S'more Pie

Well, this sounded like a wonderful recipe to try... especially since i was kind of craving s'mores. This was a VERY time consuming pie, and I didn't even do everything in the right amount of time. (me and my impatience, again!) The crust was the simplest part of the whole thing. A homemade graham cracker crust, how hard is that to make anyway? I blame part of the taste of this pie because of how the pie crust turned out. You are supposed to cook the crust until it is golden (I thought graham crackers were golden, oh well) and then let it cool. I did the directed time and it made it taste like it had been burnt in the end. The chocolate part of the pie wasn't as great as I expected it to be either; the taste seemed too bitter and didn't really fit into the flavor I think of when I eat a s'more. The marshmallow top was just a failure in and of itself. By the time I got the sugar to read the tempurature it was to be, it was actually too hot. Old candy thermometers and a small, shallow amount of hot bubbling sugar does not make for accurate tempurates in a timely manner. Then, when I added the sugar to the rest of the marshmallow recipe, the sugar stuck to the bottom of the bowl and hardened.. this probably had a little to do with the fact that i poured the last little bit of the sugar in pretty quick. (because once again, I was impatient and wanted to eat it!) The amount of marshmallow "fluff" i ended up with wasn't much of a fluff, and it barely even covered the top of the pie. I was supposed to let that cool in the fridge for 3 hours and then take it back out to toast the top with my torch. I chose not to do that and just torch it then and there... :D that was fun! The marshmallow top was so runny that it took a little work getting the top to brown correctly.
In the end, this pie was NOT the greatest! I would give it about 1 star out of 5.... It was a nice effort at trying to recreate a s'more, but it wasn't very good to me... This pie is definitely not for a beginner and maybe not an intermediate. Only plan on making this if you have LOTS of time and patience! :)

Caramel Cake

A couple of days later i decided to make this recipe that i have had my eye on for a while. I quite like *love* caramel so this was a recipe I was looking forward to! The cake, as far as I remember, was fairly simple to make. It is just a fairly simple white "pound" cake, fairly dense and quite heavy. The caramel sauce takes a little work to make but it is delicious. A lot of the caramel sauce however, is lost when it is poured over the cake, I scooped it back up about 6 or 7 times before i actually got it all to stay ON the cake. The cake seemed to *eat* the caramel sauce which kind of scared me. The corners of the cake had just the right amount of caramel on them but the other pieces just seemed to lack the correct amount of sauce. It was kind of like eating a dry white cake that someone tried to fix with the caramel sauce. In the end the cake was good once it had set and soaked for a while, but I still feel it needs more of the caramel sauce. I would give this a rating of about a 4.

I would opt next time to either leave the cake in the pan and pour the caramel over it while it is in the pan, or double the recipe for the caramel sauce. Another idea would be to poke the cake with a fork to help the cake absorb the sauce. (This only makes an 8x8 cake.) Overall this was a good cake that would not serve so much as a dessert in and of itself, but maybe along side of something like berries, whipped cream, a mousse of sorts, etc.

Homemade Oreos

So, everyone seems to have tried these...I finally decided i would see what all the rage was about.. after having my cherry gelato "mishap" i decided to go back to baking things. The cookies didn't turn out too bad, if you like really small cookies. I would suggest taking them out a little early so the cookies are softer and easier to eat in the end. I don't know if I was having a bad baking day, the recipe wasn't the greatest, or what the problem was. The cookies turned out fairly hard and made them hard to eat in my opinion. My brother, who usually likes chocolate stuff didn't even finish the little one he ate. The frosting needs work, it just doesn't seem like an "Oreo frosting." It was a very "fluffy" frosting and just didn't seem like it should be on an Oreo. On the plus side, though, these were some of the easiest cookies i have ever made, they had no flour and didn't stick to the bowl when i was forming the cookies. If you want a calorie conscious cookie, (who in the world would want that anyway?!) these are definitely not the cookie for you, they are absolutely loaded with sugar and butter!

So, all in all I give this recipe a 4.5... the flavors all went well together, they just didn't turn out the way I would have wished they would. The ease of the cookie makes this a beginner cooking level. Just make sure you have the time and patience to assemble the cookies