As much as I am a holiday lover, I’m not really into St. Patrick’s Day. It’s yet just another excuse for people to drink. Now, I am all for drinking, but I don’t need a day in the year as an excuse to drink. Need an excuse? Use mine.

Won my hockey game.
Lost my hockey game.
A drink for every bruise I got in the hockey game.
A drink for every time I mess up in the hockey game (though this is not wise because I usually pass out from how much I end up drinking).
Need to avoid doing laundry.
Need to avoid folding laundry.
Stressed because I have no clean laundry.
I wasn’t killed by a giant orca at SeaWorld today.
Taxes. This covers you from January to April 15th.
Stress from work.
Stress from not having work.
Want to see how many free beers I can get.
The mail got delivered.

With excuses like those, I don’t need a special day of the year to drink. First off, I’m not Irish. When they have a Scottish-Canadian holiday I’ll be all over that. But I’m not Irish, and I’m not being Irish for a day. That’s lame. No one ever goes Bosnian for a day.

Also, I’m not a big fan of actually going out on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s amateur hour. I mean, if you are sitting around waiting for a day as an excuse to go drink, clearly you are not a good drinker. You have not been properly training all year round to get in shape for the holiday itself. Which is why there are so many stupid people getting DUI’s, stumbling around drunk telling me they love me, puking in the corner,  and what not. Now it’s too late for this year, but I challenge you, that if you do go out for St. Patrick’s Day, start training now for next year. Oh sure, it takes lots of dedication, but if you are willing to commit, I feel you can do it. I have faith.

I may not usually go out for it, but I do usually like to cook something for it. Usually with stout. Last weekend, I was down in Portland. We took the train actually into Vancouver, WA which is just on the other side (easier to get to our hotel from that stop). While having some downtime waiting for our train (it was late due to running someone over on the tracks…yikes) it was suggested to me and my travel companion to hit up the Salmon Creek Brew Pub. So I did. For the sake of training and all. I sampled quite a few of their beers (again, all for training purposes only), my favorite being the Belgian. The other being their sweet stout. You could actually take beer home with you in growlers or keg. Since I was fresh out of a keg, I bought two growlers. Sadly my favorite beer can not be taken home (it’s just too expensive for them to sell) but I got the stout and the Scottish ale to go. Got to love the train…you can just walk on in with beer no problem.

Once you open a growler though it goes flat pretty quickly. And though I will drink flat beer no problem (years of training will help you with this), I decided to use the rest in recipes. Hence, a stout cake. A Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey’s Irish Cream Ganache Buttercream Frosting to be exact. Proving you can be in training even when you are not drinking directly from a glass. But if you want to drink from a glass, I suggest serving a Stout Float. Trust me they are good. I made mine here with vanilla ice cream because we had it, but it’s really good with Bailey’s Irish Cream Ice Cream.

And in case you all were wondering, why yes, I was in training right before I frosted this cake. My frosting  job is even worse than usual.

Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey’s Irish Cream Ganache Buttercream Frosting
For Cake:

2 cups stout (such as Guinness)
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter
1 ½  cups unsweetened cocoa powder
4 cups all purpose flour
4 cups sugar
1 TBSP baking soda
1 ½ tsp salt
4 large eggs
1 1/3 cups sour cream

8 ounces chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter three 8-inch round cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Line with parchment paper. Butter paper.

Bring 2 cups stout and 2 cups butter to simmer in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and whisk until mixture is smooth. Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda, and 1 ½  tsp salt in large bowl to blend.

Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sour cream in another large bowl to blend.

Add stout-chocolate mixture to egg mixture and beat just to combine.

Add flour mixture and beat briefly on slow speed. Using rubber spatula, fold batter until completely combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center of cakes comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Transfer cakes to rack; cool 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto rack and cool completely.

Adapted from Epicurious.com
Bailey’s Irish Cream Ganache Buttercream
10 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
3 TBSP Bailey’s Irish Cream (or more if desired)
12 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar

Place chocolate in a medium bowl.

Heat cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Once boiling, pour over chocolate. Let sit 3 minutes. Add in the vanilla and Bailey’s Irish Cream and whisk until smooth. Pour into a 8-x8-inch pan. Spread evenly and place in fridge for 30 minutes, until the ganache is cool and almost completely set.

Using an electric mixer (or a stand mixer) beat the ganache, and add the butter, one TBSP at a time, until all the butter is incorporated. Add the powdered sugar and beat for another 3 minutes.

Your frosting may look curdled a little. This is what the Bailey’s likes to do to the frosting. I add a lot of  Bailey’s to  mine so it likes to curdle. Tastes good. That is all that matters.

Cheers! Now get to training!!!!

I’m hoping a good many of your know where I am going with this post.

So Canada played USA Sunday for the gold medal. It was a good game all around, with USA hockey goalie (and my fantasy hockey goalie), Ryan Miller, playing outstanding (he did the whole tournament…I wish I could use the Olympic games for my fantasy hockey stats). With just seconds remaining in the game, USA tie the game, forcing it to go to overtime.

Canada won in overtime. On a goal by none other than….Sidney Crosby. Why yes boys and girls, in the ultimate Karma revenge, the very favorite player of Mr. Parking Lot F-bomb Dropper scored in overtime.  Against the very team Mr. Parking Lot F-bomb Dropper was rooting for. Thus, giving Canada the gold medal in Men’s Hockey. Even if you wanted USA to win, if you read this blog, you still probably thought it was kind of a little cool that it happened like that.

Let us not forget the Canadian women. They brought home the gold as well. Though, not without controversy. Now while I must agree it was probably not the best choice in today’s world of political correctness to go drink beer, champagne, and smoke cigars on the ice, I can’t really say I blame them. Heck, my team celebrates with beer weekly for just surviving the game. I have an extra bonus beer if I stayed upright the whole game. So I could see where they could get caught up in the excitement.

I’m glad the Olympics are over now truthfully. NBC coverage was insanely craptastic. They kept featuring only the same people over and over again. I mean, I like Apollo, but my goodness people I don’t need to know every detail of his childhood and other mundane info like that. And don’t even get me started about what events they chose to show.
But mainly I am happy to have to stop the our country is better than yours bullshit that so many of my friends tried to start. When USA beat Canada in the preliminary game I got many a text and email saying ha, ha. And my response to them was simply that the US played a great game and deserved the win. Because they did. But when Canada won gold, we then had to move on to Canada may have won gold in hockey, but the US won the most medals overall. Well, Canada won the most gold overall….and I’ve always been a quality over quantity kind of gal myself. Needless to say, I am ready for the pissing matches to be over and done with. Congrats to all of the athletes from all of that participating countries for representing your countries well.

Butterscotch is about as close to gold color as you can get in the baking world (except gold leaf but that stuff freaks me out for some reason). So I broke down and made a recipe that I had been avoiding making for the last couple of years. I marked it right away when I got the Sweet Melissa cookbook but then never made it. Because I knew anything with salted cashews in it would trigger me and I would eat it all. Yep, I was right. These are very similar to a Payday candy bar, minus the chocolate. Though I think a few chocolate chips scattered on top of these would go nicely.

Butterscotch Cashew Bars

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 ¼ tsp salt
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
11 ounces butterscotch chips
¾ cup light corn syrup
1 TBSP plus 1 tsp water
2 cups roasted salted whole cashews

Preheat oven to 350°. Spray a 9″x 13″ pan with cooking spray.

Using two sheets of parchment paper, line the pan’s width and length, creating a parchment “sling.” Spray parchment paper with cooking spray.

Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter, brown sugar, and salt for 1 to 1 & 1/2 minutes. Decrease mixer speed to low and add the flour. Mix just until combined. Lightly press dough evenly into the prepared pan. Poke holes in the dough with a fork. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the crust is a golden color. Remove to wire rack to cool.

In a heavy saucepan over low heat, stir together butterscotch chips, corn syrup, and water. Stir until mixture comes to a simmer and butterscotch chips are melted. Pour over crust.

Sprinkle cashews over the butterscotch caramel. Bake for 5 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack. After cooling, remove from pan and use a very sharp knife to cut into bars.
Makes 2 dozen 2-inch bars.

Source:The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy

Vic:  Is that a piece of work or what?
Clark:  What is this? “Rodolfo Lasparri”?
Vic:  Clark, I gotta tell you. The odds are pretty good we’re all gonna be on a plane to Palermo, Sicily tonight, at midnight, *if* we’re still walking.
Clark: I don’t want to go to Palermo, Sicily!
Vic: Have you ever been there?
Clark: No, of course not!
Vic: Then you really can’t make an informed judgment, can you, Rodolfo?

This movie quote from one of my all time favorite movies, The Freshman. Which brings me to my point…if you’ve never been somewhere, how do you know you don’t want to go? If you’ve never tried a food, how do you know you wont like it? AND if you have never curled before, how can you bag on it?

Yeah, you read that right…I’m going to dedicate my post to defending curling. I have done nothing but defend curling ever since the start of the Olympics, so why not here too.
I openly admit to any and all, that I curl. Sadly, I don’t do it currently as the division I qualify up here for plays on the same night that I play hockey. But I would if I could and have been on teams in the past. Like hockey, I lack skill at the sport, though I do throw a mean stone.

Now I think why so many people don’t like it is number one, you do actually have to think. Which most people do not like to have to use their brains now a days. It is a high strategy game. And once you learn the rules, you catch on to what they are doing and why. Trust me, after forcing my Southern husband to watch it, he likes it now. So much so that he actually tried it and wanted to join a league with me. Yeah, that’s right, I’m outing him.

The other is you look down right stupid doing it. I freely admit that as well. The sweeping…ummm. So not cool looking. But before you pass judgment on that, hold a mirror up to your face the next time you are going at it in the sack. You look like a moron. But hey, you’re having fun…if you’re doing it right. I mean, they don’t call it bumping uglies for nothing.

I would also quickly like to throw my support to the biathlon as well. Oh sure, I have no idea why this sport even came an Olympic event, but you have to admit, that shit is hard. Don’t believe me? Go run a couple miles and then try and shoot at targets. And then you have to keep shooting at them until you get them. Then run again. Ugh. No thank you.

So in food relatedness, huckleberries. When I was younger I refused to try them because they looked like blueberries, which I have an allergy to. I missed out on them for a of my life because of that. Because darn it all, I like huckleberries. Lang over at Fat of the Land tried to make a huckleberry buckle and it didn’t turn out to his liking. So he put out a challenge to make it better. Okay. I’ll try. First off, huckleberries aren’t easy to find, so he let us use blueberries as option B. I had to go with option B. We were also told to use frozen, that way people can make it year round. Okay.  He also wanted easy, since Lang is not a baker, more of a cooker. Okay.

So the next time you get the chance to try a huckleberry, do it. And the next time you go to make fun of curling…don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!!!!

Blueberry (because huckleberries are next to impossible to find) Sort of Buckle  But More Like Cake Concoction

9 oz frozen blueberries or huckleberries
5 oz self rising flour
zest of 1 medium lemon
¼  granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar, loosely packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 fl oz milk
3 ½ ounces (about 7 TBSP) unsalted butter, melted

For the topping:
1 oz all purpose flour
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1 oz granulated sugar
2 TBSP unsalted butter, cubed

Preheat the oven to 350F.
Prepare a 8-inch diameter (or four, 4 ½ -inch) spring form pan with butter and parchment paper.

Sift the flour, lemon zest, and sugar together in a large bowl. Set aside.

Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg, milk, vanilla, and melted butter together. On low speed add the dry ingredients and combine.

Beat well until thick and smooth. Remove bowl and scrap down whisk attachment to get all the batter.

Spoon into prepared pan (or evenly through out the 4 mini ones) and spread evenly. This will seem like a small amount, but remember stuff is going on top.

Scatter blueberries over the mixture and gently  press them with the back of a fork (I used my hand).

To make the topping, place all the ingredients into a medium bowl. Using your hands or a pastry cutter, make a crumb like mixture. Scatter the topping over the blueberries.

Bake for 30-35 minutes (about 27 for the minis) or until the top is lightly golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Leave in spring form for about 10 minutes until cool enough to handle. Then run a knife around the edge and remove the cake from the pan. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Adapted from Bake by Rachel Allen

When I was a little girl my favorite toy was a kitchen (hold back the shocked look from your face). It was shaped like different animals (the fridge was in the shape of a penguin and so on). It was outside near my sandbox and I played with it for hours until the sun faded it away to nothing.
So it should come as no surprise that my second favorite toy of all time was the Easy-Bake Oven. Oh the fun of mixing up the little packet (that cost an arm and a leg and I would have to beg my mother to get me more). Then putting it in the little pan. Pushing it into the oven with the funny little tool(pan pusher) it came with. And then watching it rise as it baked. I stood so close to that thing, I probably fried a few brain cells (I will go with that, clearly all the beer I drink wasn’t the cause…it’s that darn Easy-Bake Oven from my childhood).

I bring this up because the inventor (Ronald Howes) of the Easy Bake died last week. Given the fact that my love of baking started with his little machine, I felt it best to pay tribute. Little hard to figure out how to do that. I don’t bake a lot of my food by light bulb these days. So my other option was to use a cake mix. Now I don’t do it often, bake with a mix that is, but every now and then I save a recipe I see that calls for cake mix. Usually when that happens, I just make my own cake and incorporate it. But I figured since every Easy-Bake item I made as a kid came from a mix, my tribute item should too.

I have to say for a cake mix cake, this cake was pretty darn tasty. I didn’t exactly follow directions. I wasn’t paying attention, I was watching curling, and didn’t realize that I had to have the cinnamon layer in the middle. Oops. Oh well. I sprinkled it on top and swirled it together and that worked just fine. Maybe even better because it was through out the cake more that way. I also chose to bake it in mini spring form pans. I mean, my Easy-Bake days are probably why I like to bake with mini pans. For nostalgia reasons. And since this was baked in an oven and not by a lone light bulb, the whole cake actually bakes…not just one side of it.

Honey Bun Cake

1 box yellow cake mix
2/3 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup chopped pecans
2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 cup powdered sugar
1 TBSP milk
1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan). Grease with shortening and lightly flour 13×9-inch pan, or spray with baking spray with flour.

In large bowl, beat dry cake mix, oil, eggs and sour cream with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, then on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.
Spread half of the batter in pan.
In small bowl, stir together brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon; sprinkle over batter in pan. Carefully spread remaining batter evenly over pecan mixture. * I just put the batter in and sprinkled the mixture on top, then swirled it together. I was being weird.

Bake 44 to 48 minutes or until deep golden brown (for mini spring form it took 35 minutes). I

n another small bowl, stir powdered sugar, milk and vanilla until thin enough to spread.

Prick surface of warm cake several times with fork. Spread powdered sugar mixture over cake.

Cool completely, about 1 hour. Store covered at room temperature.

From Betty Crocker.com