Al Dente

Weekend Recipe: Eyeball Cupcakes

Talk about a sight for sore eyes! These cupcakes are perfect for Halloween, but also make a fun/creepy treat any time of year. Recipe below is from cupcakerecipes.com; head to Wilton.com for decorating tips. Happy Halloween!

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add shortening, milk, and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute on medium speed. Scrape side of bowl with a spatula.
3. Add eggs to the mixture. Beat for 1 minute on medium speed. Scrape bowl again. Beat on high speed for 1 minute 30 seconds until well mixed.
4. Spoon cupcake batter into paper liners until 1/2 to 2/3 full.
5. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
6. Cool 5 minutes in pans then remove and place on wire racks to cool completely before decorating.

--AndreaLeigh

The Celebrity Chef Blog: Our Holiday Gift to You

The holidays are all about traditions, and last year we started a wonderful new tradition of inviting chefs to blog with us, sharing their favorite holiday recipes and tips. Last year's guest chefs included Rick Bayless, Joanne Weir, Molly Katzen, and seven other foodie favorites.

This year we're thrilled to have expanded our holiday table to include 29 amazing chefs! Starting this Monday, November 3, we'll have a blog post from a guest chef every day throughout the holiday season. Come back to Al Dente for Nigella Lawson's recipe for chocolate pistachio fudge, Ellie Krieger's tips for eating healthy during the party season, Rocco DiSpirito's recipe for a succulent 24-hour turkey, and so much more.

Don't miss a day of deliciousness, all starting next week here at Al Dente!

--KitchenMaus

Take a Political Stand at the Bar with the Mood Indigo Cocktail this Election Season

The below video for the Mood Indigo cocktail transcends the partisan alco-politicking between gin and Cognac that’s so rampant in today’s bar. If it doesn’t change your alco-vote, it will, at least, make you want a drink.

--A.J. Rathbun

Happy Hour Drink Recipe: Boo Beverage

This tasty nonalcoholic blended drink goes out to all those under-21 trick-or-treaters out there! Not only is it delicious, but it's cute, to boot. The recipe comes from Taste of Home on Allrecipes.com. Photo by 3BoysMama.

Boo Beverage

Ingredients:
2 cups orange juice
2 cups milk
2 pints orange sherbet
4 ripe bananas
2 cups whipped topping
18 miniature chocolate chips

Directions:
1. In four batches, process the orange juice, milk, sherbet, and bananas in a blender until smooth. Pour into glasses.
2. Cut a hole in the corner of a pastry or plastic bag; fill with whipped topping. Pipe a ghost shape on top of each beverage. Position chocolate chips for eyes.

Serves 9.

--KitchenMaus

World's Strongest (and Spendiest) Beer

Sam Adams recently announced Sam Adams Utopias--beer with an alcohol content of 25% by volume. Marketed as an ideal after-dinner tipple, the strong, rich, dark drink is not carbonated and features four types of hops which give it an earthy, spicy, herbal taste. Carmel, Vienna, Moravian, and Bavarian smoked malts add an amber color, and a variety of yeast were used during fermentation, including the same yeast used in champagne. As a result, the slightly fruity brew has a sweet, malty flavor that resembles the deep, rich grape taste of a vintage Port, fine Cognac, or old Sherry. The limited-edition ale has been aged in Scotch, Cognac, and Port barrels and comes packaged in a collectible copper-finished brew kettle decanter reminiscent of the brew kettles used by brewmasters for hundreds of years. Oh, and it costs about $300.

--AndreaLeigh

Baconnaise, From the Makers of Bacon Salt

As an avid user of Bacon Salt, a regular eater of real bacon, and a crazy person who cooks with bacon grease instead of PAM, I'm very excited about J&D's newest bacon-flavored offering, Baconnaise.

According to their website, "Baconnaise is the ultimate bacon-flavored spread" for use on everything from salads to french fries. Dave Lefkow (right) of J&D's demonstrates how to use it on bread. Rest assured that Al Dente will have a product review soon.

Along with the launch of Baconnaise, J&D's is debuting five new Bacon Salt flavors--cheddar, maple, apple wood, mesquite and jalapeño.

A huge launch party is planned for the new products on October 30 in Seattle. Festivities include mayonnaise wrestling. Read more about this no-holds-barred celebration at Bacon Salt Blog.

Big hat tip to Slashfood. Read more about how Baconnaise was developed at IssaquahPress.com.

--Spanno

Celebrate Fall with a Pumpkin Cupcake Patch

I love pumpkins. I'm just going to come right out and say it. I love them so much that I may even be straying into addiction territory. Some people buy shoes--I buy pumpkins. When the first batch of them hits the grocery store in the fall it takes all my willpower to select just a few, instead of filling the cart with them. This really goes also for other squashes and gourds in the pumpkin family. Subsequent market visits are hard on me and I usually cave in and select a few more. Soon, every corner of my house is filled with pumpkins big and small, and my husband is starting to look at me funny.

The good news (for me) is that this year I've got an enabler. I have a one-year-old who seems equally enchanted with pumpkins. When we went to the store last week to pick out our Halloween selection, he ran around kissing them, indicating to me that the ones he kissed were The Chosen and that I must take them all home.

He is equally good at enabling me when it comes to my baking addiction. I suddenly have "a responsibility" to make him really cute treats for every occasion. And this is why, after several years of eying pans like this, I now own a pan that makes pumpkin-shaped cupcakes. Wilton's mini pumpkin pan makes four realistic and adorable mini pumpkins, using whatever kind of cake batter you wish. For my first round, I chose a carrot-cake batter and frosted them with orange and green cream-cheese frosting. I also like the idea of making a spice cake batter and plan to try that out on Wilton's larger pumpkin cake pan. And, of course you could use quick-bread batter as well and do pumpkin-bread pumpkins!

Like most cupcake pans, the mini pumpkin pan holds the equivalent of half a batch of cake batter. It has eight compartments, which, after you put them together, gives you four whole pumpkins. You may want to note that this means if you give a whole pumpkin to someone, that means they're eating two whole cupcakes. You may want to consider this before handing a whole one over to a toddler. Trust me.

As for decorating, they look pretty cute just glued together with frosting. Do note that when you're putting them together you might need to cut off a bit of the tops so the halves press together evenly. If you want to go all the way on decorating, you can put orange stripes in the vertical indentations and frost the stem and leaves with green frosting. I just stuck my frosting in piping bags and it was pretty easy. You can also make them look like jack-o-lanterns, which I did with a few of them.

Even with my pumpkin obsession, I did notice that the cupcakes could actually be decorated in other ways. The halves look quite a lot like lilies and would be so pretty decorated with pastel frostings. Or, turn them over and I see fun little sea anemones! More fun definitely lies ahead for my little one-year-old pumpkin-eater!

--KitchenMaus

Nuts to Nut Sufferers!

Have you ever been on the playground with your kids sharing a snack, and suddenly you’re surrounded by seven more kids who want some of your snack, so you try to divide the last peanut 9 ways? This happens to me all the time. Happened today, in fact. Perhaps that’s why the phrase “1/1000 of a peanut” caught my eye after a Google search for something unrelated. Clicking on the article brought up some interesting news on the latest techniques to combat food allergies.

Many of us have heard about an apparent increase in food allergies and their disastrous results, including the story about the girl from Quebec who was reported to have died after being kissed by her boyfriend who had eaten peanut butter. Thankfully, the boyfriend’s innocence has been proven. But my own niece suffers a cashew nut allergy so severe she risks hospitalization if she inhales their vapors. If we open a can of mixed nuts containing cashews in the same room she’s in, we have to warn her. She can’t chance inhaling the fine-dust-sized crumbs that often coat a lid or that may fall on the table at which we eat and where she may later come and sit. How in heck does something like this happen? Tiny dart frog venom I can almost comprehend as poisonous. Nut dust I cannot. So I’m happy to see that there are some techniques underway with medically proven positive results.

The article says “Four children who have completed years of the treatment are now able to tolerate 13 to 15 peanuts without showing even mild symptoms.” One of the children being treated was exposed to peanut butter at 2 years and her throat closed. Now she voices a dream to one day eat a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. “I’ve never eaten one…Now I probably will someday!”

Oh. My. Gosh. Poor child. I’m old and those are STILL my go-to guilty snack when I’m working alone away from my children (who don’t yet consume mass quantities of sugar). I always buy the King Size, with 4 Reese’s per package, and I never give it a second thought. How must these kids be living, and how must their parents be worrying?!

Besides peanuts as treatment, researchers are finding positive results through using “ancient Chinese herbs.” (Does anybody besides me read that phrase and hear the Calgon detergent commercial in your mind?) My gosh. A few ancient herbs? This is fantastic. We may finally catch up. I hope severe food allergies go the way of Small Pox, Consumption, and Polio. Like poison dart frogs and that commercial, don't nut allergies seem out of date?

--Sweet B

New Advances in Silverware

What's this Japanese fork used for? Check out the details and additional images at kilian-nakamura.com.

--AndreaLeigh

Beautiful Bacon Apple Pie

There's no better way to supe up an apple pie than with some cinnamon bacon. Unless, of course, you create a lattice work of cinnamon bacon on top. The fine folks at Eli Cooks have developed one great-looking pie.

Read the stoy behind the pie and get the recipe at Eli Cooks.

Here are a few more bacon apple pie recipes:
Bacon Blog's recipe
Shelley Young's recipe
Rachael Ray's recipe

--Spanno