This is Pioneer Woman's spicy pulled pork, made by braising meat for seven hours with chili powder and sugar, then tearing it into hunks and threads:
Gross picture, but yummy barbecue/carnitas. I couldn't decide if it belonged in a tortilla or one of the leftover puffy deli rolls so I ate it both ways on different days, and Isabel ate it cold, as a dip for corn chips.
Isabel baked Pioneer Woman's mocha frosted brownies
which are fantastic, if not as fantastic as Pioneer Woman's sheet cake, which Isabel also baked:
"Please make this cake today. I don't want you to live another day without it," Pioneer Woman writes. Pioneer Woman can lay it on pretty thick, but she's not overselling this cake. Please make this cake today. The recipe is here.
Okay, one caveat: I don't like chocolate and I loved this cake. It's one of those mellow, smooth chocolate cakes as opposed to one of the bitter and severe chocolate cakes. If you favor the latter, you may be disappointed.
As I type, Isabel is mixing the dough for Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls, the recipe for which calls for more than a pound of butter. I need either a new cookbook or new jeans.
I made her sheet cake a year or two ago, and I really disliked it - not for the chocolate flavor, but for the puddle of butter at the bottom of the pan. I'm pretty sure I followed the recipe correctly... and I do like butter - just in good proportion to what I'm eating it with!
ReplyDeleteI vote that you wrap up Pioneer Woman and move on to something a little more vegetabley. It all looks delicious, but not at all your style Tipsy.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good sheet cake recipe. And I'm in a bit of a fixation with carnitas right now so that's a good tip too. I miss your foodie recipes too but this is valuable to me--I need to get one of my kids eating Beyond Beige. Thanks for this detour!
ReplyDeleteI'm confused. The brownies look like what I would call a sheet cake (tall and fluffy, topped with fluffy frosting) and the sheet cake looks like what I would call brownies (short and dense, topped with shiny fudge and nuts). Have I been living in bizarro world all these years? Maybe it's an east coast/west coast thing?
ReplyDeleteI think I made her cinnamon rolls once, and from what I remember, they are really good. I think it makes a grundle, too, because I remember giving pans and pans to other people. Maple and orange variations are nice.
ReplyDeleteI second Lindsay's plea to please move on. PW's cooking is not inspiring; this type of food can be found on any of numerous websites.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Lindsay and Kevin - I'm finding it interesting and entertaining to read your take on PW's recipes. I vote you stay with her!
ReplyDeleteIf at this point in time, cooking from the PW cookbook is what you need to do then do it, it doesn't matter what anyone else says. Besides. I've got the book open myself trying to decide what to cook first (I'm thinking that chocolate sheet cake!).
ReplyDeleteI'm all for staying with P-dub, too. Just buy some elastic waist shorts now and worry about the jeans later. And can I suggest Sigrid's Carrot Cake? I don't know if it's in the cookbook or not, but it's on the website and it is DIVINE! It's a cake all about the carrots, instead of raisins, or pineapple, or walnuts, or whatever other things people try to throw into carrot cake to make it "healthy". I don't frost it like she does(no one could frost like she does...lol), I just dust it with a little powdered sugar. Soooo good.
ReplyDeleteso psyched to read some of your posts. i'm great friends with margi young who i understand is friends with your sister. i love that you're doing pioneer woman cookbook. that sheet cake looks outrageous. i want to lick off all that frosting. thanks for the stories and great writing. and i'm sorry for your loss.
ReplyDeleteI made that sheet cake once. It was incredibly good and incredibly bad in the other sense - the sense of eating a piece of sheet "cake" made with almost an entire pound of butter in it. I love Pioneer Woman and I love Tipsy Baker - together how marvelous. As a foodie, it's important to try all kinds of food anyway. Have you read her Confessions area? Reads like Harlequin romance meets Chicken Soup for a Mother's Soul. Wonderful stuff and apparently there might be a movie in the works.
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