Deconstructed Grilled Cheese

The other day I got this Martha Stewart newsletter that featured this little beauty of a recipe  Grilled cheese wheel. I left this open on my browser for two days. And by the end of the day today I knew I had to have it.  A whole cheese wheel for one person is a little ridiculous...so I had half but it was SO WORTH IT.  I recommend this for your next party appetizer!

Ingredients:
1 baguette
olive oil
salt & pepper
1 round of brie cheese (pick a round that fits the size of your party)

Directions:
1. Heat the grill to 400 and then turn off one burner.
2. Diagonally slice bread. Brush the slices with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. If you are using less than the entire round of cheese, take the cut piece of cheese and wrap in foil. If you are using the whole cheese, brush lightly with olive oil.
4. Grill bread 1-2 minutes per side over the flame.
5. Grill cheese over indirect heat or on the grill rack for about 2 minutes per side
6. Serve cheese and bread slices immediately and warm

Rainbow Cake Cups

 This weekend was my niece's 2nd birthday. I have been wanting to make this tie-dye cake for months and I just haven't had a good opportunity. So when this birthday came up I knew I had the opportunity!

Spoiler alert - this is a box mix! I used a box mix and boxed frosting and later we partially made whipped cream but then we ran out so we got canned whipped cream too. Of course you could make this all by scratch but why would you?

I found Duff's cake mix (you know Duff right?) at Target and was immediately interested. I bought the mix and one of his chocolate frosting tubs as well. Then as noted, I didn't use it for months. Still before the expiration date I finally had a chance.

 The cake mixing, color dying and baking is on issue. It's just white cake that you separate into six bowls and then add food coloring (some food coloring comes with the cake but I needed extra). If you can't find Duff's tie-dye mix you can just buy white cake mix and then add food coloring.

Red - 15 drops
Orange - 5 drops yellow, 2 drops red
Yellow - 8 drops yellow
Green - 9 drops yellow, 2 drops blue
Blue - 14 drops blue
Purple - 7 drops red, 2 drops blue

You are then supposed to take 6 MORE bowls and separate out the cake again. But that seemed like a lot of dirty bowls so I decided to just eyeball it. The result was that one cake was way smaller than the other, however, this really wasn't an issue. If you smartly weighed out the batter in the first place, this could've been way easy.  Anyway, pour about 1/4 C of the red batter into the center of a WELL GREASED and FLOURED and PARCHMENT PAPER LINED baking pan. Pour 1/4 C of the orange batter on top of that and let it spread out. Add the rest of the colors in rainbow order ending with purple.  Bake as directed.

In case you were wondering, our problem was that the pans were not well greased even though I seriously felt that I had well greased them. My cake got stuck to the bottom of the pan. The results were a very mangled cake. We first tried to frost it together but it just crumbled, it didn't work and we were frustrated. So I looked online to find out ways to fix a destroyed cake.  This is when I came up with Cake Cups. That's right, it's not cupcakes. It's cups filled with cake pieces and frosting and topped with either frosting or whipped cream.

These cake cups were actually pretty delicious. People thought they were fun and different. Even if you didn't accidentally ruin your cake, you could make these.

Directions
1. Break up cooked cake into bite sized pieces
2. Layer cake pieces and globs of frosting (this is white cake & chocolate frosting) in a small cup (if you aren't using rainbow cake feel free to use a non-see through cup)
3. Top cake pieces with whipped cream (or more frosting if you can pipe it on)
4. Use the tiny crumb crumbles as topping on your whipped cream or use sprinkles
5. Refrigerate until ready to serve. If you want to be really wild, you can top the whole thing with ice cream!