Head Start on Halloween!

I know Halloween is not here yet but, I just couldn't help myself when I came across this witch finger cookie sheet. What could be more delicious than biting into a ghoulish witch's index finger? The pan is Wilton brand and offers two different recipes on the back for nail bitingly good witch finger cookies.

The recipe is actually really simple, but it yields a lot. It's supposed to make only 3 dozen, however I managed to get 40 total which is perfect for handing out to friends in grab bags. But, timing is everything, make sure you make this early in the day or you might be making fingers all night long.

If you really want them to stand out put some food coloring in the dough to change it to that classic wicked witch color. And don't be afraid to really work the dough with your hands, it really helps incorporate all of the ingredients. Also try sticking sliced almonds on the ends of the fingers to make nails. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 sticks of butter, soften
1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
2 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly spray pan cavities with vegetable spray.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until well blended. Add egg and both extracts; mix well. Combine flour and salt to butter mixture. Beat until well blended. (optional- add food coloring to dough and knead until combined).

3. Press dough into cavities, filling 2/3 full. Bake for 9-10 minute or until light brown around edges. Cool in pan for 5 minutes. Turn pan over and lightly tap out. Transfer to cooling rack.

4. Decorate! I used some candy melts as glue and pasted almond slices onto each finger tip.

Take a look at how I made these at the link below:

Witch Finger Cookies

Martha Stewart's Cookies!

If there was one book I would suggest to any cookie fanatic, it would be “Martha Stewart’s Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share”. This book offers 175 cookie recipes from sandwich cookies to basic sugar cookies. This is my ultimate "go to" cookie book. What I really like about this book is the table of contents. The cookies are shown with the page number and are categorized by flavor and texture. Also there are plenty of pictures that show each cookie. In the back of the book there are technique pages that offer step-by-step pictures of how to decorate or roll out the cookies. I am a very visual person, so it helps to know what the outcome of the recipe should look like. I also appreciate how each recipe tells you how to store your cookies and how long before they go stale. Nothings is more disappointing than eating stale cookies.

The only thing I do not care about is how the directions are presented. Once in a while I will find a recipe that forgets to tell you to save a certain amount of an ingredient. I found that that out when I made my peanut butter cookies. It called for 1 and 1/3 cup of sugar, so I dumped it in the bowl. Mixed it together and put it in the oven for 10 minutes. But at the end, the directions said to sprinkle the remaining 1/3 of sugar over the cookies. So, as you can imagine my cookies were super sweet. Other than that, this book is still pretty good. Just make sure you read through the whole recipe.

This book comes in handy for last minute entertaining and offers a wide variety to choose from. The recipes are simple to follow and the cookies are so good!

You can get Martha's cookie book on Amazon.com at the link below: Martha's Cookie Book

Cupcakeology

Did you know that the cupcakes were originally called "number" cakes? It wasn't until the 19th century when cupcakes really became popular in the United States. Food historians are not sure exactly how the name "cupcake" had originated. One of the theories is the way they were made, they were either baked in an actual cup or the ingredients were measured out in cups. Cupcakes were created as an alternative to making one large cake and are also a time saver in the kitchen. It's no surprise that cupcakes are still popular today. Now with even more unique and tasty flavors!

One of my favorites is the Caramel Mud Cake! I found the recipe in Pamela Clark's book called "Cupcakes". When I saw that this recipe called for white chocolate and honey I knew I had to make them. So, I made these for my friend and her roommates when she returned back to the dorms last year. And they absolutely loved them!


Ingredients:

Caramel Mud Cakes

1 stick of butter, chopped coarsely
3 1/2 ounces white chocolate, chopped coarsely
2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2/3 cup milk
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1 egg

Butter Cream Frosting

6 tablespoons of butter, softened
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons of milk
Food coloring of your choice

Directions:

Batter

1. Preheat oven to 325 F. Line 6-hole over sized (Texas) or 12-hole standard muffin pan with paper baking cups. You can also use a mini cupcake pan like I did to yield more. I got about 24 mini cupcakes out of my batch.

2. Combine butter, chocolate, sugar, honey and milk in a small pot; stir over low heat, until smooth. DO NOT TURN UP THE HEAT! I cannot stress that enough, you will end up with a burnt gloopy mess. Once the chocolate mixture is smooth transfer into a medium bowl; let it cool for 15 minutes.

3. Whisk sifted flours into chocolate mixture, then egg. Divide among baking cups.

4. Bake large large cakes about 40 minutes, small cakes about 30 minutes. Turn cakes onto wire rack to cool. Frost after finished cooling.

Frosting

Beat butter and vanilla extract in a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in sifted powered sugar and milk, in two batches. Beat in a little of desired coloring. If you want two toned frosting, divide frosting into two bowls add different color food coloring to each and place into a pastry bag and squirt. Or, if you don't have a pastry bag use a sandwich bag, put the frosting in and cut the tip of the bag.

For more Cupcake history visit : http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring07/Ayers/history.html

And for more delicious cupcake recipes look for "Cupcakes" by Pamela Clark.

Mobile Journalism and Social Media

I think it is interesting how most journalist do not have to do as much leg work to get a story. That skype and other pieces of social media have replaced the face-to-face interviews. This means that stories are developed and shared online at a much faster rate. The only issue I have with mobile journalism is authenticity. Whether the stories actually true or made up of several rumors online. So, journalist are still responsible for fact finding to produce a reliable story.

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Washington and Greene Counties: Annual Covered Bridge Festival

I really wanted to bring in the fall season. So, what better way to welcome it in, than with the Annual Covered Bridge Festival. This is the place I usually buy some of my ingredients for my fall recipes, come October and November. And I also sample some of the homemade treats made by local bakers, and boy are they good...how can you say "no" to a whoopie pie? ...you can't!

The Annual Covered Bridge Festival happens only once a year on the third weekend of Sept. in Washington and Greene counties. This year marked 41 years of celebrations. There are a cluster of ten covered bridges in that area that celebrate this festival at the same time.Vendors, craftsman, artisans and bakers come to the festival to sell their goods to visitors. These are people dedicated to creating the best for their consumers in quality. Every year I go to the Henry and Ebenezer covered bridges and there are two vendors that I always have to see:


The first vendor I pay a visit to is Nancy's Homemade Goodies. Her tables are literally covered with the sweetest treats you'll ever see.






From peach and apple pies to cookies of all shapes and sizes. Don't even get me started about her apple pie!

Nancy offers a wide variety of homemade baked goods that no one can resist. I had to wait in line before I could even get close to the chocolate gobs. Nancy always bakes the night before and early in the morning, before the festival even starts, so everything is fresh. Its no wonder why there is a crowd around her booth every year. If you would like to try some of Nancy's Homemade Goodies you can email her at : bballmom107@hotmail.com


The second vendor that I cannot leave without seeing is Bee Keeper. Bee Keeper is owned by Perry D. Arlia, a local bee keeper who makes really good honey. And when I say really good, I mean really good! I like to call it liquid gold and I share it with no one.

All of these years I was using run of the mill supermarket honey, until I came across Bee Keeper honey. I never knew what good honey tasted like until I had Mr. Arlia's yellow clover and wildflower honey.

The secret to his honey is that its not imported from three different countries and poured into one bottle. He's bees are native to Washington, Pa which means his honey is fresh and local. I had to wait a while before I could get some more jars of that deliciousness. People flocked over to his booth but, it was well worth the wait.
If you would like to try Bee Keeper honey you can email Mr. Arlia at : p.arlia@att.net

As a whole this year's festival was great! Good art, great food and really amazing people. I can't wait until next year's festival. If you would like to visit next year's festivities, click on the link below for more information: http://visitwashingtoncountypa.com/coveredbridge.php

Journalists and Social Media: How Facebook is Making News

"How Journalist Are to Share News" by Lauren Drell focuses on how journalists are using social media sites to post their opinions and go more in depth on stories. This article talks about what to keep in mind while posting. Like how posts affect engagement, content should be diverse, coverage trends and when to post stories. According to Vadim Lavursik, journalist program manager, and Betsy Cameron, a data analyst, compiled the data to "provide journalists with some best practices and insights on optimizing their engagement and distribution on Facebook to better reach their audiences." This statement is very true since journalist can really connect to their audience through social media.

I like how this article gives percentages on viewer engagement depending on what is posted and when it is posted. It gives you an idea how to better promote stories on your blog. What you post affects engagement such as a question asked. When a journalist posts a questions they are looking for viewer feedback. If a journalist gives a piece of their mind, they are more likely to receive 20% more online engagement from viewers. Asking fans to read up on a topic or inviting them in behind the scenes of what you are reporting stimulates interaction. And being clever by using puns and catchy phrases attracts 18% of viewer engagement.

The only fact that I found to be common knowledge would be the percentages on viewers looking at pictures posted. Of course viewers will be more likely to view a blog if it has pictures. Any visual media will promote engagement, if every post was text only that would be pretty boring. As a whole this article is interesting to read. It gives good tips on how journalist use social media to get their point across. To read this article go to the link below:
http://www.mashable.com/2011/07/18/facebook-marketing-journalists/

The next article I read was "Vadim Lavursik: How Journalist can make use of Facebook Pages". This article focuses on how private journalists are using Facebook to their advantage. It basically states things that everyone already knows about Facebook. Such as, the news feeds, social storytelling, personal vs. professional, and showcasing multimedia. Most people know that new feeds are like having your own newspaper; you can post basically whatever you want. Whether it is a article you read on CNN or what you ate for dinner last night. The idea of social media is to post out information that you would like the public to know.

However, one topic that I did find interesting was building your journalistic brand. How people have shift from the institutional news brand to journalists' personal brands. Prior to the web, the journalist's personal brand was mostly limited to columnist and the TV anchors who enjoy lots of face time. By having a personal brand it makes the readers understanding how credible the reporters are. Basically taking the brand logo away from the journalist and replacing it with an actual face. Both reporters and online readers can openly communicate and talk about the stories they reported. Besides this section on personal branding, this article focuses on too many things that people are well aware of on Facebook. To read this article go to the link below:
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/05/vadim-lavrusik-how-journalists-can-make-use-of-facebook-pages/

The last article I read on facebook as a news source was " Facebook Journalism 101" which pretty much broke every aspect down to using Facebook as a media source. To the point of giving way too much information. This is like reading a manual about how to use Facebook, most people can learn how to use the site just by using it. Don't get me wrong, this article states the percentages on audience engagement and explains personal branding too. But, it explains too much, also their percentages are a little different from the first article . For example:

• Post that asked questions or user input: +64%



• Call to read or take a closer look: +37%



• Personal reflections or behind the scenes post: +25%

This article is perfect for someone just beginning to use Facebook and has never had any experience with it. It also combines a lot of the information from the first two articles. It is sort of like reading a text book on social media, packed with vocabulary, terms and statistics. I would most likely give this site to a much older person just learning the basics to Facebook. If you would like to visit this site, go to the link below:
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/61073681%20(up%20to%20the%20end%20of%20section%20V)