Snicker

doodles!!

Okay, sorry for not putting up posts. It has been a rough week... lots of tests. :P But that is what high school bio is! (And in case you were wondering, I got an A) But anyway these are easy cookies. Very easy. And soft and delicious. MMMMMM. And they look pretty darn good too. So - make, eat, love, enjoy!!

Snickerdoodles

recipe from here

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons white sugar
• 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt.
   
3. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls, about 1 inch in diameter.
4. Mix the 4 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon.
   
5. Roll balls of dough in mixture.
   
6. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.
   
7. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set. Remove immediately from baking sheets.

Shamrocks for St. Patty's Day!

mmm - cookies! I was playing around with different settings on iphoto...

I am Irish. Very Irish. As in, flaming red hair and freckles, can't go outside in summer because of my fair skin irish. However, I hate - and I mean hate - Irish food. Soda Bread, haggis, all of that kind of stuff, ew. But I like cookies. And frosting. So I made some shortbread cookies with a powdered sugar frosting, in honor of this very Irish holiday.

Shamrock Cookies

recipe courtesy of thepioneerwoman.com

Ingredients

• 2 sticks Plus 2 Tablespoons Salted Butter, Softened
• 1 cup Sugar
• 2 cups All-purpose Flour
• 1 cup (scant) Corn Starch

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar together. Sift in flour and

cornstarch and blend together using a pastry cutter

until the ingredients all come together. (If mixture

seems excessively dry, cut in 1 more tablespoon of

butter—but only if you really need it.) (p.s. as a note

from me, I just used my hands to mix it all up - it

blended it a lot better)

Form dough into a big ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and

refrigerate 20 minutes.

Roll onto a lightly floured surface and cut into rounds.

Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper

or a baking mat. Bake for 20 minutes. Do not allow

shortbread to brown; the edges should have the faintest

golden tinge.

Powdered Sugar Frosting

2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp milk

Mix together. You may need to add more or less liquid in, or more or less powdered sugar, to get the consistency you desire. To decorate the cookies, I used the flooding technique.

Chocolate Filled Cupcakes

I was really bored this weekend, so I made about 7 recipes, including shortbread, homemade pasta, biscuts, apple pie, olive cheese bread, and of course, these. They are vanilla cupcakes filled with chocolate cream, topped with a chocolate ganache, which is then dipped in chocolate. They are pretty dang delicious. And relatively easy, since they start with a homemade cake mix.

So here is the recipe (I came up with it myself!!)

Ingredients:
1 boxed cake mix + any materials called for on the box
24 ox chocolate chips.
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 tbs honey
3 tbs flour
3/4 c. sugar
1 c. half and half
2 tsp. vanilla
5 egg yolks
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs vegetable shortening

Directions:
1. Make the cupcakes as directed, set aside to cool completely


For the Chocolate Creme:
1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the flour, salt, sugar, and half n half.

2. Let cook, whisking continuously until smooth.

3. take about 1/2 cup of the mixture and combine it with the egg yolks, CONSTANTLY
WHISKING (this is called tempering, if you don't whisk it, the eggs will cook, and that is gross, we don't want scrambled eggs in our chocolate creme.)

4. When this mixture is smooth, pour it into the saucepan and start whisking again, when it is smooth, whisk while cooking for about 3 minutes until thickened.

5. Add in about 2/3 cups of the chocolate chips, and the vanilla. Mix it untill smooth. (For a vanilla creme, just leave out the chocolate chips)

6. Put this creme into a bowl, put the bowl in the fridge, and let it chill.

For the Chocolate Ganache
1. Bring the heavy cream to a simmer.

2. Pour it over 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips and add 1tbs. honey. Mix until smooth and shiny.

3. Set aside, it's time to fill the cupcakes!

For the Assembly of Everything:
1. Fill a ziploc baggie with the chilled chocolate creme, and cut off a small corner of the bag.

2. Take a paring knife, and just like hulling a strawberry, cut a cone out of the middle of the cupcake.

3. Fill the hole with the creme.

4. Cut the bottom off the cone, and replace the top on the cupcake.

5. Using a spoon, spoon some ganache over the top of the cupcake. It doesn't have to cover the entire thing, or be perfect, since we are going to cover it with chocolate soon anyway. Mine just looked like a blob.

6. Put the cupcakes in the fridge to chill and harden the ganache.

For the Chocolate Top:
1. Take about 3 tbs of chocolate chips and set aside.

2. Melt the rest of the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, and when it is all melted add about 1 tbs vegetable shortening.

3. Stir until the shortening is mixed in.

4. Take a cupcake, hold it upside down, and dip the top into the chocolate. Let the drips drip off, and set down. Place one chocolate chip in the middle for decoration.

5. Repeat with all of the cupcakes.

6. Put Cupcakes in the fridge and let the chocolate harden.

7. Eat!


These are yummy, and I made them because they travel well. I was sick of the ganache/buttercream getting all smeared. The chocolate shell is really yummy too!

They can be made with any kind of variation. Maybe a chocolate cupcake with vanilla creme (just leave out the chocolate chips to make vanilla creme) and a white chocolate ganache with a white chocolate coating. You could easily use buttercream instead of ganache underneath the chocolate too, but if you do that, make a thin-ish layer so the chocolate doesn't smash. Happy Eating!

Turkey Meatballs

These are good. No, great. No, fantabulous. :) I have made them a few times now and the one thing I like about them is that you can change them very easily to focus on a different ingredient. The first time I made them, It was all about the basil.

This time, it's all about the...

Garlic!! I love garlic, it's yummy, and smells good. I could write love songs to garlic. But I won't because I think that you would run away from this blog crying.

However you can tweak this recipe to focus on whatever spice you want. Heck, even cilantro.


I don't judge.


But anyway, this is really easy to put together (and I apologize for not having a decent picture of these ingredients, but I forgot)

You need 19.2 oz of ground turkey (or 16 oz, but the package I bought was 19.2 oz so I just used all of it), 2/3 cup of breadcrumbs (I just used progresso, I didn't make my own since I can't tell the difference), about 1/4 cup FINELY diced onion, 3-4 cloves garlic (you can use more or less depending on how deep your love is for garlic), about 2 teaspoons dried or fresh basil, chopped, one egg, and a sprinkle of onion powder and garlic powder (this can be left out but I love the flavor so I always add some)

Mix that all together. Really mix it. C'mon, keep mixing - your arm will get tired. But it's worth it. Then use a cookie scoop, one of the ones with the little thing that slides back and forth to get the stuff out, any size. The size I used made 25 meatballs. Scoop the meat mixture and roll it into balls.

They should end up looking like this:

Now refrigerate those babies and get started on marinara sauce!!

For the marinara sauces, you need 2 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes (or crushed or whole, it doesn't matter they will be pureed anyway), 5-6 teaspoons basil, either fresh or dried, a sprinkle of sage (about an eighth of a teaspoon), 4 teaspoons sugar, and about 1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder. (I always add extra onion powder though, so make sure you taste it to make sure the combination is right for you)

Pour all of this in a food processor, and process it up until it is at the consistency you like best. I usually make sure there are absolutely no chunks.

Then set the sauce aside for while you do this:

Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a skillet on medium-low heat, and add 5-6 cloves of minced garlic. Saute garlic until golden brown. It will smell AMAZING at this point.

This picture makes me hungry.

Now take the pureed marinara sauce mixture and pour it into the garlic and olive oil, and stir it all up. Cook on medium low for 20-25 minutes.

While the sauce is cooking, take the meatballs out of the fridge and heat up about a tablespoon of olive oil in a small skillet. Cook about 8 meatballs at a time so they are browned on each side

Hungry yet? I am!

When they are done browning (keep in mind this is not meant to cook them all the way through) they should look like this:

Like the Disney princess plate? I got it in Disney World when my band went this Christmas.

Then you put all of the meatballs in the marinara sauce and cook for about 20 min. It could be less, it could be more, make sure you check the inside of one to make sure they are all the way cooked.

When they are done, ladle them into a bowl (yes, ladle, it helps give you more of the wonderful tomato sauce) And eat.

Yum. I love these meatballs more than normal ones, and I could eat that sauce with a spoon, so in the words of Pioneer Woman, "Lawsie that is good!" And healthy. But mostly good. Serve over pasta for extra special deliciousness!

Boston Cream Pie

So today was my baking day, and one thing I have definitely learned is that dogs are difficult to bake with. My dog, bailey, is always after food and it can become kind of funny. He actually started eating stuff off the dishwasher today! My dog is going to get fat.

But anyway, this is the 4th recipe I have made today, after the brownies and the cookie dough balls. I also made mac n cheese from pioneer woman, which you can find at her website here.

It's incredibly amazingly delicious, but I am not going to do a whole post about it because I don't think that I can do it justice.

But back to the recipe.

This is boston cream pie. But it isn't a pie. (Not that real Boston Cream Pie is a pie anyway.) It is a cupcake.

It is good. It is really good.

Vanilla cream:

- 2 eggs yolks

- 1/4 cup white granulated sugar

- 2 tablespoons + 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

- 1/4 teaspoon salt

- 1 cup milk

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cupcakes:

- 3 eggs

- 1 cup white granulated sugar

- 1 1/2 cups flour

- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter

- 1/2 cup milk

Chocolate Ganache Glaze:

- 6 oz semisweet chocolate (chopped)

- 1 tablespoon light corn syrup

- 2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

Vanilla cream:

1. Whisk the egg yolks until smooth.

2. Heat the sugar, cornstarch, salt and milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly.

3. Stir it until the mixture thickens. Once the thickened mixture start to bubble, remove the saucepan from the heat.

4. Pour 1/3 of the thickened mixture into the yolks an whisk until smooth.

5. Return the yolk mixture to the rest of he mixture in the saucepan, place it back over heat. Add in the vanilla extract and stir it for another 4 mins.

6. Then pour the vanilla cream into a bowl and refridgerate for a few hours.

Cupcakes:

7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line a muffin tray with paper liners. Then, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

8. In another bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until pale. Takes about 5 mins.

9. Add in the flour mixture and mix well.

10. Place the butter and milk in a saucepan over medium heat and bring it to a boil.

11. Then pour the mixture into the batter and beat well. Add the vanilla extract and mix well.

12. Scoop the batter into the muffin cups.

13. Bake for 15 mins until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool for 20 mins.

14. Take out the vanilla cream from the fridge and beat it until it's smooth. Set it aside to let it come to room temperature.

Chocolate ganache glaze:

15. Place the chopped chocolate and light corn syrup in a heat-proof bowl. Bring the heavy cream to a boil over medium heat, once it boils, pour it over the chocolate. Let it stand for 3 mins.

16. Then whisk it until it's smooth. Set aside to let it cool.

Assembly:

17. Using a paring knife, cut out a cone-shaped top from the top of the cupcakes.

18. Fill the holes with the vanilla cream.

19. Place back the tops of the cupcakes.

20. Finally, pour a tablespoon full of chocolate ganache over the tops of the cupcakes.

Look at the beatutiful inside!!

This week, I am going to cram in turkey meatballs in between my studying. I have to eat healthy sometime!!

Cookie Dough Balls

Yum. Of course, this is cookie dough dipped in chocolate, so it has to be yummy.

This is also the easiest recipe to make if you aren't afraid of raw cookie dough.

It takes 3 ingredients. Chocolate chips, a tube of pre-made cookie dough (or you could make your own), and vegetable shortening.

Take about 2 teaspoons of cookie dough, and roll it into a ball. Place on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper/ a silpat / wax paper, whichever you prefer. Repeat until you use all of the cookie dough. Then you need to freeze the balls for about 30 minutes so they won't fall apart when you dip them in chocolate.

When it has been 30 min, melt the bag of chocolate chips in a heatproof dish. I used the microwave. (Yes, most people say to use a double boiler, but this is easier. Promise.) When the chips are melted stir in about 1 tbs. shortening. The shortening helps you get a smooth coating on the chocolate.

Dip the balls in chocolate and fully coat them one at a time, placing on the baking sheet when coated. Then put the sheet back into the freezer until the chocolate is hard, about 10 minutes.

Then you eat. And eat. And eat, because they are THAT addictive.

****disclaimer*****

these have raw eggs. if you don't like raw eggs, here is an alternate recipe to use that does not have eggs in it. if you use this recipe, you will need to chill the dough to make it cold enough to hold its shape.

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk or soy milk
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips, or small chocolate chunks.

14 oz dark chocolate candy coating, (i didnt have any so i used chocolate chips)

Directions
Beat butter and sugars and in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add soymilk and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt and mix on low speed (or by hand) until incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips.

Thanks to "love and olive oil" for this recipe!

This makes about 50 balls, but could make more or less based on how big or small they are rolled.

NOT FOR CHOCOLATE HATERS

If you hate chocolate, do not read this post.

Do not melt 2 sticks of butter, 12 oz of chocolate chips, and 3 oz unsweetened baking chocolate.

Do not let that cool slightly.

If you hate chocolate, do not combine 1 c and 2 tbs of sugar, 3 eggs, and 1 tbs vanilla extract.

Do not combine the chocolate mixture with that.

ESPECIALLY DONT TASTE IT. because you hate chocolate, and that would be bad.

Don't let the whole mixture cool and add 1/2 c. flour, 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder, and 1/2 tsp. salt

And don't take out a spoon and eat some. That would be bad.

Finally, make sure you don't add another bag of chocolate chips. That would be horrible if you hated chocolate.

If you really hate chocolate, don't grease a 9x13 pan and bake the brownies for 30 min.

HOWEVER, I love chocolate. So I did do all of that. And then I ate one. And it was good.

Thank you, Ina.

These are from Ina Garten's Recipe, and they are gooey and chewy and delicious. They took me about 35 min to bake, so I suppose the time could vary. They are good. And I recommend them highly.

Also, they are exceedingly rich, so if you cut them smaller it is probably better for your waist. But they are good, and you might end up eating 6 anyway. :) Have fun!

Ina’s Outrageous Brownies

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter

1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

3 oz. unsweetened chocolate

3 extra-large eggs

1 ½ tbsp. instant coffee powder

1 tbsp. real vanilla extract

1 cup and 2 tbsp. sugar

½ cup and 2 tbsp. flour, divided – ½ cup for batter and 2 tbsp. .in the chips

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups morsels (milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate or butterscotch)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour a 9×13” metal pan.

Melt together the butter, 1 ½ cups chocolate chips, and unsweetened chocolate on top of a double boiler. Cool slightly. Stir together the eggs, instant coffee, vanilla and sugar. Stir in the warm chocolate mixture and cool to room temperature.

Stir together ½ cup of the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to cooled chocolate mixture. Toss the chocolate chips with 2 tbsp. flour to coat. Then add to the chocolate batter. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until tester just comes out clean. Halfway through the baking, rap the pan against the oven shelf to allow air to escape from between the pan and the brownie dough. Do not overbake! Cool thoroughly, refrigerate well and cut into squares.