Another Direction?

so tonight was supposed to be the THIRD Wednesday in a row that I have tried a new recipe for the parents and Drew, in an attempt to become more domesticated before I become a wifey :)

It just so happened that Drew AND my dad had "prior commitments" and just couldn't make it to dinner. Coincidence? I think not... ;)

Soo.. there goes that. I decided FINE. I would make a dessert for my mom and I instead. :)

Backing up a little, Drew and I registered this weekend! (more on that later). Whoever would have thought that I would want a meat thermometer or a ramekin?

So when I came across this little recipe for chocolate souffles, I thought I would give my moms ramekins a little test drive and see just what these "hot items on Macy's Home Store Registry for Weddings" were all about. Seriously though. I thought the worker was going to kill us if we didn't register for these little bowls. She acted like any woman who does not have a set of 4 matching ramekins in her kitchen could not even be taken seriously. I didn't even know what a ramekin was. You either? They are little bowls? That's all I got to describe them... :)

this is what the recipe promised my little chocolate mousse things would look like.

delicious, right?

aaaaannnnddddd here is my creation.

ahahahaha. seriously? how did I mess this up? it had like 4 ingredients and CHOCOLATE MILK was one of them. How does one mess up a 10 minute long dessert that has chocolate milk as it's main ingredient?

i was also talking to my mom today about how I say this quote on twitter that I just LOVED. It said,

"Rejection is God's way of saying, "nope. wrong direction!"

I was being all "look at me, look at me" high and mighty and telling her how nice it would be if everyone could just consider not getting a job they applied for or getting dumped by their boyfriend as God telling them this! My mom was going off about how this is much easier said than done, blah blah blah.

when I showed my mom her dessert for the evening?

she looked at me and said, 'yeah, like the quote you were talking about. God is telling you wrong direction!" ruuuuude mother. last time I bake something for you. ;)

so yeah. here's to hoping the magical ramekins from Macy's will bring me some souffle luck...

well i should say... the ugliness didn't deter me from just having one bite... or a couple... ;)

moral of the story: I am going to go back through the registry and get rid of anything that she recommended would make me a "fabulous dinner host."

liar. :)

SnowDay #3!

we have been stuck at home all week with snowdays.

don't get me WRONG, it was awesome buuuuut I wouldn't mind if I headed back to work tomorrow.

Things are getting scary. I have been baking too much and things like these vanilla bean whoopie cakes are laying around.

even scarier? I am running out of cozy snowday sweatpants and had to bust out these babies...

;)

and this all happened before 8AM Saturday morning of a 3-day weekend...

we're off to a good start, i'd say <3

This cute card got me in the Valentine'y spirit, so I threw on my NEW apron :) (FYI it SAYS MRS.!!!!) :)

had a little mishap between peppermint extract and vanilla extract (i actually think the accidental teaspoon made the cookies taste better? Or I'm just trying to tell myself that? :)
and ta-daaaaa

happy friday! <3

Christmas Cheesecake Bars!

CANDY CANE DESSERT SQUARES

CRUST
36 (2 CUPS) finely crushed chocolate wafer cookies (i used the keebler elf mint ones)

1/2 cup butter, melted

3 tablespoons sugar

GANACHE

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

2/3 cup whipping cream

FILLING

1 cup powdered sugar

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 teaspoons peppermint extract

1 1/2 cup whipping cream, whipped

2/3 cup ground up peppermints of candycanes

Combine all crust ingredients in a small bowl. Press onto bottom of a 13 x 9 ungreased baking pan. Set aside.

Melt chocolate chips and 2/3 cup whipping cream in a sauce-pan over low heat until smooth. (4 to 5 minutes) Spread evenly over crust. Place in freezer for at least 10 minutes.

Combine powdered sugar, cream cheese and peppermint extract in large bowl. Beat at low speed until creamy. Gently stir in whipped cream and crushed candies. Spread evenly over ganache layer. If you want, sprinkle with additional crushed candy. Cover. Freeze 4 hours, or overnight.

Cut into squares and serve frozen or refrigerated!

SOOOOOOO GOOD!

The directions looks long, but it's worth it :)

It's like candy cane cheesecake bars with Keebler Mint Elf Cookie Crust ;)

I have officially decided that this Fall I am going to have an ice-cream sundae party and we will eat our sundaes out of these chocolate cups.

I think the party will also be on a Sunday, so it can be Sundae Sunday ;)

wanna come?

simplesong.typepad.com

Blogger Meal

So. I have gotten these three ideas off of blogs, and I think we should call a day, "Only Eat Things that Other Bloggers Have Posted"

So here is what we shall eat:

BREAKFAST:

Smores

... typical graham crackers, chocolate and marshmellows... WITH A PIECE OF BACON! I have heard the salty/sweet combo is actually pretty good...


from Jennifer's blog

LUNCH:

"Ranch potatoes"

... Cut up little red potatoes or fingerling potatoes. Add them to a skillet with some olive oil. ADD A PACKET OF RANCH DRESSING SEASONING. Stir. Umm. Can you say AMAZING? This sounds so amazing and so simple.


from Kelly's blog

DINNER:

Rice Crispie Cake Batter Cake

... Make your normal rice crispie treats but add in 1/2 cup of YELLOW CAKE MIX after you melt the butter and marshmallows! Makes the rice crispie treats just a little doughier, chewier and cakey-ier. That sounds like the best combination I have heard in a long time. :)


from Kelly's blog


The reason we are eating the smore is for breakfast is because it has bacon and I am sorry I can't find anything for dessert. Please forgive me ;)

Brown, Orange, Yellow...

Yep. It's official. M & M's in the fall colors are out :) M & M cookies are going to made this weekend.

PS. I know I am pretty pale and don't have a very nice tan, but those are NOT my bare legs. I am wearing tan cords thank you very much. :)

Pancakes

You know how birthdays always make the day more fun?

Even if it isn't YOUR birthday, it could be:

~your college roomie's birthday'

~your sister's birthday

~your BEST FRIEND's birthday

~your teacher's birthday

~your husband's birthday

~your boss's birthday?

You get the point. If you know a lot of people, these fun birthday celebrations (going out to eat, going out for drinks, picking out a fun present, sending a card,going out to lunch, eating CAKE, eating cupcakes...) always can spruce up a

otherwise boring work-week or a gotta-get out the house weekend.

I mean, it's always a little better waking up at 6AM on a Monday when I know we are celebrating someone's birthday at work.

It's someone's birthday SOMEWHERE today...

so make these for breakfast and eat them in bed, while listening to Katy Perry's FIREWORKS song.

Funfetti Pancakes.

This is seriously one the most brilliant ideas I have ever heard of.

:)

Waffle Cookies

Make your normal chocolate chip cookie dough.

Put a scoop on the waffle iron

Chocolate Chip Cookies in 90 seconds :)

how cute! :)

www.thekitchn.com

Sprinkles

DESSERT is STRESSED spelled backwards!

So I saw this quote, and literally had to read it four times and yes i ever wrote out desserts backwards cuz I didn't believe it... I will save you the embarrassment. It is true.

Have a Pampered Chef Spritz cookie gun that you only bring out at Christmas to make cute little Spritz cookies but takes up precious room in your kitchen the other 360 days of the year? Well. Is it your lucky Monday or what?

Y'all know those cookies. So good. but the Christmas wreaths and snowflake cookies are always waaaay too small, and kinda hard? My precious auntie makes her Spritz cookies a little bit bigger, sandwiches some frosting between them and adds sprinkles. Delicious. Cute. and not Christmasy :) The picture doesn't do them justice. Put that Spritz cookie gun to use this summer!!!!!

I also just realized that after my little spiel about starting WeightWatchers my first post is about cookies and frosting? Yeah. I am one of those people. When I am trying to eat healthy I bake up a storm and try to shove it down other people's throats. I say it is a workout for my will-power :) My dad thinks it is just plain weird and mean. :)

M & M's

I love holidays. Every. Single. One. Decorating, celebrating, dressing in the Holiday colors. You name it. Flag Day, 4th of July. I'm allll over it.

I also love baking. Especially cookies.

Sooo. One of my fav things to do is bake M & M cookies with holiday themes. You know how the stores sell the packs? Red and green for Christmas. Pinks and Whites for Valentines Day, yadda, yadda.

I even branch out sometimes and get a little creative if I do say so myself.

Pick out the red's and blue's... Wait... There is no white M & M's. Add white chocolate chips!

This time I went with the basic assorted Holiday pack.
I've made some for football season where I pick out all the blues and greens for Seahawk colors, red and yellows for the San Fran 49er's. You get the picture. While they are fun and cute, it is not fun to pick through the colors. Plus you need like 5 bags to get enough of the colors you need.

Where am I going with this? My lovely sister had the GENIUS idea of seeing if the Sweet Factory (a specialty candy store in malls around the Pacific Northwest) sold the customizable M & M colors. While they didn't have the ones where you could write messages or print pictures, they had WAYYY more colors of M & M's and they were organized by color!

We bought purple and yellow and she baked up some cute cookies to celebrate Tyson's graduation from UW and his younger brother's acceptance for fall!

Such a fun, easy spin on something simple!

Go bake some in your favorite colors. :)

Mission: Cake Pops

Move over mini cupcakes and single serve ice cream cups. There is a new cat in town.

Cake pops are all the new rage in case you have been living under a rock :)

Starbucks, baking blogs, baby showers... these babies are taking ovvvvvvvva.
So me and my sister had to try to make them. We can bake a cake and decorate cookies, how hard could a combo of the two be? If we followed the directions we would be fine.

We baked a cake.

Let is cool.

Crumbled it up.

Added a jar of frosting to it.

Stirred it all around.

Made the dough into balls and stuck them on some sticks.




I was feeling pretty confident at this point. The mixture felt kinda weird, but I figured that was what happened when you mixed cake with frosting.

Ok. Maybe I should tell the truth. All the recipes we read said that the cake has to be completely cool before you crumble it up.

Ours was mostly cool.

What would it matter anyways? You have to freeze the balls of dough before you can dip them in chocolate anyways.

Then we dipped them in pretty pretty pink, and sprinkled on some decorations.

I think the first one turned out kind of okay.

Before we knew it, the cakepops had turned into a disaster.

They were falling off the sticks. The sprinkles weren't sticking. The chocolate was clumping.

The pink looked like skin color, and our cake balls... (kind of looked like male anatomy if we are honest with ya)

Okay. Well. Looks aren't everything. We were sure they would be delicious and everyone would be ditching Starbucks and Bakerella's cookbook to line up in our kitchen.

So we waited for them to cool. And tried them...

I so wish I could say some witty pun about how looks are deceiving and it's what's on the inside that counts...

Sigh. I can't. They were HORRIBLE. Like wet cake. Even my mom who eats cupcakes for breakfast and loves all things cake couldn't stomach one.

I think it's very important when they say make SURE the cake is completely cooled before crumbling.

So. I take it all back. More power to ya Starbucks and baking blogs. Keep up the cake pops cuz they sure as heck aren't gonna make me rich and famous anytime soon. Didn't you guys think Cake Balls by Lindsay had a nice ring to it? Oh welllll. ;)

"Globs" of Frosting

Green Velvet

I thought I was being sooo tricky. If Red Velvet is the new hot thang, why couldn't I make a cute little treat for St. Paddy's day and come up with... GREEN VELVET?

I used a normal, red velvet recipe, but instead of the red food coloring I thought I would just add green instead.

Things were going just fine and dandy until I got to the part where it said how much red food coloring went into this so called Red Velvet cake mix. AN ENTIRE JUG OF FOOD COLORING.

I reread it and reread it. and thought NO WAY! First of all, it just seemed gross and so artificial. Plus, I thought that had to be a mistake. A little food coloring goes a loonnnnggg way.

I figured it must have been wrong so I went on, just putting in a normal amount of food coloring. It was a lovely, DARK green. Velvety, if you will. So I thought to myself, BINGO. I am so smart. Who needs stupid old recipes anyways to tell you to put AN ENTIRE LITTLE JUG OF FOOD COLORING? I'll show them.

So I put my beautiful green velvet cupcakes in the oven.

And the timer went off...

They were BARELY GREEN AT ALL. :(

My "green velvet" cupcakes were light, seafoam green. :( Like pukey, moldy green.

Advice: follow the recipe.

and PS. that awesome Red Velvet cake from Costco? I'm not sure if I will be able to ever enjoy it again, because it probably does have a cup of food coloring... :)

So apparently I wasn't the only one who ever thought of green velvet, either.

What they are supposed to look like...

Notice the velvety, DARK, rich color...

My beauties?

And this makes them look WAY more green then they really were. They were so light you could even see the brown crispy burn marks!

FAIL! Oh well.

I guess I have to stick to my Yoplait Red Velvet Cake Yogurt...