Mashed Potatoes

This might seem like an odd post, weird food to randomly make, and it isn’t a baked good. All of that said, I made mashed potatoes. My mother gave me the recipe and they were delicious – yes, I actually ate something I made. Note that I measured the portion perfectly and I write down everything I eat and am on a strict diet, mashed potatoes are okay to eat. Dessert is still never going to be in my diet though. Back to mashed potatoes. My mother’s recipe goes as follows:

Peel the potatoes
Chop up those potatoes, I pretended to know how many to use.
Put them in a pot, covering them completely with water, and let them boil until they seem soft enough.
Take them off the stove, we always place the pot on a pot holder on our kitchen table.

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Peanut Butter Fudge

I MADE FUDGE AND IT LOOKS LIKE FUDGE AND SMELLS LIKE FUDGE AND I THINK IT MIGHT BE EDIBLE! I thought making peanut butter fudge was going to be difficult, it’s not. These are the ingredients:

Peanut Butter Fudge
1 cup (256 g) smooth no-stir peanut butter (the kind that doesn’t separate in the jar)
12 ounces sweetened condensed milk
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (173 g) confectioners’ sugar

Note that I made a complete mess, as usual. At least this time it was all in about a three foot radius.
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The directions as paraphrased by me: melt this shit, stir this shit, put this shit in a wax lined pan.

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Red Velvet Sugar Cookies

I made red velvet sugar cookies with a cream cheese frosting (recipe from Cookingclassy.com) Wednesday, it was so incredibly easy and enjoyable. This post is going to be short because it’s super similar to my red velvet gooey butter cookies. This was fun, I didn’t make a huge mess, and they were different enough from the gooey butter cookies that people could notice. The vote was all for the gooey butter cookies, but not by a landslide, it was more of a 45:55 ratio. I don’t care if there is a smaller ratio that I can use for that, I wanted it to add up to 100. IMG_0932

This recipe is super similar to the gooey butter cookies, main difference? In the sugar cookies you use cake flour. The best part of this recipe was the fact that I didn’t feel like I was going to break my mixer! Very excited about that. After mixing up these cuties you let them sit in the refrigerator for a minimum of two hours, I may have let them sit for about 8 hours, but they still came out as cookies. Win, win!

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Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies

Let’s just start with that name, how wonderful do these cookies sound? I am not only a lover of eggnog, as noted in my post from yesterday, I am also a lover of red velvet anything. I have learned that a few of my friends fall into this category as well, so they’ll be partaking in these cookies as soon as they’re done. (I am writing this post while I wait for the two hour refrigeration part of the recipe is over, it’ll make more sense when I explain the recipe and post pictures, all of the fun stuff!). Moral of this paragraph: red velvet is wonderful and you’ll be seeing quite a few posts involving the name. This recipe comes from recipegirl.com’s delicious Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies post.

The only ingredient I didn’t have for this recipe was red food coloring, picked some up and voila here we are! I thank food coloring for the blood like stain that is now covering my thumb. To start off, there are two bowls: dry ingredients in one, wet ingredients in the other. The wet ingredients bowl was fun,IMG_0877 the recipe calls for 4 tablespoons of butter, which I have! Except that I only had one tablespoons worth defrosted. I keep butter in my freezer like everyone else because the price of butter is just as ridiculous as the price of gas, and as an amateur baker I have found that you use a lot of butter in the kitchen. With this new found information, I took the butter out of my freezer and let it sit out on my counter for about a half hour. After that everything went perfectly! You mix 8 ounces of cream cheese with 4 tablespoons of butter until it’s smooth, I assume that smooth meant until they were completely combined and looked like whipped cream cheese. If I’m wrong, oh well, the cookies are still mixed. Once those two ingredients are a smooth consistency it’s time to add 1 large egg and 1 tablespoon of red food coloring. I wasn’t expecting the mix to turn red so quickly, it made me really happy. I mixed these together for about, I have no idea – everything was mixed though.

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Eggnog Snicker Doodles

IMG_0867I, like many others, adore eggnog. It is very true that people either love or hate eggnog. I happen to be someone who loves eggnog – I say that even though I haven’t had eggnog in about five years. I used to drink it until I was sick, that might sound horrible but it’s a wonderful memory that I take pride in. Since I happen to fall into the eggnog lovers’ annonymous category it seems fitting to make a really cool Eggnog Snickerdoodles recipe I found on Cookingclass.com (side note: Their recipes are amazing). Let’s get this recipe going!

I surprisingly followed these directions absolutely perfectly. I read and reread and then checked some more, strictly from the fear of missing an ingredient or direction. First things first, putting the drymix together! All the usual staples in baked goods: flour, cream of tartar (still don’t know what the hell that IMG_0851is), baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. After whisking this mixture for the stated 20 seconds, I put it aside. Far, far away. It wasn’t even on the table when I put the wet mixture together. Again, paranoid. Next is to blend 1/2 a cup of unsalted butter, softened, 1/2 a cup of all-vegetable shortening, 1 cup of granulated sugar, and 1/2 a cup of packed light brown sugar. After everything is in a mixing bowl it’s time to actually mix it up, “until creamy.” I wasn’t sure what it meant when it said creamy, but I quickly found out. The mix almost feels like peanut butter, which was really cool to me. You then add eggs, vanilla extract, and rum extract (I used imitation rum extract because that was all I could find at Stop & Shop). The mixture went from smelling pretty delicious to basically making me want to throw it down my throat.

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Pumpkin Pie

I bought a lot of baking supplies today, quite a few items. I spent far too much time and money in Aldi this afternoon. Absolutely loved every second of it. While I had/IMG_0822have a list of every dessert I would like to attempt to bake this week, and spent a numerous amount of minutes shopping to ensure I had every needed ingredient, I chose to make a pumpkin pie. I believe this decision was based solely on the frustration that was still deep in my soul from disappointing myself yesterday with my dessert outcomes. In the end I am happy to report that my second attempt at this dessert was a success. There is currently a beautiful pie sitting on my oven, tempting my parents. I am sincerely joyed that I was able to make one of the easiest desserts known to man, correctly.

I started off on the right foot this time: 2 large eggs, beaten. Unlike yesterday, I took the time to do as the recipe noted. After beating two wholesome eggs to death, I added in the can of Libby’s pumpkin pie mix, splashing a bitIMG_0827 of the mix all around my kitchen table. Then, pulling out the correct measuring cup, 2/3 of a cup of evaporated milk was poured in. Now was the exciting moment, stirring it all up – during which I dropped the spatula twice. Once, fully into the bowl of pumpkin and the other, flipping it out of the bowl. My sincerest apologies to the horror that has been cast upon that table through my baking explorations. Unlike yesterday’s disaster, this mix looked less like tomato soup and much closer to the multiple times I have witnessed my mother make this pie up.

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Home Fries

IMG_0729This morning seemed like a good time to make a nice breakfast for my friend – also known as Patryk, my admin for this site. It is kind of the only way I can thank someone, seeing as how he does a bunch for me I figured I would repay him with food. No one ever seems sad when you give them food. It also helped that I have 10 pounds of potatoes chilling in my kitchen. I remember buying them for another recipe that I have yet to make. Might as well use some of them. I based this breakfast losely from Rachel Ray’s recipe on Foodnetwork.com, ‘Oven home fries with peppers and onions.’ I did not use peppers because I had none. I also did not make 2 1/2 pounds of of redskin potatoes. I ended up using four potatoes and putting about 1/4 of one on the plate. I also scrambled up four eggs. I honestly fudged putting this together. The instructions that I used from the recipe were to use:

  • IMG_0734Olive oil – I used 1 tablespoon.
  • Throw in chopped onion – I used half of a medium sized onion.
  • Season them – I sprinkled on a random amount of salt and pepper, figuring that whoever eats the home fries could season them how they’d like.
  • Turning twice with a spatula – I think I turned them over three times instead, just to be safe.

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No-bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies

I made this dessert as soon as I got up this morning. I woke up in a wonderful mood and felt the need to jump into the kitchen! I am so happy that I did because making these was very fun. I am also happy to report that I am fully caught up on my back tracking of recipes, every dessert that I have made has a blog post up. In other baking news, everyone adored the chocolate covered pretzels from yesterday! They went very quickly, absolutely none left. Having people enjoy my desserts is one of the best feelings I’ve ever had, this is truly making me happy. I get to wake up and know there will always be something that will be calming and fun during my day.

IMG_0709Today was No-bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Cookies. I get most of my recipes from Tumblr blogs I follow – I had apparently not emailed this recipe to myself when I found it this morning and just ended up having to search through my Tumblr feed for abour ten minutes to find it again. The time it took to find it gave me a little bit of anxiety due to doubting I would find it again. That thought is silly though since it would be weird for someone to take down their post, especially a dessert post! The search was worth it though, not posting a link to this wonderful recipe would have been 1. wrong on my end and 2. unfortunate for you guys because it’s obvious that everyone needs these cookies in their life. It also helps to have the recipe in front of me when explaining what the hell it is that I did in my kitchen.

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Mini Peppermint Pies

This is a late post – I made these on the 7th. I took this idea/complete dessert from Butter, with a side of bread’s ‘EasIMG_0533y mini peppermint pies’ recipe. I made this dessert with two other people in my kitchen, one being my mother and the other being Patryk (who makes sure this blog doesn’t crumble down from the IT side). I was so in the zone when I started making this dessert that I had gotten to having the Oreo crust done and halfway through mixing the peppermint/whipped topping together when Patryk pointed out I hadn’t taken a single picture of what I was making. So you guys will have to bare with me and just believe that I crushed up an entire package of Oreos into dirt, combined them with 3 tablespoons of butter, then packed them into cupcake tins (which is what the directions are), and this is what those tins looked like:

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Chocolate Covered Pretzels

CHOCOLATE COVERED PRETZELS ARE REALLY FUN TO MAKE. There it is. The truth comes out. I felt like a master artist while making these! I based this Chocolate Covered Pretzel recipe very, very losely off of Food.com’s recipe. When I say losely I mean that they say to use wax paper to put your just dipped pretzels onto as you let them cool. I didn’t use bittersweet chocolate like they use, and I didn’t measure any of the chocolate out. The amount of pretzels that were made isn’t even known. After making these I brought them down to the church my dad works at, they have a ‘pasta supper’ on Wednesday night after their service for the homeless and others who need a good meal! I was very happy to take these down to them, included were a few cupcakes that hadn’t left my kitchen yet. I liked making these pretzels a lot and I’m glad that they came out so well!

IMG_0645I used some random ingredients for these though:

  • Sourdough jumbo pretzels
  • Left over cinnamon sugar
  • Left over peppermint/Oreo crumble
  • Milk Chocolate
  • 70% Cocoa Dark Chocolate
  • Marshmallow bits
  • Red and Green sprinkles
  • White chocolate candy melts
  • Oreo chunks

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