baking extravaganza, aka, i need to go on a detox after this

wow, i crammed in as much baking for my last few days of break possible. so lets get right to it!

 these are called "food of the gods" but like pioneer woman, i feel the name is a bit odd. but they are drool worthy and melt in your mouth goodness (it helps that there are 3 sticks of butter in it...but don't let that stop you from trying this out). i wish i had more nuts in it, so i would recommend trying out pioneer woman's idea of adding chopped pecans. i've never used dates in my baking before but these were yummy. i wonder how dried figs would taste instead?

 the bars wrapped and boxed up for s2 and s3!

it was a tough decision trying to decide what to make for my birthday "cake" and the winner turned out to be a cookie rather than a cake. these are picky palate's s'mores stuffed chocolate chip cookies. these are delicious and so cute! i made my s'mores insert half the size of picky palate's, got lazy and only made 7 of them, but wish i had made all the dough into s'mores stuffed ones b/c the cookies actually tasted better with the s'more inside. but it was so cute! the stack of s'more with cookie dough on top and bottom reminded me of those weird sponge bob square pants candy shaped like burgers (which i haven't tried and am a little too freaked out to try...). and out of the oven the marshmallows just oozeddddd out of the cookie.

 oh, and did you notice, i finally got a silpat! love love love. although with waiting for the cookies to cool and such i still ended up using aluminum foil to bake the rest of the cookies so i wouldn't waste the heat of the oven. hopefully one day i'll have enough silpat to just bake away to my hearts content (how dangerous that day will be)

so in less than 2 hours i'll be 24. phew. this year is going by so fast. oh, i forgot to mention my family tried chick n' friends for my birthday (i was in the mood for super low key kind of birthday celebration). and yes, the vegetarian got fried chicken food for her birthday (but i had fried fish!) but i forgot to get a waffle! time for me to get some sleep now that spring break is ending, too bad i couldn't have another week of spring break. but it's probably better this way as i need to go on a bit of a fried food/baked goods detox.

faberge cakebites!

so spring break is almost over. it's amazing how i still got up around 6 am and yet the day was too short to get everything done that i wanted! but today ended up very fun. this was completely experimental, can it be done, kind of fun. and my fingers and back are feeling it. but totally fun. i looked up faberge eggs to get some designs to create on the cakebites, but i only really managed to recreate one design. and shaping the cakebites into egg shapes was so strange and yet difficult! who knew eggs were such a funny shape.

i kept a real egg next to me while i shaped the cakebites (carrot flavor!)

 this was probably my 3rd or 4th egg i decorated. the first couple did not come out so nice. i need to work on my piping. the two side flowers were made from individual flower sprinkles, but the top flower i made by using a toothpick and shaping a flower on parchment paper then transferring it dried onto the top of the cakebite.

 this is one of my favorites! the blue flowers are so cute and it looks like a very simple daisy chain (not so clean looking because this was pre-tweezers)

i'm amazed i'm not permanently cross-eyed from sticking all the teeny tiny candy beads onto my egg. but once i figured out to use tweezers to pick the little beadies up once i dipped them in the chocolate instead of using my fingers and making a mess of things it was a bit easier. it still took about 2 hours, but look how fabergey it looks!

here are all the eggs i decorated that i find okay looking (the others got the axe- into my mom's or dad's tummy). do you like all the upside down shot glass stands:) happy early easter!

cookies like crack

now, i've never actually tried crack, but i really am addicted to these cookies- chocolate chocolate marshmallow pudding cookies. my all time favorite cookies at this point (and i've had a LOT of cookies). AND this is without the peanut butter chips. i can't imagine how many i'll inhale once i can have peanut butter again. i used some milk chocolate chips in place of the peanut butter chips. thank gosh these were going to my friend for her birthday or else they would have all ended up in my stomach!

 i baked the first couple batches on aluminum foil, terrible idea because when the marshmallows melted onto the foil it never let go. but parchment paper worked out much better.

picky palate is my new favorite blog right now. every single recipe makes me want to get in the kitchen. it's downright wrong that so many of them have peanut butter, but i'll look forward to trying them out in april!

oh, and i got to fire a musket at work today! i don't think i ever mentioned it before but i work at the b&o museum elliott city station and the reenactor taught me how to shoot his musket. even with just powder and no bullet i could feel the kickback, but it was pretty fun shooting it:)

candied ginger lime cookies

wow, it's been a while since i've updated this. my bad! school is going along, chemistry is trying to bury me, but somehow a 61% gets curved to a B. it seems strange that i'm not really getting the material but our professor doesn't expect us to so he just curves it. an odd way of determining whether or not you understand the material.

anyway, this time instead of baking in place of studying i waited until after all my midterms were over and then let myself go crazy:)

making the chai cookies again (a half batch) and with the same recipe i'm ignoring the addition of chai and making a half batch of candied ginger lime cookies!

 this is my first time making candied ginger, and i'm not sure i got it right and it's taking an awful long time to cool (i think i had too much liquid left) but it was fun to try it! i ended up putting the ginger in the oven for a bit to dry out and then tossed with some sugar.

i only had one lime in the fridge so i zested the whole thing and added it and the juice of the whole lime into the cookie.

* somehow my batter for the ginger lime cookies turned out really dry and i didn't have anymore butter on hand, so i added some crisco and milk, which (i can't believe i forgot this) biscuit-cake like cookies. not terrible tasting, but not what i wanted. i wanted buttery melt in your mouth cookies. next time i'll remember what crisco and milk together do to recipes before i start adding ingredients willy-nilly. oh, and the ginger flavor didn't come out as strong as i had hoped.