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. 

happy new year!

it's the year of the rabbit, which is also my year! apparently the year is the time to catch your breath and calm your nerves. so relax!

maybe this will help:)

tres leches cake from pioneer woman! it is soooo delicious. i used skim milk (b/c what would i do w/ the excess whole milk?) and soaked it for 48 hours b/c our bday celebrating for the D was pushed back a bit. but seriously, she's not joking when she says you have to make/eat this cake.

happy new year! have some ddukgook

appley apple bread!

this bread is soooo good. and i'm saying this over a week after i made it b/c apparently having a final tomorrow means i'll do anything to avoid studying for it. so i'm finally getting around to posting up this recipe.

still working through the apples at home (the ones from catoctin mt. orchard). and this recipe is going to be made again (although i'm going to tweak it a bit to see if i can lower the sugar amount and still get that sugary goodness that is sweet and kind of crispy (but not in a bad way) yumminess.

Apple Bread (makes two loaves, and you'll want both!)

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups all-purpose

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 c applesauce (unsweetened)

1 Tbl vanilla extract

2 cups diced apples (i used four various medium apples)

extra sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on top of the bread

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour two bread pans. 

Mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and baking powder in a medium bowl. In another bowl, beat eggs and add sugar and applesauce in a large bowl. Add vanilla and dry ingredients. Stir in apples. Dump into the pans (it will be a thick batter) and spread evenly. Liberally sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the loaves (this will give the bread some extra nice texture)

after my final tomorrow i'm going to try to play around w/ the ingredients a bit to find out if i can put less sugar in. i still need to make a real apple cake!

apple bites

something about studying makes me want to eat or bake, so as a reward for getting through my food science midterm (not that i did well...but that's besides the point) i decided to bake (the eating came during the studying!)

there are still so many apples in the house i knew i wanted to bake with apples and looking through my favorite blogs i saw a lot of delicious looking apple cake recipes (check out bakerella's and smittenkitchen's) but 2+ cups of sugar plus a cup of oil was daunting (maybe it was all the talk about eating healthy foods in class that's killing me) that i decided to fiddle with some muffin recipes and ended up with muffins chock full of apples = apple bites! i found this recipe online somewhere and tweaked it (i think it was for some diet program since it had points)

Apple Bites (makes 12)
1 1/4 c. skim milk
3/4 c. cornmeal
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
a little less than 1/4 c. honey (i didn't have a lot of honey left so this is why i used less)
2 Tbl plain yogurt
1 egg
3 medium apples, peeled and diced small (i used a granny, golden delicious and i think a mcintosh)
some cinnamon and brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a muffin pan. Toss the apple chunks in cinnamon and brown sugar, set aside. In a large bowl combine milk and cornmeal, let stand for 10 minutes. In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Whisk honey, yogurt and egg into the cornmeal mixture. Stir in apple and flour mixture. Spoon into the pan and bake for about 15-20 minutes.

*next time i want to try soaking oats in the milk instead of cornmeal. i like the kind of grainy texture you get from cornmeal but i'm thinking oats would make this much more moist. the apple bites weren't very sweet (which is nice) and the nutty bites of walnut helped make it extra tasty.

pb rice krispy cake

happy birthday to M!

this is peanut butter rice krispy treats topped with a semi sweet chocolate shell and stacked on top of one another to make a different kind of birthday cake. you can never go wrong with rice krispies especially in my family. and adding peanut just makes it that much better!

pb rice krispy cake
1 cup corn syrup
about 2 cups peanut butter (i eyed this amount)
10 cups rice krispy cereal
2 bags minus about 7 marshmallows
about 2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips

butter an 11 x 13 pan or i buttered two spring form pans (and layer with buttered parchment paper for even easier removal). melt and boil the corn syrup and peanut butter. add the marshmallows and let them melt completely (i also tossed in a couple later to have little chunks of whole marshmallows). when it's all a melted gooey mix take the pot off the heat and mix in the cereal. once that's all mixed in, dump it into whatever pan(s) you're using and press down with a buttered spoon. once it's cool you can melt the chocolate chips and spread it over the whole thing and then let that cool until the chocolate rehardens.

happy new year!

made this for some friends from college when they came to visit.

this comes from smittenkitchen. it's a mushroom and blue cheese galette. the crust is store bought (sometimes it's just that much easier:) and used some large button mushrooms and some mushrooms i'm not quite sure the name of but they were good. the recipe is ridiculously straightforward and easy. happy 2011!