Honey dark choc chip cookies

Oh cookies you are my weakness. They are so easy to make and so yummy. My car has been in the shop and yesterday I was slightly bored and needed something to do. I had 1 stick of butter so I decided to make cookies! I found this lovely recipe that I had all the ingredients for from pinterest here is the direct link to the blog .pastryaffair.
These cookies were super delicious. My cookies look a little different because I used dark choc chips instead of choc chunks because that is what I had. I adore dark choc tho so it worked for me however dark choc chunks would have been pretty amazing! I also played around with some of the batter and add peanut butter and made like 5 cookies and they were pretty darn good.

Baked Banana and Zucchini Donuts w/strawberry glaze.. YUM

So I recently bought a donut pan for baking donuts. I love donuts, but they are just so unhealthy fried. SO last night I was on pinterest searching for recipes and came across a Banana and Zucchini recipe! This is perfect because I have a good bit of zucchini, well a giant zucchini for that matter. For those of you who are not on my facebook. I have a cowork that has his own garden and he brings us zucchinis to work. They have been giantic lately. Well this certain cowork does not like the fact that I walk home back and forth to work. So he said he was going to bring me a giant zucchini everyday so that I will have a weapon (he jokes a lot). Im afraid he might really do this and if so I will be swimming in zucchini! Pics below of the huge zucchini.

It could totally be a bat for a little league team :)

Okay for actual donut recipe please make your way over to the lovely recipeforcrazy blog found via pinterest. Mine turned out really good (btw I halfed the recipe on her site) and it made 12 donuts for my 6 donut baking pan (which I got for 10$ at bed bath and beyond). Also, she has a donut maker so I baked mine for 15 mins at 350 degrees!. These donuts are similar to a muffin just in donut form, but HEY THEY ARE BETTER FOR YOU !! Anyways I tweaked one thing and that was the frosting.
I used a strawberry glaze. While the donuts are baking make the glaze...
To make the strawberry glaze you need..
6-7 strawberries (you can omit the strawberries too and make a basic glaze you probably need to add more powder sugar though)
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup of powder sugar
splash of vanilla extract
Optional 1/2 tspn lemon juice (it added a nice fresh flavor)
I chopped up my strawberries and put them a in a pan with the tpsn of sugar on med heat. Basically your cooking the strawberries to a syrup. Once you have a nice syrup consistency (add more sugar if needs thickening or water to thin it out). Allow the strawberry syrup to cool and then blend the mixture together until you have a puree.
I didn't put my puree through a stainer, but you can to get rid of the bigger strawberry bits.
Next mix the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. If glaze is too thin just add more powder sugar to make a thicker consistency.

Once your donuts are finished cooking allow them to slightly cool a bit. You still want them a little warm though. Then dip your donuts in your glaze and allow to cool further. ENJOY!! This was my first donut baking experience. I can't wait to try more...

How to make flavored cream cheese.

So in Charlottesville there is a place called Bodo's Bagels. I walk by there everyday pretty much on my way to work. They have some really great bagel sandwiches and awesome cream cheese for bagels. You can buy the flavored cream cheese by the tub, but they can run up to 4$. Anyways this morning I thought why don't I just make my own flavored cream cheese, which I did and it was so easy!! Also was extremely tasty. Below are the ingredient I scrounged up from my cabinets.

 

 So I made 2 different kinds this morning. I used cream cheese and mixed berry jam for one. The other was honey and almonds. So I have these little containers that I put them in called glad mini rounds. They are perfect for sauces and spreads. Anyways, all you need to do it make sure your cream cheese is room temp. because its easier to mix that way. In one container I mixed my cream cheese with honey and almonds and in the other I mixed it with the mix berry jam. It is that easy!!! Also you can make it as sweet as you want just keep adding more honey or jam to your cream cheese! Its great because you can by one thing of cream cheese and divide it up instead of buying a bunch of flavored tubs of cream cheese and then them going to waste.

The possibilites are endless with this. You can use fresh fruit such as strawberries and cut them up finely and mix with some sugar and let them sit for a bit to make a straberry sauce and then mix with your cream cheese. There is so may flavors you can create with different jams, marmalades, cinnamon, vanilla or even apple butter cream cheese. This would also be a cute idea for a brunch! Get a bunch of bagels and make a variety of cream cheese spreads! I can't believe I haven't done this earlier!

 

Make and then store the rest in the little containers!



Early Valentines Day inspired Breakfast

SO Valentines day is coming up. I don't feel like people should be pressured into buying tons of gifts. Its more about the little things. Recently I've been listening to people talk about Valentines day and most girls I have heard say I just want him to recognize the day. So guys just do something special you dont have to go out and by diamonds and tons of flowers.

 Inspired by upcoming Valentines day I made heart shaped pancakes for breakfast! The pancakes were blueberry and strawberry. I started with bisquick and then made the batter a little thicker by not adding so much water. Then I cut up some fresh strawberries and added fresh blueberry to the batter. Then I made my heart shaped pancakes. I wanted to use a cookie cutter at first, but I couldnt find one. I like how they turned out they are cute, but I also like their imperfections.



1. Using a big spoon the pour batter in a well pam sprayed pan. Like image 1.

2. Next do the same thing on the other side like image 2.

3. Next, quickly take a spoon or knife around the edges to fix any batter that might have spilled over like on the right side in image 2. Make sure its good and cooked on that side before flipping (however dont burn it).

4. Now let it brown on the other side and you gots a heart shaped pancake!!

Next I made strawberry and blueberry syrup. In a pan add cut up strawberries and blueberries. Add about 1/4 cup sugar. Allow to set for a couple of minutes. Then add a little butter I didnt even add a tablespoon and simmer over low heat. Then I squeeze about 1/4 of a orange (optional) in the mixtured and stirred. A simple syrup should be formed and once that happens I added just a little bit of maple syrup to add more flavor and thickness.

Add some powder sugar on the pancakes (optional)

Then enjoy!

Dinner!!!

Mushroom Rigatoni Bake

Image from cookinglight, also recipe from myrecipes. It was pretty good to be meatless. The mushrooms made you not miss the the meat.

My image above of the finish dish is not the greatest quality! but it was still good.

Sauteed shallots

so yummy. I love mushrooms

My favorite dark wine!!!

French bread!

Pasta, mushrooms, and cheese mixture!

Nutella Turtle Cheesecake

So a couple of weeks ago my mom bought me a springform pan. Ive been dying to make a cheesecake. December 1 was my mom's Birthday and I thought what a perfect time to make a cheesecake. So I found this website via pinterest. willowbirdbaking. On this website is a link to a youtube video on how to make cheesecake. Here is my first delicious cheesecake.

Crust
20 graham crackers pulsed into crumbs
5 1/2 tablespoons of butter melted

Dark Choc Ganache
1/2 cup of dark choc pieces
1/4 milk

Caramel
condensed milk

Cheesecake Filling
3 8oz packages of room temp cream cheese
1 cup of sugar
2 teaspoon of vanilla
1 1/2 tbsp of flour
3 eggs
3 1/2 tbsp of nutella

1. Start off making the caramel for the cheesecake. This takes about 6 hours at least. Its totally worth it! Get your crockpot and line the bottom of the crockpot with alum foil. Place your unopened can of condense milk on the alum foil. Fill crockpot with water and make sure the water is covering your can completely. Set temperature on low. In about 6-8 hours you will have awesome caramel (found via pinterest). Make sure you allow the can to cool before removing from the water or use tongs. You will have alot of caramel left over so you mine want to get some apples :) Set aside until your ready to decorate your cheesecake.
2. Make your crust. pulse 20 graham crackers in a food processor. Then mix 5 1/2 tablespoons of melted butter. Stir until butter is well incorporated. Place mixture in the bottom of your springfold pan. Press and pack the crumbles in the bottom of your pan with your fingers or a glass.
3. Now make the dark choc. ganache. Heat up 1/4 cup of milk and add it to your 1/2 cup of semisweet dark choc pieces. Stir milk into the choc until it is melted. Pour the majority of the mixture into the springform pan. Spread the choc evenly on the bottom and add some pecans on top (optional). Leave some of the melted dark choc to decorate the top of the cheesecake. Place springform pan into the freezer just until the filling is done.

4. To make the filling, you mix 1 cup of sugar with the 3 packages of room temperature cream cheese with electronic mixer. Add vanilla and flour to the mixture while scraping the sides of the bowl as needed. Then add each room temperature egg one at a time. Once that is all mix add the nutella at the end. You can add more or less nutella for your liken. I did not want the cheesecake to overly sweet, especially since I was added all the sweet toppings to decorate it. If you dont want the sweet toppings on top then add more nutella for taste.

5. Pour mixture in the pan. Take some alum foil and cover the bottom of the springform pan to avoid leaking because your going to place the springform pan in another pan filled with water. Bake 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. Mine took more on the hour side. Allow for the cheesecake to cool before adding your topping. I drizzled the left over dark choc and caramel on top. Then I placed pecans around the edge of the cheesecake. Place in the refrigerator for 20 mins to allow to set. Then you got a awesome Nutella Turtle Cheesecake!!!

Yummy breakfast

Its the first weekend of fall and I decided to make breakfast.

 I found this image below on pinterest and it looked amazing that I just had to try it.
Yummy breakfast!!

Source: bacontimewiththehungryhypo.blogspot.com via Ashlee on Pinterest

Recipe from bacontimewiththehungryhypo

Heres mine it didnt look exactly like the one above but it was close and so good!.

Mine looks more like a breakfast calzone!

Ingredients:1 can of crescents 8count (I used reduced fat)

5 large eggs (to make it slightly healthier use egg whites or egg substitute, however double up on the egg whites)
1 cup of shredded Colby and monterey jack cheese
8 slices of fully cooked bacon ( I used turkey bacon)

- Preheat oven 375

- Cook bacon and cook egg scramble style

- Arrange crescent rolls with the pointed end away from the middle, I did mine a lil different than http://bacontimewiththehungryhypo.blogspot.com/2011/02/beautiful-bacon-egg-cheese-wreath.html, but you can check out her website for her instructions I just modified it a lil.

- place bacon, eggs, and cheese on top of the crescent rolls, like so..

- then fold over pointed ends to the middle.

- Bake for about 15-17 minutes

Then I made some Pumpkin Spice Coffee as a fall inspired drink I just used the left over pumpkin spice mousse and put it on top of my coffee. Basically I just made coffee lightly sweetened it and then topped it with the mousse and some pumpkin spice.

Cheers!



Dinner!

Tonight I cooked dinner for the fam. It was pretty good.

Its called Lazy Sunday Casserole (yes I realize it is not Sunday)

Anyways I got the recipe from kayotic kitchen, but tweaked it a bit. And for dessert I made Pumpkin Mousse Filo cups

Ingredients:
4 sausages (beef or pork) - I used turkey sausage
1 pound potatoes
1/2 pound carrots
1/2 bell pepper
1 large onion
1 fennel bulb - I didnt use any fennel
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp oil
freshly cracked black pepper
1 1/2 tsp Italian herbs
1/2 cup chicken broth - I used fat tire beer instead (the turkey sausage and the beer cancels each other out right)
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Visit kayotic kitchen for her directions they might be slight easier to follow then my condensed version.

- I washed and chopped all the veggies into nice big pieces.
-Use a big bowl to combine the oil with the Italian herbs, grated or chopped garlic, and Beer .
- Put veggies into a nice big roasting pan and pour seasoning mixture over veggies. Add some salt and pepper in addition to the season mixture

Pretty colors right... Now cover with foil and bake for 45 mins.
- When there is about 15 mins left for the veggie, start browning the turkey sausage in a pan. You dont have to cook them all the way tho.

-After browning the sausage let them rest and then cut them 1/3 or 1/2.
-After 45 minutes the potatoes and vegetables should be fork tender. Next add the sausage with the veggies and pour the balsamic vinegar all over. Bake for another 20-25 mins uncovered!
-then Enjoy!

 Pumpkin Mousse Filo cups

I know the paper plate is classy!
Anyways I cant seem to find the website that I got the recipe for the pumpkin mousse, but I remember ( sorry for not crediting).
-1 package of vanilla instant pudding (the small one)
- 1 cup of milk
- 1/2 can of pumpkin puree
-  1 Tablespoon of pumpkin spice
- 1 Tablespoon of cinnamon
- About 1/4 cup of sugar (I kinda did mine to taste)
- package of filo cups.
 They tasted like fall in a mini cup :)

Oh yes FOOD....I love cooking!

I love to cook and now that I live back with my parent temporary I have people to cook for! I made homemade pizza with my sister recently and it was soo good. It was really easy basically you need pizza dough (I used pillsbury), tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese ( we used fresh mozz and shredded moz chs), veggies ( we use mushrooms, red onions, zucchini, tomatoes, yellow peppers , and meat (we used shredded chicken) and fresh garlic.

We put some moz cheese in the crust and it was really easy just roll out the dough place pieces of moz cheese near the edge and pinch the dough over the cheese. I sauteed the veggies before putting them on the pizza just to give it some extra flavor, but you can put them on there raw.

Over the crust we brushed on some garlic infused olive oil. Then we put the fresh mozz chs on the bottom over the sauce then layered the veggies and chk and topped it off with shredded mozz.

YUMM. It was pretty awesome!

Another Treat

So this morning I woke up feeling sluggish. Im pretty sure it had something to do with the weather and also not wanting my break to end. I turned on the tv for a lil while and Martha had Andy Samberg so heres a lil clip, which made my morning a little better.

Heres the link http://www.marthastewart.com/show/the-martha-stewart-show/the-cold-show-with-andy-samberg.. Martha says "richard in a box" hence she cant say the real title.

Image found.

 SO I GUESS I GOT SOME INSPIRATION TO COOK..

Anyways this morning I decided to make breakfast! I love quiche so much so I decided to come up with a recipe. I bought some fillo dough the other day for my cannolis and I have so much left over. So I figured instead of making a crust I would use the fillo dough on top of the quiche.

Heres the end results

It turned out so good! and pretty too!

Heres Recipe.

ingredients

6 eggs

1/4 cup of 2% milk

2 tbsp of half and half

1/2 onion

1/2 red pepper

1/2 cup of cooked spinach

lean sausage (however much you want) I only did a little bit

salt and pepper

about 8 sheets of fillo dough

non stick spray

about a tbsp of melted butter

also - FYI ( you can use anything cheese, bacon, ham, zucchini, mushrooms)

also to make it healther you can use more of the egg whites instead of using whole eggs

Preheat oven to 350. I cooked ground sausage until done (and added some red pepper flakes to make sausage spicy) then I sauteed the spinach, red pepper, and onion with salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil to cover the pan. I just lightly sauteed them though just for flavor.I drained extra oil out of the sausage, spinach, onions, and red peppers on a paper towel and allowed them to cool.

 

You dont want to add them in the egg mixture hot off the stove. Next crack all eggs in a bowl and whisk, add milk and half and half, add some salt and pepper. Add cooled sausage, onions, red pepper, and spinach to the egg mixture. Next I sprayed (really good) a 9inch round pan with non stick spray. Add the mixture to the pan and bake for around 8-10 minutes.

Take fillo dough out around 10 sheets cut up sheets into smaller pieces ( but enough to cover the top of the quiche). Melt some butter ( or you can spray with non stick spray) and then apply the melted butter to your fillo dough. After the quiche is in there for 8-10 mins add the fillo dough on top to cover the quiche. Bake until quiche is firm around 6 mins. I used a toothpick to make sure it was done. Stick tooth in the middle of the quiche and if it comes out clean then its done. It was so yummy and the fillo dough added some light crunch to it!