Easter Cookies

It's a gorgeous Easter weekend, I'm going to an Easter party later, and I signed up to bring a veggie tray.  But in my heart I wanted to make something with pastel frostings and sprinkles... So here I present to you my Easter sugar cookies.

The recipe was based off of this sugar cookie recipe from chocolatecoveredkatie.com.  I did this:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

1&1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp milk
1/2 c butter

Add dry ingredients to a bowl and mix very well.  Add milk and vanilla to melted butter in another bowl.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients.  Mix and use your hands to roll into balls, or roll out the dough and use cookie cutters.  I rolled them into balls, and then for some of them I flattened out the balls slightly by squishing them down a little - those turned out the best.  Lay them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 9 minutes, remove from oven (they will look a little under done, but still take them out) and let cool for 5 minutes before touching them.

Then... I tried to make an array of pastel icings.  I put powdered sugar and a few drops of water in a bowl and added liquid food coloring.

Not... what I had in mind!  Luckily I found some fluffy white Duncan Hines frosting in the cupboard, which saved the day:

With this, you'll get a much better pastel color.

Mix up a few little bowls of pastel icing, spread them on the cookies, and add sprinkles!

And here's to the reject cookies who didn't make it on the final tray:

 Happy Easter!!

White Bean Bruschetta

This is fresh.  You're going to love it.

 It's also easy... I don't tend to make recipes that are time-consuming.

I whipped out my mini-ninja chopper for this recipe and it made it so quick and effortless.

Ingredients:

1 can white beans ($0.67 at Harris Teeter!)

3 regular tomatoes, or a container of cherry tomatoes is what I used

1 red onion

2 cloves garlic

Fresh or freeze-dried basil (I used freeze-dried)

4 Tbsp. olive oil

Salt and pepper 

1 french baguette

Toss your tomatoes, your garlic, and 1/3 of your red onion into your chopper and chop them right up.  Drain and rinse your can of beans.  Put chopped vegetables, beans, and basil (however much you like) in a bowl, and add 3 tbsp. olive oil.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Slice a few pieces of bread, and drizzle them with olive oil.  Broil them in the oven, about 3 inches beneath the broiler, for 1 - 2 minutes.

Top your crispy bread with your fresh, white bean bruschetta and enjoy your lovely lunch!

Monkey Bread

My mom tore this recipe from a magazine and requested that my sister and I make it...

Ooey-gooey, warm, cinnamon-sugary monkey bread?  Haven't had that since we used to have it for Sunday brunch back in the day!  Don't mind if I do!

So on this gorgeous March afternoon, my sister and I put on some happy music and started baking!

Lady Antebellum's Hillary Scott's MONKEY BREAD

Serves 10 to 12

4 (7.5-oz.) cans refrigerated biscuits

2 cups sugar, divided

3 tbsp. cinnamon, divided

1½ sticks butter or margarine

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Combine 1 cup sugar and 2 tbsp. cinnamon in a zip-top bag.

 We used half white sugar and half sucanat, which is the brown whole cane sugar.

3. Cut biscuits into quarters, add to bag and shake until coated.

Cutting up this biscuit dough was definitely the most fun part.  (Sarah P- I thought of you...)

5. Melt remaining butter, add remaining sugar and cinnamon, and bring to a boil.

Pour over biscuits and bake until biscuits are puffed and liquid is caramelized, 35 to 40 minutes. 

It puffed up huge in the oven.  I now recommend putting it on a tray in the oven because the cinnamon sugar boiled over!

6. Remove from oven and cool completely.

7. Invert onto a plate and serve whole, allowing people to pull apart. 

This is almost too delicious.  Every bite has all that gooey cinnamon that can only be found in the center of a cinnamon roll.  Here's the link to the recipe: Monkey Bread recipe on People.com

Hope you make this!  Happy Springtime!

Peanut Butter Cookies... Easy as Pie. Way Easier than Pie.

These are the simplest, and probably the best peanut butter cookies you could make.

 

Josh bought a bag of peanut butter cookies from the grocery store hoping they would be like his favorite cookies he used to get in the lunch room in high school.  Fresh, warm, melt in-your-mouth peanut butter cookies from the lunch line.  Remember those?  Well, the ones he bought at the store were nothing like those.  So I became inspired.

I combined the following: 

1 cup of organic crunchy peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

...And came up with these.  Don't look at my cookie sheet.  

A chocolatey one:

And an original, pressed with a fork of course:

Packaged up and ready to go.

 

His roommate liked the ones with the chocolate chips, said they tasted like a reese's.  Josh said I should make them every day.  And anyone could, because they're that easy!

This batch only made 10 cookies, so I would double the recipe if I were taking them to a cookout or a party.  Double... or triple... But they are sure to be a hit!

Tropical Breakfast Bars

The inspiration to make these bars came from a request to make a delicious, healthy, breakfast cookie.  You might even be able to bake this dough in the form of cookies.

The recipe was based on this one for Tropical Lemon Cranberry Coconut Chia Bars.

I used cherries instead of cranberries, pecans instead of pistachios, and altered some measurements.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons chia seeds
• 6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (approx 1.5 lemons)
• 1.5 cups regular oats, ground into a flour in food processor
• 1/2 cup regular oats (not ground)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1.5 cups unsweetened shredded coconut + additional for sprinkling
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/3 cup Agave nectar
• 4 tablespoons coconut oil, melted
• 1/4 cup pecans, chopped
• 1/2 cup dried cherries

First, you combine 3 T of chia seeds with 6 T of fresh squeezed lemon juice and let it sit while it gels up.  Meanwhile, you process 1.5 cups of oats in the food processor to make oat flour.

In a medium bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, including the cherries, lemon zest, and coconut flakes.  I only had 1 cup worth of coconut flakes so I was a half cup short.  In a separate small bowl, mix together the wet ingredients, adding the chia/lemon juice mixture last. Here, I also ran out of agave and used less than was called for.  I think this resulted in the crumbliness of the bars later on!

Add the wet to the dry and mix, mix, mix.  You're going to think you might need more liquid but you don't.

It starts to form a fantastic consistency.
Line an 8" square pan with parchment paper, squish the dough into it, and bake at 350F for 20 minutes.

Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer it to a cooling rack for 30 minutes before cutting them into bars.

Voila!  Mine were too crumbly but still tasty.

These are good, but I'm still on the hunt for the perfect breakfast cookie recipe!

Homemade Reese's Cups

A few years ago, one of my good friends was eating Reese's peanut butter cups when she suddenly had an allergic reaction.  Her throat closed up and she had difficulty breathing - and it was determined that she had developed an allergy to peanut butter.  Ever since the incident, she hasn't had peanut butter or Reese's cups, which she used to love.

SO, as a present, my roommate and I made her a nice batch of homemade almond butter cups!

So easy to make and so dang good. 

 

In one bowl, you melt some chocolate chips.  I used Hershey's Special Dark.  In another bowl, you combine any nut butter of your choice with a tablespoon or two of nutritional yeast flakes.  These give the nut butter that salty Reese's cup taste.  If you don't have any nutritional yeast, you can do just fine without!

Next, spoon some of the melted chocolate into the bottom of a cupcake liner, just enough to coat the bottom.  Spoon some nut butter on top of that, and then cover the nut butter with more melted chocolate.

Put them into the fridge, and in a few minutes they'll be ready to enjoy!

Banana Blueberry Pancakes

On Sunday morning, my roommate and I celebrated the weekend with a delicious batch of blueberry banana pancakes!

It's an easy batter to whip right up, and the outcome is way delicious.

Blueberry Banana Pancakes

-1 cup whole wheat flour

-2 tsp baking powder

-1 tsp salt

-1/2 cup almond milk (or any milk)

-1/2 cup water

-1 banana, smashed

-a bunch of frozen blueberries

(The batter yielded 7 pancakes for us.)

First mash the banana in the mixing bowl, then add the other ingredients, adjusting the liquid as needed.

Check out the inside of this pancake:

I made sure to be generous with the blueberries as you can see. 

Pan Dulce for Cuba!

I was asked by a friend to make a Cuban sweet bread for his presentation of Cuba in his dorm.  He and his co-RAs decorated the whole lobby as Cuba and his job was to bring an authentic dish.  I have always been intimidated by bread recipes that require the use of yeast, and I've kept my distance.  Until now!

He gave me a recipe for Pan Dulce, brought me the ingredients, and I got to work.  This was on Superbowl Sunday, so my friends were over as we also made dip and guacamole and chocolate chip cookies.

So.... the recipe said to leave the dough in a bowl covered with a dish towel for a few hours.  When you come back, it will have quadrupled in size!  When I came back, it was exactly the same size.  Not sure what happened there.  But I baked it anyway and the good news is, everyone liked the bread!  So my first time making bread from scratch was a semi-success.

 And here's a shot of Sarah's Ghiradelli chocolate chip cookies and our white bean artichoke dip.

Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of Leigh Ann's fresh guacamole, but trust me, it was delicious.  Even though she had to leave out the cilantro because she bought parsley instead on accident.

Cinnamon Pear Balsamic

This salad is simple, delicious, and would be even better if it had cinnamon roasted chickpeas on it.

What it does include, however, is fresh baby spinach, goat cheese, dried cherries, and the divine cinnamon pear balsamic vinegar I bought at The Filling Station on my NYC trip in December.

Check out some of their other varieties of infused vinegars, olive oils, and sea salts here: The Filling Station NYC.

On an exercise note, I have a new found love for Pilates.  That, and doing my friend Sarah's Turbofire workouts with her in the living room, all couches and coffee tables pushed aside.

source

It's fun and really intense, and I've noticed a definite increase in my daily energy.  And nightly energy for that matter.  See Sarah's blog here!

Glad to see the days are getting longer and it's no longer dark at 4:45pm!  Who's ready for summer?!

Hot soup, cinnamon rolls, and pizza!

For Christmas, my dad gave me a new Moosewood Cookbook, which I love!  A few nights ago, I made my first recipe from the it - the Italian Chickpea Stew.

I used sweet potatoes instead of butternut squash, since I had some on hand.  It also called for onion, garlic, carrots, diced tomatoes, chickpeas, kale, coriander, basil, and red wine vinegar.

It was my first time making soup, or stew rather, but it turned out great!  And it's filling like you wouldn't believe.

Over the weekend, there was talk of snow in Wilmington.  No one really believed it.  But low and behold, we awoke Monday morning to huge white snowflakes and everything in in town closed.   So school was canceled, work was canceled, and my roommates made cinnamon rolls.

Later, we rented Inception from Redbox and had a snow-day movie-watching game-playing party all day and night.

And last night, I made a pizza using Katie's 15-minute pizza crust, topped with roasted eggplant and green bell peppers.

Delicious!  So awesome to make up such a killer pizza from scratch in such a short amount of time.