Turk-ish Dreams

This year we hosted our very first Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving has never been a big deal for me, as I'm usually needed at work before 4am the next day, and my parents were always out of town growing up so it was never a huge family event for me.

But, this year, we are on the other side of the country from our families and I don't have a job that will fire me for not coming on Black Friday, so we got to have Thanksgiving! Out here there are several people that we actually know from our hometown--we always find this truth odd, since we currently live in the middle of nowhere--and we all got together to great a potluck dinner last night.

Although we had a full dinner and much more food than we needed, I only made the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry/apple mold (thanks for the recipe, Family Circle). I was very nervous about the turkey, since I had never made one, and despite it taking 1.5 hrs longer than it was supposed to, it tasted absolutely delicious and I wouldn't change a thing if/when I do it again!

I decided to stuff it with celery, carrots, an onion, and sage leaves just to keep it moist and flavorful. I have read that actually stuffing a turkey with stuffing is no longer considered good practice due to some bacteria that tends to grow between the stuffing and the turkey, so I decided against that.



I used a mixture of honey, butter, and dried herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary) to baste with, and took it out of the oven (where it was covered in foil) about every 45 minutes to rebaste. It took about 6.5 hours to fully cook, but it was great!




And I went cheap for the stuffing..stove top, approx. 10 minutes total to fix. Best idea ever.




So, our first Thanksgiving was a total success!

Hope everyone else had a great one too!

Owlcakes

Last week we had a couple snow days and, although I'm sure I'm probably the only one who felt this way, I was incredibly bored. I mean, I never mind getting the "you have a snow day" call in the morning, but I'm kind of on a deadline this semester with certain lessons that need to be taught at certain times, so I'm really not that into them at the moment. So I decided to go get some materials to make some sugarplums and some cupcakes. I took the sugarplums in for a couple classes and some coworkers at lunch on Monday, but didn't make the cupcakes until last night.

I chose this design a long time ago, because they are pretty easy to make and relatively cheap. I think they turned out pretty well...




My first bell couldn't just accept the treat...they were all "WHY did you bring us cupcakes? Is it your birthday?" And I'm all "...um, can't I just like you?" Any other class and it would have been a bribe, but not this class!

I had a couple left over and took them to lunch where a couple people decided that, because I brought sugarplums on Monday and these today, that I'm a super crafty person. I don't know if that's a good thing or not? But I mean...at least they'll remember my cupcakes when I leave in May :D

Now I have to figure out some cupcake creation to make for Little Man's birthday this weekend! I want to make some kind of cupcake cake (one that does NOT fail) like a racecar or alligator or something, but I'm not sure if I'm good enough for that.

Any suggestions?

Boo Bakeoff: Link Up!

Welcome to the Boo Bakeoff!

Don't know what this is? Shame on you! But, you can find out here.

Basically, you make and post pictures of adorable halloween cupcakes. You love cupcakes, right? 'Cause I do.

And then, of course, you win something! This lovely book:



Which is officially ready for me to pickup and send to one of you!

Making a post is 3 points. Tweeting about it is another point. And blogging about it without participating is another point. Each point=1 entry into the drawing for the book!

The linky should be at the bottom of this post for you to link up and win! You have through Monday to link up, and I'll be drawing a winner on Tuesday!

And, of course, I made some cupcakes as well!

Scarecrow Cupcakes (recipe from The Pondering Princess)


I think they turned out okay, but were pretty expensive to make...and kind of look like they have a turd on their head. BUT. At least it's a tasty turd :)






So, what did you make?

Bake-N-Blog: Banana Cupcakes with Maple Icing!

That's right! The time has come for the Bake-N-Blog, hosted by Jess over at Jesstagirl and her Officer! The cupcake recipes themselves come from Ming Makes Cupcakes.

For the Bake-N-Blog, I chose the Banana Cupcakes with Maple Brown Butter Frosting!

The ingredients were many...


And the mixes were not very attractive looking, seen here is the cupcake mix and the icing mix.


And I had some help from Little Man. He really enjoyed "mashing" the bananas. And then Gangsta's Paradise came on and, even though the song came out several years before he was born, he indulged in the fun and broke out in "gangsta dance."


After our gangsta break, we pulled the baked cakes out of the freezer and iced away.


All in all, they turned out really well. They tasted pretty much like banana bread with maple syrup icing.


At least, Little Man says they were good!



Another cupcake success :)

Smelly Fish, et al

You know I only have one blog post for July? One? That's horrid.

I have definitely decided that if anyone ever tells you that they are planning on taking 10 credit hours full of literature and foreign language in one month, you should repeatedly smack them in the face with a smelly fish until they come to their senses. Logically speaking, I'm a pretty good student with a pretty good GPA and a fabulous knack for last minute papers full of nothing but well-phrased bs.

This summer month of classes is kicking my ass.

So here's a little post of what's been happening around here this month around classes and schoolwork:

Jess over at Jesstagirl and her Officer sent me these lovely peaches and cobbler mix for winning a give-away! I made the cobbler for July 4th and it was the easiest thing ever, and absolutely delicious! (Jess, I have a thank you card sitting on my desk stamped and ready to go for you...sans address, because I forgot to take it off the box before I tossed it. Please drop me an email and I'll send it out!)



We attended the last Brooks & Dunn tour :( B had a small conflict with the drunk idiots next to us, who thought it was okay to reach over and grab the back of my best friends shirt and attempt to dump alcohol down it. Uh uh, not cool--choice words were used and after awhile the drunkards decided weed was better and stopped talking to people around them. Concert was good, though.



We made the decision to stop "sharing" drinks with Brady. She now gets her own cup.


We discovered that 1lb of meat on Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza is about double as much as one can stand to eat.


And, lastly, we discovered that Brady's tendency to throw herself underwater last year at 18 months old in a 1 ft pool did not end last year. Now it's just in a bigger pool and with more emphasis. But at least she can swim!


I swear I'll be back soon!

Mission: Avocado

Here in the last few months, my face has suddenly decided that it wants to be 15. Which is especially annoying because...well, it didn't act this way when it was 15. I mean, logically speaking, it's not horrible...but it's been better.

A few weeks ago I was talking to my best friend and she suggested eating an avocado everyday. The same week, randomly, one of my co-workers mentioned that he eats a lot of avocadoes and that's why his hair was so soft. So I thought hey...why not?



And I bought an avocado.

And it tasted like crap.

I tried to add salt and pepper. No luck. Honestly the first...five-ish bites weren't that bad. But after that I just couldn't go on. But, in an attempt to force myself to like avocado, I continued with my quest.

I moved on to avocado smoothies.

This seemed like a fabulous idea. I could cover up the avocado and taste something I actually liked, and just drink it so I didn't have to taste the weird consistency. I tried an apple avocado smoothie first (apple+1/2avo+applejuice+ice+mint). Failure. Then I went for the banana smoothie (bananer+1/2avo+nutmeg+cinnamon+milk+orangejuice). This one wasn't horrible...for the first few swigs.

It seems that during this process I forgot something crucial: I don't like smoothies.

However, I refuse to give up. I will make something with the stupid avocado and be healthy was shiny hair and a pretty face.

I will.

Cake Pops for the New Year!

These looked cute when I saw them on My Charming Kids. I decided to try them.

I'm positive there is some kind of trick I'm missing, but these were almost as big of pain as those stained glass cookies were. They taste good from what others have told me, but they took forever to make!

I'm not going to give you the whole "how to" because you can find it on Bakerella, but I'll give you the gist of it:

The inside of chocolate cake mixed with cream cheese frosting.
The outside is melted and colored white chocolate.

...the outside is where the issue came in for me because we weren't really able to "dip" them in the melted chocolate :( It could have been the type of chocolate we used, and probably was, but out of 60 rolled cake balls, only about 30 made it off the pan, was iced, and made it to the styrofoam block.



But, it was worth it, because they are adorable. And, as my grandmother points out, "If it's weird, you will find it and make it."



Next baking adventure? Rainbow cake. To happen after the next pay day. ;)

Stained Glass Cookies

This was a fun recipe. And by fun, I do mean that it looked great on paper but made me want to fork my own eyes out in actuality.

Cut outs and I? We are not friends. Never have been, never will be. I don't even like the taste of cutouts. But these were just so pretty!

Ingredients were pretty simple. Jolly ranchers and cutout dough (in my case, homemade--unsalted butter, flour, one yolk, sugar, and vanilla).

According to the recipe, the prep time for this was 15 minutes. If someone can make all of this in 15 minutes, I'd be calling the world records group.

Step 1: Make dough, if doing so. Shape into 3 discs. Refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours. Then roll out.


Step 2: Using a large size and small size of the same (or different, I suppose, if you want) cutout, do cutouts from your dough (first with the big one, and then cut out the middle of the big cutout with the little cutout) and put them on a piece of parchment paper just big enough for a cookie sheet.

Step 3: Separate colors of jolly ranchers. The recipe says "red and green only." I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I've seen color specific packs of jolly ranchers, so I did all five colors in one original flavor bag and had wayyy more than enough.

Anyway. The next thing the recipe says to do is put the jolly ranchers in a food processor. I'm pretty anti-breakingthebladesonmyfoodprocessor/cleaningmyfoodprocessorbecauseihadtochopupjollyranchers so I put each color in a separate lunch bag, went out to the garage, and hit them with a hammer until finely chopped.

Here, I learned something: jolly ranchers stick together, even when finely chopped/hammered, even when only left for 10 minutes. I suggest doing one color at a time, because it become a royal pain to rehammer everything.



Step 4: Pour crushed ranchers into individual bowls or saucers or whatever you want. Then, using a tiny spoon (or a metal baby spoon, which worked great for me), spoon some into the middle cuts on your cutouts. The recipe says "level with the cutout"...I say "higher than the cutout" because level left a few holes.


Step 5: Bake. Recipe says 8-10 minutes "or until golden brown". If I cooked them for 8 minutes, they would have been black. 4 minutes and 30 seconds was just about perfect for me. It also says to let them cool on the cookie sheet, but I took them off (ON the parchment paper) and set them aside so they wouldn't continue to cook.

The recipe, supposedly, makes 36 cookies. I made probably a good 50, maybe more. Most of them were in my first few attempts at this and were burnt, broken, ugly, and thrown away. But hey...some of them turned out awesomely so it was worth it!


...and I'll never be making them again.

Pumpkin Cake

I found this recipe probably in family circle as well, but I honestly don't remember. If doesn't matter, because other than the general idea I completely ignored the recipe and did whatever I felt like doing.

Like using box mix for Chocolate Fudge Cake instead of making my own blend of pumpkin cake. And using a smaller Pyrex baking bowl than they suggested (who knew those bowls we always mix in were actually baking bowls??). It turned out okay for the presentation, but the cake itself is amazingly delicious! So here it goes:

When you bake in a pyrex bowl, this is what it comes out like.

You have to use the same size bowl to make each one, and I baked them for 45 minutes each. Both halves.

And then you have to level the tops of each so that they meet closely when placed on top of each other.

Mix yellow and red with vanilla icing to make orange, and use that in between the halves to keep them together and on the outer edge to smooth it.

Then ice the rest of it, but I suggest doing one section at a time because the icing gets funky. Cut a hole in the top of the cake for the "stem". Cover the icing with reese pieces (it said M&Ms but they don't have an abundance of yellow and orange in them) in the pattern you want and put some kind of chocolate bar in the top hole for the stem.


Voila!

It worked well until I went to move it. Then things started to move. But it was a good thought. Next time I'd probably use a bigger bowl to make it easier, decorate on the presentation dish instead of the wire rack, and more red in my icing. But it's still at least kind of cute :)

Spider cupcakes on Saturday I think!

Turkey Meatball Heroes

It is no secret that I love to bake. Cupcakes, cakes, pie, bread...anything horrible for you and completely unnecessary to a meal is right up my alley. But cooking a meal? I don't do that very often. It's probably been 4-5 months since I've "made" a meal (unless you include dialing Marco's Pizza or microwaving things). The problem I have with it is that I don't like doing the same recipe multiple times. The problem I have with using a new recipe every time is that I can't afford to buy extra ingredients that I don't usually keep. But, this week in my Family Circle magazine (shut up, you know you like it too), a particular recipe caught my eye: Turkey Meatball Heroes.

I'm a big fan of anything made with ground turkey instead of ground beef. It's a million times better for you. And, I don't know how it is in your house, but in my house when people know you used turkey instead of beef they dislike whatever you make. But if I keep my turkey substitute a secret then they never know the difference and they love it meanwhile I've made a healthy choice for them. Whiney turds.

I'm not entirely comfortable posting the recipe on here, since it's probably a copyright infringement (aka illegal) but you can probably find it on the site, or you could email me and I could just scan it and email it to you. The ingredients, plus two eggs, are here:


Aside from the meatballs being a bit overdone (I should really know better than to cook them for the length they tell me too, but not-done raw meat freaks me out) and there not being really enough sauce to keep them moist (two teaspoons on each? please, that was BY FAR not enough and I even doubled it)...


...they were actually really good!

And plus, if you put them on a red plate with a golden underplate, it makes them look all special...


And one is definitely enough, but I made a salad to go with it. I ate probably 3/5ths of mine, but that's just me.

Other than that, today is Thursday, and we're hoping to find out about the woah thing.

One Week

Over the last week I...

...was not drunk during the taking of this...


...bought, made, and decorated this in two hours for my sister's July 4th birthday...


...spend two hours talking to my grandma about how getting a german shepard mix puppy would not be the right dog for her and how she knows that, and then came home and found this...


...and then went next door and found this one, his sister (literally)...


...watched Brady's Mozart skills...


...set off some of these...


...bought this for our large group of partiers this weekend...


...and purchased these for B for the weekend in my hopes of turning him into a sandal-wearer.


And this weekend will rock the socks off the past week :)

Cupcake Crazi!

I just felt like "crazy" needed an 'i' on the end. Don't judge.

But here's is my latest baking project: Hamburger Cupcakes!



The "bun" is yellow cake cupcakes, the "burger" is fudgey brownies, and the "ketchup" "mustard" and "lettuce" is all icing...well, half icing half food coloring (at least for the ketchup!). Good tip though, if you decide to make them, cake them the day you plan on eating them. When you take cupcakes out of their "cup" they get hard realllly fast.



I don't have any idea if they actually taste good, because I don't eat the things I bake 99% of the time (too much time with the ingredients!) but they are cute!

The recipe can be found here at Bakerella, and I found it through The Jetplane's Blog.

Because I'm all about the Creative Cupcake (see previous endeavors here and here). In the past, the real kickoff to the cupcake madness, I also made these:



and these:


Because I hate cooking. But I adore baking!