Monday, February 27, 2012

She was the apple of his eye and he liked to sit down be cider.

Apple Sandwiches
The first time I saw these, all I could think is HOW HAVE I NOT THOUGHT OF THIS?! Now I make these and put them in my lunch at least once a week.

Its simple;
  • Take and apple or two, and core them.
  • Using the fattest part of the apple make two slices of "apple bread".
  • Spread on your condiment (Peanut-butter, nutella, almond butter, jelly, etcetcetc...)
  • Sprinkle on chocolate chips, granola, dried berries, or whatever you want!
 There you have it!


Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Its Electrifying!





My bestfriends 21st birthday was this past weekend! A few other close friends and I treated her a lavish weekend that she would never forget...well, that she did forget most of...it was her 21st birthday after all...

We started her weekend off right, by getting the family out of the way! We had a massive surprise party waiting for her when she came home from work on Friday, where I broke out these bad-girl cupcakes; Strawberry with Vanilla Buttercream frosting, and some crazy toppers. And they're electric pink.

I bake and decorate cakes for a living, so I have a pretty steady hand when it comes to cake decorating.
But I LOVE BAKING, so hopefully I'll do more dessert posts in the future!

And since I had no picture on my last post, I took real pictures of these! Not shitty camera phone pictures!

Ingredients for cupcakes:
  • 2 cups white sugar
  • 1 (3 ounce) package strawberry flavored gelatin
  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 4 eggs (room temperature)
  • 2 3/4 cups sifted cake flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 cup whole milk, room temperature
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup strawberry puree made from frozen sweetened strawberries
Directions for cupcakes:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place ~24 cupcake flutes into pan.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and dry strawberry gelatin until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Combine the flour and baking powder; stir into the batter alternately with the milk. Blend in vanilla and strawberry puree. Divide the batter evenly between the flutes.
  3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a tooth pick can be stuck in the center of a cupcake and come out clean. Allow cupcakes to cool for at least 10 minutes, before taking out cupcakes to cool completely.
 

Ingredients for icing:

  • 3 cups confectioners' sugar
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons whipping cream

Directions for icing:

  1. In a mixing bowl, mix together sugar and butter with a whisk until well blended. 
  2. Add vanilla and cream and continue to whisk 1 minute more, adding more cream if needed for spreading consistency.





For a homemade icing bag, you can just use a plastic zip-lock freezer bag, or whatever sealable plastic sandwhich bag you have.
Put the icing the bag, I recomend a freezer bag because its hard to use the tiny sandwhich bags without refilling after every cupcake!
Once the icing is in, cut a little hole in the corner of the bag, and there ya have it!

I added gummy bears, rainbow and chocolate sprinkles, nonpareils, and whatever else I had in my cabinet!

Anyone have any suggestions they want me to make~?
This is me and my best friend, as zombies anyway!
 

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Me gusta.

Tonight, I was being a good student and doing my physics homework. I started to get hungry, and figured I'd just wait until I was done my homework to cook. Hurray, I was done! Oh my, it was 10:00pm.

Here's a meal that's filling and quick. Teriyaki chicken and noodles. You can make as much, or as little, of this as you want!


Here's the recipe I use for homemade teriyaki sauce:
  • 2/3 cup soy sauce (for those of you who are health conscious- lite/low sodium soy sauce works great too!)
  • 1/4 cup cooking sherry*
  • 2 tablespoons white sugar**
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 clove garlic, minced

    1. In a bowl, combine soy sauce, sherry, sugar, ginger, and garlic (all ingredients)
*A suitible substitue for cooking sherry can be 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar, or any "sweet" vinegar you have around the house.
**Also, brown sugar also tastes great.
~Some people like to cook their sauce in a pan, depending on how you doctor this to your own taste, you may need to to thicken it up.
This is one of those recipies where you can doctor the ingrediants to your liking, and it still tastes great as long as you follow the basic recipe.

I had some leftover homemade teriyaki sauce in my fridge, so I didn't make any fresh tonight. But it doesn't take long to make, at all!

I grilled up some pre-cut chicken breasts I bought from the local grocery.
  • Chicken is cooked once the middle is no longer pink. The chicken should be white all over, inside and out! 
I boiled a pot of water(I just put in enough to submerge the amount of noodles I'll be putting in, since all the water gets drained no measuring is needed here!) and added about a handful of rice noodles.
  • Here's a trick to tell if pasta/noodles are done if you can never tell. Take a piece of the pasta, and throw it against the wall! If it sticks, its done!
Drain the water out of your pot when the noodles are cooked-- rice noodles get VERY sticky when they're not in water, so don't worry, you did nothing wrong! Place noodles into your serving dish(or for me, just a bowl!)
Pour a SMALL amount of teriyaki cause over the noodles. I said SMALL. A little teriyaki goes a loooong way, its very strong! And its always better to have not enough of something then too much when cooking. Gradually add the sauce to your liking.
Place your grilled chicken ontop of your noodles. I added a little more sauce to coat my chicken and mixed it all together.

Hey, if you're feeling adventurous, make a simple chicken stir-fry! Throw some veggie in a pan, cook 'em, add some teriyaki sauce and add them to your chicken and noodles!

This meal isn't going to kill your diet either! 
The homemade teriyaki sauce has 42 Calories, 0g of fat, and 0g of cholesterol. Bake your chicken instead of grilling or pan-frying it. Add some veggies. And limit your amount of noodles. The noodles would be the most fattening part of this meal(one serving size of noodles is about the size of a baseball!).

Sorry, no pictures tonight!
Enjoy~

Sunday, February 12, 2012

The Beast.

 This is a good meal to have a cold day like this. Meat and potatoes. It warms you soul! A bottom round roast with potatoes, carrots, and peas covered in a creamy golden mushroom sauce.
The prep time of this meal is 15-20 minutes. Cook time of this meal is 2-3 hours(depending on the size of the roast).

2 cans Campbell's Golden Mushroom soup
1 envelope Lipton Onion soup mix
2-3 cans whole, peeled potatoes
2 cans peas
1 bag of baby, peeled carrots
Bottom Round Roast

Im cooking for 3-4 people, so I got a roast the was about 3.5 pounds, used 3 cans of potatoes, and about 3/4ths of the bag of carrots.
 




 Preheat the oven to 400degrees.
In a mixing bowl, pour in the two cans of Golden Mushroom soup and add the envelope of onion soup mix. Mix the two together.
















Place the roast in the center of your baking dish. Spread the potatoes, carrots and peas around the roast.


















Take the Golden Mushroom/Onion mix and spread over the potatoes, carrots, peas, and roast. Be sure to rub it into the roast with the spoon.









 
Wrap tinfoil and put in it in the oven. Set your timer for one hour.

After one hour, stir the potatoes, carrots and peas. If the veggies are not done, put it back in the oven checking at half hour interviels. 
When the veggies are done, put the roast on a separate plate(this makes it easier to get everything out) and scoop all the veggie mix into another dish and cover it in foil to keep the heat in.

                                                      Put the roast back into your baking dish. Take a few spoon fulls of the golden mushroom mix and rub it onto the roast to keep it from drying out. Re-cover with tin foil and stick back in the oven for half hour interviels until roast is cooked to your liking. It took our roast about 2 hours to cook to medium rare/medium temperature.
Some roasts may come with a pop-up timer already in it, or you can put your own in. I end up cutting into the roast a few times to check the reddness, but a popup timer is obviously more efficent.




Once its done, cut up the roast and serve with the veggie mix!

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Begining.

Everyone loves food.
Not everyone's good at making food.

That's where I come in.

Get ready for every delicious flavor in every single post.