Thursday, December 15, 2011

Cake Batter Truffles

Finally the last of the recipes from Thursday. The star of the show. That turned out to be a bit of a misfit. Note taken, you can't make three desserts and dinner all at the same time. Disaster will strike.

Also, white chocolate chips do not melt well. Second note taken, buy the candy melts instead. We drizzled ours with milk chocolate, but they are supposed to be rolled in melted white chocolate. Way to hard for our impatient selves.

Cake Batter Truffles
adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything


Ingredients:

1 ½ cups flour
1 cup yellow cake mix
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3-4 Tablespoons milk
2 Tablespoons sprinkles
1/2 cup chocolate chips, melted


Directions:
1. Beat together butter and sugar using an electric mixer until combined. Add cake mix, flour, salt, and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add 3 Tablespoons of milk or more if needed to make a dough consistency. Mix in sprinkles by hand. Roll dough into one inch balls and place on a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet. Chill balls in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to firm up.
 2. Melt the chocolate chips and drizzle on top. Place truffle back on the cookie sheet and top with sprinkles. Repeat with remaining balls until finished.
3. Chill cake batter truffles in the refrigerator until serving. Makes around 24-30 truffles.




Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Chicken Marsala

In twenty four hours from now I will be DONE. (well less when you read this) That means five of my eight semester of college are over and three remain. I think I might cry thinking about it that way. I'm staying in school forever and ever, sorry mom and dad! 

Tonight (last night) we got a special delivery. SPRINKLES CUPCAKES all the way from NYC! Hello perfect study break. Mariah's parents went to NYC this past weekend and made a pit stop at Sprinkles and came home with a dark chocolate, coconut, lemon and red velvet cupcakes for us, YUM.

I also desperately want  need these mom, pppppppuuuuuhhhhhleeeeaaasssseeeeeee.

Anyway, the point of this post was dinner tonight (last night). You can clearly see how spacey I am today. I had a twenty minute laugh attack today because of a conversation I had with T via texting..

me- "what size syracuse pinky do you have?"
t sends me back a picture of her pinky with the caption "normal but a lil chubby?"
me- confused as ever realized i typed pinky instead of pinny. 

maybe you just had to be there.

okay for real, dinner.

Chicken Marsala
adapted from: Blog Chef

Ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon oregano
salt and pepper (to taste)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
10 ounces fresh sliced mushrooms
4  garlic cloves (minced)
2 cups marsala wine
3 cups chicken stock

1 cup peas

Directions:
1. 1 at a time, place chicken breasts between 2 sheets of wax paper (or plastic wrap). With a mallet (or can of peas in our case) pound chicken breasts until they are about ¼” thick.
2. On a plate combine flour, salt and pepper, and oregano. Dredge chicken breasts in flour until coated thoroughly.
3.  Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet. Fry chicken breasts until they are almost fully cooked (about 3 minutes on each side). Remove from pan and keep warm in the oven at 175 degrees.
4. Deglaze the pan with marsala wine. Make sure to scrape up all the brown bits (the goodness!!) on the bottom of the pan and mix them with the wine.
5. Add chicken broth mushrooms and garlic. Cook on medium-high for 10 minutes or until the sauce has reduced by half. Add chicken breasts back to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes. Add the peas with about 5 minutes left to heath through. The sauce should now have become somewhat thick.



White Chocolate Coconut Cranberry Bark

Instead of studying for my two finals tomorrow, or packing, or preparing the apartment for a month of no one living here, I'm trying to finish up last Thursday's baking adventure.

I guess I can kind of consider this studying since my one final is based off Hershey..so this is kind of like studying..sort of.

We ended up making two kinds of bark because we failed not once, but twice trying to melt white chocolate appropriately. Go us.

White Chocolate Coconut Cranberry Bark


Ingredients:
1 bag of white chocolate chips
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup craisins

Directions:
1. Melt the white chocolate over a double boiler (or in 30-second intervals in the microwave on 50% power, stirring after each). Once the chocolate is melted, remove from the heat and the coconut.
2. Tin foil and spray a baking sheet (we used a circle pie pan) and pour the mixture into the pan spreading evenly.
3. Top with craisins
4. Refrigerate for 30 minutes




Monday, December 12, 2011

Lofthouse Style Frosted Sugar Cookies

I think everyone has had a Lofthouse cookie before, you know the big, fluffy, soft sugar cookies with a mound of frosting on them? Growing up people always brought them into school, and oh my they were so good. We've seen recipes before but have always shied away because they had to refrigerate overnight, no thank you. We found one that only had to for two hours so we added it to the list of things to bake Thursday. To say it was a messy project would be an understatement.

Mariah's worst nightmare
 Using our resources wisely

(we halved the recipe and it made about two and half dozen, the whole recipe is supposed to make 5-6 dozen)

Lofthouse Style Frosted Sugar Cookies
source: Brown Eyed Baker


Ingredients:

For the Cookies:
6 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ cups sour cream
For the Easy Buttercream Frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the flat beater attached, cream the butter and granulated sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add the vanilla and sour cream and beat at low speed until combined.
3. Add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed until just combined, scraping down the bowl as needed. Dough will be a bit “sticky”. Divide dough into two sections. Flatten into rectangles about 1½ inches thick, then wrap with plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator overnight or at least two hours until firm.
4. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Line large baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.
5. Flour the counter top and the top of the dough. With a rolling pin, roll the dough out to ¼-inch thickness. Using a 2 1/2-inch round cookie cutter, cut out circles and transfer to a baking sheet. Bake for 7 minutes, until pale golden. Immediately transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Cook cookies completely before frosting.
6. To make the frosting, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and vanilla. Slowly beat in the powdered sugar and the pinch of salt. Once smooth and creamy, add in heavy cream, 1 tablespoon at a time, then beat at medium-high speed for a minute or two until light and fluffy. If desired, add food coloring and beat until combined.
7. Once cookies have cooled completely, frost and add sprinkles. Allow frosting to set, then store in an air-tight container. Let cookies sit for several hours before serving to allow the flavors to develop.




we tried to use cookie cutters, and I do not recommend. The dough got super sticky and it was a disaster. Stick to the circles, much easier.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Creamy Avocado Pasta

Included in Thursday's festivities was dinner, we deemed Mariah head chef and she cooked up a storm while Amels and I got to relax.

On the menu was Creamy Avocado Pasta with roasted asparagus and Garlic Tuscan bread. Garlic Tuscan bread is a weekly thing at home and I can't get enough of it and I introduced it to them and I think it may have been life changing for them.


Creamy Avocado Pasta
adapted from: The Healthy Foodie


Ingredients:
1 box of linguine
3 cups of spinach
2 ripe avocados
2 cups sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
Juice of a lime
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper


Directions:
1. Cook pasta according to instructions on package
2. In the meantime, heat about a teaspoon of olive oil) in a medium non stick pan over medium heat and cook the spinach for 2-3 minutes, until just tender. Remove from heat but leave in pan.
3. Add avocado, yogurt, lemon juice, salt and pepper to the bowl of your food processor and process until smooth.
4.When pasta is cooked, drain it and add it to your spinach. Add avocado mixture and toss delicately to combine.
5. Serve immediately.



Friday, December 9, 2011

Cake Batter Bark

Oh hi. Meet MEM or Maria or Amelia or whatever my desired name of the moment is for them. Their my best friends. And we like to get into major shenanigans. Last year these shenanigans occurred on a daily basis when we all lived together, but now their limited to the weekend and (almost) weekly week day gatherings because our little Amels had to become a big kid. Boo.

A few weeks ago this happened..(tilt you're head I don't know how to rotate...)
 The jist of that was I let Emily dye my hair, minus the purple kitchen floor and purple walls in the bathroom, it was a success! So last night I asked her to redye it, and we bribed her with dinner and baking. A perfect night in our books. One of the things we attempted to make were cake batter truffles, now we love, love, love cookie dough as much as the next person (minus Mariah because she has some odd fear of raw eggs.....) so when I came across these I knew I had to make them, last year we made chocolate chip cookie dough truffles and I think ate the whole batch in one sitting. Needless to say this did not go as planned. You had to melt white chocolate to coat the truffles in, well after two tries of failing to melt we decided to make bark.

Cake Batter Bark

Ingredients:
1 bag of white chocolate chips
4 tablespoons yellow cake mix
1/2 cup melted chocolate
Sprinkles

Directions:
1. Melt the white chocolate over a double boiler (or in 30-second intervals in the microwave on 50% power, stirring after each). Once the chocolate is melted, remove from the heat and add the cake mix and sprinkles.
2. Tin foil and spray a baking sheet (we used a circle pie pan) and pour the mixture into the pan spreading evenly.
3. Top with melted chocolate and sprinkles.
4. Refrigerate for 30 minutes







This is so terribly addicting.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Magic Bars

So I have this thing for coconut. Many people look at me funny when I say this because they assume I can't eat it because it's a nut. Well it's not and I can eat it and quite frankly could eat it any time of the day, it's just SO good. Last year I went through a phase of only drinking coconut milk, yum.

Christmas time= so many cookies stocked in the freezer at all times, just calling out my name saying "eat me, eat me" so clearly I do. Aside from Kiss Cookies magic bars are my all time favorite Christmas treat. Also, I do believe it is how we found out that I was allergic to nuts..yet the traumatic experience didn't shy me away from loving these bad boys.

Magic Bars


Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
6 oz chocolate chips (I prefer chunks)
1 1/3 cup shredded coconut
1 cup nuts (optional, a definite no for me)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 line a 9 x 13 pan with tin foil.
2. Melt butter in microwave and pour into bottom of the pan.
3. Add graham crackers over butter and push out to cover bottom of the pan.
4. Pour half the condensed milk over overs.
5. Top with remaining ingredients and finally with remaining condensed milk
6. Press down gentle, bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool before cutting.