Beer Waffles = Win
August 21st, 2010Posted in Recipes | 3 Comments »
Me Want Food
December 13th, 2009I apologize for being so incredibly depressingly neglectful of this blog lately! I have been feeling rather uninspired. Add that to the fact that my MBA program is super demanding and my internship and my addiction to watching Dexter and V and it makes for a very bad blogger. I have pretty much worn boots, leggings, and a pea coat every day for a month, so blogging about clothes would get a little tedious, heh. It seems like the only exciting things I do worth blogging about lately are food related, haha. So… here is another food post!
We had a Christmas party yesterday, which I think went well. I like to set up parties and make food and such, so here are some of the favorite recipes I found!
Rachel Ray has this video on a goat cheese log, but instead of putting it on the outside we threw everything in a food processor and mixed it in. I thought it was pretty good, but people seem to generally be scared of goat cheese, haha.
She also has a video on the mini pizzas I made, only I put feta cheese and salami on them instead. Um… they tasted good, but mine look nothing at all like hers. Mine puffed up way too much and I used the same dough as her. hm…
How adorable are these pumpkin pie bites on Bakeralla?! I went to make them and realized somewhere in my transitions I lost my mini cupcake mold, and the only mold I had was for jumbo cupcakes, so I made them big and rustic instead of small and cute. I don’t like pumpkin pie, but I figured everyone else does. I whipped some cream with a little vanilla and powdered sugar and put it in a martini glass next to them.
We made this weird punch (which for the life of me I cannot find) that was 6 cups apple juice, 2 cups spiced rum, and 1 cup cinnamon schnapps, with apple slices for garnish, and it was actually pretty delicious! I didn’t want to do a regular fruit punch, so it was a nice alternative. One girl said it tasted like a scented candle, which I guess is a down side, haha.
I made chocolate creme brulee in shot glasses from my favorite recipe. I don’t think people realize how incredibly easy creme brulee is to make. The only potential problem with creme brulee is adding the hot liquid to the eggs too fast and cooking them (making ugly, unappetizing chunks). For the recipe, which is from a Mrs. Fields cookbook, click the “continue reading” image!
And as for the table, we covered it in wrapping paper (cheaper and cuter than a table cloth) and stacked bowls under plates to give everything different heights (because according to morning news segments, different heights are more appealing, haha).
Hope everyone had an exciting weekend. For all of the college students, good luck on your finals!
“Semi-Homemade” Hamburger Cupcakes
July 15th, 2009
I decided to make the hamburger cupcakes I posted about a while ago, but when I actually started buying the ingredients I got lazy and decided I wanted to do everything the easiest way possible. So, below is my super easy, done in less than one hour cupcake recipe 
.
1. Bake 12 cupcakes in extra large cupcake tins. Use either yellow, vanilla, lemon, or butter flavored box cake mix. Do not use cupcake liners! Lightly grease and flour each cupcake tin. Follow baking directions on the box. This will be your “bun”.
2. Bake chocolate cookies using store bought fudge cookies dough (you could also buy chocolate cookies from a bakery). This will be your “patty”. Make sure the cookies are rather large in size, large enough to hang over the edge of your “buns”.
3. Buy canned frosting in either vanilla or cream cheese flavor. Add yellow and orange food coloring (about a 2:1 ratio, yellow:orange) and mix thoroughly until you get the color you want. This is your “cheese”.
4. Cut your COOLED bun in half, set your cookie patty in the bun, then coat the patty with ample amounts of “cheese”. Put the top of your bun on, and sprinkle a bit of sugar on top.
5. Enjoy your hamburger!
Howto::Recipe: Slightly Smoky Macaroni and Cheese!
April 16th, 2009
About a year ago I had an urge to make homemade macaroni and cheese. I looked up a recipe online, followed it and… well, it just didn’t taste that good. But, I did realize that making homemade macaroni and cheese was ridiculously easy, so I made it a personal mission to come up with an amazing recipe. About two months ago I finally created, not to brag or anything, the most amazing macaroni and cheese I’d ever tasted in my entire life. Here is the recipe!
INGREDIENTS
- 6 oz. smoky provolone cheese
- 6 oz. sharp cheddar cheese
- half pint whipping cream (heavy cream)
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 box dried pasta of your choice (I use regular elbow pasta)
DIRECTIONS
- Put the dried pasta in a pot and start boiling it (I’m not going to explain how to cook pasta, you should know this, hehe)
- Chop the cheese into very small pieces. If you’re feeling extra energetic, you can shred the cheese, but it isn’t necessary.
- In a medium sized sauce pan, pour whipping cream and flour. Over medium heat, bring this mix to a nice simmer, stirring very frequently so the cream doesn’t burn or create a film.
- Once the cream mixture is to a simmer, turn off the heat and immediately add the cheeses into the pan. Stir the sauce until the cheese is fully melted; it should get thick and creamy!
- Drain the pasta if you haven’t done so already, and add the cheese sauce onto the pasta. Lightly stir it in, but be careful not to break up the pasta.
- Eat!
Spa Day!
March 23rd, 2009
So, although David probably hates me now, I declared yesterday a spa day! We spent a couple of hours soaking our feet, exfoliating, wearing face masks, pulling pore strips, waxing eyebrows, and just acting like metrosexuals. My hands, feet, and face are super soft todayyyyyyy. Below is my favorite face mask recipe I found, as well as an exfoliator recipe I made up myself .
BANANA-AVOCADO MASK VIA SPA-AT-HOME
- 1/2 over-ripe banana
- 1/2 over-ripe avacado
- 2 Tbsp unflavored full-fat yogurt
- 1 tsp olive oil
Combine these ingredients, then leave on for 20 minutes. My face felt super soft. I followed this with a blackhead scrub to get all of the olive oil off.
LEMON SUGAR EXFOLIATOR (my recipe!)
- 3 tablespoons sugar (raw sugar for coarser exfoliant!)
- 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
- dash of lemon juice
- dash of lavender oil, if you have it
Mix these together and then rub down your hands and feet with it. It smells really really good and makes your skin feel like a baby butt, hehe.
HOWTO::RECIPE Chocolate Peanut Butter
March 8th, 2009
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
- 2 pounds roasted peanuts (both salted, or one pound salted, one pound unsalted)
- 3 tablespoons oil (peanut oil if you have it. I use olive oil and it’s fine.)
- 12-15 tablespoons powdered sugar
- 12-15 tablespoons cocoa powder
1. Start by pouring the two pounds of peanuts into your food processor. Turn it on (warning: it will be really loud!) and let it go until the peanuts are in very fine pieces. This will probably take a couple of minutes.
Orange Jello Shots
November 21st, 2008So I stumbled upon this Orange Jello Shot recipe on Food Network’s website and decided it was one of the most ingenious things I’d seen in a very long time. I’ve been meaning to try to make these for a couple of weeks, but since people get old enough to go to bars it seems they rarely throw house parties. After being antsy about it I finally decided to make them a couple of days ago to “test.”
To be honest, I’ve never in my entire life peeled an orange. I don’t really like orange a ton. I like the flavor and I like orange juice, but I don’t really like the texture of citruses. I didn’t know you were supposed to use one of those special spoons, and even if I had know it’s not like I have one. So getting the Orange out of the peel was a slightly more complicated process than it had to be (as you can see by the mush in that bowl).
I put the orange halves in my fridge and filled them up from there, since I was pretty sure I’d have a heart attack trying to carry them all from the counter to the fridge. It worked, somewhat, but there was still a lot of spillage (as expected when you try to fill something up to the very top.
And I must say, mine clearly don’t look as amazing as the Food Network ones, but it was a really good idea. I think I’m going to try to make jello jiggler shots next. We’ll see how that works out.
Aram Rolls
October 9th, 2008
I’ve always had a place in my heart for yummy aram rolls. I’ve been making them since I was probably 12 years old. If you’re looking for a super easy snack to put out when you have guest over or to bring to a picnic, I highly recommend these! For mine I like to put in cream cheese, spinach, swiss cheese, turkey breast, and dried salami, but really anything will work.
Howt::Recipe Yummus Hummus
October 4th, 2008
I love love love to eat (and make) hummus, and here’s my favorite recipe. I’ve been playing around with a few recipes and put more of what I like and less of what I don’t. Hummus is super easy to make, all you do is take all of the ingredients listed below and throw them in a food processor until it’s creamy with a slightly grainy looking texture. It’s amazing how much less expensive it is to make hummus than to buy it at the store!
Ingredients:
- 2 16 ounce cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drains and rinsed
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp -1 tbsp crushed red pepper, to taste
- 1/2 – 2/3 cup lemon, to taste
- 1/3 cup tahini
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/3 cup olive oil OR garlic flavored olive oil
Like I said above, just throw all of the ingredients in the food processor! Serve it chilled with some pitas (or if you ate all of your pitas like I did, crackers taste fine as well).
Howto::Recipe Father’s Day “Cupcake”
June 15th, 2008
1. Make rice krispy treats via this recipe. I usually only use 5 cups of rice krispies so they’re a bit more gunky.
2. Coat your hands with veggie shortening (I actually had to spray pam on my hands today because I was out of shortening and it worked fine). Put the rice krispy goop into lined cupcake molds (you’ll probably want to spray pam into the cupcake liners). I used 6 large cupcakes, but you can also use 12 regular sized ones.
3. Melt one bag of white chocolate chips in the microwave. In a mixer, mix together 3 tablespoons of whipping cream and half a teaspoon of corn starch (if you don’t have corn starch just use 2 tablespoons of cream instead of 3). Mix in the melted chocolate. Add some food coloring.
4. Plop the white chocolate mixture on top of the rice krispy cupcakes and throw them in the fridge for about half an hour for the chocolate to cool. You can then take them out and drizzle some different colored white chocolate on top, if you’d like .