Cooking Week 12- Cheesy Apple Beer Bread

I move tomorrow.  This means that even though I managed to make the bread on Sunday, this is my first time being able to sit down long enough to write the post.  It also means that I may be able to do the baking challenge a week late, but likely not.  For Cheese I decided to make a cheesy beer bread which I had been planning on making for a while.  

I used a recipe from Cooking light and adapted it slightly to compensate for my laziness.  

Mix 13.5 ounces of all purpose flour, 3 Tablespoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, a shake of black pepper, and a few shakes of garlic powder in a bowl.

Add 1 bottle of hard apple cider and 1 c. of grated cheese.  I used dubliner because it was on sale and I LOVE the stuff :)  Mix until moist and combined.

Spoon into greased 9x 5 loaf pan and pour 1 Tablespoon of melted butter on top.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 35 minutes.  Pour another Tablespoon of melted butter on top and bake for another 15-25 minutes until deep golden and toothpick in center comes out clean.  

Cooking Week 11- Breakfast Mini Cinnamon Rolls

I wobbled on what exactly to do for this week.  I LOVE breakfast so to pick one is hard, but I finally wound up deciding on these mini cinnamon rolls that I've seen online lately.  I must say, I'm glad I did, they are delicious and easy too!

First you roll out the premade crescent dough (I use Trader Joe's brand) and smush the lines together to make them into 4 rectangles. 

Then you spread butter on them and sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar (I have some premade at all times for cinnamon sugar emergencies).

Roll from the long end to create a cylinder and cut each log into 5 pieces.

Place in a greased mini cupcake pan and bake at 350 for 10 minutes, or follow the baking instructions in the link. 

Whip up the powdered sugar icing in the link (or one one of your own), frost, and eat.  Try not to eat them all! 

Baking Week 11-Savory Potato Bread

Yet another semi-fail from my magazine file.  I grabbed this one from an issue of Cooking Light and I threw out the recipe so I can't tell which one.  It was a prize winning potato bread and staying true to my Irish heritage, I love me some potatoes.  In any and all forms.

I gave this recipe a whirl and while it rose VERY nicely I was somewhat disappointed in the final product. 

It was a little too soft and didn't have enough structure to it.  I also didn't mash my potatoes smooth enough, but that's my fault. 

I think I'll try again with smoother potatoes and a different recipe I think.  Therefore no recipe share.  Find your own with good reviews. ;) 

Baking Week 10: TV inspired Starfleet Combat Rations

Have I revealed myself as a total nerd on here yet?  Cuz I am.  In my quest to watch all of Star Trek, I've been rewatching DS9, which I think is my favorite.  In the episode entitled The Seige (which I will not go into details about so as not to spoil it) Miles O'Brien mentions his love of Starfleet combat rations.  Since I'd been toying around with ideas for this week's baking challenge and simultaneously trying to figure out what snack to make to bring with me on my flight to NYC next week, it was a light bulb moment for me.  I'd make combat rations!  Well in this case granola bars.

I adapted the recipe found here for my preferences and based on the suggestions in the comments.

The honey is in there already because I forgot to take a picture first.

First I mixed 2 c. rolled oats, 1/2 c. brown sugar, 1/2 c. wheat germ, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 c. wheat flour, 1/2 c. unsweetened coconut shreds, 1/2 coarsely chopped walnuts, and 3/4 tsp. salt.

Then you make a well in the center and mix in 1/2 c. honey, 1/2 c. oil (I use canola), 1 egg (beaten), and 2 tsp. vanilla.

Pat mixture in a greased 13x 9 pan.  You can see I leave about 2 inches at the end so that my bars are thicker and chewier.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, until the edges start to brown.

Cool for 5 minutes then cut and enjoy when you wish.

When telling the boy about my combat ration plan he suggested that I just make him poptarts and pipe the federation symbol on top because he wants everything he eats to be federation approved.  :|  I thought about piping it on the granola bars combat rations I made, but frankly I got too lazy.  I also imagine TRUE combat rations would be a little less sweet and a little more protein-y.

Cooking Week 10: Lord of the Onion Rings

This week's theme is book/movie inspired.  I toyed around with a lot of ideas for the cooking challenge and wasn't particularly happy with any of them.  While talking about my ideas I tossed out Lord of the Onion Rings and its just cheesy enough to thrill me so I went with it.

A quick google of how to make onion rings and I found instructions to try out here.

I cut my onions.

The little bits are drops of batter I used to test the heat of the oil.

Heated up a mix of canola oil and the bacon fat leftover in my skillet.

Made my batter.

Fried the rings on both sides.

And then promptly tossed most of them.  I'm still no good at deep frying things.  I was feeling sick from the grease of the three rings that I ate and they weren't as crispy as they should be.  Perhaps these powerful rings are not meant to be eaten.

Cooking Week 9: Coffee Semi-Fail!

This week's cooking challenge is coffee.  I debated for a while on what to do (I do love coffee) and while I wanted to make an espresso crusted steak, the boy does not eat steak so I didn't want to have to make a second dinner for him.  Instead I decided to make Espresso Crinkles, a cookie recipe in my magazine file from a 2008 issue of Cooking Light.  The cookies were supposed to look like this:

And instead they came out looking like this:

I thought I followed the recipe, but I must have messed something up.  They still taste delicious, and I gave them to my vet's office as a thank you since I've been spending WAY too much time there, but not what they were supposed to be.  Oh well.  If I have the energy this weekend maybe I'll try the steak. 

Baking Week 9: Cookies

I make a lot of cookies.  It's my go-to baking type.  For this challenge I decided to pick a cookie I've been eyeing for a while in my Martha Stewart Cookie book, Grammy's Chocolate Cookies. 

It's so simple, and I maybe should have challenged myself more in the cookie department but I think I've been looking at these cookies and not making them for almost a year now! 

It's a basic mix all the stuff together and chill.

Form it into balls and roll the balls in sugar.

Bake.

Enjoy! 

I have a particular fondness for the style of cookie that is rolled in sugar (or cinnamon sugar) and baked.  It might be the bit of caramelization that you get on the bottom when it bakes that makes it so delicious, but whatever it is, it's awesome.  I gave all of these away so I think I need to make another batch for me!

Craft Fail: Decoupage

I'm wondering if I should just give up on the decoupaging attempts.  This is the second time I've tried a decoupage project to have it fail.  Last time it was design issues.  This time I like the way it looks, but I decoupaged the wrong object. 

I have these plastic partylite clipboards that I thought I could cover up the partylite logo with some pretty decoupage and give them new life. 

I added a full sheet of paper to the back, and decorated it with some flower cricut cuts (and a tiny bit of glitter.  My next step was going to be to add a ribbon to the top but didn't make it that far.

 

Then I covered the front with scrap squares of paper in greens.  It was looking good until a few coats of modge podge later when I realized that it didn't matter how many times I reglued the corners they were still going to peel up.  I give up.  My next decoupage project is a wooden frame, but I just have to wait for my mom to loan me her paints! 

Cooking Week 8: Slow Cooking Chicken and Dumplings

This week's challenge for cooking was slow cooking.  My original plan was to make a veggie soup in the slow cooker for the boy's work lunches.  It didn't work out.  I'll probably make it Sunday or Monday night instead.  For the challenge I decided to instead make chicken and dumplings in the slow cooker. 

I found a recipe in my big Fix-it and Forget-It book and adjusted it a bit to our tastes.

I threw in 2.25 cups of shredded cooked chicken, 1 c. chopped onion, 1.5 c. chopped carrots, 1.5 c. chopped celery, 6 c. chicken broth, and some garlic and basil. 

I let it cook on low for 6 ish hours.  Doesn't really need to be quite so long, but it worked with our timing since I had a program at work and we decided to take advantage of the snow and go sledding. 

After cooking it in the slow cooker, I transferred (okay, the boy transferred since I'm a total clutz) the soup into a stock pot, brought it up to a boil, and added scoops of dumplings I made from the recipe on the side of the Bisquick box.  Cook them according to package and enjoy!

Welcome Baby Card

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but for some reason I volunteered to be the chair of my work's Sunshine Committee.  Essentially this means I'm in charge of doing cheery things for my coworkers to keep morale up.  One of these cheery things is to make sure there are cards signed by everyone and collections taken up for various events.  Most recently this was the birth of a new baby.  This kind of snuck up on me, both the birth (I didn't know his wife was pregnant!) and that it was my responsibility to get the card.  I decided it would be easier and better to make the card so when I went home the night I found out I needed a card (after stopping by another scrapper friend's house for cricut cartridges) and whipped up this welcome baby card.

It was super simple, just used 2 cartridges and a stamp and I think it turned out well.  It also inspired me to work on more crafty stuff.  I'm currently working on  some decoupage stuff that I'm not entirely sure will work out well.  Either way I'm sure you'll be seeing it soon. 

Baking Week 8: Candy Decorations

So I saw this cake floating around on pinterest.  When I discovered week 8 was all about candy decorations I knew I had to make it.  So I present to you my version of the kit-kat and m&m cake.

I used 5.5 King Size Kit-Kat bars to cover my 9" cake and a medium size bag of the pretzel m&m's.  You'll probably need a Large bag for better coverage. 

For the cake I used my Colette Peter's Chocolate Cake Recipe which thankfully someone else typed up here.  I refuse to use vegetable shortening so I use real butter in mine (softened) and instead of almond extract (which I'm allergic to) I replace it with more vanilla.  I frosted it with a basic buttercream with about a tablespoon of cocoa to make the coloring darker.

Really though, you can do whats under the candy any way you choose.  Also despite the simplicity of the cake, everyone at work loved it and refused to be the first to cut into it.  It's a great way to show off an impressive cake with not too much work!

Cooking Week 7: Love

One of the things that I learned on our sleepover date was that the boy's favorite food is my chicken pot pie.  As such I thought it would be the perfect food for my love inspired cooking challenge.  My love loves this meal so I made it for him.

I even added some hearts to the top crust to make it a bit more lovey.

I used Emeril's recipe for chicken pot pie.  Mostly.  I won't watch the man, as I find him to be annoying (I find a lot of TV chefs to be annoying) but this pot pie recipe is delish!!

I didn't use all the veggies that he said to, mixed it up based on what the boy likes and was in the house.  I used peas, carrots, celery, onions, green beans, and corn.  I also didn't blanch the carrots and threw them in the skillet with the celery and onions instead. 

I also used skim milk instead of half and half because my half and half had gone very, very wrong.  Makes it a little lighter too!

For my pie crust I used the recipe I use for my poptarts minus the sugar, and had a little trouble rolling out the crust.  I just seem to be particularly bad at this part.  In theory practice makes perfect and I should be getting better with every crust.

Apparently the top was not enough practice. 


Despite its somewhat ugly appearance it was delicious and the boy was thrilled to get pot pie for dinner (and likely also when its in his lunch tomorrow).  You can also cheat and use store bought pie crust (I have in the past) and it will still be awesome.  

Baking Week 7: Love

I took advantage of the fact that I had a teen craft program at work that was decorating heart shaped sugar cookies to use it for the baking challenge of love inspired.  I baked all 55 cookies from scratch and spent the good chunk of the morning doing so.  I used a recipe I saw on pinterest found here and they came out soft and delicious. 

I'd post more detail, but its pretty basic mix and roll out sort of thing, so no need.  I'd also have after decorating pictures if I was less of a flake and ever could remember to bring a camera to my craft programs.  I really need  to get better on that.