Summer Eats

Best thing about summer? Cookouts of course! I'm a huge fan of summer foods, anything from brats to salad dishes to cool desserts and everywhere in between. The first recipe to share is what I brought for a family 4th of July party: Strawberry Pretzel Squares...yep I said 'pretzels' alright. Some people's reaction to the combination is "Ew" but usually after they have a bite they're hooked by the salty sweetness.

2 cups finely crushed pretzels

1/2 cup  Sugar, divided

2/3 cup Butter or margarine, melted

11/2 pkg. Cream Cheese, softened

2 Tbsp. Milk

1 cup  thawed Cool Whip topping

2 cups boiling water

1 pkg.  (6 oz.) JELL-O Strawberry Flavor Gelatin

1-1/2 cups cold water

4 cups strawberries, sliced 

Heat oven to 350°F.
Mix pretzel crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar and butter. Press onto bottom of 13x9-inch pan. Bake 10 min. Cool.

My pretzels were a bit on the large side. I think I'll put them in a food processor next time

 
Beat cream cheese, remaining sugar and milk until blended. Stir in Cool Whip; spread over crust. Refrigerate.

 

Add boiling water to gelatin mix in large bowl; stir 2 min. until completely dissolved. Stir in cold water. Refrigerate 1-1/2 hours or until thickened (spoon drawn through leaves definite impression). Stir in strawberries; spoon over cream cheese layer. Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm.

YuM! Now go try it, it's TOO easy not to!

 WAIT! There's more! This is a double recipe blog day for AOP! (I know, not procrastinating? that's so weird for me, don't worry I'm sure it's just a phase).
I've been on a BLT kick lately and then I remembered this fantastic BLT pasta salad that used to carry in the deli at the store I used to work at. So I attempted to make my own little creation.

8oz. pasta noodle (rigatoni or macaroni work best) cook, rinse and drain according to package
8 slices of bacon cooked until crispy, crumbled (reserve drippings)
1 cup mayonnaise
4 leaves of romaine lettuce chopped
1 plum tomato, chopped

Mix bacon drippings into mayonnaise and pour over pasta, bacon, lettuce and tomato. mix until incorporated. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

BACON BACON BACON :D It'S BACON!!!!

Southern Livin'

Hey Ya'll! Shortly after finishing the spring semester I went on a week long vacation to North Carolina to visit my best friend and fellow blogger Melania from LUSH-ous Baking. Since she moved down to the south I've truly missed our girl-time together where we would craft, eat good food (and bad-for-you food lol) and watch movies together. So that's what our vacation was mainly about, just doing things like in the good ole days where we were just a 15 minute walk from each other.

On one of the days during the vacation we were inspired by the southern cooking queen herself; Paula Dean. And here are the results:

Southern Red Velvet cake recipe from Boozy Baker

 First we decided it was only appropriate to make something "Southern" so we chose to do Southern Comfort Red Velvet cake from the new baking book The Boozy Baker that I gave to Melania for her birthday. (I love that the author's name is Lucy Baker!)

Preping

 We had to make a run to the ABC Store. For us Yankees who don't know that's what the liquor stores are called in the South. They can't buy hard liquor in grocery stores like we do! I don't know how a Wisconsin girl could live that way...lol.

If you've ever watched Paula Dean in action you know no matter how messy she never takes off her rings!

Don't forget your BLING ladies!

Always tell your Kitchen Aide mixer how much you appreciate it!

Bunny Shaped cake forms; cause why wouldn't you?

I shocked Melania with my speedy decorating skills!

I felt it needed more cream cheese frosting...and got a delicious ghost bunny out of it.

RAWR! Bunny taste GOOD!

Also if you're curious to know what we did with the rest of the Southern Comfort bottle we made a grand discovery that it is amazing with another Southern treat: Cheer Wine! Try it now! Remember it's 5 o'clock somewhere!

I chipped my tooth and I think I ate the piece that broke off!

Today's blog title is brought to you by my former classmate Janice after I made everyone decorated molar-shaped sugar cookies for the last day of class; out of context it sure does sound like a shocking statement!

 

 

 

Janice's "chipped" tooth!

Sugar cookies are something I have a lot of practice with at work. I've literally made dozens of dozens of various shapes and designs for holidays, sports and events. But when I do it at work it's easy; the cookie dough is premixed and so is the royal icing. So rather than take the easy route and give everyone in my class just the 'run of the mill' mass production cookies I thought I'd give myself a little challenge and make my own cookie dough and icing. It was easier than I even thought and tasted 10x better than the ones I make at work (it's cause love is a flavoring you know heehee).

Here is a wonderfully and simple sugar cookie recipe:

1 Cup butter (room temp)
1 Cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 Cups sifted flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Cream butter. Add powdered sugar. Blend in egg, almond, vanilla, salt and flour. Chill dough in refrigerator until firm. On a lightly floured surface roll dough into 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with cookie cutters, or if you're crazy (and cheap) like me you make your own template out of cardboard and cover it with plastic wrap and use a knife to individually cut out each one.... 0_o
Place on greased cookie sheets and bake 8-10 minutes. *Cookies should NOT brown*

After the cookies have fully cooled, now comes the the tedious and sometimes a bit frustrating decorating.

Royal Icing recipe

4 Cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons meringue powder
5 tablespoons water

Combine all ingredients in stand mixer. Mix on low speed until sheen has disappeared, about 7-10 minutes. Will have a matte appearance. It will be incredibly thick; if it seems too difficult to get out of the bowl or even attempt to hand mix, go ahead and add one tablespoon of water at a time until it is manageable. Transfer to a container with a tight lid to prevent icing from becoming hard during decorating.

Add enough water (one tablespoon at a time) to get it to pass through your piping tip of your pastry bag. I used a Wilton #4 tip. Outline all  your cookies, this serves as a border to hold in the rest of the icing. Now water down the rest of your icing until it's very smooth but remember just a little bit of water at a time. If you do get it too watered down you can add more powdered sugar but it's easier if you just don't get to that point. The icing should be to the consistency of where you pull the spoon out when it drips back into rest that it dissipates in about 2 seconds. The next step is called "flooding" where you fill the space inside the border you created before. Where I have gaps I just "shake" the cookie back and forth to smooth it out or use a tooth pick if there's air bubbles.

Outlined

"Flooded"

Now comes the boring part, you let them dry...and you wait and you wait and wait and wa...you get the picture. You're probably going to have to do those other things that you've been putting off, but we all know if you're like me you'll probably watch a movie or two instead. And then it's still going to take awhile...take a nap too.

Okay so now that you've been so patient you can decorate them more with other colors or if you like them just as is you can put them in individual cellophane bags. I decided to write each one of the girls names on them, because I'm a glutton for punishment. So I took my left over frosting (which don't worry you'll have enough plus a little more to do all these steps the way I did) and I mixed a tiny bit of purple coloring and put it in the piping bag with a #3 tip. After you're done with your decorating go back to waiting a long time again because you don't want all your hard work to get smeared or smashed when you go to package them.

Finished product. (That lumpy heart one was a practice cookie)

Tips:
*These take much practice, don't get frustrated if it doesn't work perfectly the first time. This is a trial and error project for sure.
*Give yourself a few days ahead of time if you're making these for a special occasion. They take a very VERY long time to dry!

Happy Baking! =D

"Healthy" Egg-free Banana Bread

It's been SO long I know, I make all these promises to post and then I do what I do best: procrastinate.  So gimme a break, it's the name of the blog isn't it? Keep your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed, am I right? Haha.

So since January I have lost just about 15 pounds and my goal before May 25th (my 24th birthday) is to lose about 15 more. I know that's about 7 weeks away and is probably pretty achievable, but with school and work and trying to make time for friends and family I tend to run out of time on going to work out.  Sure I could wake up earlier and go running, but lets not get crazy here...

And sugar cravings are the worse struggle I have so I wanted to have a little treat that was as healthy as I could get without it losing the flavor. I had nice ripe bananas already so I thought banana bread sounds pretty healthy right? Wrong! So many of them have such an overwhelming amount of sugar to them! So I did some searching around and I found a recipe that sounded pretty easy and it's egg-free. Now I don't have any issues with eggs in baking, but I just don't have any right now and I barely use them so buying a carton for just one egg in a banana loaf seemed pretty senseless.

I found this recipe at Tasty Kitchen (which is linked to the Pioneer Woman's website; I love her! Go buy her cook book it's fantastic!)

Ingredients

• 2 whole Ripe Bananas
• ½ cups Low Fat Cottage Cheese
• ½ cups Whole Wheat Flour
• ½ cups All-purpose Flour
• ¼ cups Brown Sugar
• ¼ cups White Sugar
• ½ teaspoons Vanilla Extract
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• ¼ cups Canola Oil

 Preperation

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
In a large bowl, mash peeled bananas. Add cottage cheese and continue mashing.
Add remaining ingredients and mix together until well combined.
Pour batter into a greased loaf pan, spreading evenly.
Bake for 32-35 minutes. Let cool before removing from the pan and serving.

My mashed up banana and cottage cheese mixture.

Reminder: don't be like me, always remember to grease your pan first..makes things a lot easier!

Yeah baby! It's pretty good, different than the usual banana bread but I'd make it again for sure!

Overdue Update

Hey readers, so as you can see I didn't really reach my winter break goal of posting a new food everyday.  The time just flew by too fast and I had lots of people to visit and I just overall relaxed as much as I could between preparing for the spring semester and work.

But I wanted you all to know that I will really try to give you a small update now and again.  Hopefully we can get this really up and rolling during summer break!

Also this Saturday I will be receiving my grandma's Kitchen Aid mixer! So leave me a comment on what you would like to see me make in it for the first time: I'm so excited!