Sabrina and I made Christmas cookies for the neighbors today.
There was lots of decorating
And over decorating
Surreptitious tastes
and not so surreptitious tastes
This little elf had lots of cookies
And was a very hapy girl
Merry Christmas!
-Lindsey
I read about a crazy dessert on Jamie the Very Worst Missionary. The Picaken is a pie inside a cake, the turducken of desserts if you will.
When I told my friend Christian about it at first he delighted in the portmanteau. (I had no idea what a portmanteau was despite my love for brunch and sporks). After the delight wore off he took it as a challenge to design a better franken-dessert with an even better portmanteau.
Soon he came up with the crackoopudackiedinger. It is cookies, in a pudding pie, in a graham cracker crust, in a cake.
After the initial horror wore off (come on, that is a whole lot going on in one dessert) I took it as a challenge. I figured pumpkin pie is puddingy so I coordinated the flavors around that. Ginger snaps and carrot cake use some of the same spices so that is what I went with.
The ingredients (yea, you counted right, FIVE eggs!)
Cookies in the graham cracker crust
The pie that ate the cookies
More cookies in 1/2 of the cake batter
The pie placed oh so gingerly in the cake (in hindsight I should have let the pie cool completely but I was so eager to give life to this monster)
The cake that ate the pie (look how happy it is, it doesn't care that the pie wasn't exactly intact)
Behold! the Crackoopudackiedinger! (Cream cheese frosting is a must for any cake)
Christian holding a piece of his brainchild (I love how you can really see the strata of cookie and pie and cake)
It went over very well in the office and after everyone came down from the sugar high we started brainstorming about other flavor combinations. How about a citrus version with orange cookies, key lime pie, and a lemon cake?
Any ideas for other flavor combinations?
-Lindsey
I got the hook up to the most amazing peaches.
A LOT of peaches
They are luscious and juicy
I was compelled to make cobbler
I mixed this blueberry cobbler recipe with this blackberry peach recipe. It was a delicious experiment.
We spend a lot of time now sitting on the front step eating peaches.
My favorite part is letting the juices flow.
So does any one have any favorite peach recipes to share? I think my next experiment will be peach pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.
-Lindsey
on lily's first day of school i thought it would be a nice touch to put a homemade cookie in her lunch. after realizing how quick and easy it is to bake up a batch lil has been getting a cookie in her lunch sack each day.
i thought i'd share the recipe because aside from being quick and easy, they're really tasty little cookies.
best cookies ever!
1c sugar
1 stick of butter (softened)
2 eggs
1/2t vanilla
1T cold water
2c flour
1 1/2t baking powder
pinch-o-salt
cream butter and sugar together. stir in eggs, vanilla, and water. then add flour, baking powder, and salt. spoon onto baking sheets and bake at 350 deg for 12-15 minutes.
sweet little poof-cookies, the perfect way to send a little home-baked love along with your kiddo when they're off at school.
-melissa
yesterday i spent most of the day in the kitchen baking up a storm.
with lily by my side we cranked out more baked good in one day than my kitchen has seen in months!
along with my favorite standard bread recipe we also made caramel monkey bread and apricot muffins! i picked a hot day to keep the oven on, but the results made it well worth it.
-melissa
we went to some friend's house for dinner last night and i was in charge of bringing dessert. i had a craving for zucchini bread, and luckily i have a stash of zucchini in my freezer.
my zucchini bread recipe is a family tradition, passed down from my grandmom to my mom to me. and it's delicious!
here's the recipe, incase you want to join in the baking fun!
grandma miller's zucchini bread
preheat oven to 350 deg
makes two loaves - grease and flour pans
3 eggs
1c oil
2c sugar
2c peeled/grated zucchini
3 1/2c flour
2t baking powder
1/2t vanilla
1/2t salt
1/2t cinnamon
1/2t nutmeg
1c chocolate chips
combine sugar and oil. add eggs, zucchini and then dry ingredients. mix in chocolate chips. pour batter into pans and bake for 50-60 minutes.
the best thing about the recipe is it makes two loaves, so we still have one left. it's coming with us today to some other friends to watch the playoffs. (go vikes!!!!!)
-melissa
i am not typically the type to make a new year's resolution. i am more in the vein of trying to improve myself year round, a-hem-hem, i did say try.
but this year i have found myself in a place where the resolution just seemed to make itself. i have been thinking for a long time how i would like to make our family's bread. (i could get up on a soap box here about high fructose corn syrup and preservatives and how expensive decent bread is at the grocery, but i'll spare you my rantings.)
a couple weeks ago we had some friends over for dinner and as i was making bread for that meal i realized just how easy it was to do this and from that moment on promised myself that my family won't be buying any bread in 2010.
right now i'm using this recipe from the favorite family recipes blog, and i like it a lot. it's easy, has very few ingredients and makes a moist bread that lily will agree to eat. the only changes i made were to use 2c whole wheat and 4c white flour (see above statement about lily being picky about her bread).
it's also nice because it makes three loaves.
but i'd love to know of other good recipes. the main reason i avoid resolutions is that i hate when they fall to the wayside but this is one resolution i feel strongly about and that i am going to work hard to keep. i'd appreciate any recipe suggestions you all may have!
thanks!!
-melissa
Every Christmas my friend Glenna hosts a cookie exchange party. It is one of my favorite holiday traditions. We bring half a dozen cookies for each person. The party is early in the week so we can bake on the weekend.
Early this morning I remembered that I have a tour at the art museum this afternoon. That pretty much killed my cookie baking plans - until I realized that cookies for breakfast sounded really good.
So at 8:00 I started making cookies inspired by this recipe from epicurious. After reading the reviews I realized the sugar needed to be cut way down and some substitutions were needed. Thus the Oatmeal cranberry dark chocolate chip cookie was born.
Here is the recipe:
Heat oven to 350
Cream 1.5 sticks of butter, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar. Then beat in 2 eggs, 1 tbsp vanilla, and 2 tbsp honey.
In separate bowl whisk together 1 cup white flour, 1 cup wheat flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt.
Stir into butter mixture with 3 cups oatmeal, 1 cup chopped walnuts, 1 cup chopped dried cranberries, 1 cup fresh cranberries, and 1 cup chocolate chips.
Plop on a baking sheet with tablespoon and bake for 15 minutes. Makes 4 dozen cookies.
The first batch didn't seem to have enough of the cranberry flavor so I added the fresh cranberries in the second batch. They were much better.
A great breakfast!
-Lindsey
we woke up saturday morning in minnesota to our first dusting of snow for the season.
i had run out to the garden late friday evening and gathered up all the remaining tomatoes.
now... what to do with all these lovely green tomatoes?
i remembered reading somewhere (i'm pretty sure is was little house on the prairie, but feel free to correct me if i'm wrong) that green tomato pie taste just like apple pie so i decided to give it a try.
after a quick google search i came up with this recipe. (i chose it because it called for the most tomatoes - 4c, and because i had all the ingredients in the house already.)
the pie turned out really tasty (if i do say so myself). we took it over to some friends' house for dinner tonight and it was very well received. i still have some tomatoes left - maybe i could make up the filling and freeze it until thanksgiving? what do you guys think?
and these last two pictures are for clairey, who wanted pictures of our snow. they are from the second little snow we had on monday.
it was all gone by late afternoon, but it was fun while it lasted.
-melissa
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