Cookies, Cakes and Chaos

cake board tutorial

2012-01-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

Here's a tutorial on how to make your own cake board. This tutorial will save you about 10 bucks. All I had to buy was the board for a dollar at a dollar store.

You will need:
*A foam board that you can buy at the dollar store (I only needed one because my board is small)
*Spray adhesive
*Glue stick
*Scissors or a razor blade for cutting the rounds
*A plate or cake pan to trace your rounds as big as you want your board to be
*A pencil or pen to trace the rounds on your board
*Tin foil to cover your stacked rounds

Start off by tracing 3 rounds (however big that you want them) on a foam board

Use a razor or scissors to cut the traced out rounds

Spray and stack the rounds

Cut a piece of tin foil to cover your stacked rounds (I only needed one piece, but if your board is bigger than 10 inches, you going to need to overlay another piece of tin foil)

Cut the tin foil in a round, with an inch bigger than the board. Glue the side of the board that is going to be facing up, make sure you smooth out any bumps and place tin foil covered side down

Cut 1 1/2in cuts along the round of tin foil

Glue the strips of tin foil and fold the tin foil along the cake board

Finished cake board. Next you cover your board in fondant and add a ribbon for a border. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.. and cheap!

A 2012 count calorie brownie to welcome the new year!

2011-12-31T12:02:00.000-08:00

What better way to end the year than with a final fix, before your sent off to food rehab in 2012? I decided to make a monster dessert. This baby is a brownie spooning with some cookie dough, covered under a blanket of chocolate ganche and this was the result of that situation. Keep your scale hidden underground for a few days after this one.

Brownie recipe
1 1/4 c flour
1 ts salt
2 Tb coco powder
11 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 sticks butter (cubed)
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
5 eggs
2 ts vanilla

Over a double boiler melt your chocolate and cubed butter. Once the chocolate and butter is smooth, add your sugars and take off the heat. Add 3 eggs to the chocolate mixture and mix well. Then add the other 2 eggs and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix your flour, salt and coco powder. Sprinkle the flour mixture over your chocolate mixture and fold it into the chocolate mixture, being sure not to overwork the batter.

Chocolate chip cookie dough recipe
1 1/8 c flour
1/2 ts baking soda
1/2 ts salt
1 stick butter (room temp)
3/8 c white sugar
3/8 c brown sugar
1/2 ts vanilla
1 egg
1 c chocolate chips

Cream your room temperature butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Mix in your egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, mix your flour, baking soda and salt.

Add your flour mixture into your butter mixture.

Add your chocolate chips.

Chocolate ganche recipe
12 oz chocolate
1 c heavy cream

Over a double broiler melt your chocolate and cream together, stir until shiny and smooth. Take off the heat. You can use the ganche several different ways. We are going to use this ganche right away.

Steps...
Make your brownie batter and cookie dough batter

Butter a 9x13 baking dish and lay parchment paper in the pan

Pour your brownie mixture into the pan

Scoop out your cookie dough and lay on top of the brownie batter, softly push the down a bit.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes to 1 hr.

Cool the brownie and once the brownie is cool, make your ganche and pour the ganche over your brownie.

Let the ganche set and then cut your brownies.

Enjoy!

And so it begins

Starting my brownie batter off with some chocolate and butter

I added some eggs to my chocolate mixture and in another bowl mixed my dry ingredients together. Then I folded my dry into the wet mixture.

Now I'm starting my chocolate chip cookie dough by creaming my sugars and my butter

I have my dry to the left (flour, baking soda, salt) and my wet (butter, sugar, egg, vanilla) to the right.

My cookie dough batter

Poured my brownie mix into my buttered and parchment papered baking dish

Then I scooped my cookie dough over the brownie batter

The baked cookie, brownie beast

Just when you thought that you had escaped the gluttony, dun dun dun... BAM! chocolate ganche.

On the 13th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, one Italian rum cake

2011-12-28T10:18:00.001-08:00

Here are some photos of the steps in making an Italian rum cake. I made the cake for Christmas Eve. My family has Italian food on Christmas Eve every year, so the cake perfectly suited the occasion. There are also some photos of Christmas.

The egg yolk and sugar mixture to the left and the egg white mixture to the right

The finished batter with the egg white mixture and cake flour folded into the egg yolk mix

My cake pans filled

My pastry cream that I made the day prior. Chocolate and Vanilla

The rum syrup

My baked and cooled cakes

Sponge cake, brushed with the rum syrup, layered with the pastry cream

crumb coated with whipped frosting

Finished cake!

Everyone seemed to like the cake

Front house decorated

Cosmo eating his Christmas Eve dinner

Lasagna, eggplant parm, meatballs and sausage and my amazing homemade garlic bread

I thought that my gift was the most hilarious Christmas photo, everyone in their snuggies!

The tree

Kaspy yawning

The prime rib for Christmas dinner

Cookie cook off 2011

2011-12-28T09:15:00.000-08:00

Every year my sister, my mom and I do a cookie day, a few days before Christmas Eve and give the cookies out to coworkers, neighbors,friends and we also have them on Christmas Eve and Christmas to snack on. I give you 2011's Cookie cook off.

The cookie list

The ingredients

The ginger cookie wet and dry bowls

Ginger cookie batter

Ginger cookies baked

Making the peanut butter cookie batter

Peanut butter cookie batter

Baked peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses

M&M cookie batter

M&M baked cookies

The sugar cookies that took me 3 hours to make.

Butterscotch haystack cookies

The decorating table

The anisette cookies.. mmm

Decorated sugar cookies

A tray of sugar cookies

Some of the plated cookies

All wrapped up and ready to go out

Whipped browned butter cake with lemon curd and whipped frosting

2011-11-15T17:14:00.000-08:00

So I've made several vanilla or white cakes from scratch. Every time I make one, they taste terrible. So I was researching a lemon curb recipe and came across a lemon curd cake recipe. I've been wanting to make lemon curd forever, I've always been a little nervous making a curd because I was afraid of the curd.... curdling haha. I've made lemon bars before that came out o-mazing, thank you Fresh Market for turning me into a lemon lover. So I saw this recipe and the cake looked really good. I crossed my fingers as I followed the whipped browned butter cake recipe and to my surprise, the cake was the best butter cake that I've ever had!

The cake was a process, I'm not going to lie. The curd recipe called for 8 eggs and the cake called for 6. The curd called for 2 and a half sticks of butter and the cake called for 3. I had to brown 3 sticks of butter.

The browned butter cake and I've never browned butter for any kind of baked good, I didn't think that I would like it, but it tasted amazing and I'm going to try more browned butter recipes in the future, they are just a lot of work. I had to brown the butter and then let the butter cool a bit, before I put the butter back into the fridge to firm up again, like a stick of butter, straight out of the fridge.

I had to beat the cold browned butter until fluffy for about 5 minutes and then I added my sugar and had to beat for 10 minutes. I added my eggs, mixing after each egg, so that took about 5 minutes. Then added part of my flour mixture and part of my milk until everything was combined. The batter was thick and the cake baked great, I only had to even off one of the cakes and hardly had to touch it. Oh and I used a hand held mixer! My stand mixer is broken.

The curd started off with juicing 10 lemons by hand, because I don't have a lemon juicer, that was fun. The curd came out ok, I think that I would use a different recipe next time though, I'm not sure if it had too many eggs in it or not.

Assembling the cake was a bit of a challenge because the curd kept on making the layers slide, so I had to secure the cake with dowels. The cake was for my brother in law's birthday and I guess I kind of forget to let everyone know, so the game of the night was to try to figure out who had a lucky dowel and who didn't. I think that it went over well.

I tried a few different recipes for the candied lemon slices, the first attempt was a failure, wasted 2 cups of sugar and 2 lemons on that one. I ended up cutting the lemon thin, threw them on a pan with some parchment and sprinkled some sugar on top and baked on the lowest temp until the lemon slices were dried out to my liking. I used the candied lemon slices as a garnish.

Samoas!!

2011-11-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

The samoa is my favorite girl scout cookie, it's insanely delicious and insanely expensive, but after making these from scratch, I understand why. The cookies took me 3 hours to make and those 3 hours didn't include the time for the chocolate to set up.

The shortbread was really good and it's a recipe that I would use again, maybe I'll use this recipe for my annually cookie cook off. It just took a lot of work to get the dough at a good enough temperature to roll out and cut shapes that kept shape, the recipe contains baking powder, so the cookies don't hold their shape as much as a true shortbread cookie, but it's a pretty good hold for a recipe that calls for baking powder. The cookies were super soft and tasty, as appose to a shortbread cookie that you almost break your teeth on.

The caramel that I used, I wasn't too happy with, it wasn't soft enough and when the cookies set up, you could tell, it didn't melt to my liking either. The caramel made the topping difficult to spread on the cookies.

The coconut that I used wasn't thin like the coconut used in a real samoa, and it was sweetened. I toasted it and it tasted great, but the texture was off. So next time I'll use raw shredded coconut.

The chocolate was Hersey's semi sweet chips and I think next time I'll use a higher quality chocolate because the chocolate didn't set up the way that I wanted. I guess you get what you pay for. Dipping the cookies in the chocolate was kind of difficult, but after the first 4, I did better.

All in all the cookie's came out tasting exactly like a real samoa cookie, but the topping was on the hard side, due to the soft caramel's that were too hard. And the chocolate didn't set up enough for me. With a few tweaks, this could be a excellent recipe.

Beef bourguignon, bon appetit!

2011-10-16T16:05:00.001-07:00

Ok, I'll admit it. I fell madly in love with Julia Child after I saw the movie and read the book "Julie and Julia" I couldn't wait to see the movie, I had seen it on my 22nd Birthday with a couple of my best friends. First we went out to dinner at this really adorable place in Downtown Delray Beach, called Dada's. I had the brie appetizer and it was fantastic.

I have always had this deep love for baking and cooking, I remember even as a child trying to make things, even though I had no idea how to. I was thrilled when my mom would let me stir a boxed muffin mix. My favorite toys were my easy-bake oven and art supplies. I had no desire to play with dolls or talk to imaginary friends. When I was old enough to use the oven my mom use to buy packs of cookie mixes and I would always burn the cookies, because I didn't really know what I was doing. When I was a sophomore in high school I moved away from all of my friends, I moved in the Spring, school was too late in the year to start and we didn't have an address to put on any school documents, because we were living with my Nana and Grampy, looking for a house to buy or rent, needless to say, I was pretty bored out of my mind. I don't know how I came upon it, but one day I just started watching the food network and I was addicted, ironically my Nana was not too happy with this choice of tv station, she hates food shows, no one in my family is much of a baker, my dad makes bread sometimes, that's pretty much it and its strange how I had never really been into the food network before that moment because my step father is a chef and he always had the food network on when he was home, you would think that would have been the reason why I was so interested in cooking and baking. Believe it or not, children of chefs don't really get cooked elegant 5 star meals every night, chefs work crazy hours and my mom also worked in a restaurant, so between the 2 of them working so much, most dinners were just picking at whatever was in the pantry or frozen pizza bagels. My mom use to make a pot of mac and cheese and American chop suey probably once a week,but that's as far as her culinary skills goes.

So I started watching all of these different shows on the food network and I was just so amazed about a station that played nothing but shows about food all day long. First what got me interested was unwrapped, I thought it was so cool how they would show how all these brand name products were created. Then of course Paula Dean and Alton Brown. Alton Brown use to put me to sleep every night, I loved his show, it was great, it was the science behind food, but done in a goofy manner.

I started my new school when I was a junior. New school's are always so much fun, not. It was actually the first time in my life that I actually really enjoyed going to class, it was the first time that I actually payed attention and got great grades, I generally enjoyed all of my classes. One of my electives was home ec, I was kind of nervous about being in a cooking class because I've struggled with my weight for pretty much my whole life, I had moved around enough times and had been the new kid enough times to know that without even saying a word you could be a target for insult and I was placed in a cooking class! I was so afraid of being tormented. To my surprise there was no bullying and I even got along with the team of kids that I was placed in for that class. My teacher wasted no time in having us all start to bake. The first thing that we made were homemade chocolate chip cookies, I had never made homemade cookies a day in my life and that's when my love for homemade baked goods came in play. Every week we would make a new recipe, we would have to split up all of the steps of baking into the group, one person would get to measure the ingredients, one person would have to stir the dry ingredients, one would have to mix the wet ingredients, one person got to pour the batter. I was in a group of all boys, they all hated baking, well I think that they secretly thought that it was kind of fun. But that meant that I got to do more baking than them. I still have most of the recipes from that class and use a few of them to this day. I was so inspired to start baking on my own and trying out new recipes and different techniques. I was so much in love with that class, I looked forward to it everyday and was disappointed on the days that we didn't have it. We were on a block schedule.

We were only in school for 2 months before we had to move again, back to South Florida. There was a hurricane called hurricane Charley that destroyed my step father's work, he worked for a nice resort on an island. I was so happy to be moving back to my friends, seeing how I hadn't made any at the new school, thank god me and my brother had the same lunch hour, we at least had each other. So we hid in the library during lunch. We also shared a literature class together. Being the same age for almost the whole time that we were at that school made things a little aggravating, explaining to every teacher that we weren't twins. I was kind of sad at the same time to be leaving because for the first time in my life I was actually enjoying my schooling, most of all I was going to miss my cooking class.

So back we went, enrolled in another school, never really got back on track. I eventually started Jenny Craig and was working non stop and didn't have the time to do much of anything, if I wasn't working or hanging out at work, I would be working out. I became extremely cautious of every single thing I ate, I stuck to my program to the T, wouldn't dare having even one calorie over my plan. I was on Jenny Craig for about 6 months and I did really well, I felt happy about what I looked like for the first time in my entire life, I didn't have to carry the weight of worry that being mocked for being overweight carries, I wasn't a size zero, I wasn't necessarily skinny, but I was a lot happier. To this day, the weight is a constant struggle, I'll have my months that I'm doing awesome and then I'll have my months where I'm just not in the zone.

When I turned 20, that's when I really started to enjoy cooking and baking. I would fall asleep with my head filled up with different recipe ideas and wake up every morning wanting to try those recipes out the second I got out of bed. I would look forward to my days off just so I could try out a new recipe. Even to this day I'll get super excited about an idea that I have for a different type of recipe, I have a pad of paper on my nightstand in case I get inspired while I'm trying to fall asleep and I need to write down my ideas.

Anyway, back to Julia Child and that movie. After watching that movie, I fell madly in love with Julia Child and her passion, because that was the same passion that I felt. I also felt this connection to Julie Powell and I've seen the movie about 20 times, I've only read the book once. But every single time that I see that movie, I want to make beef bourguignon, it looks like a perfect challenge, and then today I was watching "the chew" from my dvr list and they made it and I decided to finally make it. I've seen plenty of Julia Child's tv shows and I had seen her beef bourguignon episode, but at the time, I just had too much on my plate and so when I watched the episode of the chew this morning I decided to finally do it. I always thought that there were so many ingredients in it, so I was cautious about making it, but after seeing how they made it, it looked pretty easy actually and few ingredients. So I finally made it tonight! Julia Child's spirit was running through my blood as I danced around the kitchen from counter to counter like a conductor leading an orchestra of ingredients and kitchen tools.

Wannabe Bertolli "stuffed shells" and shrimp scampi sauce.

2011-10-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Bertolli use to sell this frozen meal which was stuffed shells with a shrimp scampi sauce. I loved it, it was amazing and they stopped making it. So I decided to try to make a similar dish. I'm not a giant shrimp fan, so maybe next time I'll use chicken. I didn't have any shells, so I decided to make fresh ravioli. Then I made my scampi sauce with white wine, garlic, butter, cream, parm cheese, salt and pepper.. cooked up my shrimp, added them to the sauce. Boiled my raviolis, plated them in a baking dish with my sauce, added some cheese on top and baked. The dish came out pretty good, the sauce tasted very similar to Bertollis. Ravioli were perfect, especially for a first time ravioli maker.

Happy Birthday Grampy

2011-02-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

For my Grampy's 80th birthday party.. Happy Birthday Grampy!

Little Debbie's got nothing on me

2011-01-26T15:36:00.000-08:00

This recipe as won my heart. Best oatmeal cookie I've used in awhile. The cookie isn't too sweet. The cookie is moist and chewy. Perfect. The filling isn't too sweet, it's perfect. Thank you...
http://www.natalieskillercuisine.com/2010/05/oatmeal-creme-pies.html

white chocolate buttercream cake

2010-11-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

The only time I have cake that hasn't been homemade is if I go to someone's party and I'm not the one who has made the cake or if it's my birthday, sometimes I will make my own birthday cake too haha.

If I'm going to have a store bought cake, my favorites are Publix marble cake with their whipped frosting and Fresh Market's sinfully white cake. Ever since I've had the sinfully white cake, I've wanted to make it. The cake is a white chocolate cake with a cream cheese frosting.

I ended up making a white cake with white chocolate buttercream frosting. I found the recipe in one of my cupcake books and decided to try it out. I don't think that I will be using this recipe again. It was far too sweet and I had no control over the piping, because the frosting was so thin. The recipe was misleading, this is much more like an icing, rather than a frosting.

So my cake isn't the prettiest looking cake, but it didn't taste terrible. I loved the white chocolate wedges that I made as a garnish and the chocolate jimmies add a nice contrast from all of the white chocolate.

Oh no, candy!!

2010-11-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

I have a few weaknesses, one of them being chocolate candy. I do love my candy and Halloween likes to beat up my diet a bit. This Halloween, I probably had about 10 pieces of candy.. and they were delicious haha.

So this Halloween I bought about 4 different bags of candy. This was the first Halloween in this house, so I wasn't sure how many kids trick or treat around here and didn't want to run out of candy. Usually we get around 40 kids. So, we ended up only getting about 5 trick or treaters and had a lot of leftover candy. I decided to make cookies!!!!

Date night with me, myself and I

2010-09-08T14:23:00.001-07:00

On today's menu we have chicken pot pie and an apple turnover that I made with the leftover pie dough.

I have this farmer's market that is about 5 exits away from my home. The market is in the middle of no where, it's like this hidden secret. Shopping at this market is kind of like being in a secret fight club. Another customer passes as your sort through a crate of nectarines and you both give each other that nod of approval.

This market has the best produce selection in the area, so the drive is worth it. Once and awhile I'll go and stock up on my fruit and veg.. maybe get a tiny bit crazy and buy some of their famous ciders. Nothing comes close to my beloved Boys in Delay Beach, The boys has to be the best market that I've been too.. maybe even better than Stew Leonard's in CT. Sadly, there aren't any singing milk cartons or talking cows at the boys.

You would never know how cool the boys is by looking at the outside of the building, it's located in the middle of the city, next door to a post office. The boys, another one of my secret spots.

I went to my market aka.. middle of no where, thumbprint access code market. I got tons of veggies and fruit. Produce is so much cheaper and much more fresh at farmer's markets.

So I only had to buy some chicken stock and heavy cream at the grocery store today for my pot pies. And I even got to use some of the fresh herbs in my garden. I used rosemary, garlic and butter to roast my chicken.

These pies came out so good, I've never had a better chicken pot pie in my life, I don't think that I can go back to any other kind after these. And the filling was super easy. I cut up my potatoes and carrots before hand and boiled them, for just a few minutes. In a big pot I caramelized my onions with butter and a tiny bit of olive oil, and a little sugar towards the end. (I would suggest using shallots if you have them, I'm sure they would add so much flavor to the filling, white onions are fine if no shallots are available) I didn't let the onions get totally brown, only spots of brown. Then I added my mushrooms, don't crowd the mushrooms! They like their space, and with the mushrooms I added more butter. Once the mushrooms were cooked I added only a little chicken stock and chicken that I roasted earlier and had cut up and cooked that down for a minute or so. I then added my beloved heavy cream and had that boil with the rest of the party for a few minutes until the cream got thicker. I then added my precooked carrots and potatoes. Last minute I added my peas and took the filling off of the heat. Don't forget to salt and pepper! While the filling was cooling I rolled out my pie crust.

A friend gave me this really cool fondant mat for my birthday just the other day, so I decided to try it out on my pie crust and I just love love love the way it works, it's one of my new favorite fondant tools :)

Tortillas

2010-09-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I was thinking about a low calorie meal that I could prepare today, without having to go to the store and buying anything. Lack of money.

So, I thought to myself, well, I have some black beans and rice packets in the freezer. (I buy the box mix of black beans and rice, cook it and then divide up my serving sizes, put them in ziploc bags and freeze them) and I also have some low fat cheese and then I have some portioned out chicken in the freezer... too bad I don't have tortillas.
And then I thought, well.. I remember when I lived in Michigan, I had a teacher who made them in class one day and she was telling us how super easy it was and how much money you saved making your own, rather than buying them and how much better they tasted.

So I got a recipe and I made my own tortillas. They were kind of a pain to roll out, but after awhile, you get the technique down, and I got to try out my comal!

peach

2010-08-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's peach season! Yay. I do enjoy a nice peach every now and then, if perfectly ripe. If not, then not. I love peach pie and I've never made it from scratch and peaches are very cheap right now. I decided to make a peach pie because my bro was visiting for a couple of days. Here is my peach pie. I was much more happy with the pie before it was baked. I'm not a huge fan of the final result of this pie.

Happy Birthday Mary

2010-07-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

My Step Father's Mother's 80th birthday is on Sunday. I was chosen to make her the birthday cake. This is what I came up with.

All of the fondant used on this cake was homemade because store bought fondant is both expensive and not very tasty.

How do you make homemade fondant? And how much does it cost to make your own, as appose to buying it?

In order to make your own fondant, all you need is a bag of powdered sugar, a bag of mini marshmallows, some water and a tiny bit of shortening to knead your fondant on, to prevent sticking. So it costs about $3.00 to make your own fondant that tastes good. It costs about $9.00 to buy it and it tastes horrible.

You microwave your marshmallows with the water, about 3 tablespoons of water for about 50 seconds, mix, return to the microwave and microwave for another 50 seconds, cook until melted. Add about 3/4's of the bag of powdered sugar to the bowl and mix until everything has come together, then dump the the mixture onto a flat surface that has been covered with shortening and knead until the fondant is malleable, this could take awhile. This is why most people just cave in and buy it. Once your fondant is fondant, you can add your coloring (I mix in my color into the melted marshmallow and water, before the powdered sugar, if I'm making a cake with mostly that one color,but you have to be careful about adding enough food coloring, the powdered sugar will dull down the color. You can store fondant in the fridge for weeks just as long as it's covered tightly in plastic wrap.

I also made my own cake board, guess how much cake boards cost? About 10 bucks... just for the board! So I went to the dollar store and got 2 foam boards that you would buy for a school project. I traced 3 10 inch circles, 2 circles on one board and 1 on the other and cut my circles out with an exacto knife. I sprayed a layer of a glue adhesive on the circles and stacked them. While that was drying I cut a 12 inch circle out of some aluminum foil, I had to use 2 overlayed sheets in order for the 12 inch circle to fit. I then covered my 3 foam sheet layered circle, that had been sprayed with more adhesive with the foil. And there you have it, cake board.

I ended up covering the royal icing m with a line of fondant, this is the finished cake.

This was the cake before I added the frill.

This was the emblem before I covered the royal icing initial with fondant

New England

2010-07-30T17:44:00.000-07:00

I just took a trip back home to New England and I was inspired to make some New England famous whoopie pies. I found a good recipe here. I've made this recipe several times since, and it's a giant hit.

buttermilk fudge cake

2010-03-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

I had some buttermilk that I needed to use up, before it went bad and I've been going through baking withdrawals. I looked up recipes that included buttermilk and decided to go with this one, because I already had everything in the house to make it. This really is an idiot proof buttermilk fudge cake. I've never made such an easy cake in my life. And it's really really yummy! So fudgie. Like, it's real fudge, not an ammature chocolate icing, this frosting is in the big leagues of amazing chocolate fudge frosting. I salute you http://www.nancyskitchen.com/buttermilk-recipes/buttermilk-fudge-cake.html.

top of the pita TO YOU!

2010-03-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

I saw this recipe on hungry-girl.com yesterday for a bbq pizza on a pita pocket, a whole wheat pita pocket. I used the last of my whole wheat pita pockets yesterday. So I decided to make my own pita pockets today, for the first time. They came out soooo good. I will never eat a store bought pita ever again.

"The best chocolate chip cookie recipe"

2010-02-20T13:04:00.000-08:00

I was doing my cookie research as usual. I've probably tried about 50 chocolate chip cookie recipes.. all claiming to be the best. Not just any chocolate chip cookies, I try to find the best fat chewy cookie.. the best soft cookie, the best chewiest cookie, the best thin cookie. So this week I tried... New York Time's best chocolate chip cookie! The recipe calls for resting in the fridge for 24+ hrs. So I made the batter yesterday.. half dead. I've been super sick. I'm still sick today, but I was hoping that my taste buds would come back in time for the cookies... I'm sad to say, they haven't. I'm not really too sure how the cookies taste, but I'll keep you updated. They baked nicely though!

I found this picture hanging in an old family picture frame... my sister and I.. I don't know why my dress is so big.

renewing of vows

2010-02-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

So my Mother and Step Father decided to renew their vows. I made the "wedding" cake.

cupcake cookies

2010-02-16T18:42:00.000-08:00

Cupcake cookies, aren't they adorable? I made these for my neighbor's birthday party.

Winter house

2010-02-16T18:32:00.000-08:00

I tried to make a gingerbread house for Xmas this year... things did not go as I wanted them to.. the royal icing I made, was terrible. So I wanted to try it out again, with a lighter dough and a good royal icing, I decided to make a little winter house.

Xmas time

2010-02-16T18:07:00.000-08:00

All of us kids together on Christmas!

Most adorable grandparents that you have ever seen?

Mike, laying out at the pool on Christmas with the dogs.

Mike and Kenny.. twins!

Gotta love farmstands.

So, I had the most wonderful Christmas this year. My brother flew down from Boston. It was the first time all of us kids were together in years. I couldn't have asked for anything better for Xmas. The second day he was here, was our annual cookie cookoff.

Angel hair pasta

2010-02-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

So I've had the love of my life, uhh, I mean pasta maker, I call him Pluto, for a few years now and have never used the angel hair attachment, so I tried it out. It's pretty awesome.

Pixel cookies!

2010-02-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

My dough, shortbread cookie recipe

DUN DUN DUN! The pixel maker.. aka my hell

Only a few of many many pixels.

Most likely the coolest update I will make. I made pixel cookies!!!!!! They were an all day event, but well worth it. I found a tutorial here. The second I found the tutorial, I was off to the store to buy supplies. I couldn't find a playdoh fun center anywhere! I went to about 5 different stores until finally, I found a mini version of one and bought it up, it was on sale too!

Pasta love

2010-02-16T17:47:00.001-08:00

I cheated and added red food coloring, because I had no beet juice.

ok, so I love my pasta maker. I'm not even going to lie about it anymore. I would be happy if me and my pasta maker ran away together, to Austria and lived on top of a mountain, that's how much I love my pasta maker. I wanted to try out the whole multicolored pasta thing. Check it out.

Cannolis!

2010-02-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

I want to be buried with my pasta maker... thats how much love I have for it.

So, after I made the cannoli cake, I had tons of cannoli filling leftover. I decided to make real cannolis. I made the cannoli shell's, this was a job in a half, I don't think I will be frying my own shells again haha. But they came out very nice.

Cannoli cake

2010-02-16T17:29:00.000-08:00

Maybe, possibly.. the best cake recipe ever. This cake took the cake of cakes. This is a cannoli filling filled cake with layers of nice, light white cake and frosting with this amazing whipped cream frosting. Here's the recipe. I ended up making cupcake versions of this cake for x-mas.

Cannoli cupcakes

Carrabba's pasta carrabba

2010-02-16T17:15:00.000-08:00

So it's been awhile since I have last updated. My favorite dish from any chain restaraunt is Carrabba's pasta carrabba. I haven't had much money these days, so haven't been going out to eat. I decided I wanted to make this at home. I searched near and far, everywhere for this secret recipe and found it! This recipe is the clone to Carrabba's. I of course, had to make fresh pasta to go along with it. The only thing I did differently was, I didn't marinate the chicken in balsamic, I've tried it before with the balsamic and when the chicken and cream sauce is combined.. the dish tastes like mayo.. so I like to just cook my chicken with some salt and pepper on the stovetop with alittle pam.

spice cookies

2009-11-23T15:29:00.000-08:00

Spice cookies.. best spice cookie recipe yet.

Blondies from your Blondie

2009-11-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

I found the BEST blondie recipe ever. This is the holy grail of blondie recipes. I've never had such an amazing blondie a day in my life. I got the recipe here. I used pecans instead of macadamia nuts because, well.. because they are a hellalot cheaper. But in no way, did that affect the recipe. I've tried tons of blondie recipes and they always come out dry and tasting like straight up flour. I think the secret in these is the brown sugar, brown sugar seems to be the secret in everything haha. The sea salt is delish in these!

Lofthouse cookie.. wannabes

2009-11-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

I love Walmart's lofthouse soft sugar cookies. They are one of my fave sugar cookies and I've wanted to learn the secret recipe. Today I was looking up recipes for soft sugar cookies, because I wanted to bake something. I found a recipe that claimed to be similar, so I tried it. The frosting is a tad different, but the actual cookie is pretty close. I also love the pink icing I made! :)

On a unrelated note... I saw Where The Wild Things Are last night and it was an amazing movie, I loved every second of it. I haven't been moved by a movie like that in such a long time. I just totally got it 5 minutes into it.. good message, very emotional at parts, not blaintly obvious emotion, but the kind when you actually read between the lines. Isn't it funny how most of the time, children's movies have the most powerful layers of messages?

Anise Biscotti

2009-11-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

First attempt at biscottis. They are just plain anise biscottis, nothing too special, but they are pretty tasty, when they were done I glazed them with a anise glaze.

best chocolate cake

2009-11-11T08:58:00.000-08:00

It was my brother in law's birthday the other day and I've mean wanting to try out this cake recipe for months. I have been feeling very sick lately and on top of feeling sick, kinda a little down. I went to see my favorite band play this past week and it was the most amazing show that I've ever been to, maybe the best night of my life and I've seen this band (Brand New) play about 7 times, it was just amazing. But after the show I was more sad than usual that it was over, because I was looking forward to this show for the longest time. Don't you wish that sometimes you could just travel around with your favorite band when they are on tour and go to ever single show? Thats how I feel, haha.

So anyways, I decided to make a cake and it came out awesome. It is probably the best chocolate cake recipe that I've ever used and the buttercreme frosting is amazing as well, I was very pleased.

P.S If your on a diet, this isn't the best cake to cake, it's too good.

Giant cookies!!!!!

2009-10-27T12:10:00.001-07:00

So, forever I've been searching for a giant cookie recipe. Ya know, those kind that you can only buy at one of those creepy gas stations in the middle of no where that you happen to stop at, at 3am in the morning on a road trip. Those are the best! So after years of searching for this cookie recipe, I finally caught a break! I was checking out this awesome cookie site and found the recipe!!!! I made them this afternoon, decided to skip lunch and split one of them with my sister and just work out like crazy tonight to burn off the calories.

Apple pie.

2009-10-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

I decided that I wanted to make a pie today, to continue my joy of the cold weather combined with baking! I had a horrible night of sleep last night, as usual. So I woke up early, made my dough and then ran to the boys and got some apples and some pears ( that's my secret to making the perfect apple pie, because of the starch content in a pear) I came home, starting pealing away. I went all out today and did some hand crafted leafs for the border of my pie. Enjoy!

world's best peanut butter cookies

2009-10-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

So this weekend, we got our first "cold front". The weather has just been amazing, I'm loving every second of it! When it gets nice and chilly like this, I love to bake. I'm on a diet and can't really eat anything good so I haven't been able to bake lately, although I have been able to try out a BUNCH of awesome low cal recipes! I will eventually post these recipes with pictures and my evaluations of other low cal products.

Like I said, I LOVE to bake in this weather, to me, there is nothing more comforting than a cup of chai tea in one hand and a cookie tray in the other. So I decided to make some cookies, and just force myself not to eat any of them!!! My brother loves peanut butter cookies and I found this really awesome recipe online. The recipe claimed to be the world's best peanut butter cookies and it turns out that they really are that amazing! I even gave some to my neighbor. That's right! they are neighbor worthy! Here's the link.

chocolate eclair

2009-08-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

Second attempt at a chocolate eclair.

peanut butter and jelly bars

2009-06-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well, my brother in law's brother (Sten) has been staying with my sister and my brother in law. He just moved here from New Zealand. Tonight, my family and I are having them over and making a nice sit down dinner. So I decided to make something homemade for after dinner. I was looking online for something that I could make that I already had the ingredients to. I already made chocolate chip cookies just a few days ago, and the night prior I had made brownies. My options were kinda limited because my kitchen aide stand mixer is broken. I wanted to make chocolate peanutbutter bars, but my Mum can't stand peanutbutter and chocolate together, so I decided to go with this recipe that I saw when I was watching Barefoot Contessa. It had everything to make it, so I made these bars. Oh no, hopefully Sten isn't allergic to nuts! Didn't think about that one! Guess we'll find out.

"I brought you flours"

2009-04-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

I was watching one of my favorite movies of all the time other day. Stranger Than Fiction.

Will Ferrel and baking mixed into one?

What else could I ask for?

If a guy ever brought me "flours" I'm pretty positive I would want to marry him, right on the spot.

This is one of my favorite movie scenes.

Escargot

2009-04-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

So I've been waiting to get a can of escargot and I finally got one the other day. I decided to prepare my escargots and freeze them. But I had to try one of them out first. I made toast points to dip in the escargot. I don't think I'm a huge fan of the canned escargot. It had a horrible can taste that is really hard to get rid of.

Easter weekend

2009-04-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

So today is Easter and we all know what any kind of Italian family Holiday is all about.. and that's food.

I started the Easter weekend off by having my Nana and Grampy over early yesterday morning and we spent most of the day at the pool with the whole family. Then went home and made pasta and garlic bread and then later on that night we colored eggs. I made a homemade angel food cake, it came out awesome, looked just like something you'd buy in the store. We went to "The Girl's Strawberry Patch" and picked some fresh strawberries and made a strawberry shortcake with the angel food cake and my Nana made the fresh whipped cream. It was a nice dessert.

Today we watched awesome old school claymation Easter movies and snacked all day. I made stuffed mushrooms, my sister made her spinach dip. Then we had Easter dinner. I made a sweet potato casserole with dinner, it came out awesome. My Nana made her tiramisu, it was the most amazing tiramisu that I've ever had.

Tala's first Easter and she loves it! Can't you tell how much she is enjoying helping us clean up?

Makeshift Cakesters?

2009-04-04T14:53:00.001-07:00

So Albertson's is selling cake mix and containers of frosting for only 1 dollar each, I love the box cake mixes, although I'm not a huge fan of the premade frostings, they always taste a little too artificial for me. But I figured that I would try their cream cheese frosting and I made these very tasty cookie sandwiches. The recipe was extremely easy...

1 Box cake mix*

1/2 Cup butter, softened to room temperature
2 Eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix ingredients until combined.

Drop spoonfuls of cookie batter onto baking sheet about two inches apart.

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Cool.

Greek pasta salad

2009-03-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've been craving a nice pasta salad and I found this recipe, that looks fantastic, so I tried it out today and it came out really yummmy.

Soup's on...

2009-03-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

Soup for me and.... no soup for you! Come back, one day! I made the most amazing broccoil cheese soup from scratch the other day and here it is...

Ah! Poppaycock.

2009-02-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

So, I was in line at Walgreens the other day, buying some Glade's Tropical Mist air freshener (my favorite Glade's scent) and I was saw a bag of one dollar salted peanuts on the check out rack and I thought of crackerjacks right away and decided to make crackerjacks. The great thing about making your own is you can add any many peanuts as you'd like! Or even pecans!

past cakes and creations

2009-02-25T19:23:00.001-08:00

Just uploading a few cake pictures that I have done in the past that I had never posted before. Enjoy.

Mmmmmm neon pink and green cake checkerboard cake?!?! Could you get any more punk?

Valentine's Day cookies for my imaginary boyfriend

Cookies from one of the cookie cookoffs

Hoggle cupcakes!!!!

mickey moused reesecups

2009-02-20T17:34:00.000-08:00

I didn't have any flour in the house and I wanted something with chocolate in it. I had just got the amazing bag of chocolate chips that I've ever seen in my entire life, so I decided to put them to work. I made from scatch reesecups. They came out prettay awesome. Next time I'd use natural peanutbutter.

These pretzels are making me thirsty.

2009-02-08T07:22:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, there was one of my favorite Good Eat's episode on. Mr Alton Brown was making pretzels. I made these a few years ago and they tasted awesome, but they didn't look very pretty. I thought I was give them another shot. These ones came out looking OK. I made the traditional salted pretzel and then I made some garlic parmesan preztels. Next time, I would like to try to do a nice cinnamon sugar pretzel.

My finished pretzels

Combine warm water, sugar, salt and yeast.

Your gonna need to use the hook kitchen aid attachment and don't forget to tease your dog with the tool.

Hehehehe.

Add your flour and melted butter to your water yeast mixture.

Mix until the mixture comes together.

Then beat on high speed for about 5 minutes.

Cover with a tea towell and stash in a warm place for about an hour. Your dough will double in size.

Devide into 8 equal size balls. Mine are a little uneven. I need a food scale.

Make your traditional pretzel shape or whatever shape you want.

Your gonna soak these raw preztels in boiling water and baking soda for about 30 seconds and then transfer the pretzels to parchment paper covered cookie sheets, and then coat with egg yolk, water and salt. Then bake.

Microwave brownies.

2009-02-08T07:16:00.000-08:00

So, you wanna make brownies but you don't have a working oven? Apparently, you can microwave brownie mix in a microwave safe container. The other day, I was left oven-less. I was craving to bake something. So I tried making microwave brownies. I made this amazing frosting, started off with your basic butter creme frosting and added some of this amazing chocolate honey fudge. Came out prettay good.

Apple of my eye.

2009-01-25T16:24:00.001-08:00

I'm not sure why I made pie.

oatmeal chocolate chip and cranberry cookies

2009-01-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

I decided to make some cookies, I had some cranberries in the house along with some oats, so I decided to make some oatmeal chocolate chip and cranberry cookies. I wasn't allowed to really have any because I started my diet, but I tried a little corner or one and they were pretty good.

Boredom turns to baking

2009-01-11T19:14:00.000-08:00

So I learned how to make Pate A Choux. For losing all of my pasrty bag tips and half of my baking stuff in one of the moves this year, I think they came out pretty good.

Eclairs in 40 minutes!

2009-01-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, me, my bros and my sister would all go over my Nana and Grampy's house every weekend. We would stay there from Friday night to Saturday night. On most Friday nights, my Nana would order pizza from the best pizza place in the world, Papa Ginos. (Boston pizza is the best pizza ever). Then when we didn't order pizza on Fridays, my nana would make her famous Mac and cheees or American Chop Suey. Alot of the time, we would have these Eclairs for dessert. So me and my brother's and sister all grew up with these eclairs. So when we moved here to Florida and ordered an eclair somewhere, to our suprise, these eclairs were filled with this fake wannabe custard. So I've always wanted to make my own.

So tonight for dinner, pain in the ass. I was making pasta for about 2 hours and then in 5 minutes had to make my chicken, while everyone else had beef. Had to make my sauce and everything in like 5 minutes. By the time we ended up eating, it was pretty late and I remembered that I wanted to try out this awesome eclair recipe I found on this amazing bread site.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/eclairs. But I was extremely limited on time. I wanted to make these tonight because a bunch of people were over for dinner, so what a perfect time to make them eh? For the time I was given, I think that they came out pretty good. They don't look super pretty, but for sure next time they will.

Fresh Pasta, the only way to pasta.

2009-01-05T10:17:00.001-08:00

So we got a pasta maker!!!! Finally and its awesome. Tonight I'm gonna make some fresh pasta with mushrooms, shallots and peas. A few nights away we decided to try to make some fresh ravioli. I made a champagin cream sauce to go along with it and our ravioli were stuffed with regatta and mushrooms with garlic, they were good, but there was too much egg in the regatta mixture. And my sauce was perfect until my step father decided to ruin it by adding olive oil to it and broke my sauce. So thats why it doesn't look that great. I also made fresh bruschetta that came out awesome.

Banana bread!

2009-01-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

So I bought some bananas the other day, when I bought them, they were actually not even quite ripe yet. I come to find out yesterday that they were getting brown, so I decided to make banana bread with no walnuts. I found the most amazing bread site in the world! ttp://www.thefreshloaf.com . Tonight I'm gonna make eclairs. Good stuff.

3rd anual cookie cook off

2008-12-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

So today was our 3rd Anual cookie cook off. This year we did 6 different kind of cookies, all made from scatch. So from 11am to 5pm there was non stop baking. All in all cookie day was a success.

What makes the cookies

Magic in a bottle, real Italian Anise

All of our cookies

A platter of cookies

Sugar Cookie

Gingerbread Cookie

Snowball Melt Away Cookie

Anisette Cookie

Kolache Cookie

Chcolate Chip Cookie

Homemade nougat anyone?

2008-12-14T15:29:00.001-08:00

So I've moved again, I'm in Delray Beach now. To break in the house I decided to make some homemade nougat. I had never made it before and I think it came out pretty awesome, it's like marshmallow, but doesn't have that gross marshmallow taste and there is no gelatin in it yay. So the process was a bit of a pain, because it's not baking, it's cooking candy, which means you have to cook it just right, with different stages, ex: hard ball stage, soft ball stage.. tempatures. Then you have to whip egg whites to a certain texture, then cool for about an hour and then finally are allow to cover the nougat in chocolate. I would do them differently next time, not whats in them, but the way i coated them in chocolate, but they taste amazing.

Cake Auction

2008-10-30T14:24:00.001-07:00

So at my step father's work there was a cake auction. All the money made from the auction is going towards breast cancer research, so I had to make a cake for my Nana.

Pumpkin fudge

2008-10-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

So, whats Halloween without some good old fashion pumpkin fudge? I used the basic fudge recipe thats on the back of a fluff jar, but i added pumpkin and some nice pumpkin spices and used white chocolate instead of milk chocolate or semi sweet, bring on the fudge!!!

Aloha! Pineapple

2008-10-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

So I love Jamba Juice's Aloha Pineapple smoothie, but they're so exspensive and we don't have one of those around here, so I figured that I would make my own and it came out pretty fantastic, I bought all of the ingredients to make about 20 and it cost me the same amount to buy one. I also added some orange juice, which jamba juice doesn't use in their aloha pineapple.

Milk Chocolate Truffles

2008-10-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

My second try at truffles. This time I wanted to make a nice creamy milk chocolate truffle. The first time I made my truffles, I did it the messy way, and I wasn't content on the finished product. So this time I figured that I would use a candy mold, instead of going out and buying a candy mold, I just used an old quice tray. I tempered the milk chocolate coating using a heat blanket, the heat blanket is great for tempering chocolate because the heat is just perfect and won't over heat the chocolate which result in burnt chocolate, which is never tastey and won't melt, so you get these peices of hard chocolate on your truffle. I had a little trouble getting the chocolate extremely thin, so it was kinda diffuicult to work with, I have to find a chocolate that melts well, the chips that you buy at craft stores melt well, but taste horrible, but all and all, they came out looking pretty descent, I will use this technique again!

My trusty heat blanket!!!

Coat a thin layer of chocolate onto the tray.

Put into the fridge until firm.

While waiting for your chocolate cups to firm up, start making your milk chocolate ganche. Heat your heavy cream and butter in a sauce pan until boiling and then pour over your chocolate, don't stir for 5 minutes.

Finished ganache.

Pour your ganche into a pastry bag or a ziploc.

Fill your hallow chocolate cups with the ganche and put into the freezer until the ganche is firm, then use your melted milk chocolate and coat the bottoms of your chocolate cups, put back into the freezer until firm.

Your finished truffles!

Yum!

Monkey munch!!!!

2008-09-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

So I was watching Jon and Kate plus 8 and they were making this stuff called monkey munch, the kids seemed to like it alot and I'm a kid... in my head. So I figured that I would give it a try. It's very easy to make, you can find the recipe here. I will definitly be making this again, next partay, I'll bring the monkey munch! But I might just change the name to "awesome munch".

Pumpkin Cake

2008-09-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

So I decided to make some pumpkin cake, it was gonna be that or a pumpkin cheesecake, but we did not have the condenced milk for the cheesecake, therefore no cheesecake. But I did get to use my little cake pans!!!! So here is my pumpkin cake with creamcheese frosting.

pumpkin cake batter, all from scratch (even the pumpkin)

creamcheese frosting

Yum.

Drunken iguana?

Alkaline Trio cake!!!!

2008-08-29T16:30:00.001-07:00

For my friend's birthday I decided to make her a cake with her favorite band's logo on it. Alkaline Trio are prettay awesome. I did the black fondant myself, only took about 2 hours haha, black fondant can be quite a pain.

Jack Daniels sauce

2008-08-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

I give you the best sauce in the whole world. Friday's Jack Daniel's sauce.. once it touches your lips.. its so good!!!! I decided to make this on my birthday, this recipe is the same exact sauce from Fridays. It is amazing.

The ingredients

Combine everything.

Roast garlic.

Your amazing sauce!

Hmm pancakes

2008-08-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

Pancakes with a compound cream cheese of brown sugar, pecans and cinnamon.

Cadbury Eggs!

2008-08-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

The recipe.. dun dun dun.

The Secret Ingredients are....

Combine the corn syrup and butter and beat until somewhat thick.

Add the powered sugar.

You get this nice fondant.

Take 1/4 off the mixture and add your orange food coloring, this is your yolk.

Your egg white and yolk.

The yolk.

Wrap the egg white around the yolk.

A complete egg.

All of your eggs in one basket.

Melt the chocolate that your coating your eggs with in a microwave with the shortening.

Set up your dipping station.

dip

Put on your candy mat.

Refrigerate until the coating is hard and then dip them for a second coat, refrigerate again until hard.

Your eggs after being refrigerated.

Finished product.

Milk chocolate on the outside and gooey goodness in the middle.

Enjoy!

carrot cake cupcakes

2008-08-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

So, we had some cream cheese in the house, we never have cream cheese in the house and I felt like baking something, so I went onto the Kraft web site to see if I could find a good cream cheese recipe. I saw this Pumpkin loaf with cream cheese in the middle, it looked amazing, but we didn't have any pumpkin in the house, and I didn't feel like going to the store at all. So I scanned the fridge and cabinet for inspiration. We had just gone to the Farmer's Market this week and bought a bunch of veggies and fruits. We used up all of the banana's, so no banana bread. We did have some carrots, so I decided to make some carrot cake cupcakes. Everything is from scratch, the cake recipe and the cream cheese frosting, the frosting is the best cream cheese frosting that I've ever had. Next on the list is a pumpkin cake with cream cheese in the middle, I had got these awesome cake pans for my birthday and totally forgot about them when I was making the carrot cake cupcakes. They're pretty awesome, can't wait to try them out.

flip flops

2008-08-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a flip flop cake I made for my Nana's Birthday. Took alllll day. I was gonna go with a different design on the actual flip flop part, but i ran out of all of my bright food colors and it didn't look quite right with the colors I have.

Eggplant Parmesan

2008-07-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

So here you have it. The famous Muskalino Family eggplant parmesan with the also famous tomato sauce, but that's on the hush hush. P.S, this is Cozmo's favorite meal in the whole entire world, so he'll be getting some tomorrow, what a lucky baby iguana.

Great Nana's Anisette Cookies

2008-07-13T14:46:00.000-07:00

If your Italian then these cookies are right down your ally. Made these last night and didn't get a picture until this morning and the colorful nonpareils bled into the white icing so theyre not as pretty. But they're still moist and tasty.

4th Of July

2008-07-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, time for some Boston style 4th of July cookout family traditions.

When I was a kid, the 4th was a pretty big deal for my family. The night before, my town would throw a giant block party with fireworks, live music (usually men dressed up as giant raisins, known as The California Raisins) dancing, tons of food and games. Then the actual 4th of july there would be a big parade. My family and I would walk from my Nana's house to the parade that was at the end of her street. After the parade we would have a cookout with the whole family (there are alot of us!) and family friends. We would swim for hours and after swimming we would play games like spud, dodgeball, volleyball and badminton. Sometimes we would have a huge water balloon fight. Then at the end of the day we would go watch fireworks and get bit by millions of misquitos. (Fireworks are both illegal to buy and to use in all of New England).

But anyways, on with the food. You can't beat my families ability to create amazing food on special occasions. These recipes have been passed on for generations. So this year I decided to try out my Great Nana's Boston Beans. These are the most amazing beans in the whole world and I didn't think I was going to be able to produce heaven on a plate, but I did! And they were fantastic!!

You can not have a 4th Of July without a little help from your local Friendlys!!! And their amazing watermelon roll and orange roll. (The Watermelon Roll is my favorite) Friendlys aren't too popular in Florida or anywhere that's not New England, but when we moved to Port Saint Lucie we found out that we had one just a few miles from us! So you better believe we had to pick up a Watermelon Roll for the 4th.

Mmmmmm cotton candy.....

So, because we had way too much food and not as many guests that we thought we were going to have haha. We decided to put off the smores for another day, but they were pretty good when we did get to have them!!!!

Ohhh and Russle The Love Mussle LOVES The 4th Of July!!!!

Chocolate chip cookies

2008-06-27T17:08:00.001-07:00

Still to come.. pecan and brown sugar cream cheese filled french toast.

Mmmm baklava

2008-06-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

Chocolate truffles

2008-06-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

Why Bakers don't diet

2008-06-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

Arrrrg. Ok... so it's day 5 of my Isagenix cleanse and things are going just fine. Last time I checked my weight was 3 days into my Isagenix cleanse and I lost 3 pounds, so that's good. And I haven't "cheated" once (which for me is a miracle). The only thing is... I'm a baker!!!!! All I watch are food shows and google cakes and chocolate recipes. Today I was on this awesome site CandyAddict.com for about 3 hours!!! I'm a foodie, it's my one weakness. I mean, don't get me wrong, It's not that the meal replacement shakes don't fill me up, It's just that, I like to snack and I love my chocolate. So I think after this month cleanse I'm either going to do another month cleanse and then start eating 3 low calorie meals a day again.. I can do that. I'm surprised I haven't cheated yet though, because I am the worst dieter in the whole entire universe. Even before I start a diet I'll think of ways to cheat.. I even write lists of stuff I want to eat when I get off of the diet! It's like my mouth has been in prison and it's writing it's wishlist. For some reason food tastes better when your on a diet and its illegal for you to eat!!!! Ok, so I was watching unwrapped on the food network today and they had the most amazing brownies, their website is http://www.americanbrownieco.com Hmmmm do I hear a birthday gift idea for your's truely?

I'm staying with my sister right now, so when I get back home I'm gonna make these awesome carmely chocolate rice crispy cookies things, so get that nice glass of cold milk ready.

P.S. What I wouldn't give for a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich right now.

Da Cubs.

2008-06-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Hey-o so today is my second day of Isagenix. I'm getting quite sick of those damn shakes lol. I think that I'd rather don't eat anything than have one of those bloody shakes. Ahhh!!!! Ok. So i had my morning shake around 8:30am and I was wicked full. When i went to run a few erans, I thought I was fine.. turns out I was wrong. 2 o'clock rolls around and I'm starving, but I'm not hungry, I'm just feeling wicked weak. So I get home and have my shake and I'm fine after that. I downed it lol, soooo sick of it already. So I get home around 3 and start making my step father a cake for Father's Day. I didn't get done with the cake until 8, so I'm pretty exhasuted right now. So here is the cake and I'm going to be posting some more Isagenix video's.. I'm doing a video everyday.

Elementary school cafeteria memories

2008-06-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, so after an awesome weekend visiting Coral Springs, then coming back and having friend's over to enjoy the pool and Russle The Love Mussle! I had to end the weekend on a sweet note. So I decided to make these peanut butter bars. This recipe is the same recipe that was served in my elementary school cafeteria in New England. I'm pretty sure the recipe at my old school have milk chocolate as apose to semi-sweet chocolate though. But they're still fantasticly good and bring back only memories.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars II

No bake peanut butter bars.

Servings: 12

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups peanut butter

2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Melt butter or margarine over low heat. Add sugars, peanut butter andvanilla. Mix well.

2. Press into a 9 x 13 inch pan.

3. Melt chocolate chips and spread over the top. Cool.

Stolen Innocence

2008-05-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

So we got settled into the house fairly quick. This gave me time to catch up on some reading and crocheting! I started to read the book "Stolen Innocence" about a week ago and didn't get to read much of it because of all of the packing. So I picked it back up on Wednesday and finished it Friday. It was such a good book, I just couldn't put it down. It was about about this child was raised in a Polygamous Sect and forced into marriage at the age of 14. Some pretty crazy stuff, and the reality of it is that it's happening right now! The author "the girl who was raised in the sect" is only a year older than me. So while I grew up dressing up as the Pink Power Ranger for Halloween and watching a good dose of Doug, Wishbone and Rocko's Modern Life when I got home from school. This girl was reading the Morman Bible or playing with her 17 other siblings. In the religion she was raised on, tv was too worldly, anything that had to do with the outside world was off limits, even playing with children that weren't of her religion. I know theres alot about this in the news right now, a few cases against Warren Jeffs, but to truely understand, you should look at things through the eyes of someone who actually went through this. Good book. Give it a read.

Because I'm proud to be in America.

2008-05-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

So we moved in! And this is all I have to say about that new house.....

My new room.. heh

Cold Stone's got nothing on me!

2008-05-08T19:34:00.000-07:00

So this is how my night went....

So I did this instead....

+

Chocolate moltastic cake, eat your heart out Chili's.

2008-05-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

So, me and my side kick Tegan decided to have a little girlie's night out on Saturyday, but when your single, isn't every night a girl's night out anyway? Anywho, so we decide to go to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This is a particually special showing of the classic cult movie "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." While the movie plays, a cast acts the movie out and the audience interacts and even dresses up as some of the characters in the movie. It's a fun experience, that is, if you don't mind a hardy dose of prophanity and the feeling that your sitting in a high school drama classroom on a lunch break. If your intrested in this show, it starts at 12am every Saturday night at a place called Flippers in Hollywood, FL. I always call ahead of time just to double check if the cast is going to be there that night.

So we decide to catch a bite to eat before the show and we had a craving for Chili's Chocolate Molten cake, after a double on my day off, i needed a stronge dose of chocolately goodness, plus our amazing friend Joel is a server there and I hadn't have seen him in forever. Not a huge fan of chili's.. the only thing I really like there is their fan-tast-ic Molten.

So the rest of our night went on as planned, It was a nice night. My day off finally comes around and me and tegan decide to try to see if we can make our own chocolate molden cake. So we work out internet magic and find a recipe AND a youtube video on how to make a Chili's Chocolate Molten Cake clone!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hz4jSM8D5o4

This was his recipe...

Cake1 18.25-ounce box chocolate fudge or dark chocolate cake mix

1 1/3 cups water

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 eggs1 bottle

Hershey hot fudge topping

8 scoops vanilla ice cream

Smucker's Magic Shell chocolate topping

1. Make cake batter 'following directions on the box and pour 1/2 cup of batter into the greased cups of a large (Texas size, muffin pan. If your pan has six cups, bake the cakes in two batches of 4 cakes each. Turn all of the cakes out of the pan and let them cool.2. The cakes will be served upside down, so you may have to slice a bit of the domed top off the cakes to help them lay flat when inverted.A serrated sandwich knife works best for this. After you've flipped over all of the cooled cakes, use a sharp paring knife to cut out a 1 1/2-inch diameter cylindrical chunk in the center of the bottom (now the top) of each cake. The hole should be about 1 1/2-inches deep. After slicing straight down into the cake in a circle, scoop out the chunk of cake with a teaspoon and discard the piece. Now you have a secret compartment to conceal the hot fudge payload.3. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of fudge into each of the holes you've made in the cakes, then store the cakes in a sealed container in the refrigerator.4. When you are ready to serve, heat one cake at a time in the microwave for 40 to 45 seconds on high, or until you see the fudge begin to bubble. Remove the cake from the microwave and let it rest for 30 seconds or so, then place a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the cake. Pour a coating of Magic Shell chocolate topping over the ice cream and serve.Makes 8 desserts.

I added a pit of cookie dough to mine and this was our finished result...

New addition to the family.

2008-05-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

So, over the weekend, we adopted a dog from "Manos por Patas". Manos por Patas is a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the suffering of stray dogs roaming Puerto Rico, desperately in need of medical attention, food and water, and a loving touch.

http://http://www.manosporpatas.org/home.htm

If you are thinking about getting a new doggy, please take this site into consideration.

Tala (new puppy) was featured in April's issue of People magazine.

You can also find her here with her new daddy and one of her new brothers.

Here are some pictures of her at her new Nana's home.

Gramma Syle.

2008-04-30T18:06:00.000-07:00

What can you do with a box of raisins?

Mmmmm cookie cookie.

You’re so good at talking smack, you heart attack, but your the apple of my heart anyway!

2008-04-27T17:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, so today I decided to myself that I was going to make me some apple fritters. After researching many recipes, I finally found the perfect apple fritter recipe.

http://www.thepickyapple.com/blog/2008/02/11/apple-fritters/

Submitted for the approval of the Baker's Society, I call this story "The Journey Of The Apple Fritter"

Birthday cake

2008-04-21T20:52:00.001-07:00

So Today was Jessi's Birthday and I made the birthday cake!!! This is how the lovely cake grew into the beautiful eatable create it is today. Well, I decied that I wanted to make Jessi a giant cupcake because, that's our thing.. cupcakes, baking.. the whole 9 yards in the baking world, our friendship is built on Anchorman and icing, can't beat a friendship like that haha. Anyways, I was flipping through my wilton catalog and I saw the perfect cake pan, it's a giant cupcake cake!!! Can't go wrong with a giant cupcake.

At this time, it was already a few days before the party and there was no way I would have been able to order that from online and get it before the party, so I researched alittle and found out that they had it at Michael's, yay for nifty craft stores!!!! So i get this amazing pan home and try it out right away. This is my first time using a cake mold, so I messed up the first cake, ran out of cake mix and eggs, so the mold had to wait a day for it to soak up that heat in the oven. So, day of the party comes and I spend the whole day on the cake...making fondant flowers, mixing perfect food colored frostings, leveling and adjusting, all that fun stuff, until finally this giant cupcake of love is created!

The party was very nice, we went to this little Habachi place, then went back to her house for cake, gifts and rockband, I had never played it before, it was pretty fun.