Samoas!!

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.

Wannabe Bertolli "stuffed shells" and shrimp scampi sauce.

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

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

Little Debbie's got nothing on me

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

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!!

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

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

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

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

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

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.