4 Hours in the Kitchen: what can YOU do?

Bake 4 types of cookies, of course! We went on a little baking spree yesterday morning to buff up our cookie supplies- we chowed through a bunch over the last couple of days. We made our standby gingerbread, dark chocolate cutouts from Martha Stewart, mincemeat pies (not shown- oops), mini-blackberry pies, and some German cookies with poppyseed filling from the recipe on the can's wrapper.

For the blackberry pies, my mom just thawed out some of the blackberries we picked this summer in a colander to keep them from getting mushy, added some vanilla and sugar and cut out circles from pre-made pie crust. We baked it at 400 degrees for maybe 12 minutes- super simple and it would work with a bunch of different fruits! (See where I get my kitchen experimenting from?!)

Cookies GALORE! And my sister made more after I left to go to dinner... yay! More later on my AMAZING dinner recipe- you'll be jealous!

Cookies Galore! (And some REAL food too, of course!)

It so good to be back in the kitchen!

After getting more groceries, I whipped up these orange molasses cookies that I found in Eating Well. They turned out well, especially for cookies that only use oats and whole wheat flour!

Wait until the next day if you didn't really like them- they get sweeter and more molasses-y overnight!

Today, I woke up and made some pumpkin and orange muffins from Recipe Book, a blog that I just started following via Swap-Bot. I'm so excited I started following her because the recipes are all amazing! The muffins are super delicious and have a great orange flavor.  I ran out of brown sugar yesterday, so I substituted sugar with a little molasses, via this tip.

And for lunch, I made some roasted pumpkin-apple soup from Eating Well. Don't even try it- it went down the sink drain.

There were a few problems: I halved the recipe that says it is originally for 12 and it looks like it would barely serve 2 people! So I added 1 more cup of chicken broth to lengthen the soup.

It had pretty much no flavor except from the little chunks of apple that my food processor refused to make smaller. It was not sweet but not savory- just bland. Then, my mom tried to add some spices to make it better, but there was no saving that dish. I guess not every dish can be a winner!

At least I baked some more gingerbread cookies! My family ate up the batch I made 2 days ago! We LOVE gingerbread and this time I made mittens and socks! So cute!

Check back later for what I made for dinner! One hint: it involved beer!

Back in the Kitchen

I'm back! After a week of exams and packing to move out, I'm finally home and back in the kitchen! I actually got back Saturday afternoon, but this is the first time I've had a chance to post some stuff, but I've already started the kitchen take over!

On Sunday, I pulled some of the spiced thumbprint dough that I froze over Thanksgiving and put some strawberry-rhubarb preserves in the middle. DIVINE!

And I made some bacon grilled cheese for the family dinner yesterday with sweet potato fries on the side (I followed a recipe, but I apparently didn't put enough oil on the sweet potatoes so most of them burned before actually "blistering" and getting perfect). But they still tasted good!

And I made myself some delicious gingerbread hot chocolate with gingerbread men for dessert! I just added maybe 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice (the easy way of measuring gingerbread spices!) into my regular hot chocolate mix that my mom makes. It was delicious! 

I hope your day is wonderful and I'll be posting again more regularly with the recipes that I love to bake and cook! 

Cookie Experiment

I have been ACHING for an opportunity to make these Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies, and so when our church's small group started up again for the semester, I had my opportunity!

Yum! They were so delicious :) I made them with this recipe from the Hungry Engineer. I changed it just a little by using Hershey's Dark chocolate chips instead of regular semi-sweet chips and it was uber-delicious. So go make yourself some "healthy" (or at least a little healthier!) cookie!

Come on, you deserve it! Its almost the weekend and the whole cookie process only takes about 20 minutes! Don't say I didn't warn you about how delicious they are!