BakeAwayGirl

I can't believe I haven't posted this recipe yet.  It could be argued that this recipe is what kicked off my obsession with cooking and baking.  I loved baking and cooking, but it was about how it tasted, and it didn't usually look all that great.  My parents bought me some cake decorating stuff for Christmas, and my cousin asked me to take a cake decorating class with her. I was hooked. Problem was, the recipe the class gave me looked phenomenal... and tasted like plastic.  So I did some research and discovered that the problem was the shortening.  I needed butter.  Be real, people, butter makes everything better. Now, I've done my research.  The general consensus, along with my own experience, is that the butter makes it softer, so it doesn't hold up for much real decorating.  If you're trying to make flowers or something along those lines, you're going to need a straight up shortening/confectioners sugar concoction.  However, fo...

I have been eating like a pig lately.  I mean, it doesn't bother me too much because I just love food.  Yes, I've got my warm winter padding on my body all year, but I'll keep my brownies and you can have the bikini :)  But still, I like my jeans and the way they fit so I will cut back on the onion rings for a few days. Maybe. When I stumbled upon the recipe for a chopped salad, I thought, "Hot damn, nothing better than a Portillos chopped salad."  Even better, this one was a southwestern chopped salad!  I was a little skeptical on this one, to be honest.  Salads can really easily be bland and not very filling, and I love me some good flavor.  But, we had most of the ingredients already and had to go to the grocery store anyway, so picking up the last few ingredients was easy. Mostly, though, I was worried that the salad dressing would be gross.  I love ranch dressing.  Mmmm.  Judge away, but I would douse everything in some good...

So if you read the last post, I experimented with a raspberry crumble and it was a hit !  I was just going to post an update in the same post about it, but... well, this is Jeff's fault.  I was thinking aloud and said I was going to make a half-batch of the apple filling, and Jeff felt this was blasphemy.  Why make half the amount of apples when I could make them all? Men. So I gave in (who doesn't love baked apples?) and sliced two apples and diced six.  Why?  Well, we decided to make two different things.  The diced apples would be the apple filling in the crumble, while the sliced apples would be the base of a few small ramikins of apple crisp.  I mixed all the apple pieces with cinnamon, lemon juice, brown sugar, and nutmeg.  I let that sit in its juice while I made the crumble dough.  For some reason, the dough didn't ball up as nicely as yesterday.  It was much more like a pie dough today and less like a dough.  For thos...

So it was your typical Sunday around here.  We slept in, did some grocery shopping, and I browsed Pinterest (of course).  We've been staying at my parents for a week to take care of the dogs while they were on vacation, and getting back to our own apartment and rhythm was nice.  Sleeping in our own bed again was beyond heavenly, and I never wanted to get out!  Unfortunately, the shower and grocery shopping called, so I did. While doing my lazy morning internet routine (facebook, email, weather, pinterest), I discovered a delicious recipe on Pinterest.  It was an easy, basic crumble recipe that called for raspberry, but I think you could do a lot with it.  We followed the recipe this time, but I want to try it with my apple pie filling as well.  The one thing I'll caution about that, however, is the rest of the dish is sweet, so the tartness of the raspberry filling was the perfect counterpart.  I would suggest raspberry, blueberry, cherry, or ...

This little beauty of a recipe was accidentally stashed on the wrong Pin board, and as soon as I rediscovered it, I knew it was time.  Jeff makes some killer homemade brownies, and he suggested we use his recipe, but I wanted to do it exactly the way the original had it. I'll put the original recipe on here, but I will probably never make it the same way again.  The alcohol is mixed (uncooked) into the cream topping, and it tastes pretty boozy.  That sort of bitter taste ruined the brownies for me.  Don't get me wrong, I love me my booze.  Nothin like coming home from a Monday and knockin back a bottle of wine (ok, not a whole bottle) or going out on Friday with friends for beer.  But this was too much. When I make this in the future, I'll pass on the alcohol.  There is enough orange zest to give it the flavor.  We also discussed using raspberry extract instead of orange zest to make raspberry brownies, but we haven't tried it yet.  I'l...

It's coooold here today!  When I woke up this morning, my phone said it was 9 degrees outside.  This calls for warm comforts at home.  I spent most of the day under blankets on the couch, watching movies, and avoiding the whole outside.  Jeff was feeling a little skittish about my ideas of dinner because I made so much spicy food last night (man up, right?), so I sat down and browsed Pinterest (duh). I discovered a recipe for chicken dumpling soup.  Maybe I should call it Cheater's Chicken Dumpling Soup, because this isn't your homemade southern style soup, but it is absolutely delicious nonetheless.  I know how to make real dumplings, but this was so easy and still so amazingly delicious.  Even if you're a soup snob, you should try it.  It's a wonderful crockpot dish that takes just about no work for you.  My friend Courtney makes something similar to this that she found on Pinterest, and it was what inspired me to try this one. Chicke...

I don't have enough adjectives to describe these.  Just trust me, they are awesome. What drew me to these were (of course) the Pinterest pictures.  Who doesn't want food that tastes delicious and looks amazing too?  Problem is, I'm no artist.  I'm not patient enough or steady enough to make things look as nice as they do on Pinterest, and the fancy camera is currently in my father's possession, so my little digital camera has to do. But something miraculous happened with these cookies... they came out beautifully!  I think it's the dark cocoa powder in it.  They were just stiff enough that they held the cookie cutter shape perfectly.  Even before refrigeration, they were stiff enough to cut out (but I didn't).  It turns out that I didn't have the heart-shaped cookie cutter I needed for a perfect Valentine's Day treat.  So my cookies refrigerated overnight, and it didn't do any harm.  They have almost the consistency of an Oreo. ...

Jeff and I were starving on Saturday, so I loaded up my Pinterest food board and went to work.  I've had things on there since I signed up about a year ago that I've just never tried, but I went for a new recipe anyway.  Most of those have ingredients that we don't leave around, so they are more of a special occasion.  Maybe I should just give up on those others... Anyway, these were deeeeelicious!  We usually have the ingredients laying around, so it was an quick, easy meal for us!  Even if it takes a trip to the grocery store, this is worth it.  There are no amounts because you make as much as you want to use.  Be aware, though, that if you use an entire can of black beans, you will have enough for about 10 tacos from the 6-inch tortillas.  They do keep fine in the fridge for a while if you cover them. Crunchy Black Bean Tacos Adapted from Endless Simmer Canned black beans or cooked black beans Diced onion Taco seasoning Corn tortilla...

I hope you all enjoyed your Superbowl, whether it was alone or a party.  I don't know how anyone would enjoy football alone, but then, I don't care about the football.  I tune in for the commercials, and I only like to watch it with other people. And let's be real... I love Beyonce. I was rootin' for the Ravens, so I was thrilled with the final score, but the game itself was nerve wrecking.  I don't like close games, and that blackout killed me.  I like to go to bed about 10, but our apartment wasn't even cleared out until then!  We were all pretty ready for the end of the game at that point. Well, it's a week later and I think I'm finally hungry again.  We had so many snacks for our superbowl party that I thought I was going to explode.  Jeff did make his delicious carne asada, I made some guacamole to go with it.  We bought the phenomenal salsa verde from our local carniceria, but it was too spicy for most. The snacks I made were all fav...

I've had a little internal debate going on over the past two weeks.  I've tried a couple recipes only to discover that we didn't like them.  I wondered if I should post about the failed ones as well.  Well... they weren't failures, we just didn't care for them.  I didn't want this blog to be "Molly & Jeff's amazing cooking lives" because we make "eh" dishes plenty of times, but I also don't want to bore you with recipes that we didn't much like and who wants to try something with that kind of recommendation. So here's my disclaimer:  Sometimes we make lousy food, blah food, or boring food.  I'm not going to post about them because I want this to be a record of recipes I like so I can go back and find delicious things any time I want.  Ta daaaa... problem solved. Now, onto our delicious experiment last weekend... We're hosting the Superbowl party here next weekend, and Jeff didn't want chili or pizza or wi...

I blatantly stole this picture from A Bitchin' Kitchen Chicken gyros... yummmm!  As soon as I saw this little beauty on Pinterest, I announced to Jeff what we would be doing for dinner that night and we headed to the grocery store.  You can, of course, skip one part or another.  This has a recipe for the tzatziki sauce (my favorite!) as well as the chicken.  If you want to make just one and buy the other from the store, that's fine too. It's actually pretty low calorie (which I don't usually care about, but it's a nice change of pace after the holidays) because the tzatziki is a greek yogurt based sauce and I use chicken breast.  You can use wheat pitas, but I personally think that is a crime.  Either way, do your thing the way you like it. Below, I've broken down the meal.  If you buy certain parts or make it all from scratch, in the end, you'll have a delicious gyro.  I suggest you brown the pitas by spraying it with some cooking spray a...

What's that you say?  S'mores in my oven?  Heck yes!  This was another Pinterest find a long time ago, placed in my Bake It, Girl board for a rainy day.  Well, it's not quite raining here today, but the weather is gross and I'm bored. It's a quick easy recipe, but I warn you, you most likely will have to hit the grocery store for this.  Most of you won't have marshmallow fluff and two 4.2oz special dark Hershey's bars in your house.  If you do, I'm on my way over! S'mores Cookie Bars Adapted from Baked Perfection 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup sugar 1 large egg 1 tsp vanilla 1-1/3 cup flour 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 5 graham crackers) 1 tsp baking powder Splash of salt 2  4.2 oz dark chocolate (I like Hersheys) 1 7oz jar of marshmallow fluff Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8-in square pan. Cream butter and sugars together until fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  In a separat...

After about 9 years of searching and experimenting, I have found the ideal decorating sugar cookie.  A few years ago, I plopped myself down on the floor of my local library in the middle of the baking cook book aisle and poured over book after book until I found the perfect recipe.  I've tweaked quite a bit and have played with it a couple of times since.  Here is the recipe, along with some pictures of the different cookies I've made with this recipe since discovering this gem. 4th of July Treat Deliciously Soft Sugar Cookies 11 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened 3/4 cup sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 egg 1 tablespoon 2% milk 1 tsp vanilla 2 cups all-purpose flour Mix butter alone until creamy.  Add sugar and baking powder.  Beat until thoroughly blended.  Stir in egg, milk, and vanilla.  Add flour one cup at a time, mixing completely before adding the second cup.  Chill dough in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.   Sprinkle...

Wraps are probably my favorite sandwiches, but this recipe doesn't count as my typical wrap.  It's more of a chicken taco salad pinwheel.  I usually don't like pinwheel sandwiches, but this one is deeeelicious!  You can make these one day ahead of time if necessary or 10 minutes before the party.  The best is a couple of hours before, to let the wraps set. This calls for shredded chicken breast and you can do it however you'd like.  I've cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast and shredded it myself.  You can shred a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from the grocery store (not my favorite option).  You can also use shredded chicken in a can because it's so well mixed with delicious seasonings and fresh flavors.  There is also no fat on that chicken. Again, I'm sorry for the poor quality of the picture.  Still workin on that camera situation! Chicken Taco Wraps Adapted from Homemade by Holman 1.5lbs of shredded chicken Pinch of salt ...

You'd think with the holidays just passing that I'd have enough sweets to last me a lifetime.  I do, and I did.  I'm looking forward to going back to work on Monday just to start eating normally again!  But when my mom mentioned our weekly pizza date with my grandparents, I immediately thought of making a double chocolate chip cookie.  I've never (successfully) made them before, so I thought I'd go to my trusty Pinterest to find it. Problem was... I fell asleep on the couch.  When I woke up, I had just over a half an hour to find a recipe, bake it, and be in the car.  I will tell you now, I didn't make it.  But I was close!  At 5:03, I jumped off the couch and by 5:43, we were pulling out of the garage with a delicious smelling plate of cookies.  Here's the recipe! Decadent Double Chocolate Chip Cookies Adapted from Kitchen Simplicity 1 cup flour 1/2 cup cocoa powder 1/2 tsp baking soda Pinch of table salt 2/3 cup chocolate chips ...