BakeAwayGirl

Last year for Jeff's first father's day, he sent me this recipe with the caption "All I want for Father's Day."  It's a generic recipe for oatmeal, and you can add whatever you want to it to make it delicious.  I was a little hesitant because oatmeal isn't my favorite breakfast food.  I mean, I'll eat it, but it's not my first choice. Then we had it for breakfast and I was sold.  This is now our go-to breakfast on a Sunday morning, and (for now) we have enough leftover to eat throughout the week.  The best part is, everyone loves it! Oatmeal Bake 3 cups quick oats or old fashioned oats 1 cup brown sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp clove 1/2 tsp all spice 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1 tsp cinnamon 1/2 cup vegetable oil 2 eggs, beaten 1 cup milk 1 tsp vanilla *1 can of chopped peaches (NOT drained) *1-1/2 cup dried cranberries Grease 9x13 pan.  Preheat oven to 350*. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Bake for 30-35 minutes or ...

Before I start this one, I'll preface it with a simple breakdown of this recipe:  If you don't like mint, move on, this one isn't for you.  If you care for mint at all, make these. Now, mint lovers, this is the best cookie for Christmastime.  The original recipe I found was not specifically for Christmas, but it uses Andes mints, and those scream Christmastime to me.  This tastes exactly like mint chocolate chip ice cream in cookie form.  So delicious.  Jeff even suggested we put two together around a scoop of vanilla ice cream to make ice cream sandwiches. In the original recipe, it calls for Andes mints chopped.  That was way too time consuming for my liking, so I just broke them up with my hands.  They break pretty easily, so that wasn't a problem, but it was still time consuming and uneven, so there were some that were still very large.  I vaguely remembered that Andes mints came in chocolate chip sized pieces, but I didn't see them a...

Om nom nom these sliders were a fantastic find on Pinterest.  We were planning on having friends over for a Bears game and I immediately thought of sliders.  Luckily, I had this little beauty stashed on my Pinterest boards! See, I'm picky.  Any time the ingredients involve Velveeta, I'm out.  Done, moving on.  I realized how ridiculous it is for the woman who eats box macaroni and cheese, but I don't care.  Velveeta is gross.  Therefore, when I read recipe sliders, I usually abandon them because they incorporate some level of velveeta.  This recipe uses real cheese but still uses the oven.  The last thing I wanted to do with friends over was stand outside on the balcony and grill, so the oven was a must. As you can see in the picture, we had a plethora of condiments for the sliders.  We tried bacon, onions, ketchup, mustard, bbq sauce... it was all good, but I wasn't too wild about them.  Then, with the leftovers, we tried pi...

For the Independence Day, I brought that Blueberry Buckle from the previous post, but I felt like a copout.  But it's a holiday!  I wanted something a little more... festive.  So I started searching Pinterest (of course), and I came across this picture: Well pinwheels are pretty easy!  So I gathered my ingredients and got to work.  These can be altered for whatever colors you want or whatever season.  At Christmas, I've sprinkled 1/2 tsp of cinnamon in the red dough for a bit of a bite.  You can play however you'd like. **Just be aware that these cookies need to rest in the fridge for roughly 5 hours.  You can make them in advance and just slice and bake when your guests come (or when you're hungry), but they will need at least 5 hours for cooling. Pinwheel Cookies:  4th of July Version Cutting the dough Adapted from here 1 cup of butter (2 sticks), room temperature 1-1/3 cup sugar 2 eggs 2 tsp vanilla extract 3 cups flour...

Every year, my aunt hosts Easter at her house, and it's a giant potluck brunch.  There's always more food than any one person should eat (doesn't stop us though).  We all come equipped with tupperwear so we can take leftovers home and eat for days.  As such, I like to experiment with new things because I know it will get eaten. One year, I tried out some new cake decorating... Chocolate cake, white butter cream icing -- 2010 Another year, I did some Easter-inspired sugar cookies.  This was particularly awesome because we were going out of town and I didn't even get to eat a single cookie! This year, my aunt asked me to bring cupcakes.  Well I just haven't been much in a cake-decorating mood lately.  In fact, I don't think I've decorated a cake or cupcake since February.  I'm dissatisfied with my frosting since it doesn't taste as delicious as the professional bakers.  Silly reason, but nonetheless, I am on the quest for the perfect f...

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. ...