BakeAwayGirl

This one should be prefaced with the statement, "Don't judge a book by its cover!"  So if you think, "No, I don't like jalapenos, or cream cheese, or crescent rolls, or life," just chill out for a second. I came across these at a party before I had fully embraced the Pinterest lifestyle.  This girl made these and accredited the recipe to Pinterest, which at the time, I didn't understand.  I thought it was just pictures, so I had no idea how she had a recipe.  Oh, the early days... ;) Anyway, I judged them because they weren't deep fried and made with cream cheese.  I don't like cream cheese.  It's... sour.  Ew.  But the temptation of jalapenos called to me, and I decided to snag one.  Oh, thank goodness I did!  It didn't have the usual taste of cream cheese, just a delicious jalapeno creaminess.  Yummmm!  For those of you who don't much care for spicy, these really aren't (much to my disappointment).  The crescent roll...

This is a recipe I discovered last summer when I needed some snacks for a friend and me.  We needed something easy that would soak up some of the bottles of wine we guzzled (we were celebrating summer, don't judge).  So while we had some great cheese and crackers, that just wasn't going to be enough for all of that. What do we go for when we're consuming plenty of alcohol?  The answer is, of course, pizza!  But we wanted it to be easy and less messy, so to Pinterest I went.  This is what I came up with. Sidenote:  You can eat these without adult beverages, I'm just saying it was the inspiration. Pizza Bites Adapted from here 1 container of your favorite unbaked pizza crust* Shredded Mozzarella cheese Pepperoni 1/8 cup olive oil 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning Parmesan (for sprinkling) Pizza sauce (for dipping) Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out pizza dough and cut.  I suggest scissors for this because the pizza cutter couldn't get ...

**Disclaimer:  If you count calories, you may just want to skip this post.  You've been fairly warned! My version from Easter '12 I discovered this little gem last year, and I don't remember why, but I don't think I need a reason.  It's a cinnamon coffee cake from Pinterest.  What more do we need?  I made it for a work breakfast, and then again for Easter brunch.  When it was a hit in both places, I stored this baby away for special days.  I've started jonesing for it again, so it was lucky for me that the work breakfast fell on this week! Unfortunately, it was a busy week.  My sister's birthday was yesterday and we went out for the evening.  When we came home, the couch was so inviting, and then it was bedtime!  I woke up this morning to my alarm and groggily laid there for a moment until a little voice in my head whispered, "Hey... you never made that cake that you need to have at work by 7:00 this morning." I won't bore you ...

What a slacker!  I've been making things like crazy, but haven't put them up here.  Good thing summer break isn't too far off, because I have some sinfully delicious things for you guys.  Just be aware that your adorable bikini won't be so adorable after eating some of these things... I won't worry.  I don't do bikinis!  :) In the meantime, I do have two amazing recipes for you today.  Not sure if you heard, but the Chicago area decided to become a serious if islands this past week.  Jeff and I went from a lovely apartment by a very small river to lake-front property renters!  We're considering buying a boat! Time to get a boat! So everything was shut down for a while, and I had some time to just hang out in the apartment.  I was craving brownies, so I went to the pantry and... NO BROWNIE MIX! What?!  I have never  been out of brownie mix in my life !  Simple, we'll just run to the store... oh wait, the parking lo...

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...