Snickerdoodle Brownies

I made these snickerdoodle brownies, from A Well Seasoned Life, to bring over to my mother-in-law's house over spring break.

Feel free to be amazed with my special food photography props.  I'm super classy, and should be a professional food photographer.

Now that you are done laughing, let's get on with discussing these Snickerdoodle Brownies.

First, they had a glaze on top, but they were not pretty with the glaze.  So that's why you get the crazy cat medicine picture.  Cause cat medicine and Kool-aid were prettier than the glazed bars.

The bars settled in the middle as they cooled, which acted as a basin for the glaze to settle in.  A smart thing would have been to let the glaze set up a bit before I drizzled it on.  Do that so you don't get a glaze swimming pool.  Glaze swimming pools taste divine, but are butt ugly. (Case in point, see this post.  When will I ever learn?!)  Or even better yet, cut your bars and then apply the glaze.  This wasn't really an option for me.  I wanted an easy way to transport these bars in the car, so I left them in the pan I baked them in.

Cinnamon is like crack to me.  And these bars are really cinnamon-y.  I could NOT stop eating them.  I may or may not have eaten so many bars in one sitting that I may have started buzzing around the room like a humming bird, and then just might have had to lie down and have a sugar crash nap.  But I'm not going to fully admit to that.

I'll definitely make these bars again.  Although, if I'm just making them for the three of us, I'll make a half batch so I don't pig out again and knock myself into a sugar coma. 

Snickerdoodle Brownies from A Well Seasoned Life
2 1/3 cup All-Purpose Flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cinnamon Mixer:
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon Cinnamon

Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray 9x13 baking pan with cooking spray. In small bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In a larger bowl mix together softened butter, brown sugar and sugar until blended. Add one egg at a time, then vanilla. Add flour mixture and blend well. Spoon half of the batter into the pan and spread evenly.

Make cinnamon mixture by combining: 1 T sugar and 1T cinnamon. Sprinkle evenly on top of the batter that is in the pan. Using the remaining batter, place teaspoon sized dollops on top of the cinnamon mixture…covering all the pan. You will be able to see some of the cinnamon mixture peeking through. Bake for 25 minutes.

Once baked, let it cool for one hour. Combine all ingredients for the icing and once cool drizzle it over the brownies.

Thankful Thurs #15

1. Only verbal punches were thrown when the neighbor behind us decided to get all racist toward our other neighbors who were sealing our new fence.

2. Sunrise Easter service.

3. Blockette singing her heart out at church.

4. Another awesome report card from Blockette.

5. I finished sealing the rest of the fence myself.

6. I won't have to do that again for a while.

7. I can finally move like a normal person again.

8. The talk I had with another neighbor, not the ones mentioned above. (More on this in a few weeks.)

9. Mrblocko taking my computer in for repairs before it gave up the magic smoke.

10. The computer is still under warranty.

11. The free loaner computer is so quiet I can actually hear myself think.

12. Downton Abbey...it's as good as everyone raves about.

No Boil Penne and Cheesey Bread

Are you one of those folks who doesn't boil their noodles when they make lasagna?  If you are, you is my kinda people, if you aren't why the frell not?!  The noodles totally get cooked in the oven.  Save yourself some time people!

Ahem.

But we're not talking about lasagna today. No sir. We are talking about it's cousin, no boil penne from Plain Chicken.  Yes.  You read that right.  NO BOIL.  It's a pasta revolution!

A time saving revolution.  Just dump everything into your casserole dish and wham...awesome!

Now I feel it is my duty to the world to explain a few things. First, your Penne dish will look like this when it comes out of the oven:

It will look very liquidy, and oh, the bubbles.  Mine came out a boiling cauldron of molten red lava.  Please wait 15-20 minutes before serving.  Your family and their non burnt tongues will thank you.

This is what the dish looks like after things have cooled off a bit:

Much better.

And since I can't serve Italian food without bread, (it's the law you know, ) I made some cheesey bread too.

I found two nearly identical recipes for cheesy bread.  One was pizza blanco from Everybody Likes Sandwiches and the other was cheesy breadsticks from Real Mom Kitchen.  The only real difference is one gets baked at 500 for 10 minutes, and the other at 400 for 20 minutes.

Before the oven!

And Post baking goodness:


The cheesy bread made the perfect side dish to the no boil penne. Blockette went totally gaga over both of them. Particularly the cheese bread. This is one of the things that makes me know she truly my child...her love of cheese. Girl cannot get herself enough cheese, especially Parmesan, but that's a whole 'nother story.

One more thing, the cheesy bread recipe makes enough for two crusts. I didn't want two whole pizza thingies. I guessed, and correctly, that the bread would be it's most awesome right out of the oven. So I took the unused half of bread dough and put it in a non airtight container in the fridge. It's important that your container is NOT airtight. You want the dough to be able to breathe a bit in there!

So I let my dough sit in the fridge for two days, when we were having the no boil penne leftovers. My intentions were to let the leftover dough sit out for an hour before making it. Nope. I totally spaced out. At 5:00 I yelped, "Oh no! I forgot to take the bread out." (This was particularly confusing to my friend who I was on the phone with at the time and it didn't quite make since with the flow of our conversation.)

Anyhow, I rolled that dough out, popped it in the oven and hoped for the best. Well wouldn't you know it, it was the best. Turned out every bit as yummy as it's fresh twin.


No Boil Baked Penne from Plain Chicken
1 jar pasta sauce (26oz)
1 1/2 cups water
15 oz ricotta (I used small curd cottage cheese)
2 cups shredded mozzarella, divided
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1 lb sausage, cooked and crumbled
8 oz uncooked penne (This is half a box)

Preheat oven to 400 F. Lightly grease 9x13 pan; set aside. Combine sauce, water, ricotta 1 c mozzarella, sausage, parmesan and penne. Pour into 9x13 pan and cover with foil. Bake 55 min. Remove foil and top with remaining mozzarella cheese. Bake 5-10 min, til bubbly.  Let cook for 15-20 min.


Cheesy Garlic Breadsticks from Real Mom Kitchen
1/2 recipe Basic Pizza Dough (see below)
2 tablespoons softened butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
dried parsley, optional

Preheat oven to 500 F.  In small bowl, mix butter and garlic, set aside.  Roll dough out into a 12" circle on parchment paper. Spread butter and garlic mix over dough. Sprinkle with parmesan followed by mozzarella cheeses. Transfer parchment and dough to pizza stone or baking sheet. Bake 9-10 min.
Use a pizza cutter and cut into stick shapes. Sprinkle with a little dried parsley if desired.


Basic Pizza Dough from Real Mom Kitchen (makes two crusts)
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon honey or sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive
2-3 cups bread flour

In bowl of stand mixer, add yeast, honey, and warm water. Give it a stir and let sit for 5-10 min til bubbly and foamy.  Add salt, oil and 1 1/2 c flour. Mix using dough hook.  Once combined, add additional flour 1/2 c at a time til slightly tacky, but doesn’t stick to hands.  Turn on medium to knead for 6 min. The side of bowl should be clean and dough should be smooth.  Remove dough from bowl. Spray bowl with Pam. Add dough back to bowl and turn once to get both sides coated with  spray.
Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm place for 1-2 hrs.  Divide dough in half. Roll each half out into a 12 inch circle on a piece of parchment paper. Top as desired.

P.S. This post was written on 3 hours of sleep. I hope you enjoyed your journey down the madness of my sleep deprived brain. Thanks for visiting!

Green Bread

AAAAh!!! My bread is all moldy and green!

No, wait! It's just green pistachio bread from Better than Burgers.

This recipe uses pistachio pudding and cake mix, which makes it super easy, and super tasty.  I of course, had to make at least one substitution.  I didn't have any yellow cake mix, so I used butter cake mix instead.  I mean they are both yellow so they MUST be interchangeable.  I mean it's not like I'm using tomatoes for apples or anything CRAZY like that.

The sweet bread turned out just fine, despite my substitution.  The only real problem I had with this recipe was that it does not state what size loaf pan to use.  I must have a larger loaf pan than the folks at Better than Burgers.  When I put half the batter into one loaf pan, it didn't even fill up the pan half way.  The loaves on Better than Burgers have a nice domed top.  I was skeptical that a quick bread would rise more than half way up the pan, so I went to plan B.  I scraped out the batter in my regular loaf pans, and poured it into 4 mini loaf pans.  

Problem solved.  

The batter filled the mini loaf pans about 3/4 full.  That seemed just right to me.

We ate two of the mini loaves over the course of St. Patrick's day weekend, and I froze the other two.  They tasted just as good fresh as they did thawed from the freezer.


Pistachio St. Patrick's Day Bread from Better than Burgers
1 yellow cake mix
4 eggs
1/4 c. oil
2 T. water
1 (3 oz) pkg. instant pistachio pudding mix
1 c. sour cream
1/2-1 t. green food coloring
1 t. almond extract
3/4 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour 2 loaf pans (or 4 mini loaves). Mix all ingredients together until well blended. Pour into prepared pans. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pans.

The Big OH THREE!

This weekend Tomatoes for Apples turned three years old!

Image source: Think Cards

Three years.  It seems like I've been writing on here for a lot longer.  I think that's a good thing.  This blog has given me a place to vent, appreciate the things I have, a place for sharing photos of Blockette with family, and the excuse to continuously try new things in the kitchen.  

If it weren't for this blog, we'd probably be eating the same meals every week.  Which, when you rarely go out to eat, can get pretty boring, pretty fast.  Although, learning my way around the kitchen did result in an unexpected side effect.  Now, when we do go out to eat, most of the time I think, "I could make this better and cheaper at home!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not this Iron Chief guru, not even close.  My cooking has just improved so drastically in the past three years it's something to really be proud about.  I still have loads to learn and I look forward overcoming more culinary hurdles in the future.

Incidentally, I had every intention of making a cake this weekend in celebration of my blogiversary.  I bought all the ingredients and everything.  Then, I realized we would be overloaded with sugar from the Easter Bunny.  My father-in-law is supposed to come out to see Blockette's soccer game in two weeks, so I thought I'd just delay the cake making until then. 

Happy Birthday little blogy blog!

Happy Easter

Cross Stitch Bonanza

...or what I did over spring break.  ...or whatup smalls?

I've been really getting back into the groove of cross stitching these past few weeks.  I used to be a fanatic before Blockette was born.  Insane about cross stitch.

I made things like this:

Peacock Tapestry by TW Designworks. This bad boy is 22.5"x 14.5" not including the mat or frame.

And this:

Pattern from some book I found in the library back in the early 1990's.  Stitched over 1 on 25 count fabric.

I really don't have the patience or inclination to do massive projects like this anymore.  Which is probably a good thing as the house we live in now doesn't have a lot of wall space.

Anyhow...
Over spring break I stitched up a series of itty bitty cross stitches.  I felt like I accomplished something with every finish, even though I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of them.

The first one: Santa pirate.  Will probably be turned into a Christmas ornament.  It was a free design from Sue Hillis Cross Stitch that can be found here.  It was stitched on a tiny scrap of hand dyed 32 count turquoise linen.  The design measures 2.25"x 2.25".

This little design measures 2"x3".  I found the design on pinterest and it reminded me of Jane Austen.  The design is free and can be found here at a French blog called Aurelle.  The design was stitched over two threads on 28 count white-ish evenweave fabric.

This Grecian lady was another freebie found on the Dutch blog Steekjes and Kruisjes. She was stitched on an off white linen, and measures 2.75"x 2.75".

This key was stitched over two threads on a grayish-green linen fabric. The free chart can be found here on this French Blog.  The design measures 2"x3.75".

 

This sweet strawberry chart was a freebie from Cosmic Handmade. You can find it here.  I used a scrap of heathered 18 count aida from when I stitched up this cow for my mom two years ago.  The design measures about 3"x3".

You can't really tell from the photo but I used some hand over-dyed threads.  Over-dyed threads are the threads that are dyed multiple colors, often in the same shade, on the same skein of thread.  This is probably the only design that I stitched over spring break that I was less than thrilled about.  The colors are too muted for my liking.  I think perhaps the birds should have been a dusty blue.  I guess I just didn't care enough to rip it out.  Maybe I will later.

Then I decided to get all kinds of crazy.  And dye my own fabric. CRAZY!

I had a narrow strip of antique white evenweave fabric.  It was a bit too creamy for my liking.  I had some Roobios tea that I didn't particularly care for so I used that to stain the cloth. 

I'm quite pleased with the results.

So far I have stitched two tiny designs on my hand dyed fabric.  The first is this locks and keys from the Hungarian blog Sub Rosa.  The link for the free chart is here.  I stitched the design over one thread, so the whole design only measures 2" x 3.75".  There is a companion free chart to this design at Sub Rosa that I just discovered called Keys to the past that I plan on stitching up in the near future.

This cow was my last finish over spring break.  He measures in at a whopping 2"x1.25"! 

Ain't he a cutie.  I think I could handle a cow this size.  At least I could if he could be paper or litter trained!  You can purchase this design on Etsy from Sewingseed.

So that's all that I stitched last week. They're no Peacock Tapestry, but I sure had fun cranking them out!