Muffins & Chocolate Chip Cookies

I wanted to make something for breakfast. No, not really. I wanted to eat freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, but that seemed an inappropriate thing to do with Scrappy around. To set a better example, I made oatmeal muffins with cinnamon streusel topping.

Then I made chocolate chip cookies. (You can tell these were from the last of hte batter because there are no chocolate chips visible.) I didn't give the oven enough time to cool down after the muffins. This batch is a lot crunchier than the previous round.

Butter Cookies

I found a funny little white hat in one of the baby's drawers. A very nice hand-me-down that nevertheless looks like it belongs to a Smurf because of the built in pocket of air. LV said we should take a picture of the kids in chef hats and bake cookies for his mother's birthday. But what kind of cookies...? We went with butter cookies. Shortbread seemed a little too old lady-ish.

Chocolate on Chocolate

Those lemon-coconut bars taste like a combination of Trix cereal and coconut donuts, so the tray is almost gone now. I decided to use the last of the cake mixes—Devil's Food cake—to make cupcakes. Then I made my own butter cream frosting with hot cocoa mix (why look for unsweetened chocolate powder). Sadly, Scrappy will not be here for several days. I keep running through scenarios for how to package one of these cupcakes in order to get it to her without it being ruined. It could be quite the happy Valentine's Day to her.

Chicken Pot Pie and Lemon Cookie Bars

Hooray! I finally got to turn that leftover chicken into a pot pie. This is part of the chicken that was leftover from the last whole chicken I roasted. I added too many potatoes to my new and improved (and more filling) version, so there is still more chicken leftover. (Which is good because I'm kind of tired of peanut butter and jelly for lunch.)

"It looks like a pie," LV said. So, click click click. I took a picture to remember. The crust was really good this time. I think it was combination of giving it enough of enough baking time with better prep work.

Apparently Target had baking ingredients on sale. LV brought me one bag of chocolate chips two weeks ago. "Don't you want cookies every week?" I asked. I sent him back for more of anything the following week. He brought me coconut flakes. What can I do with coconut flakes... We had a box of lemon cake mix in the cabinet from when cake mix had gone on sale. I hunted around for a recipe that would tell me how to turn cake mix into cookie bars (luckily, I had been tempted by the peanut butter fudge bars on the side of the yellow cake mix box), and then mixed the coconut flakes with vanilla frosting. Scrappy thought it was delish. But she's not shy about complimenting her own cooking. This was the first time in forever that I had her bake with me. (Her and the baby and LV. It was a family affair.) I kind of like making cookies alone...

Cupcakes and a Pattymelt

By special request, I made more cupcakes. This time I thought the frosting should be green. And the batter should be pink.

After making this sandwich for myself (LV had regular burgers later), I've decided the best way to clean the Foreman grill is to use a piece of bread. So good.

Class Party

I said LV was going to make the brownies for Scrappy's class, but I ended up making them. With two boxes, I thought we'd have so many more leftover. There were only a few. I guess I cut them too generously. ("Neurotically" might be a better word to describe my attempt at perfect symmetry.)

Cupcake Party

I feel like I ate LV's birthday cake all by myself, so I made a motion to make cupcakes for the "let's cut a cake for Scrappy" non-party birthday celebration. I added food coloring to the tub of vanilla frosting and told LV, "You know everyone is going to ask what flavor the purple are." He shook his head. Then Scrappy saw the tray and told her dad I made strawberry cupcakes. He laughed.

Birthday Cake

We bought a bunch of cake mixes. The first set--yellow cake with vanilla frosting--was for LV's birthday. I tried to even out the cake to look less homemade by shaving off the top where it bubbles up like a big mushroom, but homemade looks homemade.

Chicken, Pasta, and Pumpkin Turtle Pie

There was a story in Good Housekeeping or on the Today Show about what you can stock in your pantry to make meals more adventurous. It inspired me to put those bottles of lemon juice and capers to use.

There was also an ad for Philly cream cheese and Jell-O pudding and other products that go into making Thanksgiving desserts. I had to make this pie. It's one of those Cool Whip creations that you simply refrigerate (and then decide to not take to your sister-in-law's dinner).

Pumpkin Turtle Pie

I don't remember making this pie on Thanksgiving... I believe I made it on the 25th or 24th, but added the caramel and pecan topping on the 26th. (And then decided I didn't want to share.)

Time to Eat

When LV saw this on the counter, he wanted to eat it that night. Luckily, he didn't. Thanksgiving morning, I fired up the oven to warm the coffee cake. The house didn't really fill with the scent of cinnamon, but that was some good cake.

Pumpkin Pie

The past two years, I think I've made the pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. This year I decided to make the pie when I had the time (as determined by the baby). I think it turned out well. The crust could have been flakier.

Cheesecake!

I didn't make this cheesecake. My friend and I bought it because, you know, cookies and candy aren't enough snacks... The cake was huge. Rather than simply send the leftovers to LV's office, I thought I would use some of the extra pounds of Wilton candy melts to coat squares of the cheesecake. But I set about doing so all wrong. I ended up spreading melted candy with a butter knife. No one cared. They were tasty. (I pulled them out of the refrigerator for this picture--that's why they look sweaty.)

Mother's Day/Birthday

My mom brought along this cake to Mother's Day brunch to celebrate my birthday. She wanted me to know how much she loves me? I wanted to get my brother on the phone for when everyone sang Happy Birthday because it was so much closer to his birthday than mine, but my mom was too anxious to eat cake...

(That's a mothers and mother-to-be cake in the background.)

Chocolates and Salmon Burgers

After my success with free handing the butterfly wings for cupcakes in December, I started to think about making special "Yay, It's a Boy" candies. I was able to find some molds that could work and some colors I thought would be good. But I had no idea how long I would be hunched over, carefully filling the trays.

In addition to the large suckers, I made small bottles, letter blocks, cradles and other baby related shapes.

Then, for some bizarre reason, I decided I was still okay to keep hunching over to pick out the bones from canned salmon...

St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes

Scrappy really wanted to a way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We all decided cupcakes would be best. This amounted to LV and Scrappy heading out with shopping list that said, "X if it's on sale, or else y." Apparently nothing was on sale that weekend, so I made cupcakes and frosting from scratch. They weren't as soft as the boxed cake mixes and prepared frosting I turned into cupcakes in December, but I was still happy with how the first homemade batch turned out.

Banana Bread, Chocolaty Treats, and Chicken Parm

Our bananas became ripe too quickly, so I stuck them in the refrigerator (having no idea this would stop the ripening process) and thought the only thing left to do with bananas that brown (on the outside) was to bake banana bread. Even though the bananas were not completely mushy, the bread turned out much better than the last round of nut bread I made.

LV wanted something with chocolate and nuts for around the house. I found Chocolate Revel Bars in the cookbook and decided that could work. The lumpy stuff on top is an oatmeal-based dough. Good stuff.

Then, because I hadn't baked enough that afternoon, I made chicken parmigiana. It was a welcome break from the usual grilled chicken.

National Pie Day, Smoothies, and Liver

Friday was National Pie Day, but LV wanted us to come meet him for dinner. That didn't leave Scrappy and I enough time to pick a pie recipe, shop for ingredients, and make a pie. She and I went shopping and put off the baking until the next day.

Scrappy picked the Chocolate Bar Pie recipe, which doesn't actually get baked. It's made of melted chocolate bars, melted marshmallows, heavy whipping cream, and... that's it. You end up with a kind of mousse that you scrape into a pie dish and freeze for 8 hours. The crust is baked concoction of chopped walnuts, butter and sugar, but really all you taste is chocolate.

After all the hours of waiting, she said it was her favorite pie.

Seeing as the food processor was already out and now needed to be washed (I had used it chop the walnuts), I thought it would be best to try out how well it made smoothies. This is frozen cherries and frozen peaches with not enough milk.

Why stop there? I had read liver was a really good source of iron, but there were only two recipes for liver in the cookbook I like: liver pâté or liver and onions. I went with liver pâté. All seemed to be going well, and it tasted all right while it was still warm (cooked in the skillet and then puréed), but a pound of liver is just too much.

Can't Rush the Holidays

Early in December, I bought all the ingredients I would need to make lots of cookies. And pies. And who knows what else. Come 2009, I have hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, almonds, chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and more crowding my cabinets. January 5 seemed like a good day to bake more Christmas cookies.

I have two cookie presses. Neither has ever been used by me. I'm not sure either will ever be used again. I wasn't particularly impressed with my handiwork, but the Hazelnut Spritz cookies tasted really good.

When I bought Hershey kisses, I thought I was buying them for the kind of cookies that have a peanut butter base... But it turns out the recipe I had was for a chocolate base. It looks like a whole lot of chocolate going on (I didn't roll them all in powdered sugar because that seemed a little excessive), but it tastes just right.

Cookies for Santa

By the time you reach third grade, navigating your beliefs about Santa can be tricky. I, personally, always wondered why Santa seems to spoil the rich kids. But that was only after I would ponder how on Earth he got into my house. I didn't have a fireplace growing up and I don't have one now. Here is Scrappy's theory: He smells the cookies and knows where to go.

"Can we just leave him some Oreos?"

Oh, no no no. He wants gingerbread cookies. Luckily I've worked out the kinks to cookies that we cut into shapes--Scrappy has her work station, I have mine. That way we can work at our own paces and if she decided she really only want to decorate (and eat the decorations) so be it. I can still finish the batches in a timely manner.

Unfortunately for me, I haven't worked out the kinks with my icing bags and decorating tips. After mixing up way too much powdered sugar with water, I learned that this is possibly the worst frosting to load into a bag. It's not a frosting and will not act like a frosting. It's a glaze. Period. (Sad.)

Meanwhile, Scrappy was having a ball loading up individual cookies with as much decorative sugar as possible. LV simply raised his eyebrows when he saw them. My favorite "linguisticist" couldn't think of a way to describe them.