Stressed

When I get stressed, I get hungry. And so I bake. I haven't baked in quite a while, i have had little homework (actually, i just haven't been doing it all...), I have been managing well at gymnastics and the fall play had not yet taken over my life.

Fast forward to right now. I have an AP environmental science textbook open in a vain attempt at note taking, my math homework and all of it's imaginary numbers make me want to be imaginary, the fall play is in two weeks so I will be having 14 hour school days, we are learning a new tense in spanish, I have two books (one of which I have no started) due for AP english, my drama teacher expects me to be choosing a monologue for an upcoming competition, I am signing up for next semester classes tomorrow and my intra-squad meet for gymnastics is coming up in less that six weeks.

I would say my stress level is pretty high. And so, instead of dealing with these issues and, oh, I don't know...doing my homework, running lines and working out, I decided to make cookies.

Milk chocolate walnut cookies made out of pancake mix. Pancake mix? Yes, pancake mix.

Loosely inspired by this http://newhopemills.com/pages.php?page_id=6, my recipe is as follows (makes about 2 1/2 dozen):

1. Preheat oven to 375 and spray baking sheets (mine weren't non-stick, lame)
2. Cream 1 1/3 cups packed brown sugar, 2/3 cup unsalted butter and 4 tsp vanilla (I ALWAYS make my cookies extra vanilla-y)
3. Add 2 eggs and beat
4. Add 3 cups of, wait for it... PANCAKE MIX!
5. Beat on medium until well incorporated, and this means well, NO LUMPS.
6. Taste your batter...just to make sure its not poisonous(:
7. Fold in desired amounts of goodies--I used 1/2 bag of milk chocolate chips and 1/2 cup walnut pieces but feel free to experiment.
8. Place rounded teaspoon-fulls on baking sheets
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes, shoot for slightly underdone and just let rest before you remove 'em from the pan.
10. Don't tell your little brother the cookies are done until you have eaten the biggest one, enjoy!

And here they are in all their glory, fresh out of the oven and just dying to relieve my stress.




ps, is that not the most excellent apron you have ever seen? Yeah, I thought so.


pps, these would be even more excellent if i had my bff forever to share them with...

weetabix baking

Today, on the first day of SPRING BREAK (woohoo), i spent my day in pajamas, lazing about the house and drinking tea. Oh, and also making up recipes. This one was insprired by this weird cereal that has been sitting around my house and not being eaten. I thpought, hey, people make cake out of oatmeal, why not out of...Weetabix?
And so i began concocting and mixing and tasting in a devilish frenzy until I came up with this final recipe:


2 crushed (well crushed!) Weetabix chunks? pieces? rounds? cakes? WHATEVER THEY ARE CALLED.
2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup sugar

ginger, nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon, cloves

1 and 1/2 teaspoons combined of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and fresh ground cloves (those spices are listed in order of how much I put in)
1 cup milk
1/8 cup (-ish, just for moistness) of plain yogurt 
2 teaspoons vanilla


1. CRUSH YOUR WEETABIX. I cannot stress eough how important this is, do you want clumps of gross dryness in your loaf? NO, you do not.
2. Add CRUSHED Weetabix, flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar into a large/medium mixing bowl.
3. Add your ONE TEASPOON TOTAL of your own personal spice concoction, not one teaspoon of each spice, ONE TEASPOON TOTAL.
4. Mix up those dry ingredients.
5. Add yourself some milk, yogurt and vanilla and mix/whisk until everything is well incorporated.

6. At this point, taste your batter (if you have restrained yourself until now), and add extra milk or spices for taste and texture issues that you discover--IF you discover any issues at all. 
7. Bake at 325 degrees for forty five minutes.
Remove from oven, let cool, slice, EAT!

The bread just came out of the oven and, although its oddly chewy, its pretty damn good for some ingredients i threw into a bowl :)

banana brownies

• So this friday after three and a half grueling hours of gymnastics jordan zoe and I went on back to my house to bake. We were really feelin some brownies so we decided to whip some up. Like the geniuses we are, we did not check to see if all of the indgredients were available BEFORE cooking. So halfway through someone discovered there werent enough eggs. 
• Although I was tempted to panic and give up, i didnt. GO ME! instead, a banana to egg equivalent was googled. We just mashed up half of a banana with a fourth teaspoon of baking powder for each missing egg and added that.
• In the end, everything worked out and we ended up with a delish banana-chocolate explosion of brownie goodness. 

• THIS was the final recipe:
• 
  
• 6 (1 ounce) squares 100% unsweetened chocolate
• 1 1/2 cup butter
• 4 cups white sugar
• 3 eggs
• 4 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 2 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 over ripe bananas

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Melt chocolate in a double boiler (over hot but not boiling water).
3. Add in butter and stir until melted.
4. Remove pan from heat.
5.  Stir in sugar. Mix in eggs and vanilla. 
6. Stir in flour.
7. Mash bananas and baking powder in a separate bowl.
8. Add banana mixture to chocolate mixture and mix thoroughly.
9. Spread in greased 13 x 9 inch pan. Bake for 45 minutes (except maybe more...)

The above recipe does have one flaw...ZOE decided to pull the brownies out of the oven a little before they were done. Or a lot. We ended up with some brownie like substance around the edges of the pan and some...pudding? Which was admittedly delicious, and even turned into sliceable brownie by the next day.

But yeah, we ate our "brownies" with spoons :)

empanada making 101

So what's pretty awesome is that we live in San Francisco. This means Heather and I have the opportunity to experience some pretty magical food. But ALSO, we have friends with lots of cultural backgrounds! So this weekend, we went to an 
empanada making party! Our friend Adriana is Colombian, so her mom knows WHATS UP when it comes to making empanadas. She doesn't use any specific recipe, and learned how to make these from watching her mom make them growing up. 


She taught us how to make them from scratch. We got to make our own filling, roll out the dough, flatten the dough, stuff the dough with the filling, and then fry them! 
The filling started off with sauteing onions and tomatoes with cumin, salt and pepper. Simple, yes? yes!
We had a few chicken breasts that we cut into small cube-like pieces, and threw those in after. No extra secret sauces, spices or marinades. "The KEY to these empanadas, is that it's all about the cumin!", says Adriana's mom. 
We were simultaneously boiling potatoes, and then mashed them and added the rest of our saute to them. Then, we got to add salt, pepper and cumin (yes, that is all) to the filling until it tasted good TO US. This is the freedom that comes with using no recipes! 

The empanada dough was made out of a sort of maiz (kind of like corn-starch), and the only thing that needed to be added was hot water. Instantly, it turned into this very sticky dough!


We made them into little balls, and then flattened them into the shape of disks. Then, we filled them with our perfectly seasoned filling and closed them up. They were pockets of joy!


The process was actually a lot harder than it sounds, though. It took a lot of concentration to close up the empanadas without having holes pop up everywhere, which is why we had some lukewarm water on hand to "mend" the empanadas! 

raw empanadas ready for frying!

aaaand in they go

...SUCESS!! They were.. yes, you guessed it: crunchy on the outside and soft, warm, creamy, steamy, flavorful---and any other adjective describing the insides of empanadas---on the inside! best part is that they were 100% homemade!! 


And as Adriana's mother told us: the NUMBER ONE RULE of cooking in the kitchen is that you must always have music playing!