thin mint stuffed cookies!

Everyone has bad days. You know, days where you find yourself listening to Adele on repeat, and generally doing nothing but eating and crying...

Self-pity is a natural feeling, and no one should feel bad about it! Yet there are probably 3 solutions to this situation, and the route you chose to take could very easily determine the type of person you are.

You could either: a), go out and solve whatever is bothering you. b), go onto pandora to create a coldplay station and brainstorm, or c), bake something, and completely avoid the outside world. 

Well obviously I went with choice C. It was one of those nights; where I simply couldn't handle anything anymore, and on top of that I was both incredibly hungry and bored. Thank god for girl scout cookie season, cause I had half of box of frozen thin mints in the freezer! (the other half was obviously eaten already)

So I went with my best instinct and decided to make some thin mint stuffed cookies! I decided to go with the typical chocolate chip cookie recipe, however, we were all out of chocolate chips. Luckily, I had some WHITE chocolate chips in the pantry, and I gotta say...white chocolate and mint=VERY GOOD COMBO.

I was a little nervous because the baking time called for 10 mins, but after that time, the cookies were no where near being finished. That was probably because of their colossal size! I hesitantly left them in for a bit longer (you know under baked cookies are my weakness!), and I gotta say...they came out pretty perfect.   

Imagine biting in to this puppy....the cookie is warm and doughy, the white chocolate chips melt in your mouth. The thin mint itself is soft and warm, but it still maintains most of the satisfying, minty crunch you get as you bite into this multi-textured cookie. I MEAN ITS HEAVEN. I HAD THESE FOR DINNER! Soooo worth it!

So remember this little life lesson: whenever you find yourself sitting through yet another self pity fest, go through the list in your mind. Should I solve this problem? should I sulk? should I rely on Adele or Coldplay to take the pain away?

The answer is NO...get off your butt and bake! Bake away, eat it all, and forget about everyone else, because you know you want to. 

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...

giving back

Gifts for the kind people of the world. Its certainly not christmas but I was in the mood to give back today and so i made an angelfoodcake for one of my friends fathers. This man is so great. He drives us everywhere (more than my own parents) and is always making us food and sining along to the radio and GETTING ME MY WRIST GUARDS. 
He drove for a total of an hour and a half to save me from getting stress fractures on my wrists and allowing me to compete beam last friday at gymnastics finals. The man is a saint.
In conclusion, I made him this cake. Angel food, his favorite kind. And my least favorite to make because egg whites take SO LONG to whip up into nice foamy peaks. But I did, and it turned out well...I hope.




Updates on the taste as well as some nice photos of it being served to come, after I give it to him that is.

chocolate cake

Lately, with all of the AP test studying, the final projects, the plays, the vacations and the gymnastics meets, we have had just about ZERO TIME to do anything food related. Which is a sham, because baking is such a stress reliever. Luckily, today my wonderful friend from middle school Everett came over and we baked a chocolate cake.
A delicious cake, made with cocoa powder and fresh brewed coffee and then a powdered sugar and maple syrup drizzle. HOW YUMMY!

We forgot to preheat the oven and so had to wait foreverrrr until we got the cake in there and by the time it came out, well, we were a little impatient and frosted/drizzled before--way before--the cake was cooled and so it was a little...runny. But I did get to show off my wonderful new cake stand (thank you, easter bunny).

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 :)

the turduken of cookies (an oreo stuffed inside a chocolate chip-less cookie)

(http://ilovemesomefood.blogspot.com/2011/02/double-cookie-love.html)

We've already featured the famous oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies here on ilovemesomefood.blogspot.com, in Heather's lovely post "double cookie love" --------> 
Our lovely friend Jenna baked the cookie featured in that post, and last night I figured it was time for me to take a crack at it as well!

Since there were no chocolate chips available in my household, I decided to just bake the cookies along with the recipe and completely disregard the chocolate chip part of it. I found the official recipe for these puppies here: http://picky-palate.com/2011/01/06/oreo-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookies/. Apparently this is THE original recipe for the cookies, and all other recipes I read linked back to this one. 

Obviously, they didn't turn out as I hoped because of their...tumor-like shapes. The whole point to these cookies is that the oreos are a surprise!

But as Jenna put it, they look like dainty hats!!

Now, if you're smart, you know that EVERYTHING is best underbaked. That is not a matter of opinion; it's pure fact. That's why these cookies are def best straight out of the oven. The whole top layer of cookie is basically hot, oozing cookie dough! and the cream in the oreo melts in your mouth. ufgpj, so good. 

they're awesomely photogenic the next day though...

oh, and did I mention that I stuffed two of these with THIN MINTS?! yeah, thats right. But only two lucky cookies got to be thin mint-ified, because it was kind of an experiment. Let me just say that those experiments didn't go to waste. I ate both of the thin mint ones, long before anyone else got a chance to try this batch of cookies. mwahaha.

it's girl scout cookie season!

...and that means that we are going to be purchasing, eating, and creating new things out of GIRL SCOUT COOKIESSSSS!
SO, you tell us. girl scout cookie ice cream sandwiches? girl scout cookie ice cream? girl scout cookies BAKED into OTHER cookies?

well....stay tuned for updates :)