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...

bi rite re-runs

So it's been a while...a really, really long while.
And I'm just going to apologize for that right here and now. With all of our summer laziness, also came with the neglect of this beautiful food blog. What did our blog do to deserve such neglect?! Nothing, I tell you, but it's time for me to give it a little refreshment.
With all this neglect of updating our blog, there was another thing I was neglecting---visiting bi rite. yes, thats rite folks (ha), I probably hadn't been to bi rite since the last bi rite post I made on the blog!!


But I finally had a relapse; yesterday, after a long excruciating gymnastics workout, I made my way over there. Unsurprisingly, the line was incredibly long, but I had no hesitation to jump right in there.
After having my mind set on ordering the good ol' brownie sundae, my mind was forever changed when I got closer to the front. I saw they had a new sundae in store; "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Sounds rather elegant, yes? Not sure how an ice cream sundae can sound elegant and dainty, but bi rite was somehow able to do just that.
It was composed of ricanelas ice cream (one of my faves: cinnamon and snikerdoodle bits!!), chunks of home made coffee cake (sensing the elegance yet?), drizzled with caramel sauce and topped off with their house made whipped cream. YUM.

I'm pretty sure that if i hadn't just worked out for 4 hours, it would have been much more difficult to finish this thing. What confirmed this belief, was that the cashier asked if i wanted a second spoon. Like, he thought that I was planning on sharing a bi rite sundae with someone else. He didn't know that my true plan was to eat it on my own. I gave him a laugh and said no (awwwkward for him!!) And then went on my merry way to finish the sundae. In fact, I polished it off to the very melting parts at the bottom. 

It was very satisfying.

smitten

With our love of ice cream, when we heard about a pop up ice cream store in SF's own hayes valley, we just had to go. this wonderful store was called smitten. This creative little store made ice cream right in front of you! We had heard the stories--the instantaneous ice cream making, the liquid nitrogen, oh my!
And so we went one day on a whim. And as we drove up, the line down the square got our hopes up even more. We jumped out of the car, got in line, and waited. And waited. And waited. The liquid nitrogen freeze technique was great and was the whole point of this store BUT, took a really long time. This was unfortunate but we decided we would spend the time waiting wisely and choose our flavor. Unfortunatley, out of the three flavors offered that day, only two were left. 

strawberry goodness

We really wanted to try salted caramel but so did everyone before us and so by the time we got to the front, we had strawberry and vanilla left. We ordered one of each from a hipster holding an iPad who wrote the order on a colored post-it and gave us a poker chip. This clever method of order/pick up worked pretty well except that because we had ordered two flavors, we got them at two different times. 

kickin it old school--VANILLA

When we finally got them we had watched the twenty somethings who made the ice cream pour the giant bottles of unfrozen ice cream into tiny liquid nitrogen mixers to freeze countless times. Wait a minute... Liquid nitrogen, you say? WHAT? Yes. This liquid nitrogen is what makes Smitten really special. They freeze each ice cream order individually. They pour their magic ice cream mix into the mixer, get some gaseous liquid nitrogen and use their chemistry genius to freeze up some iced desserts.


We got the ice cream--eventually--and it was good. Small but delicious. And extra good because we saw it get frozen just for us.

banana blob!

So today I was just doing some casual baking, as per usual. 
We had some rotting bananas in the fruit bowl, so instantly I thought "BANANA BREAD."
As I was pouring my lovely batter into the loaf pan, I noticed how much batter I had. I had A LOT, and it almost went to the rim of the pan. BUT, mothers know all, so I asked mine if there was too much. 
"won't it overflow?" I said.
"no, no, no! it'll be fine. you know, i always used to worry about that stuff too. 'is it too big? too much, too little?' no, the batter will be just fine!" assured my mother.
And in went the batter...

 ...AND OUT CAME AN OVERFLOWING PAN OF BANANA BREAD! the biggest blob that dropped to the bottom of the oven was salvaged, and eventually eaten by me. It was deliciously underbaked and the bottom was burnt, but i just cut that part off. it was a blob of banana bread! tasty!

banana blob

my mom said it looked like dog poo. i blame her for this.




Thankfully though, the rest of the loaf turned out beautiful!

bi rite creamery

There's something so ridiculously addicting about bi rite creamery. Their sundaes are just...I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF THEM.

browine sundae: vanilla ice cream, spiced pecans, housemade brownies, chocolate sauce and whipped cream!!!

I will literally have my brother drive me across town at 9:30pm, on a school night, just to go have one of their sundaes.

see this sundae right down here? it's the s'mores sundae (a special!)

are you ready for this? it's toasted MARSHMALLOW, atop chocolate ice cream, house made graham cracker pieces and caramel sauce. 

...and I am so very proud to say that last week I finally made it through their whole sundae menu--that's right folks, I've tried every sundae on the bi rite menu. And then some!!

banana split: caramelized bananas, toasted walnuts, malted vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and whipped cream!