Strawberry Cake Cookies

I love any cookie recipe that starts out with a box of cake mix.

My favorite is definitely my mother's chocolate cake cookies. With peanut butter chips. And the recipe always makes me giggle because you bake the cookies until the edges start turning brown. But they start brown. Since they are chocolate.

So I found this recipe on Pinterest and thought they were pretty, so decided to make them. The first time I read the recipe through, I was confused because I thought they were supposed to be strawberry lemonade cookies. Turns out, that's a cake.

Definitely not a cake.

So I had to buy the cake mix and the coconut for this recipe. Luckily, I carry my coupons with me all the time (because I'm crazy) and it turns out I had a coupon for Duncan Hines cake mix. Fantastic! Because Duncan Hines strawberry cake mix was the only strawberry cake mix I saw.

I'm not the biggest fan of coconut. Although I do love me some coconut macaroons. But this recipe only called for a cup. I figured it was more for texture than flavor, so I decided not to skip the coconut.

Not as pretty as the original, but super tasty.

These cookies are great. The coconut does indeed add some chewy texture. There is a buttery-ness at the end that keeps them from being too sweet. Sure, mine don't look as pretty as the picture, but I don't own a cookie dough scoop.

Conclusion: Yum! And ruminate on what chips could be added.


PS -- I'm finally caught up after missing a post during Easter! Although I'm sure no one noticed.

Grown-up Grilled Cheese: White Cheddar, Bacon, Pickles on Sourdough

Usually when I have dinner for my friends (who I've put in charge of helping me eat all this food I'm making), I try one recipe. Maybe two, if one is a dessert or drink.

What did I do this week?

Five new recipes.

Five.

At one meal.

I might be crazy.

But really, the grilled cheese sandwiches share ingredients, I made dessert the night before, and we needed something to drink.

I still might be crazy.

For this grilled cheese, the only ingredient I needed to buy was white cheddar cheese. I had bought a loaf of sourdough maybe a month ago with a coupon, so all I needed to do with that was take it out of the freezer.

I made the dessert the night before, so the first thing I did when I got home from work was put the bacon in the oven to bake. We've been over this before. I hate frying bacon.

I cut up all my white cheddar cheese, and started buttering my bread. Well, actually it was margarine since it spreads so much more easily, but who uses margarine as a verb?

Mine didn't look this nice. But then again, I was making an effort to evenly distribute the ingredients.

When my friends showed up, I put the grilled cheese on. Margarine side down, put on the cheese (although I forgot to factor in the fact that the slice of bread was larger than what I was used to so I should have had more cheese), then the bacon, then the pickles. And I totally used the kosher dill slices that I had picked up to try the "fried pickles" again. Martha's picture shows hamburger dills. Which I'm sure folded into the sandwich better (as they are floppier), but I love me some kosher dills.

Then I burnt the bread.

It still tasted fine, but I shouldn't have had the burner on high, I guess, and I should have tried to put three sandwiches in the pan. They were more difficult to flip.

I didn't burn the other side. Thank goodness.

Mmm, tasty.

The three of us who ate the bacon-pickle grilled cheese liked it. It might have been better pressed to melt all the ingredients together, but the bacon gave a good crunch and the pickle made it tangy. It was almost like a Cuban. Almost. Not quite. The pickle probably folled us into that.

And I don't like my grilled cheeses super cheesy, but this could have used a little more.

Conclusion: Press it. And use more cheese is the slice of bread calls for it.

Nutella Ravioli

When any of my friends decide to have us over for an evening, I offer to make something. Partially because it's a nice thing to do, but mostly (recently) because it'll give me something to blog about.


I decided to make these dessert ravioli with Nutella mostly because I already had all the ingredients. Does Nutella go bad, do we think? Because I definitely have no idea how long this jar has been open...


Anyway, I checked to make sure my friend had baking sheets (She just bought a house. Who knows what she has.)


I took the stuff to her house to bake it there. So they would be warm.

So pretty.

I couldn't get the ravioli to be square like the woman I copied the recipe from. Mine were sort of triangular. And definitely rustic. I forgot my camera.


I did just like the recipe said. Plop down the Nutella. Roll over the crescent roll. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake according to directions from the roll can.


They were delicious. Seriously. Everyone loved them. And no one had even had Nutella before, so I was just pleased they tried them.


I probably should have spread the Nutella inside out a little more so it would melt better. But they were still incredibly tasty.


Conclusion: Hold onto those crescent roll coupons.

Trying Again: Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

We all remember my disasterous cookies that turned out more like brittle.

Or at least I do.

My boyfriend is going on a road trip this weekend, so I decided to make him cookies for his journey. I decided to try these cookies again, first, because I had all the ingredients, and second, because I feel less bad making him sweets when I throw in oatmeal.

I remembered what went do wrong last time and made sure to use regular butter. Which I left out to soften while I made and ate my dinner.

I cut the recipe in half and measured everything exactly, except the flour. Because I don't have a 1/6 cup. So I eyeballed that.

When I mixed everything up, it still seemed really wet, so I sprinkled in a little more flour.

That was probably unneccesary, but I did it anyway. I'm just paranoid.

Look! They look like cookies!

The cookies didn't turn out like brittle, as they did last time. Which it good. But they did turn out crunchier than my other oatmeal cookies. Which isn't bad, but isn't preferrable.

My man liked them, and that's really all that matters.

Conclusion: Trust the recipe.

Ale and Cheddar Soup

I bought some pretty good bread for that stew I made last week that turned out utterly crap. Since I hadn't turned in into grilled cheese sandwiches, I figured I should make something this week that would go with it.

Ale and cheddar soup it would be.

I had trepidations about this soup. It sounded really good, but it seems I always do horrible things to cheese soup. So I resolved to follow the directions closely to minimize my chances of screwing it up.

And then I read the recipe. Kind of.

Doesn't it look good?

First thing I noticed was the it says, "A bottle of ale." Have you any idea how many different sizes there are for a bottle of ale? I mean, seriously. I went to the Party Source's website to see if there was a standard size bottle. Um, no. I found so many different sizes of bottles, it'll make your head spin. And that doesn't even count growlers. I have no idea how many fluid ounces are in a growler.

I had a heck of a time picking out a beer when I went grocery shopping. I finally bought Mt. Carmel Brewing Company's amber ale. It's not a beer I've ever had, but I'm all for patronizing local businesses. And I KNOW I don't like India Pale Ales, so I avoided them. When I saw Mt. Carmel had an amber ale, I wondered if Amber Bock was an ale. No, it's a bock/lager, silly. And while it might have turned out just fine, I didn't want to take the chance.

I couldn't really do anything ahead of time, so I got home, put the bacon in the oven to bake (because I always burn myself frying it), and then took the trash out. I used about half good bacon (I had a coupon for a brand I don't remember now, but I think it was called something blue?) and half mediocre bacon. I mean, I like using the good stuff, although I don't care for the price, and I was putting it in soup. How much are you actually going to notice the difference?

Of course, I come back in and started cutting up vegetables, and then read the directions again.

I was supposed to cut up the bacon into 1-inch strips.

Which I didn't do.

So much for reading the recipe.

I kept cutting vegetables. I tried to get everything as small as I could so it would cook down to nearly nothing. I only used two jalapenos (which I seeded and de-ribbed) because I didn't want the soup too spicy.

I added everything in the correct order. I pulled the thyme leaves off the stems I had instead of shopping them up because who wants to eat stems? I eyeballed that amount. De-leafing a thyme stem is time consuming.

I took the slices of cooked bacon and cut them up into the required 1-inch pieces and added them when directed. So that part didn't turn out so bad, at least. And the bacon was really tasty.

I was worried about things sticking to the bottom of the pan despite the bacon grease I cooked the veggies in, so I just kept stirring.

I only used one bottle of the ale. And I kept stirring.

I used partially pre-grated cheese (because I had it) and partially cheese I grated myself (because that tastes better). And I kept stirring.

I added plenty of salt at the end because the soup actually tasted a little sweet. I have no idea how much salt, pepper or cayenne I added. It said to taste, so I tasted. And kept stirring.

My soup, with the beer.

In the end, the soup was very tasty. I was glad I had bread and salad, because although the recipe says it's four servings, it's four small servings. Everyone liked it, and no one's taste buds were burnt out (as far as I was told).

Now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of that heavy cream...

Conclusion: 12 ounces is probably enough ale. Next time, try white cheedar? And more bacon, less celery.

Untitled deliciousness

It seems whoever came up with this champagne concoction drank do much of it that they forgot to name it. Name or no, though, my friends and I totally drank this at a small celebration.


It's half champagne and half lambic framboise, a.k.a. delicious raspberry beer. Lindemans is definitely the one you see most around here, and the most afforable. The only other one I can recall seeing was an organic version for twice the price. Seriously. I'll take the cheap-and-tasty one, thanks.

Classy like with etched glass.

I have no idea what kind of champagne or sparkling wine we used. We had two bottles. We decided to use the dryer one (a brut) because the lambic is rather sweet, which we know from experience.


You pour it. You drink it. It really is that simple.


And it was tasty, although with all that carbonation, not something you could drink all night.


Conclusion: A special occasion drink.


Potential variation: Peach instead of raspberry lambic. Or cherry, but I think I would like peach best.

Sausage Potato and Cheddar Cheese Stew

My man was coming to dinner. And I didn't feel like working too hard on dinner.

So I decided to make this stew. Come on. Potatoes? Sausage? Cheese? Yeah, it sounded really tasty.

Everything looks tastier in a bread bowl.

He was coming to dinner on Monday. I looked at the recipe on Sunday to see what I needed to pick up after work on Monday.

That's when I relaized it was a slow cooker recipe.

Because I'm a genius.

So I ran around my kitchen and panty and found, thanks to me remembering to buy chicken stock, I actually had all the ingredients. Well, almost all. I only have 9 oz. of smoked sausage and I needed 16. So I chopped up the carving board ham I had bought with a coupon and used that for the rest of the meat.

I put everything in the slow cooker and put it in the fridge so all I had to do the next morning was take it out and put in on the electical unit.

That might have been the mistake.

You see, I got home and thought my apartment smelled like burnt cheese. I put everything down and checked the crock pot.

My stew.

Everything was a little browner than the picture.

And the cheese was in two congealed masses.

Said cheesy masses.

I tasted it. It was too salty, the potatoes were barely cooked through and the sausage was mushy.

We had scrambled eggs and bacon for dinner instead.

Conclusion: Maybe combined all the ingredients the night before isn't always the best idea. And read the recipe more than one day in advance.

Orange Coffee Cake

I have a lot of cousins.

A.

Lot.

So when we have family get togethers, everyone chips in food or drink because it's just too much work and too much money for one person to handle everything.

So for Easter -- my first Easter in town and out of my parents' house -- I made sure to ask what I needed to bring.

I decided to bring a coffee cake.

A Paula Deen coffee cake. Not because I have any special affinity for Our Southern Lady of Butter, but because it seemed a heck of a lot easier than the other recipes I was considering.

I mean, seriously. I didn't even have to make my own batter. I just went to the store and used a coupon to get some Pillsbury Grand Flaky Layers Rolls.

Side note: I hate how Pillsbury constantly give out coupons, but it's never for just one tube of rolls. It's always three. I bought three because I figured I would use the others in short order, but still. Pain in the butt.

Anyway, I also bought one fresh orange since the recipe called for both orange zest and a small amount of orange juice. Now that I have a microplace, why would I buy the dry stuff?

Our Southern Lady of Butter's. Her glaze looks so pretty.

I also substituted slivered almonds for walnuts because I don't eat walnuts and I already had the slivered almonds.

I made it pretty much according to the directions. Since I used a square disposable pan, obviously, I couldn't put the biscuits in exactly as the recipe stipulated. And I didn't measure the orange zest or juice. I eyeballed it.

And was then tempted to eat the orange sugar as it was. It smelled so good.

I microwaved the cream cheese to soften it for the glaze. I probably should have used a hand mixer to make sure it was smoother, but I really didn't feel like busting out the handmixer. I just used a fork.

Twenty minutes was plenty to make the "cake" part come out golden brown. I added the glaze (which didn't turn out nearly as well as the picture) and let it cool on a trivet. 

Tasty, but not nearly as pretty.

When I tried it the next day, I shared had a corner piece with a cousin. It was delicious. The topping was very sweet, so I appreciated that the "cake" part was less so. Everyone who had some liked it. Although not enough people tried it that I didn't have to take some home. Good thing I didn't make a second one...

I had another piece the next day, however. Not as good. I'm not sure if sitting for an extra day was the downfall, or if the middle just wasn't as good. The middle part seemed doughy-er, and I can't be certain if that was because the middle didn't cook as well or because it had just had to long to soak up the glaze.

Conclusion: Don't make too far in advance. Almonds work fine. Maybe cook the biscuits a little longer. Use a hand mixer when a fork doesn't do the job.

Brownie batter dip

Sometimes, I will throw a party just to clean out what I have in my fridge.

That's totally what happened Easter weekend.

I had the girls over and proceeded to put together a cheese ball, a cheese tray and the lemon cake leftover from Wednesday dinner.

I also knew I had to make something new for the blog.

So I made brownie batter dip.


My friends will make brownies just to eat the batter, so I figured this would be a hit.

The only thing I needed to buy was cocoa powder. And another thing of cream cheese, but that's a regular item on my grocery list so it was no big deal. I used 1/3 less fat cream cheese, not because I'm that concerned with being healthy, but because the regular and the 1/3 less fat taste similar enough to me that I use them interchangeably. (The same cannot be said for fat free cream cheese. That stuff is nasty.)

I let the butter and cream cheese warm up while I worked on a cheese ball and a coffee cake for Easter. And even after sitting on the counter for a good 45 minutes, they were hard to blend. It might be because I need a new harn mixer, but it's probably because mixing butter and cream cheese is a crime against caloric intact and the mixture was rebeling.

What it's supposed to look like.

Once I added all that sugar, though, the mixing went easier. Go figure. Guess it was a caloric rebellion.

I finally got everything together. Although the picture shows the dip being garnished with mini chocolate chips, I went with white chips for the contract. And because I bought the bag but rarely bake with them.

Not bad looking...

I couldn't decide what would go best to dip in said dish, so I asked a friend to bring graham crackers. Kind of perfect.

Everyone tried it. Everyone liked it. I still have half the bowl left, though, because it's pretty rich. I, however, do not think it tasted like brownie batter. I think it tastes like really rich icing. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you like icing. Eating it with a graham cracker actually reminds me of childhood and I can't figure out why. Is this what Dunkaroos tasted like? Or I vaguely remember mom making us snacks of graham crackers with leftover icing. That's probably the one.

Conclusion: Cut the recipe in half or invite more people. Call it something other than brownie batter dip.

Power Burger -- Steak pizzaiola burger

I wanted a burger.


And Rachael Ray, while irritatingly perky, does make good burgers.


I decided on this recipe because it seemed pretty straight forward and I had most of the ingredients already in the house. All I needed was the bread, the provolone cheese, and the parsley.


Yes, I decided to buy fresh parsley.


It's fairly ridiculous how big a bunch you have to buy in order to get just a handful. I seriously need to find a store or market where I can buy only what I need. I need bulk bins. And not just for herbs. Maybe I only want one stalk of celery; why do I need to buy a whole bag?!


But I digress.


I cut the recipe in half because a half pound of meat for a burger is excessive in my book. I decided to use the ground beef I already had in my freezer instead of going out ad buying ground sirloin.


Except, of course, I realized as I was stuck in traffic on the way home from work on Wednesday that I had forgotten to take the meat out of the freezer.


So I stopped and got some ground round on the way home. I was already running late, what's another 15 minutes? I would have gotten ground sirloin, except I couldn't find any.


I used the smallest onion for that component because I can only handle so much onion. I used kitchen shears to chop the parsley because it was just not working with me on my glass cutting board. When the meat was all mixed up (and it really didn't want to stay together very well), I scored it in thirds so we would each get 1/3 pound, instead of the 1/2 pound the recipe actually called for. I put them in the pan and hoped for the best.


Now, my friend couldn't find sesame semolina, so she went with three-cheese semolina. Win. By the time she got there/the burgers were close to done, I was ready to eat. Really ready.


This is where I took a short cut.


I didn't even bother to read the directions thoroughly, I saw something along the lines of melting the butter and infusing the garlic and I said, Forget it. I'm too hungry for that!


So we spread a little butter on the bread, dusted it with parmesan cheese and garlic salt and put it in the oven while the provolone on the patties melted.

I realized after I started eating that I should have gotten more patty in the picture. Oh well, it still tasted good.

The burgers were delicious. Seriously. They were really good, and I'm not the biggest fan of actual onions. The bread didn't seem to hold up super well to the juiciness of the burger, but that could have been because he took that cut with the garlic butter. I'm fairly certain that's why, but the burger was just so tasty, I didn't even care my hands were a mess. It would have also helped if the patties were flatter, but like I said, I had a hard time keeping the patties intact.

Conclusion: More substantial bread. Remember to thaw the meat. Use a smaller onion. Make the patties flatter.

Vodka-thyme lemonade

Sometimes, I don't feel like baking.


That's usually when I make an adult beverage instead of dessert.


I wanted to try something super different, so I decided to make Martha's vodka-thyme lemonade. Yes, Martha and I really are on a first name basis, now.

I don't have a picther that pretty.

The first thing I worried about was not getting enough of the herb flavor. I have noted that problem with the lavender pound cake.


I need not have worried about the thyme.


I cut the recipe in half since I wasn't sure if we would like it and there would only be three of us. I made the simple syrup the night before because I knew I would not have time to make it AND let it cool before my friends were to show up for dinner.


The thyme smell did not overwhelm my kitchen, but the syrup definitely turned out smelling a little pine-like. And delicious.


I was running late getting home from work, so the lemonade was not prepared when my first friend arrived. I put her in charge of amking it.


And then neglected to tell her I had cut the recipe in half.


Luckily, she thought two cups of vodka seemed like way too much, so she only put in a cup and a half. It should have been one cup.

Yummy. I even garnished it.

I also had a lemon available, so she zested a little bit of that. And by a little bit, I mean a lot of zest.


I used lemon juice from a bottle because I was not about the juice 24 lemons. That's just crazy talk.


The recipe didn't call for any extra water, which I thought was odd, but we went with it. We just put in a bunch of ice.


We all thought the drink was marvelous. The thyme added something without being overwhelming. It was too tart and too lemony-strong for me at the end, but water fixed that up real nice.

Conclusion: Make sure to tell someone if you've halved a recipe. We will probably make this again.

Slow-cooker pulled pork

I love to try new things. Especially foods.


But no matter how hard I try, if there is pulled pork on a menu, I can't get anything else.


I love pulled pork.


Now if only those chefs/restaurateurs would just quit messing it up by putting it on bread...


Anyway, I've never made it for myself, so I resolved to try. I decided to go with one Martha's recipes because it used a slow cooker and I already had most of the ingredients. 


I was, of course, missing the meat.

What did I just say about the bread?

I stopped by the grocery store near my job after work to pick up the cut. I much prefer an actual butcher, but the only ones I'm aware of were out of my way between work and home. I went to the meat section and they did not have boneless pork shoulder.


Drat.


So I went over the the man behind the counter and asked if he had any. He did not.


Double drat.


Well, sir, I said. What can I use instead?


He asked me what I was making. I told him. He recommended the pork loin. And lo, there was one right about 3 lbs.


I leave for work around 8 a.m. Now, I know that may seem late to a lot of people, even luxurious compared to my hours when I was a school photographer, but it's still too early for me. I'm not a morning person. I enjoy sleep. So I got the whole thing ready the night before and stuck the pot for the crock in the fridge. I don't know if that eight-hour marinating process affected the taste much, but it must have done something. How could it not?


Either way, I accidently doubled the pepper (yeah... I can't read) and then was worried about the lack of liquid. But I decided to trust Martha.


I actually remembered to put the pot in the crock and turn the whole thing on before I left the next morning. Score one for my brain in the morning. I'm not one to worry about crockpots, so I forgot about it while I was at work.


I got home at the end of the day, walked in the door, and wondered why my apartment smelled like cooking meat.


Yeah. Special.


I broke out the two forks to pull the pork, but I might as well not have bothered. Just one fork did the whole job, the pork was that tender. I pulled the whole thing and then mixed it around in the sauciness in the bottom of the pan. 


Then I tasted it.


It was just to fricking good.


Although it could have been better.


I know I try to stick to the recipe, but the pork needed something, so I added it. A dash of apple cider vinegar and the pork was perfect.

Tastiness. And no bread.

I didn't make the cabbage because no one attending dinner was a huge fan of it. And Mom brought rolls, but I don't think anyone made an actual sandwich.


Everyone really liked it and I was very glad of it.

Conclusion: Taste the pork. Make it better. Vinegar is an under-utilized fixer.