Gifty Granola

          For the last 5 years for Christmas, I have given my relatives cookie mix in a jar (basically a jar with layers of flour, sugar, chocolate chips, m and ms, cranberries, nuts, rice crispies, oats, etc that the lucky recipient can whip out wonderful cookies by just adding eggs and butter).  However, unlike previous years when I have had two whole weeks after finishing finals until Christmas, this week I only had ONE week, so I for some reason felt like I did not have in my oh-so-busy schedule to spend two hours making cookie jars. So I decided I should do something else instead.

           Since I have the artistic talent of a first grader, I decided I needed to stick with food.  Everyone likes food, right? I also really couldn't abandon the whole jar idea (not like having to stick with the jar idea really limited my options since we all know that ANYTHING can be eaten out of a jar).  I should also note that  I'm trying to slowly make this blog transition from its current state (Peanut Butter crunch bites, Oreo truffle filled cupcakes, pumpkin pie bars, etc) to its original state (HEALTHY whole wheat pumpkin muffins and HEALTHY squash mac and cheese).  I don't want to make that transition cold turkey though, so I decided to go with one of the foods that commonly straddles the line between health food and not health food: granola!

            Luckily, I am at my family home right now so Gertrude did not have to be involved with this project that has a lot of burn potential.  I just realized that is two weeks in a row without Gertrude, but I think this is a well needed break between us- distance makes the heart grow fonder. Anyways, the oven at my family home is pretty solid- it is definitely a plus that it can fit two baking sheets on a rack (Gertrude of course can fit exactly 1.8 sheets in her until she refuses to close- I guess she just insists we leave her on for hours at a time while making cookies). For that reason, I'm glad this other oven...let's call him..... Steve.... can fit multiple sheets, because this project literally would have taken exactly 15 hours in Gertrude.  I am not kidding.

For this project, I used the recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/granola-recipe/index.html

             I followed it exactly as listed- I even bought good maple syrup instead of using the maple syrup in my fridge that was really just high fructose corn syrup dyed brown with a truckload of vanilla flavoring dumped in.  I had a temporary crisis when I realized the cashews I bought were salted.  I put them in a colander and washed the salt away.  Crisis averted.

            The whole baking process was quite intensive .  Granola is very susceptible to burning, so I had to stir the granola every fifteen minutes to prevent some parts from turning to ash.  However, my intensive TLC to the granola was worth it, since I only burned 1 out of 6 batches.. not too shabby. After it baked and cooled for a while, I jarred it up in some 1 quart jars.

           Looks a little bit boring, huh? These were a bit bland looking (not tasting, luckily!), so I needed to somehow jazz them up.  If I had time and motivation, I would whip out my hot glue gun and fabric scraps and make nice little fabric skirts on the lids.  However, I had about 15 minutes total to finish this last part of the project so I needed something simple.  My conclusion? shove paper bags in the printer to make labels to give the "rustic look".  Even though the sounds the printer was making as the labels were made were really troublesome, I was quite happy with my quick fix. Here are the the final results!

PBCBs

             Now that I am on break, I have lots of time to both dream up and more importantly execute some wonderful treats.... thankfully I have lots of wonderful people in my life to give these wonderful treats to ! As you will soon see, it would be bad news bears if I was left to alone to consume every last one of my..... ahhhh I need to think of a name right now... how about... peanut butter crunch bites! (more like peanut butter CRACK bites, but we will keep it PG here).  The scary thing about these PBCBs (you are free to have the acronym stand for anything you want) is that they are very very very easy to make...... like, a little bit TOO easy to make.   So if you are ever in a pinch and need to win people over really quickly (since we all now that is the only reason to give people delicious food in the first place) these would be a very intelligent, reliable choice.  I know I say this in pretty much every one of my posts, but there is really no way that peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter and chocolate can go wrong.  I guess I sort of took a risk adding in pretzels and peanut butter chips, but I am pretty darn sure that everything turned out ok.

            I realize that this recipe does not actually call for Gertrude (hence the fact that they were just SO easy to make...Gertrude makes everything harder), so Gertrude was just an innocent bystander in this operation.  The first step was to make the peanut butter goo: 

1 cup crunchy peanut-butter (you can use creamy, but that would take away from the CRUNCH part) 

1/4 cup softened unsalted butter

1 cup powdered sugar

2 cup crispy rice cereal 

for this step, just mix the peanut butter, butter and sugar together until you have a homogenous mixture,  and finish by adding the cereal.  Now what you are going to do is get a piece of wax paper and roll balls the size of a gumball (about forty balls total from the mixture).  

Now, it gets fun.  Get mini pretzels that are either square shaped or circle shaped to make little sandwiches with the peanut butter goo.  When I was at the store, I was planning on getting square pretzels, but for some reason, despite having 20 different types of pretzels, they did not have square pretzels at the store.  The only type that was similar was a bag of checkered circular pretzels.  These were labeled as "butter-rich", which I was a bit skeptical about, but I figured since we have peanut BUTTER and unsalted BUTTER, BUTTER-rich pretzels would beautifully complement the other ingredients.  

So basically, sandwich the peanut butter balls between two unbroken pretzels and press down just a little bit.  It is ok if there is some overflow, because you are going to be dipping these in chocolate anyways.  

Now, get 18 ounces chocolate candy melts.  After they were 2/3 of the way done melting (per the instructions on the bag), I added about 3/4 cup of peanut butter chips in the bowl to add a little touch of peanut butter to the taste (because you can never have enough peanut butter, right??).  Then I proceeded to dip each pretzel sandwich in the chocolate and then let it sit on the wax paper.  I was feeling creative so I melted the rest of the peanut butter chips and drizzled them over the completed candies.  The final result?? Buh-Bam!! 

Tis the season for awesome cupcakes

I should start out by saying....I don't always bake cupcakes, but when I do..... they are freaking ridiculous!  I mean the word ridiculous in the absolute best sense of the word, as the few times I bake cupcakes a year I always feel the need to transcend normal cupcake-ness and add something awesome to them... like cookiedough, or chocolate truffles.  This last week, my household held a classy holiday party in which a dessert competition was held- how could I not resist concocting the most pinteresty holiday cupcakes I possible could?

So, after a bit a deliberation- my partner and crime and I decided on this- chocolate cupcakes with mint  creme filled sandwich cookies (you know what I'm talking about.. remember, no name brands) truffles stuffed in the middle. Of course, these cupcakes had to be aesthetically pleasing as well, so we decided to arrange the cupcakes in the shape of a candy dressed Christmas tree.  I must say, this was a fairly involved process to put all of this together... good thing it was the weekend before finals week that I decided to take on this project. Whatever.... #YOLO#cookoverbook.

The first step that I did the night before was to make the mint creme filled sandwich cookie truffles.  The truffles are best put in the cupcakes if they are cold, so I decided to do it the night before because I didn't have time the next day to let them sit in the freezer for a while... and I really just was anxious to get this show on the road.  The truffle making was a bit messy, but quite simple.  First, I ground up the a whole package cookies (minus one that I may have eaten) in my handy dandy food processor to make cookie dust.  Then I poured the dust into a bowl and mixed it with 8 ounces of softened cream cheese.  I pretty much just used my hands for this step, and then made 24 balls out of the mix.  Then, I separated them by wax paper and into the freezer they went.

Flash-forward next day.  The recipe I used for the cupcakes was http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateCupcakes.html.  I followed the directions of this recipe pretty much word for word (after-all, I didn't want to risk screwing anything up, so I decided to just do exactly as it said). However, I did 1.5 times the recipe because I wanted to make 24 cupcakes instead of 16.  As far as putting the truffle in,  basically what I did was to put a tiny bit of batter (just enough to cover the bottom) on the bottom of the cupcake tin... then I put a truffle in each one and proceeded to cover the truffle with batter.  I ended up using all the batter, which is a bit surprising since the truffle is about the size of a golf ball and took up quite a bit of space in each cup, but the cakes ended up rising without overflow and were a perfect size.

Next, I had to tackle the frosting. http://www.food.com/recipe/vanilla-buttercream-frosting-from-sprinkles-cupcakes-222188   was my recipe of choice and boy was it good!  After-all, how can you really go wrong mixing powdered sugar, vanilla a butter. I think the most important part of this is to used UNSALTED butter.  I never realized until now that if the recipe does not specify salted vs unsalted... use unsalted! I've definitely made some frosting in my day that has tasted a bit weird, and now that I think of it, it was probably because of too much salt! Anyways,  I would highly recommend using a standing mixer if you have one, but a good old electric beater could work too if necessary.

Finally, it was time to decorate! Making candy ornaments sounded a bit too involved (I had already spent wayyyyy to much time on this project), but I decided that I could do some sort of Christmas lights.  So, I did some research and found the instructions on http://www.hungryhappenings.com/2012/11/quick-and-easy-m-and-mike-and-ike.html to make candy Christmas lights.  I learned that fusing together candies with an open flame is lots of fun... and opens so many possibilities for hybrid colored candies.

Finally, we were able to put it all together! (doesn't the attractive color of green on our counter complement the green on the cupcakes well?).  Also,  don't mind our man of the house, Scuba Steve, in the background.  He wanted to be associated. Most importantly  did we win? Well, we settled for second place, but Gertrude and I will take that as a win.... it was a win in our hearts.  Well, that's all for now... till next time! (luckily I'm on winter break so till next time won't actually be that long!)

Tea-time: Crescent rolls, scones and gingerbread.... oh my!

       Alright, I sort of skipped blogging last week, but luckily this weekend my kitchen was TEAming with bakers as myself and some TEAmmates had a nice TEAparty for no good reason other than we wanted an excuse to drink and eat pastries (there really isn't a need for any better reason than that).  I have never really been a big tea person, until the last couple of weeks.  My roommates drink tea a ton, so I suppose I was indirectly peer pressured into buying my first box of tea. And apparently most forms of tea (namely green tea) is supposed to be TEAriffic for your health so I figured it is not exactly a bad thing if I become a tea-drinker....along with the fact that tea is not that expensive so its quite the sTEAl(I'm obviously super excited about it since I am being super sTEAlthy with all these puns... I'll stop).  I forgot to mention it also makes me feel refined and civilized.. nothing wrong with that!  Anyways, on Saturday we had Gertrude fired up for about 90 minutes... and I must say she was on her best behavior... for the most part.

The first thing that was made by one of my lovely roommates was crescent rolls filled with mini chocolate chips.. yum! Crescent rolls are particularly vulnerable to being burnt, but we were able to take them out of the oven just at the right time, before the wrath of Gertrude could ruin their flakey and gooey deliciousness.  I have never really baked with pre-made crescent rolls, but I have realized the possibilities are almost endless.  Just pop the dough out of the tube, unroll each one, and fill it with whatever you want- candy, peanut butter, marshmallows... anything!.  Last week, she filled it with chocolate hazelnut spread (sorry as an NCAA athlete I'm not allowed to endorse specific products) and those were fantastic as well.

       The next delectable treat that was made by me, was chocolate chip scones.... what is a tea-party without scones, right?? The recipe I used washttp://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Chip-Scones-104462 and I pretty much followed the recipe to a TEA (sorry, that one came naturally).  The recipe said it made six scones, so I was considering doubling the batch to make sure there were enough for the tea-party, but selfishly decided not to so I could save the extra chocolate chips to sprinkle in my oatmeal :)  However, it is good that I didn't, since I was able to cut up the dough to make 18  scones from the batch.... perfect! I guess some people like GIANT scones? I guess I could see that... these were pretty darn good! I just wanted to stay away from the whole heart-attack in scone form by making these guys a little smaller.  And aren't you supposed to have little food items at tea-parties, like mini sandwiches and such? 

      I had a close call with Gertrude, since you were supposed to brush milk on top of the dough right before baking, and then sprinkle some sugar on. Since I do not have a brush (note to self, add to Xmas list), I just tried to spoon little bits of milk on each one and spread it around... FAIL.  Most of the milk ended up on the pan, and when some of the sugar ended up there too, it caused some nasty burning action on the pan that almost tainted the delicious scones... Lucky I was able to salvage most of the scones, but I must say Gertrude... you almost got me! 

The last thing that was made by my other roommate (who I also want to give a shout-out to for letting me use her camera.. notice the slightly better quality!) was gingerbread.  Not gingerbread cookies, or gingerbread men... just Ginger Bread.  She made it from a box mix from a store I suppose I cannot disclose the name of... but it was delicious! Moist and gingery, just as I would imagine gingerbread to be.  I suppose gingerbread cake would actually be the best way to describe it.  

So there we have it! I'm sure next weekend I'll have a nice festive post and I have a holiday get-together that involves a dessert competition! Everyone better watch-out, Gertrude is going for the win!