Apparently I really like peanut butter

So, It has been almost a month and a half since I have posted last..... it was not supposed to be that way.  Gertrude and I were going to have an epic last go at this whole baking thing and I was going to write an awesome post complete with witty puns and mouthwatering photos.   Considering how committed of a baker I am, very few things could possibly come in the way of this last hurrah.  Well, one thing did.... I found out I had to move to Minneapolis a month earlier than I intended for a new internship.  I make that sound like an absolutely TERRIBLE turn of events.... it really isn't.  I am so lucky to have gotten this job and would not trade anything in the world for it, including a good last Gertrude post.

I'm going to be honest and say that despite Gertrude's many quirks,  I really miss her.. especially since I scrubbed her for hours as one of my official lets-see-how-much-of-a-deposit-we-can-get-back tasks. I must say- she looked pretty darn fine by the end of my first oven cleaning experience.  I really think she regained at least 20 years to her life.  It's a shame I did not get to enjoy her at all in that state since I could not risk dirtying her up!  

This last month or so I have not yet had a kitchen of my own, so minus the occasional boxed brownies or cake batter cookies, I have not really had the chance to make anything.... something about doing a whole extravagant baking project in someone else's kitchen doesn't exactly go with my whole being a good guest plan (even though I am sure my hosts would have appreciated the treats!).  Yesterday though, a friend delivered a whole big box of my kitchen stuff to me... I felt like a part of me had been revived! One of my precious items in the box was a food processor.  Now, don't get me wrong- I appreciate food processors.  My food processor can crumb-ify oreos like it is nobody's business.  However, my appreciation for food processors has skyrocketed after my peanut butter making adventure today.

I love peanut butter.... skippy, jif, peter pan, trader joes..... you name it, I love it.  However, I do try to eat natural peanut butter since I am not all about things like partially hydrogenated oils.  Unfortunately, natural peanut butter is much more expensive and now since I am a poor college grad, I need to save every bit of money I can.  Nuts alone are way cheaper than a jar of natural PB or almond butter, so I decided to give making my own a whirl.  I am not even going to bother posting a recipe, because it is so freaking easy.  Just put your nuts in your food processor and let it spin for about 5 min (be patient!!).  I made normal slightly-salted PB and AB... my only fail of the night was my other batch of honey PB..... it did not get the smooth creamy texture I was aiming for.  I predict that I put the honey in too soon, so next time I am going to wait till the very end to add the honey.  Lesson learned (even though the picture of it is gorgeous). Anyways, I could not encourage everyone enough to give this a shot.  Go Nuts! (sorry, had to have at least one lame pun)

In 'Merica.... we eat peanut butter!

Now that summer is in full swing, I can spend all of my free time doing what else??... baking. Tis' the season of being reimbursed for making cookies and delicious bars as "work expenses".   Since I can't bake alllll the time, I have to do other things with my time. One of those things is..... watch world cup soccer.  I completely admit that I am the ultimate bandwagon fan, but I have been all about US soccer for the last few days (today ruined it a bit more me but I am still fairly impressed how the US did in these games). So, what better way to celebrate thursday at work than to make world cup themed desserts? (since last thursday was the day of the most glorious loss in US history to advance out of "the group of death")

I spent a while brainstorming of how I could integrate soccer into my dessert without straight out making cupcakes or something.... though to be honest, I really like the sound of World Cup-cakes..... Anyways, I brainstormed everything that is black and white.  The first thing that naturally comes to mind?? Oreos. Ok, so I was going to have Oreos in my dessert.  And as great as Oreos are as a stand alone treat, I needed something a little more than that! Then I thought, what do we have in America that we do not have in Germany (our opponent)..... and then it came to me: PEANUT BUTTER.  I don't know how whole countries could live without peanut butter, so I decided that this would be the perfect ingredient to integrate into my dessert to remind every how awesome the US is (in most ways that is).  So it all came to me:  Peanut butter blondies with Oreos on top resembling soccer balls.  I used this recipe with the minor exception that I left out the milk chocolate chips and replaced that with peanut butter chips.... I wanted to keep the emphasis on the peanut butter after all. These were seriously delicious, which made up for US losing.... and the somewhat questionable looking soccer balls.  But you get the idea, right?

Say cheese (cake)! And don't forget cookies.

Well, luckily I am keeping up with my one post a month- however, now that I am a free bird on summertime I expect to update much more! I am nearing the end of my relationship with Gertrude so I'm going to really have to make the most of these next few months with her.... can't have her forget me, right? This past week has been an exciting week for Gertrude... not only did she nail another batch of cookies, but she also managed to not mess up the one dessert I have never actually made successfully before now: cheesecake!

I will start with the cookies I made the day before the cheesecake, which maybe allowed Gertrude to warm up a little bit (well a lot, literally) so she was sharp and ready to go for the next day's bigger challenge.  This past quarter I have been in a lab class that has essentially consumed my life.  Two 6 hour labs a week are basically a day killer... and a week killer... and a quarter killer. And if you imagine that we are doing anything productive and scientific in those 6 hours, there is also just about that much outside work of writing lab reports and studying for quizzes that will ensure this productivity. While I make this class sound horrible, you can imagine that spending time with the same people for these long periods of time (not to mention the time slaving over lab reports) allows you to develop a sense of commodore with your classmates. I guess broken pH meters, ripped protein gels and countless upon countless rounds of Bradford assays can really bring people together.

To celebrate, we had a potluck on the last day and everyone was required to make (bring) something.  I of course, had to bring a dessert.  I ended up taking another recipe off the famed bucket list bake board on pinterest: buckeye brownie cookies! .  This is yet another recipe that is way too easy for its (and my) own good.  Peanut butter... chocolate... really can't get much better than that. I also wanted to integrate some of the best memories from my class into the cookies; my professor worked on research about the photo-sensing properties of a particular cyanobacteria.... so like many proud researchers much of his lectures were based upon these bacteria.  The claim to fame of this particular compound? it is going to dye blue m&ms from now on since it is a natural food coloring.  Therefore, I needed to somehow integrate the color blue into my cookies- I went with some blue icing that may or may not actually contain phycocyanonbilin. I also decorated the cookies with some awesome dinosaurs, microplates, plasmids and birds... things only MCB120L students will understand.

So that was the warmup.  The next day was the true test with the cheesecake.  My housemate mentioned to me that she wanted a cheesecake.... any type of cheesecake. Guess what I find the most difficult baked good to make? cheesecake....any type of cheesecake. So I definitely felt the pressure.  She also mentioned that she wanted something light as in a "oh now it is summer time" sort of thing.  There goes my peanut butter cookie dough nutella cheesecake plan! I tried to think of a fruit that would complement this "light" cheesecake (seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me!). At first I decided I was going to do strawberry shortcake... then I thought that seemed too boring.... I mean, in this day and age you can even get strawberry shortcake flavored frozen yogurt.  So I settled with raspberry white chocolate cheesecake, mainly since I was not sure on my housemates stance on raspberry and dark chocolate mixed together (turns out she is a fan but I was not sure how to casually slip that into a conversation before hand).

Anyways, I went to the store just like a normal person and bought 4 containers of cream cheese (because that is what every normal person does, right?), along with all the other fattening ingredients that would compose my masterpiece.  I started mentally preparing myself for the job. Another element of challenge was that I had a very small window of time to make this cheesecake (about 2 hours).  This left me very little time to put this whole thing together.  I used this recipe for raspberry white chocolate cheesecake  with oreo crust- it was really the picture that sold me.... did I think mine would look exactly like that?? no way.  Did I think it could even be close in comparison?? one could hope. Making this cheesecake, I had two major complications 1) I accidentally added the sugar in with the melted chocolate chips and heavy cream.  This was the kind of mistake that I was hoping would simply work itself out 2) my attempt at making a water bath. For those who don't know, a very common way to make a cheesecake is to put the cheesecake pan in a large pan of boiling water. Of course, the only pan I had that was big enough was a large springform pan.  And of course, that springform pan was a little bit leaky and could not hold the water.  Therefore, the water I put in it completely spilled everywhere...... so no water bath was to be had.  I just wrapped the pan in various layers of tin foil to try to buffer the heat a bit.

So, I put my cheesecake into the oven and hoped for the best.  Even after I took it out when I thought it was done (sorta just going with my intuition here), I had to wait a torturous 8 hours to let it set.  So I didn't actually find out it was actually good until the next morning!  So, did it look as good as the picture? nope.  But it definitely looked somewhat close, which I, as a complete amateur cheesecake maker was quite proud of.   It was definitely a little rough around the edges... the Gertrude touch!  But the most important thing was that it was gone within a day... that is what assures me it was a success.

Nutella stuffed cookies... yes, I said Nutella.

       Sometimes when I know I am going to bake something, I plan it days in advance and patiently wait until I am done with classes and all that nonsense for the week.  This time.... not even close.  There I was sitting in molecular genetics class, learning about transcription methods of prokaryotes (so exciting), when I the ultimate seed planted in my head that needed to be grown RIGHT AWAY.  This class, which is from 4:40-6:00 falls right during the time where I get very very hungry and also towards the last few minutes of the class, very very bored. Usually towards the last few minutes of class, I cave into my boredom and check my phone.  When I glanced at my email, I had gotten a notification form pinterest (because they apparently think I need a reminder to check my pinterest... yeah, right!) saying the my housemate had posted a dessert on our household "bucket list bake board" (all the desserts that I am going to make before we all leave).  Browned butter nutella stuffed chocolate chip cookies with sea salt.... I almost died.

As I impatiently waited out the last few minutes of hearing about the different sigma binding site on the core promotor region, my mind was already rolling of how I would find time to make these bad boys.... that evening. I used the following recipe  http://thebitesizedbaker.com/2012/09/18/nutella-stuffed-browned-butter-chocolate-chip-cookies-with-sea-salt/ to make the most amazing cookie I have ever made in my life.  Well done Gertrude.  The only credit I give to myself is for my killer intuition that lets me know exactly when the right time to pull out cookies are- you would always be surprised how much cookies harden up after they are out of the oven, so I always err on the side of undercooked..... and if they are undercooked??? well I would say death by undercooked cookies is a good way to go out. Anyways, these were truly magical.... I was a little bit skeptical about the sea salt but it really just added a wonderful last touch to a practically perfect cookie.

 JUST YOUR NORMAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES, RIGHT????

 PSYYCHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

CInnamon Pull-Apart Bread

         Happy April everyone! I am happy to say that I have been keeping up with my once a month updating of this blog.  The most recent of of my baking escapades was cinnamon pull-apart bread for easter morning.  Instead of using Gertrude for this endeavor, I used my parent's new giant convection oven; Lets call him Dusty (he gathered quite a bit of dust waiting to be installed).  Think of Dusty as the buff, stud-muffin of a grandson of cranky old Gertrude- MUCH easier to deal with and MUCH more effective at it's one job.  I also was able to use the holy grail of baking- the kitchen-aid standing mixer.  When the very far in the future day comes when I have a dispensable income, you can bet that the kitchen-aid will be the first thing on my list.  

         Anyways, considering this was for easter bunch (and I had basically my dream kitchen to work with), there was no way I was going to mess this up.   Learning from past experience of never trusting old yeast, I made sure to throw a new package of yeast into the basket at the grocery store to ensure that those little guys were just as sharp and ready to perform as was Dusty.  This was definitely a good choice. Nothing is better than that moment when you see that your bread dough has indeed doubled like the recipe said- no need to be a wishful thinker "oh, yeah.... that kinda looks like it has grown a little bit, right??".  

        One of the kitchen designs that has always baffled me is the placement of a microwave right above the oven.  Considering that most microwave handles are stainless steel, it makes absolutely no sense to have a large source of heat coming from right below.  Use of the microwave and the oven/stove are definitely not mutually exclusive so it is most definitely possible to get some very painful microwave opening experiences.  So where am I going with this?  Basically, while the hot microwave handle is quite literally a big pain in the...... hand..... inside the microwave is the PERFECT place to let bread rise (just don't turn on the microwave obviously).  Perfectly nice and warm, without feeling bad for wasting energy in any way by turning the oven light on or something.  This plus my brand new yeast created bread that rose like no other.   Anyways, I used the following recipe for the pull-apart bread http://joythebaker.com/2011/03/cinnamon-sugar-pull-apart-bread/ and the following recipe for cream cheese frosting http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/cream-cheese-frosting-recipe.html since you really can't have cinnamon bread without cream cheese frosting.  I sadly don't have any kitchen debacles to recant since the preparation went absolutely perfectly.  NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

March Madness

Ahhh it feels so wonderful to have absolutely nothing to do but update this blog right now.  March is traditionally a very hectic month for me due to winter finals, but that does not mean I can't find a few spare hours to bake here and there.  It is just a lot easier to bake something than to document it on here- thus, I have some catching up to do! The beginning of March is full of birthdays at my house- this adds an element of challenge because I need to somehow make and decorate the elaborate treat item without having the birthday girl know about it.  I would also have to store the item somehow (ie shove it to the back of the fridge and hope no one sees).

At some point recently, my housemates came up with the idea of "hinterest", a pinterest-like platform that is specifically for finding and pinning items/recipes you like so that wonderful people in your life can make and or purchase those items for you.  Since the domain name for "hinterest" is already taken (and I don't think I have time in my life to maintain ANOTHER webpage), I figured we just had to use pinterest itself and I could make a board that people could pin on for hints of ideas of recipes I could make.  That way, I can choose among the "hinted" recipes so it is somewhat of a surprise.

For week one of birthday madness, I went with the cookie dough brownies.  I would say the creation of this recipe was analogous to purchasing something for a family member as a gift knowing that you too will be able to take part in the enjoying of that item.  Since there are very few things I like more than cookie dough and brownies, let alone them together, I'm not going to lie and say there was no selfish motive here.  However, I think the one down side of actually making the brownies is knowing just how much butter goes into making them.  Ignorance is bliss! But that honestly did not stop me from consuming an inappropriate amount of these brownies.  The pan must have weighed 20 pounds..... my household probably collectively gained that much after consuming the entire pan in 1.5 days.  Anyways here is the recipe for the brownies, I used "Brooke's best bombshell brownies" for the brownie base

COOKIE DOUGH BROWNIES 

Brownie Base:
1 cup melted butter
3 cups white sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
11/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

• 
  
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Prepare a 9x13 baking dish with foil.
• Combine the  butter, sugar, and vanilla in a bowl. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing well 
• Mix  flour, cocoa powder, and salt in a bowl. Gradually stir flour mixture into the egg mixture until blended. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared baking dish.
• Bake in preheated oven until an inserted toothpick comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. 

Cookie Dough Layer

After the brownies had cooled, I prepared the cookie dough: I basically combined all these ingredients into a bowl 

2 cup flour

4 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt (can be left out or reduced to just a pinch)

1 cup margarine

12 tablespoons granulated sugar

12 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

water (add small amounts until the dough is proper consistency( about 1/8 cup at a time to avoid making it )

Fudge Frosting: 

6 tablespoons butter, softened

2 2/3 cups confectioners' sugar

1/2 cup cocoa

1/3 cup milk

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1. cream butter 

2. add in sugar and cocoa

3. stir in milk slowly 

4. add vanilla 

Next, I put the cookie dough on the brownies, put it into the fridge for a bit and then frosted it.  This is it! 

Red Velvet Brownie Cake

With the amazing success of my cookie dough brownies, I had a lot to live up to for my second house mate who had a birthday exactly a week later.  Going back to the "hinterest" board, I had many options; however, I decided to go with a red velvet oreo truffle brownies.  Anything I have ever made with oreo truffle mix (crushed up oreos and cream cheese) has been pretty rockin'.  So I could not really see anyway that this could go wrong.  I used the following recipe (I did have it though since I wanted to fit it into a round cake pan): http://saorganics.com/red-velvet-oreo-truffle-brownie-bars/  

The result: the best creation I had ever made (in the opinion of my housemates)- I still thought the cookie dough brownies were pretty good (the brownies bias). I was very proud of my decoration as well- shaved white chocolate can make anything look better. 

Irish Soda Bread 

There are two main times when I like to bake: 1) when I have nothing going on 2) when I have way too much going on and just blow it off by baking.  This bread product was a classic example of the latter.   I had an enormous amount of studying to do, but figured celebrating my Irish heritage was significantly more important than learning about the muscles of the larynx.   I had always seen recipes for irish soda bread online and was intrigued by the simplicity of the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/irish-soda-bread-recipe.html. I normally am not a big fan of things with raisins in them- I mean, what can raisins go in that chocolate chips would not be better? However, I realized the specific recipe I found didn't actually call for raisins- it called for currants.  I had never had currants before, but I figured I would just go all out.  Anyways, the end product was very delicious- it had a tint of orange and the currants complemented it perfectly. 

Anyways, so there we have it- march madness.  Luckily march isn't over yet and i'm on spring break: so hopefully I will be back on soon!

"Mint to be" bars

Though I honestly think I am one of the luckiest people in the world in terms of the wonderful opportunities and people in the world around me, I have to admit that this winter has been a series of unfortunate health mishaps- from a season-ending injury last fall to a nasty flu to my most recent diagnosis of mono, nothing has really gone to plan. After my poor mono-infected body lay on the couch eating nothing but soup, barely having the energy to walk across the room to get my computer charger for an entire week, I finally started feeling better this past friday.

To celebrate my regained energy and desire to eat food (I do find this a reason to celebrate) I decided I had to bake sometime.  During my sloth-week, I also spent an inordinate amount of time on Pinterest.  bot only did I rename and reorganize my boards but also I pinned a whole plethora of new desserts to make when I finally felt up to it.  One of such desserts were Loaded M&M Oreo bars.  The pictures looked amazzzzzing and I had most of the ingredients.  These two things made me to decide to go for it on Friday afternoon, aka the first day I had been outside in over a week.

 I decided to put a little spin on it and go with a mint theme: T-1 month before St.Patty's day, right? Also I would like to commemorate my current favorite TV show "Grey's Anatomy" (which returns this week yahoo!!) by calling these "Mint to be" bars- thank you April Kepner (I'm totally team Jackson for those that care/understand).  Though having mono is definitely NOT how I envisioned the winter of my senior year, I am hoping that something good will come out of being able to relax a bit- meaning, everything that has happened was "mint to be".  I know that is cheesy but despite hours on the pinterest humor board I cannot think of anything better and I am just SO excited for Grey's this week.  On to the recipe:


1/2 cup unsalted melter butter
1 large egg
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup cake flour
18 Mint Cream Oreos
1/2 cup green and brown M&M's (yes, I picked them out)
8 mini-york patties

1. preheat oven to 350F
2. melt butter and add to large bowl
3. add egg, sugar and vanilla
4. add flour until combined
5. put Oreos and plastic bag and crush up
6. add Oreos to batter (I found that this mixture pretty much looked like some gross pesto mixture- though I agree "gross" and "pesto" should never go in the same sentence)
7. spread batter in 8 by 8 pan (I used by new brownie pan that had individual brownie squares and filled 9 of them)
8. cut up york patties and sprinkle on top
9.  sprinkle M&Ms on top
10.  bake for 15-22 minutes depending on type of pan (I did only 15)


Taking these out of the oven, I was a bit skeptical at the first glance.  I have some impatience issues sometimes, especially when I suspect something I've made has turned out a bit questionable,  so decided to scrap a little crumb off one of the top bars.  Examining the little crumb, I realized that York patties look like a gross, snotty white mess when melted.  This didn't stop me from putting it in my mouth however, since york patties in any form are delicious .  As I ate it, the gooey,white melted York cream mess crystalized suddenly and turned into pure sugar, sort of like some chemistry experiment I did in high school when we learned about supersaturation.  So basically my bars transcended some weird law of matter and taught me that the cream in York patties is supersaturated with sugar..... neither of which is a bad thing.  Though to anyone making this recipe I would probably recommend sprinkling the york patties on AFTER baking. Not that chemistry isn't exciting.

On a side note, all of my doubts I had about my brownie pan making overly hard and underly chewy/gooey brownies were alleviated when I realized these were cooked PERFECTLY.  Slightly crisp around the edges but just so so soft, chocolatey and minty in the middle. soooooo good.  My housemate and I did some serious work of these in an embarrassingly short amount of time.  We decided to leave the last two for our other two housemates, which ended up being a struggle of will. Our thought process- we could just finish them off now and they would never know about them....Unless they read my blog...... then it would be awkward.  So we resisted and let everyone in the Alice Palace taste the magic.  

The Hy(bread)

When reflecting on the different bread products I have made and written about, I realized that I have pretty much run the gamut on pretty much every type- bagels, muffins, bread, rolls, pretzels, corn bread, english muffins, calzones, scones and so on.  So when I finally finished my midterms this past week and was determined to bake something, I needed to come up with someone new to avoid sounding too repetitive.  Basically my baking falls into two categories: 1) over-the-top desserts (aka cookie dough, cheese cake, oreo, reese's peanut cup stuffed goodness) 2) or things I make with flour, yeast and water.  Since I am in the middle of my running season, I try to avoid numero uno unless I have a really good excuse or a really large group of people to distribute them to.  I sadly did not have that type of excuse this weekend so I had to settle with making some yeast product.  

A side note on yeast; I realized that the expiration date on a jar of yeast is only for an UNOPENED jar of yeast.  That would have been nice to know about a year an a half ago as I continued to use my two year old jar of yeast! I have had some failed yeast bread attempts and now I probably know why:  unhappy yeast that was probably over the hill. Apparently yeast jars should not be used longer than 6 months.  I thought I was being thrifty by getting the big jar of yeast but apparently not since I could not have possibly used it in 6 months unless I baked every day.  Anyone who can do that either 1) owns a bakery 2) has a lot more free time on their hands than I do. 

Anyways, in my attempt to come up with a unique product, I settled on English Muffin Bread.  My very strong ambitions to bake emerged fairly late last night so I did not have time to do a long-rise product.  I did find a fairly quick recipe for english muffin bread.  I like english muffins.... and bread... so why not give it a try to combine the two? I used the following recipes with no modification, except that I used my mini-loaf pan instead of the 8by4 pan (only have a 9 by 5 and didn't want to get flatbread!). http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/english-muffin-bread-2

My fresh, young and energetic yeast was also very happy and decided to actually make my bread double (usually I am overly optimistic about my bread's progress.... it's risen a little bit... right???? This time I had no doubt). I also actually measured the temperature of the milk/water mixture to make certain that I don't scald the yeast to death at such a young age :)  I did adjust the baking time a bit to only 30 minutes since I was using my mini-loaf pan.   The result was pretty much as expected, english muffin and loaf form.  Add some butter and honey to a nice toasted slice to complete a wonderful side to a nutritious breakfast (or dinner like I did!). 

Crockin' and almost rollin' with Gertrude

This year for christmas I got another kitchen appliance to add to my and my housemates' growing collection- you would think that with a food processor, waffle iron, sandwich maker, panini press, 2 blenders, fondue pot, george foreman grill and a ricecooker that I would not need anything else.... however, the aspiring adventurous chef inside of me said otherwise, so I asked for a CrockPot.  The idea of a CrockPot is very romantic- you can just whip up something in the morning before running out of the house and then come home to a warm,savory meal .  There are a few caveats however- first off, many of the recipes involve lots of processed food items that you simply throw together. Entire bottles of ranch dressing, cans of "cream of XXXX soup" or packets of taco seasoning are not exactly what I want to be putting into my body.  Therefore, I am on a mission to find healthy and delicious crock pot recipes with which I can fulfill this fantasy of coming home to a nice meal.  And when I mean delicious, I really mean it- my CrockPot is giant so anything I make I will be having for days!  Second, many of the recipes involve more work than you would expect- namely chopping lots of vegetables. So, I would like to find some recipes that minimize the amount of work (without sacrificing taste or nutritional value that is).

Last week on Saturday there was a 30% chance of rain.  That may seem like a normal winter day to anyone in any other year or in any other place (well actually it probably would be raining, not just a 30% chance) but this was a very significant day here in California since there was actually a CHANCE of rain- we have not had one drop of rain this entire year. Because of this it was actually somewhat wintery looking outside and I decided I needed to make a nice warm meal in the crock pot- I settled on a hearty beef stew.  I have never made stew before, so decided to strictly follow a recipe to ensure that this stew that I was going to be able to make at least 5 meals out of would be good. I followed the http://allrecipes.com/recipe/slow-cooker-beef-stew-i/ minus the celery since I simply do not like celery.  I also realized as I was putting in everything that I did not have Worcestershire sauce..... so I just added a splash of soysauce and ketchup (thank you yahoo! answers).  All in all, the stew was a tad bland. However, a sprinkle of salt fixed that!

Also for christmas I got some more pans! I got a brownie pan with individual brownie squares (which I am a little bit skeptical about since brownie edges are the worst) and a mini-loaf pan.  I decided to make use of the mini-loaf pans a make some whole-wheat cornbread with the following recipe http://www.food.com/recipe/whole-wheat-cornbread-80963.  My only faux pas came when I accidentally used the spoon I had been stirring the stew with (which had a strong flavor of onions) to scoop the batter into the loaf pans. Most of the time my worst nightmare is to have my baked good "contaminated" with onion-ness (I am not the biggest onion fan in general, let alone on things it just not be on!), but the cornbread with a tint of onion was actually pretty good.  Would I chop up onions and put them into cornbread.....??? probably not.  But this cornbread went wonderfully with my stew and was in the form of nice little freezable loafs. Now I'm off to go eat some of this stew....a week later. (don't worry I froze it too!)

Zebra Brownies

I will start by apologizing that I am writing this post almost two weeks after the creation of this product.  Lets just call this my belated holiday post.

If you go back to my december 2012 posts (wow 2012!- that was a long time ago.  Still can't believe it is 2014), you will see my entry called "gifty granola" which explains my yearly holiday tradition of giving a jar with some sort of delicious food item to my relatives.  I have done cookies many times, did granola last year and decided that this year I needed to continue to expand my horizons and do some other IAJ recipe.... IAJ obviously is an abbreviation for IAJ (a bet somewhere, in the world, that is a valid abbreviation).  The two requirements for IAJ recipes that I arbitrarily decided :  1) the receiver should not be required to put in more than 3 of their own ingredients into the mix to prevent them getting ripped off... some gift it is if they have to add 10 ingredients! 2) the mix has to look pretty.  That is really all there is to a successful something IAJ .

After browsing a bit online for some inspiration, I came across a recipe called "tuxedo brownies"  which fit all of my VERY strict requirements an IAJ recipe.  So, I decided to go for it. Basically, it entails layering walnuts, white chocolate chips, chocolate chips, brown sugar, flour, cocoa, salt and sugar.  I especially liked this recipe because it has no baking soda or baking powder to add to each one- that is annoying.

 If you haven't picked up on it, they are called "tuxedo brownies" because they have white chocolate chips and chocolate chips (black/white).  I was going to go with this exact same concept, but then I started to get the feeling that these are the types you give out at a wedding...... not christmas.  Maybe one day I will give my wedding guests tuxedo brownies IAJ but christmas was not that day! So, I racked my brain for other black on white things besides a tuxedo.  I came up with cow brownies (Davis resident obviously), Dalmatian brownies, piano brownies, skunk brownies (ew) and zebra brownies.  None of these are particular merry or festive as a christmas gift should be, so I just went with the most exotic- Zebra brownies.  I also found cool scrapbook paper that I could decorate with.  I ended up following the recipe exactly and then dolled up the jars to fit my zebra theme. I also obviously had to make a sample of these chewy, chocolatey and delicious brownies to bring to the party.  I suppose you could always make the brownies without even including the whole jar part if you are just making them on your own, but if you want a wonderful gift to give someone to give them the impression they are a masterful baker, you know what to do :) Happy 2014!!