Still standing...

Hello readers! It's been a sad and busy week for us. I apologize for my lack of posting. This month already has proved to be challenging. The month began pleasantly anticipating the usual May fun of my birthday and Mother's day. I also, began planning for the 2011 Bloggers Bake Sale to support Share Our Strength in the fight against childhood hunger. However, life switched paces quickly as my grandma's cancer worsened and she was placed into hospice care and moved in with my family. We tried our best to make her comfortable, and to spend as much time as we could with her. Unfortunately, she grew weaker by the day and lost her battle with cancer on May 13. Her services will be held this week, so I won't be posting much until after then. She was a beautiful woman inside and out, as you can see from these photos. Thank you for all the prayers and kind words. My family greatly appreciates it!

On a positive side note, the bake sale was a huge success! I will share a post later this week with recipes, photos, and details surrounding the bake sale! Thanks to all those helped me with the bake sale during this hectic, saddening time. Thanks to Donna, from My Tasty Journey, and Melissa and Danielle from Jersey Bites, for all their hard work baking sweet treats for the bake sale! I couldn't have done it without, especially during this time for my family! Your generosity was so appreciated!!

Check out the Bloggers Bake for Hope Virtual Bakesale

If you are interested in buying some wonderful, homemade, and creative baked goods and also help raise money for Breast Cancer/ Susan G Komen Fund, then here's your chance! Stop by the Bloggers Bake for Hope Virtual Bake Sale website starting today and going on through midnight on Friday, May 6th. You can then bid on the item of your choice (and there are lots of photos of yummy sweets to peruse, including Anginettes made by me!)

After that, simply choose the amount you would be willing to donate in exchange for that baked good and place a bid. The winner will be notified afterwards and sent to paypal to finalize their order. Then us, the bloggers, will be packaged your baked good and sending it your front door. I hope that you take some time to visit this virtual bake sale and help fight breast cancer with sweet treats!

We finally bought a house!

I apologize for my absence this past week or so, but don't worry it's for good reason... I have an announcement to make.

We are home owners!

Hubby and I bought our first house last week and it has been a crazy few months trying to get everything finished up. We are super excited and ready to tackle the new and fun challenge of owning a home! There is some construction that needs to be done still so we won't be moving in for a little while, but our weekends are happily full of sledge hammers and dumpsters! My hubby teases it's our home away from home since we aren't staying there yet. I can't wait to fully move in ! I'll be sure to keep updating throughout the process. Ah, my very own kitchen... Soon!

Since our attorney is close family friend, I thought I'd make her a treat to say thank you for her hard work with the closing. And what's more appropriate then house cookies! I made these once before when one of my best friends bought her first house. I tried adding some new elements such as keys, moving boxes, and sold signs. I made templates for the cookies by drawing on card stock and then cut the cookies out using a small paring knife.

These cookies were a variation of the usual vanilla and almond version. I've been playing with different flavors recently and trying to new variations of my usual sugar cookie recipe. I truly loved this one! It was different and the lemon was a great addition!


Lemon And Vanilla Cookies

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp Madagascar bourbon pure vanilla powder
Zest of half a lemon (or the zest of a whole lemon, if you love lemon)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt


1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and powdered sugar on medium until smooth, about 1-2 minutes.

2. Add in the egg, vanilla extract, vanilla powder, and lemon zest until blended.

3. Next, pour in the flour and salt on low speed just until incorporated.

4. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough until chilled and firm(about 2 hours).

5. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll the dough out between two lightly floured pieces of wax paper to about ¼-inch thickness.

6. Cut with cookie cutters and transfer to the prepared baking sheets.

7. Bake on 375 for 8-10 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through baking, until fully cooked but not at all browned.

8. Allow to cool on the baking sheet 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

9. Decorate with royal icing, marshmallow fondant, or any other favorite toppings! I used royal icing from this recipe I used earlier to make house cookies, which was my first attempt to decorate with royal icing and ever since then I've been hooked!

Source: Annie's Eats
Also featured on: Tempt my Tummy Tuesday and Tasty Tuesday

Banana Split Float and Introducing... Hubby's Kitchen Endeavors!

Welcome to a new section of my blog devoted to the men in our lives. It's called Man Made! (yes cheesy, I know) It's a compilation of the food and drinks that are made by hubby, with or without assistance. This usually consists of drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), all things grill related, and any form of cooking involving a giant flame. Hubby himself will be sharing his new concoctions with you whenever he gets a moment in the kitchen to experiment! I'm so proud of hubby and his culinary skills considering when we met in college, he could barely handle making mac and cheese from the box, and he lived off hamburger helper and various "processed, pre-made food". Since then he has mastered much more and introduced real home cooking into his repertoire. Hope you enjoy this new little segment! (Man Made recipes unless otherwise noted are hubby's own creations, for better or for worse, and are made, photographed, and written by himself)


Banana Split Float

On occasion I get to help in the kitchen, usually I'm in charge of all "tall jobs" and make a great sou-chef. My kitchen tasks consist of cutting chicken, peeling 4 million cloves of garlic, or getting that plate off the top shelf. Once and a while I have a culinary inspiration, and it almost never works out. I would say that 9 times out of 10 the smoke alarm goes off and on a good day we still have enough of an appetite to enjoy the take-out that became a necessity. One of the places in the kitchen that I'm not so bad is Mixology.

Amanda had purchased this bottle of banana liqueur to make bananas foster around Christmas time, but life got in the way so she never got around to it. So I had been staring at this bottle for a few weeks and the craving finally took over last night and I just had to use it! I rummaged around and came up with a little something. Banana Split - for grown ups! I found some of our favorite daiquiri mix and a ton of little toppings and sweet liqueurs. I grabbed our trusty blender and went to work. Each layer tastes delightful on its own but all together this drink combines well an taste like one of my favorite desserts!

2 1/2 cups of ice, divided
2 oz banana liqueur
1 tbs caramel sauce
4 oz strawberry daiquiri mix
1 oz Grey Goose Vodka
1 oz Godiva Chocolate Liqueur
4 small scoops of vanilla ice cream
2 oz Bailey's Irish Cream
maraschino cherries, for topping

1. First, blend 1 cup ice and banana liqueur until smooth. Then add caramel and blend again for 10-20 seconds

2. Pour into bottom of the glass and rinse blender.

3. Blend 1 cup ice, daiquiri mix, and vodka for about 30-45 seconds. Then add chocolate liqueur and blend again until incorporated.

4. Tilt glass and pour slowly while spinning glass. Rinse blender.

5. Blend 1/2 cup ice, ice cream and Irish cream. Blend until there are no chunks of ice left and mixture is creamy.

6. Pour slowly to float foam on top of liquids. Top with a maraschino cherries or two, throw in a straw, and you are all set to enjoy your dessert/drink!



Also featured on: What's Cooking Wednesday

Giant Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie

Welcome to the Autism Awareness section of my blog post for the month of April in honor of my brother! I'm sure most people have heard of autism, but how many people really know what it is? Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that affects people in every walk of life. It is classified by particular behaviors and difficulty in communications. Not every person with autism presents the same characteristics. People are categorized "on the spectrum" based on levels of functioning. But what's so surprising is how very many people are being diagnosed with autism, asperger's or other disorders on the PDD spectrum. According to a study done two years ago, one child in every 110 children is born with autism. Even more so affrected are boys with a 1 to 70 ratio. Where we live has one of the highest rates of autism in the country; 1 in 94 children born are affected. Those results are staggering when compared with other developmental delays. These reasons, plus many more are simply the beginning of why it's crucial to spread awareness. The more we know, the more we can accomplish.


Now back to our regularly scheduled program... I've been trying to think of a way to share Autism Awareness in my food this month and have come up with some good ideas and some not so good ideas. This simple recipe is merely a fun way to spread awareness with baked goods which feature the colors and symbols of Autism Awareness. Some people call this concoction a cookie pizza and others call it a cookie cake. I'm leaning toward pizza, but either sounds good, because it'll be gone so fast!



Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie "Cake/Pizza"
This cookie cake is simply a double batch of the peanut butter cookies I previously made here, but I will share the revised recipe.

1 stick butter (softened)
1/2 cup peanut butter ( I used smooth, but chunky would be great too)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar 1 egg
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (I used min kisses!)

Chocolate Ganache (for topping)
1 cup of heavy cream
1 1/2 cup chopped chocolate



Giant Cookie

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Cream butter, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar in a mixing bowl.

3. Add the egg and continue to beat until fluffy.

4. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

5. Slowly add dry mix to peanut butter mix while beating.

6. Stir in chocolate chips.

7. Cover a 16" pizza pan with foil or parchment and spread cookie dough with a lightly greased spatula. I even gave the foil a quick spray before filling the pan just to be sure there had no surprises later...

8. Bake on 350 for 18-23 minutes, until fully cooked through. Remove from oven and let cool.


Ganache

1. Take your chocolate bar and break it up into smaller pieces for easier melting. Spread out the pieces in a large bowl. You can use whatever chocolate you have on hand, but the better the chocolate, the better the results. I used a large milk chocolate bar I had hanging around Valentine's Day.

2. Heat the cream on medium-low. Watch it carefully. It will simmer for a few minutes and then as soon as it reaches a boil, immediately remove it from the heat and pour over the chocolate.

3. Stir the chocolate and cream together until smooth and fully incorporated.

4. Pour the ganache over the cookie and help spread it out to the edges with a spoon or spatula.

5. Then decorate as you desire. You can use candy, marshmallows, other types of melted chocolate or peanut butter, icing, nuts, or whatever toppings you want. I used mini M&Ms in the colors of the autism awareness ribbon. Then just cut a slice and eat!



For more information about Autism, please visit these sites:
Autism Society of America
Autism Speaks
Easter Seals



Remember to Support. Educate. Advocate. for Autism Awareness now and all through the year!
Source: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, previously blogged by me, originally from Stephanie Cooks

Also featured on: Full Plate Thurdays