Peanut Butter, Chocolate, and Bacon: Something for Everyone!

What could be better then a peanut butter cookie with chocolate chips? A peanut butter cookie with chocolate chips and BACON!! Although I personally would enjoy this creation (I am a vegetarian), I know that many people would love the combination of sweet and salty goodness, the soft cookie and crisp bacon. And you can't forget the maple glaze that goes with the crispy bacon! I found this fun recipe on foodnetwork.com and just had to try it. And for the first time I did not come out of the kitchen a mess because of my new apron! Unfortunately, I can't report on the taste just yet. The cookies were sent off to my taste tester in Vermont. Fingers crossed that they are good!

You can find the recipe here for Food Networks Peanut butter chocolate chip bacon cookies. I modified a few things after reading the reviews and to make the recipe my own.

Ingredients (there is a lot!)

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon chili pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• nearly 1 pound of bacon
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

*The above list is what I used in my cookies. I used a lot more bacon then the original recipe calls for, a little more chili pepper, and more chocolate chips.

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and chili pepper in a bowl.

Cook bacon until crispy. (definitely not my favorite part)

Mix together butter and reserved bacon drippings (gross!). Beat until smooth.
  

Beat in peanut butter until combined. Beat in sugar and brown sugar until creamy. Add egg and vanilla
Add the flour mixture in 2 parts. Be sure to scrape the bowl.
If the dough is too crumbly (which mine was) add a little bit of water until desired consistency.



Fold in 1/3 to 1/2 of the crumbled bacon and chocolate chips to the dough.

 

Form dough into balls and flatten out on cookie sheet. Sprinkle extra bacon on the top.

Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes. I actually think 14-15 minutes was best in my oven.

Cooling cookies!

Maple syrup glaze: 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 cup maple sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla
This makes a lot more glaze then what is needed.

The finished product!!

I may not know how good they taste, but I know how good they look! The maple glaze added an extra touch of sweetness to the not so sweet peanut butter cookies.  Even though I don't eat bacon, I have to admit the smell in my kitchen today was amazing! I will report back once I hear from my taste tester how they are!

4th of July Weekend

The 4th of July is a holiday that doesn't involve gifts and a lot of preparation, but instead it is all about family and friends, good food, good beer, and fireworks. This might be my favorite few days of the year. I have a thing for fireworks, and really don't understand why all holidays aren't celebrated with a display of beautiful colors that everyone can enjoy. The weekend should be relaxing, simple, with thrown together cookouts, laying poolside, and enjoying the company of those around you. As much as I love to cook and bake festive food for holidays, I didn't want to spend the time baking all weekend. I decided to have a few things ready to go for a no-fuss weekend, including breakfast, cookies, and another red, white, and blue treat.

The first thing on my weekend menu is a healthy, Egg White Frittata for breakfast. I didn't follow any recipes, just threw it together with the left over veggies I had laying around.

Ingredients: 12 egg whites, 3 small sweet potatoes, 1/4 chopped yellow onion, 1/2 zucchini, and feta cheese, scallions, Italian seasoning, and black pepper.

Saute the veggies with nothing but cooking spray, pepper, and some seasoning.

Whip the 12 egg whites with a little water.

Pour eggs into veggie mixture. Add feta and extra seasoning.

Cook on stove top until outsides are completely cooked.

Broil for about 10 minutes or until golden brown and set in the middle.

A delicious, healthy breakfast!

For my cookie treats, I decided to go as healthy as cookies can get, while still being delicious. I found a recipe for Heart Smart Chocolate Cherry Cookies.  Some of the changes I made: I used 2 egg whites, instead of 1 whole egg. I divided the batter in two, and did white chocolate chips in half, dark chocolate in the other. I also used cherry flavored craisins.

Whole wheat flour, oats, and egg whites, make this recipe a healthier option.

Mix flours, oats, baking soda, and salt. 

Melt butter in saucepan. Add brown sugar, stirring until smooth.

 Pour butter and brown sugar into dry ingredient mixture.

Beat with a mixer. Add dried cherries (or craisins), vanilla, and egg whites.

Beat until combined.

Fold in chocolate, or white chocolate.

Bake at 350 for approximately 12 minutes.

Nomtastic oatmeal, cherry, chocolate cookies!

I personally liked the white chocolate ones the best. I thought the sweetness really complimented the tartness of the cherry flavored craisins.

The final treat I made was more patriotic, but very simple. Red, White, and Blue Chocolate Covered Strawberries. Yum!



Decorating assembly line.



A relaxing, fun 4th of July weekend was a success! After all of the delicious food, beer, and good times, the weekend ended with my favorite thing with my favorite person....

A Perfect Summer Dessert!!

When it comes to summer desserts, light and fruity is much more refreshing then something heavy. One of my favorite fruit-cake combinations has always been angel food cake. You can pair almost any fruit with the sweet, light, and fluffy cake. The easiest thing to do is go out and buy an angel food cake and cut up some fruit for the topping, but there is nothing homemade about that! I decided to take on the challenge of making angel food cake from scratch, a more tedious task than I had imagined. The thing about angel food cake is that everything must be mixed very precisely. I like things already portioned out, so instead of making a cake, I went with angel food cupcakes.

I looked up a few recipes, but ended up taking parts of a couple to come up with my own. My fruit of choice: blueberries! With a hint of lemon.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup of cake flour, sifted
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 egg whites, room temperature
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• zest of 1 lemon
• blueberries

This recipe makes approximately 16 cupcakes. Heat oven to 325.

If you don't have cake flour (which I do not) you can use flour and cornstarch as a substitute. For every 1 cup of cake flour the recipe calls for, use 1 cup of flour - 2 Tbsp. Add in 2 Tbsp. of cornstarch.

 

Whisk together the first 3 ingredients.

Mix the egg whites, water, vanilla, and cream of tartar.

 Mix the egg mixture on low until foamy. The turn the speed to medium and slowly add in the sugar 1 Tbsp at a time. Turn the speed to high and beat for 3-5 minutes, until medium peaks form.

*This is the tricky part and where you have to be patient. Make sure the mixture isn't too glossy and stiff. The peaks should fall over when you put your finger or handle of a spoon in the mix.

Add in the lemon zest to the egg mixture.

Turn the mixer off. Add the remaining dry ingredients (powdered sugar, flour, and salt) by folding in 2 parts. Fold as many blueberries as you would like.

Divide among lined cupcake pan. Bake for 15-18 minutes.

You can top of angel food cake with a meringue icing, but I decided to go a healthier route. I mixed a little bit of vanilla extract (lemon would also be very good) into fat free cool whip and topped each cupcake with a little cool whip. Garnish with fresh blueberries.

The perfect end to a fresh summer dinner of salmon and salad.

I was finally able to bring one of my treats home to Pittsburgh for my family to enjoy! My mom made a delicious dinner of salmon and salad. We finished it off with blueberry angel food cupcakes! Perfect on a hot summer night when you want a little something sweet.

There are things to make besides cupcakes...who knew?!

I have been promising myself that I would venture out of the cupcake world and make some real food. Well today I finally did. Over the summer, I am going to try and master not just baking, but cooking healthy meals. It is always better to be well rounded! After a weekend of delicious food and lots of beer drinking, I felt like I needed to focus on healthy eating this week. A trip to Trader Joe's was in order. And a successful trip it was. I decided to make a weeks worth of meals to include, kale, zucchini, sweet potatoes, and fish.

For my mixer project tonight, I decided on mashed sweet potatoes. But not just any mashed sweet potatoes. Light, flavorful, summer mashed sweet potatoes.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Pineapple and Banana

Easy and delicious! Now for the rest of my meal. I wanted something spicy to compliment the sweeter taste of my sweet potatoes. So I created my own chimichurri sauce to cook my fish, kale, zucchini, and onions in.

Ingredients: 1 lb sweet potatoes, 1 banana, 1/2 cup pineapples, 1/4 cup orange juice, 2 tablespoons honey, salt and pepper to taste

Peel, cut and boil the potatoes until tender.

Add all ingredients to the standing mixer.

Mash with flat beater, but don't over beat so they are a little bit chunky.

Chimichurri Sauce

Ingredients: garlic, parsley, ground pepper, red pepper flakes, olive oil, rice vinegar, water

Throw all ingredients into the food processor to blend. I didn't measure anything, but estimated how much I would need to get the flavor I wanted. The recipe I was looking at used white wine vinegar, but I used rice vinegar and it tasted great.

Pour over top of kale, onions, zucchini and fish.

Cook on low until fish is done, veggies tender.

The perfect combination of sweet and spicy.

A healthy, light, refreshing meal that I will enjoy all week!

More healthy mixer cooking to come next week!



Is it a pie or a cupcake?

Happy Memorial Day! When it comes to Memorial Day cookouts, the food possibilities are endless. My mixer and I could have whipped up many delicious dishes, but I had some people to impress with my culinary skills. I decided to stick with something that is tried and true. You guessed it...cupcakes! But these weren't going to be just any cupcakes. They are cupcakes that look like berry pies! Perfect for a start of summer cookout.

First, I found a delicious vanilla cupcake recipe from Martha Stewart. The recipe makes 24-30 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cups cake flour
• 1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla


Mix the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt until combined. Add the butter until coated. The only adjustment I made was for the cake flour because I didn't have any. I used a little over 1 cup of regular flour, and 3 Tbsp. cornstarch.

Whisk wet ingredients together, then add to the dry mix in 3 parts.

Bake at 325 for 17-20 minutes.

Next - the surprise on the inside! This really makes it taste like a pie. I put some frozen berries on the stove, added sugar and cornstarch to make the berry filling.
Now it is cupcake filling time!

 

Time to decorate!

Making the icing look like pie crust.




Mini berry pies in the making! Cover the cupcake with a thin layer of icing.
Cover the top of the cupcake with M & M's. Lattice icing over the top to look like the top of the pie.
The outside crust is made with a star tip.

2 Dozen Cupcakes!



I ran out of M & M's, so I made some picnic ants on the grass. Simply put a few drops of green food coloring in a bag with coconut to make the grass. Then use brown M & Ms or other large brown candy to make the ants.

 Needless to say, my filled cupcakes again were a hit (and hopefully impressed some people)! Everyone thought they were adorable and love the fruit surprise in the center! But now it's bathing suit season. I think I need to lay off the cupcakes and make something healthier next time!