Mini Angel Food Cupcakes

Hi! Remember me!? I know…it has been a much longer hiatus than I anticipated! I apologize for just up and disappearing like that! In case you have been drooling over the mini angel food cupcakes, I thought that it was time that I FINALLY shared the recipe. What a cliff hanger, eh? Over a 2 month wait! On the bright side, school has been going fantastic! I am officially half way done my didactic year (thank goodness!). I hope you all have been enjoying the signs of spring:) I know I enjoyed the sunshine on my walk to the library this afternoon. Today I’ll share my recipe for the mini angel food cupcakes and hopefully get the one for the amazing, homemade strawberry buttercream frosting to you in the near future. I am looking forward to cooking with fresh ingredients over the next few months, so I promise to start sharing more again soon. I would love to hear from you! Any suggestions on receipes you’d like to see on kitchen anatomy in the near future? 

The Ingredients:

• 4 large egg whites
• ½ tsp cream of tarter
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ cup sifted powdered sugar
• ⅓ cup sifted flour
• Pinch of salt

Pomegranate and White Chocolate Scones

I can’t even begin to explain how much I love a good pastry in the morning with my coffee. My brain sometimes tells me that it’s a bad idea, but look how delicious these scones look. How bad could they be? Thankfully I figured out a way to make them taste fantastic but not be a huge calorie bomb like many of the purchased baked goods (for example a blueberry scone from Starbucks is almost 500 calories per serving; gasp! but they’re so good!). Now you can have your cake (scone) and eat it too. This recipe only has a few tablespoons of sugar and absolutely no butter. Seems too good to be true doesn’t it? Seriously though, you won’t believe how good they taste until you give them a try.

Feeling less guilty about drooling over them yet?

The flavor combination may seem a little weird to some, but it’s actually pretty amazing. I found myself with about 4 cups of pomegranate seeds after buying two gigantic softball sized pomegranates and needed to find a creative way to use them. I started reminiscing about some chocolate covered pomegranate candies I’ve had in the past and voila a new recipe was created. If you’re not sold on the flavor paring feel free to add blueberries, strawberries, diced apples etc. instead. Hope you enjoy them! They are a fantastic treat and ridiculously easy to make.

The Ingredients:

• 2 cups of flour
• 3 tbs of sugar
• 3 tsp of baking powder
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• zest of one small orange
• 1 cup pomegranate seeds
• 3/4 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 1/4 cup  half and half (or substitute half regular milk if heavy cream now makes this recipe horrifying to you)

Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

Yay! It’s almost Christmas! It’s starting to really feel like the holidays as Matt and I geared up yesterday for the 10 hour jaunt across country from Philly to Indiana. I was a very spoiled passenger and was able to take a few naps and watch a few movies along the way. I used to hate car trips but thanks to technology it isn’t nearly as bad. We broke up our trip with some of our favorite high school jams and I impressed my husband with my endless knowledge of lyrics. It was a great trip and it feels great to be home for a few days between the madness of constant studying.

Anyhow, we were invited to our neighbors for dinner and I was asked to bring some dessert. Since preparing for finals was consuming all of my life and braincells, it had been a while since we had a proper grocery trip. Our fridge was pretty bare, but fortunately I had all of the common staples in my fridge and pantry. These peanut butter cookies are probably the easiest cookie recipe I have ever made. All you need is 5 ingredients and NO flour and you have a perfect, delicious cookie in less than 20 minutes from start to finish. I highly recommend that you add it to your cookie repertoire. No worries if you feel you are baking challenged, these are so simple that I know you’ll have great results. It’s a very easy starter dough and you can feel free to add chocolate chips or press Hershey kisses into the cookies.

I made regular peanut butter cookies with the classic fork hashmarks and also some with Hershey hugs pressed in to the top. Both are equally delicious!

The Ingredients:

Makes 26-30 cookies 

• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp of salt

Quick and Delicious Apple Pie

This is the first year I have ever embarked on cooking the whole Thanksgiving spread from start to finish. Matt and I decided that it would be best to stay local this year because we both had a lot of studying we needed to get accomplished before classes resume on Monday. Traveling unfortunately is both time consuming and expensive but we look forward to traveling for Christmas. Anyhow, I decided to get a few of my desserts out of the way before the mashed potatoes, turkey, and stuffing extravaganza begins tomorrow. Living in an apartment doesn’t necessarily make the task of cooking Thanksgiving too easy with only one stove and a few burners to utilize. I took a few shortcuts with a few of my dishes to help speed things up a bit. Be on the lookout for the rest of my Thanksgiving recipes this week; the menu includes: semi-homemade cornbread stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, cream cheese and chive mashed potatoes, gravy, and of course turkey! (with perhaps a new twist!). Plus Matt’s favorite Thanksgiving dessert will be making an appearance. So as you can see, I’m going to be very busy the next several hours…and then onto black Friday shopping!

 The Ingredients:

Make one 9 inch pie

• Pie crust…either homemade (check out Smitten Kitchen recipe; I’ve used it before and it is delicious!) or store bought (I took this route this time because I have so many tasks to get done before the meal tomorrow! I recommend Immaculate Ready to Bake All Natural Pie Crusts)
• 4 Granny Smith Apples
• 4 Golden Delicious Apples
• For the filling:
• 1/2 cup + 2 tsps sugar
• 2 tbs brown sugar
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Splash of apple cider (if you have some like we did!)

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

Ah. So sorry for the hiatus! It’s not that I haven’t been cooking but I have been so busy that today is the first day I’ve had a chance to upload any photos to our computer. This past week with the holiday and celebrating Matt’s birthday hasn’t left me with much free time at all. The good news though is that for the holiday and Matt’s birthday I came up with some delicious treats and meals that I can’t wait to share. Tonight we are packing up to spend the weekend in Maine with my family–so hopefully I’ll have a little time to update you all on all things delicious from Maine that we eat.

Anyway, enough with the catchup and onto one of my favorite cookie recipes. Matt isn’t a big fan of birthday cake so I spoiled him with two non-cake desserts for his birthday. One being white chocolate macadamia nut cookies–also known as crack cookies in our house because they are so addictive and another treat that you’ll have to wait and see. I will tell you though that the other dessert is a fall favorite and is as equally as addictive as these cookies. Beware!

The Ingredients: 

Recipe adapted from: Joy of Cooking

• *2 1/2 cups all purpose flour—I substituted in 1 cup of whole wheat flour
• *1 tsp. baking soda
• * 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 cup–2 sticks–room temperature unsalted butter
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts
• 1 1/2 cup coarsely chopped white chocolate–if you’re going to use white chocolate chips I’d recommend Ghirardelli

*Mix 3 bolded dry ingredients into a bowl and whisk together before starting the recipe

Dulce de Leche Brownies

Remember that recipe I posted a few weeks back about Homemade Dulce de Leche? Well since that initial recipe, I have gone out to purchase 1. a bigger mason jar so I can make a double batch and 2. been absolutely obsessed with the stuff. In my initial post I commented on how great I thought the Dulce de Leche would be swirled into brownies–and boy was it delicious! The brownies are nothing special, just a regular box mix, but the addition of the carmel is fantastic. I guess the personal homemade touches really do count for something–lucky for Sandra Lee or else her Semi-Homemade show wouldn’t work like it does.

Anyway, I wanted to show how delicious the carmel is in the brownies if you needed a little more motivation to try my recipe for Homemade Dulce de Leche.  I made one side chocolate chips and the other half I sprinkled with almonds. What can I say–I like variety:) I made a huge double batch of Dulce de leche last night and am look forward to mixing it into my coffee and dipping apples into it–tastes like the best caramel apple ever. I love making items that you can use for a variety of things. Enjoy & be on the lookout this weekend for my Peach Sangria–it is amazing! Matt and I drank two bottles of wine the night I created it and that NEVER happens. Happy Thursday!

Homemade Dulce de Leche

Hi friends! Sorry for the week long hiatus. We have been busy traveling for a wedding and had an opportunity to catch up with some of our lovely friends in Indianapolis. We had a fantastic trip visiting with my husband’s family and my two favorite 8 and 6 year old little girls. It was definitely a busy couple of days but despite how great our trip was, it was amazing to sleep in our own bed last night! I remember as a child I was able to sleep soundly anywhere, but now that I am older that is definitely not the case. I guess our king sized bed has really spoiled us. I thought I’d share a few pictures for our trip. The photo immediately below was one Matt was able to capture of a hummingbird while sitting in my mother in law’s living room. I absolutely adore it. The other photo is of my extended family highlighting Matt’s step brother Christopher and his new wife Sarah on their wedding day.

Anyway, enough about our travels and onto this delicious treat! I have seen Dulce de Leche everywhere lately, so I thought it was time to give it a try. I’ve seen several recipes where you just boil the aluminum can that the Sweetened Condensed Milk comes in…but I wasn’t into that version because I was worried about all the toxins that would enter the Dulce de Leche as a result. Consuming gross toxins is not on my list to do, so I tried to think of another way to cook the condensed milk safely. I checked my cabinets and remembered that I had a mason jar from when we ate our dessert from Barbuzzo. My problem was solved. All you have to do is transfer the sweetened condensed milk to the mason jar and throw it in the crock pot for a few hours. Genius. My mason jar was just a mini one, so I was only able to cook one can of condensed milk. It’s on my to do list to buy a larger one so I can make a bigger batch the next time.

The Ingredients:

Necessary equipment: Mason jar with lid & Crock Pot 

• Sweetened Condensed Milk

S’more Popcorn? Yes please!

We are gearing up to take a 9 hour jaunt across country tomorrow, so I thought that it was imperative to create some snacks that not only travel well but taste great too! My absolute favorite treat in the summer are S’mores. I like them the traditional way and absolutely love them with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in place of the chocolate bar. If you haven’t tried this–it is an absolute must ASAP! It’s delicious…but definitely a treat to enjoy in moderation.  Anyhow, today’s treat came about because as I was browsing our pantry I saw that we had some popcorn kernels. I had initial intentions to make Kettle Corn, but my husband being the big kid that he is when it comes to his cereal selection, had just purchased some Golden Grahams last night. From there I realized that we had chocolate chips in the fridge and marshmallows as well…my mind immediately began to wander to S’mores. This creation is so good and super easy to make. I look forward to making some other popcorn creations in the future.

The Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup Popcorn–I made Kettle Corn instead–using 3 tbs canola oil & 3 tbs granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup Milk Chocolate Chips 
• Mini marshmallows or regular marshmallows cut up
• Golden Graham Cereal or broken up Graham Crackers