thirty five

I have a bunch of meals to post but with my college career dwindling, my time is limited to minimal downtime. So the next few posts will be a few pulls from the past.

A few weeks ago, Amy and I made an epic pizza braid. We snagged some pizza dough and sauce from the best pizza place in town (one of the many things I will miss about Auburn) and grabbed some veggies and cheese.

Small Dough ball
3/4 C sauce

and whatever the heck you want to use as filling!

(complex, I know)

We realized a bit too late that we lacked a rolling pin and we went MacGyver on a wine bottle to make this happen...but I still suggest a rolling pin.

The lovely Amy workin' that dough

One reason Little Italy pizza is the best is the amazing crust. Too bad this amazing crust is not so easy to flatten out without a pin or the skills of a pizza spinner. Unfortunately, Little Caesar's never prepared me for that. After many flips and presses with a wine bottle, we got it nice rectangle rolled out and sliced up the sides into strips. I think we left about 4 inches in the center for the filling. We put down a layer of sauce, followed by cheese, spinach, mushrooms, more cheese, and more sauce. We pulled the the end and the 2 end strips up and pinched them together like a diaper....yeah, that is the best description I've got. Just keep alternating sides, pinching the strips as you go almost like cross braiding the dough.

Post folding requires another layer of cheese....duh

I think we baked it at 400-450 for about 15 to 20 minutes. I suggest putting it on a rack to bake or a stone, something to elevate it cause ours was a bit soggy (probably from the spinach). I think almost everyone knows what a baked pizza looks like so trust your gut on the looks. And if you like it reeeeally crunch, toss some tin foil over the top and let it continue to bake.

yeaaaaa buddy.

Totally awesome.
Till next time

thirty four

Pasta is saving my life and my wallet. It is SO cheap and easy to make and skew to whatever flavors you want...but mainly its cheap and yummy. I've been really hesitant about making large scale purchases of food lately and happened to stumble across some frozen broccoli and a chicken breast in the freezer the other day. Since I was in the mood to cook, cook I did.
Outcome? chicken ravioli. And I think I mentioned way back about my awesome mother getting me a pasta roller for Christmas. Regular noodles, check. Not too difficult to get a good grasp on, but ravioli?? Still kickin' my butt. But, practice makes perfect (or in this case makes sub-par ravioli).

Pasta
1C Flour
1 Egg
2 Tbls water**
1/2 tsp salt
Filling
1 Chicken breast
Broccoli
Salt
Pepper

I started with the pasta. I like to do it the messy way too, ya know, no bowl, just pile the flour on the counter and make a "hole" for the egg....kinda like everyone does with mashed potatoes and gravy. Here is where I also like to add in some spices depending on what I'm making. I think I just used some oregano and salt. But start to mix egg and flour (from the center working to the outer edge), and slowly incorporate the water. I put an asterisk by the water because I used chicken broth instead of water (I was sick the week before and resorted to drinking chicken broth cause my throat was so sore). Knead for about 10 minutes until your dough is smooth and elastic. Let your dough rest for a few minutes and start working on your chicken.

Chicken is chicken. You can make this however you please, and I please to make it simple with salt and pepper. Little olive oil in the pan and season with whatever you choose. Cook for about 6-8 minutes on Medium-high on each side and boom, chicken is done. Let it rest on a cutting board for a few, then chop it up (I like mine to be cubed) and mix it with your broccoli. If your like me and use frozen broccoli, put it in a bowl, add water, and microwave it till its thawed. Try (once it has cooled down) to squeeze as much water from it as you can without making baby food....ew. Throw it all together in a bowl and get back to the pasta!

I like to cut my dough ball into smaller portions and work with it from there. Roll the dough out (or use a fancy pasta roller) thin...I mean THIN. And maybe this is where I am going wrong, but every recipe I've come across says to make the pasta "paper thin". After rolling, I used a large rimmed cup to cut out circles for my pasta, 1 top and 1 bottom. Lay them out, fill them and remember to leave enough space to close the top and the bottom together. Eventually, I would like to get one of these, but till then, this method will have to work. Some people use an egg wash to bind their pieces together but I refuse to waste an egg, so I just take some water on my finger and ring it around the edge of the bottom pasta piece. Then I place the top on and press with a fork. When you get here, pause and bring a giant (relative to your pasta) pot of water to boil...and don't forget to salt the water.

After pressing all your ravioli place them into the boiling water (reduce the heat so its not a roaring boil...you don't want to break your pasta) for about 10-15 minutes. You will see the pasta change in texture and if you have ever cooked mac and cheese, you know when the noodles look done. Same concept. Afterwords, mix them with whatever sauce you like (maybe Alfredo?). I just tossed mine in olive oil and Parmesan due to lack of funds, but it was still delicious!

Until next time!

thirty three

Cherry Coke Cupcakes...no for real...and they are awesome!

This started with a search for a awesome recipe for a friend's 21st birthday celebration. My roommate and I tag teamed this like we have in the past with a few of our other birthday treats. Since neither of us had attempted such an interesting twist on a cupcake, we browsed for a few recipes till we landed on this one.

Chocolate Cherry Coke Cupcakes

Cupcakes:
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 stick butter, melted1/2 cup buttermilk2 eggs
1 cup Coke

Please, for the love of all that is wonderful within a chocolaty treat, USE THE INGREDIENTS! AND THE BUTTERMILK. It gives the cupcakes this epically fudgy heavy texture that makes me never want to eat a regular cupcake again. This twist brings every other cupcake I've ingested prior to this day down to a new level of shame. Its like the muffin top to the muffin, no competition.

Mix allll the ingredients and toss them in the cup cake papers. She got 24 out of hers, but we only got about 22. Bake until you can poke it with a toothpick and it comes out clean (rocket science right?), which should be about 15 minutes.

Frosting:
2 sticks salted butter, softened
10 oz jar maraschino cherries
4 cups powdered sugar

Butter + Cherry juice= ew
BUT that is where you start. She suggests about 4TBSP and quite honestly I don't know how many we used. I chopped up about half of them and tossed in the butter. Once it is mixed, slowly add in the powdered sugar. We followed her recipe pretty solidly. I will tell you that there is NO need to make more frosting. This was plenty of frosting. Toss the cupcakes (frosting and all) into the fridge for about an hour and then toss on the glaze.

Post baked, frosted, and boom; Epic deliciousness. Next step, the glaze.

Interjection, you really don't need the glaze, the cupcakes are pretty rich as is but if you wanna go all out, then by all means, finish with a bang.
Also my first time making homemade frosting. And the flavor was pretty awesome. I wouldn't let an aversion to cherry keep you away from this frosting either, throw in some strawberry syrup and and fresh strawberries.

Glaze:
1/4 cup Coke
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
2 cups powdered sugar
4 Tablespoons melted butter stick

Melt butter over medium low heat and add coco powder and coke. WHISK! Then when it starts to boil pull it off the heat and stir in the powdered sugar. We actually added more coke as we went because the glaze got too thick so keep your eyes out for that. Spoon some over top, sprinkle a little powdered sugar for aesthetics and done!

Grab a fork and knife

Until next time

thirty two

I was invited to head down to New Orleans with two friends to celebrate Mardi Gras this year and jumped at the chance cause I've never actually been to Louisiana and I'm never gonna pass up a road trip. So this post is dedicated to drunken fruit and the liquors left behind.

I did a bit of reading online before actually starting this and found that a lot of people use cherries and gummies (which I have seen quite often at tailgates). It wasn't until I came across a recipe for making your own flavored liquor that I really chased down the idea. What came out after a few minutes of reading was Whipped Vodka + Oranges and Pineapple= Freakin epic.

Here is what you will need:

• 1 bottle of Whipped Vodka (750mL)
• 1 ripe pineapple
• 4 oranges
• 4 ziplock bags
• Sugar

First, I peeled all my oranges. I started with 5, but they were so juicy I only made it out with 4 (this is why former fat kids shouldn't cook). I tried my hardest to peel all the white stuff off the oranges and then separated them into individual slices and tossed them all into a ziplock bag. The ziplock is important because you want to be able to squeeze as much air out of the bag as possible. While reading I picked up on people submerging their cherries into the alcohol with various meshed/netted objects. I had neither, so a ziplock seemed the perfect solution. Resourcefulness, that is what I have learned in college.
Next Pour about 2 cups of the Whipped Vodka (I prefer Pinnacle). Now here is my if-I-made-this-again-I-would-do-this-different tip...ADD SUGAR! The oranges don't have enough sugar on their own, so help them out. Try adding about .25C to the bag, zip it up, and give it a good ol' shake weight toss. If you wanna try something a little less...umm, potent...use about 1.25C vodka and .75C orange juice, but if you do this, the sugar is up to you 'cause I have no clue how that would taste.

Next, get out that awesome and ripe pineapple...and don't judge mine, cause it sure wasn't ripe all the way.
Due to the fact that only about half of my pineapple was ready to use, that is about all that got put into the bag. Slice that bad boy up into chunks (bit sized of course) and toss them into a ziplock as well. Cover them with the rest of the vodka (which is a little less than 2C) and squeeze all the air out of the bag. Don;t worry about adding any sugar, the pineapple is sweet enough that you won't need it. Again, maybe add some juice to cut the vodka down.
This is important. DOUBLE BAG. No really, you will thank me when you open that first ziplock in 2 days. Which is the next stage...wait...as in DON'T TOUCH. Trust me, it will be worth it. After 2 days your left with not only some of the best whipped fruit ever, BUT you have a flavored vodka. The oranges themselves are not my favorite but the vodka left behind is freaking awesome and the pineapple is all around amazing. So there ya go. The only thing that would have made it more Mardi Gras is purple grapes and limes.

Till next time

thirty one

Cakes! I had a birthday cake posting looooong ago and here are some more. Nothing too fancy, box cakes for a dual birthday party. Chocolate for the boy and funfetti for the girl.

Katie and I wandered the isles of Walmart when we stumbled across a castle set. There is an ongoing princess joke in their apartment, so we snagged it and set ourselves up for some serious princess caking. It had towers and all sorts of fun stuff. The cake was a little lopsided, but considering the lack of pans, we were both very proud of our 2 tiers. The peaks on the towers cake came with the kit, so we covered half in white chocolate and rolled them in sprinkles. We ran out of chocolate and sprinkles before being able to finish the towers which led to the bright pink creation of lots of powdered sugar, food coloring, and some water. It was like being in first grade again when you make the cool putty stuff, but I digress. Anyways, we added the windows (which had we bought fondant and more piping stuff we could have gone all out) and the doors and celebrated princess style with the pretty princess cake.......I might have just slipped down a pretty princess tunnel towards Peach's castle.

The birthday boys cake was in honor of Tequila. We were gonna try and be super awesome and make a bottle of 1800 but then decided it wouldn't turn out as amazing as our expectations would demand and settled for a shot glass instead. We just baked the chocolate cake in a regular sheet pan and then baked the extra in a 10" round. After some cooling we trimmed the sheet cake and frosted it with butter cream icing. With a bit of food coloring we we ended up with a pretty bad ass looking attempt at a shot glass. The lime was a complete afterthought and actually turned out really awesome. Both the lime and shot glass were chocolate with butter cream. Both had "black" icing to outline the edges and all 3 cakes tasted amazing.

Last semester in and this baking business is still much more appealing than school.

Until next time

thirty

So, if you've read the last post, here is where the missing apples come in.

I stumbled across this recipe on foodgawker (which is totally epic and you should check it out) and decided to try to make them....By the way, them = Carmel apple jello shots. Sounds weird? Well here is the real kick, you use real apples. Here is the EXACT recipe from That's so Michelle's page.

Shopping List (makes 40 slices/shots)
10 small granny smith apples
1 envelope knox gelatin
1/2 cup water1/2 cup coconut milk
2 drops yellow food coloring
1 envelope Land o Lakes caramel hot chocolate (Regular would do just fine if you can't find caramel)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butterscotch schnapps
lemon juice

I've never really LOVED jello like every other kid in America. The texture weirds me out and the strange feeling of biting a not so solid substance never seemed appealing, but adding the crunch of the apple to this sounded like a great idea and I was sold. I just used some of the apples I had around here (which were large) and cut the recipe in half the first time I made it just to make sure I liked it.

You can get a whole step by step run through on Michelle's page (with pictures!) and I totally recommend you do that at least once to get the idea of what you should be doing. But here is a quick rundown.

Slice your apples in half (one at a time to prevent browning) and start scooping out the inside. I didn't have a melon baller as suggested and a spoon worked just as well after I had a technique down. after you have hollowed out the apple, you should squeeze a little lemon juice on top to prevent browning. I just submerged my apples in ice cold water cause I was afraid the lemon would make the final product taste weird. And I made sure to discard the seeded centers and save the apple pulp for the applesauce mentioned in the prior post. After hollowing the apples out, I started on the caramel centers.

Here is where I suggest you check out Michelle's page for 2 reasons: 1] I feel that this is the most important part and I don't wanna mess you up and 2] I have an anatomy test to be studying for.

These taste epic and remember I don't even like jello. BTW, Michelle's look WAY better than mine, so at least go to her page and check out the pictures.

Until next time :]

twenty nine

I don't really like applesauce. But I had some extra apples that either had to be used or thrown away...so used them I did.
They were green granny smiths, which don't seem like they would be any good for applesauce but I like sour stuff better than sweet anyways.

Here is what you will need.
3 apples
2/3 Sugar (brown or white)
1 Lemon
*Nutmeg
*All spice
*Cinnamon
**I didn't add these cause I don't have them BUT you should add it cause it would be awesome.

I just had the apples all chopped and then tossed them into a pot with about 3/4 C of water to boil down. Add the sugar and stir. At this point I picked out the skins of the apples and put them into the epic Tupperware chopper (mentioned in the salsa post!) and then tossed them back into the sauce. Maybe give it a few good mashes with a potato masher and add in your lemon juice. Stir and chill (or eat with pork chops!)

I really feel blah about this post because apple sauce really isn't my thing and I'm super pumped for my next post (which is the whole reason why I had the apples in the first place!)

Until next time :]