CROSSOVER!!!!!!!!!!

SO THERE'S THIS GUY WESTICLE (or Wes, that's cool too) THAT'S OUR FRIEND AND STUFF. AND HE HAS THIS BLOG http://1-1-7.blogspot.com/ THAT HE UPDATES WITH PICTURES AND STUFF. YOU SHOULD MAYBE READ IT.


Wes came over and we made Spash! It stands for something about Spices and Peppers and Texas Hash or something? I don't really know. Anyways, we made it.

Ingredients:
Onion
Green pepper
Ground beef
Tomato sauce
Rice

Chop the onion and green pepper and saute it. When it's gone for a while, add the meat and tomato sauce and cook it more till it's cooked and stuff. Have some rice prepared, and mix it together with the meat-pepper-onion-tomato sauce and put it in your mouth.

We also made stir fry (as seen earlier in this blog) because of a miscommunication about what we would be having for dinner... They turned out to go well together, because I didn't make nearly enough rice and the stir fry turned out a little meh.

So yeah! Our crossover with 1-1-7 went well, and we played triple Munchkin!

-Kate

The Most Stressful Week Ever

So you probably know by now that Steph, Kate, and I are all admins for GT's Humans vs. Zombies. This is a game that is constantly only kind of not in debt, so this game we decided to do a bake sale to raise some funds. One $100 trip to BJ's later, we had the supplies to feed an army. An army of dessert eating people.

We made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, then ice them with vanilla, chocolate, and chocolate-peanut butter icing. We made two batches throughout the week. If you'd like the recipe for any of these, request it and I can copy it off our written copy.



We also made muffins, puppy chow, and rice crispies. The rice crispies failed miserably (came out a nice crunchy nasty). The puppy chow was amazingly successful and Kate had to make multiple batches, and got powdered sugar all over the living room.

We made oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chip (Steph substitutes baking soda for baking powder so they rise better), and double chocolate cookies, that all sold fairly well. (Those peanut butter ones were amazing).

It was a long week, but we sold lots and made a good profit for HvZ. But Kate and Steph may die if they ever attempt that much baking at once again.

-Stephen

Welcome Back Lasagna

Blogger's telling me we haven't posted since July 25. I guess that would make sense; the last month has been a blur of getting ready for school, so we haven't had time to bake. But now we are back in CSA! Time to start the school year off right by bringing over friends and having a home-cooked meal. A Steph-cooked meal.

As a bonus, this is actually TWO recipes! Recipe #1 is Steph's Tomato Sauce, which can be used either on spaghetti or in the lasagna (recipe #2).

Ingredients

• 1 can crushed tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 2 16 oz cans tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 Tbs basil leaves
• 1/2 tsp thyme
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

Saute the onion and garlic. Combine all the ingredients in large pot or crockpot, and simmer until you are ready to use. The crockpot is best for all day and will provide better flavor.

Welcome Back Lasagna

Ingredients

• 8 oz uncooked lasagna noodles
• 1 15 oz container ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 batch Steph's Tomato Sauce
• 1 lb Italian seasoned pork
• 2 cups (8 oz) shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350 F. In medium bowl, combine ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and eggs; mix well. In 13x9 in baking dish, spread a layer of tomato sauce. Layer noodles, cheese mixture, meat, sauce, cheese, noodles, cheese mixture, meat, sauce, and a thick layer of cheese. Cover with aluminum foil; bake 1 hour. Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes. Put into your face. Or serve to everyone else and end up with only one piece for leftovers.

-Kate

Nyancake

Nyan nyan nyanyan nya nyanyanyanya nya nya nya nyanya nyan.

Birthday Blues

Spiffy birthday present, huh?

I really didn't mean for the title of this post to be depressing, but it does rather fit.  So, a week ago I officially left childhood behind (age-wise anyway) and turned 20.  And apparently my tastes in food are starting to reflect that, because what I wanted more than anything was plain vanilla cupcakes with extraordinary blueberry cream cheese frosting. And what better way to break in my birthday present than to bake!

Multi-use blueberry sauce

I have to say that I think the best experimenting I have done in the kitchen happens right when things are about to go bad. That's how I learned how to make the most awesome strawberry sauce and from there carried over to the blueberry sauce that I used to make the icing that I proceeded to eat out of the mixing bowl.

I didn't stop there though. I wanted my cupcakes to be even more extraordinary. So I made blueberry-pear jam a couple days in advance (might I add that my intake of PB&Js as greatly increased lately ^_^) and we filled the cupcakes with jam as well. 

Might I add that a single box of pectin will make A LOT of jam.

So for the cakes themselves this recipe will do. And make sure you don't over mix the batter or they will turn out the consistency of cornbread (still tasty, but very dense).

Now for my favourite part! The icing recipe :D

Blueberry Sauce (Yields 2cups)
1pint fresh blueberries
6 tablespoons light agave nectar

In a small sauce pot on medium heat, combine ingredients. Stir occasionally until the nectar begins to bubble, then reduce heat. Simmer until most of the berries have popped, continuing to stir occasionally.  Turn off the heat and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Puree in blender. (Alternative: skip the puree step and just use the chunky sauce)

 Cream Cheese Frosting (enough for 24 cupcakes)
8oz cream cheese (softened)
1stick unsalted butter (softened)
2-3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and cream cheese in stand mixer. Gradually add in sugar until it is the correct consistency then add in the vanilla and enough sugar to counteract the liquid.

*Then fold in 1/3 cup of the blueberry sauce and transfer to a ziploc bag for icing

If you completely mix in the 1/3 cup of sauce the icing makes an excellent topping for pancakes, so much so that you'll get designated breakfast maker for your week of vacation. Oh, sorry did I sound bitter that I shared this with my mom and now I have to get up early everyday for a week to cook for 6 people? Oops. Moral: horde all this for yourself!

Heh, my age may say that I'm not a child anymore but that sure as hell doesn't mean I won't act like one. Also, who in their right mind would leave icing in the bowl! Certainly not me!

With a bazillion birthdays in July we're certain to have a lot of new posts coming up.  There are at least 4 coming up for real people, and I haven't even decided if I'm doing a cake for Harry Potter's birthday this year (though I'm thinking I will).  So! More to come very soon.

Laters,
Steph

Bars of Deliciousness

The OCD side of me is cringing. This blog has been going Stephen Steph Kate Stephen Steph Kate Stephen Steph Kate since the beginning, and I'm about to mess it up... Please forgive me.

Ever since I was little, I have memories of having pineapple bars when we visited my grandma. She's all the way out in Iowa, so it wasn't very often, but I always remember eating these. Half would be covered in sugary glaze for me to devour, half would go plain for my parents who didn't want a sugar high (their loss). The inside was pineapple deliciousness.

A year or two back, I finally asked my grandma for the recipe, so now I can have pineapple deliciousness without the 16 hour car ride. How wonderful!

Filling sitting on the stove

Pineapple filling

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 Tbs corn starch
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg yolk
• 20 oz can of Pineapple chunks, do NOT drain

Mix together the dry ingredients. Put the yolk and pineapple into a saucepan, stir them together a bit, then add the dry ingredients. Cook on medium heat until boiling, stirring the entire time. If you don't keep the bottom part of the pineapple from sticking, it'll burn rather easily. If this does happen, it's not horrible, but your pineapple goo will have a bit of a brown tinge to it. Set this aside to cool while you make the dough.

I love you, Kitchen Aid!

Dough

• 3 3/4 to 4 1/4 cups flour (I know, quite vague)
• 1 Tbs sugar
• 1 pkg yeast (that's 1/4 oz)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks)
• 4 egg yolks

Combine 1 cup flour, sugar, and yeast. Melt the butter in the microwave a little, but not to liquidification, just so it's mushy; combine with milk and water. Add the liquids to the dry in whatever bowl you're going to mix it in (Kitchen Aid are amazing). Beat for 2 minutes. Add yolk and 1/2 cup flour. Beat at high speed for 2 minutes. Now eyeball in enough flour to make it into moist dough. Usually right at 4 is good for me, but you may require less or more as the recipe suggests. Divide dough in half. Roll out dough covering the bottom of your pan (My grandma uses a "jelly roll pan" but I just use a 9x13). Poor the filling over the dough. Roll out the remaining dough to the right size to cover it; place on and pinch the edges together.

Bread after rising for an hour

Cover with a towel and let it sit about an hour to let it rise. Yay yeast!

Preheat oven to 375 and bake for 35-40 minutes. The top should turn a nice golden brown.

You can mix up a frosting using powdered sugar and cream. Our's came out very liquidy and made a glaze. But it's powdered sugar, so honestly I don't care what consistency it's in as long as it's in the "tasty in my mouth" consistency.

There's lots of jokes about pineapples, and while describing this pastry I even got jokes about the icing. I don't care. Pineapple bars are great. The dough isn't too sweet, the pineapples are delicious, the frosting is very sweet: it all combines to make a great breakfast food. You should try it, really, before you diss.

Kate

No Pan Pie with No Pie Either...

I'm so scary

To quote Stephen, "If Kate's coming down for the weekend, we're baking something." This has been continued with this weekend's No Pan Pear Pie, as seen on Food Network.

Whenever he described to me its a pie with pears, blueberries, and balsamic vinegar, I was a little skeptical. Balsamic vinegar? In a pie? What? But I figured he hadn't shown any other crazy taste in food, let's try it!

Stephen works the flour into dough as I add juice

We didn't use the apple juice concentrate as the recipe calls for, and rather just 4 Tbs apple juice to 1 Tbs water. I don't think it made any difference.


So the recipe goes make your flour mixture, make your dough, place it in the fridge, cook the pears, balsamic vinegar, and blueberries in a cast iron skillet, put chopped pound cake in middle of rolled out dough, put the fruit over the pound cake, wrap the sides of the pie crust over the top, put it into the oven.

The delicious filling cooks

We were very successful up until that point. It was smelling good, it had lots of butter, it looked delicious. We went to work on D&D characters while it baked. Maybe my incredible skill with sucking with dice rolled over to the pie...

So it comes out of the oven. It looks delicious. I didn't even get to grab a picture of the golden-brown beauty before it happened.

Stephen goes at it with two spatulas to get it un-glued to the pan and to take it over to a wire rack.

It cracks down one side, we try to hold it together.

Pound cake with pie crust.

He puts the spatulas under it and lifts.

It shatters.

Our pie shatters. Just breaks into a few big pieces of pie. He had the more amazing look of defeat. I had the most amazing look of "What does it matter? These blueberries are now free to go into my mouth where they are still appreciated for how good they are!"

Shattered pie

After Stephen calmed down from breaking the pie, it was somehow decided that it should just be totally destroyed. It was taken over to a plastic container and Stephen again went at it with his duel-wielding spatulas, breaking the pie into lots of little pieces.

Little pieces perfect to go with ice cream!

Honestly, I think you should make this recipe and not even try to make it pretty. Yeah, wrap it up, and yeah, I guess if it comes out and transfers flawlessly for you you could wait the couple hours for the inside to not just ooze out and then enjoy some pie.

Pie-mush, ice cream bowls, and the spatulas of doom (for pies).

Or you could sabotage your pie into warm cobbler-like pieces to be put under ice cream and enjoy some of the best, most complicated ice cream topping, as Stephen put it.

Till the next successful disaster!

Kate