Strawberry Pineapple Crumble

Hi!
Long time, no blog. Summer is such an incredibly busy time of year for me in school and I have barely had time to do much else. I do have a couple of other posts that are long overdue, but they will have to wait for another day. Today, I wanted to spare a few moments from working on my dissertation (okay, okay, I really needed a break from working on it) to write about this delicious concoction of fruit, butter, sugar, and oats that I made over the weekend in anticipation of Andrew's return from his 10 year high school reunion (yikes, I know---we're getting old!).

Sidenote--is it normal to not really feel any different than you were 10 years ago? I for sure thought that by this time I'd feel "grown up" or something....but I really feel just the same. Hmm...

Okay, back to the deliciousness that is this strawberry pineapple crumble. Since this past weekend was Portland's first real taste of "summer"--it got into the 80's guys AND the sun made an appearance--I wanted to make a fruity summer dessert. Insert Joy the Baker's crumble recipe that combines two of my favorite fruits. My dad told me he thought that this sounded like an odd combination of fruit; however, I really think it was the perfect balance of sweet and tart. I have to say it didn't last long and I may have shed a tear after the last bite was devoured. Luckily, it's pretty easy and I have an almost full jar of oats just waiting to be baked in with either the same fruit combo or perhaps a different one? Strawberry rhubarb seems like a good idea.

Here's the recipe:

Strawberry Pineapple Crumble
Makes one 8-inch baking dish

Ingredients
• 1 pound strawberries, hulled and cut in half
• 1 pound peeled and diced fresh pineapple
• 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 3 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• pinch of salt
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes
• 1 1/3 cup old-fashioned oats
• 1/4 cup brown sugar

Cooking Directions
• Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

• Toss diced fruit together in an 8-inch square baking dish.

• In a small dish, whisk together 3 tablespoons sugar, cornstarch, 1/4 cup of flour and pinch of salt. Toss the mixture with the diced fruit. Set aside.

• In a medium bowl, whisk together remaining flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add the cold butter cubes. Use your fingers to break up the cold butter cubes into the flour mixture. Add the oats and toss together until the butter bits are about the size of the oat flakes. Pour the oat mixture over the prepared fruit.

• Place in the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until juices from the fruit bubble up around the sides of the pan.

• Remove the crumble from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. Crumble is delicious served warm with vanilla ice cream.

• Crumble can we wrapped and refrigerated for up to 4 days. Reheat in the microwave or wrapped in foil in a low oven.

Enjoy!

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Hi all!

Its been forever since I last posted, but I had some time today and thought I'd share some of what I baked up over my term break a couple weeks ago. I saw this particular recipe on Bakerella a while back and it had been on my "to bake" list for quite some time. I finally got around to baking them for a birthday party for one of my school friends. I will definitely use any excuse to eat something red velvet :) I followed these directions exactly and didn't have any problems with the recipe itself. The only thing I had difficulty with was that I tried to dye the cookies purple for a more spring theme. I thought that if I just added blue to the already red colored batter, they would come out purple. They didn't. They turned brown and looked like regular chocolate cookies (a little bit of purple showed through if the light hit them right). Oh well--they still tasted really, really good. Here's the recipe:

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies:

Cookies

Ingredients:
1 Box red velvet cake mix (any cake mix will work)
1/2 Cup butter, softened to room temperature
2 Eggs

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix ingredients until combined.
Drop spoonfuls of cookie batter onto baking sheet about two inches apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Cool.

**Tip: For consistent size cookies, use a 1.5 inch small ice cream scooper when placing batter on the baking sheet. The finished cookie size will be about 3 inches wide.

Cream Cheese Filling

Ingredients:
1/2 Cup butter, softened to room temperature
1 8 oz. Package cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1 1lb. Box of confectioner’s sugar
1 tsp Vanilla

Directions
In a mixer, cream butter, cream cheese and vanilla.
Gradually add sugar and mix until smooth.

**To assemble, spoon a small amount of frosting on the flat side of one cookie. Take another cookie and press together until frosting is flush with the edge. Makes about 24 cookies or 12 cookie sandwiches.

Anyway, I highly recommend these cookies! Tasty and easy to make--what could be better? Sorry I don't have any process pictures, I was so busy cooking a bunch of stuff that day that I only was able to get the final product.

Hope everyone had a happy Mother's Day! I know my sisters and I are really missing our mom today, but are so very grateful for the other wonderful women in our lives!

Rainbow Jar Cake (or goo)

Because I didn't go home for Easter weekend, my friends who were also staying in Denton and I got together to dye Easter eggs and bake. I've heard of baking things in jars, and wanted to try it, but never actually considered it until my friend Paige showed up at my door with a huge box of jars and showed me this website. Apparently she and our other friend Ashley had decided that's what we were making.

The recipe on the website calls for white cake, but we used funfetti, because it's so much better. Other than that, though, we pretty much just followed directions.

This is how it was supposed to look.

Just batter. Perfect lines thanks to Paige.

Fresh out of the oven

The colors rose through the cake. So cool!

After we decorated them!

View down the jar.

We only hit one problem, but it was a big one. Only the top half of the cake baked in the 35 minutes it was in the oven. The rest was legit goo. We ended up all stopping and saving it for when we could re-bake it. 

I tried to re-bake it the next day, and put it in the oven for another 25 minutes, BUT IT WAS STILL GOO. I just ate it. It was still good.

My rainbow goo and me.

If you want to try it, I have no idea what I would suggest to avoid burning the top while trying to solidify the molton goo at the bottom. If you figure it out, let me know. 

Here's the recipe:

April Fools! (yeah, about a month late)

First of all, sorry for making this email everyone. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what my password was and that was the only way to get a password reset link.

Now, on with the cooking. I love April Fools because I love pranks, but I never really celebrate it. I'm absolutely terrible with thinking of good enough pranks to pull on April Fools without raising suspicion. I first heard about this a long time ago, and always wanted to try it, so it seemed like the perfect time. I should also say that this was actually last year's April Fools, but I still think it's good enough to share.

Cupcakes anyone?

APRIL FOOLS! IT'S MEATLOAF!

With mashed potato frosting.

They were spit out a few times, but only because it's not what anyone was expecting. Once people realized what they were eating, they finished it. They were actually really freaking delicious.

There was no special recipe, it's just whatever meatloaf you like, and I used instant mashed potatoes (plus A LOT of food coloring). The only thing is to make sure you have foil cupcake liners. The meat cooks into a weird shape, so the foil holds the shape of a cupcake better. Plus, I'm pretty sure paper liners would just absorb juices and be soggy. Gross.

I would definitely recommend this if you want to get coworkers or something. EVERYONE will fall for it, and you'll be super popular.

My First Post!! Chicken Pockets

Hello Everyone! I've been meaning to do this for a while and I finally have internet connection and freetime!!! So here they are Chicken Pockets. They are a hit with all my friends who have tried them and I hope you will like them!!!

Here's What You need:

1 Can of Crescent Rolls

Plain Cream Cheese (Or Cream of Mushroom Soup if you don't like Cream Cheese)

1 Lb of chicken

any/all your favorite seasonings (We normally use Lemon Pepper, Marjoram, and Oregano)

Butter or Olive oil

Let's get Started!

First thing you have cut the chicken into small pieces. I've noticed its easier if you do this before you cook it but I've done it after as well. Add the chicken and the seasonings together and cook in the butter/oil until the chicken is white.

Ok Next step is make the outside layer. Now you get to bust open the crescent rolls! (Save the cooking instructions!!!) Once you finally get then open, you need to make big triangles! You do this by taking 2 normal crescent rolls and putting the flat side together and mashing it together, (it doesn't have to be pretty but one can should make 4).

Once this is done, you can put a layer of Cream Cheese on all of them and start putting chicken on all 4. As you put chicken on you can roll the triangles up and pinch the corners so you don't have any big holes, ( little holes are ok just none that you can put your finger through).

Put all the Chicken Pockets on a cookie sheet and bake like the crescent roll can says.

And once they get they're done just becareful the inside is really hot, (Trust me I burned my mouth this past weekend).

Ashley

It's Christmas in 834!

To start, a little explanation... 834, said "eight three four" not "eight thirty four," is what we (Shannon, Jocelyn, any other friends, and I) call our apartment. Over the past year and a half, it's become more of a name than an apartment number.


We've been waiting for Christmas, for what seems like months. It's all of our favorite time of year. Family, friends, presents, cookies, fudge, decorations, and NO SCHOOL! Classes have been coming down hard on all three of us for the past few weeks, but we finally found some time to get in the Christmas spirit! We spent all of yesterday transforming 834 into a winter wonderland. Now, recently we have noticed that a few balconies around the complex are decorated, but most consist of half-ass strung lights looped around the railing. There is one balcony, though, that looks professionally done. Our goal was to, and I mean this in the least Grinch way, have our balcony kick all the other balconies' butts! We totally did, by the way.

View from the ground

A little blurry, but from down the street a bit.

We also put up our tree, although, this picture is from last year!

Aside from decorating, we filled 834 with the aroma of freshly baked cookies! THREE different kinds, to be exact. I also decided to add in a treat I haven't had in a really long time, but remember from when I was a kid... 5 minute fudge! 

We had homemade chocolate chip cookies...

Sugar cookies...

Red Velvet cookies...

And only one mishap!

She's notorious for breaking things, so we shouldn't be too surprised she's holding half of a measuring cup.

Okay, procrastination over. Time to get back to the books!

Merry Christmas!!

Cheesecake Time!

Last month, my roommate Shannon turned the big 2-1! My other roommate Jocelyn and I were in a bit of a predicament, because Shannon does not like cake. At all. Luckily, for my birthday, Rebecca gave me a binder full of about 52 cheesecake recipes, so I gave it to Shannon and let her pick one. She chose the White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cheesecake. I'm pretty sure it's a Cheesecake Factory recipe, but I gave it a go.

The inside

Just a slice... of heaven!

Shannon and Jocelyn loved it! I liked the middle, but thought that around the edge there was too much raspberry. 

OH! The recipe calls for Oreos without the stuffing for the crust, but that seemed like way too much work. Instead, I used chocolate Teddy Grams. 

The Cheesecake Factory's White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Cheesecake

crust 

1½ cups chocolate cookie crumbs or 20 crumbled Oreo cookies (filling removed) 
1/3 cup margarine, melted

filling 

½ cup raspberry preserves 
¼ cup water 
4 x 8 oz pkgs cream cheese 
1¼ cups granulated sugar 
½ cup sour cream 
2 tspn vanilla extract 
5 eggs 
4 oz white chocolate, chopped into chunks

garnish 

2 oz white chocolate, shaved 
whipped cream 

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. 

Place a large pan or oven-safe skillet filled with about ½" of water into the oven while it preheats. This will be your water bath. 

Combine the raspberry preserves with ¼ cup water in a medium microwave-safe bowl. Heat for 1½ minutes on high in your microwave. 

Stir until smooth. Strain to remove the raspberry seeds (toss 'em out), then let the strained preserves sit to cool, then put the bowl in the refrigerator until later. 

Measure 1½ cups chocolate cookie crumbs, or crush 20 Oreo cookie wafers ( with the filling scraped out ) into a medium bowl. Mix in 1/3 cup melted margarine. Press the crumb into a 9" spring form pan that has been lined on the bottom and side with parchment paper. Using the bottom of a drinking glass or similar, press the crumb mixture flat into the bottom of the pan and about 2/3 the way up the side. Wrap a large piece of foil around the bottom of the pan to keep the cheesecake in the water bath. Put the crust in your freezer until the filling is done. 

Use an electric mixer to combine the cream cheese with the sugar, sour cream, and vanilla. Mix for a couple minutes or until the ingredients are smooth and creamy. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Whisk the eggs in a medium bowl and then add them to the cream cheese mixture. Blend the mixture just enough to integrate the eggs. 

Remove the crust from the freezer and sprinkle 4 oz of white chocolate chunks onto the bottom of the crust. Pour half of the cream cheese filling into the crust. Drizzle the raspberry preserves over the entire surface of the filling. Use a butter knife to swirl the raspberry into the cream cheese. 

Just a couple passes is fine, you don't want to blend the raspberry and cream cheese together too much. Pour the other half of the filling into the crust. 

Carefully place the cheesecake into the water bath in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes at 475°F, then turn the oven down to 350°F and bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until the top of the cheesecake turns a light brown or tan color. Remove the cheesecake from the oven to cool. When the cheesecake is cool, use the foil from the bottom to cover the cheesecake and chill it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours. 

Before serving, sprinkle the entire top surface of cheesecake with 2 oz of shaved white chocolate. To serve, slice the cheesecake into 12 equal portions. Apply a pile of canned whipped cream to the top of each slice and serve.