Pinnacle Whipped & Almond Butter Balls

I know this hasn’t been updated in a very long time,but I promise I’m still alive and baking! (:

Plenty has happened since the last post- I started my final year of undergraduate studies and moved into a small one bedroom apartment with my partner & acquired a new kitten. So, as a result of recent traffic increase to my blog, I was inspired [along with procrastinating studying for my Genetics exam!] to bake some cookies & blog about it.

Pinnacle & Almond Butter Balls-

Ingredients:

All plump & pretty!

1 1/2 cups butter/ margarine [yes, 3 sticks, this is how you know it's

delicious!]

3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar plus ~1/2 cup additional for rolling

3/4 tsp. salt [I was using salted margarine, so I left this out.]

1/4 to 1 1/2 cups crushed nuts [I used pecans, and crushed them with the vodka bottle, woohoo!]

4 tsp. Pinnacle Whipped whipped cream flavored vodka

1 1/2 tsp. Almond extract [this stuff is STRONG!]

3 cups all purpose flour

Directions:

Cookies about to go into the oven- my baking 'assistant' in the background.

Mix the butter and sugar in a bowl until creamy and add salt, if desired. Crush the nuts [you can use almonds, walnuts, whatever, I just happened to have some pecans around] with a rolling pin or be super classy and use a vodka bottle like I did. Add the nuts, vodka, and extract, and stir. [If you don't have any liquor sitting around, feel free to add 1-2 tsp. of vanilla extract or other extract instead]

Add the 3 cups of flour and combine slowly. If at this point, the dough is not stiff enough to be easily workable, refrigerate it for 30 minutes or so. My kitchen was cold, so I was able to just continue on. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and roll cookies into teaspoon sized balls. [I used tablespoon sized balls because I like my cookies huge, haha] Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, or 20-25 minutes if you made bigger sized cookies. When the cookies are done, roll them in powdered sugar while still somewhat warm & enjoy!

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Recipe loosely adapted from here. I’ve been making these cookies for a few years now, but haven’t really had them for a while. I saw the Pinnacle bottle just sitting there in my freezer [If you're a college student or know one, you probably have a bottle of this, too] and got the idea to use some of it in these cookies. These cookies are more of a soft, short-bread-y cookie, so if you’re into soft chewy chocolate chip cookies, these may not be for you. This recipe is also awesome because it’s [accidentally] vegan, mostly because I’m too cheap to use 3 sticks of butter just for cookies.

So, if you like buttercream icing on your cakes.. this is kind of like a cookie version of that flavor. Yum.

Restaurant Style Spinach Artichoke Dip

One of my favorite appetizers to get when I go to Applebees, Friday’s, etc. is the spinach artichoke dip. I’m usually not a chip-and-dip person, but something about the warm meltiness of the dip and the mix of flavors in it is amazing. Since it’s Jacob’s birthday today- we’re having a little get-together at the apartment, and I decided to mix up a batch of this dip to serve to our friends during the festivities. This dip is great because you can prepare it ahead of time and leave it in the fridge until half an hour before you want it.  The recipe contains a few things that aren’t (gasp) fresh from the produce section or homemade, but with 23 credits of classes, spending a lot of time on a weekday to prepare for a party is the last thing I need to do. Feel free to substitute with fresh, home-made ingredients for added deliciousness.

Hot Spinach & Artichoke Dip-

All of our ingredients ready to be mixed!

Ingredients:

1 can artichoke hearts, drained (I squeeze them in my hands to remove any extra moisture)
1 package chopped spinach (store brand is fine- feel free to replace with equal amount of wilted fresh spinach)
1 1/2 cups Alfredo sauce (mine was Ragu, I believe)
1 cup Mozarella cheese + more for topping
1/2 cup Parmesean cheese + more for topping
1-3 cloves garlic, minced (optional, but I ♥ garlic, so it goes in everything)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

all combined and ready to go in the oven.

Drain artichoke hearts and place in bowl. Heat package of spinach (or defrost ahead of time) and strain to remove moisture, add to bowl. Add either 1 cup of alfredo sauce plus 1/2 cup of mayo (I think mayo is icky, so I left it out.) or 1 1/2 cups of sauce to the bowl, along with the mozarella and parmesean cheese. Mince garlic cloves and add them and mix. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread the dip into the bottom of either a 9×13″ pan or two 8-9″ pans, and top with additional cheese. When ready to serve, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and cook for 30 minutes or until cheese is browned and dip is bubbling.

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I’ll update this post with pictures of the cooked dip after the party tonight- hopefully it’ll be a hit!

Roasted Squash and Potatoes

Sorry for the severe lack of updates now that I’m moved in- I can assure you that I’m cooking and baking pretty much constantly now that I’m in my apartment, things have just been pretty hectic.

Either way, now that I’m moved in, I found the perfect grocery store, its name is a little wince-inducing- “Meat Farm,” but it’s an amazing store- the produce section takes up half of the store, and the prices are beyond belief. As such, I’ve been buying all kinds of cheap produce, yum. So, alongside dinner a while ago, I made a nice roasted squash and potato side-dish, a perfect compliment to the (fresh!) basil and lemon marinated chicken and rice. Potatoes are one of my favorite foods- so versatile, filling, and cheap, and I got the squash/ zucchini for maybe $0.60/lb?

Oven Roasted Squash and Potatoes-

Roasted Squash and Potatoes accompanying our chicken and rice. mm!

Ingredients:

4 medium potatoes (any kind will do)
2 medium cloves of garlic garlic (or more, if you love garlic as much as I do)
1 yellow squash, sliced
1 green squash, sliced
3 tbsp. olive oil, plus more for drizzling
Salt, Pepper, dried basil, dried rosemary, and garlic salt for seasoning

Directions:

Since I’m a lazy college student, I like taking short cuts in my cooking, and there’s no way I’d run my gas oven for more than 35 minutes if I didn’t have to, so I just threw my potatoes in the microwave to bake- feel free to bake yours however you’re accustomed to.

Mixed squash, looking pretty in the sunlight. (Check out the full size image on this baby)

So!  Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash your potatoes and poke through the skin with a fork on each side, then bake in the microwave for 5 minutes, flip over, and bake for another 5 minutes until almost completely cooked. Slice up the potatoes into chunks and peel off the skin if desired. (I’m a skin fan, myself.) Leave to cool. After washing and slicing the squash (writing squash all of these times is making me realize what a funny word it is. XP), combine the slices in a mixing bowl with the olive oil and spices. Mince the cloves of garlic and mix them in with the squash.

Add the potato chunks to the bowl with the squash and mix to combine and add more seasoning if desired. (I had to use my hands to mix at this point, as the mixture took up a lot of room/ was awkward to mix with spoons- make sure your potatoes have cooled if you’re going to mix it with your hands!)

Mixing the potatoes in..

Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spread the potatoes and squash in as few layers as possible on the sheet. Drizzle with more olive oil, if desired. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes or until desired brown-ness is achieved. Serve with a sprinkle of salt, and enjoy!

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This made for a great side-dish, and the colors of the squash were just gorgeous. I served this as a side dish for just the two of us, but we both went back for seconds, and there was still plenty left over for snacking on later during the week.

Having this apartment has been a (somewhat stressful) enjoyable experience, I’m pretty used to it now, even with the surprise addition of my new kitten, Oliver. School starts up next week, so it’ll be fun to try to cook and prepare meals while running around to class and clubs and doing homework at the same time. As I type this, I have a 12-cup pot of split pea soup simmering on the stove, so hopefully that’ll last us a few weeks. (Maybe a post on that later?)

Chocolate White Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s been extremely hot and humid here on long island, not exactly weather for baking- but the other day, myself and my friend Kiwi both wanted to bake something and I decided I wanted chocolate cookies with Reeses Pieces in them. To make a long story short- the kitchen was so hot and humid that the dough kept absorbing excess water and I had to add so much flour that the cookies weren’t very tasty anymore.

So, the other day, I was over another friend’s house and decided to give chocolate cookies one more try. (I bake with my friends a lot, haha.) And I’m glad I decided to try again with these cookies. I used the recipe that was right there on the back of the white chocolate chip bag, since I already had experienced a failed recipe a few days before, but I was very happy with how these cookies turned out. My roommate and I even rolled half of the batch in colorful rainbow nonpareils, which added a pop of color and crunch to the cookies that went perfectly with them.

Chocolate Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

Ingredients:

Rolled in pretty, crunchy sprinkles!

1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup shortening (The recipe originally called for a cup of butter, but I like to substitute shortening in my recipes to lower the dairy content, and I’m convinced it helps my cookies stay fluffier)
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/2 cups AP flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 bag white chocolate chips
rainbow nonpareils for rolling (optional)

Directions:

A plain batch, fresh out of the oven.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cream together the butter, shortening, and sugars in a bowl. Add in the eggs and vanilla and mix until combined. Combine the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, and slowly add, about half a cup at a time to the wet mixture and mix until combined. Once all the ingredients are combined and a soft dough is formed, add in the white chocolate chips (or reeses pieces, mmm) and mix until combined. If necessary, put dough in the fridge to cool and make it easier to handle. I didn’t need to cool the dough when I made these, since I was in a well-air conditioned kitchen, so I just scooped out the dough in heaping teaspoon fulls (which probably ended up being about a tablespoon of dough) and rolled them into balls, rolled them in rainbow sprinkles, and flattened them onto a parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until the middle of the cookie is set. Once you remove them from the oven, allow them to cool for 3 minutes or so, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling. If you try to eat one before they’re cooled, they’ll end up crumbling all over the place (but tasting remarkably like brownies!) but once they’re cool, they keep their shape. This recipe made around 2.5 dozen cookies, though it would make many more if you made the cookies smaller!

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These cookies are some of the best chocolate cookies I’ve had- very moist and fudgey right out of the oven, then still soft after cooling. I’ll have to make another batch of these with reeses pieces sometime, as I had planned to originally.

I’m trying out new things with this blog- finally taking the time to run my pictures through Photoshop to adjust colors, and linking the thumbnails to the full size images (check out these noms in full size!). I’m getting more and more excited for the apartment as move-in day draws closer- only ten more days before we move in! I’m hand-making cloth napkins right now (as a way to save paper AND money) and they’re a no-sew project, look really great, and are easy to make- perhaps I’ll post up more information about other projects besides baking on here sometime. I’ll also try to respond to your comments from now on. Happy baking, everyone! (:

Better than Mall Bought Soft Pretzels

The new apartment is coming up so fast! I finally moved a whole car full of things (a table, a computer desk, along with many kitchen gadgets, small appliances, etc.) over to where I’m staying on Long Island, and will hopefully be able to get the rest of my stuff down to the apartment in one trip in the car. (:

I found a table and three chairs for $25 at a yard sale- a little grungy looking and definitly in need of some TLC, but with the pricetag, totally worth it. So, after a little bit of sanding, repainting, and lots of love, I’m really happy with how nice the table and chairs turned out. A picture of those will come sometime after I get settled in the apartment and take pictures of the kitchen.

While walking around the mall today (where I applied to three different stores for a job!), I picked up this lovely centerpiece for my new kitchen table on sale, and Joanna and I both decided we were craving pretzels when we walked by the Auntie Anne’s stand, so I promised I would make some as soon as we got home. I’ve made these pretzels once before, and they were a huge hit, disappearing right away (as food often does in this house), and SO much better than the mall bought ones.

Better than Mall-bought Soft Pretzels

Ingredients:

Buttery, Garlicy (is that a word?) goodness. (didn't get time to snap a better picture since they were all gone by the morning-sorry!)

1 1/2 cup warm water
1 packet yeast (I used the rapid rising type, I was hungry!)
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 1/8 tsp. salt
4 cups AP flour (and extra for shaping)

for baking soda wash:
2 cups warm water
3 tbsp. baking soda

for egg wash (optional):
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp. water

toppings:
4 tbsp. melted butter (not margarine!)
kosher salt
cinnamon sugar
garlic powder

Directions:

Add the yeast and sugar to the warm water in a bowl and stir until dissolved. Add 2 cups of the flour and stir to combine, then add the salt. Add another 1.5 cups of flour and combine, then add the last 1/2 cup in while kneading the dough.  Knead the dough until it is elastic and springs up after being poked (mine was still fairly sticky at this point, but that’s fine). Let the dough rise for 30 minutes, then pull pieces off of the dough and shape your pretzels. I just take two long strands of dough and twist them together- though braids and traditional pretzel shapes are fun to make, too (I might try making some bite sized pretzel nuggets next time- yum!).

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine the 2 cups of warm water and baking soda in a bowl, and either dunk your shaped pretzels in the mixture, or brush it onto the pretzels liberally before placing them on a  greased cookie sheet to rise again for 15 minutes.After the pretzels are done rising, you can choose to wash them with an egg wash by brushing on an egg/water mixture, which gives them a nice, brown color during cooking. Cook the pretzels for 8-10 minutes in a 450 degree oven, and brush with melted butter once they’re out of the oven. Top with course salt, cinnamon and sugar, or my favorite- garlic powder.

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These pretzels are so incredibly light and fluffy in texture, but still have that nice pretzel crust on them. Every time I make these, I wonder why I don’t make them more often- though the ingredients and process may seem daunting initially, they’re very simple to make, and the ingredients list is very undemanding. A nice, bready snack (though I had two garlic ones as a substitute for dinner) that went very well with the Scrubs marathon that we were watching on tv. (: