Oatmeal Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

My friend made these cookies for a picnic we had a few weeks past and I have been wanting to try them ever since. Its a recipe from the smittenkitchen.com, which is a great website if you ever want to look at pretty pictures of food. Since my husband and I are going on vacations for the 4th I thought it would be nice to bring out host a little something.

I'm working on "Y" for this weeks recipe of cooking through the alphabet and hope to have it to you soon but the vacation may slow me up a little, please forgive me.

Chocolate cupcake Meringue frosting

By far the best frosting ever!!! If you have a good chocolate cake recipe use it and send it to me because I lost the one I used for these cupcakes and I'm kicking myself because they were a bite of heaven. I do still have the frosting recipe though.

Topping Ingredients

• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 1/2 cup superfine sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• sprinkles to decorate

1. This is a frosting that has a kind of meringue base, by which you whisk egg whites over heat until they're stiff and gleaming. So make a double-boiler with a heatproof bowl that will fit snugly over a saucepan of barely simmering water, and put all of the ingredients for the frosting, except for the vanilla and sprinkles, into the bowl. Whisk everything with an electric beater until the icing becomes thick and holds peaks like a meringue. This will take about 5 minutes, so be patient.
2. Take the bowl off the saucepan and onto a cool surface and keep whisking while you add the vanilla. Then keep whisking until the mixture cools a little. You want a proper peaked and whipped covering here, so spoon some frosting over each bun and then dollop another spoonful over in a swirly fashion. Immediately shake over your choice of sprinkles, as the icing will set very quickly. Indeed, these look rather like stage prop buns or the fake ones that some bakeries used to keep in their windows, so plasticky and gleaming are they.

Summer things I miss

Now that its really summer here I find myself I missing a few thing eating soft cheese with grapes and apples, sushi, sipping down tropical drinks with a little rum, but mostly sleeping on my stomach. On the bright side all those things aren't that great for you regardless if your pregnant of not, so I guess I'm better off.

Z is for Zucchini Ripieni

This is the first of my cooking thru the alphabet series. Like I said that I'll start with the difficult letters and work my way to A. Zucchini Ripieni (stuffed Zucchini) has many variations, it seems like most put meat in theirs but I know I have a vegetarian follower so I though that I'd try to make a few more veggie friendly dishes.

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 lbs zucchini (12 small or 6 large)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
• 2 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs (approx)
• 2/3 cup cheese, grated
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup milk

Directions

Cut ends off zucchini and trim to same length, wash and drain. Boil in lightly salted water for 10 minutes or until half cooked, drain and cool (you may dip in ice water to help cool). Slice in half lengthwise and scoop pulp into a colander to drain a little. Leave about 1/4 inch thick walls in the zucchini, make them like a boat. In a bowl mix pulp, parsley, basil, breadcrumbs, eggs and all of the parmesan except 2 tablespoons. Add salt and pepper to taste, stir well (I only use about 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, but use to your taste, or leave out). In a saucepan melt 1/4 C of the butter, stir in the flour, gradually stir in milk and stir over low heat until it has thickened and is bubbly.

Gradually stir sauce into zucchini mixture, add more bread crumbs if mixture is not thick enough to spoon. Using a spoon fill zucchini shells with the mixture and arrange them side by side in a shallow buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake at 350 for 1/2 hour, serve hot.

Baby Booties

I hand stitched theses little felt booties. I made the blue ones a little larger than the red ones just incase. My Editor "watched" the goings on from this new felt fort. I wish I could give you my pattern but I sort of winged it. The inspiration for them came from Martha's little felt booties of corse.

Cooking by ABC's

Cooking through the alphabet is is an idea that I've been toying with for awhile now and I think it might be fun. I have been thinking that I would start a Z and work my way to A, just to get the hard ones out of the way. I'm stumped on X so if anyone has any ideas let me know.

Focaccia bread

As you have probably guessed by now, I'm not on a low carb diet, and I love to make good Mexican food. I'll start posting on stuff other than bread, I promise.

But the focaccia bread went great with the spinach, turkey bacon, and hard boiled egg, salad we had for dinner last night, and it was really fun poking my fingers in the dough so it wouldn't bubble up when it baked.

Easy Cinnamon Muffin Bread

On Friday I was searching around the local thrift store when I found these mini bread pans for a dollar. So of corse now had to think of something to bake in my new little bread pans... humm, muffins! Perfect, I hate trying to grease my muffin tin (no matter what I always miss a sport or two and some of the muffins stick to the pan and turns into a mess). Cinnamon muffin bread seemed like the way to go. Husband said that the bread was one of the best recipes I've come up and insisted that I write down the recipe for future reference.

1 3/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt.

(Mix together then add)

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

3 Tbs. butter

dash of Cinnamon

(Pour into bread pans)

(in a small bowl mix)

3 Tbs flour

3 Tbs sugar

1 tsp molasses (or you could just use brown sugar)

2 Tbs Butter (room temp)

2 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbs. Water (or until the consistency of tooth paste)

(spread on top of bread, it should sink to the middle of the bread when the bread bakes. Bake bread at 350)

Corn Tortillas

Last night I thought it was a good time to make corn tortillas out of the Corn Masa mix leftover from the tamales. I have a new found respect from those perfectly round tortillas you can buy at the store, but how much better they taste when they're fresh. It wasn't hard to make as much as it was difficult to get the knack of rolling them out. I just followed the directions on the bag, which said to use a tortilla press, used my rolling pen, placed them in the pan for awhile then flipped them over and cooked the other side and thats it. Other then the odd shapes they where great.

Card Design

I have been trying to challenge myself each week to design and submit my work in a graphic design competition. This week was the Foldees.com Monochrome card design, the rules where to could make a design using black, white and one color (and as many shades and hues of that color you want). I chose Peach, the top image is the front of the card and the lower one is the inside. Designs will be voted for on the website from June 18th- 24th.

Lemon Yogurt Blueberry Cake

So many blueberries and so many things I could make. I really could sit around and eat blueberries all day until I turned into Violet Beauregarde*, thats basically whats going happening now that I'm pregnant anyways, but I figure I should make a nice sweet bread while I have so many berries at my disposal.

I used this recipe and it turned out great. My only issue was fresh blueberries were heavier than the batter so most of the berries sunk to the bottom of the cake.

* Willy Wonka blueberry girl

Milk and Cookies

Steamed milk and the Sugar Cookies with chocolate frosting, that is.

Baby Hat

This is a baby hat I made out of one of the sleeves of my husband's old sweaters. I used this pattern http://www.make-your-own-baby-stuff.com/infant-cap.html. My "editor" was happy to model for us but for the rest of the day he acted real hood, he just keep giving me the waz' up head nod.

Taco Tuesday

Last night I made tacos to-go so my husband could watch the playoffs with a buddy. I haven't made hard tacos shells in awhile so I'm a little rusty, most of them end up sticking shut so I had to pry them open, but they tasted good. After I fried the shells in corn oil I places them in the oven for about 10 mins. to make them a bit more crunchy.

Homemade Pasta

My neighbors brought by some homemade pasta for me the other day and it inspired me to make spaghetti for dinner. 

The sauce was a put very easy, 

just a 1lb of ground beef, diced tomatoes, mushrooms, 

diced onion, garlic, salt and pepper, cook all that together 

and then add a can/jar of your favorite sauce on top of all 

that and let simmer. But it was the pasta that made the 

meal special.

Pizza Day

I used my bread maker to make pizza dough the other day. I had enough dough to make two good sized pizzas. One for me, sausage, olive, tomato, (muum) and one for husband, pepperoni (nothing fancy). 

Chicken Enchiladas

Every year on my husband’s birthday I make chicken enchiladas, I don't know how this tradition started but now it’s just what we do. I got this recipe from my brother-in-law and it is really good.

Recipe for Chicken Enchiladas

I cook a whole chicken in my crock-pot and just make a chicken potpie with the left over chicken

20-24 corn tortillas

1 bunch cilantro

3 diced green onions

1 tiny can diced black olives

1 large can red La Victoria Enchilada sauce

1 can condense tomato soup

About 2 1/2 cups Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Mix the soup and the enchilada sauce together in a saucepan, heat till warm, your fingers will be touching it so not too hot. Have all ingredients all prepared in little bowls so it makes everything go smother. Dip one tortilla in the sauce and place in a casserole dish, add 2 Tbs. chicken first then a pinch of all other ingredients and then a Tbs. of cheese and roll the tortilla up and push against a side of the dish. Repeat this until your pan is full. I stack my enchiladas 2 high but they never come out looking that pretty. After the pan is full or you’re out of tortillas sprinkle remaining green onions, a little bit of olives and sauce over all the enchiladas. Top off with more cheese. Bake at 350* for 1/2 a hour.  

Blueberry muffins in parchment paper wrappers

I bought some great blueberries and decided to make these muffins but realized I didn't have any muffin wrappers. I remembered reading on Martha Stewart's website that you can just use parchment paper for muffin wrappers.

My paper was a little stiff which made it hard but they turned out. I just couldn't fill the middle row because I filled the outside ones first and couldn't reach the middle row.

For the recipe I just used one I found online but I replaced 1/2 the flour with wheat flour and all the sugar with honey. I couldn't wait until breakfast I had to have one right as it came out of the oven, so I tore it open and placed butter inside to melt, mummm.  

Mexican Hot Coco

While I was shopping for ingredients for the tamales I saw this box of instant hot coco. I remember about 8 years ago when I would stay out late or wake up really early I would make my way to a little stand on Olvera Street called Cielito Lindo near where this picture was take above and order this thick wonderful delicious hot chocolate. It was so thick and warm, it was all you really needed for breakfast. That is going to be one of my first stops when the weather stars to turn cold.