i stuck about 20 of these muffins in a freezer bag on friday night so i could bring them to work this week. i let them defrost for a couple of hours this morning (~10 seconds in the microwave works too) and they’re still moist and great. this would probably also be a great use for more savory muffins (with cheese and cooked sausage or bacon crumbles) to freeze in small batches and grab for breakfast on the go.
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I should start out by saying that I am not a brownie person. I prefer to make things from scratch, and brownie recipes are always either too much work or taste like they came out of a box. Even really good brownies just don’t taste that great to me though, so I never make them for myself. Sadly, my coworkers are all chocolate fiends, so I get a lot of requests for brownies and spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to spruce them up so I’ll not get too bored.
My favorite coworker had a birthday a few weeks ago, and I told her I’d bake whatever she wanted. I had a couple of exciting new recipes set aside in case she couldn’t choose something, but she immediately said she wanted non-spruced up brownies. No peanut butter or minty candies stirred in, just straight up fudgey blocks of chocolate. Luckily, I had just stumbled across a new recipe that sounded okay, so I gave them a shot.
For real, these were the densest, richest, most forgiving brownies I have ever eaten. They burned a little while baking, but you couldn’t even tell. The only change I made was to add a tablespoon or two of confectioners sugar to the frosting, because I thought it would pair better if it was a little sweeter. The best part was that they came together in a few hours, and that includes the time you had to let everything cool in between steps.
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no-fuss mini muffins.
i am very bad at feelings but pretty good at baking, so i’ve been known to use cookies, cakes, and muffins to express my love. these are mini muffins of love, thrown together when i only had a couple of hours to spare and no budget, but wanted to let my friend know she’s one of my best bros.
the best part about these muffins (aside from their adorable size) is how versatile they are. i used the same base for all three muffins, but switched the extras i was mixing in to make three very different treats. the only things i bought before starting were an orange, an apple, milk, and eggs- everything else i had floating around the pantry already. (adapted from this recipe.)
dry ingredients (stir together in a small/medium bowl)
1 cup flour
6 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp saltwet ingredients (whisk together in a small bowl/measuring cup)
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
4 Tbsp vegetable or canola oilextras (mix as noted)
for chocolate chip:
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips mixed with dry ingredients
2 tsp vanilla extract mixed with wet ingredientsfor cranberry orange:
3/4 cup dried cranberries (roughly chopped) mixed with dry ingredients
rind of one small orange (grated into wet ingredients)
2 tsp vanilla extract (mixed with wet ingredients)for caramel apple:
about one cup (one medium apple, peeled and roughly diced) mixed with dry ingredients
1/4 tsp cinnamon mixed with dry ingredients
sprinkle of nutmeg mixed with dry ingredients
4 tsp caramel extract mixed with wet ingredients-stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients until just combined.
-prepare your mini muffin pan however you see fit. (probably spray it with nonstick cooking stuff, although i have a nonstick pan and they came out alright without any spray.)
-spoon or scoop batter into muffin cups, filling nearly to the top. (my mini scoop was the perfect size, and i think it’s about a tablespoon?)
-bake at 375* for 10-12 minutes.
-let cool in pan for a few minutes before removing muffins to a cooling rack.
-nom :D
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earth’s kittiest heroes.
i’ll admit it- i have a sickness. phil catson was getting doodled all over the place at work though, and i wanted to give danielle something special for christmas, so. here we are!
these were actually pretty easy to do, too! natasha’s 6x6 (she’s mine, and was done as a test) and the rest are 5x5, all on canvas. i used matte acrylics for the bodies and metallic/glossy acrylics for the outfits and eyes, with a mix of the two for the backgrounds.
the backgrounds, incidentally, were the hardest part. i used scotch tape to help make borders and just kept making them more and more complicated. it was fun though, and i mainlined all of once upon a time while i was painting!
(i freehanded the actual cats, using hannelore’s kitty tutorial for reference. super-easy! trust me- i have no actual drawing or painting skills and i managed this.)
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birthday cookies!
i’ve been looking for an easy cookie recipe that i can bake for people on their birthdays for a while now. i needed them to be
- easy to make (under two hours from start to finish, preferably leaving me with less than 60 cookies)
- full of ingredients i usually have on hand (i often forget people’s birthdays until the last second)
- able to withstand being mailed (so nothing delicate)
- but still special!
the mint chocolate cookies were a big hit, but that recipe makes a TON of cookies and i definitely don’t keep my pantry stocked with andes candies. my favorite cookies (orange chocolate chip) are definitely special, but nobody else i know will eat them. oatmeal chocolate chip will mail well, but they didn’t feel fun enough.
after a couple of test runs though, i was able to tweak my standard chocolate chip cookie batter to be something a little more festive, and tonight i think i’ve perfected them. the cookies are soft in the middle but have a nice crunch to the edges. the peanut butter is barely there, but it really makes the chocolate pop. and the sprinkles- my favorite part- add just the right touch of fun.
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbs. creamy peanut butter
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 bag (12 oz.) milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup rainbow sprinkles
01. cream together butter and sugars with an electric mixer.
02. add eggs and vanilla. once it’s mixed, drop in about a tablespoon of peanut butter and mix well.
03. in a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
04. slowly add dry mixture to wet mixture, beating on low speed.
05. stir in chocolate chips and sprinkles by hand.
06. spoon onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. (or better yet, use a mini ice cream scoop! i get 15 cookies on each 10x15 cookie tray.)
07. bake in 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.08. let them cool on the tray for 2 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.
09. nomnomnomnomnom <:Dmakes about 55 cookies.
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avengers pots!
it’s possible that the avengers have eaten my brain. i bought two of these plants (phil and phil, one of which got renamed clint) the night we saw the movie. i decided to paint the pots, but while i was out buying supplies i saw this bright flamingo plant and figured the team really needed her. painting these was super-easy (mostly acrylic paint on regluar old ceramic pots, although i mixed some fabric paint in there as well) and i love how they came out.
tips for doing this at home!
- wipe down the outside of the pots and let them dry before you start painting
- a thin, even layer of matte acrylic paint works best and also dries really quickly
- if you’re using thicker paint or anything glossy, let it dry for 24 hours! i didn’t let the phil pot dry long enough, and now the shirt/tie have some bubbling :/
- for the straight lines, use masking tape to give yourself a border. foam brushes work great for painting the larger section. i used an edge brush for hawkeye’s symbol and around black widow’s belt and my favorite small brush for painting the details.
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another coworker birthday means another batch of cookies! this particular coworker refused give me any direction for what she wanted, but eventually let slip that mint chocolate chip is her favorite ice cream. it happens to be my favorite too, so of course i latched onto that for a recipe idea.
i ended up using that chocolate cookie base again (if it ain’t broke, etc etc) but instead of butterscotch chips i added minty candies: two packages of andes candies (chopped up pretty small, although a bag of the pre-chopped andes candies chips would have been easier) and one package of hersey’s mint chocolate bliss candies (also chopped up, but not as small). i was a little disappointed that they only had the milk chocolate kind at target, since dark chocolate + mint = THE BEST, but it ended up adding just the right amount of sweetness to the cookies.
the batter was incredibly thick, so i finished the mixing by hand. i ended up with a lot of cookies, but my coworkers devoured them in record time and still ended up fighting over the last few! -
or as my brother calls them: snick snicks!
one of my coworkers requested snickerdoodles for her birthday, so i decided to try my hand at what i had wrongly convinced myself was a complicated cookie. since my mom was out of town for the night, i used a friend’s recipe instead. everyone loved the cookies, but they were denser than my mom’s (it’s possible i undercooked them) and something about them tasted off to me. i am notoriously judgmental of my own baking, but i decided to try again with my mom’s recipe anyway.
this is an adapted version of my mom’s recipe, with a few changes from things i liked about kait’s. i also bought fresh eggs and cinnamon in case they had been the problem in the first cookies. i’m not sure which change did the trick, but these tasted much more like mom’s- light, crispy, and just begging for a cup of tea to go with them. they also survived being mailed all over the country, since i had to do SOMETHING with the second batch ;)
snickerdoodlesfor cookies:
1 1/2 cups (3/4 lb, 3 sticks) butter, softened
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
4 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
for topping:
2 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp sugar
01. preheat oven to 375 degrees.
02. in a large bowl or an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until creamy. beat in eggs and vanilla.
03. in another bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and cinnamon; gradually add to butter mixture, blending thoroughly.
04. in a small bowl, combine cinnamon and sugar for topping. roll dough into 1 inch balls (if you have a small ice cream scoop, use that), then roll in cinnamon-sugar mixture to coat. place about 2 inches apart on baking sheets.
05. bake in 375 degree oven for about 11 minutes or until lightly browned. let cool on baking sheets for about a minute, then transfer to racks and let cool completely. makes about 55 cookies.
tips: this dough is thick (and delicious!) so keep an eye on your mixer while you’re adding the flour. also, in between batches, stick your dough in the fridge and your extra pan in the freezer. it’ll help the cookies not get melty before you can get them in the oven. and finally, my mom said to grease the cookie sheets but i didn’t and had no problems. if your sheets aren’t non-stick or just suck, i would probably use parchment paper instead of greasing. but i hate greasing pans, so what do i know? -
last halloween, my roommate dressed as deryn from scott westerfeld’s leviathan series and let me make her a sweet aviator hat with a modified version of the pattern i already had. it came out great and sewed up really quickly, and her costume, as you can see, looked fantastic!
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chocolate butterscotch cookies.
i bought butterscotch chips a few months ago and never got around to using them, so i decided to find a recipe for them this weekend using only things i already had in the pantry. i settled on this recipe for chocolate chocolate chip cookies, and just substituted the butterscotch chips for the chocolate ones.
the cookies are very chocolatey, and have a nice crust with a soft center. the butterscotch chips add an unexpected flavor that’s making me wish i still had some milk from the last time i made cookies!
