Blueberry Muffins

My favorite part about summer is the excessive amount of fruit that's in season. I went a little crazy the other day buying all of my produce and when I found that the blueberries were on sale I bought 2 pounds of them. Ashamed? Absolutely not! Well, at least not until I realized how much I had to eat. After about a week-and-a-half I still had about 1/3 left and knew I had to act quickly before they went bad. Enter said muffins.

I'm still not big on baking - especially early on a Saturday morning, but I was willing to allow it for the outcome of homemade muffins! Oh these are so incredibly delicious and pretty easy to make. I got the recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction and didn't need to change much. I skipped the extra sugar on top because I figured I would have enough sugar in the coffee I would inevitably be pairing these with and found that they were just a good without it. I don't think I'll ever go back to boxed muffin mix again!

What You'll Need:

3 cups of flour

4 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of cinnamon 

2 eggs

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of buttermilk (or 1 cup of milk + 1 tablespoon of vinegar)

1/2 cup of oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups of fresh or frozen blueberries

What To Do: 

1. Start by pre-heating your oven to 425 degrees. Don't worry, you're going to lower the heat after five minutes of baking. 

2. Carefully measure all of your dry ingredients and mix together in a large bowl. (You'll be adding the wet ingredients to this).

3. In another bowl, mix the sugar and eggs. Add the rest of the wet ingredients to the eggs and sugar. 

4. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients and make sure the flour is thoroughly incorporated. When it is, carefully fold in the blueberries. 

5. Line or spray your pans and fill each spot to the top with your mix. 

6. Bake at 425 for 5 minutes. Then for another 13 minutes at 375. Don't worry about taking the muffins out while the oven is cooling. When they're done leave them in the pan for another minute, then place them on cooling racks. 

7. Let them cool for a bit, but they're better when they're nice and warm with a little bit of butter (and the coffee of course!). ENJOY

Granola Clusters

Raise your hand if you're still keeping up with your New Year's resolution. Be honest, now. I have to admit that I got a slow start to mine but I'm still going. After all these years I've finally added the "eating healthy" resolution to my life. It's all part of making a better, happier me. I adapted this recipe from Cookies and Cups after needing more healthy snack and dessert options. Nothing is worse than working out or doing really good with your daily diet and feeling like you ruined everything with an unhealthy snack. Enter GRANOLA CLUSTERS! These little clusters are perfectly crunchy and just sweet enough and fill you up quicker than other junk food snacks! My favorite part was that even though there are quite a bit of ingredients, this recipe is so customizable that you could mix and match the ingredients with things that you have. Here's to us and our New Year's Resolutions!

What You'll Need:

2 1/2 cups oats (not instant)

1/4 cup melted butter

1/4 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup dried cherries

1 cup flaked coconut

2 cups corn flakes (lightly crushed)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 chopped walnuts

1 beaten egg white

What To Do:

1. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

2. Line a large cookie sheet with non-stick foil or parchment paper and set aside.

3. In a large bowl mix all of your ingredients together. It's sort of a running joke between Mike and I that I never mix things in large enough bowls. So, my friends, use a LARGE bowl because there are a lot of ingredients.

*Spray your measuring cup with a little cooking spray in order to get all of the honey out of it.

4. Put the mixture on you cookie sheet and spread it around evenly.

5. Bake the granola for 25 minutes then turn off your oven but keep your granola in there until the oven cools. This was a great tip from Shelly (author of Cookies and Cups) that makes all the difference in how crunchy your granola gets.

**Her blog also has good tips on how to get less crunchy granola if that's not really your thing.

***As I mentioned, there are a lot of things that would go great in these. I happened to only have walnuts and dried cherries, because I love to snack on them, but cranberries, raisins, almonds, chocolate chips, or a mix of all of these would be a great addition. 

6. Once it's cooled start to break off pieces. The bottom will form a sort of crust that keeps everything together and is insanely delicious.

7. Save the mix in a air-tight container and enjoy throughout your day!

Cake Mix Biscotti

I feel like so many people have been trying to kick the processed foods out of their life. This makes me so happy! Being one of those people who actually can't stomach overly process foods the way I used to, I'm glad to come across more and more recipes that show ways to make this easy and be able to share recipes that can help others do the same. This recipe actually constitutes as semi-homemade rather than from scratch but there's a reason why. About 6 months ago I got pretty fed up with the "food" that was in my pantry. Boxed noodles, potatoes, brownies, cakes, rice, and so on - I had it all! I finally donated all that food because I wasn't eating it anymore and I had found really amazing substitutions that I actually preferred more. HOWEVER I kept a few things (like my boxed cake mix) to see if there was anything I could make with it, besides cake. I decided to make biscotti instead. That's how this cake mix substitution came to be. This is a fun way to clear your pantry of that processed powder you have in your pantry or cupboard and bring new life into foods that you're slowly trying to work your way out of.

What You'll Need:

1 box of chocolate cake mix

1 cup of AP flour

2 eggs

1 stick of butter (melted)

1/4 C of water

Chocolate for drizzling (optional)

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

2. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and make a dough. I know it sounds like a lot of butter but it's totally worth it, I promise!

3. Divide dough into two pieces and place on a lightly floured work space.

4. Flatten each piece into a rectangle - 1" thick and 3" wide. You'll end up with two rectangle-shaped chocolate dough pieces. I know you can tell this is going to be good!

5. Bake each rectangle for 25 minutes on a foil lined baking sheet, until it firms up then let cool for a few minutes or until it's cool to the touch.

6. Slice each piece into 1.5" thick pieces and place back on a baking sheet. You'll end up with around 14 pieces. Bake for another 15 minutes to make them really crunchy.

7. Let them cool and drizzle with chocolate or a little powdered sugar. I chose to omit this process because I figured I had my calorie intake for the moment. Sure does sound good though!

8. Serve with coffee and ENJOY!

*Some delicious add-ins are walnuts, dried cherries, or chocolate chips!

Snickerdoodles

 Everyone loves a good Snickerdoodle cookie. Now that I've finally made them, I'm hearing from everyone that these are their favorite cookies. I have to admit that I was never a huge fan. I think I finally had my first Snickerdoodle a year ago, and it was only a bite. There was no real reason for me to not like them - especially because I'd never had one. But I mean how can anyone not like a good sugar cookie covered in cinnamon and sugar? But I finally cracked and decided to surprise Mike with a batch for his birthday a few weeks ago because, of course, they're his favorite cookie. You know me, I'm not the biggest fan of baking but the recipe I found was super easy. I used a recipe I found online (thanks Sue W.) and it'll probably always be the recipe I use. I've used this recipe once more since then and they came out fabulous yet again so I knew the recipe was worth sharing.

What You'll Need:

1 1/2 C white sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 teaspoon butter (softened)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 3/4 all purpose flour

1 teaspoon cream of tarter

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons white sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

What to Do:

1. Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees.

2. Then, in a large bowl, beat the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and softened butter. If you're fancy and have a nice mixer... well, then I'm jealous. I just use my good, old-fashioned hand mixer which I think is on it's last leg. Anyway. Make sure everything is mixed really well. (Tell me, is this not the best start to any recipe ever??

3. Once it's nice and mixed, add the flour, cream of tarter, baking soda, and salt to the bowl. I've only ever tried the recipe with cream of tarter but reviews I read said that you don't absolutely need it. I now have a little container full of it that have no idea what to do with. Maybe I'll make meringues... or more Snickerdoodles.

4. Mix everything until the dough forms. If you're a rebel and eat raw cookie dough on occasion, you 1) are like me and 2) NEED to try this.

5. Next, in a small bowl you'll want to combine the cinnamon and sugar so you can coat the cookies.This is what makes the Snickerdoodle a Snickerdoodle. So this two step process is essentially the most important. Funny how that works.

6. Get the dough and lightly roll it into balls then roll the balls into the cinnasugar mix. Place them on a non-greased cookie sheet and lightly press them down. Bake them for 8 minutes and immediately place them on a wire rack to cool.

7. ENJOY!

I think another great thing about these cookies is that they bake really quickly so I get to eat sooner! These cookies have definitely changed my mind on Snickerdoodles. They're crispy on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle. I'm thinking about adding these to my Christmas cookie lineup this year and seeing what I can do with making them look more festive. I doubt festivity would matter considering these are (almost) everyone's favorite cookie. I hope you try them and fall in love with them just as much.

Brownie Pizza

 It's been a long time since I've posted a dessert but the time has come and I think you're going to like it! It all started the other day when I had a basket full of fresh strawberries and nothing to do with them. I planned on eating them like so but decided to make a dessert instead, the problem was that I didn't know what to make. Out of nowhere I remembered this dessert my mom had brought home from work once and knew that was exactly what I was going to make. We call this incredibly decadent dessert Brownie Pizza but Mike calls it a tart and I'm not sure why. And even though there is fruit on this, I recommend putting the calories away for this one.

What to Do:

1. Start by making a brownie mix according to the directions on the box. You can use a homemade brownie mix or the box stuff. I obviously don't bake much (if you follow my blog you know I like my baking shortcuts) so I gladly used my usual boxed brownie mix. Oh simplicity.

2. Instead of putting the mix in the usual 13x9 baking dish, put it on a cookie sheet that is really well greased. I believe the one I used was 13"x10". Cook for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. 

3. 15 minutes later you'll have exactly what you need. Make sure you let it cool completely. This is a cold dessert so I recommend letting it sit out or in the fridge for a couple of hours.

4. Next it's time to make the frosting. Use one package of cream cheese and 1/4 cup of sugar and beat together until the sugar is totally incorporated. If you taste it, you have to try not to eat the whole thing right then and there. Trust me, I know how tempting it will be.

5. When the brownie is fully cooled you can either move it to a fancy platter or leave it be on the cookie sheet. Because I'm not a baker I tend to have to little luck with my baked goods being transferred cleanly and in one piece so I opted to leave it on the cookie sheet. No biggie. When you have the brownie correctly placed slather (yes I meant to type that) the cream cheese frosting on top, making sure that you get the ends and corners with extra. I usually hate the edges of baked goods which I why I tend to over-compensate with them.

6. Now for the healthy stuff. I've never used any other fruits than bananas and strawberries but if you ever try this and use something else, please let me know! The important thing to remember for the fruit is to make sure all of the slices are even AND that they are patted dry to get rid of any extra moisture. You can just use a paper towel for this.

*I used two medium sized bananas and laid those down first because I know they go brown and I wanted this to look pretty.

7. Then add the strawberries.

**This is where it gets interesting.

8. Heat the fudge according to the directions then drizzle it over the brownie. You can also use chocolate syrup but I already had the fudge so I used it. 

Voilà! Foodie heaven! When you eat this you get a chewy, moist brownie with a sweet cream cheese taste. And just when it becomes too much you get the freshness from the strawberries and bananas that cut down the decadence and add their own refreshing sweetness. It's pure magic! I owe this dessert to my mother who brought it home and now has the recipe forever on my blog! Thanks mama! So I hope this has tempted you to get up and eat something sweet! Go ahead, go - I won't judge you. Until next time, cheers!

Thanksgiving Catch-Up: Blogging Through the Holidays!

I literally have one more final left then I'm on vacation. I've taken a hiatus from blogging so I could focus on pre-final tests and papers, then finals themselves. As always I have soo much to blog but I wanted to let you know how my holidays have been. We're currently getting ready for Christmas (I'll be in full-swing Christmas mode when finals are done) but we've already had some of our traditions here: Thanksgiving being the first one. Mike and I both attended our families Thanksgiving dinners, then I attended my parents' dinner, then our personal one here at home. Three Thanksgivings. Yeah, I'm still full. I won't get into my recipes (except for one that I'll post later) so I'll just let you know what I was up to for my weekend-long feast.

On Thanksgiving day I woke up, watched the parade, then headed off to San Jose to see my family. We usually have that dinner pretty early because my aunts and uncles have dinner with their in-laws too and so on. There was no shortage of food there either.

My uncle and the newest member of our family - his grandson!

I had a great time with my family and enjoyed seeing everyone since it had been so long and I've moved pretty far.

On Friday it was also Mike's birthday (he's a Thanksgiving baby) so we had plans that night but my parents always have their own Thanksgiving for us the next day so I attended that too. This is the spread my mom had for us. It consisted of turkey, homemade stuffing, yams, homemade mashed potatoes, rice (because we're Mexican and we eat it with almost every meal), and cranberry sauce.

Yeah, I rocked this...

Our last Thanksgiving was on that Saturday. I started this tradition when Mike and I moved out last year so we could have our own leftovers. It's really what got me started in blogging again. I had forgotten how fun it could be to cook multiple items at once, and the pressure and satisfaction that comes with pulling it off. Folks, this is for you, I owe you one.This year I found out something about myself. I don't like turkey. I mean I'll eat it, but I usually go after all of the side dishes. And I realized the older I get, the lazier turkey makes me. It's just not my favorite thing, but I made one anyway. Along with my turkey I had stuffin' muffins, mashed potatoes, yams, rice, and a potato salad.

*Confession* I don't know the difference between sweet potatoes and yams and I honestly don't know which ones I made but they were good. Also, I'm sorry if my version differs from the traditional way, I don't know what that is either but feel free to let me know.

These are the ingredients that my lovely father chopped really really tiny for me. He's the best at it. These are bags of celery, green onion, and the turkey neck (let's all ignore the third thing together). I sauteed them in a bunch of butter then added a box of Stovetop stuffing and half a bag of plain stuffing. This is my secret. You're welcome :) unless you do it too.

For my potatoes I did the usual boiling of potatoes and whipped them with cream and butter (calories and I are good friends over the holidays).

My stuffin muffins ready to go....

My yams crushed up with crushed pineapple, walnuts, brown sugar and topped with mini marshmallows.

This is the first time we had this but we got them from Mike's dad. This is the exact recipe we used. Please try them - they're delicious and very unhealthy!!

This is the guest of honor. Not too bad huh? 

Not a bad feast for college students on a budget. We both really enjoyed it too. Don't worry I didn't forget about dessert! I'll be posting my Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe soon. See you all then. Cheers!

Halloween Treats - Pinwheels and Pizza

One of my favorite holidays is officially over. It makes me sad because I absolutely love Halloween, but I'm also excited because it means the holiday season has officially started. When I was little my parents would let me go all out for Halloween, sometimes having multiple costumes for school and trick or treating. As I got older I looked forward to the month long airing of scary movies. Now I would never say that I'm too old for trick or treating because you can never be too old for a costume and candy, but since my life has been getting increasingly more hectic, the thought of walking in the cold, dressed as a sailor, knocking on strangers doors in an area I'm still new to didn't sound like my kind of thing, besides I had already gone out on Saturday night and had a fabulous time.

 

It didn't help that Halloween was on a Monday this year either, so I was ready to kick back and veg out. I did buy two bags of candy for any trick or treaters that might stop by (but what kid wants to climb stairs just to get candy... ok probably a lot) but our plans consisted of a scary movie marathon, margarita style pizza, and spinach and tomato pinwheels. I don't know if the whole bowl of candy was intended to be on the menu, but Mike and I ate it as an appetizer, main course, and dessert. Ooops...

Right before the good parts of Signs started we made our pizza. In 20 minutes dinner was done. As most of my go-to meals, these are semi-homemade to - you know how I roll.

Pinwheels

I'm not sure what these are really called but this name works for me. I got this idea from a Pillsbury commercial shown during the holidays last year, but I added a little extra oomph - tomatoes!! This is the perfect appetizer. I'm thinking about making these for Christmas Eve when I visit my family because they're so easy.

What You'll Need:

1 can (roll?) of refrigerated biscuits

chopped frozen spinach

1/2 a tomato

1/2 C of mozzarella cheese

Start by taking out all of the biscuits and rolling them into one piece of dough. Make sure the dough is rolled about 1/2 an inch thick. Sprinkle the cheese, spinach and tomatoes and lightly press down into the dough. Then roll the dough as tightly as possible and cut the roll about a 1/4-1/2 inch thick and place them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake them for as long as the container says to - about 10 minutes.

Eat them while they're hot. We ate ours with the pizza and it was the perfect meat-free (guilt-free) meal for a night in. 

Margarita Style Pizza

Once again this is an ode to a semi-homemade meals. I didn't feel like making a homemade crust so I bough one from the store. The crust was a little more spongy than I'm use to but the taste worked because of all the flavors on top. I made my own pizza sauce too.

What You'll Need:

Pizza Sauce

Pizza Crust

Mozzarella cheese slices

Basil

Tomato slices 

How could a pizza this simple be bad? For my sauce I just used one small can of tomato sauce and added some salt, garlic powder, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and oregano. I spread the sauce over my store bought crust, then put a layer of basil, cheese and then tomato.

Bake the pizza for 14 minutes at 450 degrees. This is just long enough to put the dishes in the sink (to wash later) and perhaps make a drink...hmmm...

This pizza is the perfect light pizza to eat while your sitting in sweats watching scary movies on the couch. I put a little fresh basil (which is currently my new obsession) on top and curled up - mainly because I was too scared to keep my feet on the floor... The tomatoes are so juicy and the cheese is so creamy that you should probably make two pizzas because they're so good.

We ended up having the best Halloween. It was perfectly relaxing and I couldn't have asked for anything better. I hope you all had a good Halloween too. I look forward to starting the fall off with you guys. Cheers!

Spinach Quiche

Quiche is one of the things I have always loved but left for other people to make. My favorite version is mini quiches - like the adorable ones that are always served at fabulous parties. There's something crazy good about a flaky crust filled with an almost creamy, fluffy, center. Not to mention I love any dish that can be made with pretty much anything I have. As a working college student I love me a no-fuss recipe. I adapted my recipe from Just Eat, it's such a great blog, check it out. This is super easy to make and really really delicious.

What You'll Need:

4 eggs

1/3 C milk

1 1/4 C cheese

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 chopped onion
1 tomato

6 sliced mushrooms

1 1/2 packages of frozen spinach

1 cold pie crust (below)

Pie Crust

I started by making my own pie crust for this. If you usually rock a pre-made pie crust those work just as well but pie crusts are soo easy and they get really flaky. Here's how I made mine:

What You'll Need:

1 1/4 C all purpose flour

1/2 C cold butter (cubed)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

3-5 tblsp of water

Mix your flour, salt, and sugar in a mixing bowl. I still don't have a standing mixer but my grandma doesn't need one for her pie crusts so I'm going to say I don't either, I just use my hand-held dough cutter to, well I'm assuming, "cut" in the butter. Once it looks like course sand, add your water one tablespoon at a time. This time I ended up needing four tablespoons to get the consistency I wanted, kneading it continuously. Knead it into a ball and keep in the refrigerator until your quiche (or any other type) of filling is ready. 

First, preheat the oven to 350 so you don't have to wait later on, it's lame.

My quiche was filled with two kinds of cheeses, 1 cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of a Mexican blend (which included pepper jack and cheddar cheese). The pepper jack ended up adding a really nice, deep flavor to the quiche.

In a bowl I mixed the eggs, milk, and cheeses. Then I added the salt and pepper and set it aside.

In a large pan, saute the onion until they're translucent then add the mushrooms. I decided to add a little chopped garlic because I'd pretty much eat garlic on anything and this was no exception.

I wanted to add some tomato because I was sure they would add some awesome color to my quiche. Red pepper would have worked too but I always have tomatoes on hand and they seem to always add a great color, texture, and taste to my meals. I love the little things.

The last thing you want to add is your defrosted, drained spinach. The colors are about to get insane right now! Make sure everything is mixed and fully incorporated.

Add your spinach mixture to your egg mixture and fold in. 

Take out your crust roll it out on a clean, well-floured, surface. It's good to have the chunks of butter in the dough because that's what makes it flaky. Pour the spinach mix over the pie crust.

Place this in the oven for 25 - 30 minutes, until the top is a light golden brown.

When the quiche comes out you're going to see that this recipe is a keeper. Now, I'm a "sides" kind of girl, I love serving main dishes with some sort of side. I guess I feel that a meal isn't complete without them. This was an exception. This was the only thing on our plates and it's all we needed. The spinach was crazy, crazy, crazy it was so good and everything else was fluffy. You can taste every single thing that goes into this. And the perfect thing about this is, if you're like me and you get home late most nights, you can eat this and you don't feel like you over-ate even though you're full. I now have a great recipe that I can make into fabulous mini quiches or smaller personal sized portions.