Nutella Banana Bread

Where did I find this tasty treat?

This is another find from Recipe Girl. I was inspired to make this after spotting a couple sad looking bananas sitting on my counter.  We have very different opinions in this house about when the most appropriate time to eat a banana is.  Matt eats bananas the second they turn yellow. I’m more of a wait-until-they-have-a-couple-brown-spots banana eater. But these 2 sad looking things had gone way past a couple brown spots and more into…”these were yellow at one time right?” territory.  It didn’t take too much convincing for me to settle upon this recipe.  Nutella + banana bread, obviously I’m all over that!

I got 99 problems and Baking is one.

This recipe actually wasn’t so bad. Honestly, I’ve made banana bread before, so it was pretty smooth sailing.  With just one exception…the recipe said “beat at low speed until flour is incorporated (don’t over mix”).  So I start incorporating the flour, but, wait, did I mix that enough? What does over mix mean? How do I know if I over mix…my guess is when I do realize what it means, it’s going to be too late!?!?!  ACK. Basically this sort of freaked me out so I sort of used the mixer for a bit, but then stopped and used my spoon because I was afraid if I stuck with the mixer I’d end up “over mixing”.

Lessons Learned:

1. Banana bread + nutella= OMGFREAKINGAWESOME
2. This sort of make me think that I should start eating banana & nutella sandwiches.
3. I still don’t know about over mixing. I’m not sure what it means. But I can say that I didn’t over mix this bread.

Dark Chocolate Brownies

Where did I find this tasty treat?

I am a big fan of brownies…I mean really who isn’t?  But as I have already confessed, my baking has pretty much focused on box mix baked good.  I knew that I was going to have to find a brownie recipe (or several really) that I was going to make.  This latest recipe came from Sweet Anna’s blog.  Brownies + dark chocolate = hell yeah I’m all over that.

I got 99 problems and Baking is one.

These seemed like they were going to be easy enough to make, but of course I found a way to mess something up.  First and foremost, I made a freakin’ MESS of my kitchen. Seriously, it was a goddamned disaster when I finished making these.  Chocolate, flour, sugar…everywhere. I am not even sure how the hell I managed to make the mess I did. It was bad.You know those paper towel commercials where they are showing how good the paper towels are by cleaning up a HUGE mess? You know, the ones where you ask yourself, “how would anyone’s house be that dirty?”  Well folks, let me tell you it’s possible.

So there I am going along mixing, stirring, etc everything seems like it’s going OK (besides the mess) and I pour the batter in my greased pan…then I notice the vanilla sitting on the counter.  Hmm…I know I took all the ingredients out and put them on the counter…but I don’t think I used the vanilla.  Why is it sitting on the counter?  Oh shit, did I miss a step?  I run back over to the computer, look at the recipe again.  Yep, missed a step.  Actually I missed the part where I was supposed to add the salt and vanilla.  OOPS. So, OK what do I do now.  The batter is already in the greased pan…I was a bit frozen.  Do I add it now and try and mix it in as best I can, or leave it out?  I decided to add them in.  I think it was the right choice, they really were tasty when they were finished.

Lessons Learned:

1. Read the whole recipe, and then read it again.
2. It’s a good idea for me to lay everything out first.
3. Mixing things in at the end, even when it’s in a greased pan is not a total deal breaker.
4. Wait until the brownies have had time to cool down before you start cutting.  (I am an impatient person, I dug right in when they were still warm, and while really yummy, the brownie totally fell apart.)

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

Where did I find such a treat?

This recipe comes from Recipe Girl, who adapted the recipe from Martha Stewart.  I knew I had to try to make these as soon as I stumbled across the recipe.  I love, love, love a snickerdoodle, so I just assumed a snickerdoodle in cupcake form WITH FROSTING would be amazing, and I was right. 

I got 99 problems, and Baking is one:

So apparently the temperature in my apartment is determined to screw with my baking at all times.  Last week it was too hot for my egg whites to form into peaks, and this time, it was freezing cold and my butter at room temperature was still too cold for creaming.  I had left it out forever, tossed into the bowl with my sugar, attempted to start creaming and then tragedy struck. I was stuck, all clumped together, not making any kind of progress in the creaming department.  It was a disaster.  I ended up having to toss the whole damned thing into the microwave to get it soft enough to cream together. After creaming the butter and sugar I had to add the eggs 1 at a time.  Thanks to my friend Marianne I knew that by leaving eggs in some tepid water for a bit, I could have room temperature eggs in no time, so no troubles on that front.

Everything is mixed and looking yummy and now onto pouring the batter, Hooray! Except how the hell do i pour this batter that won’t actually pour? Well, I started spooning the mix into the paper lined cupcake tin and realized that I suck at this too.  Instead of putting the batter into the cups, I kept getting enough batter on the cup for it to get stuck onto my spoon, so there were partially filled cupcake liners flying everywhere.  Eventually, I got into a groove and filled all 24 cupcakes. 

24?  Wait that’s weird, why did the recipe say it would yield 28 cupcakes?  How exactly did I end up with 24 perfectly filled liners?  I overfilled the damned cupcakes.  Actually that isn’t true, I over filled a bunch of the cupcakes, not all of them.  (See perfectly sized cupcake in the picture)

They baked up in about 18 minutes.  They smelled amazing, and I was sure they would taste good, but the very first thing I noticed when I took them out of the oven was that every single one of them was totally flat.  They didn’t have that cute domed look of so many cupcakes, including the picture of the recipe I was following. I did a bit of googleing and it turns out the flat top can be a result of old baking powder, or not creaming properly.  I know the latter is true and honestly, I would almost bet my baking power is old too. So, two out of two ain’t bad right?  Erm…wait, it is bad.

The frosting was killer easy, and very tasty.  Honestly cream cheese frosting, what is there not to love? The little cinnamon sugar sprinkle as a finishing touch turned into having a lot of leftover cinnamon sugar, because what was supposed to be a 1/2 tsp of cinnamon really became 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.  DOH!

Lessons learned:

1. The temperature in my apartment sucks.
2. Butter at room temperature should give a bit when squeezed, not just seem slightly warmer than when it comes out of the fridge.  
3. Room temperature eggs can be left out, or if you can plan in advance they can be left into tepid water to warm up a bit. 
4. I need to be a bit more patient while pouring/spooning batter into the liners.
5. DO NOT OVERFILL THE CUPCAKES.
6. 1/2 tsp does NOT equal 1tblsp

 

 

Tres Leches

OK here we go, the first official Made From Scratch recipe of 2012.  I found this Tres Leches cake recipe on Punchfork which then linked me over to the original recipe found on The Pioneer Woman.

Overall it came out great.  But as always there were issues.  The first being that I only have 1 measuring cup, which means laying out all of my ingredients can be a total pain, mostly because I can’t be bothered to measure all dry stuff then all wet things, it’s a cluster.

The second problem had to do with the fact that my apartment doubles as a sweat lodge, so it was a balmy 84 degrees in the house and my egg whites would not form into soft peaks.  Instead, after a while I just gave up and added them into the mix as they were.  Had my egg whites cooperated I think the cake would have risen a bit more than it did.

Over all, I’d say this was a yummy success and a relatively easy way to start.  Hooray.

365:2 My View

I would write and tell you all about this picture but since I added like a million notes to the pic on my flickr account explaining what everything thing is I will instead just refer you over there.

Short and sweet.  That is all.

So, um…here we go again.

Alright, I was having some success blogging about my shoes for a while…but alas, the winter restricts my shoe choices.

Here are a few reasons why:

1. Snow + heels= not that easy to walk.
2. Snow + salt/sand + pretty shoes= too risky. I really don’t want to wreck a nice pair of shoes on a crappy day.
3. Snow + cold= unhappy me. Why? Basically because when my feet are cold I’m cold–and I really hate being cold.

Are you starting to recognize a theme here? So…no new shoe postings for a while…now what? Well, I’m a glutton for punishment and I just got a new camera so I’m diving back into a 365 project!

Here we go.  Project 365 part dos!  I blew on part one but I’m determined to make it through this one!  So here’s my first pic!

I think I’ll call this one: My SUCK ASS journey to work today.

9: Clark Flats

Clark Flats

Heel: NONE (I guess that should be pretty obvious though, right?)

Purchased at: DSW with a $20 off coupon so they only ended up costing me $40 which was awesome

I bought these because I needed a nice pair of brown flats that I could wear when I didn’t want to just be in sneakers/flip flops but I didn’t want to bother with heels.  I love these shoes–they are crazy comfortable.

(On a side note, is it totally corny that I snapped this picture in our dining room at work because I liked that the tiles matched the shoes? YIKES I’m a total geek)

8: Brown strappy cork heels

Brown Strappy Cork Sandals

Heels: 4inches

Purchased at: Aldo

I got these shoes 3 years ago and I still love them as much as I did when I first bought them.  I went shopping with my mom for some new shoes to go with a dress that I bought for my cousin’s wedding…and I LOVED these.  They cost me somewhere between $60-$90 I have no idea how much.  I lasted all day at work in these shoes so they are pretty comfortable–maybe because I’ve broken them in after so long.

You can’t really see it in the picture but on my left foot there’s about an inch long scratch on the cork–why?  Because one night when I was walking to another bar with my friend Tommy my foot just sunk right into a sidewalk grate–Tommy was totally oblivious to the fact that I was literally stuck into the sidewalk so he just kept on walking.  I ended up having to yell at him to make him wait for me. This is how it went down.

Me: boom, stuck

Me: Tommy, wait up for me!

Tommy: What, what are you doing?

Me: My foot is stuck–literally.

Tommy: WHAT?

Me: My heel got stuck in the grate

Tommy: Well yank it out!

Me: No, these are new, and cork–I can’t just YANK–they will get scratched!

Tommy: Um, Bunny are you fucken serious?

Me: YES I AM SERIOUS

Tommy: Well, I’m not staying here all night

And then YANK he just grabbed my ankle and ripped my shoe out of the grate.  I, of course was totally devastated about the stratch and made Tommy buy me a beer to make up for the damage to my shoe.

7: Flower Power Pumps

Michael Kors Off White Flower Pumps

Heels: 3 1/2 inches

Purchased at: Century 21 in NYC

It’s official–I have found a pair of shoes that I’m ready to part with.  These shoes while terribly beautiful, are terribly UNCOMFORTABLE!  Seriously these shoes are so uncomfortable…the back part at my heel cuts into my leg so much that in order to wear them I have to stick moleskin on my heel! And the balls of my feet totally kill in these shoes, they have no padding, I mean NONE it’s as if I’m walking on my bare feet.

I LOVE these shoes, I bought them on a birthday weekend trip to NYC. Me and 19 of my friends rented a house in Queens for a long weekend and wandered around the city it was great!  It was hella random, but great fun.  I had read about Century 21 in my NYC travel book and we checked it out…I think all of us scored some really good deals that day. I only paid $40 for these shoes, but it’s time they get retired–I’m going to hand them off to torture someon else’s feet.

6: Dots! Pink, Gray, & White Airwalks

Pink, Gray & White Airwalks

Heels: NONE

Purchased at: Payless

These shoes only cost me like $15! Which was such a BONUS–I was at the mall with my sister looking for new sneakers and found these.  I saved myself a ton of money and they are really comfy shoes.  They will only be good to wear during the spring, summer & fall–winter snow will totally destroy these–so I guess I’ll enjoy them while I can! Three out of four seasons isn’t bad is it?