Rich Frosted Chocolate Mug Cake

Lately I've really been enjoying making various mug cakes.  They are ready in just a couple minutes and make less dirty dishes than making a whole cake, not to mention that a whole cake would go to waste for us because there aren't enough people to eat it!

I think I've finally perfected the chocolate one the last time I made them so I'm going to present my recipe on the blog. Sorry, no pictures of the process since I made them quickly and late at night when the baby (oops, toddler now!) was resisting going to sleep. They were so rich and yummy!

Here's what you need to make 2. Just half the recipe if you are alone and have a chocolate craving. Or make the whole thing and devour it and feel sorry for yourself when you get the biggest stomach ache you've ever had in you life!

For the cake:

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• a handful of random melt-able chocolate (we had these truffle things that we were given for Christmas so I used 6 of them) use whatever you have around, chocolate chips, half a mars bar, whatever, as long as you can microwave it!

I defeated the purpose of making cake in a mug by mixing my stuff in bowls, if I was only making one I would have mixed it in the mug, it's just easier to do it this way if you're making multiples!

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in one bowl and whisk the milk, oil, egg, and vanilla in another. Pour the wet into the dry and combine.  Now microwave whatever chocolate you are using until it's just melted and stir it into your batter. Pour half into each mug and microwave for 1 minute 45 seconds. You may have to play around with the time depending on your microwave, start with 1 minute and then add 30 seconds, it might be done after that long.

The cake and mugs are going to be very hot so they will have to sit for a bit, this gives you time to mix up the frosting. For this you need:

• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon soft butter or margarine
• 1/2 teaspoon milk or cream

Just mix everything together with a fork, easy as that! You can spread the frosting right onto the hot cake before serving or you can do what we did, our cakes were really deep so we just spooned on a dollop of frosting for every inch of cake we ate!

*A quick change for if you want brownies in a mug instead of cake, omit the baking powder and use 2 eggs instead of one

*Other yummy add-ins: sprinkle of cinnamon, teaspoon of instant coffee, caramel, a peppermint patty pushed halfway down into the batter, etc!

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

Lady LaLa (Alice) just turned a year old. Of course I made her a cake, I wasn't about to go out and buy her something from the store. I find that store bought cakes tend to have a way too sweet, greasy feeling frosting that seems like it's made with lard instead of real butter and usually only come in 2 flavors: white or brown. Not to mention the preservatives and whatnot they may contain, not something I want to give to a one year old. I could have made her a cake from a box but I wanted something with real veggies in it.

Baked Mac and Cheese

Baked mac and cheese is something we have for dinner fairly often, it's quick, easy, filling and an ultimate comfort food. It's also a pretty cheap meal. You can add leftover ham, bacon or veggies to it and it makes enough for leftovers for lunch the next day.

Here's what you need:

• 2 cups of milk
• 1 cup of grated cheese (whatever kind you like, I usually use cheddar)
• 1 bag of pasta (my bag is 500g)
• about a quarter of a regular sized onion (or half of a small onion)
• 1 large clove of garlic
• 2 tablespoons flour
• a handful of crackers, whatever kind you like ( I stole some of Alice's Goldfish crackers), you can also use breadcrumbs 
• salt and pepper 
• 1 tablespoon oil

Start by getting the pasta on to cook, the sauce part won't take very long at all and it's easier if everything is ready at the same time.  You want the pasta a bit firm because it's going into the oven covered in sauce and it will finish cooking in there.

Ingredients

Finely dice the garlic and onion and fry in the oil until golden. Just a minute on medium heat should do it.

Onion and garlic frying up

Pour in the milk and continue cooking on medium.  I go ahead and give it a generous salt and peppering at this point, not sure why. Most people would wait until the sauce was done but I would probably forget if I waited I guess.

Add zee malk

When the milk is hot and starting to bubble mix the flour with about a quarter cup of water and stir it really well. This is used to thicken the sauce and you don't want chunks of flour. Blech. I realize that most people prefer to mix flour right into butter to make a roux but I find this way easier. Plus I don't want to fry the onion and garlic in a separate pan, the less dishes the better.  I've tried adding the flour first but it sticks to the onions and makes them weird and clumpy.

Flour and water

Dump the flour mix into the hot milk and get stirring! You will need to whisk constantly because this stuff thickens up super fast! When it seems like it's as thick as it's going to get turn the burner off and add all but a handful of cheese.

Creamy cheese sauce

So at this point my camera battery dies and needs to be charged.

Pretend you see me stirring the sauce into the drained mostly cooked pasta, pouring it into a baking dish, crumbling some crackers over the top and sprinkling the last of the cheese on. Also pretend you see the dish going into the oven at 350 for 10 minutes.

This was the aftermath of dinner when the battery was just charged enough to get a photo. It's supposed to be 6 servings but we were pretty hungry.

Mostly eated

Red Velvet Brownies with Buttercream Frosting

I've been spending an obscene amount of time on Pinterest lately, mostly just drooling over food and bookmarking recipes. I noticed that a lot of people are apparently obsessed with red velvet things and these brownies kept popping up over and over again. I figured I would give it a try, something a bit different than the usual brownies and blondies and whatnot. It was originally with white chocolate buttercream but I substituted it with the buttercream recipe that I've always used. I don't like white chocolate so I don't have any around.

Pardon the lack of pictures of the process, we had an early start to the day, I already had them out of the oven before I realized I should have taken pictures of what I was doing

Here's what you need:

For the brownies

• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons red food coloring
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup soft unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the buttercream

• 1/2 cup soft unsalted butter
• 1 small bag of powdered sugar ( about 2 cups)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons cream ( I used the 18% that we have for coffee)

I started by making the frosting first so that I didn't have to clean my mixing bowl (and so that I could eat some while the brownies were mixing!) The frosting is the easiest part anyway. Just put everything in the mixing bowl and whisk until it's fluffy! That's it, it's done. I put mine in the fridge because I wasn't sure when I would get around to frosting the brownies.

Preheat your oven to 350 and grease and flour a pan, a smallish one, 8x8, 6x10, whatever you have. I used my springform pan because it's easier to get stuff out of.

Start the brownies off by mixing together the butter, sugar and vanilla until it's creamy. Then add the cocoa powder and food coloring, when that is combined beat in the egg and salt. Now you can add the flour, you're going to have to stop and scrape the sides of the bowl a couple times to make sure everything is red. Pour into your pan, my batter was pretty thick and I had to use a spatula to spread it around.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, a toothpick or knife should come out clean when you stab the brownies. I think mine went for about 45 minutes due to baby shenanigans and were too dry and a bit too dark on the bottom. 35 minutes probably would have been perfect.

Let the brownies cool completely before attempting to remove them from the pan, about an hour should do it. If you put the frosting in the fridge then take it out and let it sit for the hour as well and it should be ready to use. Frost, slice and serve!

*I only used about half the frosting, the rest went into the fridge for a carrot cake that I'm making soon.

The verdict on these brownies? Eh. Not great, I don't really see what the fuss is, is it just because they are red? I know I overcooked mine but the flavor really wasn't anything special, just very mildly chocolatey. Maybe I'm just used to more chocolate in my desserts?

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies!

It's true, these really are the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had. I was pretty sick of the recipe I had for chocolate chip cookies, they never turned out the same and most of the time they were all thin and spread out and weird. I Googled and this recipe kept popping up over and over again. So I made it and it was awesome and made really soft, chewy cookies.  I will use this one forever. I've even cheated and made it with margarine when butter wasn't a decent price and it was still pretty good. I recommend using real butter though, they just taste better!

Start by preheating the oven to 325 and gathering your ingredients:

Stuff you need

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup melted unsalted butter (if all you have is salted butter or margarine skip the salt in the recipe!)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla 
• 1 egg
• 1egg yolk
• an entire bag of chocolate chips (I used this bag of Caramilk thingies I had in the freezer)

Butter, sugar, vanilla and egg

Start by melting the butter and mixing it with the sugar and vanilla for a few minutes until it's nice and fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to the mixer. Mix until just combined ( it should look pebbley) and then add the chocolate chips and give it another quick mix. You don't want to overmix it, the dough will be tough and the cookies will be hard.

Dry ingredients added and just barely mixed

Your finished dough

Chopped Frozen Tiny Caramilks

Grab a good sized handful of dough and lightly flatten it into a "cookie patty", no need to roll it into a ball or anything.  Bake at 325 for 16-20 minutes.  Make as many as you want and freeze the rest of the patties for whenever you get a cookie craving.

Handful of dough

Squish!

4 cookies for us to nom right away about to go in the oven

The rest can go in the fridge or freezer

Hot cookies!

OM

NOM!

Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

This is an excellent and quick pancake recipe. It tastes just like the expensive Aunt Jemima Complete buttermilk pancake mix but since I'm making it myself I know it has no weird additives and it doesn't have that slightly powdery taste.

This makes 6 medium pancakes which is perfect for 2 people, or 5 medium and 3 teeny baby sized pancakes.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups flour (I used 1 cup all purpose and 1/4 cup whole wheat)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
Start by making your buttermilk if you don't have any. The buttermilk has to sit for a little while so do this first, then start heating your skillet or frying pan.

Mix together the buttermilk, sugar and margarine. Beat in the egg. Add all of the rest of the dry stuff on top and mix until just combined.

Scoop onto your hot grill or frying pan. The batter is pretty thick so you might have to spread it out a bit with the spoon. I cook mine on 4/medium. You can tell when the pancake needs to be flipped when it gets all bubbly on top.
Add syrup and enjoy!
 

 

Homemade Sweet Cornbread

This is great for breakfast or as a snack with tea. It's quick and easy to make and you can make it sweet or savory. This time I went with sweet but next time I may do savory with some cheese and green onion to go along with soups and chili that are coming up on the menu later in the month. Sorry, no photos of the process this time.

• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 egg
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup white sugar 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons baking powder

Start by making a cup of buttermilk if you don't keep any in your fridge, pour it into your bowl or mixer and add the cornmeal. Let the cornmeal soak for a couple of minutes while you get the other ingredients ready and preheat the oven to 400.

Now add the sugar and oil, mix for a bit and then add the egg and mix. Now add all of the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. The batter should be quite thick, pour into a lightly greased pan and thump the pan on the counter to even out the batter a bit. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes. Mine baked for 22 minutes and was perfect.

For savory cornbread:

• Only use 1 tablespoon of sugar instead of 1/2 cup, you could also up the salt to 1 1/2 teaspoons if you like
• Add 1/2 cup cheddar cheese and a chopped green onion as well as a shake or 2 of cayenne pepper
• Try cheese and diced jalepenos

Be sure to add these things in with the wet ingredients so that they are well mixed.

10 minute lunch - Tomato Basil Pasta

This is a really quick and fresh tasting meal that's perfect for when you're short on time, low on ingredients and it's hot outside. It's light and contains no meat. It's also a great way to use up my overabundance of basil and the single ripe tomato from my plant. My tomato plant is only producing one tiny tomato at a time while my basil has become a veritable shrub.

Chicken Pie Filling

This one is super easy and if you have any that won't fit into the pie it counts as chicken cream soup! You could also use turkey or any other meat for this if you wanted.

I'm assuming you have your pie crust ready to go or at least a frozen one waiting! If not then I guess you could just eat it as is!

Brew your own iced tea for just $0.15

[post by Jon]

I feel kind of silly even typing this out. This recipe is so simple any explanation will just be meandering so I'll just get right to it.

1. Combine boiling water with 3 teabags in a large cup (8-10oz)
2. Let this cup sit overnight.
3. In the morning pour this super strong tea into a 2L pitcher.
4. Fill with cold filtered water.
5. Stir and remove teabags.
6. Optional - squeeze half a lemon into the tea.
7. Add a few teaspoons of simple syrup to each glass you pour.

There are a few things great about this recipe.

• You can use any kind of tea. Your favorite green, herbal, black etc.
• Inexpensive. Tea is very cheap especially when bought in large boxes. 3 teabags makes it cost only $0.15 per jug.
• If you regularly drink hot tea as we do in the morning or after dinner, the tea bags can go in the iced tea pitcher instead of straight to the garbage. Add water each time you do.
• Make it a sweet as you like. Holly likes her tea way sweeter than I do, the simple syrup allows us to make each glass just how we like and there are no granules.

I don't like to add the lemon to the jug because it gets more bitter after a few days in the fridge and can't refill the jug as consistently.

Simple Syrup recipe

[post by Holly]
Simple syrup is exactly the same sugary stuff that coffee shops use to sweeten their iced tea and coffees. If you want to buy a bottle of Starbucks Classic Syrup, it will cost you about $11, maybe more and it probably has some sort of preservative added.

This is just sugar and water, super easy to make and sooooo cheap! Use it in anything you don't want sugar crystals floating around in, I use it in iced tea, iced coffee and smoothies. You can use it for alcoholic mixed drinks as well.

Cheap and easy pizza dough

[post by Holly]
I couldn't believe how quick and easy it was to make my own pizza dough. This stuff is really easy to work with and freezes perfectly. My recipe makes 4 thin crust pizzas. You can also use it to make panzerottis or bread sticks. We made a giant pizza roll with it the other day to use up some deli meat that we had.

If you don't have a stand mixer you're going to have to do this with a wooden/plastic spoon and a big bowl and then knead by hand but it's not too difficult to work with, it's not as thick as bread dough.