Lookie Lookie, Ooey Gooey Cornflake Cookie

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I started back school full-time and I have been in high demand to sub, so I've been a busy bee. 

This is my nana's recipe, and one of our family's favorite. Story goes that my parents were on vacation with my dad's parents and my nana made these treats for everyone. Well after a little while, the cookies were gone. A few days later my dad came out of his bedroom eating a cookie. When everyone confronted him, he confessed he had stashed a bunch of cookies in his suitcase so he wouldn't have to share. Every time I make them, they only last for an average of two days, no exaggeration. It's a fight to the death over the last cookie. And one of the best things about this recipe is the cookies are NO-BAKE, so no chance of burning them (I'm talking to you mom)!

Ingredients

8 cups of corn flakes

8 oz of peanut butter (I use smooth but chunky would be good too)

1 cup light corn syrup

1 cup sugar

Stir together the cornflakes and peanut butter in a large bowl.

 This will take a little while because you want to make sure each corn flake is coated in pb.

On the stove top, combine sugar and corn syrup

Bring to a rolling boil. Let this boil for about 30 seconds, stirring constantly.

Immediately pour the syrup mixture over the corn flakes

Stir together very well

Pour it into a greased pan and that's it!

It's best if you let it sit for a few hours and let it harden. Enjoy these cookies while they last (it won't be long!)

*note: IMMEDIATELY wash your pot that the syrup mixture was in. It will start to harden and take you forever to clean it otherwise. 

Zany for Zucchini Bread

While my parents were away on vacation last week, they asked me to look after their vegetable garden. I don't know what would possess them to ask me since I basically have a black thumb...I can kill a cactus in two days, and they're pretty much indestructible. Anyways, after I started picking the garden for a few days I realized I was going to have an abundance of zucchini on my hands. Since I am the world's pickiest eater, I decided to turn all the fresh zucchini into a bread. I would NEVER eat zucchini bread willfully and on my own, which is why my mom had to trick me into eating it the first time. She told me it was apple cinnamon bread and thus, I was suckered into trying it. I really liked it and THAT'S when she told me the truth...that it was actually her recipe for zucchini bread. Who knew it could be so tasty? That being said, even the pickiest of eaters will like this recipe. And when in doubt, lie first. 

*This recipe makes 2 loaves of bread

Ingredients

3 eggs

2 cups of sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup of vegetable oil

3 cups of grated zucchini

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup of chopped nuts (I used pecans)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease loaf pans.

I used two large zucchini.

This step is not necessary, but if you have large seeds I would recommend taking a spoon and scooping out the seeds.

Grate the zucchini.

Be careful not to grate your finger, or it will hurt (yes, I'm speaking from experience and yes, it happened during this adventure. Which is probably why this picture is slightly blurry)

In a mixing bowl beat together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and oil.

Stir in the zucchini

Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. 

Add to the sugar mixture.

Stir in nuts.

Pour into pans

Bake for 30-40 minutes.

And now you have delicious zucchini bread! Yummy!

Just Peachy

My hands-down favorite part about summer is peach ice cream! Peaches are my favorite fruit, so I have to binge eat them in the summer while they are in season. Today is my birthday (yay me!) so I decided the perfect ending to a hot day would be to make up a big ole batch. I have a regular churn that makes about a gallon, so you might have to adjust according to your churn size. 

I love to bake because I like to precisely measure out everything. My mom however, is more of a cook and is the type of person to say "add a pinch or handful of ..." Well this drives me CRAZY. This is her recipe so I've tried my best to convert her "measurements" to real amounts.

Here's what you'll need:

Peaches (about 8-10)

2 cups of sugar (I usually tip in a little more because I like it super sweet--like me)

1 small can of Carnation milk

1 tsp vanilla 

4 cups of whole milk (for all you non-mathematics people, that's a quart)

Ice (at least a 10 lb bag)

Rock salt

It's best if you can get soft peaches, or leave them out a few days to soften up

Peel and slice up the peaches. The blender should be about half full

Then add in your sugar, Carnation milk, and vanilla

Blend it all up til it's smooth. 

I don't like chunky ice cream, but you can blend it for less time to get chunks of peaches.

Once you pour it into the cylinder for the churn, add the whole milk and stir it together. There should be a mark on the outside of the tub telling where the max fill line is...make sure you don't go above that because the ice cream expands as it hardens. 

Put it in the churn

Fill 'er up with ice and rock salt. I usually do a layer of ice, layer of rock salt, and repeat. 

Check on it every 10 minutes or so. Add more ice and rock salt when it starts melting.

It took about 40 minutes for the ice cream to be ready. I think it could have used a few more minutes, but my brother was being Mr. Impatient and insisted that is was ready.

There it is...the most wonderful, delicious, creamy, refreshing peach ice cream you'll ever eat. 

And now time for me to enjoy my treat.

Go Bananas {and Nuts} - Banana Nut Bread Recipe

This family recipe for banana nut bread is to die for! I'm usually not a huge fan of banana nut bread, but this recipe has the perfect ratio of banana to nuts to bread. This is a great recipe for a delicious breakfast or snack on-the-go. I like to make it into a loaf, but I've also made it into muffins before. 

Let's get crackin'

Ingredients

1/2 cup corn oil

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

3 bananas, mashed (preferably on the brownish side)

3 Tbsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped nuts (I like to use pecan--pronounced pea-CAN)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine corn oil and sugar. Beat in eggs, milk, vanilla and mashed bananas. 

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Combine flour mixture with egg mixture.

Stir in the chopped nuts (I used some I got from my papa's pecan tree, but you can buy store-bought ones already chopped)

Pour delicious mixture into a greased pan.

Bake at 350 for 23-35 minutes. 

When the sides start pulling away from the pan and it cracks down the middle...that's when it's perfection.

Let me tell you...if you could smell pictures, you'd be in heaven.  I promise you'll go NUTS over this recipe (and yes, pun intended)

That's a Wrap{ped} Wreath

I can't take credit for this masterpiece, except for the photography. My aunt is a wreath & bow mastermind. So this posting is dedicated to her creating a wreath for my brother's new house and my semi-paying attention to her directions. 

Here's the before picture. It was just an old vine wreath my mom found in our craft room.

First she started wrapping a burlap ribbon around, leaving a little room between each pass.

Keep wrapping

Once she got to the end, she just tucked the ends under the vines.

So this part is a little murky for me. She can tie like the BEST bows, but I haven't ever done one myself. And she was on her lunch break when she did this so she didn't have time to give me a tutorial. She promised to give me one later, and I promise to post the results. Apparently the trick is to twist after every loop.

Tie the bow to the wreath by using some twine

We added a "R" to add a little somethin-somethin to keep it snazzy.

And BAM, we have a recycled rustic wreath (try saying that 5 times fast!)

How the Cookie Crumbles

In honor of it being my best friend's birthday today, I had to make her a cookie cake. It's a tradition of ours to celebrate with cookie cake. I can even remember a time in college when one of our roommates made us a stick figure cookie cake labeled in Spanish in honor of both of us acing our Anatomy and Spanish tests that week. A few years ago I made her a Despicable Me minion cookie cake (pictured below). But with this being a bigger and better year (#25), I had to outdo myself. Lately she's been obsessed with Doctor Who...I mean OBSESSED, so I decided to make her a Tardis design. I forgot to make pics of the steps of the cookie cake being made, but it's super simple. I can't take credit for coming up with the recipe - I got it from my Kitchenaid mixer's recipe book. It hasn't failed me yet, and you shouldn't fix somethin that aint broke. 

B-day Minion Cookie Cake

 Ingredients:

Cookie Part

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) of butter or margarine, softened

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (I usually add a few extra for better taste...those calories don't count right?)

Icing

*note, I doubled this recipe because I was covering the entire cookie cake and using different colors. Usually the listed amount will be plenty (again, these extra calories don't count right?)

1 lb powdered sugar

1/2 cup Crisco

1/4 water

pinch of salt

Steps:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place sugars, butter, eggs, and vanilla into a bowl. Mix all of them together. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add the dry mixture while the batter is mixing. Add in chocolate chips and stir together. After this point you can drop spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet to make individual cookies, or glop it all together for a cake. Bake either choice for 10-12 minutes.

Here's the final product!

 Make sure when you make the icing, you add the water slowly - you might not need the entire water amount, just depends on how thin you want the icing.

Fun fact: I named my Kichenaid stand mixer Amelia (I name a lot of my stuff)

 When adding colors, it's a good idea to use gel colors, that way the colors are nice and vibrant without using a lot of color, which tends to make the icing runny. 

I knew the Tardis colors were blue, black, and white so I took out some icing and put it into two different plastic sandwich baggies. (Just cut a SMALL hole in one of the corners for piping - I didn't feel like getting out my entire decorating kit so I decided to skip corners this time)

Since blue was the main color and it didn't need to be piped, I left it in the mixer.

Covered in blue icing.

I piped out a black strip at the top where the writing will go in a minute.

It just wouldn't be a successful event if everything went smoothly...while making the windows, my cheap icing baggy busted and a huge glop of icing fell out :(

But no worries...I'm an expert fixer so I just smoothed it in and decided to put black lines for the windows instead.

The finished cookie cake! I can't wait to dig in!

Here's what the actual Tardis is supposed to look like, for all my non-Whovians out there. 

Happy birthday best friend! I hope you have a wonderful day!