Oatmeal!!

So I've started eating healthy... er... sort of. I'm counting calories and controlling portion sizes but I still FIRMLY believe that "reduced fat" "sugar free" and so on are evil evil things. And I still bake with butter! For breakfast I decided I would eat oatmeal, it's supposed to be healthy right? I like oatmeal! Well b/c I'm cheap I bought the Off brand "old fashioned" oats (I'm assuming these are rolled oats but what do I know?).

I ate it a few times, once with raisins, another time with bananas, and brown sugar. trying to keep it "healthy".  But I don't know if it's the way I'm making it, or if it's the kind I got but.... I'm not into it. This makes me sad I hate wasting food. so.... Oatmeal Raisin Cookies!! I searched the internet for a healthy recipe that wasn't stupid and I found this one:

The Recipe (click to check out website ^^)

Ingredients:

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

2 sticks unsalted butter

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups whole grain pastry flour (by Arrowhead Mills) (I used all purpose flour b/c that's what I have)

1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup raisins

Step One: Immediately suspect the recipe because you found it on Pintrest. 

Step Two: Try it out anyway because you never learn.

Step Three: Set Oven to 350 degrees, then gather all of your ingredients together. Cover two pans with foil, one for cookies and one for oatmeal.

Step Four: "toast" the oatmeal. I wasn't sure exactly what this involved so I just spread them out onto a pan and popped them in the oven. the recipe says for 15 minutes, at about 12 minutes I noticed a pleasant smell coming from the oven (a rare occurrence).

Step Five: set sticks of BUTTER (yes! because butter makes baked goods taste "right") onto the oven to warm them up (this has become habit, she didn't include it in her instructions but I did it anyway)

Step Six: Stop everything because your baby becomes miss fussy pants and wants a bottle. Make her one and sing to her while you bake.

Step Seven: Drop a cup of brown sugar into the mixing bowl, and get the dry ingredients ready in a bowl (flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon).

Step Eight: Take toasty oats out of the oven. they didn't look any different to me, but were definitely hot. Once the oats were out of the oven I got to work. I put the sticks of butter into the mixer and creamed the sugar.

Step Nine: add the egg, mix, then add the vanilla, mix. Then stop everything because your baby has decided she is done with her bottle and wants a toy instead. Continue to sing whatever song pops in your head to entertain her.

Step Ten: Pour in dry ingredients, oatmeal, and raisins. mix well. 

Step Eleven: place them on a cookie sheet, bake for 15 minutes, eat! (well eat them AFTER they cool off)

Step Twelve: put your baby down for a nap because she is a grumpy butt when she is tired ^^

And you're probably wondering how they turned out? I'm sure you are on the seat of your pants and everything. I fail so often but... would I fail gain?

Well they look good.... but do they taste good? *drumroll* ....................................... yes! they are great! A little dry but I think they are supposed to be. Anyway they are awesome and now I'll have to resist eating the whole batch! (I only made half the other half is in the fridge - I might have to bake them and send them to work with my husband) A little crumble-ly but again with all that oatmeal what would you expect?

Here is the nutritional info! (which may or may not be accurate - I have no clue! I used this website to get this information: Recipe Analysis and yeah I totally copy and pasted just FYI)


Serving Size: 1 cookie 
Total Servings per recipe: 22 cookies

Amount Per Serving

Calories 195 Calories from Fat 84

% Daily Value*

Total Fat 9.4g 14%

Saturated Fat 5.5g 27%

Trans Fat 0.0g

Cholesterol 30mg 10%

Sodium 200mg 8%

Total Carbohydrates 25.9g 9%

Dietary Fiber 1.6g 7%

Sugars 10.5g

Protein 2.9g

Vitamin A 5%	•	Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 2%	•	Iron 6%

popcorn

So I haven't posted in awhile... I haven't baked or done much of anything -_-

BUT I gave pintrest yet another chance and...........

It's AWESOME! and very sticky

I couldn't find a link to the recipe b/c it is on one of those horrid "pic" site things where it's just pictures or a picture of food. but the directions were in the comments so here is that:

Movie night treat: Marshmallow Caramel Popcorn: 1/2 C brown sugar, 1/2 C butter, 9-10 marshmallows, 12 C popcorn. Microwave brown sugar and butter for 2 minutes. Add marshmallows. Microwave until melted, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Pour over popcorn. Devour.

Once again the above is NOT mine, but I have no idea where it came from *shrug*

Crescent Roll S'mores

Alright Pintrest... I'll give you another chance. I have marshmallows and those super awesome Ghirardelli chocolate chips so I shall attempt to make this:

Crescent Roll S'mores

Come on now, how hard could this possibly be?? Even I can't screw this up. Right? Right??

Step One: Run out to the store and buy crescent rolls since I don't have any on hand. I bought the store brand because I am cheap (and broke) ^^

Step Two: Clean the kitchen just enough so it appears tidy in pictures.

Step Three: Preheat the oven and line a baking sheet with foil.

Step Four: Fill them with deliciousness

 Step Five: Place them in the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes. Eat a few loose chips and marshmallows while you wait.

Step Six: Pull them out of the oven and stare at them for a bit. wait impatiently for them to cool.

Conclusion? Success! The marshmallows melted and you can't really taste them and the chocolate doesn't appear to have fully melted but..... I'm going to file this under "win" anyway. lol

Still don't think I'm going to trust Pintrest...

Pintrest Lied to Me

Maybe some of you have seen the popular brownie pin?

Brownie, caramel, and pretzels

It makes it look soooo easy. Well... it isn't. I'm sure I messed up somewhere.. I may even know where. sadly it doesn't even taste good. Which definitely means it qualifies as a baking failure! *trumpets*

Step One: Glace at the picture provided on Pintrest. Decide it looks so easy even you could do it. Get ingredients needed out and display on counter. 

 Continue to assume that this will be easy and soon you will have delicious pretzel caramel brownies!

Step Two: Read the instructions and start the brownie mix part:

(since I live in Colorado it is wise to follow the "high altitude" instructions. which call for an additional 1/2 cup flour and 1/3 cup of water instead of 1/4)

Step Three: Pour the batter in the greased pan, add the pretzels (this took forever) and then the caramel. - This has to be where I screwed up. I think the pretzels were supposed to go first. and I may have used too much caramel? not sure...

Step Four: Set the oven at 350 and place the brownies in for 25 - 36 min (we ended up doing 36 minutes - not that it helped)

Step Five: Take them out of the oven, assuming they are supposed to look like that. But they're not. 

Step Six: Scoop some out and hope that it tastes good... but it doesn't. The pretzel are mushy and the brownie is just gross. Where did the caramel go? 

Step Seven: Vow to never ruin perfectly good brownie mix again, or to trust pintrest. Evil evil pintrest.

So there you have it, I fail again. Don't worry we didn't need those extra calories anyway. I'll be frying up some chicken tonight cross your fingers for me. ^^ One of these days I'll be able to post about a "baking success"!!

Finished

I have finished Harry "Trotter" and Flapjack! I think they turned out pretty good. ^^

The hardest part was the Gryffindor symbol. Flapjack was pretty easy, I used an off white for his shirt and hat to make it not too bright. I'm not sure what t do next. I've had people mention Star Wars style ponies but I'm not too sure about those yet. I'll have to think it over.

Update On Latest Customs

 My "green stuff" arrived in the mail Tuesday! I got to work on my two latest customs (flapjack and harry potter). I had to take a small break since we've all been feeling a little sick, but at this point I am ready to paint them! I still have green stuff leftover but not sure what to do with it. I'm am STILL waiting for my hair order from Dollyhair - I'm not even sure that it was shipped out yet (I ordered it the same day as the green stuff). I had planned to do a Christmas pony with that hair, and I have a few other ideas floating around. I just need to decide.

This is my husband helping me out. I don't remember exactly what he was doing at the time... but helping for sure! :)

I'll have to post more current pics later, Harry Potter has already been halfway painted.

Baking Failures

So I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. yay! who doesn't love chocolate chip cookies? and it's possibly one of the easiest recipes to make. how could this go wrong??

First I used the nestle toll house chocolate chip cookie recipe because I firmly believe that one is the best. the secret? 2 sticks of butter. At least that's what I believe it to be. cookies that use anything but butter usually taste weird to me. so put away that *shudder* margarine. and place that can of crisco back in your cupboard!

Oven: 375 degrees... check!

Ingredients (this is when I decide that I only want "30" cookies instead of "60". and thus my downfall begins)

• 1 cup 2 tbs flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 stick of BUTTER
• 6 tbs of brown sugar
• 6 tbs of granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 lg egg
• 1 cup chocolate chips 

Step one: fail completely at doing the math for halving the recipe ( ^ it's halved up there). I converted 3/4 cup brown sugar and granulates sugar into 12 Tbs each. then proceeded to add 12 tbs to my mixer. not 6. Now a sane person would think "oh well, I'll just double the flour, baking soda, and salt and take another stick of butter out". (I had already mixed the flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl) but I decided to scoop out what I thought was 6 tbs of white and brown sugar. 

oops!

I shrug my shoulders and move on to step 2.

Step two: follow the recipe and mix everything up. Add chocolate chips. and since I have a love for Ghirardelli Chocolate I added their milk chocolate chips. and ate a few. so what?

this batter smelled wonderful. it tasted wonderful (yes I know you're not supposed to taste it) but I could tell that there was something off. quite possibly too much brown sugar. hmm.. I wonder why?

 Step Three: with hope and joy lovingly place 12 gigantic lumps of cookie dough onto a baking pan and slide them into the oven. set the timer to 10 minutes... just in case.

Step Four: weep at your failure and eat the rest of the Ghirardelli chocolate chips by themselves.

They were chewy and thin and gross. my husband ate 4 before I could toss them out. I picked a few of the melty chocolate chips out to eat, because why waste chocolate? and now time for Game of Thrones. I'll make cheese/meat/and tomato dip in our tiny crockpot and as long as my cooking curse doesn't affect (effect?) that too we should have at least that to snack on! 

On a side note I purchased 11 Milky way bars to make Pioneer Woman's Milky way cake (though I'll be using butter of course) for a cookout this Saturday. wish me luck! I'm going to need it. 

A link to the recipe on Pioneer Woman's website:

The Pioneer Woman's Milky Way Cake Recipe