Cold + Snow= Comfort Food Time!

Wow, it has been a crazy 24 hours. I have seen more snow in the past few hours than I have in forever, well at least as long as I can remember, lol! It didn't start snowing until around 11 am on Friday, but 2 out of 3 of my classes were cancelled as well as work! I left campus right as soon as it started snowing heavily and went to tan... Within that 30 mins that I was inside the tanning salon, we went from a dusting to a blanket of snow with slush all over the roads:

Once I made it home, I decided I wasn't going back out until at least the roads were better... It doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon, because it is STILL snowing, lol. I want to go out and play in the snow, but my roommate was traumatized at an early age by an incident she had in the snow... So, I don't have anyone to play with here at the apartment :/ Sad day!

For dinner Friday, both my roomie and I wanted Asian cuisine! I wanted Orange Chicken and she wanted something salty, lol. We decided to make teriyaki ground turkey with rice and EGG DROP SOUP! I had never made Egg Drop Soup, let alone any soup... I was very afraid. I found a recipe and went from there. I made a few substitutions for stuff we didn't had and it was fabulous, as well as easy to make! It is just chicken broth, garlic(at least in my recipe :p), salt/pepper, corn starch, water, soy sauce, sugar, and eggs! You start by heating your chicken broth on the stove and adding a minced clove of garlic. Next, mix the soy sauce, sugar, corn starch, and water. Then, add to your broth and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce and add beaten eggs with a little water. Stir the egg to break it up or you will end up with a poached egg in broth, lol! Then serve! Here is a pic of my soup:

Now, we just have to find out how to make fried noodles! 

Today, I decided to make some cupcakes after watching Alton Brown's segment on Cup Cakes. I started with his recipe for a Chiffon Cup Cake, but added my own little twist. I added some hot cocoa mix to my flour along with cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, and cocoa to enhance the flavors. In the recipe, you are required to beat egg whites to a stiff peak... I had never done this before, but I tried it. After a few minutes with a whisk, it worked! See pic:

Perfect!

Once I mixed it all, I put them in my muffin tin and baked at 325 for 20 mins. The cake out perfect and had an amazing flavor! The cooled very quickly and then I added icing. For more flavor, I dusted the icing with a little more hot cocoa powder and added a few super-mini toasted marshmallows!

I am in love with this cupcake :D 

That is it for this edition of "New Day, New Way" :D I am working out a few kinks with a new web host, and once complete, my site will be moving! Keep checking back! Until next time, have a great today and tomorrow!

Blondies Have More Fun!

     This has been a crazy week! I have been working my hardest to get everything turned in for my study abroad trip to France. Today, I turned in my scholarship application and essay! I am one step closer! :D I still have to translate my letter of intent into French, and then I am going to Normandy! Now, onto my cooking adventures:

    Last week, I was buying spices to fill up my new spice jars when I came across some vanilla beans! I had never used them and vanilla is my favorite flavoring, so I bought a couple. A couple of days ago, I decided to give them a try in cupcakes. I started mixing the batter and deseeded my bean, as seen here:

   After deseeding, I added them to my batter and finished adding all the other ingredient. I could tell the batter didn’t look right... It was a new recipe I was trying out. It was really liquidy and had a funny color. Needless to say, I was right. I had to throw all 20 cupcakes in the trash... Oh, well. You can’t win them all!

    The next day, I made lasagna for dinner, which I have done before. However, for dessert, I made Chocolate Chip and Walnut Blondies! I thought it would be like making brownies without the cocoa, but surprisingly enough, it was a lot different. I followed a recipe that I found on Allrecipes.com, which is my favorite website, and they turned out amazingly well! I doubled the batch and made a cookie sheet full of Blondies for my co-workers and friends. 

     Tonight, I wanted to do something not so dessert-y for my new thing, so I made PANINIS! Usually, it requires a panini press, but I ghetto rigged one out of a cast-iron skillet. I started my cooking up my turkey breast with some seasoning, cooked my turkey bacon, prepped the sandwich with some Pesto and Provolone, then put it all on my skillet. To press the sandwich like a panini press, I heated my cast-iron skillet on the stove, then I pressed with all my might on the sandwich while it was in my regular skillet. After a couple of minutes, I flipped the panini and did it again. Once that was done, here was the final product:

                                                                                       Turkey Pesto Panini :D

     Sorry for not blogging yesterday, but I promise I will make it up to you all very soon! Also, starting next week, I will be posting some of my recipes on this website for my readers and fans to try out themselves! Also, I am trying Creme Brulee soon :D This will be exciting! I leave you now with my pride and joy, my spice drawer:

     Until next time, have a good night and tomorrow!

Turning Hippie

Bonjour mes amis! Welcome to another edition of "New Day, New Way." If you read my earlier blogs, you will remember Rachael and I made 3 batches of pasta dough. We finally put them to use and made ravioli, tortellini, fettucini, and lasagna noodles!

Here are our spinach stuffed tortellini, which we froze for future use! Also, my new pasta press, Preston!

Our ghetto drying racks for fettucini noodles! Whatever gets the job done, right?

We finally ate our handmade ravioli with vodka sauce and fresh Parmesan... Omg, it was the best thing, ever!

Side note: Right after we made our ravioli, they demonstrated it on "Worst Cooks In America" lol!

My second new thing that I did that is kitchen related is that we planted vegetables! Rachael and I are now growing SPINACH, GARLIC, AND CHERRY TOMATOES! :D I am so excited! We also planted a couple of flowers, a Peony and Surprise Lilies!

We are slowly turning into hippies... If you don't me, take a look at my new water bottle:

I <3 it! Rachael bought a black one with peace signs on it, lol, even hippier :p

Aside from cooking and food: We have new living room furniture, from IKEA! Take a look:

I am in the process of redoing my bedroom and will post pictures on my next blog! I just got some new baking tools, so expect some SWEET news soon! Also, I have decided that in the next week or so, I will be transitioning to a vlog, which is a video blog! Get excited!Until next time, have a great night and tomorrow!

T & P (T*ts and Pasta)

Well, the past couple of days have been interesting to say the least... After my success production of the blue and white polka dot cake, I was hired for a cake job! One of my best friends, his mother, and her fiancé came by Murfreesboro before my friend, Jerico, flew back to Chicago. I had sent them a picture mail of my cake because I was so proud of it, and then I receive a text. "Can you make a tit cake?" I can honestly say that I have never done that... At first, I thought it was a joke, but they were dead serious when we went to dinner. His mother and her fiancé wanted one for their friend's birthday party this weekend. On my high from the success of my first fondant cake, I agreed. I was given about 18 hours to make the cake. Sounds easy, right? WRONG! I first bakes my cakes and cooled them. While that was going, we, Rachael and I, tried to make fondant from scratch. It looked like it was working and running smoothly in the beginning. I have only one spring form pan, so baking the cakes took about 2-2.5 hours. Cooling took about an hour, of course. Icing and stacking took all of about 20 minutes. I colored the fondant and started to roll it out... The fondant became dry and was cracking to pieces, I added shortening. Didn't help. Added more, didn't help. Added more, didn't help. Then it was greasy and cracking. I eventually got fed-up at around 2pm, so I threw it away. Then I tried another fondant recipe. This time, it wouldn't come together AT ALL! I worked for 4 hours on it and eventually gave up. At 6 am, I ventured to Wal*Mart and bought a pound from Wilton. I colored it and it worked! The one request was that the cake have a huge nipple, and that is what I gave them! Here is a pic of the cake:

If you read my previous blog entry, you will have read about our pasta dough experience. Well, we finally did something with it. We made homemade spinach ravioli! We rolled it out and cut out circles for each side. Then, we made the filling which consisted of: ricotta, fresh parmesan, salt, pepper, spinach, and an egg! The filling is magnificent! Here is a pic of our filling(before we added the spinach) and the dough:

EXCITING NEWS! I bough a Kitchenaid Mixer! It is fabulous! The minute I got it, I made cookies! lol I seriously walked in the door, opened it, and made them! Here is my mixer, Marie:

Also, our herb garden is finally growing! Thyme was the first to show leaves!

Besides from gardening, baking, pasta making, and cake foreplay, I have also been busy redecorating my living room! We ordered furniture from Ikea and received them today! Will post pictures on next entry when everything is all together! I also ordered 40 spice jars, bahaha! Tomorrow, we are cooking our spinach ravioli, very excited! Now that I am a FREELANCE CAKE DECORATOR, I am sure every blog will have at least one thing cake-related, lol. Until next time, have a good night and tomorrow!

Show me the dough!

     We have officially made it to our second posting! The past couple of days have been a real adventure for me in the kitchen. As those who know me already know, my heart belongs to baking cakes and cookies. It is just fascinating how some sugar, eggs, flour, and a few other little ingredients can turn into a beautiful, not to mention tasty, piece of art. For about a year now, I have been putting off and putting off one of the most important and labor-intensive parts of cake decorating: FONDANT! This is basically a layer of stiff icing that provides a smooth surface on the cake. It is very finicky! I finally broke down and bought a pound of it, I didn't want to make it the first time I used it. To test this technique out, I decided to bake an MTSU colors cake(Royal Blue and White). I started by baking up a simple white cake in 3 layers and cooling them. I then prepared my board that it would sit on by covering it with shiny side-up aluminum foil. Then I added a dab of icing in the center of the board to keep cake in place. After, I stacked all the layers(biggest to smallest) with icing between each. Once stacked, you must crumb coat the cake, which is essentially thinly icing the cake to cover all imperfections and to hold the fondant. For the fondant, you roll it out on a Confectioner's Sugar cover surface, it prevents sticking, to about 1/4-1/5 inch. Then wrap the fondant around rolling pin and place on cake. Smooth the fondant across cake and cut excess with pizza wheel! Et voila! You have a perfectly covered and smooth cake! Here is mine that I made for my co-workers:

To add polka dots, cut out rounds and paste on with icing.

With our leftover egg yolks, because you can't add the yolks to white cake or it won't be white, we made PASTA! It was icky and hard to make! It took about an hour to make the dough, which we haven't yet cut into actual pasta. Here is a photo of the dough in process and the final product:

I also baked some Oatmeal Chocolate Chip and Walnut cookies! I made four dozen and took them to school today, along with the cake. Not a crumb was left lol!

I have now been hired to make a boob cake, which I am working on now... Check back on Saturday for pics and my next adventure! Have a great night and tomorrow!

My New Years Resolution

Everytime the sun makes a full 360, we gather with our friends and family to toast a new year. With each toast, half-hearted promises of dieting and exercise fill our ears. This year, I wanted to break away from these traditional resolutions and do something new and exciting. For 2010, I have decided to try one new thing in the kitchen each day. I know I have started nineteen days late on this blog, but better later than never!

Side Note: I will be leaving for Normandy, France in late August and will be gone until May 2011, so I will be unable to do things in a kitchen then.

Here is a list of things I have done since January 1st, I don't remember the dates lol:

• Poached An Egg
• Made Doughnuts
• Sculpted with Rice Krispie Treats
• Tortilla Wrapped Burgers
• Shepherd's Pie
• New York Cheesecake
• Planted an herb garden
• Tried a Mushroom, which wasn't half bad!
• and 11 other minor things, which I can't remember and the reason why I am now blogging!

Here are a few of pics from my adventures thus far:

Here is a slice of my yum-licious New York Cheesecake! 16 slices in a cake, 5 grams of fat each!

My dinosaur sculpted out of rice crisp cereal with red food coloring and green icing!

Cinnamon Sugar Donuts! <3!

I will be blogging ever other day with pictures from every day, so check back! Have a great today and tomorrow!