#22: thinking "pink" oatmeal cookies

So I know that breast cancer awareness month isn't till October, but I figured, why not start experimenting now?


Ok.  In reality, finals are fast approaching which means late night studying and being home more hours.  And I'm doing a 1 month spending freeze challenge, so if I want semi healthy study snacks while writing my papers, I have to make them myself.  And do so without buying ingredients that I'm missing or running low on.  That means oatmeal cookies...but I'm low on brown sugar, and I wanted to save it for my breakfasts (i like it on my oatmeal), so I'm using honey instead.  and then...i remembered the bottle of boysenberry syrup that stephanie brought over awhile back.  I've become something of a pancake snob since learning how to make buttermilk pancakes, and since I don't have any buttermilk left I won't be making pancakes until after may 16, so I thought it might be fun to put that syrup to use a different way.  here's to experiments!


A word to the wise on baking experiments: start from known territory.  Baking involves chemical interactions and this gives you a familiar launching ground.  This recipe was adapted (by which I mean drastically altered) from this Food.com honey oatmeal cookie recipe,


The Basics:
Prep time: About 25 minutes.
Good for leftovers: cookies, left over? no way!
cost: about $5
servings: varies depending on the size of your cookie.  and how much dough you snack on.


The ingredients:
3 tablespoons butter or margerine, softened
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup boysenberry syrup
1/4 cup chopped walnuts, pecans, or other nuts (optional)


The Process:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.


Combine wet ingredients (egg, water, honey, syrup) in a large bowl.  Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  One third at a time, add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and stir well.


Grease a baking sheet with non-stick spray or butter.  Form whatever size cookies you prefer, and place them on the baking sheet.  Bake for about 15 minutes; if you do smaller cookies, check after 10 minutes to make sure they don't overcook.


Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before removing from the pan.


Ok, so these aren't pink.  They start out that way, but the pink doesn't show after they cooked- I wonder if it would look any pinker with white flour instead of cornmeal?  They're also quite crumbly because I forgot to add the water, but the boysenberry is a nice touch.  Next time I will try adding more boysenberry and less honey.


But now I have an idea.  I think I should hold a "pink recipe" contest for breast cancer awareness month.  any thoughts?

#20: Minister's Delight! (dessert)

Dear Tiffany,
 Sorry I haven't been posted in awhile- you've been almost as busy as I have.  But when I went over and found you shopping the freezer section again, I got a little worried!

Though I will say, I was very proud to see you show up with your crock pots at church sunday. Your group's food was amazing!

This is the easiest dessert you will ever make.  Its also amazing, and super sugary.  I found it on allrecipes.com and adapted it a bit.  It uses canned pie filling, but the next time I make it I want to see if I can do it cheaper/healthier with fresh fruit, or regular canned fruit. 

The Basics:
Prep time: About 5 minutes, then 2-3 hours in the crock pot.
Good for leftovers: if there are any.
servings:  10-15
cost: about $10-$15

Ingredients:
2 cans fruit pie filling (such as apple or cherry, maybe even blueberry.  You will find these with the cake mixes, not with the regular canned goods).  You could stretch it further and do even 3 or 4 cans.
1 box cake mix
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup butter, melted

The Process:
Dump the pie filling into the crockpot.  In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix the melted butter into the cake mix.  It will be crumbly.  Pour the cake mix- butter-mixture evenly over the pie filling in the pot, but don't worry if it doesn't look too even or pretty.  Its not going to look pretty but it will taste fantastic.  Sprinkle your nuts over the top, put the lid on, and cook on low for 2-3 hours.

This is really great with ice cream on top too.  It will look like mush.  It will smell wonderful.  And it will taste even better.  Just ask all the kids that came to basketball/tae kwon do camp.  or MattyK.  I told them they couldn't have seconds because if I gave them too much sugar I'd get in trouble with Teacher Matt.  There were definitely no leftovers.

We will have another sister-date soon!
Love,
Joy

#11: Banana Oat Bread (oven or slow-cooker)

Banana-Oat Bread

Hi Tiffany,
I had a few bananas left that were getting mushy, and I needed to use them soon, so I made Banana Bread today.  Apparently you can bake in a crock pot!  Who would've known?  I got the idea from the crock pot lady.


Now, why would someone want to bake in a slow cooker, you might ask?  You might want to bake in your slow cooker if:
1) you don't have an oven
2) your oven is broken
3) your oven is already full of other goodies for holiday dinners
4) you don't want to stay near your kitchen while your appliances are at work
5) its too hot to run your oven.
6) you think slow cookers are the bomb.


#1 applies to me.  and #6.
Anyways...I adapted a recipe from cooks.com.  I wanted to try some with orange marmalade, but didn't have orange juice as most of those recipes call for, so I just added a little orange marmalade to this one, along with some chopped walnuts.  


The Basics:
Prep time: About 20 minutes, then 45-50 min. in the oven or about 4 hours in the slow cooker.
Good for leftovers: of course!
servings: about 10 slices
cost: less than $5. I didn't have to go to the store for this recipe.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup softened butter/margarine OR 1/2 cup shortening OR about 6 tablespoons of vegetable oil.  But Butter will taste Better.
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed, plus extra for sprinkling on top
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 to 3 medium very ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/3 cup old-fashioned oatmeal, uncooked, plus extra for sprinkling
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
1/3 cup chopped (but still chunky) walnuts, almonds, or pecans (optional)


The Process:
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees OR get out your slow cooker.  Grease a bread pan.  If you are using the slow cooker method and don't have a bread pan that will fit inside your slow cooker, you can either use a different pan or just grease your slow-cooker and cook directly inside it, but the cook time will be less (about 2 hours)
Mash your bananas- I sliced mine in a bowl before mashing them with a fork until they were super mushy.  Mix all wet ingredients (eggs, bananas, orange marmalade, milk, and butter/shortening/oil.  Gradually stir in the dry ingredients a little bit at a time.  If you have a mixer, use it and it will be better stirred and won't take so long.  I don't have a mixer so I had to use my strong-woman-muscles to mix mine.
Spoon it all into your pan or crock pot.  Sprinkle a little oatmeal and brown sugar on top.  Cook in the oven for 45-50 minutes, or in the crockpot (pan method) for 4 hours on high, or 2 hours if you're cooking directly in the crock (don't open and check until its been at least 2 hours in the crockpot!).  It's done when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Carefully remove the pan and let it cool 10-20 minutes before taking the bread out of the pan.


Its not super sweet, but pretty yummy.  It would have tasted better with real butter, but I didn't have any so I used margarine and vegetable oil instead.  I think I like my mom's banana bread even more, so I will try to find out what recipe she's using and hopefully get that up here as well.  


Notes:

With your Crock Pot: According to Stephanie the Crock pot lady, you're supposed to use something to prop the lid up a little to let the steam out when using a pan inside the crock.  She (and I) used a chopstick.  Others have suggested placing a stack of paper towels over the pan before putting the lid on, but I used the chopstick method and mine turned out fine. 

Edible Christmas Critters

Dear Tiffany,
Does this count as cooking?  I didn't have to heat anything up, but I wanted to share with you the Christmas critters you would've gotten to make/eat if you'd been able to make it tonight.  Although...we ended up too full from dinner to eat them, thanks to Joey's amazing Coctel de Camaron (Mexican Shrimp Cocktail) which I will have to make sometime.  It was soooo good.  


The reindeer (left) is made with a Nutter-Butter cookie, 2 stick pretzels, and mini m &m's, with peanut butter to glue it all together.  You'll have to separate the cookies just a bit (without breaking them as I did!) to put the "antlers" in place, and then fill around with peanut butter to hold them in place.  A small dot of peanut butter will hold the eyes and nose.  I can't take credit for this one; I found it here.

Christmas Critters!

The snowman (right) is made of banana, carrot, pretzel sticks, and mini chocolate chips.  You'll want to slice your banana kind of thick so that it doesn't break when you skewer it.  A little sliver of carrot makes the nose, and chocolate chips stand in as eyes and buttons (the chocolate goes really well with the banana!).  You can also put a triangle slice of apple on top as a hat if you so desire.  I suggest you eat it sooner rather than later, because eventually the banana will start to turn brown (After several hours) and the pretzels will absorb moisture from the banana so they won't be as crunchy.  I found this idea here.


The "Mr Grinch" in the center is a mean one!  The face is a jalapeno pepper (though another green pepper would work also, this was what had enough space to make a face), and the hat is a sweet mini red pepper.  I used Ricotta cheese for the eyes, frown, and the fluff for the santa hat, but any kind of cream cheese (or maybe even ranch dressing?) would work just as well.   I can proudly say that I thought this one up all by myself!  I haven't gotten brave enough to eat him yet though- I like jalapenos but usually in stuff, I've never eaten one straight up before haha.  If you could find baby cucumbers, they would create a not-so-mean version of the Grinch that would be more palatable to those who aren't really into straight-up spicy.  


I wouldn't recommend Mr Grinch for your first graders (though you can show them one!) as the jalapeno would be a bit much (just a bit?  Its probably a bit much for you but its cute and Sam might try one...), but it might be fun to try one of the others in your class sometime.  Beware, the skewers will become lightsabers and blasters and assorted other weapons with the boys!  But otherwise, the snowmen especially are a relatively healthy option for a fun, edible activity.


-Joy

Brownies in an Orange!

Dear Tiffany,

If you answer the phone while scooping the insides out of oranges, your phone will smell really yummy.  Just saying.

I'm not going to count this as one of my 365 recipes, because I'm using brownie mix from a box (lazy, I know), and its something I've never done before, but I saw a video of these and wanted to try it out.  My hands smell really yummy.  ahh. I love the smell of oranges.

You slice off the top of your oranges, scrape all the fruit out of the inside, and fill them with brownie batter (I used the kind from the box, but if you have a recipe for brownies that will work fine too).  If you want them to look "pretty," you don't want to fill them to the top, as they will expand and spill over.  If you want them to make a huge mess, go ahead and fill them to the top and they'll look like mine did :).

I made mine in my toaster oven because I don't have a real oven. I'm always a little hesitant about baking desserts in the toaster oven, because you can't control the temperature so the bake times are not the same.  According to the Cooking for Geeks guy, they should take about 20-25 minutes with the oven temp set according to the brownie mix directions (check for doneness with a toothpick, it should only be slightly coated).  Mine took longer due to my wannabe oven- about 35 minutes.    Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

My tendency is to always bake stuff too long, because it tends to not look done until it cools.  Its better to be undercooked than overcooked this time.  If you undercook these you'll just end up with yummy lava cakes instead :).

With one of these, I filled it about halfway with the brownie mix, then added a spoonful of orange marmalade before filling the rest of the way- and it turned out great!  It was was a little more liquidy due to the marmalade, which made the cheap $1 brownie mix taste a little smoother.

The Verdict: I really liked these!  They were fun to make, a cute idea and really yummy (the orange pulp really infuses even my cheap dollar brownie mix with great flavor.  I'm planning to make them for some Christmas treats, and I think this would taste good in lemons too.  I'll have to try that next time, there's a tree full of them out in the backyard.

-Joy