it's a party! pasta salad

i entered another of the weekly fabric contests on spoonflower. the theme this week is recipe tea towels. go here to vote: http://www.spoonflower.com/contests/242 for my it's a party! pasta salad tea towel. and if you want, buy a quarter yard of it and make your own pasta salad. it's easy to make and quite tasty if i say so myself.

royal icing cookies

i've always loved the look and taste of royal icing cookies. there are some amazing looking cookies that skilled bakers can create. i wanted to make some fish shaped royal icing cookies for alex's goody bags for her friends this birthday and i had to try some recipes and practice. i found a recipe online a little while back and decided to try that, those are the yellow fish shaped cookies in the photo. i did a horrible job icing the cookies, the mix was too thin and runny and they look just plain sloppy. i didn't like the taste of this recipe either. the recipe called for meringue powder and i could taste that in the icing - it tasted powdery and chalky. to give them a little credit, the next day after they really set they tasted better and less chalky. so when halloween came around i wanted to make pumpkin face cookies. the cookies are sugar cookies from a mix and i cut out pumpkin shapes. this time i used alton brown's royal icing recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/royal-icing-recipe/index.html. the recipe was easy to make and it tastes really good and mild. the consistancy was nice and the color is bright (i use wilton icing colorants). i'm still not skilled at decorating with royal icing but i think they're a huge improvement from the first batch. they turned out cute, and then i wanted to cover them up for the night to avoid cat tampering...wasn't a good idea. i thought they were set enough to lay saran wrap on top loosely but when i found them the next morning their faces had all bled like they cried overnight. they still tasted good though and i learned a lesson and i still sent them to alex's school for the kids who really enjoyed them.

making pumpkin puree

we have a csa with a local farmer here in ohio and we've received a few pumpkins lately. i also wanted to make some pumpkin spice cold-process soap for the holidays and wanted to incorporate real pumpkins. so i made my own pumpkin puree using the farm fresh pumpkins. it's so simple to make pumpkin puree and it has to be nicer than buying canned, right? preheat your oven to 350 degrees and get out a roasting pan. cut your pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds and stringy fibers. save your seeds so you can cook those with some butter and seasoning salt (i put the seeds on a cookie sheet and baked at the same time as the pumpkin for 45 minutes). place your pumpkin halves in the roasting pan with cut sides facing down. add 2 cups of water and bake for 90 minutes. scoop the flesh out of each pumpkin half and put in your food processor. blend this to a nice smooth puree finish and you're done. it's that simple. i used some of the puree in a soap recipe but you could make pumpkin pie with it as well i hear - i'm not a fan of pumpkin pie so i wouldn't really know.

waffle cones

now that the rains have taken a temporary break, the heat has moved in. what a great way to beat the heat than ice-cream in waffle cones. i've had a waffle cone maker for a while now and have only used it once before. we had been too ambitious i think the first time and tried making chocolate waffle cones. they were okay, but turned out too thick and kind of soft and dry. this time we decided to try the most basic waffle cone recipe we could find and they turned out delicious. for an easy waffle cone you just need eggs, salt, sugar, flour and butter. the waffle iron is easy to use, just try to not put too much batter in there. wait for the light to turn green, pick up the waffle with a fork and move it to your towel (a linen towel would probably work best but i just used one that had the least texture to it) and use your cone tool (which i believe came with the iron) and roll the waffle around it. you hold it on the cone tool for a minute or so to make sure it sets and you're all done. we didn't have any malt balls to put in the bottom of the cone but an upside down hershey's kiss works just as well. they were so yummy that i ate more than i should have and now we have to refrain from making them again too soon for fear of our expanding wastelines.

cherry lollipops

i've been wanting to make lollipops with alex for a while now so i had all the necessary items already on hand when she asked to make cherry lollipops. actually, her request started with lunch when they brought the bill along with some lollipops. they didn't give us any flavors that she was interested in and that started a whole issue that she wanted a cherry lollipop. luckily very cherry was a flavor i already had at home. we pulled out a recipe from my candy cook book, the molds, lollipop sticks, candy thermometer, flavoring, food coloring, and the sugars. lollipops are basically granulated sugar, corn syrup, water, flavoring and food coloring. you mix all the water and sugars in a pot, boil it for about 5 minutes, add your flavoring and color and mold it. spray your molds with pam and insert the sticks before you pour in the candy. it's just that easy, they set rather quickly and pop out of the molds easily. aren't these molds adorable too - alex chose to make the balloons and i wanted to make the mustaches. but when it came time for her to pick one to eat she chose the mustache - they're just more fun to eat i guess. i finished them off by wrapping them in saran wrap. alex seemed to like them, i only tasted some broken off bits. they were a little stickier than i had hoped, so i think a little less corn syrup next time. overall though they are nice looking, easy to make, tasty and could be an easy party favor or party decoration with limitless possibilites for color, flavor and mold combinations.

happy 1 year of blogging to me!

it's been a whole year of this blog already! actually, i think it was last week or so, but close enough.  so, what do you make in celebration of a year of blogging? ice-cream whoopies, of course. yum, yum, and super yum. and we made them the super easy way, from a mix. i found this fun whoopie pie pan at target on sale - it has faces on some and words like "happy" and "cute" on others. we were going to make cupcakes anyways, so i thought we'd try the cake mix in the whoopie pan. they came out delicious, and there was extra batter to still make cupcakes. then all we did was make them into ice-cream sandwich sundaes. i think that is vanilla turtle ice-cream between two chocolate whoopies and then caramel and chocolate syrup on top. so freakin' delicious and easy. happy one year of boogie beans blogging - yay.

making doggie ice-cream

our puppy (i think he's still considered a puppy - he's about 6 months old, huge and clumsy) loves that doggie ice-cream that you can buy at the grocery store. and it's great because it really occupies him for a short period of time and gives you a tiny break from all the hyperactivity. but those ice-creams are rather expensive and there's only four in a pack, so we decided to make our own. i researched recipes and they all had the same ingredients in common so i mixed a couple of ideas and made this recipe:
32 oz. plain yogurt
1 mashed up banana
2 Tbsp. peanut butter
2 Tbsp. honey
put everything in your blender and mix well. we then divided all the mix into dixie cups, which yielded 15 to 18 cups of individual ice-creams. we put all these on a cookie sheet, covered them each with saran wrap and stuck them in the freezer. lonnie loves this ice-cream - possibly even more than that store bought brand. the only problem is that he will destroy that dixie cup and eat it if you let him, so the best option so far has been to peel off the cup and then give him the frozen treat in his food bowl.

pancake fun

during the week and on saturdays we take the quick route for breakfast, grabbing a breakfast bar or a bowl or cereal or toast: the faster and easier the better. so on sundays, we like to make waffles or pancakes or something that takes a tad more effort than normal. and we like to add a bit of fun to our pancakes with fun pans and colors. the first time we ventured off the normal pancake path, i had really just asked alex what she wanted to eat (and i'm thinking it may have even been a friday night fun meal) and she replied with "pink pancakes." well, that was easy enough. and i'm not fancy with my own pancake recipe or anything like that, it's boxed bisquik all the way for me. and all we did was add some pink food coloring and voila, pink pancakes. i like to use the flat side of the waffle iron plates for making our pancakes instead of the stove top - for one thing i don't think any of our pans are actually flat and there's just more room on the flat iron. then for christmas alex received that awesome pig pancake pan you see above in the photo. and that gift reminded us of a previous gift we received of an animal shape pancake pan. both of these pans go on the stove top, but when i flip them (after you see the bubbles around the edges of each pancake), i flip them onto the flat top waffle maker to cook the other side flat. and as you can see we have gotten fancier with making two-color pancakes too - we're working our way up to full out rainbow pancakes. and alex really enjoys picking out which pancakes she's going to eat by color and animal: green hippo please. maybe we'll get fancy with making our own shapes soon too - we've only done mickey mouse ears for free form pancakes so far.

making whoopie

whoopie pies of course. it was my birthday yesterday and for some reason i was not in the mood for regular box cake with buttercream frosting. and in fact, i tend to pick my birthday to experiment with new desserts - i should probably stop doing that since my experiments rarely go according to plan. so i decided to try my hand at making whoopie pies. i looked at some suggested combinations and tweaked those ideas a little and ended up deciding to make a chocolate whoopie with chocolate buttercream middle, then rolled in pretzel bits and mini candy coated chocolate chips and finally dipped in chocolate glaze. wow, huh? lots of chocolate - part of that choice stems from my daughter's absolute adoration of chocoate. they turned out huge - i seem to have a problem with making my dessert treats bigger than planned. i also seem to have an issue with making all my batters thicker than they are supposed to be. they look awesome though, right? they were a little dry for my liking, so next time: not so big, not so thick, cook less, and fluffier filler. and actually they were pretty easy to make (well, compared to the awesome fun that goes into making macarons) that i will definitely try again. the next try i plan on making a chocolate chip whoopie with an ice-cream filler rolled in mini chocolate chips or something - yum - in fact, i should have tried that the first time around. oh, and check out my fabulous professional stand mixer that used to be my grand-parents - it's older than i am and i absolutely love it.

alex in wonderland's birthday tea party

you've seen all the blogs of me crafting and sewing and cooking and such all leading up to the alex in wonderland birthday tea party - and here it is. alex turned 4 on 1.1.11! yes, she's a new year's baby - yay. what a fun party, and here's a collection image of most of the decorations and details. i was planning on pulling out all the tea sets for the party, but there just wasn't enough room for all of them (seriously, we have at least two more play tea sets, and you can't even see all the sets out in the photos, not to mention all of our real tea sets). you can see the toadstool i made (surrounded by the cutest disney alice in wonderland plush dolls called pookalooz), the dress and purse i made for alex (i love the inside of the sleeve cuffs and the liner of the purse), i made several "alex" banners around the house (cut out of paper, tea pot shapes and circles and alice silhouettes, hung up with clothes pins or decorative tape), the mini (or not so mini - they're kind of big actually) 3-tiered cakes all in different colors, the origami hanging balls that i showed a teaser of in an earlier blog (i absolutely love the way the double-sided polka dotted origami papers turned out), and the wax tea candle set. then of course the other details like the play tea tier treat set, the tin tea sets, the alice barbie, the madame alexander dolls (which were mcdonald's happy meal toys), and the flamingo and hedgehogs. i thought the pink piano that alex received for christmas added a nice touch to the look of the party too (even though there's no specific nod to alice in wonderland with it, but it seems to fit wonderfully). since it's christmas time also, we left the tree all set up and decorated and we use all our spode for dinner (and alex even has a children's spode tea set that is adorable). alex was dressed as alice (whom she still calls alison in wonderland - she's pretty determined that alison is the correct name), i was the red queen, her dad was the mad hatter, and lots of other guests dressed up as characters from alice in wonderland or dressed for tea with fun tea hats. i do have pictures of everyone together - i'm going to attempt to photoshop all the different group shots to get one super group shot that has everyone's best look (i might have to update this blog post once i make the super photo). happy new year to you all and cheers to a whole new year of crafting.

here's the photo of the party people. you should be able to find: the dormouse, the pink grand-mudder, a pink zebra, the white rabbit, the white queen, tweedle dum, six flowers, the march hare, the red queen, alice and the mad hatter.

tea party macarons

i've been seeing pictures of these cute little colorful macarons all over the place lately - they seem to be quite the trend. and i started thinking what a perfect tea party treat to have little macarons on tea trays or tiers along with other appetizers i have in mind (not much of a tea party if you don't have the treats also). so i decided to attempt these chocolate ganache filled vanilla macarons - and i went with green of course, since it's alex's favorite color (and she won't let you forget that, believe me). ok, so this was my second attempt actually. the first time i tried to make these macarons the meringue flattened and the almond flour was not ground enough and i didn't properly sift the almond flour/sugar mixture. so i did not even get past the wafer part the first time around. so now, attempt number two. i took the time to sift the flour/sugar mixture twice like it says in the instructions - what a pain in the behind - i don't have a flour sifter so i did it with a medium mesh strainer, my goodness i highly recommend spending the money on a sifter. i feel like this part took me forever. but anyways, the meringue turned out well, i mixed it with the flour and used a frosting bag and large circle tip to make 1 inch round wafers (i think the dough was still not as thick as it should have been but it was close enough to go forward and keep trying). while those were setting up i mixed up with chocolate ganache - which actually was pretty easy, and considering how awesomely delicious ganache is that was surprising. now, time to bake the wafers (after they were not sticky to touch). first batch was burnt, second batch was better but undercooked and third batch was still pretty but undercooked as well. i think i needed to turn the oven down and still hold the original time. i felt like you lost some of the green after baking them, but i can pump up the color and try not to burn them next time. funny thing is the burnt ones are pretty darn tasty - they're like roasted marshmallows - yum. finally, you sandwich a little chocolate ganache between two wafers and voila you have this super cute macaron. they look better in the books than mine do. when i was done i was never going to make these again because they took me the better part of a day and still didn't look like i was expecting them to. but then i ate some...and they are deliciously addicting. i'm still on the fence as to whether they were worth the effort or not, so we'll see if i make a third attempt at them for alex's tea party birthday party.

deep dish pizza

we have a great recipe that we love to make homemade pizza with, and it's such an easy recipe too. normally we make a whole wheat dough and roll it out on a large pizza stone - delicious. well, we watched a tv show a couple of weeks ago about pizza: chicago vs. ny and i've had a craving ever since to try to make deep dish pizza. it went rather well for the first attempt but we have some ideas as to how to make it better. First here's the recipe for the whole wheat pizza dough that we usually make:
2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp. active dry yeast
3/4 tsp. salt
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. honey
pour flour into a large mixing bowl, add yeast and salt. mix well. add water, oil and honey; mix well. cover with a moist cloth and place in a warm spot for 10 minutes to rise. punch down and roll out onto a 14 inch pizza stone (make sure to oil and flour the stone well). spread sauce and other ingredients on pizza crust. bake at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes or until crust is golden brown and cheese is melted.
the recipe is great with white flour too. so with the deep dish, we made the dough with white flour and pressed it into a cake pan. we then started with cheese, onion, basil, tomato a layer of italian sausage and finally the sauce with a sprinkling of salt, pepper and parmesan. it took considerably longer to cook - i think about 45 minutes total actually. it turned out super yummy, but when we try this again we're going to try a thinner crust (or larger cake pan - just a bit too much crust on this one) and we're going to pre-cook the sausage (that's why it took so long to cook - didn't want raw sausage on our pizza). it was a great first try, and soooo filling.

pasta salad

a few years ago when trying to figure out what to make with what we had in our almost empty cupboards, i created this pasta salad. it turned out really yummy and it's easy and people seem to like it. so, i thought i'd share the recipe here with anybody that would like to make it themselves.
1/2 c. sour cream
1/4 c. mayonaisse
1 lb. pasta (i like the mini shells)
dill
white wine vinegar
salt
pepper
1 can kidney beans
2 c. corn
combine all - dill, salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste. i like a lot of dill and a good amount of vinegar, but taste as you're mixing and stop when you're happy with it. Enjoy.