Friday Favorites, 9.9.11

Friday is here!!!!! Woohoo. It was really nice to have a short, 4-day work week. For this week's Friday Favorites, I thought I'd share some of my new favorite additions to my kitchen! Oh, and in case you were missing Friday Favorites last week, my apologies... I was a busy gal last Friday, running 19 miles (my longest run yet!) and also just running all over doing a gazillion things (truly, a gazillion), which caused me to completely neglect the blog. Oopsies! And speaking of 19 miles, I just realized that my first marathon is one month from today! That's right. On October 9th, I'll be running (hopefully!) my first ever marathon.

K, onto some newly developed favorites...

My birthday was last month, and I received some awesome baking and cooking related items. I wonder why people give me those types of items? Hmmmm. People know me so well! 

Mike gave me this ice cream maker! I'd been saying for a while that I've wanted one, and Mike clearly picked up on that. ;-)

Last night we made our first batch...

We made peanut butter chocolate chip! Oh my. Deeelicious. It was quite rich! But oh so good. The recipe will be on the blog in the near future...

The peanut butter chip was a recipe from the Cuisinart recipe book that came with the machine, but I also received this ice cream recipe cookbook for my b'day from my sister:

And I plan to make my next flavor of homemade ice cream from this book! I've read through several recipes so far, and I'm thinking either pumpkin or cinnamon...two very fall-like flavors. Heck, maybe I'll combine them and make pumpkin cinnamon!

I also received this fabulous Martha Stewart Cupcakes cookbook. Yay!

A girl can never have too many cupcake books. Some delicious recipes I'm eyeing already in here? Snickerdoodle cupcakes, roasted banana cupcakes, and pumpkin brown butter cupcakes. If the quality of the cupcakes in this book is anything like the quality of the several cookie recipes I've made in my Martha Stewart Cookies book, then we're in for some awesome treats! 

And in my last post of zucchini cake whoopie pies with maple buttercream filling, I mentioned this great book too that I received for my b'day:

Can't wait to try more from this fun book!

And lastly, my Mom also gave me some super cute dishes that I'm sure you'll see on the blog from time to time...

How cute are these? Love 'em!

Have a wonderful weekend! We're off to our second wedding of this month! And then we'll be focusing on planning our own. :)

Zucchini Cake Whoopie Pies with Maple Buttercream Filling

Zucchini cake whoopie pies? Who thinks up such a thing? I do! What made me think of this? Well, you see, I recently received this fun whoopie pies cookbook for my birthday, and I wanted to try one of the recipes in it.

In the book, I saw a recipe for carrot cake whoopie pies that sounded awesome. However, I was in possession of this huge zucchini:

And I felt the need to bake with it! So, I decided to try substituting shredded zucchini for the carrots. Success! The zucchini cake cookies were awesome. 

Then I had to decide which type of filling to use for the whoopie pies. Some kind of cream cheese filling? Chocolate? Actually, thinking back, chocolate probably would have worked quite well with zucchini. What I settled on though was a very tasty maple buttercream filling recipe that was also from the whoopie pies cookbook. Score! A great, unique combo was born.

Ingredients:

-2 cups all-purpose flour

-1 and 1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1 tsp. ground cinnamon

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

-1/2 cup granulated sugar

-2 large eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1 cup grated zucchini

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt in a medium bowl. 

In a stand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, then add the eggs and vanilla and beat until combined. Mix in the flour mixture until just combined, then add the zucchini. Chill the batter in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour (I chilled mine overnight because I wasn't making the cookies until the next day).

Drop about 1 to 2 tablespoons of batter at a time onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing cookies about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when pressed gently. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool on sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

For the maple buttercream filling:

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

-2 cups confectioners' sugar

-1 Tbsp. milk

-2 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

In a stand mixer, beat the butter on low speed until creamy. Add the sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, with the mixer on low until incorporated. Add the milk and maple syrup, and beat on medium for 3 to 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl periodically.

Match up cookies of roughly the same size, top one with a generous amount of maple filling, and put the two cookies together. Bam! You've got yourself a delicious (and somewhat healthy, perhaps?? ;-)) whoopie pie. This recipe made about 36 cookies for me...so about 18 whoopie pies.

You'll want to store these cookies in the fridge, and be sure not to stack them on top of one another because they'll stick together. I put mine in tupperware containers, and each layer of whoopie pies was separated by wax paper.

The cookies were a tad flatter than I would have liked, but the flavor was great and they were very cake-like so I was still happy with them.

Hi there little green specks of zucchini! Love that you can see those.

Mmmmm, time for filling. :)

I also made zucchini chocolate chip muffins with that beautiful, huge zucchini, so hopefully that recipe will appear here on the blog soon!

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Flourless Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been very excited to share this recipe for you (along with the several others patiently waiting to go on the blog!). This recipe for flourless peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies was soooo easy. And the cookies tasted soooo good. Need I say more? Didn't think so. ;-)

This recipe was adapted from Amandeleine.

Ingredients:

-1 cup peanut butter (any kind will do, I think)

-3/4 cup granulated sugar

-1 large egg, slightly beaten

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1/4 tsp. salt

-1 cup chocolate chunks or chips (any kind; I used semi-sweet because that's all I happened to have on hand)

-3/4 cup quick oats (this was my addition; the original recipe did not call for oatmeal)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, stir the peanut butter, sugar, egg, baking soda, and salt until combined. Stir in the chocolate and oats.

Place the dough on prepared pans by the teaspoonful, placing the balls about two inches apart. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until slightly browned.

Simple (takes less than 5 minutes to mix the ingredients together!), delicious (pb & chocolate - always a winner, and the cookies were super soft and chewy), and on the healthy side as far as cookies go (oatmeal? pb? totally justified as health food)... ;-)

Friday Favorites, 8.26.11

Happy Friday, all!

I'm trying to get back on track with the blog, so here's an edition of Friday Favorites for you. :) I'll keep it a bit more "traditional" and share some of my favorite recipes I've bookmarked lately.

1) Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie Dough Balls from Keep it Sweet

No baking required friends! And they're somewhat healthy too ;-)

(photo from Keep it Sweet)

2) Corn Cakes with Tomato Avocado Relish from Annie's Eats

These look so delicious! And it's always nice to have options for a vegetarian main dish. Personally, I don't cook a lot of meat (I choose to eat it more when I go out to eat), so I love veggie dishes to make at home!

(photo from Annie's Eats)

It's late August. For me, that means I am already thinking about my favorite season - fall! So, I've recently bookmarked a couple delicious looking recipes with autumn flavors...

3) Baked Pumpkin Spice Donut Holes from The Craving Chronicles

These look pretty easy to make and yuuummmmmy. And they're baked, not fried. No guilt! They are a bit similar to these French Breakfast Puffs I made a while back that are full of cinnamon-sugary goodness.

(photo from The Craving Chronicles)

4) Cinnamon Toasted Pumpkin Pie Tarts from the Picky Palate

These are 1) too cute 2) so festive and 3) lookin' very tasty!

(photo from the Picky Palate)

Hope you all have a great weekend. And I hope everyone stays safe with the arrival of Hurricane Irene!!

Engaged in Baking!

Hello blog world friends!

I apologize for yet another long break from the blog, but I have been busy with some exciting news these last few days... I just got engaged!! Super duper exciting. :)  My boyfriend (who is now my fiance!) proposed to me this past Friday evening, August 19th. It was a very sweet, thoughtful proposal and I obviously said YES!

In case you have two minutes to spare right now, I've included a video I took after the proposal to capture the moment and have it forever.  (My voice sounds funny in this video, I think. I blame it on the fact that I had a cold/was sick, I had just been happily crying quite a bit, and I was totally happy/giddy while filming this video :)).

After the proposal, we went out to celebrate where we had our first date, which was at James Gate (yes, rhymes were intentional)!

Happy couple! We're going to be maaaaarried!

Awesome, thoughtful cookies my sister made for us!! Thanks, sista! :)

Both our families were able to get together this past weekend in MA to celebrate. What a memorable weekend! One of the best of my life thus far, I can tell you that. ;-)

Strawberry Banana Quinoa Breakfast Cereal

Quinoa cereal? Yes! I've heard about folks making quinoa for breakfast and have been wanting to try it... My most recent issue of Whole Living magazine inspired me to do so since it included a tasty looking quinoa cereal recipe.

What a delicious breakfast! It was one of those dishes that you taste and realize it's reeeeally yummy, and then you start to eat it fairly quickly because it's so yummy, all the while thinking that you probably shouldn't be eating that quickly, yet you keep taking bites as if someone's about to come take it away from you... And then finally, when the bowl is two-thirds of the way gone, you slow down for just a minute or two...and then gobble up the rest. Well, maybe that doesn't happen to you. But that's what happened to me with this delicious bowl of strawberry banana quinoa breakfast cereal.

So, how do you make this cereal? Here you go!

Bring 1 and 1/2 cups of milk (I used 1%) to a boil in a saucepan on the stove, and add in 1/2 cup of quinoa (I used white quinoa). Cook until all the liquid is absorbed (about 14 minutes). Remove from heat and mix in your fruits of choice (the magazine suggested raspberries and bananas). I added about 1/3 cup of strawberries (mine were fresh ones that I had frozen and then thawed, so they were a bit liquid-y), and about 1/4 cup of sliced banana. I also sprinkled a generous dash of cinnamon on top (I love me my cinnamon!!), and a slight drizzle of maple syrup (pure VT maple syrup - it's gotta be the real stuff, friends!). Mix everything together, and enjoy!!

I love how the strawberry juice made it a pretty pink color!

I hope you try this for a unique twist on a healthy breakfast. You'll be glad you did!

Blueberry Banana Bread

Aloha! We're back from an amaaazing vacation in Kauai. It was tough to return last week, but it's also nice to be back home, of course. I have missed baking in my kitchen! I didn't do one lick of baking while on our trip. We did, however, eat a lot of yummy foods that I'll have to share with you at some point. :)

The day after we returned from our vacation, I took the day off from work to rest and recover (the time change/jet lag from Hawaii to the east coast is a killer!), to get some errands done, and of course...to bake! I made a batch of some delicious maple snickerdoodles, and I tried a new recipe for blueberry banana bread since I had both ripe bananas and blueberries frozen in the freezer, waiting to be used in a baked treat. This recipe is definitely a keeper! It's from the blog, Daily Garnish. I wanted to make several mini loaves to give to people as gifts for various reasons, and this was a great recipe for that. As is, the recipe made 8 mini loaves for me (in my Crate and Barrel mini loaf pan). It makes one 8 x 4 or 9 x 5 loaf if you'd like to make it as one loaf. I changed the recipe just slightly (my ingredients are listed below), and the original recipe is here.

Ingredients:

-1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (you could easily substitute whole wheat flour here! I actually meant to and forgot)

-2 tsp. baking powder

-1/2 tsp. salt

-1/2 cup brown sugar

-1/4 cup sugar

-1 cup ripe, mashed banana (should equal about 2 large bananas)

-1 tsp. vanilla

-2 eggs

-1/2 cup yogurt (I used Dannon light n' fit banana flavor)

-1 cup blueberries (I used some I had frozen; you can also use fresh, of course!)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas with a fork, and add to them the sugars, vanilla, eggs, and yogurt until well combined. Mix the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients, until just combined. Fold in the blueberries. Pour batter into a greased loaf pan (or several mini pans), and bake for 1 hour (my mini loaves took about 25 minutes; they're tiny!) until the top is lightly golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

Delicious and pretty healthy too! This was the perfect recipe to satisfy my baking itch upon our return from vacation...  I was dying to make something but it needed to be easy since I was tired and didn't have a lot of time. Perfection right here in this banana blueberry bread, folks! :)