you're one ugly whale!

Sassy (my mom) threw a swim party for Connor (my nephew) and the other 2 year olds from his gymnastics class. We do not need to talk about how many other kids showed up to the party, because even if it was just us, we had fun! So anyway, sister and I made some summer fun cookies to bring to said party. We weren't sure what to bake, but luckily my bestest non sister friend Natalie gave me some super cute summer cookie cutters a few years ago so we used those.

Sadly, one batch of cookies did not stay in the oven quite long enough and the cookies were too soft to hold the icing. The tale and the spout fell off of one whale so in frustration I announced that it was one ugly whale, which Sister thought was a rude thing to say to her ;) The rest of the cookies were not in fact ugly and were quite cute. So without further adieu I introduce:

Whaley (you're one cute whale!)

Tree-y (which is actually quite small, but because of my cropping looks the same size as the other cookies)

Sandy (made by covering the cookies in white royal icing and then dusting them with vanilla wafers that we ran through the food processor. YUMMY)

Octy

Flippy

And Crabby (who was super cute covered in red sanding sugar)

If you want to see some pictures of the mess we made while making cookies, and Connor as a merman hop on over to Sisters blog.

make batter ice cream

I LOVE cake batter ice cream from coldstone, maggie moos, marble slab etc. I pretty much think it was the best invention ever. I know its not for everyone, but that's why ice cream comes in SO many flavors! I, however, was super excited to find out that its really simple to make cake batter ice cream at home. I couldn't leave it there though, my VERY favorite batter to eat has always been Betty or Duncan blue berry muffin batter. So I made it into ice cream, and it was everything I hoped for :) I, in fact, liked the blue berry muffin batter ice cream better than the cake batter I made, but in hindsight I think I added too much cake batter to my ice cream.


I have a pretty basic Cuisinart ice cream maker, and I made the gourmet vanilla bean base and then flavored it. There are tons of ice cream recipes out there, but I suggest at least starting with the recipe that comes with your ice cream maker so the volumes are right.

I know I've kind of droned on about my my vanilla purchases, but buying the vanilla bean paste might have been the best culinary decision I ever made. You can add one tablespoon of your ice cream base instead of a vanilla bean (and at $8 a bottle vs. $12 a bean its a really good deal) and when you heat it on the stove those seeds get so fragrant its intoxicating. Not much compares to the smell of vanilla and cream simmering together.

And now on to batter ice creams... it really is as simple as buying your favorite box mix and adding 2/3 to 1 cup of dry mix to your ice cream :) I told you it was easy. I guess I always thought it was some secret chemical and flavor mix, but its not. I actually mixed the dry powder with milk to make it really smooth before adding it to my ice cream base, and then let it do its thing in the ice cream maker.

Next time I think I'll try frozen yogurt.

banana nana bo banna

I have to thank Deb at smittenkitchen.com for helping make my first baking experience in my new oven such a huge success. I made her "Jacked-Up Banana Bread" on Friday morning and let me just tell you it smelled so good that I had to restrain myself from opening the oven and eating the half baked bread with a spoon!

I did hold out and, even waited for Sean to get home before I cut into it. And it was DEVINE! I cannot believe I've never made banana bread before. I think the only thing that might make this better is some chopped walnuts, but since those are poison to my husband they will be continue to be left out of my jacked up banana bread.

I usually don't do this, since the recipe is very clear over at smittenkitchen.com, but its so good you should make this right now without jumping pages. But while its baking promise me you'll stop over to smittenkitchen.com and leave a note! my comments in RED.

3 to 4 ripe bananas, smashed *felt really silly buying brown bananas at the store but I wanted this so bad!
1/3 cup melted salted butter
3/4 to 1 cup light brown sugar *why hold back? I used the whole cup!
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla *used the bean paste... goooooooooood stuff
1 tablespoon bourbon (optional) *I used Jacked Daniels, and personally think it could handle a little more
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg *didn't have any of this so I left it out.
Pinch of ground cloves *and added a little bit more of this
1 1/2 cup of flour

Preheat the oven to 350°F. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, vanilla and bourbon, then the spices. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4×8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Okay, not only have I never made banana bread, but I'd never made bread period... other than my mom's bread machine forever ago. And it seems like most loaf recipes call for a 4x8 loaf pan. For some strange reason, I only had a 5x9 inch loaf pan. It was close enough. the loaf might have been a little bit short, but it baked perfectly without adjusting the time.

Make new friends...

And send the old ones off in big moving truck. I think I've mentioned before that my oven was extremely unreliable. I mean, I had to adjust temperatures multiple times while baking, and always started off at least 50 degrees above whatever the recipe called for. This has been going on for at least a year and was probably starting to go bad from the day we moved into this house. Unfortunately, we didn't notice it until after the warranty was up on the house OF COURSE. So I've just been dealing with it. Sometimes begrudgingly, but generally its been bearable.

Well last week I went on a little adventure up to Virginia and then North Carolina to visit one of my favoritest people, and since I didn't want my husband to wither away and die while I was gone, I made him some casserole type meals that he could pop in the oven and heat up and have enough to eat for a few days and take as lunch. I left on Tuesday morning and arrived in Virginia on wed. evening. I'd only been there a few hours when I a get a call from a quite distressed Sean saying the oven does not work. Hes been walking the dog for 20 mins and its only 160 degrees!

Woah bowl me over with shock. Our oven sucks?! I'd never noticed... The problem with the oven was in fact SOOO bad, that I needed to go into town the next day and pick out a new oven. Trust me I'm not complaining... I've wanted a new oven for a long stinking time. I just think its very funny and not at all surprising that the first time Sean is cooking on his own and experiencing first hand the difficulties of our oven its IMPERATIVE that it get replaced before I get home!

I got home late Wednesday night, and spent most of yesterday reclaiming the house... unpacking, doing laundry, washing dishes, picking up all the things that were left in the most "convenient" places regardless of how bizarre it made the house look etc. Today, I think all the driving and being away from home has caught up with me because I'm having a hard time getting off the couch (so much so that I just went to homedepot.com to find a picture to post instead of walking into the kitchen to take one) but I'm really excited to go introduce myself to my new range. It has many exciting new features that the old sad one did not, and I'm even more excited to set the temperature and hopefully not have baked goods that are burned on one side and clearly slanted toward the front of the stove.

Today I see coming out of the oven at the very least... banana bread, and lemon tart. I haven't even decided what I want to make for dinner!

I'm mesmerized

Did you know it was teacher appreciation week this week? If you didn't already know, wouldn't it have been nice for me to let you know on Monday?? Yeah, well sorry ;) I don't have human children so I don't keep up with teacher-y things but my sister has the cutest 2 and a half year old on the planet and he has 2 pre-school teachers who needed some appreciating this week.

Before I let you see how we appreciated the teachers, I think its important to note, that my sister is older than me, but she did NOT, in fact, invent cookies. According to our mother though, it is entirely possible though that I DID invent cookies. I think this blogging thing has gone on too long without giving my sister some credit. We really did start making cookies together, and I seem to recall her being WAY better at it than I was when we started. I think I've at least caught up at this point but honestly while our techniques might be moderately different, our skill levels are pretty even. "Flour Blossoms" was really OUR creation together, and the only reason she doesn't make more cookies with me is that she has the aforementioned 2.5 year old son, and the cutest, chubbiest, smartest 10 month old daughter on the planet. PLUS shes a professor at A&M. So I guess you could say shes "kinda" busy. Even though she didn't invent cookies, shes my bestest friend in the whole wide world, and making cookies is 1000x more fun when we do it together.

And NOW on to the cookies, which really have me mesmerized. We baked these guys at my house, but decorated them at her house and she made the red icing with her powdered color. They are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Like seriously I'm in love, and I can't wait for Christmas so I have an excuse to use my red powdered color!!!

Maizey in a drawer

Thanks for the offers to take "the poop-y one" off our hands. And while its tempting to send her off to someone else's house to poop on someone else's floor, the husband is quite attached to her. So I'm trying out new ways to keep her from sneaking off to defile my carpet. You see, I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen. When we (the dogs and I, cause husband is long gone by the time we wake up) get up in the morning, the dogs go outside to relieve themselves and then come back in to eat breakfast... in the kitchen. And I don't like to leave the house without doing the dishes, so I spend my pre-work minutes in the kitchen...thats usually when she sneaks off into the dining room to potty under the pool table. And then when I get home from work, I'm usually in the kitchen putting away clean dishes and dirtying new ones while I fix dinner. And I have a baby gate to keep her in the kitchen side of the house, but those darn open floor plans make it kind of difficult to keep her entirely IN the kitchen... again this is where we get into trouble... I'm paying attention to something else, and she knows it and poops. SOOOOOOOOO today I put Maizey in the drawer to keep her conscience close by and thus her poop off my floor!

I think she knows shes in trouble, and the other dogs just like to taunt her.

Fortunately, when I'm not in the kitchen, she crawls up in my lap and we usually look like this.

Yeah... thats my lap, and 2 cavies, and me trying to write this blog while wedging my computer in between them. But can't you see why we tend to forget the poops on the floor?? In moments like this, shes so sweet and asleep shes easy to forgive.

Super easy super yummy cookies

I know it may sound like I've been living under a baking rock when I say I had never heard of, let alone baked cake mix cookies until a few weeks ago. I guess that's not entirely true... bakerella mentioned cake mix cookies around valentines day, but i SERIOUSLY had never heard of them before then! So a few weeks ago I did some research and came up with my own super easy cake mix cookie recipe and Sean and I loved them. And I am not kidding they are SUPER easy.

All you need: 1 box cake mix (whatever flavor you like), 1 stick butter at room temperature, 2 eggs, and one tablespoon of vegetable oil.

Its always nice if you have a helper monkey ;)

Mix your ingredients and then form into balls. Its a pretty thick batter so I recommend using a hand mixer or a stand mixer. And the dough is pretty sticky so if you don't have a silpat you should definitely grease your cookie sheet or line with parchment or SOMETHING.

Then bake at 350 for 9-13 mins. The first time I made these, the cookies were about twice as big, and I baked for the full 13mins, but this time I wanted miniatures and I was able to bake for only 9 mins. Be careful with how you position them because they spread out quite a bit.

They are great to eat just like this, but I let them cool completely (which doesn't take too long) and made little sandwiches with left over frosting from cake balls. ENJOY!

Non food related post.

I have 3 dogs. I know very few (if any) people who live in a standard-size neighborhood who own 3 dogs, and I guess that makes Sean and I unique. All three of our dogs live inside full time. One of them would be totally happy if we could arrange a way for him to potty (discretely) without ever leaving the house. Another one, evidently has no problem pottying in the house willy nilly, and the third one is pretty much perfect because she would go outside in a tornado with snow and floods in order to not potty in the house.

I bring this up their potty personalities mainly because the one that potties in the house is driving me INSANE lately. And I haven't baked any cookies lately or even come up with something clever to blog about because the perfect one has had some medical drama in the last 2 weeks and she really just wants to be cuddled lately. And who am I to deprive her of sweet cuddle love?

Murphy Deacon: The one would rather not go outside.

Maizey Florence: The potty in the house one.

Molly Soren: The PERFECT one.

I do have some cookie projects in the work this week. So stay tuned.

And the last of the cakes... for now.

Okay, here are a few more cookie cakes. I really had fun doing this set of cookies, but they were kind of a problem for me. I finished them up on wednesday, and they set out on the table covered in wax paper until friday morning. I couldn't figure out what to do with them. I loved them so much I didn't want to give them away! Admittedly I did eat 2 on wednesday as I was decorating and they broke, but other than that I didn't really feel like eating them. I couldn't bare to give them away either, they were all so pretty and I really think I was afraid no one would appreciate them.

But by friday morning they were still layed out on the counter relatively untouched and I knew I couldn't keep them around forever. So I gingerly packed them up and carted them off to my husband's office (bonus:he brings shipleys in every friday) and unceremoniously dropped them off the in the kitchen (and took a donut for the road). I didn't want to know if people liked them or WORSE hated them. I loved them, and that was enough for me.

This is my favorite inspiration cake.

And my favorite look a like cookie.

I tried some of the same scrolls on the green.

And then some more blue and white.
And I couldn't leave out the polkies all together. So I loosely copied this cake.
With this cookie...

And then I went all kinds of polkie crazy...

But the brown and white polks are my favorite, I kept that one. hmmm, its time to confess... I have five cookies, including the first three scrollies on this post and the brown and white polkies in zip loc bags on my counter. I really don't know what I'm doing with them. I seriously doubt I will eat them. I think I might take them to my mom, cause I know she'll fawn over them like I feel they deserve. I am really beginning to believe I have an unhealthy attachment to these cookies!!!