Sweet and Kickin' Pecans

Welp, I am doing another mini-sugar detox right now. This time for 2 weeks before I'm off to Buffalo for a family member's wedding. I find detoxing is so much easier when you have a lot of items on deck, especially snack type food. One of my favorite go-to detox snack is nuts, but sometimes just eating plain nuts gets boring, so I decided to get a little creative and spice things up a bit.

The bag that inspired it all

My inspiration came from the back of a bag of pecan halves I got from my local Albertson's. Their recipe included corn syrup and sugar, so I had to make a few modifications to make my version 21DSD approved. I was a little nervous as I wasn't sure what exactly was a good substitute for corn syrup (and I am sure I could have just Googled it, but I was feeling lazy) and I wasn't sure how to balance out for omitting a half a cup of sugar (again, probably could have Googled it, but what's the fun in that?). Also, because I've never cooked nuts before.

I was pleasantly surprised with the results as there were quite a few moments of panic (Can you really use coconut oil instead of corn syrup? Where's my pure vanilla extract? Oh no! The butter just exploded in the microwave! Was that too much cinnamon? Was that too much cayenne pepper?). But my worries were unfounded as the final product was delicious.

Sweet and Kickin Pecans

16 ounces pecan halves
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 350.

Line a cookie sheet with greased aluminum foil. In a large bowl, mix together pecans, coconut oil butter and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix until well coated. Spread onto the cookie sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Stir and continue baking another 5 minutes. Spread pecans onto parchment paper and let cool.

Peanut Butter Cookies

It seems as though it's been quite some time since I've actually posted something about baking, so I'm getting back to the heart of this blog today.

I made these cookies on a stormy Friday night. There was no real reason I chose these cookies, mostly because I realized I had all of the ingredients when I was perusing recipes in my new Pie in the Sky cookbook. I modified the recipe slightly in that I didn't do the sugar coating or criss cross portions of the recipe.

Because I'm lazy.

And because wine.

One thing you may or may not have noticed is that a lot of times I seem to be out of something and have to
run to the store. Usually for eggs. I have no idea why it's usually the eggs. This comes from me assuming that I have the basics and because I tend to quickly look at a recipe just to make sure I have all the ingredients. Which is usually fine. But not this time because the recipe called for the egg (which I did have!) to be "room temperature."  So, I may or may not have attempted to warm up the egg in my cleavage.

Because wine.

I tried to pass these off to my coworkers as "healthy" because they have peanut butter in them and peanut butter has protein. Although I'm pretty sure they would have eaten them regardless.

The bulk of these cookies went to my friend for her Birthday (who said they were "baller")...of which we missed the festivities.

Because beer.

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chunky peanut butter

Preheat oven to 375.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt. In a mixer, blend together butter and sugars until smooth. Mix in egg, vanilla and peanut butter. Slowly mix in the flour mixture a little at a time until everything is completely blended. Drop cookies, about an inch around, onto an ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove cookies from the cookie sheet immediately and place on a cooling rack or wax paper.

Kiwi Strawberry Smoothie

"Quartered" kiwis. You probs don't need to do this

Kiwis were on sale so I decided to stock up on them for the sole purpose of putting them into a smoothie. The strawberry kiwi combo is nothing new by any stretch of the imagination, so I apologize for my lack of creativity. Also, this was a total pain in my ass to do. Thinking back, kiwis are soft enough that I probably didn't need to peel, slice and quarter the kiwis. The process was extremely time consuming but the results were tasty!

Kiwi Strawberry Smoothie

1 1/4 cups kiwis, peeled, sliced and quartered
1 1/4 cups strawberries, quartered
1 1/4 cups white grape juice

Clean and cut strawberries. Peel and cut kiwi. Place into blender with white grape juice. Blend until smooth. Pour into a glass.

Apple Spice Cookies

Conversations between my husband and me yesterday went a little something like this:

Husband: so I have this thing for work tomorrow
Me: uh-huh...[knowing full well where this is going]
Husband: and I need to bring something
Me: ...like a baked good?
Husband: yeah! that would be great. could you make something?
Husband: oh, there was a request for blueberry and pecans
Me: ...you're getting something from whatever we already have in the kitchen

I almost made plain old chocolate chips (and I swear I'll do so one of these days!) but I flipped quickly through my cookbooks and saw a recipe for these cookies in my High Altitude Baking book. I have a ton of
apples and  typically they end up going bad because I don't manage to eat the quickly enough so I thought it would be a great way to get some use out of them.

The directions call for "finely chopped peeled" apples, which I took to mean "as long as it isn't bigger than the size of a chocolate chip it's probably okay."

Looks fine to me. Heh.

On a side note, I just got cooling racks for the first time in my life and they are so super awesome.

Apple Spice Cookies

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2/3 cup shortening

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup peeled and chopped apple

Preheat oven to 375. In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, nutmeg and cinnamon. In a large bowl, cream sugars and shortening. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add flour mixture slowly and thoroughly, a little at a time. Stir in apples. Drop cookies, about an inch around, onto an ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove cookies from the cookie sheet immediately and place on a cooling rack or wax paper.

Blueberry Watermelon Strawberry Smoothie

I learned this morning that it is National Blueberry Muffin Day. I actually don't have a blueberry muffin recipe nor do I have the time to make any today, so instead, I will give you this picture of a blueberry muffin

and then will proceed with posting another smoothie recipe (that contains blueberries!) even though I just posted one a few days ago.

I originally intended to make another Watermelon Strawberry Smoothie, but I didn't have much watermelon left. But I did have plenty of leftover strawberries and blueberries from the American Flag Cake from July 4th. I substituted blueberries to cover the amount of watermelon I was missing.

I really enjoyed the end result, especially with the addition of some leftover whipped topping, also because of the American Flag Cake.

This is what a "quartered" strawberry looks like.

Blueberry Watermelon Strawberry Smoothie

1/4 cup watermelon, sliced, no rind
1 1/2 cups blueberries
3/4 cup strawberries, quartered
1 1/4 cups white grape juice
whipped topping, if desired

Clean and cut watermelon and strawberries. Rinse blueberries. Place into blender with white grape juice. Blend until smooth. Pour into a glass and top with whipped topping and blueberries (but only if you want to - I don't want to seem bossy or anything).

Watermelon and Strawberry Smoothie

When the weather gets hot there is nothing better than a cold smoothie. The problem for me though, is that I am super picky when it comes to fruit juices (and to an extent, fruit). I do not like orange or apple juice, which are the two most common types of juice (from my extensive research). I also cannot stand bananas, which seems to make regular appearances in smoothies (again, from my own extensive research). I was delighted when I found this recipe which doesn't contain any of the aforementioned atrocities. I decided to give it a go and was delighted with the results.

Watermelon and Strawberry Smoothie

1 3/4 cups watermelon, sliced, no rind
3/4 cup strawberries, quartered
1 1/4 cups white grape juice

Clean and cut watermelon and strawberries. Place into blender with white grape juice. Blend until smooth.

1 3/4 cups watermelon, sliced and rind removed

3/4 cup strawberries, cleaned and quartered

1 1/4 cups white grape juice

- See more at: http://www.foodfanatic.com/recipes/watermelon-strawberry-smoothie-recipe/#sthash.n6Ck1gIK.dpuf

1 3/4 cups watermelon, sliced and rind removed

3/4 cup strawberries, cleaned and quartered

1 1/4 cups white grape juice

- See more at: http://www.foodfanatic.com/recipes/watermelon-strawberry-smoothie-recipe/#sthash.n6Ck1gIK.dpuf

1 3/4 cups watermelon, sliced and rind removed

3/4 cup strawberries, cleaned and quartered

1 1/4 cups white grape juice

- See more at: http://www.foodfanatic.com/recipes/watermelon-strawberry-smoothie-recipe/#sthash.n6Ck1gIK.dpuf

Honey Spice Cookies

I'd actually set out to make chocolate chip cookies (I swear I was actually planning on making something normal) but as I started getting the ingredients together I realized I was out of brown sugar. I thought about trekking down to the grocery store to get some more, but then I got lazy and instead started to look for something else to make with what I had.

I came upon the Honey Spice Cookies in my High Altitude Baking cookbook and was happy to see that I had everything needed for them. I resumed mixing in the ingredients when I realized that although I did have clove, I had whole clove and not ground clove. I decided to improvise and ground it on my own. I don't have a mortar and pestle (cause really, when does someone ever actually need that?), so I had to use the method I used to crush pills before I learned to swallow them like a normal person (which wasn't until I was in high school). Yup, the tried and true "two spoons" method.

It took a bit of time and effort but I think I got it fairly well crushed.

The dough will be really sticky so you may want to cover your hands with flour before handling it. Also, the cookies spread quite a but, so make sure to place them pretty well apart on the cookie sheet or else they will run into each other (which happens to be a huge pet peeve of mine).

Honey Spice Cookies

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 cup sugar

2/3 cup butter

2 eggs

1/3 cup honey

Preheat oven to 350.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and baking powder. In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and honey and beat until smooth. Add flour mixture slowly and thoroughly, a little at a time. Drop cookies, about an inch around, onto an ungreased cookie sheet about 1 1/2 or 2 inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove cookies from the cookie sheet immediately (they will stick to the cookie sheet if you wait) and place on a cooling rack or wax paper.

Chocolate Chip Potato Chip Cookies

There was a gathering at my husband's workplace last night and I wanted to bring something to the event. I asked my husband for some inspiration and without skipping a beat he tells me a story about how one day he and his former roommate ate raw cookie dough and potato chips and how amazing the combination was. At first I thought he was suggesting I serve raw cookie dough and I was like, "Yeah...no, I'm not comfortable with that" but then I realized he just thought I should put potato chips into chocolate chip cookies. And this I could totally get behind because I love salty and sweet combinations.

I did a quick search on the Googles and realized that this was actually a thing and there were quite a few recipes out there (none for high altitude, of course). Many of the recipes called for potato chips and pretzels, but I decided to just add potato chips.

Rather than mess with a good thing, I used the standard drop cookie recipe from my High Altitude Baking book that I've used for my Caramel Bacon White Chocolate Chip Cookies and my Maple Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Per my usual, there was no way that my baking experience was going to be flawless. This time, when I grabbed the brown sugar, I realized it had gotten hard.

Luckily, this was an easy fix. I put the brown sugar in a bowl and popped it into the microwave for 10 seconds and it softened enough for me to measure it. Once it was creamed with the sugar and shortening it was like there was never even an issue in the first place.

There was one more moment of panic when my guinea pig/husband did the taste test. He stood there for a few moments with the strangest and (and from what I perceived) non-positive expression on his face. I thought, "Oh no! They are terrible!" but it turns out they weren't and then he proceeded to eat 10 more.

Chocolate Chip Potato Chip Cookies

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2/3 cup shortening

2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups crushed potato chips

Preheat oven to 375.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and baking powder. In a large bowl, cream sugars and shortening. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add flour mixture slowly and thoroughly, a little at a time. Stir in chocolate chips and potato chips. Drop cookies, about an inch around, onto an ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove cookies from the cookie sheet immediately and place on a cooling rack or wax paper.