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

American Flag Cake

Happy 4th of July everybody! I have many fond memories of Independence Days growing up. Every year my neighborhood (actually, to be fair, it was actually the neighborhood next to mine but we "crashed" it every year) would hold a parade. One of my neighbors had a flatbed trailer that we would decorate the night before. The day of the parade we would climb into the flatbed, decked out in as much red, white and blue as possible and throw candy and sing and shout to the parade watchers. After, we would gather at my godmother's house for a swim and a BBQ with all our neighbors. We'd then head home to change and regrouped to walk to the mall where would would set up our towels on a hill to watch the fireworks display. After the trek home we'd stop at my next door neighbors for ice cream sundaes. We'd top off the night with some night swimming with the pool lights on at my best friend's house. So yes, I totally love the 4th of July!

This flag cake became a yearly tradition for me. It is super easy and I admit I made it even easier by cheating and using a box cake mix (oh the horror!).

I decided this year I wouldn't cheat and I found a white cake recipe on this website. It wasn't complicated and was pretty simple to follow.



American Flag Cake

2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups + 1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoon shortening (room temperature)
1 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup + 3 tablespoons milk (refrigerator temperature)
5 egg whites (refrigerator temperature)
1 container of whipped topping
1 container blueberries
1 container strawberries

 Preheat oven to 375.

Mix and sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into mixer bowl. Add shortening, vanilla, milk and egg whites. Beat 30 seconds on low speed, scraping frequently. Beat 7 1/2 minutes on high speed. Scrape twice during this beating.

Bake for 30-35 minutes (until toothpick inserted comes out clean).

Once completely cooled completely, cover cake with whipped topping. Place blueberries in the top left corner to make the blue square of the American flag. Halve the strawberries and place end to end in rows. Leave an equal amount of space between the next row to make the stripes of the flag.

Apple Mustard Pork Chops

Although I enjoy baking, I am not much of a fan of actual cooking. I'm actually pretty terrified of it, if I'm being honest. What, I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?

But, since you really can't healthfully live on baked goods and eating out every night gets expensive, I do the bare minimum. If a meal requires more than 5 ingredients, it's not happening.

I've started experimenting and trying different stuff together and so far nobody has died so I thought maybe I'd start sharing some of my creations. They are all super simple and easy and are usually the end result of me just looking through my fridge and pantry to see what I have.

To reiterate, I do not consider myself to be a cook and I actually have quite a fear of cooking. So who better than to show the world that maybe cooking might not be so scary than the girl who is afraid?

I figured I might as well start with what I cooked this week. I'm not typically in the habit of taking pictures while I'm cooking and didn't want to post a recipe without them. I came up with this concoction on the fly and it ended up being quite tasty.

The apple butter and the dijon mustard I used for these pork chops really compliment each other quite nicely and the mixture makes it so that neither overwhelms the other. If you prefer the taste of one over the other you can change the ratio of the apple butter to dijon mustard (50/50 in this version). I'll offer some variations I've tried in the past at the end of the post.


Apple Mustard Pork Chops
2 pork chops
1 1/2 tablespoons apple butter
1 1/2 tablespoons dijon mustard
Planko Japanese style breadcrumbs

Mix together apple butter and mustard in a medium-sized bowl (alternately you can mix them in a large zip lock bag). Dip pork chops into the mixture, one at a time, until fully covered. Place in a large zip lock bag and let sit in the fridge for 30 - 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400.

Place breadcrumbs into a medium sized bowl. Dip pork chops into the breadcrumbs until completely covered. Place into a glass dish. Bake in the over 30-40 minutes until thoroughly cooked (depending on the size of the pork chops).

Alternate versions:
Apple Butter Pork Chops:
2 pork chops
3 tablespoons of apple butter
with or without Planko Japanese style breadcrumbs or  regular style breadcrumbs (like Shake 'n Bake)

Cook as directed above.

or

Dijon Mustard Pork Chops:
2 pork chops
3 tablespoons of dijon mustard
with or without Planko Japanese style breadcrumbs or  regular style breadcrumbs (like Shake 'n Bake)

Cook as directed above.

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.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies used to be my go-to back in day, so I figured I should go back to my roots and whip up a batch. I found an awesome recipe online that had conversions for high altitude (side note: did you see how many changes had to be made?!?!) and decided to try it. I was pumped, until this happened:

Yup, the peanut butter chips melted. I'd left them on a side counter and in the afternoon that part of the kitchen gets quite a bit of sun. I panicked for a minute, because I was making these at the last minute and didn't have time to head back to the store. But then I remembered I had some leftover semi-sweet chocolate chips and realized all was not lost (yay!).

Another side note, when I bake, I tend to make a mess. Like, a huge mess. I don't know how others are able to keep their kitchens clean when baking. I spilled a lot of flour onto the stove this time, and when I turned my back for a second, my husband, who is apparently 12 years old, had done this:

Isn't he sweet?

 Everything else went off without a hitch and the cookies ended up tasting awesome. I mean, seriously, who doesn't love chocolate?!?!

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

 2 cups + 2 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons water
1 1/4 cups butter, softened
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium sized bowl, mix together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and water.

Beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with a mixer until fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Slowly add flour mixture, a little at a time until it's all well mixed. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop cookies, about an inch around, onto an ungreased cookie sheet about an inch apart. Bake 7-8 minutes. Cookies will be soft and puffy when you take them out of the oven.

They will flatten while cooling.

Once flattened, remove from cookie sheet and place on cooling rack or wax paper to cool.

Cupcake Shout-out

I mentioned in my previous post, The Story of Us, that my husband and I eloped. This weekend, we threw a party to celebrate our nuptials. One of the best parts of the wedding was the cupcakes. And while I would love to claim that I had slaved over a hot oven the day of my reception, it was my sister-in-law, Liz, who tackled the feat. Did I mention she's 7 1/2 months pregnant? Here are a couple of pictures that do not rightly do these amazing cupcakes justice:

Our reception was Irish themed, so Liz concocted Irish Cream, Irish Milkshake and Irish Car Bomb cupcakes for the occasion. They were a huge, delicious hit. You can check out more of her awesome cupcakes (or get in contact with her to hire her) on her Facebook page.

Thanks, Liz, you are amazing!