My life is complete.

This weekend the roommates and I took a little roadtrip up to St. Louis. We did a little shopping, a lot of laughing, some wedding planning, you know, fun stuff. Oh, and I met THE PIONEER WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!! Heavens to Betsy, you guys! It was so fun to meet her, have her sign my book, and find out that a pug card I sent her is sitting on her counter.



Here's what you should know: Ree is incredibly gracious, kind, and as wonderful in person as she seems online. She's also incredibly lovely. She has a great life and it shines through. Her husband, the Marlboro Man, accompanied her. I didn't go up to meet him, but he was kindly giving autographs and taking pictures too.

It's fun to meet someone that inspires you. This is way better than Julie and Julia.

Malted Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies

Wanna guess who this recipe comes from? I bet you'll just need one guess. Yup. The Pioneer Woman. I'll confess that I visit her site daily. She makes me laugh, provides great recipes and photographs, and I want her life. Well, sort of. I don't think I could actually live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. No Target for miles? Oh geez. That would be torture for me.

I enjoy malt flavoring. Chocolate malts? YUM. So I didn't hesitate for a second when she posted this recipe. Let me tell you right now, these cookie are supposed to be flat. FLAT. That kind of reminded me of my Grandma G's cookies, so it was a nice memory tucked into the recipe. Anyway, prepare yourself for a flat cookie. I've never made a cookie that was supposed to be flat; I've only had one recipe that ended up flat due to a forgotten ingredient. It was a mental hurdle I had to conquer. Anyway, these were really good and delightful and deceitful. Flat does not equal fewer calories, people. Keep that in mind when your hand wants to wander back to them because it will. Mmmmm. They were so good.


(Did you notice that I forgot the chocolate chips for the malted milk CHOCOLATE CHIP cookies? Geez. They were simply sitting off to the side...forelorn...with a single tear sliding down the bag. Sad.)

1 cup (2 Sticks) Unsalted Butter Softened
¾ cups Golden Brown Sugar
¾ cups Sugar
2 whole Eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
2 cups All-purpose Flour
1-¼ teaspoon Baking Soda
1-¼ teaspoon Salt
½ cups (rounded) Malted Milk Powder
1 bag (12 Ounce) Milk Chocolate Chips



Look at them all lined up, ready to work. Like a little army of ingredients. I must say that laying out all my ingredients prior to mixing would be one of my top tips for you. It guarantees that you have everything you need prior to starting. I hate getting caught without an ingredient once I've started mixing.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cream butter, then add both sugars and cream until fluffy. Add eggs and beat slightly, then add vanilla and beat until combined. Add malted milk powder and beat until combined. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to butter mixture, beating gently until just combined. Add chocolate chips and stir in gently.




Drop by teaspoonfuls (or use a cookie scoop) and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Bake less if you want chewy cookies; more if you want crispy cookies.

Pico de Gallo and Guacamole

I love guacamole thanks to the Bowmans. I had no idea what I was missing out on until they made it when I lived with them. Guacamole and avocados are at the top of my favorite foods list. Yum. For our BBQ on Memorial Day, I quickly threw together gucamole. The Pioneer Woman has a recipe in her cookbook for pico de gallo which she then adds to her avocado. Now, gucamole is really about personal taste. Some people like smooth, some like chunky, some add tomatoes, some don't. I happen to prefer a chunkier, natural texture with tomatoes, onion, and cilantro added in. So the PW's recipe was right up my alley. Here's the key thing I learned from her (because really it's so super easy you don't need a recipe): use equal parts of onion, tomato, and cilantro for your pico de gallo. I'd have to agree. The flavor was perfect. After everything was mixed, I didn't have to add one thing to adapt the flavor. Here we go. (I'm excited now and I'm not even making it.)

Yellow or red onion
Roma tomatoes
Cilantro (fresh, please)
Lime
Salt
Avocados

I'm not putting amounts because it'll all depend on how much you're making. I think I used one onion, two tomatoes that weren't actually roma, a whole package of cilantro, half a lime, and unknown amount of salt, and three avocados.

Dice up the onions pretty finely. Not everyone loves onions (I'm one of those people- unless they're cooked.), so finely chopping makes them more palatable. Dice up the tomatoes. Then, (you guessed it) dice up the cilantro finely. Squeeze in the juice from half a lime, sprinkle with salt, and stir together. Halve the avocados and remove the pit. Put the avocado in a separate bowl, sprinkle with salt, and mash to the consistency you desire. Add as much of the pice de gallo as your heart desires and stir together. She suggests tasting your pico de gallo and guacamole with the chips to see how salty they are together before adding any other seasonings. I think that is genius. You should know that neither of these things last past 24 hours. Her other helpful hint was that to avoid browning of the guacamole, gently press plastic wrap against the surface of the guacamole until serving.

Almost Salted Caramel Brownies

I am not a brownie person. It is simply not my dessert of choice. However, I was intrigued by this recipe on the Pioneer Woman's blog. When Stalena said that she loves brownies I thought it was the perfect excuse to try the recipe. I titled this the Almost Salted Caramel Brownie because I didn't end up attempting the caramel part. Frankly, I was tired of being in the kitchen, I didn't have all the ingredients, and since I'm not passionate about brownies I wasn't as driven. However, she (the PW) even mentions using purchased caramel, so I'm not a complete heathen. So, let's bake, shall we?



6 ounces, weight Unsweetened Chocolate, Chopped
¾ cups Unsalted Butter, Cut Into Pieces
2 cups Sugar
3 whole Eggs
1 cup All-purpose Flour

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan with butter or baking spray. Cut your chocolate into pieces. (The PW has a link on her page about a comparison to see if there's a difference in baking chocolates. The Baker's Chocolate didn't fair well. I hadn't read this before my last two chocolate recipes- the brownies and previous cupcakes. I think that may be part of my ambivalence towards them. I liked the baked fudge with cocoa powder better.)

In the top of a double boiler over medium heat, melt chocolate and butter, stirring until melted.




Of course, if you don't have a double boiler, you can use a glass bowl over a saucepan of boiling water. The chocolate and butter are actually in a glass bowl here, not just sitting on the counter.



Don't walk away. It doesn't take long for the butter and chocolate to melt. Soon you'll have this...




Add sugar and stir gently until combined. Remove from heat.
In a separate bowl, gently whisk the eggs. Add a small splash of eggs to chocolate mixture, stirring immediately (but still gently). Drizzle in the rest of the eggs, stirring constantly.
Add flour and stir until combined. Pour batter into greased baking pan and spread to even out the surface.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, then remove from oven to cool completely in the pan.

We had caramel on hand, so I simply drizzled that on top of the brownie. It did compliment it nicely. I really think a different chocolate would have made a difference, so I'm going to skip Baker's chocolate in the future and see how the flavors compare. But the caramel really did help add some punch to the flavor, so feel free to use your Baker's chocolate. Just know that you may want to add a little something for additional flavor.

Monkey Bread

My first taste of monkey bread was at a sleepover when I was a child. It was a recipe that my mom recreated for me a few times over the years. It's a breakfast that is ridiculously good. So good that even though I seem to go years between eating it, the memory of its goodness lingers on. As I was looking through the Pioneer Woman's recipes I saw a monkey bread recipe from her friend, Pastor Ryan. It's a standard recipe. I'm not trying it because it's different rather because monkey bread is simply delicious. Enjoy!



3 cans Buttermilk Biscuits (the Non-flaky Ones)
1 cup Sugar
2-3 teaspoons Cinnamon (I used 2 1/2 because I'm diplomatic.)
2 sticks Butter
1/2 cups Brown Sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Open up all three cans of biscuits and cut each biscuit into quarters.




Next, combine the white sugar with 2-3 teaspoons of cinnamon. Three teaspoons of cinnamon gives it a fairly strong cinnamon flavor. If you’re not so hot on cinnamon, cut it back to 2 teaspoons. Dump these into a 1 gallon zip bag and shake to mix evenly. (My mom and I used to dip each piece by hand with the cinnamon-sugar combination in a bowl. I decided to follow Pastor Ryan's instructions. It saved me a bowl, but I somehow ended up with a hole in the bag and a little mess. The mess and the fact that I'm OCD meant that I hand dipped some of them anyway.)

Drop all of the biscuit quarters into the cinnamon-sugar mix. Once all the biscuit quarters are in the bag seal it and give it a vigorous shake. This will get all those pieces unstuck from one another and nicely coated with cinnamon-sugar. Spread these nuggets out evenly in the bundt pan.



At this point, you’re going to want to melt the two sticks of butter together with ½ cup of brown sugar in a saucepan over medium-high heat. This can be light or dark brown sugar.



Cook butter/sugar mixture, stirring for a few minutes until the two become one. Once the brown sugar butter has become one color, you can pour it over the biscuits.



Bake for about 30-40 minutes until the crust is a deep dark brown on top. When its finished cooking, remove it from the oven. If you have the willpower, allow it to cook for about 15-30 minutes before turning it over onto a plate.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Sticky Chocolate Icing

Yesterday's recipe came from the Pioneer Woman. I decided to try her chocolate cupcakes. I made a slight variation to the recipe by omitting the Hershey kisses because I was choosing to use her sticky choclate icing. Since it seemed to be a richer icing I thought the Hershey kiss might be overkill. I'd like to try the ganache she has paired with the chocolate cupcakes, but the sticky icing required me to purchase less ingredients so it won for yesterday's test.

Cupcakes

2 cups Sugar
2 cups All-purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoons Salt
1/2 cups Buttermilk
2 whole Eggs
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 sticks 1 Cup Butter
4 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa Powder
1 cup Water, Boiling

(If you don't have buttermilk on hand, you can measure a little less than 1/2 cup milk and top it off with white vinegar to make your own buttermilk. Since I have no regular use for buttermilk, this is what I generally do when I need it.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 18 muffin cups with baking spray. (My Baking Joy let me down yesterday which is why I generally prefer to use muffin liners)

To make the cake batter, combine flour, sugar, and salt. Set aside.
In a separate container, combine buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir to combine and set aside.

In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add cocoa powder and stir to combine. Add boiling water, allow to bubble for a few seconds, then turn off heat.



Pour chocolate mixture over flour mixture. Stir a few times to cool the chocolate.





Pour buttermilk mixture over the top and stir to combine.



Pour 1/4 cup cake batter into each muffin cup.



Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove cupcakes and allow to cool on a baking rack.



Sticky Chocolate Icing



3/4 cups Sweetened, Condensed Milk
6 ounces, weight Semi-sweet Chocolate
2 Tablespoons Butter

Mix ingredients together in a small/medium saucepan. Melt ingredients over medium low heat, stirring gently. Icing is ready when all ingredients are melted and combined.
Spoon warm icing over warm cupcakes, stirring icing to smooth after every third cupcake or so. Allow iced cupcakes to sit at least ten minutes before serving.






We had a jumper. Tragic, isn't it?

Want to know what's funny? I don't really like cake and I always seem to forget that when I get inspired to try a new cake recipe. The cupcakes and icing were good (my preference was the chocolate over the store-bought white), but they didn't blow my skirt up as the Pioneer Woman would say. Not because her recipe isn't good rather because I'm just not a cake person. So I can't fairly judge this recipe and I ended up sending all the cupcakes to school with Stalena for her fellow teachers. Oh well.

Baked Fudge

I have recently discovered The Pioneer Woman. Ree Drummond has a delightful website and cookbook full of great recipes, stories, and photographs. She's incredibly funny and I've spent a lot of time on her website. You should check her out (www.thepioneerwoman.com). I can wait here......see? Aren't you glad you looked at her site? It just makes you feel better. Today's recipe comes from her. Baked Fudge. Let's begin, shall we? I don't want to keep you from this recipe.

Baked Fudge (The Pioneer Woman)

1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 heaping Tablespoons cocoa powder
2 level Tablespoons flour
1 tsp vanilla



Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. If your oven doesn't get too hot, you can use 325. Melt 1 stick butter (1/2 cup) and set aside. Use an electric mixer to beat the 2 eggs until they are lighter in color. Since I don't have a stand mixer, I used my hand mixer. I know, it makes me sad too. Pour in 1 cup of sugar. Mix until thoroughly combined. Next, add 2 heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder followed by 2 level tablespoons of flour. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla and your melted (but not too hot) butter. Mix on low-speed until well combined. Take a baking dish and fill about 1/2 way with water. Fill your ramekins evenly and place in the water. Bake for 40 minutes. When it's time to check them, use a toothpick. The top should be solid, but the toothpick should not come out clean. Ree warned that there's a trial and error process to this and she wasn't kidding. Make sure that the fudge doesn't jiggle when the ramekins are moved, but the inside shouldn't be a brownie consistency either. Mine (even after a few return visits to the oven) are still a bit thinner than I think they're supposed to be. However, they don't run off the spoon so I think we're fine for the first attempt. Ree made a heavy cream sauce for the top, but I don't have any on hand so I skipped that step. Now, let's look at the pictures so we can all enter a sugar coma together.



Please be very impressed by this action shot. I worked hard for it.

Apple Pie

I have baked my very first pie! I had the vision of making an apple pie with a lattice top and so I decided to try it. After talking with a few people, I realized that pie crust is supposed to be a somewhat difficult task. Yikes. I pulled out my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook and started to make a plan. I ended up using a pie crust from The Pioneer Woman's website. If you've never been to her website, you should check it out (www.thepioneerwoman.com).

Sylvia's Perfect Pie Crust from Pioneer Woman

1 1/2 cup Crisco (vegetable Shortening)
3 cups All-purpose Flour
1 whole Egg
5 Tablespoons Cold Water
1 Tablespoon White Vinegar
1 teaspoon Salt

In a large bowl, with a pastry cutter, gradually work the Crisco into the flour for about 3 or 4 minutes until it resembles a coarse meal. (I don't have a pastry cutter, so I used the two knife method.) In a small bowl, beat an egg with a fork and then pour it into the flour/shortening mixture. Add 5 tablespoons of cold water, 1 tablespoon of white vinegar and 1 teaspoon of salt. Stir together gently until all of the ingredients are incorporated.

Separate the dough into thirds. Form 3 evenly sized balls of dough and place each dough into a large Ziploc bag. Using a rolling pin, slightly flatten each ball of dough (about ½ inch thick) to make rolling easier later. Seal the bags and place them in the freezer until you need them. (If you will be using it immediately it’s still a good idea to put in the freezer for about 15 to 20 minutes to chill.)
When you are ready to use the dough to make a crust, remove from the freezer and allow to thaw for 15 minutes. On a floured surface roll the dough, starting at the center and working your way out. (Sprinkle some flour over top of the dough if it’s a bit too moist.) If the dough is sticking to the countertop use a metal spatula and carefully scrape it up and flip it over and continue rolling until it’s about 1/2 inch larger in diameter than your pie pan.

With a spatula, lift the dough carefully from the surface of the counter into the pie pan. Gently press the dough against the corner of the pan. Go around the pie pan pinching and tucking the dough to make a clean edge.

Because I wanted to do the lattice top, I followed the above steps and then rolled out a second crust. I cut it into strips and then placed them onto my pie. Ideally, I would have woven the lattice top, but then I actually realized how delicate pie crust could be so a simplified lattice top seemed perfectly acceptable.

Apple Filling from Betty Crocker

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Dash of salt
8 cups thinly sliced Granny Smith apples
2 tablespoons butter

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Make pastry. Mix sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl. Stir in apples. Turn into pastry-lined pie plate. Cut butter into small pieces; sprinkle over apples. (Moment of honesty: I didn't fully read my recipe and so I mixed the butter in. Make sure you cut it up well so it can be distributed among the apples.) Cover with lattice top. Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until crust is golden brown.











Cover the edge of your pie crust with foil to keep it from getting too dark. Remove the foil for the last 10-15 minutes. Cool on wire rack at least 2 hours.

Result: A success! The crust was delicious and flaky, the apples a bit tart with some bite to them, and paired with vanilla ice cream it was perfect.