Good Ol' Fashion Root Beer...Cookies!!

I am VERY excited about the following cookie recipe for two reasons. 1) I LOVE root beer and 2) I FINALLY made cookies without burning them!!! Score!

This is also a GREAT recipe for those of you who have labor day weekend BBQ's coming up. Perfect way to end summer!!

Anyway, a few weeks ago I saw a recipe posted through the Better Crocker website for Root Beer Cookies and I was immediately attracted to it. My first hurdle, however, was finding root beer extract or root beer concentrate. NONE of the grocery stores around me, even the specialty food ones, sold it!! I know McCormick's makes root beer concentrate but it's not a big seller where I live apparently. So my husband and I found a store online that sells pretty much any extract you'd want. We decided to invest in a few for recipes we felt we'd make later on but within two days, my root beer extract was at my door!

Then it was time to try it out...based on my past failure with cookies, I was nervous. But determined.

So, I followed this recipe exactly, but halved it. I didn't want to waste too many ingredients if I messed up again. Here is the recipe:

Cookies
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup flat root beer
2 large eggs
2 teaspoon root beer extract or concentrate
1 teaspoon vanilla


Heat oven to 375F.
In medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda and salt.
In large bowl, beat granulated sugar, brown sugar, butter, root beer, eggs, root beer extract and vanilla until well blended.
Beat in flour mixture just until combined.

Form dough into balls, about 1 1/2-inch diameter (using a rounded tablespoon of dough).
Place about 2 inches apart on cookie sheets. Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until lightly browned. (Do not over bake or cookies will be dry.)
Cool completely on rack.



Icing
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon flat root beer
2 teaspoon butter, softened
1 teaspoon root beer extract or concentrate

In small bowl, combine icing ingredients, with spoon, until smooth. Add more powdered sugar if too thin; add more root beer if too thick. Spread on cooled cookies.


Makes about 4 dozen cookies

I baked mine for about 10 minutes and they turned out great!! I also had to add a little more root beer to the icing recipe, mine was coming out too thick. But it turned out well and my husband loved the cookies. I also sent some to work with him for his parents to taste and will be delivering some to my own parents so I am hoping to get some good feedback on these.

I think my next challenge will be cream soda cookies! I love cream soda!

Enjoy!

Tempura Night!

So I was speaking with my baking consultant the other day, who is actually the same person I spoke about in my Japan post - the one who tricked me into trying a piece of octopus. Somehow we got on the topic of sushi and how my husband and I won't eat it but she was quick to point out that there are types of sushi that don't contain fish.

She started talking about a piece of sweet potato tempura over rice, or a type of sushi where rice is stuffed into a tofu pocket. It sounded interesting. Not enough for me to try to make my own, but the tempura part made me want to have that for dinner one night! Plus, my husband loves sweet potatoes so I knew he's like that in a tempura batter.

Now, I know I can find recipes to make tempura batter online, but I actually wanted to do it right and have it taste good the first time around. I totally cheated and bought the McCormick's box mix of tempura batter.

So I set out to make us some tempura for dinner. All the mix needs is 3/4 cup ice cold water and then you stir it together. Heat some oil in a skillet to 375 degrees F and start battering your food!


I chose to make chicken, shrimp, broccoli, sweet potato, red pepper, carrot and onion tempura. It was actually a very messy process...I got batter all over the place and oil kept splattering out of my skillet so I had to do a major clean up after!


But it was worth it! Despite having a totally fried meal (besides the brown rice we paired it with), it was very delicious and we used a variety of sauces to dip it in. We used some duck sauce, soyaki sauce from Trader Joes and an Asian vinaigrette we also got from Trader Joes. We liked the soy/teriyaki base sauces the best.

Our favorite things that got tempura'd were actually all of the vegetables. The chicken was just so-so and we fried the shrimp too long so it got tough. But all of the vegetables turned out great!


Next time I'll probably make less tempura and some steamed dumplings and rice to go along with it!

Pancake Napoleon!

Last week when I made chocolate pancakes, my husband used them to make desert one night, a pancake napoleon.

He took a pancake, smeared some marshmallow fluff on it, topped it with another pancake, whipped cream and crushed graham cracker crumbs. He also drizzled chocolate syrup over his treat.

It looked pretty tasty and he seemed to enjoy it!

It's always fun to come up with different ways to use the food you make.

Chicken and Stuffing...simple but tasty!

One of my favorite shows on TV is Food Network's "Chopped." If you haven't seen it - it's an elimination competition where 4 chefs are each given a mystery basket and they have to use every ingredient inside in some way while having access to a full pantry as well. In each round, the worst dish gets chopped. It's very interesting to see how a chef will incorporate a basket full of beef, almond butter and watermelon into a recipe. And that is a relatively tame basket! A lot of times there are the most random foods in there that are expected to throw the chefs for a loop. Only the most savvy chef will prevail!

Anyway, I am no where near the level that these chefs cook at, obviously. If someone handed me jicama, I would have no idea what to do with it. But my challenge is when I have a bunch of food in the house, but no set meal, and I need to figure out what I can combine to make something.

I faced that challenge the other day - we had a lot of chicken in the house, so I wanted to use that. We had various soups, rices, stuffing, pasta, etc. So I scoured the Internet again for ideas.

I found a very basic chicken and stuffing recipe that was quick enough to make and seemed tasty. So here are the ingredients:

1 (6 ounce) package of chicken-flavored stuffing mix, or any flavor you like.
6 chicken breasts (boneless and skinless)
1 can cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1/3 cup milk
1 tablespoon of parsley flakes


I ended up about 3/4 the box of stuffing and 4 chicken breasts because we didn't need as much food. I left the rest of the ingredients the same. And I also added a teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes for a little something extra.

Directions:

Prepare stuffing according to package directions.

Once the stuffing is cooked, grease whatever baking dish you are using based on the amount of chicken you have and spoon the stuffing directly down the middle of the dish.

Arrange the chicken around the stuffing.


Combine the rest of the ingredients (soup, milk, spices) in a bowl and mix until smooth.


Pour the mixture over the chicken and some of the stuffing.



Cover and bake at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake 10-15 minutes longer or until chicken juices run clear.

Serve with your favorite vegetable!

It's very basic and simple but it turned out to be very tasty and both my husband and I enjoyed it. Since it didn't take long to make, it's great for after work.

Stir Fry Sounds Good To Me!

Chinese food is one of my favorite things to eat. A lot of Asian food is actually - the flavors are savory and delicious. So one of the first things I learned to make on my own was stir fry. It's very simple, and if you have all your ingredients chopped ahead of time, you can easily throw it together for a nice meal after work in under 20 minutes.

Personally I'd rather use sliced pieces of chicken over beef, but everyone has their favorite tastes. Here are some of my other favorite ingredients:
Udon noodles
Water chestnuts
Bamboo shoots
Snow Peas
Mushrooms
Onion
Pepper
Cashews

Sometimes I use all ingredients, other times, just what I have on hand. I know fresh mushrooms are best but I am partial to the sliced mushrooms that come from a can. I also use the water chestnuts and bamboo shoots that are in cans often found in the Asian section of your local supermarket.

I always cook the udon noodles like spaghetti first in boiling water, then add it to the stir fry at the very end with the sauce. Or, I just put the udon noodles on the plate and pile stir fry on top!! Depends on my mood, I guess.

Here are 2 of my favorite stir fry sauce recipes:

Soy-Teriyaki Sauce
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup teriyaki sauce
1 teaspoon red hot pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sugar

Mix all together and pour over cooked ingredients in skillet or wok.

Sweet n Sour Sauce
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon of either rice wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar or cider vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Mix all together and pour over cooked ingredients in skillet or wok.

Enjoy!

Eating With A Travels...to Edinburgh, Scotland!!

Back in 2001 I had my first experience overseas abroad to Europe. I'd been "abroad" before, but I don't count Canada and Mexico as much - probably because they are connected to the US and I never went far.

So in 2001 I studied abroad in London for a summer session. Despite picking a location where I would be able to understand what they were saying, I was still very culture shocked. It was a rough first week and a half as I struggled to adjust but the weekend trip I got pulled into for Edinburgh, Scotland was a game changer. Several of my "flat mates" decided to hop a train and go and somehow, non-spontaneous me, went along with it as well, despite not having a set hotel reservation. (That thought scared the crap out of me...I hadn't had much hostel experience yet!)

Anyway, we get to Edinburgh and we get a hotel - I was instantly happier. Exploring the city was great, it is beautiful and it remains one of my favorite cities in the whole world to this day.

One adventure, however, was the morning we decided to go to the World's End Pub for a "traditional Scottish breakfast." We had gone to that pub the prior evening for some drinks (and also discovered the whiskey-flavored condom dispenser in the bathroom...only in Scotland!) One of the girls I was with noticed a sign in the corner for the traditional breakfast and stated we should go back in the morning. We didn't really know what we were in for but it sounded good so there we were!

We had already heard a lot of "haggis" jokes along our travels in Edinburgh. The locals like to tease the tourists about their famous dish. They kept telling us to try the haggis but would never, ever tell us what it was. Suuure...that makes me want to try it!! (This was also before we all had cell phones with Internet on it so we really were clueless).

So anyway, our breakfast platter arrives. There were eggs, two different forms of potatoes, toast, oatmeal, bacon, sausage, vegetables, milks, creams, teas, Scottish jams and preserves and orange juice. Lastly was the haggis, sitting there in all its haggis glory.

It was a grainy little brown cake, and we still had no idea what it really was. I remember my friend Joscelynn trying it first or second and stating it tasted like meatloaf. Slowly everyone started trying some of it, and even picky little me took a small fork-full. It did actually taste like meatloaf.


It was not until all 5 of us had tried a bite of the haggis that the waiter told us what this delicacy was. To paraphrase, "haggis is a dish containing the sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, beef fat, spices, and salt. It is also mixed with stock and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach for a few hours." However, modern haggis is prepared in a casing rather than an actual stomach. OH, thank you for THAT.

Well, needless to say, a few of us were pretty grossed out and upset about the description. I honestly don't know how I managed to finish eat the rest of my delicious breakfast but I did. At least I can say that I tried it, though I still shudder at the memory sometimes. I guess when you are young and don't have much experience abroad, something as unusual as that would freak you out a bit.

At least it was an experience. Scotland is also where I truly learned to drink tea the way they do in Great Britain - with milk and sugar. My first fried Mars bar was also consumed there. All in all, it's a great place to go and there are a lot of fun pubs to drink and eat at. Our favorite's were the World's End and Frankenstein's Pub.

But try the haggis at your own risk...

Chocolate Pancakes!!

Two words...chocolate pancakes. Uh, YUM!!

Everyone loves pancakes and everyone loves chocolate and this recipe was deeeeeelicious!! My old camp buddy has a website called Somewhere In Middle America where she mainly talks about things that inspire her in life... things going on in her life... and a lot of style! (Check her out, she's fun to read, plus at her website you will also find a link to her own stationary company and another website she writes for, EAD Living). Anyway, on Friday's she tends to post links of things she found around the Internet that she thinks is cool. One of those posting's happened to be for CHOCOLATE PANCAKES!!

As soon as I saw this I knew I had to make them. So here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

* 1 cup sugar
* 1 1/4 cup flour
* 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1 t. baking powder
* 1/4 t. baking soda
* 1/4 t. salt
* 3/4 cup milk
* 2 eggs
* 1 t. vanilla
* 2 T oil

Directions:

1. Mix all of the dry ingredients into a medium bowl, preferably one with a pour spout if you have one.


2. Measure your milk into a large measuring cup first, then add the rest of the wet ingredients to it.


3. Whisk the wet stuff with a fork to blend it well.

4. Pour into the dry mix and stir it all up until there are no lumps in the batter.


** If your batter seems too thick, add a splash more milk. If too thin, add a little more flour.

Just like regular pancakes, heat up a flat skillet or griddle on medium heat. Drop small circles of batter on the surface and watch them expand!


When regular pancakes bubble up, they have clear bubbles and they turn brownish. But these pancakes are already brown so watch carefully and be sure not to burn them.

As soon as they just begin to bubble, slide the spatula underneath one to flip it over If it sticks, pull it back and wait a little longer. If you can get the spatula under the pancake, go ahead and flip it. It may take a few tries to get it right.

I burned a few before I got the feeling of how long it took a pancake to cook on the first side before flipping it.

After I made a nice batch of regular pancakes, I threw some white chocolate chips into the batter for an extra treat!!


My husband views these pancakes solely as a dessert like item. For me? Please. I'll eat them any time of day... breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. I'm not picky!

The day I made them, however, I did eat them as dessert with some powdered sugar on them. But one day I'll probably find myself eating the leftovers as breakfast!!

Enjoy!

Recipe originally courtesy of GoodMeasureBlog.com