cookies {valentine's}...

After I was done making valentine's cakepops with my Mom I headed home to make cutout cookies with my husband. Well, I roped him into it :-) And looking back I realize now that I got my Dad to make cakepops with me and my husband to decorate cookies with me...GO ME!!

Anyways, I'd been wanting to try some outlining and flooding techniques. This was my first time and while they aren't to the calibur of one of my favorite blogs bakeat350, it is a step in the right direction.

Thanks to my husband for his help!

3 of the 4 are decorated by me. 1 of 4 by the husband!

2/3 by me :)

Teddy Bear cookie with Teddy Bear sprinkles! So adorable!!

cakepops {bunco and superbowl edition}...

After I have found out that you could indeed use frozen cake balls for cakepop making I got right to it! I had two events that weekend. One playing BUNCO with my friends from work and one watching the SUPERBOWL - GO PACKERS!!!

Dice - For BUNCO!

With a few hearts - for Valentine's

The loot. All but 4 were gone by the end of the night.

A few for the Superbowl!

Green and Gold! Go Pack!!

I love the Packers!!

colorful cakepops...

Back in December I taught a few groups of my friends how to make cakepops! I had them all make a batch of cakepops, which makes about 45 balls per batch. And there was 5 batches (mine included) from the first day and 3 batches from the second day...which is approximately 400 cake balls. OMG I did not realize that until I just did the math!

Regardless of the math it was a lot, too much in fact. I ended up with about 40 in my freezer of varying shapes, colors, and flavors. I decided to freeze them to see if it worked and this last weekend I unfroze them to see if they were still tasty...and they were!

5 flavors of fun!

I was headed to play BUNCO with some of my work friends and wanted to make a dessert but we were out of most things dessert related (eggs, flour) so I decided to finally take the cake balls out of the freezer and try it. Since it was for my friends I decided it would be okay...even if it wasn't really okay.

I took them out about an hour before I was going to dip them, another hour probably wouldn't have been a bad idea. They needed to be re-rolled to gain a round shape and in a few cases I shaped them into squares, but they turned out just fine!!

It is nice to know because now I can make cake balls, freeze them, and use them at a very different time - which to me is very exciting!

Another thing I did this time since I had so many flavors, was to try to define them my inside flavor. Personally, I like vanilla and vanilla and while I'll eat any kind of cake I will always choose vanilla! I used an ink pad that had 4 different colors in it to help people know what they were picking. I used pink for strawberry, blue for chocolate, and nothing for the vanilla. It worked pretty good though the problem was since they were in something when displayed you couldn't see what kind you were picking...they were still delicious though!!

Total Baking Failure

I had my first total baking failure this weekend...and it is so frustrating!! I had made my strawberry cupcakes before. I think the difference here...last time I used fresh berries and this time I used frozen ones. They really tasted more like muffins. UG! No pictures and they don't even look pretty! Just had to vent somewhere :)

Bread Twists

I'd seen a recipe for Pizza Twists over at King Arthur's Flour and wanted to try my own version. We already had pizza dough in the freezer from a pizza long, long ago (maybe like 3 months) and I decided it was time to see if it was still good! I defrosted it in some luke warm water hoping that would both defrost it and wake up the yeast a little bit. Once workable I kneaded it for a few minutes to get it going.

Roll out dough into 12 by 12 inch square

Ingredients
2 TBSP Penzey's Brady Street Cheese Sprinkle
1 tsp dried Parsley
1 TBSP melter butter
4 TBSP Parmesan cheese

Mix ingredients together. Spread over top half of rolled out dough, fold bare half on top of mixture. Cut into 1 inch strips. TWIST. Place on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, or until they're golden brown. Remove and serve with pizza or marinara sauce.

Baked Ziti {an adaptation}

Late one night I was paroosing on my iPhone, the husband was at work and I didn't have much else to do! I came across the app for Weight Watchers and downloaded it...not to join (I've tried that...three times) but to see if they had recipe's. And sure enough, they did! Though I can't find it online, maybe because it was an iPhone App recipe?!?

I LOVE pasta and so I was up for trying this recipe out. I had to wait a week or so until I remembered to get all the ingredients from the store but I love how it turned out! I made a salad and some corn for sides. My husband told me he would have loved it even more with some kind of meat in it but we didn't have any unfrozen at the time so that's why it didn't make it in there. This really is my kind of cooking dinner though because it is more like baking :) I'll write the recipe up as I prepared it.

Baked Ziti
Printer Friendly Version
Baked Ziti
Adapted from iPhone App Recipe
Weight Watchers
Printed from: madebyACE

Ingredients
5 sprays cooking spray (to coat pan)
½ pound uncooked pasta, elbow
8 oz. part-skim ricotta cheese
¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
½ C. grated Parmesan cheese, divided
2 C. marinara sauce, store bought, divided
1 ball shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1 TBSP Penzy’s  Brady Street Sprinkle
2 TBSP black olives, sliced

Instructions
1. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Coat bottom and sides of 8x8 (approximate) size pan.
2. Cook pasta according to directions on the package; rinse with cool water and drain.
3. While pasta is cooking - in a medium bowl: combine ricotta cheese, red pepper flakes, ¼ C Parmesan cheese and 1 C. Marinara.  Pour slightly cooled pasta into bowl, mix well unless pasta is evenly coated.
4. To assemble ziti: spoon ¼ cup sauce on to bottom of the pan.  Pour Pasta coated with sauce into pan. Top with mozzarella and remaining ¼ C Parmesan. Bake until cheese melts and is browned, about 20 to 30 minutes. Allow ziti to sit for 10 minutes before slicing.

We had enough for dinner and for both of us for lunch the next day!

Fun Frames ~ SMOOCH

Here is my Valentine's Day set up of Fun Frames! With my words I'm trying to use uncommon words. SO I chose SMOOCH instead of HEART or VALENTINE. I'm happy with the results...check back back after Valentine's day to see what I'm planning for St. Patty's Day!