Happy Valentine's Day: Have Some Love Brownies!

You're probably gonna get chocolate today, either as a direct gift or from the movie theater. Wanna do something different this Valentine's Day?

Try our Valentine Brownies! This one is Natalie's concoction... What else do you do with a heart-shaped baking pan?

These delicious and gorgeous brownies are from a fantastic recipe, courtesy of Natalie, again. Check it out:

• 1 1/4 sticks of butter
• 1 1/4 cups of sugar
• 1 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 2 teaspoons of almond extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup of flour

Preheat oven to 325. Mix butter, cocoa, sugar, and salt in heatproof bowl. Set bowl in barely simmering water on stove. We've seen versions of this with a skillet of water, a pan of water, etc. We find it works best with a pot filled maybe 1/4 of the way with water. Stir until butter is completely melted and mixture is smooth. Remove bowl and set aside until lukewarm (not stove hot).

Mix remaining ingredients. Your oven should be preheated by now so pour the batter into this super cute heart-shaped pan (from the geniuses at Sur La Table, I've been told).

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out mostly clean. Let cool for 5-10 minutes before placing on a red plate and sprinkling on some powdered sugar.

An angelic, Cupid-inspired glow...

The perfect Valentine treat for couples or a girls' day or even a day with the guys. Who doesn't love brownies, man?

Dish and enjoy with a glass of milk!

Yum! This recipe was made with lots of love! Happy Valentine's Day to our friends, family, and interested parties. Don't forget to check out our social media for to the moment updates on our kitchen kraziness. You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter for exclusive updates and upcoming giveaways. Stay tuned for more from the College Kitchenettes!

Grammy Celebrations: Marshmallow Cupcakes a la Yum

Welcome to the Grammys! As many American families do, we are having a Grammys party. Nachos for dinner and something ultra-new for dessert! I've had this gluten-free chocolate cake mix for a while now and really wanted to do something with it today but I had to find something creative to do with it. And then I looked at Pinterest - on the top of the page was a picture of epic proportions: Chocolate Marshmallow Cupcakes. I had to do it.

Let's get started!

This is one of our easier recipes because it's not from scratch. I didn't have time today to get some of the required 'from scratch' ingredients.

• Betty Crocker Gluten-Free Chocolate Devil's Food Cake Mix
• Jello Chocolate Fudge Pudding Mix
• 1 cup water
• 3 eggs
• 1 stick of butter, softened

Put all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and pull out your mixer. We have a small handheld mixer, not one of those fancy KitchenAid ones. The batter should be extremely smooth after about 5 minutes of mixing on the second lowest setting.

Smooth, soft, and scrumptious!

Start spooning the batter into each cupcake spot, about 3/4 full, and then add the marshmallow standing straight.

Bring on the marshy-mallows!

Put in the oven at 325 for about 22 minutes. The marshmallows will poof up and then spread out across the top of the cupcakes. This can get messy.

S'more goodness!

I did marshmallow filled and non-marshmallow filled. The marshmallow filled turned out nicely (and delicious), even before I frosted them.

Frosting and sprinkles to the front!

I frosted the cupcakes with whipped vanilla frosting, to sort of match the marshmallow consistency. Then, I used red and silver sprinkles, and white pearls. They turned out elegantly delicious.

Grammy-winning deliciousness!

Stay tuned for more yummy kitchen kreations this month and next month. Don't forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on recipes, holidays, events and even upcoming giveaways. Check us out on Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest, too! 

Pull-Apart Pizza for the Playoffs!

For our anniversary, and to celebrate Playoff Season, we decided on the ultimate game party snack - pull-apart pizza! Ditch the chips and dip, put away the buffalo wings, refuse delivery pizza, and don't even think about those freezer finger foods. Check out this delicious dish!

Breaking Bread!

You start with a simple round roll of sourdough bread. I would advise you to get a large roll because this can be addictive and you don't want to run out by halftime. Cut the roll almost all the way through, leaving maybe an inch between knife and bottom of bread, by x and y until you have a criss-cross type of pattern.

FRESH mozzarella was FRESHLY GRATED <3

Then start stuffing your fresh mozzarella cheese, as much as you like or will be preferred by everyone on the couch. Get it in every nook and cranny until it's practically falling out. Then, get started on your pepperoni.

OH SO REGULAR

The pepperoni can be stuffed according to preference, as can the size of the pepperonis. We chose the usual pizza size. I have seen variations with really tiny pepperonis and I'm sure you could have lots of fun with those large pepperonis.

IT''S PRACTICALLY PIZZA. IT'S PIZZA.

Then, the yummy really kicks in! Now, we start on the glaze. Even by itself, this glaze smells like pizza. Pour it on your toast and call it pizza. Bake it in rolls and call it pizza. It seriously smells like pizza.

• 1/2 stick of butter
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 pinches oregano
• 1/2 tsp Parmesan cheese

Melt the butter completely and then mix in everything else. Of course, the measurements are flexible depending on preference and the size of your bread roll.

DAT, DOE

Preheat your oven to 350. Transfer your pizza heaven onto an aluminum foil covered baking sheet. Cover the roll in another sheet of aluminum foil. Keep in oven for 10 minutes, checking in at the 7 minute mark. After ten minutes, remove the aluminum foil cover. Keep in oven for an additional 7 minutes, checking the progress at five minutes. The bread should come out golden-brown, the pepperonis a dark red, and all of the mozzarella should be gooey.

PIZZA HEAVEN

Bring out the marinara sauce and enjoy thoroughly! For reference, our 8'' roll was enough for the five of us. This was a super fun and delicious recipe, both to smell and taste. I definitely recommend that everyone try it at least once in their lives. And what better time than the playoffs?

This is the empty shell, it looks like a disturbing face

Stay tuned for more tasty treats, including easy and fun lunch ideas for the spring school semester! Happy Anniversary to the College Kitchenettes and to everyone who stuck with us since the beginning! Don't forget to share us with friends, and to keep updated through social media and our NEW newsletter - NEWsletter - sign up now to be the first to know about recipes, adventures, and even giveaways!

Recipes in a Mug - Almost Instant Mac N Cheese!

Crunched for time? Super tired after a long day at school or work (or both)? That mac n' cheese looks so good in the cabinet but there is no way you can muster the energy or have time to eat it and be on time? You don't want to make an entire box because that's just a lot of pasta? Well, we in the kitchen found something to tickle your tastebuds and minimize prep time!

Brown rice pasta! It's sticky and good.

To kick off our Recipes in a Mug series, we chose a classic that is a staple in every home and dorm room - Mac N Cheese! Two variations were put to the test: brown rice pasta and the usual glutinous pasta form. First, we gathered our supplies.

• About a cup of pasta in each dish
• 1 cup of cheddar cheese
• 1/3 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup spinach
• About 1 cup of water per dish

Start with the water. Add just enough water that it complete covers the noodles - especially if you are doing brown rice. Don't skimp on the water! The brown rice pasta is naturally sticky, so it needs some extra water for discipline. We tried lubricating it with olive oil, which gave it a really tasty flavor, but it was kinda weird because the pasta was already freaking sticky and we probably added too much.

LES PASTAS

Stick your pasta in the microwave for about 8 minutes. At 2 minutes, stir. At 5 minutes, stir and add water if necessary. When you take it out, make sure you have just a little extra water left; if there is too much drain just some of it. Then, get your cheese ready!

This was really tasty

This was pretty

Add your preferred cheese combination. 

Kajsa layered cheddar and parmesan.

I added mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan and spinach. That's right. Just put everything on there.

The cheese should melt in the dish, just from the heat of the pasta in general. If it does not completely melt to your satisfaction, send it back to the microwave for about 1 minute. Here is where things get trick for those of us choosing brown rice pasta. Brown rice pasta is naturally finicky. It can cooperate or it can bring you to tears. Thankfully, we are good-humored. After some time in the microwave, the brown rice pasta was not al dente, or even particularly soft. We decided to add some olive oil, which seemed to bring it around in terms of texture. For the cheese, we decided to play it safe and stick the brown rice pasta in the oven instead and I think that made the difference. In future attempts, we will try to solve the enigma of brown rice pasta in a microwave. We promise. 

AND I WAS JUST LIKE MMMMM

The glutinous and delicious pasta came out lovely and scrumptious. It was actually the most delicious mac and cheese to be in the kitchen for the entirety of that month, which is saying a lot. And again, all that went into it was noodles, water, and fresh cheese! What?! The parmesan added an artistic element that suggested serious labor went into the dish instead of eight minutes in the microwave while we sat on Kajsa's kitchen floor. 

yolo

Again, the brown rice pasta pretty much flopped until it was sent to the oven. Once out of the oven, however, the noodles had softened and the cheese had melted significantly. We added some parmesan cheese for fun and stirred. Then, the globbing began. We theorize that, because of the mozzarella, the macaroni tried to become a pizza. All the cheese globbed together and refused to stick to the pasta (that was the olive oil's fault).

A fun first try and running start to our Recipes in a Mug, the mac n cheese turned out fairly well. It was delicious, easy to make, quick to make, and lots of fun. Stay tuned for more from the College Kitchenettes! Sign up for our monthly newsletter and get ahead of Facebook & Twitter - keep your eyes peeled for brand new giveaways starting soon! Don't change the channel because the College Kitchenettes turn 1 this weekend! Check out our anniversary celebrations on the 13th!

Kale Omelette! (Delicious!)

Hey guys! So, while I was at college, my friend Callie bought a GIANT bushel of kale, which is a vegetable I always thought tasted absolutely gross. As we walked to meet our friends in the lobby of our favorite building, she implored me to take a huge bite, and her eyes got really big with excitement, so of course I complied. She ensured me it was organic and locally grown and tasty, but it was horrid, and it made my tongue green for like six hours. Then she let me try this new type of purple kale she bought at the farmer's market... and it was STILL gross! How could this raved-about superfood be consumed so happily and so widely?

I actually discovered that kale is INDEED delicious when cooked because of this recipe I got from the lovely Callie, who made a few of These Here Omelettes for some of our friends one night. Callie had sautéed some kale in olive oil until it was almost crispy, and then poured egg on top of it. I cooked the recipe today, doctoring the food up with a few spices I found in my kitchen. This recipe took just a few minutes, and it hit the spot right before we went to a huge party, because we're in college!

This recipe is perfect, because it takes like two seconds, which actually means about 10 minutes total. And there are only three primary ingredients, all of which are stupid cheap and easily accessible. Yay studentry!

3 main ingredients, man.  I garnish omelettes with hummus because hummus is love

I obtained a pan that was the size of my stove's burner, to prepare a single omelette. Estimated a handful of olive oil, and inserted that into the pan for fryin'. Cool. I then put in a bushel (teehee bushel) of kale that just about filled the small pan. This looks like a lot of kale before the kale is cooked, but greens SHRINK like nobody's business when they're cooked. I can't emphasize this enough, kale SHRINKS like there is LITERALLY NO TOMORROW. 

But I'm not kidding when I say that sautéed kale in olive oil is the most delicious food I have ever tried in my entire life, doe. And then I added some spices, and MMM MMM MMM, I concluded that I would be happy eating kale by itself for literally all 3 (or 7) meals today. 

Ever since discovering sautéed kale my home life has just been like

So yeah, I added a few spices too! A lot of spices. But really just a few. Here they are. The little white one on the left is Lemon Pepper, which sweetens the dank vegetable. So does the ginger. And olive oil is a delicious Butteralternative, for preventing Egg Stickage and cooking and stuff like that. Oh and Galric is Flavr too, just don't add too much of this or food will taste icky. You want this to taste kinda sweet, really.

Pepper Spice, Big Spice, Baby Spice, Oil, Corner Spice to cover a spider

So, this is what the kale looks like cooked! It shrinks A LOT, I swear I didn't eat more than three leaves. Kook the cale (I had to) on medium-low heat, for just a few minutes until it looks like this picture. Once bits of kale start turning brown and crispy, you've gone too far, so stop cooking before you get kale chips. 

THIS IS REALLY REALLY GOOD

The next step, of course, is mixing up some eggs to prepare for Omelettery! I used two eggs for this particular endeavor.

What my soul did after I played the same Smash Mouth song on repeat for a week

Somebody once told me the world was gonna roll me So I mixed up the eggs really well in this cup before I poured them on top of the kale. I then kept the heat on low, and used a rubber spatula to lift up the sides of the omelette, so any uncooked egg on top could run underneath it. The olive oil had the pan lubed up and ready fo' cookin. Also dat olive flavor is so good with this dish.

Thinkin bout dat rabbit food omelette

I flipped it onto a plate and it was GORGEOUS! The kale leaves are beautifully intertwined with the golden egg, and it looks like... a vine. A gorgeous vine growing on a gorgeous house. Or like a Vine® of a gorgeous omelette.

I love to garnish with hummus, since it's really tasty and kind of like a cheese substitute. This is entirely, absolutely, unintentionally vegetarian as well as powerfully healthy.

That heart shaped hummus was an accidental blessing from the universe

Delicious! Until next cooking time!

Anything Goes Rainbow: December Birthday Done Right!

       My little cousin has a late December birthday, literally three days before Christmas. To separate the holidays, my aunt usually plans his party for the beginning of December. This year, I happened to have a day off from school the week before his party. My aunt makes beautiful sugar cookies for almost every occasion, so I took this chance to learn her ways. The theme this year was kind of a rainbow hodge-podge of "anything goes".

Rainbow icing plus rainbow sprinkles... Oh the color combos!

       My aunt's sugar cookie recipe is adapted from Our Best Bites, which is a lovely little cooking blog. However, she made a few changes to the original recipe. The modified recipe follows:

• 1 cup real butter at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 C flour, lightly spooned into measuring cups and leveled (don’t scoop it!)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix butter and sugar until fluffy (about 2 minutes). Whip the egg separately and then add in. Mix in extracts until fully integrated. In a separate bowl, whisk the floor, baking powder and salt. For the flour, do not scoop with a cup. Spoon it out into the cup and then level off the excess with the smooth side of a knife. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix well. The dough will start to ball up on its own when it's well mixed.

A real mixer totally helps, just by the way

       After the dough is completely mixed, roll it into a ball and then cut the ball in half. Semi-roll out each half and cover them in wax paper. Put each dough-pancake flat in the fridge for about 30 minutes to an hour. This way it's easier to roll out later and quickens the process.

       After chill time, work the dough over for a little while to warm it up. Don't roll the dough too thin or too thick - it should be about 1/8 of an inch.

The dough should be just a little thinner than this

       We had plenty of hands to help us with the cookie cutting. We had three shapes for the cookies: a T, a 6, and a star. We made about 18 cookies of each shape - totaling 54 cookies.

My little cousin, Thaylo, and our cousin, Alise, helping out

       Preheat the oven to 350. Bake for 8-12 minutes. If you prefer your sugar cookies chewy go for about 8 or 9 minutes. If your prefer more crispy or crunchy, go for like 10 to 12 minutes.

       For the icing, my aunt also uses the Our Best Bites recipe for glacé icing. The great thing about this recipe is you can use it for glazing or for piping, depending on how thick you make it with the powdered sugar. The icing recipe follows:

• 3 3/4 cups powdered sugar
• 6 tsp half & half 
• 6 tsp light Corn Syrup (6T is equal to 1/4 C plus another 2 T)
• 1 tsp almond extract

Mix the icing all together and then separate into different bowls for each color. We made orange, red, blue, green, and purple icing. Stir each occasionally to keep them from crusting over.

       This is wear things get messy, so roll up your sleeves. First, pour each sprinkle variation you have into its own bowl. Using your finger, spread the icing over the cookie, going just barely over the edges of the cookie. Immediately after, use your clean hand and sprinkle your sprinkles over the cookie (pun fully intended).

       While this project took much of the day, it was a ton of fun. I got to work with my little cousins, and make some of the prettiest cookies I have ever made. Thank you to Our Best Bites for the recipe, and to my aunt and cousins for a super fun day! Happy Birthday, Thaylo!

       Stay tuned for more from the College Kitchenettes! Christmas comes early with a snow day and some geek treats next week! Happy Holidays!

Cubular! A Minecraft Birthday

       My brother discovered this game called Minecraft about three years ago. It was love at first cube. This being his lucky 13th birthday, a Minecraft party was devised. A normal Safeway cake was considered but I wanted to try something different. I've seen those how-to pins about Minecraft cube cakes on Pinterest: perfectly square with all those obnoxious little squares on top - a perfect replication of a Minecraft grass cube. I decided to give it a try, and I decided to try fondant for the first time instead of just using buttercream.

Yummy and gorgeous!

       Quite a few people talk about either how difficult fondant is, or how bad it tastes. Since Wilton's sounded not so great, I chose Satin Ice - not the tastiest, but not the most difficult to use. It served the purpose. I split one tub into three spheres; each sphere was dyed with different amounts of green coloring gel. Another tub was chocolate flavored, to avoid three different shades of brown for the dirt portion of the cake. Each different green was dissected into squares, with a total of 64 squares for an 8inX8in cake. 

Check out that chocolate fondant... Mm mm mm...

       The cake was two layers of chocolate with chocolate buttercream filling. I used a gluten-free mix for the cake and whipped buttercream for the filling and the fondant. After putting the two levels of cake together, I dirty-iced the entire thing. That means I scraped buttercream over every inch of it. Then, I rolled out and cut the chocolate fondant for each side and the top of the cake, instead of one full sheet to go over the entire cake. This way the cake was more cubular than rounded. Afterward, I applied another coat of buttercream on the top and began adding squares, which had been in the fridge during the baking process.

The candles were angled like the torches in Minecraft!

        Once all of the super-annoying squares were applied, I covered the cake with a large cardboard Creeper head - which, I am told, is bad for said head - and kept it in the fridge until 1.5 hours before the party (meaning overnight). Be warned, condensation is fondant's worst enemy. When taken out of the fridge, the fondant will begin to "sweat", which can lead to peeling. Thankfully, that didn't happen here.

       At the end of the day, it was a lot of fun working on this cake and serving this cake. Though it took several hours over three days, it was totally worth it. The kids loved it and were amazed when they found out that it wasn't store-bought. Most importantly, my brother and I had worked on it together - and he loved it. At the end of the day, family is the best birthday present.

       Stay tuned for more from the College Kitchenettes as the winter holidays draw near and warm, home-baked desserts are a favorite family activity. Check out our Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and our new subscription feed for our monthly newsletters starting in 2014!