Royal Icing: Take 1!

Since we have been offline so long (blame college), we decided to give you all a treat:

A front-row seat to our first Royal Icing attempt.

The sugar cookies themselves were relatively simple (see recipe below), although they took quite a while to make before we even got to the icing.

Oven ready and almost perfectly spherical!

Our recipe:

1 cup butter, almost completely melted
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, powdered sugar, egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt and flour. Mix until smooth. Chill dough until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper, or butter sheets, and set aside.

Roll out dough on a well floured surface until it is 1/4 inch thick. Cut out cookies with cookie cutters and carefully transfer them to the prepared cookie sheets. I used a spatula to try to maintain the spherical shape as much as possible. 

Bake cookies for 7-9 minutes. Cookies should be slightly brown on bottom. Let cool completely before frosting.

Relax, it's on wax paper...

For the frosting, we sort of cheated. I had been shopping early that day, and lost all willpower at one of my favorite cooking supply stores. Long story short, I ended up buying the royal icing in a bottle. At least it was good icing, okay?

Look how pretty!

It took about ten to fifteen minutes to ice all the cookies, and then they had to dry for about 45 minutes to an hour. Luckily, my parents weren't home so nobody tried to eat them while they were drying. By the time they were finished, I almost wished I had bought one of those frosting pens.

Smooth and dry... perfect for writing if I had a frosting pen!

Apparently the cookies were really tasty because they were gone in, like, ten minutes. I kid you not. I had 24 cookies, and they are gone. I think I had about 3. The really exciting part is that my mom was able to enjoy them as much as the rest of the family - and they aren't even gluten-free! They were delicious and simple, although time consuming.

Stay tuned this week for lunch and dinner recipes! Also, watch this weekend for an awesome St. Patty's recipe - for you, kids, and the leprechauns!

Don't forget to share the yummy! Like us on facebook, or share on Reddit, Pinterest or via email!

Valentine Cake Pops: Red Velvet? Check!

For Valentine's Day, Natalie and I chose cake pops. Not only were they cake pops, they were red velvet cake pops!

Fabulously delicious...

She managed to come in from school in San Francisco and we basically made a mess of my kitchen. This was my first attempt at cake pops, though Natalie has made them before.

Primary necessaries: mix, pudding, sticks, bowl, special pan

We worked with a mix, added pudding mix, eggs, water, and oil. Once we had the batter thoroughly mixed and smoothed, we brought out the cake pop pan. My cake pop pan read as nonstick but we sprayed with Pam anyway.

A open pastry bag is so much easier than a spoon!

We used a pastry bag to distribute the batter, instead of a spoon, and found it much more efficient. We were able to fill the pan quickly and with very little mess.

Finished batter result for Batch #1!

Once finished, we latched the top half of the pan and put it in the oven at 325 degrees for 22 minutes. After 22 minutes, we checked with a toothpick and happily took it out of the oven.

Fresh out of the oven - and cooling!

The cakes had to cool for about 5 minutes before we could remove them, for maximum together-ness. We were both ecstatic and disappointed; some came out like beautifully spherical Saturns, and others came out like an unfinished Death Star.

Like little Saturns waiting to be feasted upon...

Once we had completed our batches (we had about 2 1/2 total, given baking casualties), we were able to begin on the coating. The coating is fairly simple: chocolate chips. We chose Tollhouse Semi-Sweet. Have one pan of medium-heat water on the stove, and then place another pan over it with your chocolate chips. This works best with a double broiler, but we don't have one. When your chocolate chips are melted to 115 degrees (you can use a thermometer insert to find out), you're ready for dipping. We found that if you dip the pop stick in before inserting it into the cake pop, the process tends to work better overall.

Chocolate and sprinkles! Questions?

Once coated, place them on a piece of parchment paper on a cookie tray and then you may sprinkle or decorate as desired. We had a multitude of sprinkles that made even more of a mess, but were perfect for decorating. We had reds, pinks, multi-colored dots, and multi-colored sprinkles.

Coated and sprinkled!

Once coated and fabulously decorated, put the tray in the fridge for approximately 15 - 20 minutes. When they are set, pull them out and serve.

Even though they didn't look like the fancy store-bought pops, they were absolutely delicious and relatively easy to create. We had a few hiccups with dipping, but if you don't want to mess with melting chocolate you can easily use regular frosting and allow that to set.

First bite - revealing heavenly mix of chocolate and red velvet!

Stay tuned with the College Kitchenettes for more cooking and baking fun! Next weekend: somebody's having a birthday? To the kitchen!

Super Bowl Pizza Rolls

I was originally inspired to make these after having a popular restaurant chain's version. Soon, I had found a nice easy recipe on Pinterest! These are absolutely gorgeous treats for an event like the Super Bowl, if only because it's not just chips and dip.

You start with Pillsbury Crescent rolls and add on five mini pepperonis each. Pepperoni is easy to find, usually near the salami and other lunch meats in your local grocery store. On top of the pepperoni, add shredded mozzarella and just a dash of garlic salt.

Sweet Golden-Pizza!!

Roll them up and put them in a 375-degree preheated oven for about 12 - 15 minutes. At golden-brown, the rolls are done and smell absolutely heavenly.

I think this was definitely one of my favorite easy recipes. It was quick and cheap to accomplish! Not to mention, they tasted extremely amazing and exactly like pizza!

Stay tuned next week for more easy recipes, and next weekend for some Valentine's Day sweetness!

And don't forget to vote on our poll: Where do you find your recipes?

Chocolate Chip Cookies: Our Poll-Winners!

Since chocolate chip won our poll, I decided to play with the classics. Of course, the top of our classic "Chocolate Chip list" is Tollhouse.

The recipe is easy to find and easy to make. My only hiccup was a low stock of brown sugar.

Once you have all the ingredients together and mixed, you add the chips to the blend to make a beautiful dough.

Then, as usual, you plop the cookie dough snowballs on an oven tray and put it in the oven. After about 18 minutes, the result is about two dozen of the most perfectly round cookies!

These cookies were so much fun to make - and even more fun to eat! Don't forget to vote on our new poll: Where do you find your recipes? We'll take a recipe from one of the sources and make it shine on our blog! Stay tuned for Super Bowl treats tomorrow!

Our Poll-Winning Cookie!!

            The votes are in! Our readers' favorite cookie is Chocolate Chip, with Oatmeal in a close second!

            Stay tuned this weekend for a special post with an extra-special Chocolate Chip cookie recipe!

            Also, stay sharp for our next poll: Where do you get your recipes?

            See you this weekend with delicious Chocolate Chip cookies!

Vanilla Cupcakes: Gluten-Free Even!

This weekend, I wanted cupcakes. My mom wanted frosting and cupcakes. However, she eats gluten-free (allergies!). But, that is no match for a girl with a serious CC (Cupcake Craving)! So, I made gluten-free vanilla cupcakes! This specific mix brand, Wholesome Chow, features hardly any extra ingredients - milk, apple cider vinegar, and oil are the only ingredients you have to add.

Look how easy this looks!

The recipe itself is easy enough to carry through; add the wet ingredients to the mix and whisk until it becomes batter. The batter is fairly thin, making it really easy to pour!

Thin, fluffy batter!

Once poured into the cupcake pan, they bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. The package said 18 - 23 minutes, but 18 turned out to be perfect for me. The batter makes about 12 cupcakes that don't rise very much. However, they do turn out to be a beautiful golden-brown!

Golden-Brown Gorgeousness!

For the decorating, I used Betty Crocker  butter cream frosting. No, I didn't make my own frosting. Yes, I'm okay with that. Also, for Christmas, I got this cupcake decorating kit and, trust me, that makes a lot of difference!

The Decorating Kit Saves The Day!

For my cupcakes, I used the star tip because it produces less frosting at once. I prefer a larger cupcake-to-frosting ratio. However, the frosting covered the cupcakes well with about half of the frosting package. After the frosting, I deliberated over what to sprinkle the cupcakes with, since I used green liners. Eventually, I settled on rainbow dots. I think the result was rather nice:

Frosted and Sprinkled!

The recipe was good and the result even better! My mom loved them and so did I! 

Tune in next weekend, when the poll-winning cookies are made spectacular! Which cookie do you think will win our poll as your favorite cookie??

Banana Bread: From Scratch!

Surprise! Another post this week from Natalie's kitchen at home since school still hasn't started. What to do with myself in some house that contains bananas and some baking stuff? I decided, while running on leftover tacos and a Flu vaccine, to bake banana bread from scratch! How adventurous! 

This recipe is a classic and it's always pretty fun to do, and usually ends up tasting amazing. Well, it calls for a Midwestern amount of refined sugar, and alas, all I had was a bit of Turbinado from Trader Joe's. A bit. So I used what I had, but what to do about the three thirds of a cup of missing sweetness? Health-nut soccer moms replace sugar with applesauce all the time when baking, right? Okay, cool. Me too.

Look, I'm a NorCal chef!

The next step was to cream the sugar together with an entire stick of butter (I lied about Paula Deen), but the difference in ingredients made it a little strange. I whipped the mixture for many minutes until I received a bowl of tiny, confetti-esque butter particles held together by applesauce. This, obviously, meant I should be completely confident! So I continued to whip up two more bowls of dry (flour, salt, etc) and wet (bananas, eggs, etc) ingredients. So much fun!

Three is a crowd ;)

It only took me six years a bit of effort to mix ALL of these ingredients into the same red bowl. Especially since I was a bit distracted, trying to watch Breaking Bad and then Arrested  Development at the same time. Which was a HUGE mistake, these shows should NEVER be watched while cooking, or doing anything else, as they deserve your FULL attention and respect. Always. Digression! Look how cute my healthy banana bread looks in its pan. It's about to get so baked.

Can has entire hour of baking time? I'm worth it.

This method turned out to be yummy in a health-foody, protein bar kind of way, but I honestly love diabetes. Next time, I'm using an entire cup and a half of unhealthy refined sugar because it's 110% worth it. And, use mushy brown bananas, it too makes all the difference in the world. Yeah yeah yeah, okay, you want the recipe, I know you're eager! 

Bowl 1: entire butter stick, and 1.5 cups of white sugar. You will love every single bite.

Bowl 2: 1.5 cups of flour, teaspoon of baking soda, dash of salt.

Bowl 3:  Three smashed ugly brown bananas, two eggs, unicorn poop, splash of vanilla extract.

Mix all bowls individually first, then combine the contents of ALL bowls into Bowl 2, or your dry ingredients bowl. Mix again till all of the lumps are gone, throw it in a greased loaf pan and bake it in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees. Here's an idea for you to try: do this exact thing, except make it into muffins! Yay muffins!

Cute, right?

See you next time I create something, and it will (most likely) be actually from my dorm in San Francisco. So long and good luck!

Tell me it's pretty!