Lavender Lemonade

Lavender Lemonade 

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 5-6 cups water (1 cup for simple sugar)
• 1 Tbsp dried lavender flowers (more or less if you choose)
• 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  

1.  Make the simple sugar by combining 1 cup of water with sugar in a saucepan. Boil over medium heat, constantly stirring to dissolve sugar
2. Once sugar is completely dissolved and the water has begun to boil, add the dried lavender and remove from heat and cover.  Let stand for at least two minutes and up to 2 hours.  The longer to you let it sit, the more of a lavender flavor you will get
3. Strain mixture to get rid of big lavender pieces. Pour the mixture into a serving pitcher and add lemon juice and 4-5 more cups of water.  Stir until well mixed.  
4. Refrigerate until ready to drink. Garnish with lavender springs if desired.

Recipe adapted from: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-lavender-lemonade-recipes-from-the-kitchn-13827

Image: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/lavender-lemonade-horiz-a-640.jpg

Colorful Icebox Cookies

I LOVE these cookies and will be making many more in the future!! From a young age I have always loved the taste of the sugar cookies you would get from the store during the holidays that had a santa or tree in the middle.  They were so addicting and the best right out of the oven.  These cookies completely satisfied that craving.  They were buttery and very addicting.  I especially loved the sprinkles on the outside to gives these cookies the extra pop.

I was really nervous when rolling the cookies that the spiral wouldn't come out the way I wanted it to, but it looked great in the end!!!  Super easy too!  Just need some time to let the dough sit and cool in the fridge and these cookies are pretty simple.  Great to make the dough one night and then it can be stored in the fridge for about a week before being made.  The cookie dough would freeze wonderfully too! In fact, I will make some of this dough this summer to stick into the freezer to have easy cookies to make through out the school year when I have less free time.  

Since I made these for a celebration of the beginning of summer, I made mine yellow and white. However, you can make these any color you want. For example, these would be wonderful as pink and red for valentines day or a green and white for St. Patricks day.

Yield: About 3 dozen                                                                             

Ingredients 

2	cups unsifted cake flour
½	teaspoon baking powder
¼	teaspoon salt
⅔	cup unsifted powdered sugar
¼	cup granulated sugar
2½	sticks unsalted butter, cold
1	teaspoon vanilla
½	teaspoon almond (or other) extract*
½	teaspoon of food coloring (your choice)
2	tablespoon unsifted cake flour
1½	cups multi-colored nonpareil decors

*Use whatever extract you want. I used almond. You can use lemon, strawberry, vanilla, or whatever your heart desires.  However, flavor both of the colors the same. I tried two different extracts and one just ended up over powering the other.

1. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugars in a food processor and process briefly to mix.  Add the butter in pieces; process with on/off bursts until the mixture has the consistency of cornmeal. Add the vanilla and process until the mixture just forms a ball.

Divide the dough into 2 equal portions then return one of the portions to the food processor. Add the strawberry extract, food coloring, and the extra tablespoons of flour to the processor and process until just incorporated. ***I just used a kitchenaid and it seemed to work fine!!

2. Roll out each portion of dough between sheets of waxed paper. You want a rectangle about 11 × 8½ inches by ⅛ inch thick. Leave the dough between the sheets of waxed paper and slide onto a baking sheet. Refrigerate until firm, for at least 2 hours or up to 3 days.

Remove dough pieces from refrigerator. Pour the nonpareil decors into a shallow rectangular dish (such as a 9 × 13-inch pan.

3. Peel off the top sheet of waxed paper from both doughs. Brush the vanilla dough very lightly with water. Using the waxed paper, lift the strawberry dough and flip it onto the vanilla dough so they are stacked. Press with your fingertips to seal the two doughs together. Remove the top sheet of waxed paper and trim the edges even.

4. When the dough is just pliable (but still cold), roll up the dough(begin with the long side) like a jellyroll. As you begin to roll, gently curl the edge with your fingertips so you don’t get any air pockets as you roll dough into a log. As you roll, the vanilla portion may want to tear, pinch tears together as they happen and keep rolling.

5. After forming the dough into a log, throw away the waxed paper. Gently lift the log on top of the nonpareil decors in the dish and roll until the log is completely coated with decors. Wrap the log in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm enough to slice (from 4 hours to a week, or freeze for up to 2 months; defrost in the refrigerator overnight before slicing).

6. Heat oven to 325°. To bake, slice the log into ⅛- to ¼-inch-thick cookies and bake on parchment-lined baking sheets for 15 to 17 minutes, until the cookies are no longer shiny on top and the bottoms of the vanilla portion are golden.

Recipe from Sprinkles Bakes

Quinoa Salad

Mmmmm, this is definitely a favorite.  Which is really good news because it is actually healthy!!! I care a lot about eating healthy and trying to be better to my body, but in reality I am not very good at it.  I like to eat things that I think that taste good and if I don't love it, I'll eat it....but not very often.  Example? Raw vegetables. I would really love to love raw vegetables.  I go out and buy celery and carrots and all those good veggies for you and even chop them up and put them in to go bags in the fridge.  Then they sit there. For days. It's sort of embarrassing.  So I have embraced that raw plain vegetables are not for me and so now I am on the mission of how to find places in my diet where I can fit in vegetables that I actually like to eat.  Because, let's face it, life is too short to eat stuff you don't want to. I've found that soups are wonderful to hide lots of veggies and I love stir frys. I've even been hiding kale and spinach in my morning smoothies. Delish!

Here is a recipe that I got from my wonderful cousin in California.  I love cooking with her and a couple years ago she introduced me to this wonderful quinoa recipe.  What I love about this recipe is that it is easy, quick, I feel good about eating it, and it's delicious!! This recipe is also super adaptable to whatever fresh vegetables you have and you really can make whatever you want off of this base recipe. 

Ingredients 

Quinoa (I cooked 1 cup)

Couple tablespoons of olive oil

Couple tablespoons of rice wine vinegar 

Juice of one lime

Finely cut shallot (I used just one)

Minced garlic (I used about 5 cloves)

Salt and pepper to taste

Whatever vegetables you want!!!! (Chop into small pieces)

I used:

2 tomatoes 

1 cucumber 

1/2 cup edamame

2 ears of corn (Just cut off the cob, raw)

Other ideas:

Feta cheese

Black beans

Avocado

Bell peppers 

Kale

Carrots 

Broccoli

Mushrooms 

Instructions:

1. Cook the quinoa according to the instructions on the box.  

I recommend cooking the quinoa in some chicken stock instead of water. 

2. Chop up all the vegetables and throw into a bowl with the vinegar, oil, garlic, shallots and lime juice

3. Put the warm quinoa in with all the rest and mix around.  

4. Let chill in the fridge!

Fluffy Blueberry Pancakes

**Sorry for the bad photo, need to take a new one next time I make the pancakes!**

If you know me, then you know that I am all about breakfast.  You simply can't beat breakfast foods. Usually I am more of an eggs and fruit type of person, but who can resist having a dessert hidden as a breakfast food? After recently just picking an abundance of blueberries I had to make blueberry pancakes the next morning (really, there was no option).  I remember as a kid my dad would always make blueberry pancakes the next morning.  

I am usually a thin pancake type of person, but this morning I was craving a super fluffy pancake. Until recently, I thought that the only way to make pancakes was from a box.  However in the past couple months, I have been trying different recipes. I hadn't found a recipe that I loved until now. After searching for a bit on different blogs, I settled on this recipe and I am very glad that I did.  These pancakes had the perfect amount of fluff (for me) and worked really well with the blueberries.  This obviously is not a healthy breakfast, but is a great treat every now and then.  

This recipe makes about 3-4 servings of pancakes, and I'm sure a hungry couple could devour this whole amount.  I have not tried doubling or tripling the recipe but the blogger ensured that this recipe does well.  While I always think that pancakes taste the best right off the griddle, we preheated the oven on the lowest temperature and kept them in the oven until we were ready to eat.

Another great thing about this recipe? I froze the extras that we had and they are still great reheated.  I stuck the frozen pancake in our toaster oven and it reheated fantastically!! Next time I will probably make a double batch and that way I can have frozen pancakes for snacks or a quick breakfast on the go.

Lastly, this recipe does not have to just be for blueberry pancakes. Nix the blueberries and just have plain pancakes, or add chocolate chips, bananas or whatever your heart desires.  However, unlike the blueberries you do not need to coat other add-ins with the flour. Instead, just add the chocolate chips or whatever else in when adding the wet ingredients.

ENJOY!!

Ingredients 

-1 cup buttermilk (room temperature!!)

 I never buy buttermilk because I never plan that ahead plus I usually never find a use for a whole carton of buttermilk.  It also very easy to make your own buttermilk. Simply pour out a cup of milk and then put a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice and let it sit for at least 5 minutes. It will get nice a chunky for you in no time ;)
-1 cup (125g) all purpose flour, sifted
-2 (18g) tbsp powdered sugar
-1 tsp (4g) baking powder
-½ tsp (3g)baking soda
-½ tsp (3g) salt
-1 egg (room temperature!!)
-2 tbsp butter, melted (optional)
-1 tsp (5g) vanilla optional: cinnamon, nutmeg

-About 1 cup of blueberries (however many you want!)

Instructions 

1. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Sift twice. (see notes) 

Sifting twice is important to make sure that everything is mixed together well and it helps aerate the flour to make sure that you get a fluffy pancake.

2. Add the blueberries to the flour mixture and make sure the blueberries are coated.

3. Whisk the egg and melted butter into buttermilk. Add in vanilla. 

4. Mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, but do not overmix. Some lumps are fine. 

  Again, do NOT overmix. It's okay for it to have lumps, trust me!!

---IF YOU HAVE TIME then let the batter sit for about a half hour. I let it sit for about 20 minutes and I think that it made a difference.  Just try and plan ahead!  Don't mix after you let the batter sit, just pour straight to the griddle.

5. Heat a skillet over medium heat and coat with cooking spray. Or heat your griddle. Pour about ¼ cupsful of batter onto the skiller and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip and cook till browned on the other side.

 Cook on medium heat, and make sure that your pan/griddle is hot before you put on the first pancakes.  Mess around with the temperature a little until you find the right temperature to get amount of brown you want on your pancakes. 

Recipe from The Novice Housewife

Blueberry Jam

                             

It's blueberry season! Blueberries are great in the pacific northwest and I always look forward to when I can go and pick my own blueberries (a lot cheeper and I can eat for free :)  This season has been especially good here and on our first picking of the year we ended up with almost 11 pounds in about 2 hours!

The first thing that I wanted to do with the excess of blueberries was to make some jam!  In the past year I had made some fresh fruit butters but never a homemade jam, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity.  

I had enough mason jars and new lids but was too lazy to go pick up my mom's supplies for canning.  I figured I could improvise. Not a smart idea.  While it is possible and I did end up with beautiful jars of jam that were sealed correctly, it was quite the battle.

Below is what I made in order for the jars not to rest on the bottom on my pot while in the hot water bath.  Then I used a mixture of all sorts of utensils and oven mitts to try and lift the hot jars out.  Do-able but definitely not recommended. 

 In the end, I added more blueberries than the recipe called for because it was a little sweet so in the future I would probably only add 5 or 6 cups of sugar to the berries.  My recommendation would be to add 4 cups of sugar and then start tasting and then add sugar until you get the right taste you are looking for.  I would probably add a little more than you think it will need because it does change a little after cooking and cooling.

INGREDIENTS:

4½ cups crushed blueberries

4 tablespoons lemon juice (I added lemon zest too!)

7 cups granulated sugar 

2 (3-ounce) pouches liquid pectin

DIRECTIONS:

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids. Wash the jars, lids and screw bands in hot, soapy water. Rinse well and drain (you don't need to dry them). Place a rack in the bottom of a boiling-water canner, then place the required number of jars on the rack. Add water to the jars and the canner until it reaches the top of the jars. Cover the canner and bring the water to a simmer (180 degrees F) over medium heat. Do not boil the jars. Keep jars hot until you're ready to use them. Place the lids in a small saucepan, cover with water and bring to a simmer (180 degrees F) over medium heat. Again, do not boil the lids. Keep lids hot until you're ready to use them. Set the screw bands aside, they do not require heating.

2. In a large, deep stainless steel saucepan, combine crushed blueberries, lemon juice and sugar. Over high heat, stirring constantly, bring to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Stir in the pectin. Boil hard, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and skim off any foam.

3. Working with one jar at a time, remove a jar from the canner, pouring hot water back into the canner. Place the jar on a heat-protected work surface, such as a wooden cutting board or towel. Ladle the hot jam into hot jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Slide a nonmetallic utensil, such as a rubber spatula, down between the food and the inside of the jar two or three times to release air bubbles. Adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding more hot jam. With a clean damp cloth or paper towel, wipe jar rim and threads. Using a magnetic or nonmetallic utensil, lift a hot lid from the water and place it on the jar, centering the sealing compound on the rim of the jar. Place a screw band on the jar. With your fingers, screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight. (Do not use excessive force to tighten.) Return the jar to the rack in the hot water-filled canner. Repeat filling steps until all jars are filled.

4. When all of the jars are in the canner, adjust the water level in the canner so that it covers the jars by at least 1 inch. Cover the canner with a lid and bring the water to a full rolling boil over high heat. Once the water is boiling hard and continuously, process (continue boiling) for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and let sit for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, remove the jars, lifting them out of the hot water without tilting them. don't dry the lids or jars at this point. You don't want to disturb the lids while the seal is being formed. Place the jars upright on a towel in a draft-free place and let cool, undisturbed, for 24 hours.

5. When the processed jars have cooled for 24 hours, check the lids for seal. Remove the screw bands and with your fingers, press down on the center of each lid. Sealed lids will be concave (they'll curve downward) and will show no movement when pressed. Jars that have not sealed properly must be refrigerated immediately. Use unsealed refrigerated product within a few days. For the jars that have good seals, with a damp cloth, thoroughly wipe lids and jar surfaces to remove any water residue or food particles. Store the sealed jars of jam in a cool, dark place for up to 1 year.

Note: I found liquid pectin in my local grocery store, where they had a little display with jars, lids and canning accessories

(Recipe adapted from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

Recipe found on Brown Eyed Baker

 

This is how much this recipe made for me (3 little jam jars and 2 regular jars)

Nutter Butters

If you love peanut butter then these cookies are for you! They were a big hit with the family and I got no suggestions for improvements.  However, I think I might try a couple other different recipes to see how I like it with a crunchy peanut butter or a crunchy cookie.

These cookies were very soft and sweet so if you don't like so much sweetness, I am sure you can cut down the amount of sugar in the middle frosting and maybe increase the amount of peanut butter and decrease the butter in the cookies (I'll try this one day)

Homemade Nutter Butters

makes approx 30 sandwich cookies

Ingredients

Cookies:

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

approx 1/3 cup extra sugar for rolling

Filling:

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup creamy peanut butter, room temperature

4 cups powdered sugar

2-3 tablespoons milk

How to Make

Cookies:
1. In a large bowl with mixer beat butter, peanut butter, and sugars until light and fluffy, about 30 seconds on medium-high speed. Lower mixer to medium and add eggs and vanilla continuing to mix until combined. Turn mixer to low and add in flour, baking soda and baking powder. Mix until combined. Refrigerate dough for 1 hour.
2. Preheat oven to 375°
3. Form chilled dough first into 1 inch balls and then form into a log shape. Roll the log-shaped dough in extra granulated sugar and place on baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Using a fork press down on cookie creating a criss-cross pattern. Pinch the center to create the peanut shape.
4. Bake for 6-8 minutes until edges are lightly golden. Cool on baking sheet 2-3 minutes and then transfer to wire rack to continue cooling.
   
Filling:
5. In a large bowl beat butter and peanut butter together until smooth. Slowly add in your powdered sugar and turn mixer speed up to medium and beat until filling is smooth. Add your milk, one tablespoon at a time until desired consistency is reached.
6. Spread a heaping tablespoon of filling onto the bottom of one of the peanut butter cookies and then top with another cookie to create sandwich.

Notes

*if your cookies spread too much pinch the middles when they come out of the oven so your "nut" shape is preserved! store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Recipe from Cookies & Cups 

Halloween Sugar Cookies

More sugar cookies!  These were fun to make and decorate :)

Here's the recipe for the cookies:  

(I made the dough a couple days before and stored it in the fridge until I was ready to use it)

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups of flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup plus 3 tbsp of cool butter

1 cup of sugar

1 tsp almond extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt

2. Beat the butter with the sugar and vanilla until fluffy, then beat in the egg and yolk.

3. Sift the flour mixture over the butter mixture and combine just until well combined.

4. Wrap the dough, tightly, and cool in the fridge for at least  45 minutes.

5. Cut into cookies and bake in oven for about 12 minutes (325 degrees).

For the icing...

I always add some lemon extract to this recipe as I think it helps with the taste.

When decorating it is important to let colors dry before applying new colors.  Like for the ghosts I would apple the white and let dry for a couple hours and then go back and do the eyes.  Same for the bats.  For the candy corn I let time try between each color to allow for the icing to harden.