make lemonade

My sister and I had the great idea to make these amazing chocolate cups from bakerella. They involve melting chocolate and then using balloons to form the cups. We had a minor issue.

The balloons kept popping.

I want to try again some day but instead of spending our afternoon frustrated, we decided to change direction. Want to see what we made?

the return of the candied bacon

At times I wonder if I should have named this blog "Bacon and other things I think are okay" considering the number of times bacon appears. My roommates tolerate my obsession (okay, they usually are glad to see the bacon) but one friend may actually challenge me for my title of Most Bacon Obessed.

Sadly, this friend has an exciting move across the country planned so I wanted to send her off appropriately. We met this morning for brunch at The Empress, a favorite of ours for the great gluten free food (for her allergies.) I brought her a present of Candied Bacon Fudge.

[Sweet and salty in one package]

Making the fudge is simple. For more details, check out this link at TheKitchen. But basically, make candied bacon, while it's cooking make the fudge. Pour half the fudge into a 8x8 pan, layer in the bacon then pour the rest of the fudge on. I used just over half of the bacon and my roommates got to eat the extra. Extra fudge is getting taken to a gather of lovely ladies tonight.

ultimate super bowl cookies

As you may have been aware, there was a very important football game on Sunday. I'm not much of a football girl (but just try following my Twitter feed in March) but am not one to turn down social events that call for arriving with freshly made treats. Earlier in the week I found a recipe for Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. Perfect.

I'm not great at following recipes, but tried to replicate this one according to the directions. Of course, I couldn't find the vanilla when I needed to (I know it's around here somewhere) so a quick search on the interwebs suggested using vanilla flavored liquor. Luckily my roommate has vanilla vodka so one tablespoon of booze went into the cookies. Starting out the dough looked really dry, I even added some water midway through rolling the cookies. Next time I would definitely consider adding a tablespoon or two of milk. Only major change I would make to the recipe.

[Cookie dough. With mini chocolate chips.]

[Key ingredient]

[Assembling the cookies]

The cookies were scarfed down too fast for me to remember to take a photo, so drool over this images from Picky Palate:

[Yum]

Now go make these cookies. But have lots of friends to share them with because you won't want to eat more than one in a night.

makin' whoopie

Sorry for the lack of posts. Holidays plus several day of being sick have put me behind but I want to share my favorite new recipe from this season- Peppermint Whoopie Pies. They'll be great for Valentine's Day too, especially if you put food dye in the icing. A friend sent me the recipe and we had a baking night at my house.

I didn't do a great job reading the recipe ahead of time, so I used a brown sugar substitute and made my own buttermilk, but the cookies still turned out great.

[Vanilla and Peppermint]

[Just the icing with the peppermint chips was delicious]

[We couldn't quite make them pretty, but we make them delicious]