Pancake Puffs

One thing that some people do on Mother's Day (and everyone should do more often) is make breakfast for their moms and help out with other meals as well. This year my mom found a breakfast recipe she wanted to try in Our Best Bites cookbook, so I decided to make it for her. It was a recipe for pancake puffs and it was actually really simple and easy to prepare alone.

Ingredients:
-1/2 cup flour
-3/4 cup milk
-2 large eggs
-1/8 teaspoon salt

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and place a mini muffin pan inside.
2. While oven is heating, blend flour, milk, eggs, and salt in a blender until it is smooth.
3. Take the muffin pan out of the oven (use hot pads because it's hot!) and spray it with nonstick spray.
4. Fill muffin wells 3/4 full with batter.
5. Bake for 12-18 minutes, or until batter is puffed and slightly golden.
6. Remove from oven and enjoy with syrup, jam, or any other sauce you like!

*This recipe makes about 24 mini pancake puffs.

They should look like this in the oven

They kind of collapse on themselves when you take them out

Homemade jam was delicious

My mom and family LOVED this recipe and we will probably make it again and try others like it. Dipping the puffs in syrup or eating them with homemade raspberry jam was really good. I would also like to try them with other sauces, powdered sugar, or whipped cream. We especially liked it because it reminded us of yorkshire pudding, one of our favorite foods that we usually eat around Christmas time. This was delicious and I hope some of you try it!

The Perfect Snack

Who doesn't reach for a granola bar when they're hungry before a sports practice? I know I do, and that's why I had wanted to try making my own granola bars for weeks. I finally got around to it a couple of weeks ago. I was rather surprised with how well they turned out and I had a blast making them. My favorite thing about making my own granola bars was that I could choose the ingredients.

The original recipe I used was found on For the Love of Cooking. 

Ingredients:

• 2 cups old fashioned oats
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds
• 1/3 cup of honey
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp salted butter, plus more for pan
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 cup cut pecans
• 1/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Ingredients

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9x9 glass baking dish. Set aside.
2. Spread oats, almonds, and pecans in a baking sheet pan. Toast in oven for 10 minutes, stir occasionally.
3. While that is in the oven, combine honey, brown sugar, butter, and vanilla in a saucepan and place over medium heat. Cook until brown sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat.
4. When the oat mixture is done, remove from oven and reduce heat to 300 degrees.
5. Immediately add oat mixture to honey mixture. Then stir in the chocolate chips.
6. Spread into the prepared glass baking dish evenly, and place in the oven for 25 minutes.
7. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
8. Cut into squares or bars and wrap individually with saran wrap. Store for up to a week.

Finished product :)

These were extremely delicious and they were the perfect snack whenever I got hungry. The beauty of this recipe is that you can substitute almost any of the ingredients with ones you like better.

Let me know if you try this out with different ingredients!

The Comforts of Home

Before leaving on my cruise to South America, everyone always told me how great the food on cruise ships is.  They were right, the food was phenomenal, but no matter how good the food is, it's possible to get tired of buffet food and four-course meals.  Near the end of the cruise, I found myself craving simple things that I eat at home.  (Such as fruit, bread, crackers, and other simple yet delicious snacks!) This week I was happy to finally get to make and eat whatever food I wanted.  Trying new, gourmet food is great, but eating familiar foods can be even better.

One comfort food I had multiple times throughout the week was hot chocolate.  I was craving hot chocolate multiple times over break but never had any.  Plus, the climate differences between Buenos Aires and Park City are extreme, so the transition took me a while to get used to.

Thursday night, for once, I didn't have very much homework.  I decided to make a treat for my seminary class since the semester ended Friday and many people would be switching into a different class.  I made Rice Crispy Treats with Captain Crunch Berries in them.  Something my cousin often makes when we have family get-togethers.  My seminary class loved them and my family was very pleased when I had extras to bring home.

Rice Crispy Treats!

On Friday night, my mom and I were trying to think of creative dinner ideas involving chicken.  I know it's random, but it's true.  I found a recipe on For the Love of Cooking that looked fun and delicious so we decided to try it out.  We made chicken taco cups by putting tortillas in a muffin tin and putting the chicken inside.  It was delicious and is something I would like to try again in the future.

1. Butter the muffin tin and place small flour tortillas (cut in half) inside.

2. Put whatever kind of meat and cheese you want inside
3. Place in oven for about 15-20 minutes

4. Enjoy! (We ate them with salsa, guacamole, and tortilla chips)

We also had a beautiful fruit salad on the side

Eating any food I wanted whenever I wanted to was something that made my chaotic finals week just a little bit better.

Visit For the Love of Cooking for a more detailed recipe.

"Operation Cookie"

My friends and I always have a hard time figuring out what we want to do when we hang out. Recently, whenever we don't know what to do, we have baked some sort of dessert. Cookies, brownies, muffins, we'll make anything as long as we have the ingredients, it doesn't look too hard, and we can find a recipe for it. We get some of our recipes from the cookbook Our Best Bites: Mormon Moms in the Kitchen.

The friend that I cook with most often also has an obsession with Batman. I try not to become obsessed with anything, but I admit I have become much more fond of the Batman movies because of this friend. Ever since The Dark Knight Rises came into theaters last summer, my friend and I have wanted to make Batman sugar cookies. A couple of weeks ago, we finally got around to it. We had a lot of fun with the frosting!

Batman Cookies!!!!!

My friend and I are really slow at everything we do together because our work is hindered by our laughter. Decorating these cookies took us so long that we got together multiple times to finish what we started. We named the whole thing "Operation Cookie." After decorating so many Batman-related things, we decided to decorate other cookies as well. To make "Operation Cookie" more interesting and unique, we made the most random things we could think of. It's a good thing that there's still room for creativity and you don't have to be a genius to make sugar cookies.

Our other creations

Sugar Cookies 
1 cup real butter (no substitutions!) at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg (make sure to use a large or extra large egg)
1 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (or other flavor of your choice, like vanilla)
3 C flour, lightly spooned into measuring cups and leveled (don’t scoop it!)
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy- about 2 minutes. Add in egg and extract and mix to incorporate.

In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt.  A very important note: It’s important to correctly measure your flour or you will end up with a dry, crumbly dough. Never, ever use your measuring cup to scoop up the flour.  Use a regular sized spoon and spoon the flour into the cup and then level it off with a knife.

 Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until completely combined.
Chill the dough in the fridge for about an hour, or use this great tip to make things easier:

When your dough is made, instead of putting it in the fridge, immediately roll  between 2 sheets of waxed or parchment paper and then place on a flat surface in the fridge.  Chill for about 20-30 minutes and then start cutting it out.  This way it chills faster and the bonus is that you don’t need to add extra flour to roll it out.  If you don’t use this tip, proceed as follows:

When you’re ready to roll out dough lightly sprinkle flour onto your work surface and roll out dough with a rolling pin.

Bake at 350 for 8-12 minutes. The baking time really depends on how you like them. If you like themreally and slightly chewy, about 8-9 minutes does it. If you like them slightly crisp and buttery, then go for 10-12.

(Recipe from: Our Best Bites Cookbook)

"School, Soccer, and Everything In-Between"

     Starting a blog seemed like a nightmare. I had no clue what I would want to write about every week for the rest of the school year. What if my interests change, I get bored of writing about the same thing, or there seems to be nothing else I could possibly write about the topic I choose? I decided that the best way to avoid this would be to choose a topic that has many different things I could focus a blog post on. However, this only solves one of my three problems. In regard to the other two, the solution I came up with is to name my blog something that incorporates multiple things I enjoy. This would give me room to write about whatever I want, but it would still relate to the overall theme of my blog. "School, Soccer, and Everything In-Between" is what I decided on.
     I thought that doing a blog about cooking would be fun, but that I wouldn't have a new recipe to post very often so I decided that cooking could be one of the things that is "in-between" school and soccer. As I was looking for ideas, I came across a blog called For the Love of Cooking. I liked this blog mainly because it had a lot of pictures of each recipe that was posted. The author is very straight forward with what they say. The blog says exactly what needs to be done for each recipe while also telling the author's personal experience with it or how they came across it. This blog will inspire me to post pictures on my blog so it will catch the reader's attention.
     Another topic I am interested in writing about is photography. The reason I decided not to have my entire blog on photography is that I really like it but I don't take pictures very often. A blog I found that is about photography is called Cool Photoblogs. I really liked it because it had beautiful pictures that were taken all around the world. This blog will inspire me to include the pictures that I take in my blog and tell about the experience that goes with the picture.
     The third thing I'm interesting is, of course, soccer! Finding a blog to get ideas from was much harder because I want to write about club soccer and most soccer blogs are about major league soccer. The blog I found that was closest to what I want to write about is called BYU Soccer Blog. This blog is written by someone on the BYU men's soccer team. He writes about experiences he has at soccer practices and other activities the team does. I'm going to use the way he organizes the blog for the posts that I do about soccer.