Oh Baby! Homemade Chocolate Espresso Whip Cream

We took MJ to the doctor this morning because he was acting a little bit funny and I thought he might have an ear infection.

I'm actually trying to get a smile out of him here. No dice. 

Welp. 

No ear infection, just super cranky teething baby, but it did get us out of the house! Which is awesome. I'm pretty happy about that. 

The weather is spectacular here today warm and sunny, just the way I like it! So in order for me to NOT spend my entire afternoon in the kitchen I'm making a simple ham with a sweet glaze for dinner with baked potatoes and... broccoli I think. Or maybe green beans. We'll see - I have both. ETA: we actually had carrots instead. Shhhh. 

ANYWAY

The point is I'm putting my effort into dessert today! We will be having sugar cookie sandwiches with homemade chocolate espresso whip cream in the middle. I'm super excited as this is something I've never made before and I kinda just made it up because it sounded yummy in my head. Here goes.

This is extremely simple and easy and OMG delicious.

Ingredients:
12 Sugar cookies (home made or store bought)
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 teaspoons white sugar
1 teaspoon hot chocolate mix
1 teaspoon instant coffee

Method:
First things first, make sugar cookies! I used an extremely basic recipe which can be found here.

So good warm out of the oven. JP and I almost polished them all off before I even made the cream!

Once you have all the cookies made you can pair them up by size so you're all ready to make sandwiches and that way you know how many are left over you can eat now... 

Next gather the ingredients for your whip cream filling. While you're doing that and munching on some warm sugar cookies you want to put your mixing bowl in the fridge so it's cool when you begin mixing.

Sugar, instant coffee, hot cocoa mix, and fresh cream

Dump everything into your pre-cooled mixing bowl.

Yes, I really whip my cream by hand.

AND WHIP! And then whip some more. And once your arm feels like falling off switch arms and whip some more only not quite as coordinatedly as your dominant arm. Once you switch back because that arm feels like it's about to fall off you should have something like this:

YUM

I like to give it a few more stirs because I prefer my cream to be slightly more substantial when I'm using it as filling. So, I end up with this:

I could totally eat this whole bowl with a spoon.

All you have to do now is assemble cookie sandwiches!

OMNOM NOM NOM!

Easily one of my most delicious, simplest, and quick desserts. I love the way they turned out! Give it a try and let me know how they turn out for you!

TIP: Use a hand mixer. No seriously, if I had one I would have used it for this... my arm still hurts. 

Also, the cream from this recipe is EXTREMELY sweet. If you want something a little less sweet I would recommend using unsweetened cocoa powder instead of hot cocoa mix OR reducing the amount of sugar by 1 teaspoon.

Breakfast toast cups!

I first found this recipe at The Noshery I thought it looked amazing so I saved it in my bookmarks for the perfect  quick breakfast for a rainy Saturday morning. And since today is a rainy Saturday morning I figured what better time to try it! Turns out it's just as fantastic as it looks, what you'll need:

6-cup muffin pan
1 3in circle cookie cutter
6 slices of bread
6 slices of semi cooked bacon
3 tsp of shredded cheese
salt & pepper

1) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees
2)Grease the muffin pan, you can use a spray like Pam or butter the old fashion way.
3) Cut out 3in bread circles using cookie cutter, I don't have a 3in circle cookie cutter so I just used a large beer stein instead :D
4) Press the bread circles firmly into the muffin pan, be careful though they do tend to tear!
5) Form semi cooked bacon into the bread cups, (bacon should be cooked through but still bendable, mine was not... it was left over from BLTs on Thursday night) Add 1/2 tsp of cheese in the cups. Bake for five min. allowing the Bacon to get crispy and the cheese to melt to the bottom of the cups.
6) Add 1 egg to each cup separating out most of the egg white to they fit nicely, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake for 10-12 min. This alows the egg to set but still be slightly goo-ey in the middle!
7) Pop our of muffin pan and enjoy steaming hot! mmmm delicious. :)

This is right after adding the eggs, before the second  bake. 

A couple of quick notes:
I tried both white and wheat bread, the white was delicious in the end but the wheat seemed to hold up better without tearing.
I also tried scrambled on one of them because I don't particularly like goo-ey yoke, it actually turned out pretty good the scrambled yoke soaked into the bread as it baked and it turned out really good, so that works as a sub as well if you don't like goo-ey yoke either.
My bacon was already completely cooked because it was leftovers so it got a little crispier than it should, but I am infamous for loving burnt food so if you don't like really crispy bacon I suggest cooking fresh so that it still has some crisping to do in the oven!

I  love the simplicity of this recipe and I can't wait to try it again with a few different ingredients refrigerator biscuts instead of toast, colby jack instead of cheddar, ham instead of bacon.... mmhmm

Enjoy with your morning tea or coffee, the perfect quick breakfast!

Rainy day project: Homemade bird suet cakes!

Remember this morning when I said I would tell all about the runny peanut butter in my next post? Well, here goes. A while back Jp bought some peanut butter at the grocery story becuase it was on the list, and strangely enough he's better at sticking to the list than I am...

"Oooh those look yummy.... honey why don't we try those this time? You know we need snack-y food, if we don't by it here than we are just going to spend more to buy it next time... Ah man, you suck." 


So, he got the peanut butter on the list and brought it home and put it in the cupboard. The next day when I came home from work he had this look on his face of complete disappointment like his mother had just then called and told him Santa Claus is in fact the Easter Bunny's not so nice Uncle Fred, it's been a ruse all along... I asked him what was wrong and he told me there was something wrong with his new peanut butter.

Hmmm... that's strange I don't remember our tub of peanut butter looking like soup in the past?
Um, that's because it didn't.
What is that thick, clear, watery film on the top?
Looks like peanut oil. 
Yuck.
Yuck is right. 


So we were planning on throwing it away... eventually... once we got around to cleaning out the fridge...  Then, when I mentioned it to my mother, she gave me this wonderful idea about using it for making home made bird suet. So I went over to her house this morning and we went to work, after a couple of tries we came up with this:

Home made bird seed suet cakes!

What you'll need for this recipe:

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup crisco

1 1/2 cups corn meal

1 1/2 cups bird seed

1 cup instant oats

string

saran wrap

4 small fun shaped cups (I found these at the dollar general for three for a buck!!) or a suet cage sized container. 

Makes four small suet cakes or two suet caged size cakes

Okay, so pretend that's saran wrap instead of tin foil and add corn meal to the picture.

First heat the peanut butter and crisco over medium heat until smooth

Add the corn meal and mix well

Now, the fun part! Add a total of 1 1/2 cups of what ever bird seed you'd like, or get really creative and make your own using raisins, nuts, bread crumbs, and seeds. 

Looks good enough to eat!

Now that can sit for a minute to cool. 

While it's cooling go ahead and line your little bowls with Saran wrap. Make sure you use enough to wrap them in later so it should hang a couple of inches over the edge of the bowls. 

Now take your string and cut three pieces for each bowl. You will want to knot and braid them together up to half way, then knot the braid off, and add double knots to the edges of the three tails (those will help to anchor the string so it doesn't slip out). 

The first set is just the strings, the second set is tied at the bottom end, the third set is braided halfway down and then tied off and the fourth set has the end tails each double knotted as well. Get it?

Now you want to fill each saran lined cup half way with the bird seed mixture, then press the string into the cups like so...

Then fill up to the top with the mixture and set the cups in the freezer to solidify for about 45 minutes to an hour.

They should be nice and solid by the time you pull them out. The suet cakes should pop right out of our handy molds. 

Then you can wrap them up in the left over saran over the edges and store them in your freezer until they are ready to be hung up!

If you get some red or green saran wrap secured with a festive sticker on the bottom these will be perfect for Christmas! 

These will keep in the freezer for up to 6 weeks, but I promise they wont last that long! Not only do the birds love them, but I already have mine set aside for friends and family!

Enjoy!

Way to much weekend...

So, I'm not complaining or anything but I have a three day weekend. Which means I have tomorrow off. And I totally love not having to work because my job is so far pretty terrible however, that simply gives me far too much time to look at my messy house. I mean seriously who is going to spend their time cleaning when there is a 'I didn't know I was pregnant' marathon on TLC?!

I know, totally no one.

How scary(addicting) is that show!? Every time I watch it I drive my fiancé nuts for the next three days.

'Oh my god, honey I have this really bad craving for taco bell! Maybe I'm pregnant, like on that show...  What if I've been pregnant this whole time and we didn't know. Oh my god, what are we going to do? I CAN NOT afford to have a baby right now!! This baby is going to have to sleep in a dresser drawer and only have smelly dog toys to play with... '


ANYWAY.

So, I made skittle flavored vodka instead... for, you know, mental health purposes.

This stuff is totally amazing, if you mix half a glass with sparkling water it literally tastes like liquid rainbow.

I love it.  We made a double batch by doubling the instructions below.

You'll need:
one large bag of skittles
one liter of vodka (it doesn't need to be super expensive, but not super cheap either we used UV)
five 8.5oz flasks (we got these 17oz flasks at world market but they were kind of pricey so you might want to shop around a little)
six large canning jars
paper towels
one funnel

-First sort out your candy in separate containers. 60 pieces of skittle to 6oz of vodka will do the trick!
-Then put your Skittles in the canning jars and add your vodka, we did 120 skittles and 12 oz vodka.
-Seal them up tightly and give them a good shake.
-Let them dissolve for at least three days, I like to shake them up intermittently but I hear that's not necessary.
-After three days of dissolving you will notice a think white film on the top of your jars. This is when you strain.
-Using your paper towels layer three on top of one another and strain the mixture through them in to the extra jar, changing paper towel when it becomes too clogged.
-After you have finished straining you can use the funnel to transfer your vodka to the flasks.
-Remember to rinse your straining jar and your funnel between flavors.

Enjoy!

 This mixture is sweet enough to sip straight out of cocktail glasses over ice but remember it is almost 100% alcohol so drinker beware!