National Cookie Day!

Today for national cookie day, I decided to try out a cookie recipe I’ve never tried before – chocolate crinkle cookies! They’re definitely not perfect (I should have looked at the picture before hand to see how much powdered sugar there really are on these things!), but they’re delicious!

Here are some pictures I took along the way:

Want to try the recipe yourself? Here’s where I got it! http://abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/recipes/crinkle-cookies-carla-hall I’m a huge fan of The Chew, so naturally I had to go onto their website to try out a new recipe!

Love getting into that holiday spirit with my first batch of cookies of the season!

National Cake Day!

It’s national cake day today! I celebrated by making pumpkin toffee cupcakes this morning. I got them thinking they looked delicious and never got around to making them, so what could be a better occasion than national cake day?

Being a pre-made cake mix, it was super easy to make, but it combines flavors that I love: pumpkin, toffee, and cream cheese frosting!

Here are some shots of the process as I made it!

I think they turned out great! I have enough to share so others can enjoy national cake day with me.

National Peanut Butter Fudge Day

I’ve always been a huge fan of peanut butter fudge, so when I saw this day was coming up when I started this project, I couldn’t wait to celebrate it! Today I decided to try my hand at making peanut butter fudge myself! Im actually really impressed with how it turned out, which is really dangerous because now I can eat it whenever I want.

The recipe I used was: http://www.jif.com/Recipes/Details/142

The recipe was simple, it uses only a few ingredients: Sugar, evaporated milk, butter, peanut butter, marshmallow fluff and vanilla. I started out with the sugar, butter and evaporated milk, brought it to a boil and then let it simmer while I stirred for 5 minutes.

After that, I added in the peanut butter, stirred it until it was mixed in well. Then I stirred in the marshmallow fluff and vanilla (this is where it started to get thick so the stirring got pretty tough!) Then all I had to do was pour it into a 9X13 pan and let it cool!

Of course I had to taste the fudge before it was even cool yet. Licking the spoon seemed necessary!

I decided since that made roughly 3 pounds of fudge and I definitely don’t need to eat that much, that I would bring some to my Advanced Logo Design class tonight!

Overall I would call this day a success!!

Tomorrow I celebrate….. well I’m not really sure which one to do yet, so it will be a surprise! You’ll have to check back in to see!

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National Baklava Day

Today was National Baklava Day. I actually wasn’t entirely sure where to find baklava around here. I know I’ve had it, but mostly just at random locations. So I did some hunting and I found it at a local place nearby my house called “Doggie Diner”. It’s a place that is really close to my junior high school, so it used to be the hangout for all the kids in junior high on half days.

The baklava itself wasn’t the best I’ve ever hand, but it’s pretty darn good for $1 from a little local diner!

Tomorrow I celebrate Mickey Mouse’s Birthday!

National Indian Pudding Day

It’s National Indian Pudding Day! All I can say is YUM! I had honestly never heard of this dish before and was a little wary of something I had never seen and knew I couldn’t order anywhere. But I went ahead and prepared this dish for myself and I’m glad I did! It’s a fairly easy dessert and it’s really tasty.

I followed this recipe to create my Indian Pudding if you’d ever like to make it for yourself: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Indian-Pudding-15586

All the recipe took was whole milk, brown sugar, yellow cornmeal (the key differentiator to this dish), ground ginger, ground cinnamon, butter and vanilla.

You mix everything together except the butter and sugar and then whisk it over medium high heat for 15 minutes. It’s at this point I realized I was actual cooking, not just dumping stuff in a pot and mixing. Let me tell you, my confidence of making this pudding were not very high at this point in the recipe. But somehow it actually thickened and I didn’t burn it!!

Now all I had to do was pour it into a pan and bake it for about an hour and a half, easy peasy!

And here’s me with my finished creation!

History lesson time! Apparently Indian Pudding is virtually unknown outside of  New England (which would be why I would have never heard of it here in Illinois). The “Indian” part of Indian Pudding actually comes from Native American cornmeal and the original was very likely just cornmeal, milk and molasses steamed or boiled for a very long time.  (Here’s where I got my info http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/11/13/244983031/its-national-indian-pudding-day-heres-why-you-should-celebrate)

I’d call National Indian Pudding Day a success!

Tomorrow I’m onto National Pickle Day!!! The day I’ve been waiting for since I first came up with this project!