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 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!