anti-leftovers

I'm not a fan of leftovers... period. Whether it be take-out, homemade meals, or remaining ingredients in cooking/baking e.g. remaining 1/2c heavy cream, 1/4tsp butter, 1c chocolate chips.

Yeah, I can keep things in the fridge/pantry until the next time I'll consume them, but honestly... I won't. So why waste the space and mental consciousness.

Recipes I've looked up precisely tell you how much of whatever cup-wise you'll need. I am over that... especially for marshmallow treats.

No-Leftovers Lucky Charms Marshmallow Treats
1 bag (160z) mini marshmallows
1 bag (the 14-15 oz size) Lucky Charms cereal
1 stick (1/2c) butter

Melt butter in large pot. Add marshmallows to melt.
Then dump in cereal. Stir and mix until evenly coated.
Scrape the mixture into a parchment lined 9x13 pan (excess hanging over edges for easy removal). Press firmly down and into corners. Let cool and harden.
Cut into square or whatever to share!

Notes: use a sturdy mixing spoon... not a wimpy plastic spatula that will snap in the middle of the mixing. OOPS.

Echo Love Chamber

LOVE THEM TO DEATH!
Caught them at Hurricane's in Huntington Beach...
and if their rendition of I Want You To Want Me does nothing to your insides... then you're dead.

Band Website

"dieting"

On days I like to be healthy and not eat a greasy fatty dinner, and am REALLY lazy (more so than usual), I slice up a container of tofu into cubes, boil, then eat with cold ponzu dipping sauce.

Yumyum.

take 2

I decided to make another batch of cookies for the party... everything went so much better!

so DO keep hands wet when rolling pudges, roll pudges and drop them in a big pot of powdered sugar in batches and then its smooth sailing from there!

I made a dozen for each batch I rolled since I have 2 sheet pans with 6 cookies each.

The time I used for this round was 15minutes... I guess I'm still working on figuring that out.

Chill

The story begins:

1 fail + 2 fail

equals

Chill
DOB: December 23, 2007

a new baby for the penguin family!

(... to make myself feel better.)

patience is a virtue... and then some...

I baked today!
Unfortunately for me and my Friday funtime tomorrow... it was not a success, in my opinion anyways.
(I guess I should have been less lazy on Monday and done a trial run.)

Chef's Powdered Sugar Cake Cookies aka Cool Whip Cookies

Ingredients:
1 Box Cake Mix (pick your favorite... I used lemon)
1 8oz. Container Cool Whip (or the generic kind if you want to be cheap. I am, and I did)
Powdered Sugar
1 egg (I've seen this in recipes online... but I opted out. Perhaps that's where the problem lies)

Mix cake mix and THAWED Cool Whip together.
Thawed creamy creamy!!! Not "outside edges look creamy straight home from the grocery store freezer section creamy". Its not a big deal if its only semi-thawed like I used since I started baking right when I got home from the store. But it just makes stirring THAT much harder. SOOO MUCH HARDER. So THAW people THAW!!


Once cake mix and cool whip are thoroughly combined, scoop into small equal sized balls. (I like to call them pudges... like pudgy, but not.) Then roll in powdered sugar.

This was the messy and annoying part. The batter is VERY sticky. I would maybe suggest using a small ice cream scooper, one that will release the pudges without any excessive finger poking or scraping. I have the lame-o cookie scoop that much resembles a tablespoon with the flexible round bottom that "supposedly" allows you to just press and the dough will pop right out. Yeah RIGHT. It didn't work for this... and I do kinda doubt that it'll work for any dough. I've tried freezing the batter a bit, that don't work. The best bet is to keep your hands WET. Some batter will still stick... but not as bad. And if it starts to REALLY stick, time to re-wet your hands! Rolling in powdered sugar is pretty easy... I would have just done a BIG BIG dish... casserole or larger would have worked AWESOME. The small dish I used could only roll 4-5 pudges. The whole going back and forth between sticky batter and dry powdery sugar is time consuming, since I had to go wash off any residual batter before handling the pudges in sugar. PAIN IN THE BUTT! So, boys and girls, keep hands wet when making the pudges... make them all in one go... drop each one into a LARGE dish of powdered sugar... then roll away!

Place each rolled pudge on a parchment lined baking sheet, 1-1/2 inches apart.
These will SPREAD. So no cramming the last one or two between rows. That will not do... at least not if you care about presentation.


Bake at 350 for approx. 20min. Don't forget to pre-heat... DUH.
I don't know the exact time since I experimented with different intervals.
10-13 min = CHEWY (maybe undone) cookies
18-20 min = Probably the "right" range... I didn't break these apart to check though, since I was running low on presentable cookies.
20-22 min = NOPE. The cookies come out over-done and crispy.
(Not a fan of that blue baking thingymajig... I used parchment on the other pan. CLEAN UP IS SOOO MUCH FASTER. Just crumple and toss!

I'll post reviews after my guinea pigs have tasted. Oh, and they taste FINE to me. Just that the right amount of doneness needs to be addressed... we all eat raw cookie dough anyways, don't we?

COLORS!

120 colors of eyeshadow.... and somehow I know I still wouldn't be satisfied.
(There are no deep reds... for example. Tsk tsk.)