Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Holiday Shortbread

I heard about these cookies on the radio when I was hungry so I made them a couple of days later. I prefer plain shortbread, but they weren't bad. After reading the comments I decided to only use orange zest (plus I didn't want to buy orange oil or flavoring), and they were still very orange-y.

The Brass Sisters' Shortbread from All Things Consider's Found Recipes


Vanilla Bean Caramels

I love good caramel and I've been wanting to try to make these awesome pretzel/chocolate/caramel sticks, so I decided to start experimenting with caramel recipes. This one was okay - I think I cooked it a little long (I'm pretty sure I went to 250 instead of 248 on the candy thermometer).

I used sea salt instead of fleur de sel because I thought it was probably the same. I'm still not sure if it is or isn't, but the caramels tasted a little too salty (even though I omitted the salt on the top).

I used my vanilla bean paste instead of the vanilla/vanilla bean.

Vanilla Bean Caramels from Annie's Eats

Friday, December 6, 2013

Chocolate Raspberry Fudge

One day Eric and Moo went to Cabela's just for fun and they brought me home a piece of chocolate raspberry fudge. I didn't know that Cabela's had fudge, and it was a couple days or so before I felt like eating it. But once I ate it, I had to have more. Some days while I was pregnant it was all I could think about. Now I crave it less often, but I still want it quite a bit. Cabela's is about 30 minutes away, though, and the fudge is kind of expensive, so I've been looking for recipes online.

This particular recipe doesn't have the chocolate and raspberry layers like the fudge at Cabela's, but I thought it might still be good. It is, but it isn't as awesome as the Cabela's fudge. This fudge has a little bit of a grainy (but not really grainy) texture and doesn't have as clean a flavor. I wouldn't make it again, but not because it's gross - just because it's not exactly what I'm looking for.

Chocolate Raspberry Fudge

Chopped Taco Salad with Homemade Catalina Dressing

Eric loves taco salad. I don't. But this salad popped up on my facebook page and I decided it looked okay, so I made it (mostly for Eric). I used ground beef (though I would have used vegetarian beef-like crumbles if I had found them at the grocery store because I don't love ground beef outside of burgers and meatloaf) and only romaine lettuce (because I thought it would be silly to be left with two half-heads of lettuce). It was pretty good. I was surprised to be a big fan of the dressing because I thought I didn't like catalina dressing.

Next time I'm going to try to do a vegetarian version - maybe with more black beans.

Chopped Taco Salad with Homemade Catalina Dressing from Mel's Kitchen Cafe