Baking, Baking.

So I find that I’ve been baking quite a bit over this past week.

 

My Smores Cupcakes before they were frosted.

Frosted in chocolate ganache. Made these for my uncles 27th birthday.   

Brownie candy cups.

 

Sorry about the quality of my photos, my Blackberry doesn’t always capture how beautiful something really is.

My Chocolate Chip Gooey Peanut Butter Cookie Mash Up

Ok, so after posting a picture of my fair winning cookies on my Facebook mobile uploads a few people said they wanted my recipe. Just so you know this recipe is rather time consuming, but oh so delicious! These are cookies your grandma would be proud of :)

So First the recipe for the initial cookie:

1 1/4 C. Flour

3/4 tsp. Baking Soda

1/4 tsp. Salt

1/2 C. Butter

1/2 C. Peanut Butter

1 C. Chocolate Chips

1/2 C. Sugar

1/2 C. Packed Brown Sugar

1 Egg

1/2 tsp. Vanilla

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees
2. Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a mixing bowl beat butter, peanut butter and sugars until fluffy.
4. Add egg and vanilla, beat well.
5. Add dry ingredients and beat until well combined.
6. Add chocolate chips

Set to the side!

Now your going to make your filling and topping!

1/4 C. Dry Roasted Peanuts, finely chopped

1/4 C. Granulated Sugar

1/2 tsp. Ground Cinnamon

1/2 C. Creamy Peanut Butter

1/2 C. Powdered Sugar

1. In a small bowl mix the peanuts, granulated sugar, and cinnamon, set to the side.
2. In another bowl mix together peanut butter and powdered sugar until completely blended. Shape into about 1/2in. balls.
3. Take your cookie dough and roll it into about 1in. balls than flatted then with your hand, take the peanut butter/powdered sugar balls and flatten with your hand.
4. Place the peanut butter/powdered sugar flattened ball on top of the cookie dough.
5. Fold the sides of the cookie dough over the peanut butter/powdered sugar center.
6. After you fold the edges and completely cover the center filling, roll the dough back into a nice ball careful not to let the center show.
7. Then take the ball and roll it in the peanuts, granulated sugar, cinnamon mixture.
8. Repeat, repeat!
9. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet. Flatten the cookies with a fork, but not as intensely as you normally would a peanut butter cookie, you DONT want the fork marks to show.
10. Bake for about 8 minuets, if the cookies are a little soft and gooey upon coming out of the oven just let this sit for a few minuets. I used parchment paper so I could just lift the cookies off the sheet to cool and replaced it with another sheet of parchment paper to bake more.
11. After the cookies are completely cool drizzle with melted baking chocolate! This makes them look wonderful, as well as taste even better!

 

So there’s my fair winning cookie recipe! I currently have these cookies at state fair and I should see how they did here real soon!

Let me know if you tried my recipe and what you thought!

Cheap Chic. Batman Ballet Flats.

I got this idea off of a www.cutoutandkeep.net how-to and just had to make a pair of my own!

Here’s everything I used:

1. Mod Podge $5.99 from Michael’s

2. Ballet Flats $12.99 from Target

3. Scissors

4. Small paint brush

5. Batman Comic Book $1 at a Flash Back vintage-esque store in Seaside, Oregon

Step 1.

First round all of your items together! I posted a picture of everything I used and lay down some sort of surface if you are making your wondrous shoes on your mothers new table cloth!

Step 2.

Start cutting out images from the comic books you choose and I recommend cutting out "scenes" from the comic books to lay down on the shoes first. Scenes take up more space than you can put character pictures or sayings or whatever you like over that. Its just to make sure you have a good base.

Step 3.

Next take your comic pieces one at a time and place it on a spot on your shoe to see if it fits in the spot well. ( I recommend working from the heel forward).

Step 4.

Take your brush and brush a good layer of Mod Podge onto the the piece you are going to stick onto your shoe. I found that you can't really have to much on the comic piece, it will just make it easier to bend to the shape of the shoe. Continue with this step until you have covered the whole shoe.

Step 5.

After all of your pieces have been put on, ask yourself: "Do I want to layer more pieces over the base of the shoe?" Your answer is yes, the "Kaboom, Klik, and Attack!" Pieces look great scattered randomly as do any other pieces you want to add.

Step 6.

Brush a layer of Mod Podge over the entire shoe to seal it. Let it dry for 15-20minuets per layer. Repeat this step at least two more times.

Step 7.

After your shoes are dry, wear them and let all of your friends be jealous, let your guy friends think you actually read comic books, and if you really do, your even cooler in my book! :)