Liz bacon pasta

So I don't exactly think of this as a recipe exactly.  I feel like there should be another word for a description a of how to make a food when you can pretty much throw in anything you want and it almost always turns out good.  this is more of a suggestion of stuff you can put on pasta with cheese and it turns out awesome!

when me and my hubby just got married, this was a super common dish at our house due to it being fairly cheap and easy to put together.  It starts with bacon (which is never a bad way to start a recipe in my mind) and adds in veggies so that it can at least be a little healthy...  In this recipe feel free to use any vegetables you like (or have on hand) as well as subbing olive oil for the bacon grease if you're feeling healthy. 

Bacon Pasta
1/2 pound of bacon
I added a chicken breast sliced into strips this last time, but it's completely unnecessary more of a filler cause i had extra people than a usual ingredient for this.
1 large onion sliced into strips
1/2 large red (or yellow or orange) pepper sliced into strips
about 5-10 mushrooms sliced (however much you like, or you can leave them out)
1/2 bag frozen broccoli (you can use fresh, but I never do, cause I never think to buy it in the produce section and I think I would forget about it and it would go bad in my fridge)
about 1/4 cup frozen peas (optional.  I mostly just put these in to add another veggie)
Feel free to add any other vegetable you want in here or sub things out. I'll add tomatoes if they're in season, or summer squash
1 pound pasta (spaghetti or linguine is generally what i use, but feel free to use what you have)
about 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
Cook bacon in a large skillet. when bacon is done to your liking remove from pan.  if using chicken cook in the bacon grease till done then remove to the same place you're keeping your bacon
Put water on to boil and cook pasta. While pasta is cooking  put onions and peppers into pan with bacon grease, cook over medium heat till, soft add mushrooms broccoli and peas and cook till everything is hot. Drain pasta when it is done.  Put into large bowl or back into the pot used to boil the pasta add all the veggies. Chop or tear apart the bacon into the pasta toss together till evenly mixed.  add Parmesan cheese toss again. serve with extra parm and good bread if you have it, but it will stand on its own if you don't.

Periodic Table of Cake- Jenna

My friend, a Chemistry grad, had a birthday, thus there was a very big need for a Periodic table cake!   I googled pictures of cakes for a while, which is always a good start when brainstorming ideas for cakes, and couldn't figure out what I wanted to do.  I decided upon using Starbursts to create all the elements.  You want to make a 13X9 inch cake (or bigger; I will explain later) in any flavor of choice.  Let completely cool, then, and this is important, level off the top, otherwise your periodic table will not lay right (it'll bulge in the middle).  Then you can ice it with any icing you wish as well; I would do a white or chocolate; not a colored icing because the starbursts add a lot of color by themselves. 

The difficult part is next- unwrapping 102 Starbursts!  I bought 2 bags of the same type of Starbursts, so you will have some extras, but one bag is not enough.  This is the breakdown I used for my cake: 13 Pink, 40 Yellow, 37 Orange, and 28 Red- but this all depends on the distrubution of colors in the bags of Starbursts, so make sure and count

them before deciding on which color to use for each section.  I bought

Wilton black decorating icing, which is wonderful because black is a

difficult color to dye icing and you can put a tip directly onto the top. 

After you have written on all of the Starbursts, which doesn't take as long as you would think, then you just have to put them on top of the cake.  Back to the issue of pan size, if you can snag a bigger pan, do it!  There are 17 rows of elements on the periodic table, and obviously, only 13 inches of the pan.  So, I had to cut a loooooot of the Starbursts so that they all fit.  If you can save yourself this trouble, it will be worth it!  It all comes together pretty quickly, and then you have the nerdiest cake imaginable!  It's pretty easy, and a real crowd pleaser.  :)

Simple Snickerdoodles -Jenna

These are fool-proof snickerdoodle cookies that I use all the time.  These are the best middle of the night cookies when you're tired of grading papers and need a break!  (Little rule of thumb: never bake anything that's a challenge or new really late at night, it never turns out well.)  The ingredients are as follows:

1 box of yellow cake mix

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 Tbsp sugar and 1/2 teas. cinnamon

 (for rolling cookies in)

All you do is combine the cake mix, vegi oil, and eggs into a bowl. 

Mix with a rubber spatula until combined.

It will be a pretty pliable dough; not too wet or dry. 

Next, roll dough into balls about an inch in diameter. 

Combine the sugar and cinnamon into a bowl, then roll the balls

 in the sugar/cinnamon mixture. 

Place onto a cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes at 350 degrees.  (The magic number for me is 10 minutes, but every oven is a bit different).  It makes about 3 dozen cookies.  They are chewy, and fluffy, and perfect little cookies! 

Liz-Bread

Cheap Store Brand Flour!!

SO today it ice rained... which means I baked a lot!  I tend to bake and cook a lot anyway, but with everything being canceled because of the Ice/Snow Storm, I baked an unusual amount.   
I made bread, which is one of my favorite things to do when I have a few hours.  I'm not sure where I got this recipe, but I got it from some book that has long gone back to the library.  It is the best bread I've ever made.  It's a classic french loaf, which means that it has water, flour, yeast, sugar and salt in it.  I'm a bit of a cheap cook, so I don't use awesome stone ground artisan flour, but I've heard that the better the flour the better your bread will be.  That being said, this bread is awesome with the really cheap store brand flour that I use.
This is the kind of bread that I can eat almost a whole loaf in one sitting...

French Bread
2 Cups Warm Water
1 1/2 TBSP Active Dry Yeast
1 TBSP Sugar
5ish Cups Flour
1 TBSP Salt
a bit of oil
An egg for glaze with a bit of water (actually important for that shiny brown color I want my bread to be!)

Mix Water Yeast and Sugar.  let stand a few minutes, add 2 cups flour and the salt. Beat till smooth, a minute or so. add flour till dough forms a ball and clears the sides of the bowl.  Knead dough for 5-8 minutes adding flour to the edge of the work surface and flouring your hands so that the dough doesnt stick to you too much.  dough should not be sticky. 

Puffy Dough

Put a bit of oil in the bottom of a bowl; put dough into bowl and flip over once to lightly coat dough with oil.  Leave in bowl and cover with plastic wrap to let rise. Let rise for about an hour till its doubled in size and looks really puffy.
Deflate dough and divide into 3 sections, then shape dough and place onto baking sheets.  Shaping is best done by flattening the dough into a rectangle then rolling it up into a baton/baguette shape.
Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.  Let loaves rise while oven heats, then beat an egg and add a bit of water (2 TBSP) to the egg and brush the loaves with the egg.  Place Loaves into oven and turn oven down to 400 Degrees F immediately. 
Bake for about 35 minutes, till the bread is a pretty brownish color and sounds hollow when you tap on the bottom of the loaf (which will be hot when you pick it up to tap it, so be careful).

Wonderful Bread

Jenna

    I figured it would be good to kind of introduce myself a bit more and explain what I cook, and why I cook.  I am the single one of our trifecta, and I actually don't cook at all.... I bake :)  I am a graduate student and therefore have no time to cook really (and I don't like it anyway!)  Cooking completely stresses me out because I have no idea what to add or what would make my food taste better.  I am a baker- I like things that are straightforward.  I like recipes that will tell me exactly how much to add of what.  I know I said I don't have time to cook, but time to bake is soooo much different.  I bake when I get stressed out, so usually around 11 or 12 at night when I am grading papers or writing one of my own.  I don't really have any professional experience with baking, but I do enjoy it and have started to even make some money on the side with my cakes.  Every time I make a new cake it's an adventure and I am never sure what to expect, but it generally seems to work out.  So, my portion of the blog will be only desserts.  I will share with you what has worked for me and what hasn't.  My methods may be a bit unconventional, and not for the faint of heart, but I hope to give you some ideas and give you the courage to make something crazy!  I am going to attach some pictures of my previous cakes before the creation of this blog to give you a general idea of what I am talking about.  I won't put too many up right now so as not to crowd the blog, but I will put up more every once in a while.  If you have any questions about them, just let me know!



Taken from the book: What's New Cupcake



Little Mermaid

Steak and Baked Potato Cake