a crisp and THE college

I think I have found my dream university. To be honest, this prestigious college was never on my top three list. However, after visiting the campus, breathing in the woodsy air and walking amongst the bundled up students, it just felt right. For the longest time, I thought that an urban college with a small campus surrounded by the greatest city in the country, also known as Manhattan, would be the best fit for me. Then, reality settled in and a variety of factors bothered me. Soon after, I visited the campus of the rural school. It's seriously beautiful, vast, and lush with thick trees. The only downside would be the intensely frigid weather. Then, as I baked some Nutella chocolate chip cookies for my friend and her mother who brought me to this campus, I realized that cold weather means a desire for warmth. A desire for warmth means turning on the oven. Turning on the oven means more baked goods. Yes. More baked goods. Sounds good to me.



My dream college reminds me of this crisp. Homey and rustic. I dunno how to explain it but they just go hand in hand. Rural colleges and rustic desserts. Now, about this pear cranberry crisp. It was my very first crisp. I never tasted nor baked a crisp before. As I took my second bite, I asked myself why I never did. It was sinfully easy; I'll be making this again, very, very soon.



Pear and Cranberry Crisp
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

filling:
5 Bosc pears
3/4 cup of dried cranberries
scant 2/3 cup raw or granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt

topping:
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup old fashioned oats
scant 1/3 cup raw or granulated sugar
1/3 packed light brown sugar
heaping 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 stick butter, melted

Peel, core, and dice the pears. This took me a whiiiiilllle. I'm slow; I apologize. Mix with the cranberries, sugar, and salt. Set aside

Combine the flour, two sugars, cinnamon, and oats together. Add in the melted butter and mix.

Pour the fruit mixture into an 8x8 baking dish. Top with topping and bake for 30-50 minutes until the juices are bubbling. Cool and dig in.

Notes: I would just dial down the sugar even more. Also, I would like to read the recipe correctly... I read "pecans" as "oats" and it wasn't until I put the dish in the oven when I realized it said pecans. Oats are good too. Really good, actually. The cranberries plump up with the pear juice. There's no doubt that I'm making this again. And again. And again.

blogging with a guilty conscience

What's on your desk right now? Wait, no. Be honest. I'll be honest. I have two laptops. A package of Trader Joe's unsulfured, sweetened, dried mango. A cup of cold date tea. An Inception DVD. Six historical books, focusing on either a) Irish secret societies b) machine politics or c) the Irish exodus. Not a single pleasure read on my desk. They're all chilling just a few feet a way. I can hear them whisper (or maybe it's my lack of sleep talking to me), "Nicole, hey, Nicole. Put down that boring book. And pick me up. Crack open my spine! I can still crack! You didn't finish me yet." The Picture of Dorian Gray says those words. He's needy.

And I need sleep. And cookies. This week is going to be nuts. Nuts, as in, no-time-to-breath, nuts. Not I-met-a-cute-boy-and-we're-hanging-out nuts. Or I'm-baking-cookies-all-week nuts. Or walnuts, pistachio nuts, and peanuts. No, as in, back-to-back-semi/very-scholarly-events. Superb.

I still have work to do, guys. And yet. I'm blogging. Okay, moving on. (My conscience is catching up to me! This post will be short.)

Cookies



with Nutella,



with semisweet chocolate chips,



and smeared with more Nutella.

Um, do you need anything else when a chocolate craving hits? I don't! Have a splendid week! Recipe here. No real notes today. I followed the recipe word for word and I baked them a tad longer because my cookies were bigger.

a birthday cake and recipe networking

Lately, I've been on an "everyday baking" kick. I made carrot cake sandwich cookies last Saturday, a pear crisp with cranberries on Tuesday, and roasted chickpeas this morning. Then, I made my first ever celebration cake.




It's a birthday cake for my mom. To be honest, I've been planning this cake for weeks! Lame, right? I was thinking about smitten kitchen's best birthday cake. I then realized I didn't have two nine inch cake pans; I only have one. Oops. Luckily, I came across Big Girl Small Kitchen recipe for a one layer yellow cake with a peanut butter filling. I had a big tub of sour cream, just chilling in my fridge, begging to be used, so smittenkitchen's chocolate sour cream frosting seemed fitting.

BGSK yellow cake + BGSK peanut butter filling + smitten kitchen's chocolate sour cream frosting = a delicious, yet messy, birthday cake.

Notes: For the cake, I substituted 3/4 of the AP flour for white whole wheat. The sour cream should be 3/4 cup. The flour, sugar, baking soda, powder, salt, butter, and sour cream mixture was realllyy dry; I had to add more dollops of sour cream to moisten it. I "kneaded" the mixture with my hands. I was afraid the cake would become tough but it was fine! It's not my favorite yellow cake; I will most likely replace this cake recipe with another one.
For the filling, I only had 3 tbsp of peanut butter left in the jar. It still tasted delicious.
For the frosting, I halved everything and I still had a bit frosting left, even though I ate globs of it while I was making it. Instead of light corn syrup, I used 6 tsp of agave. Agave is similar to corn syrup because it prevents crystallization, or something like that. I dunno.
I baked the cake. While the cake was baking, I made the frosting and popped it in the fridge to chill. When the cake was taken out and completely chilled, I whipped up the filling. I sliced the cake in half, horizontally, and slathered on the filling. I saved a little and put it in a small Ziploc to pipe on the lettering. Finish it off with the chocolate frosting and it's done! Pretty simple and it tastes delicious.

news, updates, and muffins

Oh hi, how ya doin'? I'm all and well.

Okay, just kidding. I'm not. Being a teenager in this world seriously sucks. Maybe I'm just saying that because I have midterms in a couple of days and my skin is breaking out like crazy. I'm bereft of skin knowledge because my skin has never caused me any problems. I just do my daily cleaning routine and I'm good. Ugh, not anymore.

Hypothesis: If I stop eating foods filled with sugar, then I will have my old skin back. Does that make sense? Will it work? I can't help my stress; I can't even manage that ish. So, new diet it is. Hopefully I can stick to my new vegan diet. Oh God. I'm scared.

Oh, and the muffins you see above my lil rant? They're good. Not great. A solid A-. It's my fault though. I made crazy adaptions both by accident and on purpose. The first adaption was adding Craisins. THAT addition was good. The ones with Craisins were 10x better than the ones without. Next, I filled the tins with batter BEFORE they had time to rise. I thought the instructions said that they will rise in the tins. I'm an idiots sometimes most of the time. I also halved the topping amount. I bet they would taste better with more butter and sugar. What wouldn't? Another mishap was putting the batter into baking cups rather than a sprayed muffin tin. I made two without cups, just to experiment, and they held up better. Moister. My last mistake was over baking them(?). Maybe it was baking cups that caused this because the sans cup weren't burnt on the bottom like the ones in cups were.

Yeah, so take my advice and don't do the things I did. Except adding the Craisins. THAT, my friend, was a good move.

See ya on the flip side.

confessions and the best brownies ever

Confession #1. I used to hate, with a capital H, shredded coconut, bananas, and yogurt. I think it was textural thing. I've grown out of it, evident by my love for flaked & toasted coconut, banana bread (I made two different kinds on NYE, by the way) and banana cake. Also, fat free Greek yogurt? With honey? Uh, best "healthy" snack/quick meal ever.

Here's another confession. I was dreaming about these brownies in English today. (Sorry, Mrs. Cap!) While the class was murmuring about chapter seven in The Great Gatsby, my mind was absorbed with an image of brownie.

A sweet piece of dense heaven that has the richness of a chocolate bar. What would go on top? A salted caramel sauce? Mm. Oh wait, no heavy cream. Hm, what if something went inside? A cream cheese swirl? With... uh, hm. Coconut? Yes! Coconut and chocolate. Like those chocolate macaroons. Never had one though. 


And that's how this baby came into creation.

a "first" fest

Here are a few things I learned this year: AP chemistry will kick your ass if you don't study. Sharing baked goods will give you a lot of hugs. Arepas are Amazing, with a capital A. A few good friends is all you need. Instagram is the best app because then you don't have to do a tedious ritual in order to upload pics from your DSLR. Speaking of apps, Temple Run is addicting. You don't need to have a hand mixer to make cake. Your first cake will turn out fine.

double trouble

You look like you need a cookie. A warm, chocolate cookie with crunchy walnut bits and gooey dark chocolate chips. I apologize, non-chocolate lovers (if you guys do exist) because this post is all about the double chocolate crinkle cookie. Once upon a time, it was just a chocolate crinkle cookie. Then, I vamped it up with just a couple of ingredients. Really simple and swoon worthy. The only con is that if you live in a house of four, like me, these chocolate morsels will disappear in a matter of days.

scrambled pancakes are happiness.

Hi lovely. You promise you won't judge me? I screwed up pancakes. Yeah. Pancakes. I was surprised too. The pancakes kept getting stuck on the cast iron pan. I ended up just... well, scrambling them like they were eggs. Before I took a bite, I was expecting the worst. Instead, I got a creamy, flavorful mouthful of bliss. Although they aren't the prettiest plate of brunch, I took them to my Mac and watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother. I was laughing at Marshall's recitation of "The Raven" in between bites of my scrambled pancakes. This was happiness. In that moment, I was glad there was something funny before my eyes and something delicious in my mouth. It took my mind off the loads of work in store for me. Total bliss.

a toast to toast

Give me a choice between a few slices of bacon and a chunk of a baguette, smeared with strawberry jam and pat of butter, and I'll choose the latter. While some people take pleasure in eating ginormous hamburgers sandwiched in between deep fried bacon grilled cheese (ie. these guys), I prefer simpler alternatives. Bread. Toast. Pasta. With butter. With jam. With olive oil and garlic.

So basically, I love carbs. Its pure comfort food to me. When I feel stressed out, overwhelmed, or hungry, I reach for it. Its a problem, yes. But I'm working on it!

Today, in particular, I wasn't having s great day. When I got home, I was hungry and needed something to fuel me up quickly because I had a volleyball game in two hours. I was in no mood to wash a ton of dishes and pans. I glanced toward my counter and saw a glass Pyrex filled with bread slices. (Specifically, bread that my momma made the night before and cut this morning to make me my lunch.) I toasted a slice right up and decided to see how many different kinds of open faced sandwiches/ toasts I could make. I made three.