Wednesday 28 August 2013

Someone Please Stop the World, I'd Like to Get Off!

**Before I start, I realize how dirty my post title may sound, but I promise you, that isn't how I intend it! Now get your mind out of the gutter! :D*

HOLY SHMOLY what a week this has been!!!! I just wanted to write  quick post to say, I will be MIA until the weekend. We are working on a VERY important project at work right now and it is literally consuming all my time (I actually DREAM about it!).

WELCOME to all the new wonderful people visiting my blog. It seems that my Philly Cheesesteak Post has been a popular one (which is AWESOMEEEEE) so to those of you just joining me here, I am SO HAPPY to meet you! Please feel free to drop me a line any time you want on my Facebook Page I would LOVE to hear from you!

Also, I have found my new favourite cookie dough that I cannot WAIT to share with you. It is SO SO yummy scrumbos!

What I'm probably MOST excited for right now, is that this Saturday, I am FINALLY participating in COLOR ME RADDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!! I cannot tell you how excited I am for it. I have been lusting after this "race" for over a year and now I finally get to do it. Not only that, I get to do it with an AMAZING team of over 20 people!!!!! How cool is that? It all started with a FB post and now we are a mass invasion taking over the run in Downsview Park! If you're there and see team "DO OR DYE" come say hi, because that's my team! I'll be the one yelling and cheering and (hopefully) covered in the most amount of powder! Like this:


EEEEEEEE!

Also, if you haven't signed up and are interested, you can sign up the day of!!!!! Click HERE for all the deets!!

Finally, I want to show you a STUPIDLY cute picture of my pup. I was at my friend Annie's house on Sunday. We did an AMAZING 7KM run (this girl still has it!!) and then we made homemade pizza's (using the super dough I made here) Anywho, while the pizza was cooking, my friends daughter (I <3 her so much) was playing with Molly and I happened to catch this uber cute photo:

It makes me so happy!
Okay, I'm going to bed now before I fall asleep on my laptop (and hubs is telling me to stop working!), but MUCH LOVE and I promise I'll be back in action soon!!!!!

Monday 12 August 2013

Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookie Bars

HELLO my dear followers! I'm sorry I have been slacking on the blog front for the last week. I was out of town for work and then when I came back I was catching up on the work I missed while being away from work FOR work...it was quite exhausting.

THEN I was away for the weekend for a friends birthday, where we all relived our 20somethings. It was a grand ol' time:

Beer & BBQ, what more could you need?
Also, this is my new fave summer drink:

Yum.
Now, this recipe that I want to share with you today is one that I've been oogling on Pinterest for QUITE some time. It has everything that I love: Oreos, Cookie & Chocolate Chips. Oh, and it just looks irresistible as well.

What's it like in real life? EVEN BETTER!

Enjoy my lovely friends, and I promise not to abandon you for so long ever again (...I hope)

Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookie Bars

Ingredients:

2 cups brown sugar
2/3 cup salted butter (softened)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
12 Oreo cookies
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
Optional: 2 crushed Oreo cookies and 1/4 cup white chocolate chips

Method:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl with your mixer (or hand mixer). Add in the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup of flour with the salt and the baking powder. SLOWLY add to the butter mixture. Once combined, add the rest of the flour.

When that is all combined, take your bowl out and fold in the Oreos and the chocolate chips. It should look a little something like this:

At this point, I was just going to eat the batter, but decided "Mmmm, better not"

Grease up your pan (I used a bar specific baking pan) and press the dough in with lightly floured hands.

Bake for 25-35 mins, depending on your oven. If you wish (and you probably should, just sayin) 15 mins into the baking time, take out and press in the "optional" 2 Oreos and white chocolate chips. Return to oven.

Around the 25 minute mark, use a toothpick to test if it is ready!

LOOK HOW THICK this thing is (that's what she said?):


I know, I'm a twelve year old. Shut up. ;)

Look at these: Don't they just make your mouth water? I promise you, they are as good as they look!

Enjoy!

Friday 2 August 2013

Super Easy Bread Dough & Buns


First of all, I want to say a GIANT thank you to everyone who has read, commented, texted, fb'd and talked to me about my most recent post talking about some issues I've been having recently. I was TRULY blown away by how many of you reached out telling me that you were going through what I was and didn't want to talk about it. It still gets me choked up thinking about it. I am SO blessed to have wonderful people like you in my life, and I cannot express enough my gratitude to you. Much, much LOVE <3

*Wipes away tears*

OK! Moving right along.

We all know that I have a weird fear of working with Yeast. Recently I conqured that fear by trying out some baked doughnuts that turned out AMAZINGLY. Seriously, you need to make these. So, once I made these doughnuts and discovered, yeast is NOT that scary, I thought I'd try making bread! (I was also inspired by my lovely friend Anne who recently embarked on a bread making adventure as well!)

I scoured the internet for an EASY bread dough recipe. Turns out there are about 500,000 of them because bread making is NOT that hard, and I'm just getting myself worked up about nothing. After sifting through all of them for awhile, I found 2 that seemed easy enough, ones that I had the ingredients for AND were from one of my fave food blogs, Something Swanky.

Not only is her blog adorable, her food pictures amazing, she also knows how to describe things in a way that make sense to me! So, I printed off the 2 recipes and went to work!


It was SO easy, and I am SO pleased with the way the dough turned out. I don't have a loaf pan, so I decided to make buns with this instead, but you could really use this dough for pretty much anything!

It is recommended by the author that you use this dough for bread you're planning on eating THAT day, but I brought these for lunch the next day at work (with a little salami, butter, turkey and cheese...yum!), and they still tasted amazing! 

Super Easy Bread Dough

Ingredients:
1 tbsp dry active yeast
1 cup warm water (think bath water temp)
2 tbsp of olive oil or vegetable oil 
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

Method:
First, you want to proof the yeast. I don't really know what that means, but apparently, it is VERY important to getting good bread!
To Proof: Put the cup of warm water into a bowl and sprinkle the yeast over top. Then, drizzle the oil and sugar over top the yeast and let sit for about 5 minutes or until it is nice and foamy. 

While this proofing is happening, mix the salt and flour together in a stand mixer bowl. When the yeast is proofed, add to the flour and salt mixture and start kneading(either in the mixer with the dough hook OR by band) until a dough is formed. Continue to knead for about 5-6 minutes more OR until the dough becomes elasticy (I swear, that's a word).

Cover and let rise for about 10 mins.

At this point I decided that I wanted to make buns for lunch the next day (I'm getting REALLY sick of the store bought bread) so I kneaded the dough a little bit more (about 1 mintues worth) and tore off 6 balls of dough and placed them on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

In retrospect, I could have made more like 12 buns, but because I didn't put 2 and 2 together (the dough would double in size), I only made 6. My buns are large, what can I say?

Cover your buns (seriously ladies, no one wants to see that!) and wait until they have DOUBLED in size, very, very important for fluffy buns. For me, it took about 45 mins. You'll want to place them in a warm area to rise (I put mine on the stove while it was warming up).

Preheat oven to 365 degrees F.

Once they have doubled in size (at this point I went HOLY CRAP THOSE ARE HUGE) put them in the oven for about 27-30 mins.

Once the tops are a nice LIGHT golden colour, pull them out and let them cool.

Since I was SO nervous about how these were going to turn out, I cut one open right away and found this:

BEAUTIFUL! They were light, fluffy, flaky and amazing. I put a little butter on while it was still hot and MMM MMM MMM!
So so happy. Like I said, I brought them to work for lunch the next day and they were still fabulous!
You could also put this in a loaf pan, and do the same steps as above OR after the 10 mins are up, make it into a pizza dough! There are MANY options for this dough! All I know is that I need a loaf pan so that I can try making bread!

Enjoy!