Strawberry Banana Smoothie topped w. a Chocolate Covered Strawberry

Hot Day + Banana+ Lots of Fresh Strawberries + Blender = Strawberry Smoothieee Timeee!

Big boxes of strawberries went on sale for a great price so of course they came home with me.

However, the large amount wasn't getting eaten fast enough and was on its way to rott, and so i threw them into the blender with chunks of a banana

To make it more rich and creamy havving a thick greek yogurt, vanilla yogurt, and even strawberry banana flavored yogurt on hand, they all got thrown into the blender with the fruit

After it was all blended for a good few minutes into the consistency I wanted, I poured some into a serving glass and garnished it with some whipped cream and was hoping to find a mint leaf to put on top of the cream. Even though I coudn't find any mint, I conincidently had made chocolate covered strawberries earlier for someone and was able to use one of them to take the place of the mint leaf.

Hot Cocoa w. a Chocolate Chip Cookie on a Rainy Day

I was in charge of babysitting my brother on a cold rainy day, and the weather wasn't the only gloomy atmosphere. My brother happened to be having a bad day as well, and decided to take his gloomy attitude out on me. So what's better to cheer someone up than with a chocolate chip and hot cocoa with marshmellows??

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookie batter a while back and rolled the unused dough into little balls and plopped them into the freezer, so I could easily put them into the oven/toaster oven whenever I feel like a chocolate chip cookie.


Anyways, long sotry short, the cookies got baked and were placed next to a hot cup of cocoa which had marshmellows floating into it =]

Banana Bread/Cake with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts

A long while back I was craving banana bread for a whole week, after I found a recipe of it I really liked. So, of course, when the weekend came up, I had to make it. I found the recipe on http://www.icecreambeforedinner.blogspot.com/, a really great blog.
The recipe provided was http://icecreambeforedinner.blogspot.com/2008/01/mini-banana-breads.html.
I made a couple of changes throughout the many times I baked it. It never listed how many eggs are required so I always go with 2 eggs, which seems to always work out fine. For the sugar part I put 1/4 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and 1/8 cup honey. I personally find the full 3/4 cup of sweeteners to sweet but its all based on your preference. If you replace half the butter with applesauce, it gives the banana bread the complete texture of bread. I you replace half the butter with oil, it will give the banana bread the texture of a cake being really nice and moist. Both ways don't make dramatic changes but either way, they both taste amazing. Finally, I always love adding walnuts, which I roughly chop, and just recently, I added choclate chips.

Most of the times I bake it, I don't have overripe bananas on hand, so I put mine in the microwave for a minute softining it up, and add about an extra half to bring out the banana flavor. This week, I actually made it due to these extremely overipe bananas we all refused to eat raw


I also whisked the wet ingredients instead of shaking them in a container, though I'm eager to try the shaking method


And then into the oven it went


Which baked up perfectly




Banana Bread/Cake anyone?

Fruit Salad with Grapefruit

We had tons of fruits in our fridge on their way to rott. Over summer it's tempting to ignore the fruits and go straight to the cookie jar. So what better way to eat all the your fruits then to cut them up and toss them altogether in one bowl? I didn't have the classic berries you would find in a fruit salad, but I had fruits like honey dew, melon, pinapple, cherries (pit them first of course), apples, peaches, mangoe, strawberries and grapefruit fresh from our tree which no one would eat.



The grapefruits actually added a really unique flavor to the fruit salad. I cut them up in wedges and squirted the access juice onto the fruit salad.


Of course, you can put anything you want in fruit your fruit salads, so if you also have fruits rotting away in your fridge...


I love the crunch you get by adding some slivered almonds (ad them right before you serve it so they won't get soggy) and a sprint of mint for garnishing

Girly Girl Birthday Cake

When my cousin turned 3 years old in June, I baked her cookies with sprinkles. Simple as they were, that also meant her older sister who was turning six, excpected me to bake her something as special, with a little more awareness towards the definition of 'big and special'. I would have gone with cupcakes with colorful frosting designs on it, but when my grandma called, informing me we would all get together at her house for my cousin's brithday and wondering if I could bake a cake, I decided to comine her big birthday treat into one really special cake.

I already knew it would have to be a pink super girly cake, and tryng to kick it up a knotch, I decided to make it int0 a brithday cake as well. Usually, I would have a contrast as one layer vanilla and one chocolate, but she wanted everything in the cake to be vanilla and no chocolate.

For the basic cake I used a recipe my aunt always uses her friend had shared with her, wich is originally meant to be an apple cake, but has such a nice moist flavor but still sturdy texture to it, that I used it for the cake part.

-6 eggs
-2 cup. Sugar
-3/4 cup. Oil
-3 cup. Flour
-3 Tsp. Baking Powder
-1/2 cup. Orange Juice
-Vanilla

Directions:
1. Mix the eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla together.
2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder together
3. Alternate adding the flour and baking powder mixture and the orange juice to the wet ingredients, starting with the flour and ending with the flour.
4. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

This recipe was enough to fill up to round cake pans



I used one one of these same cake pans to press ice-cream into after i covered the pan in a layer of plastic wrap to make taking the layer of icecream out easier



To attach all the layers i bought premade frosting, and flavored one with pureed strawberries that i sifted all the seeds out of, knowing my cousin would enjoy the flavor from them.
The only flaw of adding the puree was that it took away a good amount of the sturdy/thick texture the frosting originally had

The assembly of the cake went like this:
1. A layer of cake
2. A layer of frosting
3. A layer of ice-cream
4. A layer of frosting
5. A final layer of cake
<--It would have helped if the icecream would have been more frozen and the frosting wouldn't have been as liquidy from the strawberry purree, to have helped keep its shape better

After everything firmed up a bit better in the freezer, i covered it in a layer of light blue frosting (that being my cousins second favorite color)
I also whipped up some cream coloring it with food coloring since the strawberry purree would have made the cream to heavy to whip up properly, and the covered the whole cake with it after it had fully hardened in the freezer
I decorated it by piping designs with the access cream I had leftover

At the very end I had very few spinkles leftover from previously, and sprinkled it onto the flower and her name (not photo-graphed)
Overall the cake was delicious, but the ice-cream was very messy and wouldn't firm up enough, even with sitting a few hours in the freezer

French Toast with Almond Crust

My 'specialty' when I'm asked to baby-sit my brother and make him some food, is usually a crepe. He always asks me to make one for him when I have a chance, so when he recently asked me to make him one, which would have been around the 50th time I would have made him one, I decided to upgrade onto something different. Crepes are something sweet, can be eaten for both breakfast and dessert, and will fill you up. Something that seemed to fit in all three catergories was french toast with an almond crust. At first my brother remained stubborn and wanted a crepe, but when I made the french toast his mind was quickly changed.

For the bread part of french toast, I always think challah bread works best, but since I didn't have any on hand, I had to use hamburger buns and just thinly cut of the seseme seed coated top. I soaked it in a mixture of eggs, milk, a very small pinch of slt to bring out all the flavors going in, a drop of vanilla, powdered sugar to sweeten it, and some cinamon to go with the sliced almonds, in which I also tossed in some cinamon, sugar, and brown sugar.

Each slice of bread got soaked into the egg mixture



And then they got tossed into the sliced almond mixture



I also made these the morning after my cousins slept over for breakfast which meant lots and lots of french toast


I found some sandwhich bread to make it when my cousins were over. Still I can never quiet get as many almonds as I would like to stick onto the soaked bread.

I also mixed up some powdered sugar with cinamon to dust on top





They tasted great dipped in maple syrup as well



Anyhow, both times seemed to be a succsess considering from these faces