This was the easiest thing to make. You will need roasted peanuts and a food processor. I used store-bought peanuts and and a tiny kitchen-aid chopper that I use almost daily (i don’t have a food processor). So the end result was crunchy, really thick peanut butter. 1 cup filled 1/2cup storage container. Since we don’t eat peanut butter much, I think it’ll last us a while.

Home-Made Peanut Butter
Makes 1/2 cup

Ingredients:
1 cup roasted peanuts (you can use regular roasted, honey roasted, whatever you have on hand)
1 teaspoon of oil (1 teaspoon per 1 cup)

Directions:
Mix the peanuts with the oil and pour everything in the food chopper/processor. Chop until the peanut butter is the consistency you want. Add salt to taste. You can add honey (or molasses) if you want sweeter peanut butter.

(my little hand chopper couldn’t make anything smoother than crunch peanut butter).

I have never had home-made banana bread…at least not that I can remember. I usually buy a slice at Starbucks with coffee and always regret it. I find that the store-bought banana bread is always far too sweet and tastes nothing like banana. So, when I heard that banana bread can be made with old/brown frozen bananas, I was sold. I froze some overly ripe bananas and when I collected 3, I was ready. I found a really simple recipe that didn’t even require me to use my kitchenaid mixer. It took over an hour to bake, but the wait was totally worth it. The banana bread came out very soft, but crunchy on top, low-fat, healthy, and not too sweet. I changed the recipe a little bit and you can see my notes along the recipe.

Banana Bread
(recipe - Cooking Light) 

Yield: 1 loaf, 14 servings (serving size: 1 slice)

Ingredients

• 2  cups  all-purpose flour
• 3/4  teaspoon  baking soda
• 1/2  teaspoon  salt
• 1  cup  sugar (I used Sugar in the Raw)
• 1/4  cup  butter, softened (I used 1 tablespoon)
• 2  large eggs (I used about 1 cup of egg beaters - it’s all I had)
• 1 1/2  cups  mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)
• 1/3  cup  plain low-fat yogurt (I used regular sour cream)
• 1  teaspoon  vanilla extract
• Cooking spray

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl, and beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 1 minute). Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add banana, yogurt, and vanilla; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed just until moist. Spoon batter into an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

Tonight was dedicated to cranberries. I’m telling you, a bag of cranberries doesn’t last very long in this household. Not long at all. First I made cranberry oatmeal, then I used almost 2x the prescribed amount (in the recipe) for the scones. Maybe that’s why they look so weird. But don’t let their looks deceive you, they are uber delicious! I really hate that I had to use a stick and a half butter to make the scones, because I can easily eat half of them. They’re not really chewy, yet crunchy, and tart (but sweet). So perfect.

Cranberry Scones
(from thekitchn)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries (I used more like 2 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
Zest of 1 small orange (I totally forgot to about this)
2 1/4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter
1 egg, beaten (I used egg beaters)
1/2 cup milk (I used 1% organic)
Extra flour
White sugar, for topping

Directions:

Heat the oven to 350F and prepare two baking sheets by lining with parchment or lightly spraying with spray oil.

In the bowl of a food processor, whiz the cranberries until lightly chopped. Dump out into a bowl toss with the brown sugar and orange zest. In the food processor, whiz the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cut the chilled butter into small pieces and whiz with the flour in the processor until fine and crumbly. Mix with the sugar and cranberries and stir in the beaten egg and milk.

Sprinkle the counter or a board with flour, and dump the dough out on it. It will be very wet and sticky. Cut out rounds using a biscuit cutter or glass, and put on baking sheet. Sprinkle the tops with sugar.

(here’s the deal, the dough is super sticky. I just used my hands and then resorted to using a spoon. They’re not perfectly round, but I don’t really care)

Bake for about 25 minutes or until just getting golden. Serve warm with plenty of butter.

I saw this recipe last week and it’s been on my mind ever since. Yesterday, I bought lollipop sticks at Michael’s and today, I went to work. I’m not the biggest perfectionist out there, actually I’m not a perfectionist at all. So when I started making the lollipops, I ended up making a couple of huge ones that I had to separate manually.

See, what I mean? So, what did I do? While the caramels were still semi-soft, I rolled them. Yep, I picked up each stick, gently separated each caramel pop and rolled it.

These are pretty easy to make (as long as you don’t burn the sugar) and you can easily pour the caramel into molds and make lollipops of different shapes.

I took the recipes from a posting on the Working Class Magazine that also adds chocolate drizzled over the pops. I was too lazy and don’t care much about chocolate to begin with (if given a choice, I will almost always choose caramel over chocolate).

Yield: Approximately 20 lollipops, depending on size

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/8 cup water
2 tablespoons heavy cream, room temperature
1 cup bittersweet chocolate, tempered (optional)
lollipop sticks
vegetable oil

Directions:

Grease two metal baking sheets with oil. In a heavy bottom pan, combine sugar and water over medium high heat. Bring the sugar to a boil. As the sugar starts to cook, swirl the pan by the handle to help the sugar cook evenly. After 5-8 minutes the sugar will begin to color. When the caramel is a deep, amber color (be careful not to burn, sugar will quickly scorch) remove pan from heat and add cream. Swirl to mix cream with sugar to create a homogeneous caramel. Working quickly, carefully pour the hot caramel into small rounds on the greased baking sheets. After pouring, immediately place a lollipop stick in each. Let caramel cool completely, approximately 15 minutes.

(optional)

Over a double boiler, gently melt chocolate. When chocolate is smooth and shiny, remove from heat. Using a small teaspoon, decoratively drizzle the warm chocolate over the caramel lolliops. Let cool completely, approximately 30 minutes.

Store in airtight container.

Saturday, our friends Alex and Irina came over for dinner. Andy helped me make chili and I made Pecan Turtle Brownies….from scratch. I have never really been into baking, so when I “bake”, it usually comes from a box. Not this time. After I saw this recipe, I felt a momentary lapse of fear and decided to make these.

The brownies turned out extremely thick and really really chocolaty. Everyone loved the topping but for me, it was a little too many pecans. I’m a great fan of walnuts so I think, next time, I’ll be using walnuts instead.

This was my first time making caramel, of any sort. My friend Irina helped me and calmly talked me through proper cooking. Here’s the deal - be calm, keep “swishing”, and breathe. When the mixture starts to boil, lift the pot about an inch off the stove and swirl the mixture (not stir) clockwise or counter clockwise (or both!). When the mixture starts turning brownish color, be ready.

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After a successfull attempt at making caramel this past weekend (more on that later), I feel confident enough to try making these. Maybe this coming weekend?

fromme-toyou:

Chocolate-Caramel Lollipops

recipe by Molly Shuster, a shoot we did for the last issue of Working Class Magazine

I assure you, they are delicious!

My friend Patti wanted to share the following recipe for snickerdoodles. Honestly, if I ever make cookies, it’s usually from pre-packaged stuffs. Never from scratch. I hope to make these soon and let you know how they came out.

Ingredients:
1 cup shortening (I use crisco)
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 3/4 cups of flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsps cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp ground cinnamon 
2 tbsp white sugar

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Mix shortening and white sugar until smooth
3. Add cream of tartar, salt and baking powder and blend eggs one at a time.
4. Stir in flour slowly until blended well.
5. Roll dough into walnut sized balls.
6. Mix 2 tbsp white sugar with 2 tbsp white cinnamon.
7. Roll dough balls around in sugar/cinnamon mixture.
8. Place dough balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
9. Bake for 8-10 minutes each until very lightly brown.
10. Let rest on elevated cooling racks until just above room temperature
11. Store cookies quickly, they will become stale quickly if left out.
12. Enjoy!

For Thanksgiving, I made exactly 1 contribution – Cranberry Sauce. To my taste, it was amazing. The recipe is simple and it can be whipped up very quickly.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 (12-ounce) package fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed, drained and sorted through, removing any stems or deflated ones (I used fresh, Ocean Spray cranberries)
Several strips of orange peel, or thick pieces of zest
A few squeezes of orange juice (I used the juice from a fresh orange)

Directions
Combine water and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to boil; add cranberries and zest, return to boil. Reduce heat and boil gently for 10-14 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add a few squeezes of fresh orange juice. Cover and cool completely at room temperature. Refrigerate until serving time.

Source (and other cranberry sauce recipes)