Recipe #9: Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies

This was not a good day for me.

Or I should say, it was a very interesting and eventful recipe. For one thing, I had gotten the recipe off the back of a bag of peanut butter chips, which made more than I wanted, so my mom and I struggled our way through fractions to try and halve the recipe. The second thing is that I think I came very close to lighting our house on fire with a handheld blender.

You see, usually when I'm baking and have to mix stuff I use this big electric mixer with a metal bowl. You flip the switch and presto, you've got cake batter. But this time my mother recommended I use a handheld blender, mostly because the electric mixer is a real pain to wash and she suspected that I would leave it for her to clean, which wasn't a completely unfathomable thought. I figured at least this time I wouldn't forget about the butter stuck to the bottom of the bowl like I did with that cake. Yet the first time I tried to blend that butter it got stuck in those detachable blades every single time! And every single time I had to scrape it out with a knife and a rubber spatula and the whole process would repeat every five minutes. It was one of the most annoying experiences in all my eighteen years of life. After I finally got through with the butter I had to mix in the dry and wet ingredients. Thus the irritating process began once again. Towards the end, when I was almost done mixing the final dough when I thought I smelled something burning and shrugged it off. That is, until I realized there was a thick stream of smoke coming from the blender in my hand. Thanks to my calm and quick-mannered mind, I freaked out and threw the cursed thing in a bowl, but not without cutting my finger while trying to unscrew the blades. Like I said, bad day. But thankfully it was made better because my cookies turned out perfectly! Well, granted, I actually made the little balls of dough bigger than they needed to be and so I had a small scare when they were still gooey even after the timer went off. But they became firm as they cooled and turned out delicious! And I have vowed never again to use that handheld blender.

Start Time: 4:30 pm

End Time: 6:17 pm

Recipe #8: Devil's Food Cake

I don't know what it is but I have now added 'cakes' to the list of things that just do not agree with me while cooking. If you'll recall my first recipe was an apple crunch cake which, although it turned out fine, was not the result I wanted and bothered me for a while. I figured this was my chance to redeem myself and get a more accomplished feeling. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

One interesting thing I learned while reading the recipe is why devil's food cake is reddish in color; it's because of the chemical reaction between the cocoa powder and baking soda. It's science! Who knew?

The initial process of gathering and mixing the ingredients was simple enough, however right at the beginning was where I messed up. The first thing I did was take out two sticks of butter and let them thaw to room temperature so that they would be mix easily in the electric mixer. They were still a bit too hard when I put them in the mixer but I figured since the mixer's doing the work for me, why should I care? I did everything else right; the baking soda, cocoa powder, flour, sugar, eggs, and by the time it was all nice and mixed, I thought everything was going surprisingly smooth.

Then while I was pouring the batter into the baking pans I realized, in horror, that most of the butter was stuck to the bottom of the bowl. It had molded there and wasn't mixed in with the rest of the batter because I had neglected to scrape the sides of the bowl in between adding new ingredients. My dad told me that it was most likely the cake might turn out dry so I was very nervous for it come out. And things didn't go all too well when it did. Even though I had been sure to grease the cake pans before pouring in the batter, the two cake halves were stuck fast to the pans. My mom and I spent five minutes with spatulas trying to pry the cake from the pans with ripping it too much. The bad news is that the bottoms of the cake halves were a bit gouged at the bottom, but the good news is that it wasn't that dry! And it was probably a bit healthier too, due to the lack of butter.

Start Time: 3:24pm

End Time: 5:02pm

Recipe #7: Chocolate Chip Muffins

This day shall forever be known, to me, as the day of the Sugar Incident.

Also, from this day onwards, I intend to hold a vengeful distaste for sugar. Not when it's used as an ingredient in things like cookies and other sugary things, but on its own.

Basically, today I decided to bake chocolate chip muffins following up on my previous baking success. My mom was out shopping, my younger sister at school, and my dad was home sick so this was once again an independent venture. And a successful one at that!

This was the recipe I used: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/chocolate-chip-muffins/Detail.aspx

The assembling of the ingredients was very easy. Lots of flour and sugar and such. At one point I accidentally mixed up the sugar and salt; I had a whole half cup of salt at the ready to pour in when I decided to read the instructions again and realized my mistake. I just nearly dodged that disastrous bullet. All I had to do was mix together all of the dry ingredients in one bowl and add them to a mixture of egg, milk, and oil. Stir it all together (just enough so that the dry ingredients were moist) and pour into the muffin cups. Believe it or not, the pouring was the most difficult part for me until I got a spatula. I had actually started preheating the oven in advance this time so it was ready by the time I had finished with the batter. I slid the sheet in with only relative timidness, set the timer for 25 minutes, and sat back thinking things couldn't have gone smoother.

But, of course, that would've been too easy. The readers of this blog will forever be the only ones to learn of the truth about the Sugar Incident.

Anyway, I did a final quick scan of the instructions about 17 minutes later and realized that I had forgotten to sprinkle the brown sugar mixture over the muffins. They were nearly finished baking and so I panicked. I quickly stirred some brown sugar and white sugar together and, because my irrational fear of ovens, I stood at arms length and flicked it over the muffins with a spoon. Of course the sugar went everywhere around the oven and settled unevenly over the muffins. Unfortunately they were pretty much done by that point and so the sugar just sat there, an unnecessary eyesore. It looked almost unnatural and so, still a state of mild panic, I started to do damage control. I slid all the muffins out of the sheet, which was covered with sugar, and tried to arrange them on a platter, but the sugar was too noticeable. I then spent the next ten minutes taking each muffin individually and attempting to brush the sugar off with my fingers.

However, when that was all done, I realized that the sugar had gotten stuck to the muffin cups. I then spent the next fifteen minutes unwrapping each muffin. Some of them were a bit stuck to the wrapper so I had to use a fork to try and jiggle them out without tearing the muffins. This was the worst part because it turns out when you try to forcibly unwrap a muffin in a sugar coated wrapper, the sugar will be flicked back at you and go into your eye. Spent a good five minutes attempting to wash sugar out of my eye. I can actually feel some of it still in my eye as I write this. And for the record, despite it being sugar, my eye does not feel sweet. Also, when you try to shake the muffin sheet out over the garbage, there is no guarantee that it won't go all over the floor.

In the end, I miraculously covered up everything and disposed of all incriminating evidence. Hopefully my mother will not notice that her kitchen is covered in a very light dusting of sugar. But on the bright side, my muffins came out great!

Start Time: 12:31pm

End Time: 3:01pm

Recipe #6: Peanut Butter Cookies

And so I begin my adventures in baking! Which I have now realized is way more fun than normal cooking (because it's much more fun to eat your creations afterwards). I decided to undertake this recipe when I was home alone one day because, as I have now realized, cooking by yourself is a very nice feeling; it's a very relaxing, almost tranquil feeling. I was a bit nervous because I don't necessarily know where all my mom's cooking appliances are and, you know, there's always the chance I could burn the house down, but I was determined to succeed!

I know perfectly well that cooking is a science and the slightest misstep can be disastrous, as I learned to a lesser degree with my apple cake. I had to combine all the ingredients in very specific amounts in a very specific order and so I used special caution. I was actually a bit paranoid, if the truth be told; I must've read the instructions at least ten times over. But in the end it wasn't really all too scary and difficult; it's just cookies after all.

I'd never used a mixer before and was extremely close to using a handheld blending thing before I called my mom to ask and she told me to use the big blender. Crisis avoided! After the dough was all ready I had to roll it into little balls and place it on the cooking sheet. Also, for some reason it had never occurred to me that the hex marks on peanut butter cookies are very easily made by a fork. Not sure why this was such a huge realization to me.

The second encounter with the oven and I was a bit more relaxed this time. I almost took them out too late but realized it and they were just perfect! I am very very proud of this accomplishment.

Start Time: 2:46pm

End Time: 4:08pm

Recipe #5: Tacos

Tacos are pretty basic as far as cooking goes, but this was my first experience cooking with meat and I mean actual beef from Shop Rite that I bought with my mom. I also did this partly on my own and partly with my mom because she has much wisdom to offer on cooking meat.

First off, I had to cook the meat in a pan, mashing it up with a wooden spoon. The thing to watch out for with this is to make sure the meat doesn't stick to the pan because it's pretty squishy at first and spreads out stickily. Also, while it's cooking, a lot of the fat and juices come out. I had to very carefully spoon off the top layer of juice, the greasy looking bubbles, which is all fat and put it into a little bowl. My mom says it's good to keep the fat because it's very good as grease but it all looked pretty gross to me.

Then I had to cut up some onions, garlic, and olives to saute with the beef. Olives are pretty gross, especially in the bottle in all the salty brine. And my mom made me pour it into my hand to get the olives out! Yuck.

What really made my taco meat unique were a few special ingredients, thanks to my mom. She makes these frozen cubes of tomato sauce and sofrito - blended onion, green pepper, and cilantro - which is the 'holy trinity of spices' in Puerto Rican cooking. She also added this orangey powder called sazon, another kind of Puerto Rican seasoning. This is stuff my mom uses all the time in her cooking that I never realized was so unique! It's definitely something I intend to do as well later in life.

While cooking everything together I realized that my meat was too salty. The way to combat this is to add water and, over the hour or so that the meat was cooking, I had to use a lot of water to fix the taste. But, in the end, it turned out fine. Or so my family said because I didn't have any. For some reason, after spending so long cooking, the last thing I want to do is eat it. Maybe it was because I had to taste the meat so many times to make sure it wasn't too salty or just that I was tired of the smell. This is definitely a new emotion for me and so far I find that cooking can lead to many feelings.

Start Time: 4:50pm

End Time: 7:28pm

Recipe #4: Macaroni & Cheese

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that macaroni and cheese is my favorite food of all time (second only to bacon) so this was a recipe I just had to do. And I am particularly proud of this accomplishment because I did it all by myself. My mom was technically in the room but she was helping my sister with something so I was pretty much on my own.

The only difficult part of this dish was the cheese sauce. Sauce in general tends to be pretty temperamental and cheese sauce can curdle easily so it has to be kept warm and stirred consistently. Unfortunately my previous attempt at Hollandaise sauce did not teach me that timing is important when it comes to making sauce and I ended up making it before boiling the pasta. Again.

Thankfully I somehow managed to salvage the whole thing. I just gave it a few mixes every few minutes or so and it worked out just fine. The macaroni boiled extremely slow and so my mom taught me a trick about boiling pasta. Apparently, if you put a bunch of salt in the water, it boils faster. Who knew? It also flavors the water and, by proxy, the pasta but doesn't make it overly salty.

Then, of course, I had to put it in the oven. I hate ovens. I hate anything that could potentially burn me in general, but this one time, when I was very young, I burned my hand trying to take something out of the oven by myself. Then later, when I wasn't so young, I burned my finger trying to make s'mores on a stove. Because of these incidents I have an irrational fear of ovens and so, on my first attempt at pushing the dish inside, I was standing at a too far distance and almost dropped it in the oven, which would have ruined my whole day. Thankfully I was more successful on my second try and managed to push it in there.

The result: Delicious! I was a little surprised that it didn't look nearly like the macaroni and cheese I usually have at school (not including Kraft mac & cheese because of that fake orange excuse for cheese that is surprisingly delicious). This is most likely because I used milk instead of cream in the sauce, but it turned out excellent anyway.

Start Time: 12:02 pm

End Time: 3:15 pm

(You see? It looks nothing like the mac & cheese at Stevie!)

Recipe #3: Eggs Benedict

The other day we had a huge snowstorm and so the local high school, where my younger sister is a junior, had a snow day. I figured, since the whole family was kind of stuck at home, this would be a perfect opportunity to do something special for breakfast and so I made eggs benedict, which happens to be my dad's favorite breakfast. There's something very pleasing about making someone's favorite dish or making something specifically for another person. Especially when they're eating it and seeing their satisfied expression; it's a great feeling!

This was more difficult than I thought it would be so my mom and younger sister were kind of acting as sous chefs. The premise of the overall product sounds pretty simple: an egg and Canadian bacon (or just cooked ham) on a toasted piece of bread or English muffin, covered in Hollandaise sauce. But it's not just any egg; it's a poached egg, and I had never even eaten a poached egg before so I had idea what it was supposed to look or taste like.

I started out making the Hollandaise sauce, which is really just butter, very rich. I had to mix the ingredients very carefully in a bowl set in a pot of boiling water. The way it worked was that the sauce would be heated by the steam made by the boiling water.Although the sauce turned out perfectly, I hadn't timed it very well and my mom and sister had to take turns stirring the sauce to keep it from burning while I made the poached eggs. The eggs weren't too difficult but making them was strange; I had to fill up a frying pan halfway with boiling water and then slide the egg in very carefully, trying not to let it spread out too much. This took an infuriatingly long time to cook but I had to wait until the area around the yolk was firm and then use a spoon to splash some of the water over the yolk, which makes it settle.

The next aspect of this was the Canadian bacon. At first I was very excited to make bacon until I realized that Canadian bacon is not normal bacon, it's just like ham. Leave it to Canada to have a different definition of bacon. Anyway we only had lunchmeat ham so I just put some of that in a frying pan and it turned out well. Finally I put it all on top of toast and voila, eggs benedict. And it was delicious! I love the feeling that I made that snow day a little more special.

Start Time: 10:12 am

End Time: 12:49 pm