Top Ten Things I Made in 2012

It's been quite a year.  I've cooked some tasty foods.  I've eaten some tasty foods. I've created 96 blog posts for you kids.  I've loved every second of it.  Now I shall give you a run-down of my 10 favorite foods I cooked this year.

#10. Bacon crackers

#9. Tamale Pie

#8. Pretzel Crusted Peanut Butter Tart

#7. Ridiculous Brownies

#6. Cheez-It Chicken

#5. Pulled Pork Wontons with Cheddar Cheese Sauce

#4. Sweet Potato Cream Spaghetti with Crispy Kale

#3. Blue Cheese Popovers with Prosciutto Balsamic Chicken

#2.  Cake Filled Peanut Butter Cups

#1. Buffalo Chicken Macaroni and Cheese Pizza

Christmas Cookies Part 2

So I can officially say we are done baking.  Around 11am the oven was turned off.  Done and done.

This post features: sesame seed cookies, chocolate dipped shortbread cookies, gingerbread men, and our adorable edible gifts of candied pecans and chocolate chip pumpkin bread.









That's all I've got for you kiddies.  Hope you all have a merry Christmas! Eat until you can eat no more.  Then find that extra room in your belly and have another cookie cause it's Christmas dammit!

Christmas Cookies Part 1

The big Christmas baking bonanza began earlier this week, my apologies for keeping you waiting.

So far in the cookie category we have: spritz, chocolate crinkles, nut balls, chocolate pretzels, and my personal contribution peanut butter pretzel cookies.

There are still 3 more batches to go, not to mention the kickass food gifts I'll be cooking up as well.  Come back real soon!

Also, if you have a spare moment please vote for my photos over at Food Stories Blog.  I'm in second place for photo of the year, click here to vote for my creamy sweet potato pasta with crispy kale.  I'm also in second place for the month of December contest, click here to vote for my Christmas tree cupcake.

Cookie Exchange

This passed Friday an amazing thing happened.  4 delicious cookies were made, 2 glorious Christmas movies were watched, and 10 bellies were filled.

I made Martha Stewart's potato chip cookies.  The recipe can be found here.  I followed the recipe exactly, only adding a little Christmas pizzaz with chocolate and sprinkles when they were done baking.







The other cookies of the night were: holiday 7 layer bars, chocolate pecan sandies, and Oreo cheesecake cookies.



I also made a Crock Pot of hot chocolate served up with your choice of boozy accompaniments.



This event was a great start to the holiday season!! Thanks to those who came and many thanks to those that baked!

Creamy Chicken Tacos

This is a glorious Crock Pot recipe, it made me love my Crock Pot even more than I already did.  I also really liked the fact that I "pinned" this recipe and then made it mere days later.  I try my best to actually make the things I pin and not pin all willy-nilly with stuff I know I'll never actually make.

So now that I've pat myself on the back enough, on to the food!



I made some slight tweeks to the recipe (found here) in terms of how much I made and how long I cooked it (because I didn't use frozen chicken), but I pretty much followed this one to the T.



I ate it atop a soft taco shell.  One eater complained that it was too sloppy and required a hard shell, you be the judge of that one.  I also ate some the next day with some chips and it was just as wonderful.  If you own a Crock Pot I highly suggest you make this for dinner.  In case you needed another plus, it'll most likely last you all week long. Holler.

Oreo Brownie Cookies

This post goes out to my good pal Gary Gulman.  He's not really my good pal, he's a moderately famous comedian, but I like to think he is because he knew who I was at one of his shows once.  It was a pretty amazing moment that I'm not letting go of anytime soon.  I do weird things like bake for him and invite him to my New Years Eve party.  You should all watch his Comedy Central special tonight at 10pm because he's hilarious.

I made these Oreo brownie cookies because he has jokes about both of these food items.  Also I knew that this brownie roll out cookie recipe would be a great use for my puzzle cookie cutter that you have all been waiting to see.

Here is a photo of the giant ball of dough this recipe makes. 

Check out these babies all lined up ready to get into the oven. Too cute!

This recipe made a lot of cookies.

I busted out the second cooling rack and they still didn't fit.

These babies are delicious.  I bet they would taste great with a nice glass of milk. 

Baked Mac and Cheese

I don't know about you guys, but I love fried onions.  These little guys that come in a can, you know what I'm talking about? They are delicious.  I put them on top of my burgers, heck I eat 'em by the handful (when no one is looking of course).   Recently a light bulb went off in my head (or maybe over it, cartoon style).  I thought why not top some baked mac and cheese with fried onions! "YES!" "GENIUS!"  I proclaimed.



And so it was.  I used American and cheddar cheeses, dropped in some hot sauce and mustard to jazz it up a bit, and milk and butter as per usual.  I health-ified it with a box of frozen spinach.



This may have been one of the best things I have made in a while. Mmmmmm looking forward to eating it again for lunch tomorrow.



P.S. For those of you who were concerned, the puzzle piece cookie cutter arrived today!  It came all the way from England.

Sugar Cookies

I had grand ideas when it came to what to bake for my aunt's 60th birthday bash this weekend.  She is a puzzle maniac like me so I hopped on over to Amazon during my black Friday binge and ordered a puzzle cookie cutter.  This I was super psyched about.  I don't really have any neat cookie cutters thus I don't ever make roll-out cookies, so I was excited to change things up.  Sadly said awesome puzzle cookie cutter did not arrive in time.

I decided I have the piping skills to pipe puzzle pieces onto cookies since I did make that awesome puzzle cake.  I used a sugar cookie recipe from my cookbook bible.



Then I made some icing with confectioner's sugar, butter, half-and-half, and vanilla.



I had fun decorating these, but I feel they came out looking like a kid made them.  Regardless of their less than impressive appearances, these cookies were a big hit.



Now what kind of cookies will I make once that puzzle cookie cutter finally arrives.....

Tomato Cheddar Soup

This was a hastily thrown together meal.  Prepare to be underwhelmed.  I got the recipe for tomato cheddar soup here.  Of course since it was so hastily thrown together I was not able to follow the recipe exactly.

Here is a shot of the ingredients I used.  Note the lack of fresh basil and Greek yogurt.  I used milk to give it a creamy-ness, but I be the first to admit it really didn't do the trick.  It also needed like 8 times more cheddar.



I had an assistant whip up some extra buttery garlic bread for dunking.

Let's just use this post as a little time filler for the show stoppers that are hopefully coming next week.  They can't all be winners right?

Thanksgiving Burger

Since Thanksgiving leftovers seem to be an endless burden in this household, I took it upon myself to finish them off for good for tonight's dinner.

Feast your eyes on my Thanksgiving burger!



Let's go from the bottom up: Texas toast, cranberry sauce, burger, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, turkey.



And get a load of this overhead shot.

In the words of Usher let us say oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh my gooooooooooood.

Yea it was that good.

Thanksgiving

I know I've left you all with baited breath waiting to find out what I made for Thanksgiving.  I can gladly say the wait is over my friends!  I give you Thanksgiving dinner!

The dinner menu consisted of: turkey, stuffing, corn bread pudding, sweet potato casserole, glazed carrots, braised brussel sprouts, broccoli casserole, twice baked potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

The dessert menu consisted of: pumpkin cheesecake, pecan pie, cream puffs, and apple butter seven layer bars.

How do you make those wonderful sounding apple seven layer bars you ask? Well I can certainly share that!

This is the ingredient line-up.  The recipe can be found here. 

I must say they came out wonderful!

We definitely had a delicious Thanksgiving, I hope you did too!

Cranberry Sauce

Ok, ok, I know Thanksgiving is still 3 days away, but the ladies in this household simply cannot hold back from cooking any longer!  Racking our brains for what can be made 3 days in advance we came up with cranberry sauce and the stuffing saute stuff (apples, celery, onions, pecans, craisins, mushrooms).

For the cranberry sauce I combined ingredients from a few recipes I looked at on the Food Network web site.

 I chose to use orange juice, lemon and orange zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

The cranberries literally pop while they cook.  Look out, they might burn you!

This is the lovely mush it all turns into when it's finished.  Dammit it's just impossible to take food pictures at night. Ugh. Well, I promise you it tastes good annnnnd I hope you are excited to see what else I cook up this Thanksgiving!

Tamale Pie

This is a dinner I've been meaning to re-make for a while now.  The first time I made it I took some really awful photographs that I just couldn't allow myself to post on this blog.

The original recipe for chicken tamale pie can be seen at pinch of yum's blog here.  The first time I made it with chicken, this time around I doubled the recipe and made it vegetarian with zucchini.

Here's the ingredient line-up.  I used a real egg and not egg substitute the recipe calls for.

I was going to take a picture of how disgusting the corn bread layer looks in the mixing bowl so we could all laugh about it, but it was really just to gross to permanently put on the web.  Instead here is a lovely photo of the finished product.

Instead of an image of the gross mixing bowl I'll let you have this unappealing photo to remember me by.  I know it does look spectacular, but trust me its crazy good.  One eater claimed "this is quite possibly the best thing you have ever made. ever."  P.S. it was not my mother, so it gets even more credibility.

Make it for dinner this week, I promise you'll love every last bite of it.