Before & After: Chocolate Chip Quick Bread!

Last night, I decided to make Chocolate Chip Quick Bread. I forgot that I'm trying to create everlasting memories to share through this blog, so I was practically done before it occurred to me to document the activity. As a result, this will be a "Before & After" post.

For example: BEFORE I began making the bread, Wes said, "don't waste the chocolate chips on that!" AFTER the bread baked and cooled, Wes ate two pieces. Let us continue...

I first preheated the oven to 350 degrees. The recipe I used (which you can find here) makes two loaves of bread, so I cut it in half to make only one.

The following dry ingredients are combined in a large bowl:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 tablespoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

**My variation: 1/4 cup granulated sugar + 1/8 cup granulated sugar + 1/8 cup BROWN SUGAR. I <3 brown sugar. Next time, I'll probably throw some cinnamon in there as well.

In a smaller bowl, combine the following:

1 large egg

3.5/4 cup milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

**My variation: Pour in a teaspoon or two of vanilla just for fun.

Add the wet ingredients into the large bowl of dry ingredients and mix until moistened. At this time you can add in 1 cup of chocolate chips (or more if you're feeling wild) and a cup of walnuts (but who would do that?).

The mixture is ready for the bread pan and can cook for 55-60 minutes. If you are doing one loaf though, I would suggest checking on your bread ten minutes or so before your timer goes off. It may not need the entire cooking time.

For the sake of spicing things up by using more pictures, I would like to show you the Before/After of my kitchen. The miraculous clean-up occurred while the delicious treat above was baking.

In summation, this bread is delish and I've eaten too much of it since last night. 

Cake in a Mug!

Today, Krista introduced me to the website moredesignplease.com, so all I've been doing this evening is looking at all of the posts, links, etc. and adding them to my Pinterest. I did stumble upon one idea, however, that needed to be immediately dealt with. Cake in a Mug! 

The ingredients were all simple items that most anyone would have on hand.

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional? ya right.)
A splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

First, all of the dry ingredients were mixed well in the coffee mug. I added the egg and mixed well and then added the milk and oil. After the mixture was homogeneous, I added the chocolate chips and vanilla extract. 

I gave the batter a final mix and cooked it for 3.5 minutes in the microwave. The cake cooled for a few minutes and I then added icing and some chocolate chips!

I can't say that this is the most delicious treat I've ever had, in fact I would say a fair comparison would be a TV dinner brownie. That being said, it took all of about 5 minutes to make and would probably be a really fun activity to do with kids. While probably pointless, I still like the idea of eating cake out of a mug.

Here's the original posting as well as a picture of a more tasty looking version: Cake in a Mug! 

Pessssto!

In an attempt to have fun/not spend too much money/make something delish, Smorgan and I set out to make a batch of pesto!

 We purchased:

 

(For future reference, we will find a substitute for the $6 pine nuts. They weren't bad, but didn't add $6 worth of flavor.)

Picked some:

from Smorgan and Priscilla's stashes, borrowed Priscilla's food processor and got to work!

We used: 

2 Cups of fresh basil

1.5 cloves of garlic

2/3 Cup of Pine Nuts

1/3 Cup olive oil

 

Primarily using the "pulse" setting, we mixed our ingredients until the basil, garlic and pine nuts were a mostly homogeneous mixture. Afterward, we added 1/4 Cup grated Parmesan which aided in thickening our pesto as well as soaking up some of the oil that seemed excessive. 

This was the part of the day when the garbage disposal drain got clogged, Smorgan had to plunge the sink and said "don't put up a picture of this."

We each made our own batches of pesto and had beautiful, green, garlic-ey/basil goodness to devour! 

Every bit of my pesto was used to construct pesto-grilled cheese sandwiches. They were delicious and reason enough to make more pesto in the future! "But you don't have to take my word for it..."

FIRST POST

C'mon girls. It's time to jump in and write your little hearts out!

Smorgan brought me some home-made laundry soap today at church. She needs to POST THE RECIPE. Also, I found this recipe for homemade dishwasher soap while perusing through some comments. I thought Smorgan said she was looking for one...

Recipe for Dishwasher Powder: 1 c Borax, 1 c Baking Soda, 1/4 c Salt, 1/4 c Citric Acid, 30 drops Orange essential oil or another citrus e.o. Mix in a mason jar and use 1tb in the wash cup. Costs about 8Cents/load.


It was on this blog: http://annasnest.com/article/laundry-detergent


I want to make some simple surface cleaner as well that isn't as harsh on my hands/the environment. So maybe that endeavor will be written about soon...


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