Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles. It's a fun word to say out loud. After baking a whole bunch for my friends for their holiday parties, I was baked out. But Scott asked me to bake one last thing for his dad. His parents have different ideas of the perfect cookie. His mom loves crunchy cookies - almost burnt; his dad loves the soft chewy type. Scott has the crunchy cookie down. Just bake them for a long time, but soft chewy cookies are a lot harder. You have time it correctly. You want a nice crunchy outer shell, but the inside has to be chewy and delicious.

He asked me to help him out. Since I was going to be stressed out about taking the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) test, I knew that baking was a great stress reliever. I bring them to work and I have a big group of people to eat them without having to force Scott to bring them to work or eat them himself. It's a great deal!

I made half of this recipe twice. So yes, I made a full recipe, but I found the second time I made it, it was much better. This is my second version of the cookie.

Snickerdoodles
(adapted from Joy of Baking)
Ingredients:
Cookie: 
1 3/8 cup of all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 cup of unsalted butter (1 stick)
3/4 cup of granulated white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla (or imitation)
optional: 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon


Cinnamon Sugar:
1/4 cup of granulated white sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon (add more if you would like)


Directions:
If you're like me and you don't start baking until you feel like, you won't have room temperature butter. The best way to get it soft is to microwave it. If you put it straight from the refrigerator, you'll have to first put it in for about a minute and a half, and then at half minute intervals. It should be fine around 2 minutes or so. After it's soft, you can add the sugar. Mix until combined (I use a spatula, but you can use an electric mixer). Add the egg and vanilla. MIX IT WELL.


Then add the flour, baking powder, and salt together. I know most places have you mix it in a separate bowl, but really, I don't have the time to wash so many dishes. If you mix it well, it won't really matter...I hope. 


Then make the cinnamon sugar, just mix the sugar and cinnamon together. Shape the dough into a ball. I use a tablespoon to make sure that my cookies are around the same size. I like to place my sugar and cinnamon into a shallow bowl (or a ramekin) so it's easier to roll around. After rolling it in the cinnamon sugar, I place it on parchment paper or a silpat. Then press down until it's about 1/2 inch. Before placing it into the oven, I sprinkle some of the cinnamon sugar on top, generously. 


Heat oven to 400 degrees F and bake for about 10 minutes. After letting it cool on the pan for 5 minutes, it's ready for consumption, or placing into tupperware for someone else to eat. 


ENJOY!

Apple Cinnamon Cupcakes

As I start to clean my new apartment, I realize that I have loads of food that I brought up when I started summer school. Mostly my mom made me bring apples up. I also bought a whole bunch of fruit recently, too. I'm also trying to make room for my roommate who is going to be moving in soon. With all that, the next couple of non-group posts should be able random fruit that I have in the fridge.

Like I said before, I had loads of apples, I thought that I could make some apple related items. Last year, I made some mini apple pies and this apple dapple cake that were both well received. This time I decided to make some cupcakes with it.

I found this recipe off of Tracey's blog. She's a great blogger and I just love all of her wonderful recipes. She had made this in the fall which makes sense since it does have some wonderful fall flavors, but the weather in Northern California has been fall-like so it just made sense.

Apple Cinnamon Cupcakes
[adapted from Everyday Food]

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup [half a stick] butter, melted
1/4 cup natural (unsweetened) applesauce
3/4 cups packed light-brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup of cubed apple [I'm not sure what type of apple I used, but it was pretty good]

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a cupcake pan with 12 paper liners (or butter the pan).

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.

In a large bowl, combine butter, applesauce, brown sugar, and eggs. Whisk until smooth.

Gradually whisk in dry ingredients just until combined (do not overmix). Using a rubber spatula, fold in cubed apple.

Spoon approximately 3 tablespoons in each cupcake. Bake until a tester inserted in cake comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes; remove cupcakes from pan. Enjoy!

Mango Bread with Cinnamon-Rum-Strawberry Glaze [sms]

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays pick, Sweet Potato Bread with Cinnamon-Rum-Orange Glaze, was chosen by Lorelei of Mermaid Sweets. I instead made it with Mangoes and Strawberry.

I ended up using canned mangoes found in the grocery store. At first, I thought they tasted a bit weird out of the can, but it tasted fine when it came out of the oven.

I first pureed one can of mangoes and the other can, I chopped up and put it into the batter itself. It gave it two different ways of getting mango.

As for the glaze on top, I made it with strawberry juice and Puerto Rican rum. It was pretty good except for the fact the glaze was kind of too sticky or something. It was great regardless.

I had made this and Thin Mint cupcakes for the Bake sale. The next couple [or a lot] of pictures are from the Bake Sale on Saturday! Enjoy. [we made $1650 for charity!]

Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cinnamon cookies without the chocolate chips one of the two things my boyfriend requested, but since this whole box was chocolate themed, I decided to throw a couple of chocolate chips in. It tastes like a snickerdoodle, but with chocolate chips. It was so good.

Apple Cinnamon Muffins

When I normally have this urge to bake, I just find something and bake it. Typically it'll be something easy since I don't have everything onhand. When I bake for a purpose, I get all the materials and I'll have everything ready for myself. This time, I decided to bake with apples. There were a whole bunch of great apple recipes, but just didn't feel right. Then I decided to just look for a super easy one that also had good reviews. I found one!

This one was super easy to just throw together. The batter was a bit thick, so I added some vanilla extract to give it another dimension to it. Super easy, and super yummy!

I've frozen a whole bunch of them for a quick breakfast for the next couple of weeks. Should be fun!

recipe found here

Cinnamon Buns [sms]

This week's SMS, Sticky Buns with Toasted Almonds [I had just made the Cinnamon Bun version], was chosen by Jen of Not Microwave Safe. She's this awesome college student JUST LIKE ME!

Jason Mraz was this Friday. OMG HE WAS SO FREAKIN' AMAZING!

The Beautiful Stage

There were two opening acts for him, and they were pretty good, but I think everyone was just waiting for Jason Mraz! He was so beautiful and sang so nicely! LOVED IT! [btw. I apologize ahead of time for the quality of these pictures. Concert pictures are just so hard to capture!]

First opening act: Robert Francis


Second opening act: Brett Dennen

The most important though! JASON MRAZ!







This is him singing with Brett Dennen. in like the middle of the bleachers area.
Afterwards, he had sang a song with Make Peace Brothers, and one of the brothers while talking about their band, proposed to his girlfriend. It was just so sweet!

Jason was a great distraction from other stuff going on in my life. I guess I've just been super busy with this even that I've been planning for the past couple of months. It's going to be fantastic, if only the stuff will all get done.

Not only that, I guess I've just been super stressed out. I guess I'm not feeling too good about my relationship with my boyfriend right now. Maybe it's just me, but we've been getting into some really petty fights right now. Maybe its just midterm stress, maybe its just neither of us are getting enough sleep. Who knows. This happens a lot it seems. We get into these fights but I forget about them a couple weeks later and everything's okay. I guess being a upperclassman now just puts more stress on me. It's all about getting a job and having a future and I guess this uncertainty with him is kind of weird.

No more about that, I'm sure everything will be fine between the two of us. We have our moments but they always pass.

Recipe for the buns here! Make sure to check out the rest of the SMS bakers on the blogroll.

ps. I recently just got a twitter. Follow me!