Pizza Dough

Hello again. This is going to be my second post for today. Normally I don't have an opportunity to post twice in one day, but this time I figure I might as post this one while I'm here.
  This recipes is a very great variation from the other recipes I've posted on here. Because this one isn't sugary!
  *GASP* I know, I know. Its almost criminal. But this was the first time I've ever made home made pizza dough. And since this recipe is so incredibly simple, I figured it deserved to e shared. With only 6 ingredients and idiot proof techniques, this is one of the easiest recipes I have ever attempted.
 
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 package quick rising yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp olive oil
3/4 cup water

Directions:
1. Pulse flour, yeast, salt,and sugar in a food processor until mixed
2. Heat water and oil in a small saucepan over medium heat until small bubbles appear on the bottom of the pot.
3. With the food processor on slowly pour the water through the feed tube. Process until the dough forms a ball.
4. Now process for another minute to knead.
5. Transfer the dough ball to a lightly floured dinner plate and cover with plastic wrap.
6. Let sit for ten minutes, to rise.
7. Spread into a round pizza pan, and bake at 350 until it doesn't look doughy on the outside. It doesn't matter if you're not sure its baked for long enough because you'll be putting it in again later with the toppings.
8. Top with your favorite stuff and stick in the oven again. Bake until the bubbles in the cheese have turned a gorgeous shade of brown.

Little tips from me:
  When in doubt, bake longer. Since this was my first time I couldn't be entirely blamed, but in the center of one of my pizzas it was a little doughy. If you don't think its done, stick it in for another 5 minutes.
  For those of you who don't buy your yeast in packages, 1 package of yeast is equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast. You're welcome.

I didn't get a picture of the dough before I covered it in toppings so instead, enjoy a picture of what I had for lunch on Saturday.

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

  Hey, what's up baking geeks? You may recall a while back I posted a recipe for brownies. I started that post off by saying we had made these brilliant chocolate chip cookies on a slow day at this coffee shop I worked at,(Not anymore sadly) but since my mom wasn't in the mood for cookies that day, I made brownies instead.
  My mom still wasn't in the mood for chocolate again when I asked this time to make these, but I found a glorious little loophole. About half of the stuff that I post on here my family doesn't even get the chance to eat. A lot of it goes to a thing my church does every Friday night for 12 to 18 year-olds called youth group. So she wouldn't even have to eat them!
  I like to bring snacks to youth group because after about two hours of hanging out, everyone gets a hankering for something sugary. I try my hardest to always bring something, but this time it looked like I was cutting it a bit close. It was already 4 o'clock and I hadn't started anything, But remembering how quick these cookies were and how delicious they were, I figured I would have plenty of time to bake these and clean up afterward and that it would be totally worth it. So after about 5 minutes of convincing arguments on my part, my mom finally let me make them.
  These are classic chocolate chip cookies. They are soft and slightly chewy if done right, and have almost more chocolate the cookie. Just the way I like it. They are best served warm with a cozy blanket and a glass of milk.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Mix both types of sugar and the butter together into a fluffy mass in a large bowl.
2. Add the eggs, water, and vanilla and stir.
3. Now add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Beat with a wooden spoon until no lumps remain.
4. Stir the chocolate chips until evenly incorporated.
5. Place tablespoon amounts onto a baking sheet in a 3 by 4 grid pattern.
6. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until you can lightly touch the top and it springs most of the way back.
7. Let cool for 10 minutes and devour ;)

Little tips form me:
  If your arm gets sore from beating the dough lump-less, just use your hand. that's what I do and It's faster easier and you usually get more lumps gone that way.

Make sure to eat at least one of these before these have cooled completely. That's when they taste the best.

Peppernut Bread

  Yes, that's right. two posts in two days. Rapid fire blogging. This is because I baked the lemon cake and this bread on the same day. Four strait hours of baking. It was a good day.

  I don't know how long this recipe has been in my family. at least three generations. It's a decadently soft bread. strung through with gentle hints of cinnamon and black pepper. It's best served with a glass of milk and good book in a quiet room. So basically, if you don't like this bread, you're taste buds have died and you're overall sanity has entirely left you.

Ingredients:

2 cups hot water

2 cups milk

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 cup shortening (half and half melted butter and vegetable oil)

2 tbsp yeast

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp black pepper

2 tsp salt

flour to make a medium hard dough

Directions:

1. Put the water, milk, and shortening into a bowl. stir

2. Then add the then add the sugar, cinnamon, pepper, and stir.

3. Then sprinkle the yeast evenly over the surface of the liquid.

4. Add about 2 cups of flour and squish the lumps with your hand until they are almost all gone.

5. Repeat step 4 over and over, trying to get all the lumps gone, until it you can no longer squish the bread dough with one hand. (When the dough starts getting harder, put the flour on your hand and rub vigorously to get the pieces of dough off.)
6. When you've reached this point, sprinkle about 1/3 cup flour over the surface of the dough and proceed to knead the bread dough by gently punching about halfway down with both fists.
7. After all the flour has been kneaded into the dough, make a quarter turn with the bowl, gather dough up on the side facing away from you, and flip it up onto the rest of the dough.
8. Repeat steps 6-7, rubbing the sides of bowl occasionally to get all the little bits into the dough, until it's formed a nice ball.
9. Now pour about 2 teaspoons of grease down the side of the bowl in three or four different places, rubbing it around to coat the entire bowl.
10. Lift the ball of dough out of the bowl and tuck the sides under it to make it look like a giant bun.
11. Put the dough back into the bowl and cover with a clean plastic garbage bag.
12. Let it rise for 30-40 minutes or until it's doubled in bulk.
13. When it's done rising, cut the dough into four equal pieces.
14. One by one, knead each piece down until you have a rectangle-ish shape about 6x12 inches.
15. Then flip in the sides lengthwise and roll up into a cylinder shape.  Squish the seam and the ends shut.
16. Now lift up the cylinder by the ends. tucking them under, move it into a greased loaf pan.
17. Repeat steps 14-16 with all the dough.
18. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until nice and brown.

Little tips from me:
  Always make sure your flour canister is full before you start kneading. Because there is nothing more sucky than being halfway through kneading the dough and realizing you're out of flour.

Sorry if this recipe was too long for all you people that have made bread before, and also sorry if it's not descriptive enough for those of you ho haven't. I tired to make it understandable to anyone who is as amateurish at bread as I am.

Lemon-Glazed Cloud Cake

  Hello again darlings. If you haven't already guessed, I'm in a fabulous mood today. Want to know why? It's because when I logged into Blogger today, I had 3 views already today. It's 9;30 a.m.! How do I already have that many view today? But now to the inevitable statement; my blog is seriously lacking in the comments department. If you comment, I will reply. I have nothing better to do with my time so bring it on. Harass me for the fact that you just couldn't get something right, and I'll help you out. I know a lot of common sense baking tricks. Just ask.

  Anyway! I don't know about you guys, but my all time favourite dessert is, and always will be, chocolate cake. But the rest of my family gets tired of chocolate cake (-.-) and I can't post recipe after recipe of chocolate cake on here, so I baked a lemon cake instead.

  This cake is a fluffy, moist, cake with a very mild lemony flavour laced throughout. It has a lovely glaze with a gorgeous tang to it. This dessert would be best served at tea time with a delicate cup of Earl Gray.

  

Ingredients:

Cake:

1 cup Naturegg Simply Egg Whites, well shaken

2 cups Rogers Granulated Sugar

1 cup butter, melted

3 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup Astro Original 6% Plain Balkan Yogurt

1/3 cup ReaLemon Lemon Juice

2 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze:

1 cup Rogers Icing Sugar

1 tbsp ReaLemon Lemon Juice (approx.)

1 tbsp butter melted (approx.)

Directions:

1. Cake: Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. Evenly coat a 10 inch bundt pan with PAM No-Stick Cooking Spray.

3. Beat sugar and with butter in a large bowl until fluffy.

4. Then add the yogurt, lemon juice, and vanilla. stir until fully Incorporated.

5. Now add the flour, baking powder, and salt and beat until no lumps remain.

6. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

7. Fold the egg whites into the cake batter until streak free.

8. Scrape into the battered pan and bake for 50-55 minutes. Or until a toothpick inserted in, comes out clean. (You might want to use a kabob stick. This cake is like 4 inches deep.) Cool completely.

9. Glaze: Throw all the glaze ingredients into a bowl and stir.

10. Now add more of both butter and lemon juice until get it to an actually pourable consistency.

11. Drizzle over the cooled cake making sure to let some drip down the sides. Place into the fridge for about ten minutes or until the glaze has set.

Little tips form me:

  It doesn't matter if that doesn't look like enough egg whites to make the cake fluffy, DON'T ADD MORE. I did that and all I could taste in the cake was the eggs. 

  Also, you might try adding a tablespoon or so of fresh lemon zest. The cake kinda fell flat in that area.

P.S. I'm so sorry this blog post has more product placement than a Transformers movie, but the recipe doesn't belong to me, so I have to.

I do not own any of this recipe (Except the directions. The original recipe had 5 steps, and that's just wrong.). All rights belong to:

Naturegg,

Rogers,

Astro Original,

ReaLemon,

and PAM.

Brownie Pudding

  Welcome again to my lifestyle, you nerds. Baked anything yummy recently? Well, if you somehow, by some fluke of fate come across this post, you hopefully will be baking something yummy very soon.
  Now, I've already posted recipes for both chocolate cake (Black Forest Cake) and cheesecake (CheeseCake), and posted the hybrid recipe of those two things on here (Cream Cheese Chocolate Cupcakes). Now It's time for another hybrid recipe. Only this time with brownies and pudding!
  This dessert is quite a bit exactly what it sounds like. It's a moist, crumbly, chocolate cake with a rich, smooth, chocolate pudding underneath.
  This is a second generation recipe. I got it from my mother, who got it from her sister. Her sister's in-laws made it all the time and she figured that her siblings would like it. They all did. And I have no doubt that if you go through the bother of making this, you will greatly enjoy it too.
  This is served best as an evening dessert. After dinner or for night lunch. Warm in the microwave for about 15 seconds and top with a scoop of ice
cream. It's almost sinful how good it tastes.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
KEEP SEPARATE!!!
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
3 cups hot water

Directions:
1. Mix the melted butter and sugar together in a large bowl.
2. Add the milk and vanilla. Stir.
3. Now add the flour, salt, cocoa, and baking powder.
4. Beat until no lumps remain.
5. Spread evenly into a 9x13 baking pan.
6. In a new bowl mix together the sugar and cocoa that you were told to keep separate.
7. Sprinkle this mixture over the batter in the pan. Make sure to get it in all the corners.
8. Pour the 3 cups hot water over the batter.
9. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until you insert a fork 1/4 inch into the surface and break away a part and it's not doughy inside there. (I know it's not super exact, but there isn't really a perfect baking time. It's different every time I make it.)

Little tips from me:
  Be careful when moving the pan into the oven. The water you pour over top has a tendency to be quite spilly.

Oatmeal Cake

  Hello again, people of the internet. Sorry it's been so long. I could give you a whole long list of excuses, but I think I'll just skip it this time. It's kinda boring, I think.

  So who here likes boiled oatmeal, or porridge? Personally, I've never been a fan. My mom loves it though and since it has health benefits, it's a regular breakfast dish.

  Usually when we have oatmeal almost all of it gets eaten, but I guess my siblings and I weren't as hungry this morning as we normally are because there was still about a cup of oatmeal left. Normally we would just soak the pot in hot water and rinse the leftover stuff down the drain, but it seemed like such a waste. So I made a cake instead!

  This oatmeal cake is a very dense cake with a mild cinnamon flavour. It also has a chewy caramel coconut topping. Its perfect for any time of day, and alao happens to be the only cake dense enough to stick in a snack baggie and take to work or school.

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked oatmeal

1/2 melted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/3 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 salt

1 tsp cinnamon

  Topping:

6 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup cream

1 cup coconut

1/2 tsp vanilla

 

Directions:

1. Put both types of sugar and the melted butter into a large bowl and mix well.

2. Add the oatmeal and eggs and mix until all the lumps in the oatmeal are beaten out.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until completely combined. (Don't be fooled by how thick it is; it's supposed to be like that.)

4. Bake in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.

5. For the topping, mix together all the topping ingredients and spread evenly over the top of the cake.

6. Put back in the oven and bake for 5-10 minutes or until the topping is golden brown.

 

Little tips from me:

You have to be super careful when baking after the topping has been put on because if you bake it for too long it will burn. If you watch carefully you can see the topping starts to foam after a bit. Keep watching until the foam goes down all the way into the centre. Then take it out. It's done.

Puffed Wheat Squares

  So who here likes puffed wheat cereal? If you said "I do!", then you can imagine me slapping you in the face. That shit is nasty! But there are good uses for it. These squares are a prime example. Now while this isn't technically baking, everyone that tried them and knows about my blog was asking me if I would be posting the recipe. So here it goes.

  These squares are a little tricky as you will be making a syrup and those can be difficult to get right. But if you get it perfect, then they are very sugary and very full of carbs. What more must I say?

 

Ingredients:

4 cups puffed wheat

4 cups puffed rice

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup syrup

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp cocoa

 

Directions:

1. Mix together the brown sugar, syrup, butter, vanilla, and cocoa in a pot.

2. Heat on a medium low setting, stirring occasionally until it boils.

3. Boil for exactly 3 minutes. (No longer or it will be very fall-aparty.)

4. While the syrup is still heating, but not yet boiling, put the puffed wheat and rice into a very large bowl.

5. When the syrup is done boiling, pour it over the puffed wheat/rice.

6. Fold together until it's all entirely coated.

7. Press into a cookie sheet and let sit until completely cooled.

8. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container.

 

Little tips from me:

DO NOT OVER BOIL THE SYRUP!!! It's better to have incredibly chewy squares, than squares that won't stay together.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Cupcakes

  Hi everyone! Did you all forget about me? Probably. You're probably wondering I haven't posted in so long. Ten days to be exact. Well the day after my last post I got very sick. And by sick, I mean a fever so high I could barely stand. After that I had terrible tonsillitis. It was so bad that I was up to 6 Advils a day to bring down the swelling.

  So now that you know why I abandoned you, you're probably wondering what kind of beautiful treat I have in store. Keeping in mind that this is my 100 views post and I promised something special.

  This has been my favorite cheesecake ever since I tasted it for the first time and I personally guarantee that if you like cheesecake or chocolate cake, you will love these cupcakes. They are moist and chocolatey with a creamy filling and just enough peanut butter to accent the taste. You can eat these for any meal or snack.

 

  Ingredients:

Filling:

1 package cream cheese

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup peanut butter chips

Cake:

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1/3 cup canola oil

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 teaspoon salt

 

Directions:

1. For the filling mix together, in a bowl with high sides, the cream cheese, sugar, egg, and salt.

2. Beat vigorously until it has achieved the consistency of mayonnaise. (I put mine in a blender to help with this.)

3. Add the chocolate and peanut butter chips and set aside.

4. For the cake, mix together the sugar, water, canola oil, vinegar, and vanilla in a large bowl.

5. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

6. Add to the wet mixture and stir until no lumps remain.

7. Fill paper lined muffin trays half full with cake batter. 8. Top each with an 1/8 cup of the cream cheese filling.

9. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

 

Little tips from me:

  For the perfect cake to filling ratio, mix together two recipes of cream cheese for every three recipes of cake batter.

 

If you like the blog so far or would like to reccomend more of a certian kind of food; check the polls at the bottom of the page, or comment.

 

I will be enclosing a few pictures other than the finished product with this post.