Posts tagged vanilla

On the morning of February 15th, I really wanted to surprise Rob with carrot cake pancakes (http://cannella-vita.blogspot.com/2012/07/carrot-cake-pancakes.html). He is a big lover of cinnamon flavored stuff, and well, pancakes. However, as you may recall, I no longer had access to ANY of my online recipes up in the mountains. So instead of a surprise, I had to enlist his help for this adventure in blind cooking.

The first part was easy - I combined greek yogurt, powdered sugar, and vanilla for the glaze that was supposed to go on the pancakes. Kind of hard to screw that up.

Once I was finished with the glaze, I knew the wet ingredients had to come next. So Rob helped me to combine an egg with about a cup of milk. So far, we are actually getting an A+ according to the recipe, even though I had far less of an idea about the amounts of things here than I did with our tomato soup the night before.

Here’s where I botched it. In a big ol’ stock pot (really the only thing big enough to serve as a mixing bowl), I combined THREE TIMES as much flour and HALF AS MUCH baking powder as the recipe called for. Which completely diluted the sugar and spice mixture I added in close to correct amounts, fully winging it.

We quickly realized that we didn’t have enough of the wet ingredients for all of that flour, unless we were shooting for a carrot cake pie crust or something. So we added more milk and egg, and even though the batter didn’t taste quite sweet enough, we proceeded to pan these cakes.

Rob is truly an expert pancake flipper, he waits for the bubbles and everything! But as a lubricant, we had to use olive oil as opposed to something more sweets-friendly like butter or canola. So pretty much the only thing that was well-executed for this little breakfast was that they didn’t get burned.

They looked pretty though! We added our greek yogurt topping and a little more cinnamon before diving in. They were thick, dense, raw in the middle, and overall hilarious.

But Rob ate them anyway because he is adorable. I whimpered about how lousy they were, but he just looked at me and said, “Caroline. You thought to surprise me IN THE MOUNTAINS with CARROT CAKE pancakes. IT IS OKAY AND I LOVE YOU.” Hearing that doesn’t suck, but having a comical amount of wonky leftover batter does! Sorry carbon footprint, but I think this is how the universe is punishing me for my tendency to only loosely follow recipes. YA GOT ME.

Caroline

Later that night, I don’t remember what exactly Rob and I were doing, but we got a mad hankering for chocolate milk. And when I say we, I mean he - Rob is an unabashed milk addict, and chocolate literally sweetens the deal.

So I googled around and found this recipe (you have to scroll clear to the bottom to see it - http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf265031.tip.html) that we could use to make our own chocolate syrup from something I always have on hand, cocoa powder. Seriously, it’s a life saver to always have some around for impromptu snacks or surprise pot-lucks (they really sneak up on you sometimes).

We combined the cocoa powder with sugar, water, and salt, and my whisker extraordinaire (in more ways than one), worked on it until it started to get thick. Then we added the vanilla and put it in the fridge for a while.

It didn’t get quite as thick as we thought it would, no doubt because we never added any corn starch. But as you can see, it got the job done.

Our chocolate milk went ever so nicely with Rob’s cherry cola cupcake (http://omnomwithrob.tumblr.com/post/30385989456/where-you-drink-champagne-and-it-tastes-just-like), and though I’m notorious for making my own pudding, I paired mine with a snack pack. Then we poured our extra syrup into a fun little jar for safely refrigerated keeping.

I know this is weird, but I’m kind of sentimental about milk. I only ever drink enough to put in my coffee, and therefore typically buy very little at a time. But when Rob comes to town, I make sure to buy a full gallon so he can have it on his cereal, or just a glass whenever he wants. Makes me feel like I have someone to take care of.

Caroline

I found a great recipe a few weeks before that I just knew I had to make for Rob on our Valentine’s weekend. Bacon. Bourbon. Brownies.

After a quick stop at the Key Foods, I consulted my recipe (http://www.beantownbaker.com/2012/01/bacon-bourbon-brownies.html), which incidentally didn’t involve any of the produce you see pictured. But it did involve BACON. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Rob’s lack of kitchen utensils (despite our day of gadgetry purchases!) left me with no mixing bowl. God bless the dutch oven.

After I whipped up the brownie batter, we sure had a lot of fun tearing up bacon for the top…and sneaking a few bites for ourselves.

After a spin in the oven, these babies were ready to eat! Instead of just pouring bourbon on top to finish like the recipe said, I put together a little glaze by heating up some bourbon, butter, sugar, and vanilla on Rob’s testy stove. Poured it over the top while the brownies were still warm, and voila!

We took these babies to a get-together with Rob’s friends Jon and Melissa, and Tyson joined us too! I highly recommend this recipe if you need a party (or general humanity) pleaser!

Caroline

Blizzard, day two. Cabin fever? No way.

I did, however, get a little delirious when Rob said he had never.had.snow.ice.cream. Lucky for us, there was no short supply. Look how ashamed he is.

After popping outside for a quick bowlful of the clean, untrodden stuff, we brought it back in for sweetenin’. I’d caution you to wait until at least the second snow of the season, and there’s obviously got to be a lot of it so you’re not scraping it off the ground or anything. Woof.

A handful or two of sugar and a few splashes of milk and vanilla later, bam. You’ve got snow ice cream. Heavy cream or half and half work too if you like it a little creamier and have got some girlish figure to waste. I put pink food coloring in mine to make it ridiculous.

Later, I really went out on a limb and put a kiss of Dr. Pepper in it. Man oh man! Burger King could sell it out of a slurpee machine.

Caroline