Apple Pie

Who says birthdays need to be celebrated with cake?  Perfect fall day to make a perfect birthday apple pie with my 2 best friends for their birthdays!  Enjoy :)

Apple Pie with Lattice Crust (makes 9in pie)

2 store bought pie crust

3 granny smith apples

3 macintosh apples

3/4 cup sugar

1 lemon

2 tbsp flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 egg white

1. Preheat oven to 425degrees.
2. Wash, peel, and chop apples into large chunks.  Make sure the chunks are about the same size.
3. Mix apples with the sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
4. Zest lemon and squeeze lemon juice into the mixture.
5. Place one of the pie crusts in the bottom of a 9in pie pan.
6. Dump the pie mixture into pie pan.
7. Cut the other pie crust dough into strips.
8. Follow this diagram to get the lattice pattern
9. Brush the top of the pie with egg white (helps with the browning of the crust).
10. Sprinkle top of pie with sugar.
11. Place pie on a cookie tray to prevent spillage when baking.
12. Bake pie for 1hr. Check the pie at 45min.  If the crust edge is getting too brown, cover the edge with aluminum foil.
13. Cool before eating!

Tofu Pad Thai

Whenever I order thai food, I always have this internal debate about whether to order pad thai or drunken noodles.  Yea, I now I can probably just order both but I dont want anyone to know how greedy I am. Slash I probably shouldnt be spending my loan money on so much on take out.  

Luckily for me, I usually end up having both just because one of my friends will always end up being the other hehe.

So pad thai..if you think about it, it's really just a simple salty peanut sauce.  The salty part comes from fish sauce, which is a briny, seafood-y asian sauce.  I also read somewhere that adding ketchup works really well in it too because of the vinegar kick it gives.   Yea, I know ketchup is kind of out of the ordinary but I didnt have any vinegar on hand so I decided to try it.  Plus what does ketchup NOT go well with.  

Boo Boo Banana Bread

Wait...how is it that my most commonly used recipe is not on the the blog yet?!  My bad guys...but I guess all is well now because I am finally sharing my booboo bananananana bread recipe!

Boo Boo Banana Bread

Ingredients

makes 12 muffins

- 3 bananas covered with booboos (aka super super ripe bananas. The riper, the better)

- 1 egg

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 1 cup brown sugar

- 1 tbsp melted unsalted butter

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 1/2 tsp baking soda

- 3/4 tsp baking powder

- 1 cup flour (I like using whole wheat)

- 1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350degrees and line a muffin tin with liners.
2. Mash the bananas in a large bowl.
3. Mix everything else except for the flour and the chocolate chips in the bowl.
4. Mix in the flour and mix until it is JUST mixed through.
5. Mix in the chocolate chips.
6. Fill the muffin tins 2/3s of the way full.
7. Bake for 17min or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I probably make a batch of these muffins at least once a month.  I love them.  LOVE THEM. They are super moist (sorry, I had to use the word even though it is honestly one of the most painful words to say).  It tastes really rich but if you look at the ingredients again, you will notice that it mostly consists of bananas.  The recipe is also really versatile!  Sometimes when I make them, I throw in a some nutella or some peanut butter.  I love adding in dried fruit and nuts too!  

Oh also, these muffins freeze super well!  Cool them completely and then throw up in a bag to put in the freezer. When you are having a sugar craving in the middle of the night after hours on end of studying OR when you want a super quick breakfast, wrap one of the muffins in a napkin and microwave for 45sec.

Enjoy! Im going to go grab a muffin from the freezer now and go back to studying about leukemia and lymphoma now =P

ALSO, look at how cute these muffin liners are!  Thanks Marshalls for selling them in the clearance section for $1 hehehe.

Eclairs

So I definitely had huge plans for this blog during my two week winter break.  I was going try lots of new recipes and update the blog with lots of posts but yea...that didnt happen.  I got too distracted with sleeping, watching tv, and cross-stitching, all of I was able to do in the bed :)

Basically, when I have lots of time on my hands, I dont blog and when I should be studying (aka now), I blog.  Makes total sense..

Anyways, here is a new recipe for eclairs!  A bit time consuming but well worth it especially since it is a really impressive looking dessert that is super easy to make!  The original recipe comes from this youtuber Laura in the Kitchen. She is so hilarious and her food always looks so good.  My roommate and I love watching her, mostly because we love watching her reactions every time she eats. Literally at the end of all her videos, she says "OMGOSH I CANT..I JUST CANT...SO GOOOOOOOOOD." What can we say, she's one of our guilty pleasures hahaha.

Enjoy!

Cornbread Bacon Stuffing

Thanksgiving is hands down my most favorite holiday of the year.  It marks the beginning of the holiday season when everyone becomes super jolly and festive.  It also begins the season where it is totally acceptable to dream of stuffing.  Stuffing, probably the most underrated side dish of all. Stuffing, the BEST side dish of all.  I'm not talking about the mushy box stuff you guys are probably imagining, I'm talking about the homemade goodness, moist on the inside and crunchy on the outside.  My mouth is drooling right now as I sit in small group trying to listen to the guy talk about antihypertensize drugs.

Anyways, the proceeding stuffing recipe was the one I made for Thanksgiving this year.  Reasons why this is the best dish ever:

1. Who doesnt love cornbread?
2. Who doesnt love bacon?
3. Who doesnt love cornbread AND bacon together?

Kudos to Martha Stewart for the original recipe!  I modified it based on what I had at home and on the fact that I had to feed an army on Turkey day.

Pumpkin Spice Cake

It was roomie's birthday this Friday so that means cake time!  We have a running joke about how we love being basic although I still really have no idea what that means. I mean really...what is wrong with liking pumpkin spice lattes, apple orchards, plaid, and north face jackets?  People need to accept the fact that all of those things are awesome..

Anyways, like I said, my roommate and I have this running joke about how we LOVEEEE basic things so what would be more perfect than a pumpkin spice birthday cake?!  The answer is nothing :)  

Oh and this time I had 2 excellent pastry chefs to help me out!  

                                     

Chicken Enchilada Lasagna

So I've been trying to do more savory dishes lately.  Figured I cant just live off of desserts for the rest of my life.  I was feeling Mexican the other day and since the closest Chipotle is still way too far away, I thought I would try my hand at it.  Corn tortillas, veggies, chicken, enchilada sauce, cheese...what more could you ask for?

Normally the tortillas are rolled up with filling but I thought it would be much easier to layer everything.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.