Posts Tagged ‘recipes’

The Amazing Cake Ball Tutorial!

April 26th, 2011 by pladd

If they look delicious, it's because they are

Cake balls are pretty amazing, and they are completely easy (and fun!) to make. They’re great to bring to a party since they’re small, portable finger food, and they are sure to impress despite their simplicity! Plus, there’s endless combinations of flavors to try!

Chocolate coating outside, cakey goodness inside

Here are all of the ingredients, plus some escape artist tulips:

1 box cake mix, 1 can frosting, 1 bag of chocolate chips

I’ve made the traditional yellow cake/chocolate coating before, but this time I wanted to try lemon cake, so I went with white chocolate chips and white frosting. I figured lemon frosting would be too lemony, but now I’m thinking there’s no such thing. And, okay, this picture is maybe a little misleading because, depending on your cake mix, you’ll probably also need an egg and/or some vegetable oil and water. Details. Besides, you have those lying around your house anyway just waiting to be put into a cake.

So, Step One: Make the cake

Ta-Dah!

It doesn’t matter what shape or size pan you use, since the next step is to wait till it cools and then

Step Two: WRECK THE CAKE

This is by far my favorite part

That’s right, get in there and smash that cake up! I usually crumble it into a very large bowl. It’s super fun just grabbing whole hunks of cake and crushing them into tiny pieces! Once that’s done it will probs look like this:

Make sure you start with a big enough bowl! I had to switch mine out

Now you’re ready for Step Three: Stir in the Frosting!

Frosting is serious business

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13 Adventures: #3 Servery Challenge: Orange Edition

December 12th, 2010 by pladd

When my parents came up for Thanksgiving, they brought two giant sacks filled with oranges and grapefruit. Even though I feel like I’ve been eating delicious Florida citrus with every meal, we still have so much left. Which is why today’s adventure was a Servery Challenge: Orange Edition in which each dish had to use up oranges.

As might be expected, I just messed around with the basics, and Steven tried to find the fanciest recipe possible. Sure, his took twice as long as mine, but it was also twice as spicy.

Since I am all about pineapple on pizza (although sadly I find Canadian bacon gross), I thought it would be interesting to try orange on pizza! I wasn’t able to find any examples of this online to make sure I wasn’t crazy, but this was an adventure(!) so I was not to be dissuaded. Besides, I know how to make pizza already, so whatever.
The easiest recipe I know is one for this pizza crust/flatbread that I got out of a teen cooking book. I love teen cookbooks because they try to be accommodating, not pretentious, and usually have awesome pictures. I like this recipe because you don’t even have to let the dough rise:

2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup milk

Mix together until a dough! Then spread on a flat pan! Top with things! Bake at 425 degrees for 15-22 minutes until done! Cook length will depend on dough’s thinness.

I don’t remember if the original recipe was written in entirely exclamation marks like that, but it should have been. I chose to top my pizza with: two oranges and 1/4 of a red onion, cut up, feta cheese, walnuts, and spinach. It looked like this:

Next time I would probably put the spinach on top after cooking

Steven made a fancy Persian rice dish whose recipe I can’t remember because it was extremely complicated. However, it had a lot of tasty spices, including ginger and curry, and two kinds of nuts: almonds and pistachios. It used up at least 3 oranges! Yay!

The orange peel ended up being almost candied and way tasty!

Competitive cooking is the best kind of cooking!!

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Posted in Food, Things I've Made |

Last School Year Ever: The Pregame

August 24th, 2010 by pladd

So, if all goes as planned, this should be my last school year ever. I am super excited. 18 years straight is too long to spend writing papers, dealing with group project drama, and researching things I don’t care about and will never use. I’m looking at you, ENGL 326. Is it hard to go back? Yes. Luckily, I’ve got the drill down and know just how to get pumped for Last School Year Ever.

Step 1: Supplies
Clearly school supplies are a major factor into determining your daily mood, not to mention who in class is the coolest. Remember how long it took to pick out even one spiral notebook in elementary school? Especially if you were totally obsessive like me and had to make sure it coordinated with your trapper keeper. Too many grad students forget the importance of cheerful, exciting school supplies and go with cheap, plain composition notebooks, not realizing that it will make every day in class taking notes completely boring. Well, not me. Not this year. After a grueling 15-minute decision process at Target’s school supply aisle, I decided on this one:

I wanted one that was all glitter, but a 12-year-old beat me to the last one

I literally cannot wait for the first day of class to take JUICY GOSSIP library science notes. Meghan has suggested that I forget the whole notes thing and turn it into my very own Burn Book, but she clearly hasn’t realized the way I take notes.

Also, for holding copies of syllabi and important papers:

A sparkly cupcake folder. Only the best.

I am one sparkly feather pen away from being the best grad student ever.

Step 2: Fortify your strength
I suggest this recipe:

1. Buy some chicken and salsa.
2. Put them in a crockpot!
3. Cook for 3-4 hours.
4. Serve over rice!

I call it "Salsa Chicken". Super tasty!

Step 3: Celebrate!
Nothing puts you in a celebration mood like vaguely literary wine on clearance at Harris Teeter!

Turns out, there was a reason it was on clearance

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