2 quick and easy breakfasts

#1. A smoothie. Really. It's as simple as that. It's fast, it's simple, and you can easily add nuts or hemp powder or something to get more protein. My dad does it with hemp, but I can't stand the taste of hemp, so I use macadamia nuts instead. They taste great in a strawberry banana smoothie!


#2. If you can scramble an egg, you can make a breakfast burrito. It's fast, easy, and tastes great on a cold morning.





                                                   Smoothies



#1. The 'Ana' Smoothie.
My best friend's mom taught us this one, though we did edit it a bit.

1. Fill a blender 1/4 a way with ice. Pour milk over it until it covers the ice.
2. Peel a banana and cut it in half. Put it in the blender.
3. Blend until there are no big chunks of ice or banana. Add chocolate syrup or chocolate powder to taste.



#2. Strawnana
My personal name for a strawberry banana smoothie.

1. Pour in 2 and 1/2 cups frozen strawberries into a blender.
2. Cut a banana into rough chunks and add to the blender.
3. Pour about 1 cup strawberry/orange/banana juice into the blender (I use the kind you get at Trader Joe's)
4. Blend until smooth.




#3. Blueberry Bliss
My brother's favorite.


1. Put 1 and 1/2 cups frozen blueberries into the blender. Pour 1 cup milk over it.
2. Add 1 cup frozen raspberries, and one banana, cut into chunks.
3. Blend until smooth.





                                                 Breakfast Burritos


1. Scramble an egg.
2. Cook a sausage and cut into small pieces. Put the eggs and the sausage onto a tortilla.
3. Put some cheese onto the egg and sausage, and put the tortilla in the microwave for 5-10 seconds.


        

Tips and Tricks #3: Getting bread out of a bread pan

The answer is simple. Use lots of butter. When you butter the bread pan, use lots of butter. Enough that when you slid your finger along the bottom and sides of the pan, where you touched still looks as greasy as the rest of the pan. Then put the dough into the pan and bake. As soon as it comes out, flip the bread pan upside down over a cooling rack and the bread should fall right out. Let the bread cool until it's cool enough to touch it, and carefully flip it over and let it cool the rest of the way. If it doesn't come out of the pan, carefully slid a knife between the bread and the side of the pan and try again. If it still doesn't come out, I don't know what to tell ya.

I'd like S'more! X2

I read about this trick somewhere (I think it was in an American Girl Magazine, but I'm not 100% positive), and have been wanting to try it out. First, you cut a hole in a marshmallow. Then you take a square of chocolate, and put it in the hole. Then you roast it like you would any S'more. If you roasted it long enough, the chocolate should have melted in the S'more.
The for the next trick, it takes a bit more. I'm sure you've had the cookies that are coated in chocolate on one side? Like the Girl Scout All Abouts or Tagalongs. So you take a cookie, and your roasted marshmallow, and instead of putting it on a gram cracker with two or three squares of chocolate, put it on the chocolate covered cookie instead. Top it with another cookie, and you have a cookie S'more! My Auntie taught me this trick.

Half-n-Half Cupcakes

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, you think I mean half-and-half cupcakes, using half cream and half milk instead of just plain milk. Nope. I mean half vanilla and half chocolate cupcakes. You can use any vanilla cupcake recipe, and any chocolate cupcake recipe. It's easy, fast, and a crowd pleaser. I frosted them with a simple vanilla buttercream frosting: Link. You need to add more powdered sugar and vanilla then the recipe calls for, but other then that, this is the recipe to use. I had some fun with our cupcake stuff, using different tips and colors for the frosting. Unfortunately, our kitchen was too hot to make roses and flowers and stuff, and caused the frosting to be a bit melty. They still tasted good, though.

Cooking tips and tricks #2: Testing your baking powder

You might want to test if your baking powder is fresh. If it's not, it still works, but not as well. You might find you'll get half-risen cakes and muffins. It's really simple to test it. Fill a cup with hot (not boiling) water. Take one tablespoon of baking powder and dump it into the cup. If it bubbles up a lot, it's still fresh. If it doesn't, it's not. It's as easy as that!

Pretzels!

I LOVE soft pretzels, but I almost never get them. So I decided to try and find a recipe online for them. I found this one. It worked really well (thought I think I used too much salt), and was really good. I made the dough in a food processor, and that worked well, too. Here's the link.

Cute Little Cookies

I saw this recipe in a cookbook, and thought, those are so cute! I've been wanting to try them, and when I heard we're going to  party that you had to bring something, I made these. Their dough was crumbly, and I had to squish it together to shape it. But I found it you work it too much, It'll dry out and get more crumbly. But they're good, and kinda have the same texture as short bread.
I got this recipe from Taste Of Home Kid Approved Recipes

 The chocolate was kinda hard to work with, and dripped all over the place when I was doing the eyes and noses (In cookbooks everything always looks nice and neat, but when I make a recipe, it never turns out that way). But they're still cute, and yummy!

They're small, about the size of a large walnut.

















                                               Hedgehog Cookies



1/3 of a cup butter, softened
1/4 a cup confectioner's sugar
1/2 a teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 a cup ground pecans (I used the same amount of ground almonds instead. It worked fine)
2/3 a cup all-purpose flour
1/8 a teaspoon salt
1/2 a cup 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate baking chips (I used plain ol' semisweet chocolate chips, instead)
1/4 a cup chocolate sprinkles


1. In a small bowl, cream butter and confection's sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, pecans, and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Shape about 1 tablespoon of dough into a ball; pinch the dough to form a face. Repeat. Place two inches apart on greased baking sheet.

2. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Let stand for 5 minutes before removing to a ware rack to cool completely.

3. In a microwave, melt chocolate; stir until smooth. Holding a hedgehog cookie by the nose, spoon chocolate over the back (leave face uncovered). Allow excess to drip off. Place on waxed paper, immediately coat the wet chocolate with sprinkles.

4. With a toothpick dipped in chocolate, make two eyes and a dot on the nose. let stand until set. Store in an airtight container.

Two summer treats (One I made and one not)

Hi, all. Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I was on vacation and kept forgetting to post. But anyway, I did a few cooking things, I did another Jell-O, the same flavors but bigger. And these really cool popsicles that I saw in an American Girl magazine. It's called a Soda Pop (Get it? I didn't at first), and super good. I also had the best waffle cone I have ever had at a place called Goody's in Sunriver, OR. The ice cream was really good, too.




                                                           Soda Pops


1 countainer of vanilla ice cream

6 mini cans of root beer (Or any other kind of soda. I used orange, too)


1. Take a small scoop of ice cream and press it down into the bottom of a small plastic cup. Press all the air out.
2. Pour cold root beer slowly over ice cream. Spoon foam off top.
3. Keep doing step two until the cup is full to the top with root beer and has no foam.
4.  Freeze six hours or overnight.