Fat Jeremies

I have this friend. His name is Jeremy. The list of adjectives one might use to describe him would likely NOT include "fat." In fact, Jeremy wagered that not even I, with my propensity for butter-saturated cooking, could fatten him up.

Wagers like this cannot be left unanswered. Recipes began bouncing around my mind, each more deliciously fattening than the last. After a few days of bouncing, three recipes had collided into an idea for a cookie with incredible powers of fattening and deliciousness, a sort unhealthy hybrid of homemade oreos, s'mores, and Reese's peanut butter cups.

And so, Fat Jeremies were born.

I double-dog dare you to ditch your diet and try one...or a half dozen.

For the cookie dough
(as adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder(plus 1 tablespoon if you want a bit more chocolate kick)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks)softened unsalted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon water
1 large egg

For cookie filling 

1 1/4 cups chunky peanut butter

1/3 cup butter, melted

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup Reese's peanut butter baking chips

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 tablespoons brown sugar

mini marshmallows, frozen

For caramel topping (optional)

1 can sweetened condensed milk
See this recipe for The Creamiest Caramel--In a Can

In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients & mix thoroughly with a spatula. Add butter, eggs, vanilla, and water. With a hand (or stand, if you're fancy) mixer, beat in wet ingredients until dough forms. (You could mix the dough by hand, but you'll probably need a mixer for the filling.) Refrigerate dough for at least 1/2 hour.

In a separate medium bowl, mix peanut butter, butter, vanilla, brown sugar, & peanut butter chips until well blended. Slowly stir in powdered sugar. With a hand mixer, blend until the consistency is even. The filling will still be chunky, since you've used chunky peanut butter & the peanut butter chips. Preheat oven to 350º F.



To build your Fat Jeremies, scoop out about pingpong-ball-sized ball of dough. Flatten the dough between the palms of your hands until the dough is about 1/8 of an inch thick. Place a scoop of peanut butter filling (about the size of a quarter & 1/4 inch thick) in the center of your round of dough. Add three or four mini marshmallows (we used a whole marshmallow, cut in half) on top of the pb filling. Fold up the edges of the dough so that all the filling is covered. (Freezing the marshmallows prevents them from melting entirely & disappearing during baking, so keep those 'mallows cold. When you've built one batch of Fat Jeremies, be sure to put your marshmallows back in the freezer.)



Bake marshmallow side up on a well-greased baking sheet for 8 to 10 minutes.



If you're going all out & adding the caramel, drizzle it on top of the cookies while they are still warm. These are fairly tender cookies, so let them cool for at least 8 minutes before removing from the baking sheet.

Fat Jeremies require a glass of milk. Enjoy!

Photo credit to Mr. Jeremy Penrod himself, for whom these cookies are named. 

A Dose of Hope

(with a short preface of grumbling)

This week has been at least 5 months long. And it's only Thursday. So much has been going on that I swear I must be nearing my 22nd birthday. I can feel the wrinkles coming. The fact that I have been eating at Taco Bell may not be helping this premature aging. But those dang crunchwraps are just so disgustingly delicious.

With multiple tests and assignments and design layouts to slog through, I was needing a bit of a boost.  I found this inspirational gem from Dieter F. Uchtdorf on lds.org.

Hope is one leg of a three-legged stool, together with faith and charity. These three stabilize our lives regardless of the rough or uneven surfaces we might encounter at the time. . ..

Hope has the power to fill our lives with happiness. Its absence—when this desire of our heart is delayed—can make 'the heart sick' (Proverbs 13:12).

Hope is a gift of the Spirit. It is a hope that through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the power of His Resurrection, we shall be raised unto life eternal and this because of our faith in the Savior. This kind of hope is both a principle of promise as well as a commandment, and, as with all commandments, we have the responsibility to make it an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope. Hope in our Heavenly Father's merciful plan of happiness leads to peace, mercy, rejoicing, and gladness. The hope of salvation is like a protective helmet; it is the foundation of our faith and an anchor to our souls.

You can read his entire address HERE – airplanes included.

Each of us go through stormy times in our life. And they say "It never rains but it pours."  They may be right. But what that knowledgeable conglomerate of "them" sometimes forgets to mention is this:

The clouds after the storm are lovely.

gameplan

1 semester in Jerusalem- 15 credits
1 Humanities core class- 3 credits
3 Advanced English lit courses- 9 credits
2 GE courses (Bio 100 & some social science)- 6 credits
1 Humanities capstone class- 3 credits
1 Honors Thesis- up to 6 credits & a lot of blood, sweat, & tears

Jerusalem + 21 credits of class + thesis = honors graduation, April 2012

That's simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.

On a Sunday...

...we did a lot of cooking. The menu was yellow curry chicken with raita. We also had some delightfully tart lemon cookies.



I wore my favorite shoes & pretended to be Julia Child.


I had the most fantastic sous chefs, Craig & Devin.
Excuse me--Sous CHeffs.
Who can CHiffonade.

 
I also got some cousin lovin'. Apparently, love of polka dots & ridiculously excited faces run in the family.

Isn't it great to have paparazzi friends?
& Farberware knives?
& chiffonade skills?
& cousins?
& curry? 
The answer is all of the above.
My belly & my heart were rather full of happiness.

 

Thanks to Jeremy & his lovely Canon camera for making me feel like a famous chef.

Oh, yes. There was also a fish. & Devin.

Alluring Tart Lemon Cookies

I know that "autumn" & "lemon" don't always go hand in hand. But today, I wanted something full of zesty lemon flavor. A mere lemon cake was not enough. So lemon cookies. With lemon icing. Sometimes you just need something really fresh on a chilly fall day. These lemon cookies are super simple and very lemon zingy. The cookies are pretty good, but the icing makes them something semi-celestial. And alluring.

(We had a very hard time finding a fitting adjective for these cookies. We also considers subLEMONal, luxurious, and lusty. Beware.)

Cookies
1 lemon cake mix
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
1 egg
1/3 cup water
2 tsp fresh lemon zest


Combine all ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Shape cookies into small balls, about 1 inch in diameter (the cookies spread out & get very thin). Bake at 350ºF for about 9 minutes. 


Icing
Note: This icing is more like a glaze. It should be thin. Don't worry. It will all work out in the end.


3 tblsp. cream cheese
3 tsp fresh lemon zest
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tblsp. milk
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (a blend of ginger, cinnamon, allspice,
the juice of one fresh lemon


In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, milk, and the lemon zest. Beat with a hand mixer on high until smooth. Add nutmeg & pumpkin pie spice. Stir in powdered sugar. Add lemon juice & blend until smooth. 


Once the cookies have cooled (at least a little--I know you're impatient), drizzle the icing over the top. Enjoy!  

newsflash

Fact: Eating more than a dozen cookies in one day might make you easily excited by things that are shiny. Or wiggly. Or completely normal.

*twitch*

Brownies, anyone?

ba ding da ding ding ding

Under the Sea

I now have photographic proof of my newly-found epic nature. Why do I feel the need to declare my own awesomeness? Well. I scuba dive. In Cozumel. That's why.

Big thanks to my daddy, who spent a lot of hours convincing me that my claustrophobic ankles would be totally fine & that I "wouldn't even notice" all the gear once I was below the surface. Turns out, he was right. Go figure.

PS- I had the soundtrack from The Little Mermaid stuck in my head on one of our dives. It was perfect.

Hello Universe

So lately, I've been doing some pretty cool grown-up stuff, like getting a job as the editor for Insight, the magazine produced by BYU's honors department. It's been such a great opportunity to jump into the field that I've been working towards for the last 2 1/2 years & find out that I love it even more than I thought. (Feel free to remind me that I said this when I'm in the Mac lab at 2 a.m. designing feature spreads later this semester.) This college senior (round 1) thing has been outstanding as of yet, thanks to highly entertaining professors who keep 16.5 credits worth of classes bearable & roommates that I still adore, though we are now in our third year of roommatehood. I also just purchased a new Cuisinart hand mixer that makes me feel like a Real Baker--& guarantees a few new recipes coming soon.

I was even super adventurous & learned to scuba dive while in Cozumel, Mexico during the month of August. It was epic. I know that "epic" is sort of a trendy word right now, but this is a legit (ha) application. How else could you describe the experience of doing back flips 30 feet below the surface of the ocean while sea turtles, tropical fish, & a shark or two swim around you? Yeah, rly.

I'm also rediscovering my love for poetry--yet again. Here's a poem that isn't mine recited by someone who also isn't mine. Happy Monday!

Blueberry Scones with Lemon & Ginger

I haven't posted anything for a while because I got distracted by other pursuits since I published that fabulous poll. The scones just barely beat out the pasta (which I made anyway), but I listen to my people. And I wanted to make these scones, really I did, but German Chocolate Cake demanded my attention for a week of tweaking and perfecting. Then it was The Salad. Oh, the salad. The salad with roasted sweet potatoes and cool cucumber mint yogurt dressing. I thought I had died and gone to summer salad heaven. But that deserves its own post.

So. The scones. These are not that fry bread that many in the Western US associate with the word "scone." These are more closely related to a biscuit, something you might see at an English tea. They are rugged and slightly sweet; hearty yet delicate--a glorious concoction that would seem perfectly at home at a bed & breakfast in the Scottish Countryside. Which, I suppose, is why the recipe I based these on (from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, pg. 174) is credited to the Scotts. So, without further ado, make these. And eat them warm. With a tall class of cool milk. But skip the extra butter on top--and I never thought I'd say that about anything.

Rustic Blueberry Scones with Lemon & Ginger
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
4 tblsp. cold butter, cuting into small cubes
3 tblsp. sugar, plus some for topping
2 tsp. fresh lemon zest
1 1/2 tsp. grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup half-and-half, plus more for glazing
1 large egg

Preheat your oven to 425º F.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Using hands, rub the butter into the flour mixture. Squeeze & pinch until the flour will stick together slightly when pinched between two fingers & no large lumps of butter remain. Add sugar, lemon zest, ginger, & blueberries (rinsed & dried) & whisk everything together.

Measure 1/2 cup half-and-half into a large measuring cup. Crack egg into half-and-half and whisk together. (I would suggest making sure you have a clean surface to knead your dough on before adding the liquid--your hands will be pretty doughy). Add liquid to dry ingredients & stir with your hands, or a spatula. That might be better... When all the dry ingredients are just incorporated, turn the dough out onto a flat, dry surface. DO NOT OVERWORK THE DOUGH. (Or yourself. This is brunch, after all.) 


Knead the dough no more than 12 times. I didn't count, but this is what the original recipe tells me, so I thought I'd pass on the wisdom. Flatten the dough into a large disk, about 1 inch thick. Transfer to large baking sheet coated in non-stick spray. Cut the disk into 8 wedges & separate them slightly, so all the edges can brown. 

Glaze the tops of scones with about 2 tbsp. of half-and-half, then sprinkle with sugar. Bake for about 12 minutes, until the edges are golden brown.

YOU Choose

I am opening a poll. (See, look. > It's over there. Go, fleet little voting fingers.) There are many reasons for this. They are mostly these:

1- I'm curious to see how many people actually read this blog, or even look at it. (AKA - Why did you all stop commenting?)

2- I am sometimes not so good at decision making. So you do it.

3- I'd like to see what type of food you people might be looking for.

4- I want to please my fans. & I just want fans. :) love me.

...that's pretty much it. So, vote. Exercise your democratic taste buds. So, tell me whatcha want, whatcha really really want.

thanks & stuff.