rejection cookies. healthy rejection cookies.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Wow Kilbride. WOMP. To which I say, you knew you were reading a cooking blog written by college seniors in the height of their job-seeking neurosis. So deal with it. That said, I wanted to make healthy rejection cookies because unemployed and fat is just too much for me to handle. And we descend on the Dominican in 34 days. Wallowing in self pity is no excuse to use more butter than Paula Dean. As such, I give thee: healthy rejection cookies. In all lower case because you're sad and without job.

Scavenge & secure:

1 cup Whole wheat flour
little baking powder
little salt
1 cup instant oats
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
little vanilla
egg
a rejection-appropriate amount of chocolate chips

You know how this works. All the dry stuff (first part of the list thru the oats) goes in a medium bowl. Soften the butter in a big bowl in the microwave, add oil, sugars, vanilla, and the egg. Mix til its all smooth and such. Add in all the dry stuff, taking time to appreciate how healthy you are despite your propensity for life-long failure. And hyperbole.

rejection. now with fewer calories.

Once its all mixed add in unseemly amounts of chocolate chips. Which you can do because your saintly roommate stocked up during last week's string of rejections. Old rejected selves lookin out for new rejected selves. Classic.

Eat most of the cookie dough. Bake whats left for 15ish minutes on 350 degrees. Pass out to roomies, accept their assurance that rejection cookies are yummy. Small victories.

peace.love.summerhousing2012herewecome

THE SECOND BEST THING I EVER DID

The first thing I can’t talk about on the internet.

Anyway, Erin and I have been trolling cooking blogs for weeks trying to find something worthy of posting up on crackden, and we finally did: brown butter. It’s a huge deal in the world of internet kitchens, and quite yummy. And then I mixed it with more yummy things and boom, cookies. Round up the following:

1 stick butter
3/4 brown sugar
1 egg
little splash of vanilla
big splash of rum (spiced, of course)
1 cup plus 1 spoonful flour, with dash salt and baking soda
LOTS of cinnamon, like unscrew the top and dump
slightly less nutmeg and ginger
ground cardamom if you have it, cardamom pods (?) if you don’t

So first, you gotta make the brown butter. Which you do like anything else you brown, actually. Dump the stick of butter into a frying pan, and stir kinda a lil bit so it browns evenly. It gets kinda frothy at first, but if you look at it in the spoon it goes from yellow to kinda golden brown and smells delicious. Once it’s golden, pour it into your mixing bowl and let it cool down. At this point, if you have whole cardamom put 3 or 4 into the butter to extract the flavor (SCIENCE, ERIN), but if you have ground cardamom just wait til you do the other spices. For the love of god, take the cardamom pods out before you mix the rest of the stuff in.

When it hits about room temperature, whip in the brown sugar, and then the egg, vanilla, and rum. Gradually mix in the 1 cup of flour with salt and baking soda. In a the measuring cup or a small bowl, mix together the other spoonful of flour, plus a heaping spoonful of cinnamon and healthy amounts of nutmeg and ginger (and ground cardamom, if that’s what you’re using).


Refrigerate the cookie dough for a little bit, approximately the length of one pong game, and then drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and bake for 13-14ish minutes in a 325 degree oven. Then nom away!

In defense of their deliciousness (and possibly my roommates’ propensity for drunk food), I offer the following: the plate of cookies was empty this morning when I woke up :)

THE CHEESER

Its simple. Its understated. It may or may not be laced with crack. But you know what? Sometimes the best things are.

Misleadingly elegant portrayal of the cheeser.

Ingredients:

-- Pillsbury crescent rolls (the dough, still stuck together, uncooked)

-- 8oz block of cream cheeze (the full fat kind. Seriously you can't use reduced fat. I know I struggled with it too. You'll be okay)

-- Wheat Thins (these can be reduced fat. in fact they should be cause you're about to eat a block of cream cheese you fatty)

Prepare yourself to be loved. Seriously.

Roll out the crescent rolls on a baking sheet. Put the block of cream cheese in the center of the dough lengthwise. Press down on it with your fingers to make it a bit wider (wider = more cheeser in your future). Take the left and right sides of the dough and cover the cream cheese, meeting in the middle. You should have about 2-3 extra inches of dough at the other 2 ends, make that neat and fold it on top. So you have a little cheeser present.

Bake at 350 til it looks like a cheeser. I don't know exactly how else to say it, but it take like 12-15ish. The dough should be cooked (the top will be the last part to fully cook, so watch that), but it should still be soft. You don't want to cook the dough til its flaky the way crescent rolls are supposed to be though cause then they'll separate AND LIFE WILL BE AWFUL FOR YOU.

Immediately transfer to a plate using 2 spatulas, put Wheat Thins on either side. The cheeser will be eaten by hand, using the Wheat Thins.  Now be careful, cause this next part is tricky. Cautiously approach living room and place cheeser on coffee table, pull back hands immediately or you WILL get bitten.

The cheeser does things to people. Messy things.

But it is beautiful. I swear. And it makes life good.

Photos © Beegs & Sugarloaf

HAMBURGER CAKE

In honor of Danny coming down to Georgetown next week, we’re gonna give him another recipe shout-out, cause that’s how we show affection :)Danny turned old this summer, and Eclaire and I wanted to give him a birthday cake that rivaled his bacon bouquet.

We tried all versions of “meat” and “cake” that Google had to offer, and briefly contemplated a bacon-dark chocolate cake before deciding to go in a hamburgerly direction. This hamburger cake requires the following:

2 cake-in-a-boxes, maybe one yellow and one chocolate, and associated eggs, oil, etc
food coloring- yellow, green, red
chocolate chips
1 tup white icing, 1 tub chocolate icing

Mix up your cakes. You need two normal round cake pans and a metal bowl that can be baked, about the same diameter as your cake pan. Fill one cake pan a little over half-ish with chocolate for the patty. Fill the other cake pan full with yellow cake mix, and fill the bowl with all the cake mix you have left. This is a bun. Bake. Gonna take a bit longer for the bun, so just keep an eye on them.

While everything is cooling, put a heaping spoonful of white icing into each of three ziplock bags for decorating. Add food coloring so you get ketchup, lettuce, and sesame seed colors. To make bun color, I suggest adding a spoonful or so of chocolate to the white icing and then maybe a few drops of yellow. Go slowly, cause it’s really hard to fix if you make it too dark. Using a blender/magic bullet/knife and patience, grate up a heaping half cup of chocolate chips and stir them into the chocolate icing. Mmmm.... meat.

Now all you have to do is decorate! Start with the bottom bun, and work your way up. In this picture, we used colored corn syrup for ketchup, but that shit’s outta control.

TRIFLE: white chocolate mint brownie magic

Think brownies, white chocolate mint mousse, chocolate pudding, and holiday happiness. You will haz all the happy. I promise.

Okay so, the prelude to this one's gonna come atchu in steps. Cause I like numbers and lists.

Step 1. Ship your twin off to Africa.
Step 2. Wallow in hopeless, dark despair for 3 months. Conclude only possible respite is preparing a trifle for her glamorous homecoming.
Step 3. Violently desire trifle dish. Search everywhere, high / low, near / far, hither / yon, etc.
Step 4. Fail miserably. Realize no one knows what you're talking about, and find no such dish. Settle back into grief and self loathing.
Step 5. Recall that you tutor for fancy Georgetown family. Upon next visit to their mansion, casually mention your casual need for a trifle dish. Be slightly disappointed when they don't have one you can borrow. Sadness.
Step 6. Wake up next morning to discover fancy Georgetown mom standing outside your door with not one, but TWO brand new trifle dishes. Express genuine, unabated glee. Truly, a Christmas miracle.

And now onto trifle making. Ingredients:

Boxed brownie mix (plus the eggs / oil / water it says you need)
Heavy cream
4 egg yolks
Sugar
White chocolate chips
2 packages Chocolate Pudding mix (plus the milk it says you need)
Brand new trifle dish
Leo's mints, stolen
Arab slave helper
Mint extract

White Chocolate Mint Mousse: The night before you want to have the trifle ready, you make the mousse. From scratch. Seriously. Start by beating 4 eggs yolks with an electric mixer (I know, I always use a fork too, but for this its actually important. Unless you have a bionic arm.) Add in 1/4 cup of white sugar.

Heat up one cup of the heavy whipping cream in a small pot on the stove (note: a real recipe would invoke the term "saucepan" here ... but who the hell has ever made sauce in one of those?). Don't let it boil or anything, just until its hot. Put half of it into the egg/sugar bowl, mix, then add that all back to the remaining cream in the pot. Continue cooking this creamy egg stuff for a few minutes over low heat STIRRING CONSTANTLY. Add in the white chocolate chips, stirring until they melt. Now, I missed that part about stirring constantly. And yes, that did mean that I had, temporarily, concocted not white chocolate mousse, but white chocolate scrambled eggs. It was heartbreaking. So yeah. Don't do that. Stir constantly bitches.

Refrigerate the above masterpiece (covered) for about 2 hours. Now beat 1 and a 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream in a bowl, fold this into the now-cold egg mixture. Cover, and put this whole thing into the frig again, leave it there overnight.

Brownies: Do what it says on the box. Cool completely. Like actually completely. Again, I never follow that direction but this time its important. This is an excellent time to utilize your Arab kitchen slave, if he isn't busy with vegetables, which they often are.

And he won't mind, because his other option was working with crazy meat lady:

Chocolate pudding: Again, read box instructions. Follow them. Now take a second to breathe, cause shits about to get real.

Magic & Mystery: Because you follow directions perfectly and allowed the brownies to cool (before your roommate ripped them out to make broccoli something-or-other in the pan), you can easily cut them all into small one inch rectangley-square things. Arrange half of these in a gorgeous circle on the bottom of your trifle dish (having settled on the smaller dish at the recommendation of your Arab. They're good with spacial reality.) Fill in small holes in the brownie circle with more brownie, obvi. Now spoon half of the chocolate pudding on top of the brownie layer and smooth out. Thats layer #2. WOW.

Next, get ambitious, and add a few teaspoons of mint extract to your mouse, gently mix it in. Now spoon half of your MAGICAL MOUSSE YOU MADE FROM SCRATCH into the trifle as your third layer. Repeat the brownie-pudding-mousse layers, pausing to absolutely flip out before the second layer of brownies because you don't know if they'll sink and ruin the whole thing. Another great job for your Arab: taking initiative and really gettin' after it with the second brownie layer, fearless.

After 2 or 3 victory laps around the house and squealing for your twin's approval, put the finished trifle in the frig and go to the gym. Cause you're gonna get fat tonight.

On the way back from the gym, casual saunter into Leo's and steal some of their red and white mints. Hide them in your Nalgene, and GTFO.

At home, put the mints in a plastic bag, and beat them with the back end of scissors (because you can't seem to locate a mallet). Sprinkle on trifle. Succumb to your child like glee (and apparent psychosis):

SERVE AND BE DELIGHTED. HAPPY HOLIDAYS FRIENDS.

p.s. as always, photocred to Erica Begoun.

BACON BOUQUET

“Violets are blue
Bacon is red.
We love you so much,
and we’re glad you’re our friend.”

For our beloved (and soon-to-be-famous) Danny Rivera’s last theater performance at Georgetown, Eclaire and I wanted to do something really special. We couldn’t do roses because Danny is much manlier than that, but were aiming for that sort of sentiment, at least.


This is where the internet came to our rescue. A dozen bacon roses. Perfect for the manly men in your life.

To put together this greasy token of undying love, you will need:

1 package bacon, the thicker the better
bamboo skewers
green food coloring
muffin tin

Caution: you will get greasy. REALLY greasy. Have lots of soap on standby.
Take a strip of bacon and start rolling it like.... well, like a fruit roll-up, only bacon. You have to roll it pretty tightly at first so you have a place to stick the stem later. When you’ve got the whole rosette assembled, you can arrange the outer petals artistically. I do apologize that you’ll never look at a rose the same way.


If you have a mini muffin tin, you can just pop that rose in there and move onto the next one. If you have a normal muffin tin, use tin foil to make a bacon support ring. That sounds weird, but here’s a picture, you’ll get it.

Put the tray into a 375 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes, until the bacon is cooked-pink but don’t let it burn! Cooking time will depend on your muffin tin situation, but you know what cooked bacon looks like.

While your bacon is baking, dye your bacon skewers. The best way is to put a drop of food coloring onto the skewer and rub it into the wood. Your fingers will get stained green, but this is why you’re doing it after the bacon. Because we don’t want green bacon.

So, let your skewers dry completely, and when your bacon is done you’re going to want it to sit on a paper towel and de-grease anyway. When everything is set, poke the skewer through the bottom of the bacon rose, and arrange the roses in a... vase? Cup? Idk, whatever you have on hand, really. 

You might wanna use toothpicks to hold the whole thing together, especially if the roses are looking rickety. Deliver with utmost love, but avoid dogs on the way.

GINGERBREAD FRIENDS

We’re uncommonly blessed by Alissa’s fetish for cake decorating, which has provided us with baking tools heretofore unknown to mankind/ErinandMelissa. Did you know they have markers to draw on cookies?? They do. So gather all the decorating bits and pieces you’ve got, and you will also need:

3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoonfuls ground ginger
1 large spoonful cinnamon
a couple shakes ground cloves
a couple shakes nutmeg
1 stick butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg

Mix your flour / salt / baking soda / spices in one bowl, and beat together sugars / butter, and then egg, in another. Combine bowls. Mush the cookie dough into a ball, cover it, and put it in the refrigerator overnight. 

Now is the messy part. If I were you, I’d put down a lot of wax paper onto whatever surface you’re working on, then sprinkle a couple of spoonfuls of flour onto said surface and spread it out. Now I know there’s no chance in hell you own a rolling pin, so wash the outside of an empty wine bottle out of your recycling pile, thoroughly dry, and flour the wine bottle.

I’m not fucking with you. 

Use the wine bottle to roll out the dough until it’s about 1/4 inch thick, sprinkling more flour as necessary to keep things from getting too sticky. Flour a cookie cutter, and cut out gingerbread people! Or, dip a knife in flour and freehand it, but that’s awfully ballsy. Bake those bad gingerboys for about 12 minutes. It depends on the size of your cookie cutter, but the edges should start to brown and the centers should be firm.

OK now decorate! Let the cookies cool completely, cause otherwise the icing will melt and you’ll be sad. You can use icing with those fancy decorating tips, or you can use tubs of icing or the recipe below:

2 cups sugar, 1 stick butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 1/2 tablespoons milk. Beat it up. Like, really.

Anyway, if you don’t have fancy decorating tips, load up icing into a ziploc bag, close it (obvi), and snip a tiny bit of the corner. You can also divide up icing and make different colors by adding a few drops of food coloring. If you run out of ideas for decorating, scroll through facebook.

Or, pick your favorite celebrity. Say a basketball player you’d love to marry.

Please come back, Chris.

Hands down the creepiest thing I've ever done.