Doodle for Google

I'm posting a link for Doodle for Google. Parents, teachers, students, grab the attention of the little Picasso's in your lives and convince them to give this a go. I think it's a great opportunity for so many reasons. Go for it while there's still time left.  

Scholarship opportunities are out there. Keep your eyes opens and your head and hands ready. When I see good/great ones I'll post them. If it weren't for art and art scholarships I can honestly say I wouldn't have been able to go places that I've been, experience things I've experienced, and learn things I've learned at the early ages that I did. It opened my eyes to the world out there. 

So many people look at scholarship application qualifications and think they can't get them. Guess what. A lot of other people think the same thing. There's those handful of people who try anyway and get them because they didn't have any real competition.  Give it a shot. You have nothing to lose.

In the future, if you come across scholarship information, shoot it to me. If it looks good and legit, I'll post it.

Have a great day everyone.

By the way, I love the MLK Day Google Search theme up today. Sweet.

-Until again-

I Have a Dreamy Chocolate Cake

Ok so, chocolate cake and Dr. MLK, Jr have nothing to do with eachother, but since it's his birthday, I'd thought I'd squeeze a reference in there somewhere. Why not celebrate the progress of America in civil rights with a hunk of super moist, super rich, decadent goodness?  I mean, we are still in the 30 days of chocolate stretch to Valentine's Day. 

By the way, I've never been a huge fan of chocolate cake, which is why this one doesn't have chocolate icing. To me, there is such a thing as too much chocolate. But this one I do like. So far, it's the only I've ever bothered to make note of the recipe for future cravings. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Chocolate Cake (with vanilla glaze) (for small 8x8 square pan or small bundt pan)

 For the batter you need:
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda 
1 tsp salt
1/2 c cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup (or 1 stick) butter or margarine
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup of fresh brewed coffee (still warm but not boiling)

For the glaze you need:
1 cup of confectioners sugar
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or non-stick spray (same thing) the pan to be used.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cocoa powder, salt and cinnamon. 
In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Until its light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Add this mixture to the dry mixture. 
While the coffee is still warm, slowly stir it into the batter.  It should look slightly watery/runny. Not as thick as usual cake batters. You will indeed be compelled to add more flour if you're used to mixing cake batters. But do refrain.

Pour the smooth, well blended batter in the pan. Bake for about 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes our mostly clean. (Because it's so moist, some will stick. If it comes out completely clean, it's overdone.)

While the cake is in the oven, mix the confectioners sugar, milk, and vanilla in a bowl until its smooth with almost no visible sugar clumps. 
Once the cake is cool, drizzle it over the cake.

It's so yummy and easy pleasey, so pass me a piecey.

-Until again-

Chocolate is the New Chocolate: Chocolate Chip Cookies

prob not the greatest picture

Seriously though, it really is. Since it's discovery chocolate has done nothing but bring lots of smiles and make a lot of people rich. It comes in so many forms. You can alter the look and taste of it. You can use it for art purposes. You can dress it down for at home hangouts or dress it up for upscale menus. Certain kinds are even good for you. But there's no mistaking the fact that chocolate always reminds us of comfort and childhood. 

Although I don't much celebrate it, Valentine's Day is right around the corner. So I thought my next few recipe-related posts will have something to do with chocolate. Fellas, (if I even have any male readers at all), women will tell you they want a lot of things. There's nothing like a man that can cook and/or bake. While all the other Joe's are out stocking up on boxed candy that's been on the shelf since Halloween, you could be stunning your lady with your "from scratch" treasures. I guarantee she'll brag that you tried, even if it doesn't come out right or even edible. She'll be glad you put in the time, the effort, and the thought.  

I get asked to make these chocolate chip cookies quite a bit. They've been tested for the last 6 years. I haven't received a complaint yet. I only tweaked a few things from a recipe I got online. Now, I can't remember what the website was that I got it from, otherwise I just would've posted the link and added my notes instead of taking the time to fully type this out. 

This recipe will make at least 80 small cookies. If I'm not giving out out baskets to various folk, I like to ball up all the dough and freeze it Otis Spunkmeyer style.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted sweet cream butter (If you sub the butter you might as well not bake these)
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1/2 granulated white sugar
2 (3.4oz) boxes of instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
2 tbsp Watkin's Double Strength Vanilla (this brand & variety makes ALL the difference)
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups of Nestle Toll-house semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups of Nestle Toll-house milk chocolate chips
**as always 1 cup pecans are optional if you go for that kind of thing
roll of parchment paper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Line a couple of pans with parchment paper. (Note: If you're make the entire batch at once, obviously there won't be enough room to bake them all at once if you're using a standard size home oven. You'll have to bake them in rounds until you get them all done. Maybe 2-4 rounds.

In medium bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Stir in the dry ingredients little by little. Make sure it's well blended. Add the chocolate chips (and nuts if you absolutely must.)

Once mixed, it's best to refrigerate it a couple of hours before to harden so your cookies won't come out super flat. But it's not mandatory or anything.
You can drop them on the pan by the spoonful (or 3 spoonfuls if you like larger cookies.) However, if presentation is important, I suggest you use your hands to roll them into 1.5in balls. Use your finger to press in the middle of the ball on the parchment paper covered cookie sheet. This should help you get them as close to perfectly round as possible.

I like my cookies a little gooey and not quite fully done so I take them out around the 8 minute mark. Just before they're browning. But if you like them done to the point in the picture about, that's about 10-12 minutes. Ovens vary, so just keep your eye on them.

Enjoy that nice plate of cookies with a tall glass of milk or a warm mug of hot cocoa.

If you are giving these as gifts, I suggest you not simply Ziploc bag it. Try stacking them in cellophane bags and tying a nice ribbon around it or using some decorative baker's boxes with a nice handwritten note tag. Personal gifts are always the best. Makes a person feel....thought about.

Don't forget to let me know how your batch turned out.

-Until again-

Breakfast Buddies Banana Nut Bread

 

Happy Hump Day! I tell ya, I'm so glad to be on the down slope of the week. It hasn't been a bad week by any means, and I usually wouldn't wish my life away. However, I'd gotten so used to sleeping late over vacation, I think my body is upset with me. (So is the dog as he has gone back on his usual crating schedule and I guess he thought those days were over and I'd never go back to work.) Needless to say, if I can help it I will most certainly sleep until at least 10am on Saturday. (Lord willing hopefully this whole construction thing outside is over and the noise won't ruin my not-so-needed R&R.)

I suppose it's time for another recipe. So here you go. A sweet, kind of cake-like, bread. This one starts with 2 cups of Amish Friendship Bread starter. Here is a link for that.
  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-friendship-bread-starter/
Or you could just Google it and a gillion search results will pop up. WARNING: This is only for the patient. It takes at least 10 days. Your home will smell like wonderful yeasty breaded goodness the entire time and your stomach will curse you for teasing the nostrils and not following through with delivery of delicious bits heaven to it.

I myself have a tree nut allergy. This recipe makes two loaves. So I usually make one loaf with nuts  and one loaf without. Bread, cakes, cookies, brownies--there's always a family member that asks me "Where's the nuts? You need to put those in there!" I also usually only top it so that I can cut the top off and eat the bottom. But it you're going to use walnuts, you'll want to just mix it in the dough/batter.


Banana Bread

2 cups of Amish Friendship Bread starter
3 super ripe bananas (I mean as brown as you can get them without them being rotten. Brown on the       outside. Still whitish yellow on the inside.)
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
*optional* 1-2 cups of pecans or walnuts whichever is preferred

Grease 2 9x5in loaf pans. Preheat over to 325 degrees. 
In a medium bowl, mash the bananas and shortening together and smooth as you get it. There will be lumps, but you don't wan't them to huge ones. Add starter, vanilla, eggs, and milk.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg. Combine this with the wet ingredients in the other bowl. Mix well. Divide/pour batter into the two pans.
If you opted to add the nuts, top it now, if you did not mix the nuts in with the batter already-which is okay too.

Bake for about 1hr 15min  (enjoy the aroma while you wait) or until it's golden on top, toothpicks come out clean, and the edges have begun to separate from the pan. Let it cool for a few minutes before separating from the pan completely. It's best to let it finish cooling on a wire rack if you have one. If not, just let it set on some parchment paper.

Here's where you wrap up the extra loaf all pretty and give it to a friend or an unsuspecting yet very deserving stranger. Yep.

Hope you enjoy it. I'm told it's the perfect companion to your cup of coffee in the morning

Don't forget, if you try any of these recipes, please comment and let us know how it turned out and what changes you'd suggest (if any). It's always a community effort to make any recipe the best it could possibly be.

-Until again-

Pay It Forward (or Maybe Just Make a Good Return)

Shewwwww! Today was quite a Monday. 

It's been a long day. 

I didn't start dinner until 9:30pm and turned it into a meatless Monday with veggie Spaghetti. I'm slurping away on the noodles as I type. However, this entry is not about food (or art or any event I attended). Coming off of a 2 week vacation, I was preparing for this to be just a hellish kind of Monday. But something miraculous happened. Someone did a good deed for me first thing this morning that really set the tone for the rest of my good Monday. Imagine that. 

A little background. 

I apparently have a neighbor who is handicapped/disabled or whatever the politically correct term is. You know what I'm saying. I've never met this neighbor, but he or she has a driver that picks them up each morning around the time I'm heading to work. This driver is an older friendly gentleman. He always waits in or by the van for them to be ready to go-reading, listening to the radio, stretching his legs, etc. He usually waves and/or says hello in a very friendly and non-threatening manner as I drive out of the neighborhood.  However, we've never held a conversation nor introduced ourselves to each other. Just a wave, a "hello" or "have a good day". That's all. For several months now. Almost every morning. 

I guess he'd noticed he hasn't been meeting me in the mornings over the holidays (yeah kinda scary to know someone you don't know knows your schedule). I digress. This morning, I went to my ice-covered car, started it and let it run with the heat while I fumbled around through my purse looking for my Ear Bags. I wanted to keep the wind out of my ears while I scraped the ice off my windows because it obviously wasn't going to melt fast enough. I should mention I'm not a morning person by any means. Before I could find them, I see a big white man seemingly lunging at me with a huge ice scraper. I'm sure I momentarily had a look of shock and fear on my face, but before I had the chance to be alarmed by this motion and reach for a box cutter (lucky him), he spoke out in that hearty voice I recognize each morning. "Do you need any help getting that ice off your car? I noticed you were just waiting and you're normally off on your way by now. Didn't know if you had an ice scraper or not". I did have one. An opportunity for him to retreat, but he did not. We introduced ourselves. Made small talk for a few minutes while he scraped one side and I scraped the other. A small gesture made my day. Between that and blasting Bruno Mars all the way to work (you're welcome to the couple that caught my all-in performance at the stoplight), there was no possible way I could have a bad Monday now. When I got to work, a co-worker made notice (knowing how I usually am in the mornings) saying "You act like you might be a morning person today!"  Funny how a little help from a stranger and the absence of people cutting you off and flipping you off in the morning can make all the difference. I'm sure he went about his day not thinking twice about what he did for me. But I did not forget.

I say all that to say this. For every genuinely nice person in the world out there, there's probably 5 unkind-troubled-soul-ready-to-do-you-harm type people out there. 

You watch the news. 

If we were all a little nicer, a little less on edge all the time, and had a sense of community reaching out to our neighbors BEFORE tragedies happen...well... it's quite possible avoidable tragedies would happen a little less. Just maybe.Think about how many people you flipped off in traffic today or had a nasty exchange then sent them on their way with all that built up hostility. How many people did you smile at and hold the door for? How many times did you say "thank you", "I love you","good job", or "need any help" to someone today? How many people did you treat like they're beneath you (because that's how you really feel)? You get the idea. Ponder that.

Now, should you choose to go up to a stranger with a sharp looking object (such as the ice scraper) like my friend this morning, let it be someone who is familiar with your face. Should you roll up on a defensive single woman such as myself, I don't want you to catch a box cutter to the groin trying to do a good deed. I'm suspicious of everyone I meet until I feel there's no threat. I suspect most women (and some men) are as well--especially in the south. You may come across a "shoot first and ask questions later" type of character. So please, exercise good judgement in your good deeds. If you think you don't have anything to pay forward, how about making the first deposit? 

I'll pay it forward I'm sure as I like to think of myself as one of those genuinely nice people in the world. I probably already have to someone in some way today not realizing it. However, in this day and time where in the blink of an eye blazing spotlights are shed all too often on the bad side of humanity (again...you watch the news), I think it's important to let others know how much you appreciate their everyday kindness-no matter how big or small. Kindness is kindness. It SHOULD be encouraged. So not only will I pay it forward, but I'm making a return. He's got a nice little handwritten Thank You card with his name on it and a bag of homemade fresh baked cookies waiting for him in the morning.

You can go the grand gesture route. That's always nice. But you know, it only takes a small amount of spice to liven up a dish. So adding spice to someone's day is just fine. You could hold the door  and share your umbrella in the rain with someone else who doesn't have one. Offer to take out your neighbors garbage. Share a laugh with those standing near you in a long line. Donate used books to a library in the name of your favorite teacher, student, or school staff member. Just a few ideas.

You know, it really is the little things.

-Until again-

"Never let loyalty and kindness leave you!
    Tie them around your neck as a reminder.
    Write them deep within your heart." -Proverbs 3:3 (NLT)