Recipe of the Week

Back to school...and currently working on my senior show before it's submitted for review next Friday, along with all the rest of college life. And snow. And rain. And sleet, hail and the power going off every five minutes. But hey, that was just one day. Regardless of the weather, I am not spending much time in Baldwin, aside from work.

Fortunately, like a good college student, I am prepared. I have a delicious recipe I tried over spring break that I have been dying to share!!! I brought these back as a surprise for The Sojourn staff, and they seemed to enjoy them, so I think it was a successful experiment.

Oreo Pudding Cookies-pretty easy and pretty yummy.

I used a pudding cookie recipe from another blog: http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/vanilla-pudding-chocolate-chip-cookies/
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3.4 oz. package vanilla instant pudding mix
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

But instead of vanilla pudding, I used Oreo pudding!

And crushed up mini Oreros!

And chocolate chips!

Here are the directions from their blog. Pretty easy to follow. And don't worry about them looking gooey when they come out of the oven; they will firm up. You don't want to burn them, after all!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat and set aside.
2. Using a mixer, beat together butter and sugars until creamy. Add in pudding mix, eggs, and vanilla extract. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Drop cookie dough by rounded tablespoons onto prepared baking sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until slight golden and set. Remove cookies from oven and let cool on baking sheet for two minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely.

An American in Paris (They speak French in Canada, right?)

What'd you do for spring break? Oh, you know, nothing special, just DROVE TO ANOTHER COUNTRY! That's all. Yeah. So I live about an hour and a half from Niagara Falls, and thus, CANADA! We were surprised to find the area so touristy. And the falls so icy. But that's what it looks like, as you can see from these fun photos.

The frozen American Falls

The frozen falls and river

Frozen falls lit up at night

Horseshoe Falls

Tim Horton's in Canada! What!

Yes, I ate a Canadian Maple doughnut in CANADA!

Recipe of the Week

4

There's no college dining hall recipe this week, because I am home on spring break! Woohoo! So, in honor of being home, I have a brand new pancake recipe, completely from my own mind! Scary. But delicious. Here it is:

Chocolate Cheesecake Pancakes.

Yum!

I had a package of cream cheese I was going to bake biscuits with, but I decided I wanted to try it in pancakes instead. I only used half of the package for this, so there is enough left to try something else. But here is the pancake recipe. It is just the basic recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookbook (at least as it was 30 years ago when my mama got married and got her cookbook).
1 egg
1 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
1 tbs sugar
2 tbs oil
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Mix it all up, and then add my ingredients.

4 oz cream cheese
1 package hot chocolate mix
A few crumbled chocolate chip cookies

Yes this is how college students make up recipes, because we do not own all of the proper ingredients like cocoa, chocolate chips and graham crackers. Hot chocolate mix works very well to add the chocolate flavor to my pancakes. But graham crackers are usually added to cheesecake type things to give the aura of a crust, and I thought those would be a nice touch. I am too impatient to wait until we get graham crackers though, but I had a brilliant idea to replace them. Why not cookie crumbs? And since we didn't have any chocolate chips (which are almost absolutely necessary for sugary pancakes) crumbling up chocolate chip cookies also added a few of those! Like I said, brilliant!

The cream cheese should probably have been sitting out a while to get softer so it was easy to mix in, but I think it worked out well having chunks of it in the mix. That way, it doesn't all melt into the batter, but when you bite into your pancakes, surprise! There's cheesecake inside! I was quite pleased with the results, and I hope you will be too. The only problem was they got a little cold while I was too busy taking pictures!