Discovering 2014: Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Cookie Sticks. As you can see from my title, the sticks part is debateable! There's a bunch of pins on Pinterest showing these gorgeous cookie sticks, which seemed simple enough. Well, I made cookies, at least. :)

The last time I made chocolate chip cookies from scratch was about a decade ago. I still don't know what I did wrong, but they were absolutely inedible, and I left the baking to my husband for many years afterward. With all the baking I did over the past couple of months though, I was confident I could get this finally right.

Discovering 2014: Marshmallow Fluff

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Marshmallow Fluff, using this recipe by Cinammon Spice and Everything Nice.

It's been a very long work day, so I'm just going to post the pictures tonight and will update with commentary tomorrow!

Discovering 2014: Brown Sugar Snickerdoodle Cookies

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Snickerdoodle Sugar Cookies. I followed this recipe by Mommy's Sweet Confessions, which in turn was adapted from this Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

This follows a normal sugar cookie recipe pretty closely, but also uses brown sugar, cream of tartar, and is rolled in sugar and cinnamon. Since I've covered making sugar cookies before I didn't take pictures throughout the entire process this time, but the full recipe can be found at the end!

Discovering 2014: Whipped Shortbread

 Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Whipped Shortbread, using this recipe from Taste of Home. My suggestion, if you decide to use their recipe, is to drop the cornstarch ingredient because these come out with an overly powdery taste. They're okay, but they could be better. Next time we do these we'll probably try this recipe from Food.com instead.

The husband and I decided to halve the recipe since we really didn't want over 100 cookies. Even with halving it we still ended up with nearly 75 cookies.

Discovering 2014: Pancake Bites

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Good morning! Today's project was Pancake Bites, following the directions from this pin. The simple version is to bake pancake batter in a muffin pan at 350°F for 12-14 minutes, but you can add more to jazz up the bites!

I'm not remotely close to a morning person, so using a Bisquick mix sounded much more appealing to me at 8:30am compared to making my own. I used one of the modified versions they offer that includes 1tsp vanilla extract and 2tsp baking powder (halved to 1/2 and 1, respectively).

Discovering 2014: Angel Bites

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Angel Bites, using this recipe from the Kitchen Trial and Error blog. I did have to modify the recipe some, which is detailed with the pictures below. The recipe is mainly low fat cream cheese and a lot of powdered sugar, flavored with mint (I used peppermint extract) and optionally dyed light yellow.

Flavored Marshmallows: The Conclusion!

Yesterday the husband and I made Flavored Marshmallows, but they had to sit overnight to solidify. This afternoon I flipped it out of the pan and peeled the parchment paper off (lost some marshmallow, but not too much, to the paper). We then added some more powdered sugar to what was the bottom side in the pan (and was now the top), since it was pretty sticky.

After a couple more hours, the husband used a pizza cutter to cut it into strips. We then dipped the sticky sides into powdered sugar and let it sit a few more hours.

Finally we cut it into cubes and again used the pan to get some powdered sugar on the sticky sides. We're going to let them sit one more night before putting them in an airtight container, but they are done and still delicious!

Discovering 2014: Flavored Marshmallows

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

One of these days I'll read a recipe the day before I do it....

Today's project was Flavored Marshmallows, using this recipe from A Beautiful Mess. I have to admit that once we got it all in the mixer we were quite dubious that it would turn to marshmallow, but about five minutes into mixing it changed very quickly!

The downside of not reading the recipe yesterday is that the mixture has to sit overnight, so I can't report on the final product until tomorrow. For now, here's a look at how everything else went!

UPDATE: Here's the conclusion of this project!

Discovering 2014: Japanese Cheesecake

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Japanese Cheesecake, which the husband and I made following this recipe from the Green Cilantro blog. The best description I read of this type of cheesecake is that it "looks like pound cake, tastes like cheesecake." I won't disagree, it certainly tastes quite similar to a cheesecake.

The only deviation we made was using a 9" springform round instead of a 7", since we couldn't justify buying a 7" for a single recipe. This made our result flatter than what Green Cilantro pictured. For some reason ours never became golden brown on the top even though we cooked it following their times (even had it got a bit longer). It tastes fine, but for the amount of time it took to make it compared to a traditional style cheesecake, I can't say we'd bother with it again.

We had our hands full most of the time, but I did manage to grab a few pictures while we were getting the many different pieces together.

Discovering 2014: Homemade Nutter Butters

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Homemade Nutter Butters. The recipe I used was from the Cookies and Cups blog. The only modifications I would do next time is use less than one-inch rolls (mine came out huge compared to hers) and one cup less powdered sugar in the filling (the taste is close, but too sweet). Our yield was about 33 sandwich cookies and they taste great. Pictures of the creation process are below!

Discovering 2014: Sugar Sprinkles Cookies

.Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Sugar Sprinkles Cookies. Yes, these are just sugar cookies with sprinkles on them, but hey, I've never made homemade sugar cookies before (the husband normally does the baking) so it's a first for me!

The recipe from Averie Cooks was spot-on and the only problem I had was having to lengthen my cook times, but I think that's because I made my cookies larger than they did. Especially the giant cookies.

WHAT?! GIANT COOKIES?? Well, check out my pictures of the creation process!

Discovering 2014: Homemade Cheez-Its

Discovering 2014 is a personal goal to complete a daily project throughout the year!

Today's project was Homemade Cheez-Its, which used a recipe blogged by Shopgirl. Take note that she uses "tsp" for tablespoon instead of "tbsp", which may save you some confusion when it comes to the water.

The only differences I made was using an 8-oz bag of pre-shredded mild cheddar cheese and needing 5 tbsp of water instead of the 3-4 she noted. I also didn't have a fluted pastry cutter, so we used a pizza cutter. Since I used our convection oven, the cook time was about 3-5 minutes more than her max of 10 minutes.

While I wouldn't say it's an exact replica of Cheez-Its, they are definitely tasty (and have my kids' stamp of approval) and are similar in flavor. Check out my pictures below taken during the creation process.