Blueberry Ernties* And Please Let Me Go Back To Sleep

*An erntie (pronounced URN-tee) is a pancake. It's the shortened form of Panacake Ernstern, which is obvs the technical pro chef term for pancakes. You philistine.

*Ahem*

Hi. I have a Taylor Swift song stuck in my head. Also, I was rudely awakened and dragged out of bed, kicking and screaming**, by Felder. Why? So I could be chained to the stove and forced to slave and slave*** and cook breakfast for him before he goes to work.

I made blueberry ernties & bacon.

HOW TO MAKE A GOOD ERNTIE (BLUEBERRY OR OTHERWISE):

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup yogurt (plain) (duh) (I guess flavored yogurt would be interesting.) (But interesting in the way where someone made you something and they're all proud and they watch you eat it and you immediately want to puke but you swallow and OH MY GOD IT'S TRYING TO COME BACK UP and they go "how did you like it?" all hopefully and you grin the grin of a corpse and go "It's... interesting." And then you run.) (Okay, back to ingredients.)
1 egg
3 tbsp butter
1 cup milk

Okay, so... what am I doing again?

Panacakes. Right. (Attention span is shot. Too much awake, not enough asleep.)

STEP ONE: Take the flour, salt, sugar, baking soda and yogurt and sift them together in a big bowl. Except, don't sift the yogurt because ew. That would turn out pretty gross.


I did not sift because I am a lazy barsted. (If you do not know what a barsted is, say it out loud a few times.)


(Please excuse my lighting inconsistencies. I kept having to reset the flash.)

STEP TWO: Take the egg and beat it slightly. Please do not ask me the difference between a slightly beaten egg and a severely beaten egg, I am not your egg abuse hotline. Melt the butter and combine it with the egg and the milk.


STEP THREE: Mix the wet stuff with the (relatively) dry stuff. It will be lumpy lumpy lumpy. This is okay.

Yes those are chocolate chips and no you may not have them.




STEP FOUR: Cook in pan until not raw anymore, duh. If you want blueberries, add them now. Also works with chocolate chips and theoretically any other item.

Ka-flip!

Ka-flip!


STEP FIVE: Add bacon and devour.



I think Felder likes it.

STEP SIX: Profit****.

**This is a lie. I woke up of my own accord at (shudder) 7 a.m.
***Also a lie.
****Probably a lie.

<3,
TWC
P.S. Muffins coming up next!

Fabulous Frosting

Hello internets!

I got this recipe from the Pioneer Woman - I was making cupcakes this weekend and also really really wanted to try out my new pastry bags, plus HELLO FROSTING. So really, it was the natural response.

Okay, less babbling, more recipe.

1. Combine 5 tbs flour with 1 cup of milk.

Lookit how cute that is! The flour made little bubbly balls when I tipped it in. D'aww.

No? Not cute? Ah well.

2. Combine the two in a saucepan over medium heat - the Pioneer Woman used a whisk but (confession time!) I have not yet gotten the hang of using a whisk and I ended up burning some of the flour that got stuck to the bottom of the saucepan, so I switched to a spatula.

...Wait a minute. (rereads recipe)

OH.

RIGHT.

Combine them FIRST, then heat. A-durr. ...LOOK, A DISTRACTION!

(My first, optimistic photo.)


Ewg, lumpy. I suspect that I did not blend this well enough because there were still some interesting lumps in it when I was done. :/

3. Let it cool completely. Why? Hell if I know, I just work here. It'll be SUPER thick, like oatmeal.

You can stick it in the fridge for a bit to cool it down faster.

4. Add 1 tsp vanilla.


Stir that motherf*cker in.


Trust me on this: DO NOT BOTHER SNEAKING A TASTE AT THIS POINT. IT TASTES GROSS.

5. Mush up 1 cup sugar with 1 cup butter. The recipe didn't specify powdered sugar or what, but since I am like Einstein (no, really), I figured out that it is, in fact, powdered sugar.

Mush it all together till it's light & fluffy, like whipped cream.

6. Now add the oatmeal flour/milk mush. Whip it on medium high until it has the consistency of frosting. (Man, I dunno... wing it? The recipe says it will have the consistency of whipped cream, but I must have screwed something up pretty bad.)

Also, it will look like a science experiment.

7. Yay! Frosting! Frost your cupcakes/cake/whatever.



8. Sprinkles optional.



Crunchy.

You can also get really excited about using your new pastry bags, like I did, and experiment.




Results: Everyone (except me) loved it. I thought it was so-so, but seriously, HUGE thumbs up from Felder, Chuck*, McK and Eeeeeeeve.

Go, go, gadget professional cook?

<3,
TWC

*Chuck is a professional chef who happens to work with me at my day job.

Buttermilk Pancakes and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Sorry for the hella late post, you guys (all three of you who read this). There was this thing, and then another thing, and then I forgot the camera at my other house and oh god you don't even want to know. But now the pictures are up and the cookies are made so here's the post! :)

I was only planning on making cookies this weekend, but then Felder got hungry. REALLY hungry. One thing led to another, and BAM! All of a sudden, I'm making cookies AND pancakes.

I started on the pancakes first, due to Felder's insistence that he was about to die of starvation. He claims that these pancakes take at least two hours to make, but I think they really only took about 45 minutes (15 of which consisted of me treating a burn wound). Possibly less, if you aren't making cookies at the same time.

OKAY. SO. Recipes are from my mom's old copy of The Joy Of Cooking.


Buttermilk Pancakes: Recipe says it makes 10 4-inch pancakes. I ended up making 5 6-inch pancakes, one of which collapsed like the Soviet Union in 1991.


The rest of them ended up looking a lot like internal organs/UFOs.


I'm not so good with the circle-making, I guess. But I don't think I could have made 10 pancakes out of that much batter.

You will need:


Dry Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons butter, melted
(Microwave works well for this, assuming your microwave works at all. Unlike mine. So I improvised, stuck my butter in a glass bowl and stuck the glass bowl in my toaster oven.

Incidentally, glass retains heat really well. Hence, the burn wounds.)
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

So vhat ve gonna do is:
In the book, it says sift the dry ingredients all together, which was hella messy, but made super fluffy pancakes, but I guess whisking works too. If you don't have a sifter, btw, you can use a strainer and shake it through into a bowl. Just beware: if your bowl is too small, the dry ingredients go everywhere. Like a dusty, fluffy cloud of pure evil.


Get another bowl, combine the wet ingredients.

Ewww.

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Give just enough quick strokes with a whisk to barely moisten the dry ingredients. If you do too much beating, the pancakes will be tough. Tough like Mr. T. Ignore the lumps (there will be lumps).


Cook on a griddle/in a pan/on a rock. You know the pan is hot enough when you flick a few drops of water on it and they jump around and sizzle. Watch your pancake - when it bubbles a bunch all over and starts to look kind of fluffy and odd, it's ready to flip. Check the underside with a spatula to make sure it's brownish first, though.


If you can't serve them immediately, stick them on a plate in the oven at 200 degrees. It keeps 'em warm. :)

They were delicious, and as The Brother pointed out, they tasted kind of like biscuits. The Mother taste-tested several, purely in the interest of science, and pronounced them a success. She wanted to continue her testing, but I took the plate away, because if she taste-tested any more of them, Felder would not have gotten any breakfast. Unfortunately, there was no syrup in the house, so we smothered them in butter and devoured them.


I love that word. It's so much fun to say. I always think of this when I say devour:


(By the Amazing Eeeeeeeve)


...Anyway, the cookies! You know that you've done it right when you taste a little bit of the cookie dough and then you taste just a little bit more and pretty soon you're on your way to cookie-rehab because you cannot stop eating.

I made a double batch of these, because I finished one batch and was like, "That's it?" Seriously, this recipe should be at LEAST doubled for your full cookie-scromphing satisfaction.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup & 2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 bag flavored chips (chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter... whatever you want)
nuts (but only if you are DANGEROUSLY INSANE want nuts)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. DO NOT FORGET THIS OR YOU WILL FEEL DUMB WHILE YOU WAIT FOR IT TO HEAT UP.

Take the butter and cream it. I use a potato masher, but I think maybe there's a thing you use specifically for creaming butter? Meh. Anyway, make sure you leave the butter out for a while because trying to cream frozen butter is like a full on workout. Like, I'm surprised that I don't have bulging biceps now.


Then you take the sugars and you play with them while you wait for the butter to get soft enough to cream.


Okay, you've creamed the butter now, right?


Good. Stir the butter and sugar together hardcore, til you can't discern the sugar from the butter - basically, til it's a creamy, sugary mass.


Once you've got that, you add the egg and vanilla. Stir those in really well. The consistency at this point will be, bluntly, super gross. Totes slimy.

Now, mix the dry ingredients. Once again, the book says sift them together. I don't know how much it matters, really. Take your dry ingredients and mix them into the wet ingredients. This is the part where the cookie dough really becomes cookie dough. You'll def. be able to tell when the cookie dough is ready for chocolate chips, because the flour is all mixed in and the cookie dough no longer looks like the Ghost of Cookie Dough Past, all white and flour-y.


At this point, you can sample the dough, if you want.


NOT THAT MUCH. Seriously, do you want to actually bake these things? No? Yeah, me neither. Buuuut, I promised the guys at work they'd have cookies. So now you can add the chocolate chips now, or the alternative chips, or the (shudder) nuts. Ew.

Bake for 10 min, until golden-brown and, you know, cookie-looking.

OR do what I did, and save them for later: Take a cookie dough lump and some tinfoil.


Form the cookie dough into a longish rectangley thing, like so:


Now roll it up like a tinfoil cookie salami.


Store in fridge til you're ready to bake. Tip: Put a note on your cookie-salamis so nobody eats them (cough cough MOM). My note says, "DO NOT TOUCH, LEST YE FALL PREY TO THE CURSE OF THE SEVEN BLIND BASTARDS."

Another Tip: If you chill your cookie dough before baking it, the cookies will be all smooshy and nice. This is a tip I have yet to test, but I read it on the Intar-webs, so it must be true. Right, guys?

Yet Another Tip, from the Amazing McK: Store your done cookies in a ziplock bag with a piece of bread. This will ensure that your cookies stay squooshy and nummy, while the bread will get hella, HELLA stale. He says this will work for about a week.

I'll update ya'll when I make the cookies, let you know how they come out.

<3, TWC
UPDATE: I wrote this post on Sunday night, but had problems with pictures. I made the cookies last night, so here is the rest of the post. Okay, so The Mother ate one of my cookie-dough salamis. I hope she likes her new curse. The remaining two were in the freezer. Here's what I did with them: 1. Unwrap, because who wants tinfoil in their cookies? (If anyone out there raises their hand, I will find you and I will smite you.)


2. Cut into pepperoni-like slices, but thickish. Like maybe 1/4" thick? Ish? I hate measurements.


3. Lay on a well-greased cookie sheet, spaced fairly evenly. Give the cookies room to expand in the oven. (Or not, if you want a giant lumpy cookie mass.)


4. Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 min (as gone over in the above post).


5. Remove cookies from oven, using TWO oven mitts, not one and almost dropping the damn thing and catching it and LOOK ANOTHER BURN HOW DELIGHTFUL.

6. Wonder what the eff happened and why do you have tye-dye cookies?!


7. Oh yeah, two different batches of dough. One had melted butter because you stuck it on top of the toaster oven. Mystery solved!

8. DEVOUR.

9. (Optional) Store in fridge with aforementioned bread.


The Brother enjoyed these so much he was all like OMG I WILL PAY YOU TO MAKE THESE FOR ME SERIOUSLY NAME YOUR PRICE. Felder was like NOM NOM NOM PUT THE COOKIES IN MY MOUTH. WHY HAS THE FLOW OF COOKIES STOPPED??

We're gonna call this one a success, I think. ;)

<3,
TWC