Chocolae Covered Caramels with Sea Salt

Sorry I haven't posted in a long time, but with school and all, it gets kinda busy around here.

We've made some new friends at the St. Croix Chocolate Co. They brought me some chocolate to practice my tempering. They also brought my mom a box of chocolates, and I tried the salted caramel chocolate, and I loved it so much, I decided to make my own with the chocolate they gave me.

We had made caramel yesterday for dipping apples, and there was a lot of extra. We figured it would be a good reason to use it up. My mom helped me temper the chocolate and dip the caramels, and I sprinkled the salt on top.
We had to set the caramel outside in the freezing cold air to get it hardened up enough to handle, and that worked way better than any freezer. They all turned out pretty and tasty! The caramel inside was all nice and gooey!

Vanilla Pudding w/ Banana & Nilla Wafers

My mom bought a box of Nilla wafers for a camping trip, but we never ate them. So there was a recipe on the side for this vanilla pudding with bananas and Nilla wafers, so we decided to try it out. First, we made a pudding of vanilla, sugar, four, salt, and milk.

Then, we poured it into a glass dish, put Nilla wafers down, then sliced bananas, and repeated the process a few times.

For a finish, we put whipped cream and some wafers sticking out of the top. It was delicious!

Homemade APPLE Juice

I had a craving for some fresh apple juice last night, so my mom came back from the store today with a bag of apples. Then, she took out our mixer and put on the meat grinder attachment. There is a funnel sort of thing where you put the meat in and it comes out ground, so we put in the cut up apples. We got a 2 in 1 sort of deal; we got apple puree, and when we put it through a strainer, we got apple juice!

It was pretty messy!

3 lbs of apples = 2 1/2 cups of juice. That's not even a cup per pound of apple! Kinda pathetic, but also tasty.

We then strained the juice again, and we got some applesauce! But then we only got 2 cups of juice, but I bet the applesauce will be tasty once we add sugar and cinnamon. Later that day, my mom and I made popovers, and we made apple butter out of the apple puree. It was delish on the popovers!

Homemade Orange Juice

I have these odd food phases in my life, if you haven't noticed already. Just a while back, I was in a Green-Apple-Phase. A long while back, I was in a Bosch-Pear-Phase. Now, I'm in a Navel-Orange-Phase, except I don't just eat them, I make orange juice out of them. My mom just bought a lemon juicer, and so I use that instead of my hands. It might sound easy, as in, "Just put in a half of an orange and squeeze it," but that's not the best way. What would really work well is cutting it up in pretty much 10ths, but I do 8ths. I put an 8th in the squeezer, and a pretty good amount of juice comes out.

I like leaving the pulp in, because it's healthy for you.

Pistachio Pudding Dessert

I recently went to my mom and dad's friend's resort, one of the desserts was DELICIOUS. I asked the woman who made it for the recipe, but I guess I couldn't wait that long. When I got home, my mom and I looked up the recipe on Epicurious, and sure enough, it showed up. It's not the same exact recipe, but it tasted just as good. I mixed milk, pistachio pudding mix and cream cheese in a mixer, and then made some whipped cream. My mom made some sort of dough, spread it on the bottom of a pan and cooked it. Then, I plopped and spread the pudding mixture on, and then the whipped cream. We let it refrigerate for a while, and then I tried some. It was SO GOOD!!! Just as good as I remembered.

By the way, while I was at the resort, I tried kneeboarding and water skiing for the first time! Despite the look on my face, I got up on my first try and had a lot of fun!

M&Em Super Sale

If you didn't know already, my friend Morgan and I came up with something called "M&Em Babysitting," which had an M&M with M&Em on it for a logo.
So a little while back, we went a little further after realizing that we could make a good amount of cash, and made an "M&Em Super Sale." Our motto for the babysitting was "It's a TREAT to babysit!" Now, our motto for the Super Sale is "It's a TREAT to EAT!" We had "Morgan's Bakery Corner" and "Cooking Emma's Candy Shoppe." We printed up a bunch of flyers and order forms so our neighbors could order pies, cookies and candy. But, the only bad part was that we only got one order. But it was a huge order!!! Our neighbor Tom ordered 6 pkg. of peanut butter cups, 4 pkg. sugar cookies, and 2 apple pies.

I had a good time making the stuff, and Morgan ended up getting sick, so she couldn't make the cookies, but her mom filled in for her. We plan on making our delivery tomorrow!

Crab Benedict

After trying my poached egg, my mom suggested the we try making Crab Benedict. When I went on an Alaskan cruise with my family and grandparents, there was a different kind of Benedict every day, including lobster. I swear that if I would have known what Eggs Benedict was, I would have taken the opportunity to have it every day on the cruise.
We had Crab Benedict for dinner the other night, and I wanted to have more. I know Lobster Benedict will be really, really good!

Chocolate-Covered Pretzel Slims

I took what I had left of our Trader Joe's Pretzel Slims and melted a bar of Hershey's Milk Chocolate in a Ziploc bag. When it was melted, I cut a tiny hole in one of the bottom corners of the bag and laid the pretzels on a baking sheet. Then, I sort of traced the inside of the pretzels, flipped them over, and put them in the fridge for about 15 minutes. So they turned out like this:
They were SO GOOD!!! I would love to try them again with different kinds of chocolate.

My Very First Poached Egg

This morning for breakfast, I was determined to try poached egg. It sounds really hard to do, but I'll tell you right off the bat, it's not. All you do is gently slide in an egg into water that is just below the simmering stage, and let it cook for about 3-6 minutes. Ours ended up being something like 8 because we have an old burner. So, I buttered an English muffin half and slid the slimy egg onto it. I took a bite, and as the orange yolk slid into my mouth, I knew right away that this egg had descended from heaven above... well, maybe our barn, but close enough. I would seriously recommend eating a poached egg if you haven't already.

Turkey Burgers w/ Pot Pie Gravy

Turkey burgers are pretty simple. Just take 2 pounds of ground turkey and mix in dill, flat parsley leaves and chives. Then just separate them into patties. Then, you grill them. The gravy is pretty simple, too. You just chop up onion, celery, and carrot and sautee them for about 7 minutes. Then, you throw in some chicken broth and flour. Then you add a hand full of baby peas. When you eat it, you put the patty on an English muffin half and put the gravy on top. Delicious! Stay tuned! I'm planning to make chocolate-covered pretzel slims!

Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

My mom and I went to Trader Joe's the other day and saw a box of tiny peanut butter cups. That gave us the idea to make a replica of a Dairy Queen Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard. So, we came home and looked up a recipe to make vanilla ice cream. It was really simple. We just added cream, half & half, vanilla and sugar to a bowl, mixed it up, and put it in our ice cream maker. After it was done, we stirred in the peanut butter cups and put it in the freezer. We took it out a few hours later and it tasted almost exactly like it!

Homemade Pop-Tarts

I made some homemade Pop-Tarts with my friend Morgan, and I'm still waiting to eat them. What we did was pretty easy. We made a kind of dough similar to pie crust and rolled it out. Then we cut it into long rectangles and laid them on a baking sheet. Then we chose our own fillings. For mine, I chose raspberry jam, Nutella, and raspberry jam with Nutella. Morgan chose raspberry jam, Nutella, and strawberry rhubarb jam. Then we put them in the freezer and baked them another day. We made glaze for them and they were super tasty!

Lo Mein Noodles and Sweet-&-Sour Chicken

When I went on a field trip to the zoo with my church buddies, I stopped at a Chinese restaurant in the food court called the Tiger Wok. I ordered sweet-&-sour- chicken with some lo mein noodles, an egg roll, and a small soda all for just $4.80! While others got a burger or a slice of pizza for $7.80. I think I got the best deal of the group. Well, I got home, and I went on and on about how good it was, so my mom and I just agreed to make it rather than to go to a restaurant.

It started with making the sweet-&-sour sauce and the sauce to put with the lo mien. Then, my mom cut the chicken into little nuggets, which she then had to deep-fry in our pan. They had to be fried twice, but it would've been quicker if she did it in a wok like the recipe said, but a deep-fryer works, too.

I poured the sauce over...

Then, I put the noodles on a platter as well as the chicken.


My stuffed animal panda bear, Ping, was happy to be in a picture of him and some Chinese food!

Even though it was not exactly the same, it was equally as good as the Tiger Wok.

Homemade Root Beer & Root Beer Floats

Sterilizing the bottles took a while. We filled them with no-rinse sanitizer, and let it sit for ten minutes, and then set them upside-down for another ten minutes while they dried out.

Filling the bottles was simple. Once I mixed the ingredients together, they sat for two days in a dark place, (the cupboard,) and then in the fridge.Mr. Root Beer, meet Ms. Ice Cream! Mr. Root Beer floats were the bomb! It tasted delicious!

Mmmmm... another gallon to go!

Lemon-Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

This frozen yogurt was more like a sherbet than yogurt. It was a bit sour, but that was because the frozen yogurt was lemon, and it was mixed with blueberry sauce that I made by cooking some blueberries in a pan with some sugar and making them mushy. It was delicious, and I'm glad about the sour part because it would have been gone the day I made it!

Morel Mushroom Soup

We found a mother lode of morel mushrooms at my friend's house, so we decided to make something out of them. The night after we found the mushrooms, I had a dream that we made some creamy, white-tan soup out of the morels and also made spaghetti and meatballs. Guess what was for diner the next day? Soup, and spaghetti and meatballs. We started by chopping up onions and the morels and sauteing them with some butter with a little flour added, then broth.


Next, I grated some nutmeg and put that in there...


...and after a while of stirring and letting the soup sit, I added cream.


I blended some of the mushroom-onion combo to make it just like my dream, and poured myself a cup.


When my dad came home from golfing in the cold wind, he decided to grab a cup for himself. After taking a sip/bite, he said, "Forget about a cup; I'm using a bowl!"

Black Bottom Tart

One word, 3 syllables: DE-LI-CIOUS! Another great, classic Martha Stewart recipe! Black Bottom Tarts are a bit similar to Boston Cream Pie. It started out with a thin, thin crust, and we made cinnamon "cookies" with the leftover stuff.

Then we made a type of chocolate custard that was spread on the crust bottom.

Then we mixed egg whites up, and then added some plain custard that made a nice cream filling that we spread on top of the pudding.

Then I piped on some whipped cream...

...and YUM!

Pineapple Flowers

In the book "Martha Stewart's Cupcakes," she had made a Mother's Day cupcake called Mother's Day Hummingbird Cupcakes. (I don't know what they have to do with hummingbirds, though.) We didn't make the cupcake, but we decided to try the pineapple part. It worked pretty well! It didn't taste as good as it worked; it had a sweet taste in the beginning, but it was a bit sour in the end.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream/Rhubarb Pie -- AGAIN

My mom wanted to make some more ice cream today, and this time it was going to be vanilla bean. Last time, it was avocado. She bought some vanilla beans, and so I scraped the seeds from the pods, which is harder than it sounds.

Next, we had to boil cream and milk, adding cornstarch and corn syrup together, and then let it cool over an ice bath.

Then we strained it into the ice cream maker. Of course, I had to recommend another rhubarb pie to go with the ice cream, so I decided to make it more on my own this time. I made the crust, picked the rhubarb, cut off the leaves, and then sliced the rhubarb.

We used orange zest again and this time I sealed the edges of the crust with a fork instead of crimping it with my fingers. It turned out delicious!!! We always make cinnamon pie crust treats with the leftover dough.