Peanut Butter Chocolate Pretzel Cookies

Sweet, salty, soft, crunchy, savory... All in a cookie !
Today, I was in a cookie mood. It's been a while since I've whipped up a batch, and thought, "Why not?" Not only that, but my brother is away at camp and he loooves getting treats in the mail. So, these are for him.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Pretzel Cookies


Ingredients
-1 1/2 cups flour
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1 1/2 sticks of butter, at room temperature
-1 1/4 cups sugar
-1 cup of peanut butter, chunky or smooth (I used smooth)
-2 eggs
-1 cup chocolate chips
-crushed pretzels

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together your flour and baking soda.

 Beat the butter, sugar, and peanut butter on medium until it's light and fluffy. This should take about 5 minutes. Don't slack on this part, it should be fluuuffy.

(See how nice it is?)

Add your eggs, one at a time. Beat after each addition so that the mixture stays nice and smooth. Slowly add your flour and baking soda mix, and keep beating on slow. Throw in your chocolate chips at this point. If desired, you can also put in some chopped peanuts.

Now comes the fun part! Crushing pretzels. I didn't put a measurement on the pretzels, because it's your decision how many you want to put in there, and what size you want them to be. I'm going to say I, roughly, used about 5 cups, crushed. All you do is crush them with your hands until they're the desired size.

Now, get a ball of your batter and drop it into the crumbs. Ready to get a bit messy? Roll the ball around so that you have enough pretzels to surround the dough completely. Push some into the dough to get a nice crunch later on.

Most of mine came out looking pretty nicely. I put them on trays and threw them in the over for about 15 minutes each. They came out so nicely!

Weren't too big, not too small, and the sweet/salty contrast is amazing. I'm going to wrap up a bunch of these and send about half of the batch to my brother. He'll be excited.

Although, I must admit, the cookies came out great, this recipe made soo many.Oh well! More cookies for us.

Cheese and Onion Focaccia Bread

I've been on a bit of a bread kick lately, and was heading over to see my grandparents, so I decided to bake a loaf. Both of my grandparents are very picky, so I settled with something I knew I could make. Cheese and Onion Focaccia. This bread is usually very pretty, flavorful, and just overall great.

(This one actually burned a tiny bit in the oven, which explains the darkened onions on top.)




Cheese and Onion Focaccia


Ingredients
-3/4 cup of water (room temp.)
-2 tablespoons olive oil
-1 teaspoon salt
-2 cups bread flour
-1 tablespoon sugar
-1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
-1 medium onion, sliced
-garlic clove, minced
-1/8 cup butter
-Italian seasoning
-1/2 shredded cheddar cheese
-grated Parmesan cheese

In a bread machine, place the first 6 ingredients in the order suggested by your manufacturer. Set machine to 'dough' and let it run. After a few minutes, check on the dough and add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water or flour, if needed.

When your cycle is done, take it out of the machine and set in a lightly greased pizza pan. Pat it into a 10 inch circle. When doing this, I would recommend putting flour over your hands so the dough doesn't stick. Cover with a towel and let it rise in a warm place. I usually just put it in the oven. (Not turned on!) Wait until it doubles, about 30 minutes.

While your dough is rising, put the butter in a skillet and let it melt. Saute your onions and garlic in it for about 20 minutes, or until the onions have taken on a nice brown color. I threw some garlic seasoning over mine while they were cooking. When they're just about done, mix in your Italian seasoning and cook for 1 minute longer.

When your bread has risen, take it out. Using the end of a wooden spoon, make indentations in your dough about 1 inch apart. Top with the onion and garlic mixture. Sprinkle your cheeses all over the dough, or until covered. Bake the bread at 400 degrees for about 15-18 minutes.

This bread is great when it's just out of the oven and still a bit warm. Even throw some spaghetti sauce on top of it. My grandparents loved it. Have fun !

Watermelon Shark!

I realize this isn't exactly baking, but it was a ton of fun! We had a family get together, and I decided to make a fruit... dish. So, I wound up making this guy. The watermelon shark.

Swedish fish stuck in his teeth and all, he was definitely a big hit with everyone at the get together. And the best part is, he wasn't even that difficult to make!

First, we sliced off a chunk of the bottom to put him coming up on an angle. This also provided something for him to stand on. Next we took a marker and drew where we wanted to make the mouth. Getting the shape right was hard. It took a few rounds of cutting and slicing to get it to look how we wanted. Next came the fun part. Scooping! Using an ice cream scoop/melon baller, I got most of the watermelon outside of his mouth. This included the top section. Then, using a paring knife, we made a fine cut about an inch from where his mouth was. We peeled the green skin off to show his teeth. This was harder than we thought it would be, but the result came out alright in the end. Maybe not as even as I would've liked, but it was barely noticeable. Then we just made diagonal cuts all around his mouth, and before you knew it, Mr. Shark had 2 rows of pearly whites. I then grabbed one of the scraps from cutting out his mouth and shaped it into a fin. Using 2 toothpicks, I put it right in the middle of his back. Again, using toothpicks, I stick 2 grapes in for his eyes. We then filled him back up with fruit, threw in some Swedish Fish just for fun, and he was set!

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Ah, I've been busy, busy, busy. Which is why I neglected my poor blog yesterday, and my kitchen. I didn't make a thing. Well, with the exception of a ham and cheese omelette with hash browns on the side for my brother in the morning. But, that wasn't all too special. But today, I did manage to throw some ingredients into the bread machine and came out with a loaf of Cinnamon Raisin Bread. I think it might have came out a little bit dry and definitely not as moist as I would have liked, but that's alright. We can fix that right up with some cream cheese or butter. 

Cinnamon Raisin Bread for the Bread Machine

Ingredients

-3/4 cup milk (at room temperature)

-2 tablespoons butter (at room temperature)

-2 cups bread flour

-2 teaspoons brown sugar

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-1/2 cup dark raisin

-1 teaspoon active bread machine yeast

Put everything in the bread machine in the order your instructions tell you to. My bread machine says to always put your liquids in last (except for the yeast.) I used the "sweet" setting on my machine for this loaf.

When I checked on it about 15 minutes into the cycle, there was some flour clumped up into the corner and it looked very dusty. So I threw in a 1/4 teaspoon of water and after that, it was perfectly fine. I let the machine do its work, checking on it frequently. When it was done, we got our finished product...

Cinnamon Raisin Bread! Again, it's a bit drier than I would have liked, but that's alright. Oh, and I would like to apologize for all of the terrible photos so far. I've had to make use of my phone camera until I can steal my regular one back from my sister. Until then.. the pictures won't be very quality. Thanks for reading, have a great night everyone !

Strawberry Cheesecake Bites

Hi there ! So, this is my first post. The name's Colette, as it says in my description. This is basically going to be a collection of all my recipes, concoctions, and goodies. To start off with, these are the cheesecake bites I made today. 

Strawberry Cheesecake Bites

Ingredients

Crust:

-3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs

-2 tablespoons sugar

-1/4 stick of butter, melted

-Sliced strawberries

Filling:

-8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

-1/2 cup sugar

-1/8 cup all-purpose flour

-1/2 teaspoon  vanilla extract

-1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Fill a muffin pan with mini or regular cupcake liners.

Combine the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and melted butter. Mix it up in a bowl until it has a nice consistency and there are no lumps. Press the mixture into cupcake liners with a spoon. Make sure it's packed down pretty thick and nicely. Take one or two of the strawberry slices and put them on top of the graham crackers.

Beat the cream cheese with a mixture until it's nice and fluffy. Add your sugar, flour, and vanilla. Add the egg separately and keep mixing until everything is blended. Spoon the mixture over the crust and strawberries, covering the strawberries completely. Bake them for about 20 minutes, maybe longer. Take them out before you get cheesecake cracks though ! Let them before serving, and garnish with whatever you'd like. Mine have chocolate drizzles that I made and sliced strawberries.

Some variations for the middle: (in place of the strawberry)

-Peanut butter cups

-Hershey kisses

-Hazelnut spread (such as Nutella)

-Raspberries or blueberries

You can also use a Vanilla Wafer cookie for the crust, if you'd like.

I never ended up having one of these, but I had made them for my brother who was coming home after being gone a few weeks. He's a huge cheesecake fan, so I thought I would whip something up for him. He ended up really liking them, and so did the rest of my family. I'm quite proud of my chocolate garnishes. This was the first time making them and they were actually a lot easier than I thought they would be. But these little cheesecake bites turned out great. Enjoy!