Great Weekend.

Fall is officially here. This past weekend was totally relaxing but yet packed with awesome. 

• Made numerous combinations of peanut butter, chocolate, honey, corn flakes, awesomey goodness.
• Played with a new puppy in an elementary school parking lot at 10 at night. 
• Hot yoga both Saturday and Sunday. New studios make me happy.
• Drove down to Iowa City to Wilson's Orchard. Huge apples. Sugar free apple butter. Super cute shop. 

• Perfect Weather.
• Shopping at the Outlets for Tim to get new work pants after dropping major inches this summer.
• Getting sucked in to buying myself stuff at UnderArmor.
• Traumatic "fashion" sighting though. I mean, really, someone purposefully put this outfit together for a public display?! My my. But the workers were in too tight sweatpants and Hawkeye shirts...so I guess it makes senses ;-) 

• Friends from out of town visiting
• Watching the races at Cattle Congress 
• Even more people convening and hanging out at Toads and BWW 

• Beautiful day on Sunday to hang out, go on walks, convertible rides and take naps with kitties,

Numerous Epic Noms, and One Epic Fail.

The past couple weeks I have been quite creative in the kitchen. All the old stuff just sounded boring and I wanted to try new things. Some of the best have been:

Apple Crumble
Honey Curry Chicken with Red Pepper
Peanut Butter Banana Pancakes
Turkey Meatloaf with Mixed Veg
Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies

However, out of numerous crazy successful attempts, there was one failure. I used the big poofy marshmallows (the ones the size of your fist) to try to make rice crispie treats (which I have shockingly never made before) and it failed MISERABLY. Epic fail.

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting.

So if you were my grandparents last night, you would have feasted on these suckers. Oh yes. They were FANTASTIC.

Blog Hop: Best Bread Recipe

Pumpkin Yeast Bread aka Heaven in a Loaf! (Click for original recipe link)
1/2 cup warm water
2 packages (2 tablespoons) active dry yeast (I like to use three)
2/3 cup warm milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups puréed pumpkin, either fresh or canned
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 1/2 cups (approximately) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
(I also add a good amount of cinnamon)

In a large bowl, stir yeast into water to soften. Add milk, eggs, pumpkin, oil, 4 cups flour, brown sugar, salt, ginger and cardamom to yeast mixture. Beat vigorously for 2 minutes.

Gradually add remaining flour, a little at a time, until you have a dough stiff enough to knead. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Knead, adding flour as necessary, until you have a smooth, elastic dough.

(At this point, I usually like to add raisins, and/or small spoonfuls of brown sugar in pockets of the dough) The brown sugar pockets, when melted are the BEST gooeyness.

Put dough into an oiled bowl. Turn once to coat entire ball of dough with oil. Cover with a towel and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

Turn dough out onto a lightly oiled work surface. Divide dough in half. Shape dough into loaves and place in well-greased 10 x 5-inch pans or, shape half into a loaf, and other half into 12 large dinner rolls. Cover with a towel and let rise until almost doubled, about 45 minutes.

Bake in a preheated 375°F oven. Loaves bake about 30 minutes, rolls about 20. Check the internal temperature of each with an instant-read thermometer; a reading of 190°F means bread or rolls are done.

Immediately remove bread or rolls from pans and cool on a wire rack to prevent crust from becoming soggy.

Double Dose of Post. Let Me Eat Cake!

Throwback post is down below this one, but I saw this cake, and have officially deemed it my birthday tonight! Someone needs to make this for me (I'll help!). No really. I want this. Forget the fact that I was born in October, I want!

DPP 23: Ooping Sugarplums.

I had to work the last UNI Men's game of 2009 tonight, but afterwards was the real fun! Ok, not really, but it was at least more entertaining than the basketball game.

I decided I was going to try something new for Christmas, I was going to make Sugar Plums! Just like the poem, only these sugar plums were certainly not dancing. They were sticky and oopy and goopy. I didnt even really know what was in them til I found the recipe. Lots of chopped dried fruits, nuts, coconut, and a bit of orange juice! I did the chopping and the ooping and the gooping, and then apparently you just roll into balls and let sit? Only, mine were quite goopy and would have never hardened. Ever. So I lined a pie tin with coconut flakes, dumped the whole mixture in, and put it in the oven for awhile, and then the freezer. Voila! Delicious and solid! Yummy.

DPP 14: Santa's Crazy Eyeballs & Baking Aftermath.

Today was absolutely insane. I feel like I got half the stuff that I needed to get done in double the amount of time it should have taken. I woke up late, but still forced myself into half my morning run, went to work, did my noon abs class, ran some work errands (see post office story below), baked cookies with my mom, hit the gym, came home and baked for the past billion hours straight, finishing with packing up all the boxes getting sent out to the east coast tomorrow and doubling my to do list for tomorrow....including a trip to the vet with my mother and her beloved child, but that should be quite amusing...
The easiest thing I made all day. By far. But one of the most time consuming....kisses don't unwrap themselves!

This is only half the baking mess, the half that is at my kitchen and not my mother's. And there is only more to come....

Post Office Story: So maybe I am the only one who has never seen this occur, but I think it is the smartest thing on the planet. I went to the post office today with quite a bit of malice already in my heart just because I knew I would be in line FOREVER. But I walked in, and was greeted by a glorious table FULL of homemade goodies and piping hot coffee. There were at least 15 different desserts of cookies and cakes and bars and doughnuts and deliciousness. Clearly, they know that to have happy postal customers, feed them oatmeal fudge bars. It worked for me!

Turkey Day. Gobble Gobble!

I'm gonna take a quick break from December photo project and recap Thanksgiving.
Pretty typical Thanksgiving, Tim and I went over to the Grandparents early to help with the last minute dishes, Mom, Dad and Chris joined up. A delectable meal was had. I had tried a new recipe for cranberry sauce, from Williams and Sonoma. It tasted like Christmas smells, a little overbearing almost, but it did tone down as days passed with the leftovers. Yum.

I also tried my hand at a blueberry pie. None of this canned blueberry nonsense either, a FRESH blueberry pie. I kind of freehanded the inside, and while it got a tiny bit liquidy, it ended up being super tasty. Only a bit of the ooze made it to the outside of the crust.


But really, the best part is in the top picture. I spent over an hour the night before Thanksgiving, making every single family member an Indian head dress to be worn for our November Nordyke Family picture. And I am of the belief that it turned out quite well...if you ever need a laugh during the holidays, put your grandparents into culturally offensive head gear. It's fantastic.

DPP 5: Double Dinner Date for Dad!

Yes, I know that technically I took this last night, but it was a great time. It was dad's birthday (as yesterday's said) and Christopher had to work, so it was just the four of us going out for a dinner celebration. Sometimes I forget how good of a time we have when its just us big kids :) I haven't been to Montage in forever, nor have I gorged myself like that in quite some time. But sometimes, when you see mashed potatoes and corn pudding on the same table like that, you cant resist!
Dad waits patiently for his big hunk of barely dead cow. Gross.
How cute are these two? Mom put away more food than the rest of us combined though! I was impressed. But to be fair, she hadn't eaten all day in preparation for the gloriousness.
I haven't worn my hair curly like this in YEARS, but I was super lazy getting out of the shower and figured hey, why not? And I would like to think that it worked out just fine....

Here's where I will admit that tomorrow's picture probably won't actually be from tomorrow either. Oops. But you will all live. Last night was just too crazy awesome not to share!

BUT. I will add in this little piece of yum yum from today just to try and have it count :)
I made Dad a Bears themed lemon bundt cake. As you can see, it didn't exactly fall out of the pan. More like crumbled out, but I did the best I could to piece it back together! Blue and Orange all the way....

Breathe it in...

Can't you just smell it? My first attempt at a yeast bread. A pumpkin yeast bread at that. I couldn't have been more pleased with how it turned out. If only my house could smell like that ALL the time...

Knowing this was on my counter helped me get through all day yesterday...no really. I am a self proclaimed carb addict.

Peach Treat Overload.

This weekend, I was going to make my parents breakfast, and that fell through, but the notion of baking fresh peach muffins burrowed a little hole and never left.

So Sunday afternoon, I baked a batch of fresh peach muffins. And they were delightful. Little egg, little oil, but I used Almond Meal for the first time. Expensive, but TOOOTTALLLY worth it.

I used my muffin top pan, and gooey peachy awesomeness ensued. My mother was literally moaning into them. And Tim probably would have eaten the whole batch if I had left him!

As I had been searching for the muffin recipe, I found a brown sugar peach ice cream recipe. We rarely use the ice cream maker we have, and with splenda and egg white substitutes....a tan sticky heaven graced our tastebuds last night.


Ice Cream Recipe: Brown Sugar Peach Ice Cream

Muffin Recipe: Fresh Peach Muffins

Fall = Pumpkin Baked Goods!

So my friend Meg has this awesome blog, and she always has these pictures of food and desserts that make me want to become a pastry chef instantly. Well a few days ago, I couldn't take it anymore. Fall is here, and I love ANYTHING pumpkinlicious, and Meg posted a picture of Pumpkin Bread with a Maple Cheese cake filling and I knew that this was my calling for the weekend.

Finding pumpkin in this canned pumpkin shortage was quite the task, all the major grocery stores were out until October 1st, but I lucked out and found organic pumpkin at a hippy crunchy grocery store. Not cheap, but it let me have an awesome Saturday of baking!
The recipe made about twice as much filling than needed, so I made more bread than the recipe called for since I had an extra half cup of pumpkin left over, and the result of that ended up in cupcake tins instead of the bread loaves. But really, I think those turned out better anyway....
Clearly I overloaded the loaves. It said to use three mini loaf pans, and I used 5! So one would think that there would not be this much pop outtage! I think it might have affected the cheesecake layer...
The cheesecake looks nowhere as crisp and clean as the actual recipe photo, but it never does I guess. I personally think it turned out looking a bit like canned cat food, but holy cow did it turn out absolutely delicious!

Oh yeah, and I chopped off a ton of hair last weekend. Now, when it dries naturally, I look like a flap dancer from the prohibition era.
Now all I needed is my beaded dress and dancing shoes!

A Weekend in Photos.

Friday night, with Linnea and Christopher. Homemade pizza, Scattegories, chocolate chip cookies, and the Goonies.


Saturday, UNI football game. A less than perfect go. From all aspects. My patience was empty by the time I went home. But then there was more Nordyke family Scattegories. That picked it up a bit. Then I slept for 11 hours.

Sunday, a long walk with Tim in the morning. Groceries with mom, and then a full afternoon at the Nordyke house, baking oatmeal raisin cookies with mom. While the boys hung out watching silly football.


Showing off the final product.


Dad was unhappy with how the Bears game was going (but at least it turned out ok!)


I ate far too many of these.....I should go run.