Have you heard of the Latte factor? David Bach writer of Start Over, Finish Rich says “Putting aside as little as a few dollars a day for your future rather than spending it on little purchases such as lattes, bottled water, fast food, cigarettes, magazines and so on, can really make a difference between accumulating wealth and living paycheck to paycheck.” You can have your cake and eat it too. By making your favorite coffee drinks at home to save a little bit of money but still getting your coffee fix. Today's hint coffee-house drinks at home, first the quote of the day.
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As you may know by now I was in charge of the dessert table for my nephew's birthday party. The party was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse themed so naturally I started googling “Mickey Mouse & Desserts”. The first dessert that I came across was the most adorable Mickey Mouse cookies. The iconic mickey ears and head frosted in a cool black icing were exactly what I wanted for my dessert table. I knew my nephew would go crazy over them.
Black icing- Is it possible?
Before I could make the cookies I needed to find out how I was going to make black icing. From experience I knew that it was not very easy to get a true black color when trying to make black frosting. While shopping at Michaels I picked up the Wilton black gel food coloring and tried it with the icing recipe below. I'm not sure if it is because I added too much coloring or if it was the product itself but it had a funny taste. After doing some research online I found that others had encountered the same problem with this food coloring. I was still determined to find a good black food coloring I mean I could not have been the first person that wanted to create black icing. After a little more digging I found amazing reviews for Americolors brand of gel icing. They are known for being able to deliver vibrant deep food coloring without the weird after taste you find with difficult colors such as black and red. I ordered my tube of super black at amazon.com and I was good to go on that front.
Finding the best recipe
My next order of business was to find the best sugar cookie recipe. I have tried a number of recipes over the years and even though they were good (I would munch on them of course, maybe that is why I have to do the insanity workouts now :) )I still wasn't satisfied with my results. I found the highest rated sugar cookie recipe on allrecipes.com and then experimented a little with it. I changed the amount of sugar, type of extract and rolled these out with powered sugar instead of flour. The final result was a chewy, sweet and delicious sugar cookie. Read more
I was in charge of making the cupcakes for my nephew's birthday party last weekend. My mom wanted to order a cake in addition to the 48 cupcakes and with that revelation my “dessert table” was created. Maybe it was the fact I had given up sweets for lent but I started coming up with a million different desserts I could make for the party. I was starting to go a little over the top in my ideas that I finally sat down and thought about what I could actually make. During this sit down, I came up with the best 3 projects that would make the most impact yet be easy to transport and complete. They are homemade mickey mouse cupcakes, mickey mouse head cookies and the project I am writing about today, chocolate covered sprinkle pretzels.
This is a ridiculously easy recipe. I am sure if you wanted to get gourmet you could complicate it out but for the purpose it was achieving (delicious and easy) this recipe gets 10 stars. I ended up making 48 chocolate dipped pretzel rods which is about two bags of Snyder’s pretzels. I used three 12oz bags of semisweet chocolate chips however if you want them a bit sweeter you can used milk chocolate instead. I found that the semisweet chocolate had a really nice flavor paired with the salty pretzel. Since I used the colored sugars it was sweet without it being overly sugary. The colors for the party were red, blue and yellow. I divided the pretzels evenly and sugared them so that I had three groups of 16 pretzels in each color. Looking back I think I would try using white chocolate for the pretzels instead of milk so that the color of the sugars show up more vibrantly on the table.
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March was a record-breaking month here in Chicago. Like most of the nation we were hit with a heat wave that made it feel like summer. Usually this time of year we are still wearing our winter coats and hats! It was so much fun seeing tons of people outside in shorts biking, rollerblading and playing in the park. I even saw a couple having a picnic. It was amazing to have summer in March for a short while.
When the temperatures reaches over 80 degrees the type of food you want to eat changes. Replacing comforting macaroni and cheese cravings is the want to eat lighter fare. Even though my usual tradition for the first warm day of the year is to light up the grill. Caught off guard I didn't even have a chance to buy a grill in time. I just moved from San Diego and was unable to bring the one we had there. So I had to do something else to celebrate this odd weather. One of my favorite salads is the Caprese an Italian favorite, the color of the ingredients mimic those of the Italian flag. Sweet and tangy, fragrant and light the Caprese salad is the perfect salad for a warm day.
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Chicago has the world's third largest Whole Foods. At 75,000 square feet, only Austin and London have larger stores. This grocery store is insane. As a lover of all things food is like a really expensive Garden of Eden with a food court. Everywhere you turn inside this monstrous grocery store you discover new and exciting features. My favorite is the wine bar. They offer several wine flights in addition to the regular offerings of wines by the glass, bottles and cheese plates.
My husband and I had a glass of wine at the wine bar last night and afterward decided to pick up a few things for the house. We never actually grocery shop here because the prices are astronomical but every once in a while we will pick up a thing or two. He was craving guacamole so we went looking for it. When we finally found it we discovered that the guacamole was over 10 dollars!! That's double the price of buying it in a Mexican restaurant so to avoid paying that much I offered to make him my homemade guacamole. Read more