Recipe For Fun

Well, hello there! Yet another week of my life has gone by, and I must say I have been thoroughly exhausted through and through. It's the third week in the row that I have been waking up consistently early, and it's starting to take a toll. I'm just way tired all the time! Silver lining: I'm entertaining the people in my class with my lack of awakeness. Apparently I'm funny when I'm tired.

Side note: Did anyone else know that there were Rudy's BBQ restaurants outside of Texas?? I tried calling one of my teachers out on it and he totally turned it around on me because i didn't do my research. Oh, the life lessons I am learning in college.

Yet again, this has been another successful and not-so-successful cooking week. (I'm thinking I should just give up and make this into a cooking blog- but I won't. I like writing about the other things in my life too, you know!)

So first: baked ziti. I called my Grandma Helena who is a FABULOUS cook, and she talked me through it, gave me a recipe that I almost followed exactly, and it was very successful. I made a whole 9x13 pan though, so I had LOTS of leftovers when I was done. I invited one of my friends over and we talked and ate and it was great!  I was very happy with how it turned out.

A couple nights later, I decided to try my hand at TEXAS SHEET CAKE! I called Heather from back home because I remembered that hers was amazing, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I took these ingredients:

And turned them into....

which I then turned into....

ta-da!!

Haha. So a few quick notes about the Texas Sheet Cake. The cake part tured out marvelously. I got a little creative with the topping. I'm not a huge fan of pecans, so I decided not to do those. Instead, I bought chocolate and vanilla Charleston Chew and put them in the freezer (a trick I learned this summer @ Aspen Grove) because it makes them brittle and really easy to crack and break. So I ended up smashing those and sprinkling it on top. I felt pretty creative.

However, I definitely struggled with the icing. It was a combination of mistakes- me not taking it off the heat, me putting too much powdered sugar in, me probably whipping it too much. In any case, the icing turned out to be a thicker, almost fudgy substance, and it was very rich. It covered most of the cake, but not all of it. I was really disappointed when I first tried it, just because I knew that I'd messed up the icing and that I'd had better. But then my roommates tried it and they absolutely LOVED it! So, with that boost of confidence, a roommate and I brought some over to some boys in our ward and guess what? They loved it too! So I guess in the end, it did turn out quite well.

Now for the strawberry cake adventure. I found this recipe that looked absolutely DIVINE online for a strawberry cake. I wanted to try it so bad. So my friend Jess came over and we made it! But we ran into some difficulties along the way. So here's what happened. We started with the cake batter. We mixed the batter:

(that's supposed to be "light and fluffy"

and we pureed the strawberries using my roommate's magic bullet. it really is MAGIC!

then we mixed some more!

(these are my artistic mixing bowl pictures.)

and we peeled the strawberries!

We also made icing, but we forgot to take pictures of that. You get the gist of it anyways. And here's a picture of the finished product:

It looks impressive, right? Well let me tell you a little secret. About 5 seconds after we took these pictures, everything started melting off! It was horrible! The strawberries on the side kept falling off, and it looked like everything was sliding off the plate. Then when we tried to cut it, it turned into a jumbled mess!

But.. that's not to say that it wasn't PLATE-LICKIN' GOOD! :) 

:)

And it was very scrumptious. Although it made a HUGE mess of dishes. Oops. But it was definitely a fun night, and another fun cooking adventure. I think I'm going to make a goal to try at least one new recipe a week. (I know I have to say only one a week because anything else would be very unrealistic.) 

OH WAIT. I have to mention a story that happened to me this week really quick.

So I was walking home from school, totally zoning out, in my own little world, and all of a sudden, this guy JUMPS out of a cardboard box and SCREAMS at me! Well of course I scream like the little girl that I am, and he just starts laughing hysterically. As I'm walking away, he points across the street and tells me that his friend is filming it. Gee, that's just really great, buddy. Yikes. Anyways. That would happen to me, right? I know.

Got a big week ahead: my first big paper and my first big test are due this week. So hopefully those go well! Fingers crossed. AND I'm going to try to get more sleep. I'm gonna. :)

Toodles!