Homemade pizookie and ice cream!

While I was home, I decided to make my dad the amazing vanilla pudding chocolate chip cookies that I have been in love with! My mom also made homemade vanilla ice cream for my neighbor block party and it just was perfect to make a pizookie with! It was also perfect because when I had been at Trader Joe's the other day, I spotted this AMAZING grinder filled with coffee beans, sugar, and chocolate (can it get any better??) that my favorite food blog had posted about.

So naturally, I started putting it on everything I ate.. and it worked perfectly on the ice cream!

and the cookie was still hot so the ice cream started to melt... not that that is a bad thing..

cookies: onedashdelplaya

Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

I'm obsessed. I think I say this about everything that I bake, but this one really takes the [cup]cake. My birthday is tomorrow, so in celebration I decided to use my precious vanilla bean, with my pink birthday crown cupcakes liners (thanks mom)!

I had bought a vanilla bean a while ago, but because they are a bit expensive, I had to find just the right recipe to use it with. I saw these cupcakes and knew that this was it. I lovee a simple delicious vanilla flavor and a simple cupcake means I can go crazy on the frosting. While I was making the batter, I just knew it was going to be amazing. It was so creamy it was hard to not just eat all of the batter, and you can even see the small vanilla bean specks. yummmmmm. I had read that not only the beans have flavor, but the shell too, so I stuck the leftover shell into a bag of sugar to make vanilla sugar. I'll have to find a recipe that uses that!

I think whoever created this recipe must have meant 36 when they said this recipe yielded 24 cupcakes because that's how many came out. A couple more than I really need in my household, so please come eat some! It is getting late and the cupcakes need to cool before I can frost them, but I could not wait to show these off! Keep looking for an update with the frosting!

recipe: unegaminedanslacuisine

Vanilla Macaroons

While I was abroad this past fall, I had the opportunity to travel to Paris with a couple of friends and of course made a trip to Laduree, an AMAZING macaroon shop. I had never had the pleasure of having a macaroon before and I fell in love. They were soo good and light and I could have eaten a million of them!

So these are obviously more expert and pretty than mine could everr be, but I had to try! Macaroons are notoriously hard to make (I only messed up and had to start over once!), but it worked! You have to let your egg whites sit out for over 24 hours (which made my screw up all that much more frustrating) and be super careful with your ingredients or the shells do not turn out right.

then you have to pipe them onto your parchment paper and wait for the outside to dry...

then bake them.. these are not as white as they should be because I left them in the oven for about 30 seconds too long..

then I piped in the buttercream after matching up the same size shells, but after all that work..

I had homemade vanilla macaroons :] I was really proud of these little babies and definitely want to try them again but maybe with a fruit flavor!




recipe: cakejournal