Crap, he's on to me

So, you may have noticed that I haven't posted any of my wildly successful and hilarious 'bradversations' lately.
It's because Brad won't let me. Actually, he doesn't care if I write about him, he's fine with it. But lately, he's been starting conversations with, "OK, if I say this, you can't blog it...or tweet it."
Dammit.
And since I love my husband and the sanctity of marriage, death do us part, don't out your husband on your blog, yadda yadda yadda, I won't talk about that.
But I really want to. If you bump into me, I'll tell you in person. Because honestly, my stories are far better in person with all the ridiculous arm flinging anyway.
***
I wanted to set up a booth for Holiday House (If you're not local, it's an event where hordes of women kick off the holiday season far too early, crammed into a massive locale that still isn't big enough for all of them and they shop until they drop. It's three days of pre-Christmas chaos. And I need those ladies to know who I am!) So I casually looked up the availability of a booth back in September. I mean, two months prior to an event should be adequate time, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Booth reservations begin in April. APRIL. Seven months prior to the event. And, the booths are a little pricey. Well, pricey in that I'm not open yet and haven't made any money in five months. So I started looking for loopholes. And I found one.
Cut to conversation with Brad:
Me: Check it out, at Holiday House they have this event where you get there at 8 a.m. and you have until 9 to set up. Then you get to decorate a gingerbread house for like four hours while all the people at Holiday House watch you! It's like one of those Food Network challenges!
Brad: That sounds awful! Who would do that?
Me: *pause*
Brad: Tell me you didn't sign up for that.
Me: Uh...
Brad: Can you get out of it?
Me: No. I'm going to kick some ass!
Brad: Have you ever even made a gingerbread house?
Me: Not exactly. But I've read up on it.
Brad: So the first gingerbread house you ever make is going to be in front of a live audience? That's not a disaster.

The man does not have faith in me. Or he really knows me well. But you know what? The first cake I made was massive-enough to feed 200 people and I rocked it. So, if you need me, I'll be over here baking gingerbread and mixing royal icing. (Oh, and making a wedding cake, two going away cakes and three birthday cakes, and two dozen mario cookies- This week just got crazy.)

SWW: Cookie Edition

I've been on a cookie making kick lately. Kick in that people keep ordering them. And so I make them.

They are so much fun.

Where the Wild Things Are:

Angry Birds:

Dinos: (Rawr)

How precious are these birds?

I recently saw a book on a blog where they made 3D cookies and I was intrigued. It just so happened  that I sat the cookie cutter up on its side and was inspired to make this happen. (Here's my tip in case you try to replicate something like this. I used a toothpick to hold the two cookies together while the icing dried and stuck it down into a square of styrofoam and pulled them out after they dried.)

And these are older, not sure if I've shared them, but LOVE.

Later this week I get to make Shrek cookies for the cast for Shrek the Musical!

Cookies cure cabin fever

More snow leads to more baking. Apparently when I am locked inside a house with no place to go, I get the urge to bake. Good thing I live in Arkansas and this has all been a fluke. (A fluke! You hear me! Snow, I'm talking to you, it's time to go now, you've overstayed your welcome.)
Anyway. Last weekend, I was craving cookies. Particularly something chocolate. But of course, I was out of chocolate chips! (for shame) but I did have some cocoa powder. I started looking around and merged two recipes together and created a cookie. It's currently a nameless cookie. But a cookie none the less. I'm thinking it's kind of a reese's cookie. Sort of.

I started with 1/2 cup peanut butter, 2/3 cup melted butter and 2 cups powdered sugar. (yeah, yum!) and mixed it all together. This is actually the center of a candy called buckeyes. I borrowed it from another blog. But instead of coating these in chocolate, I made a chocolate cookie dough.
The recipe I used is this (but I cut everything in half. I ended up with a lot of the peanut butter centers left over. If I had made the full recipe, it would have worked out perfect.)
1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

After rolling the peanut butter centers into balls, I froze them. You want them roughly the diameter of a dime. Not too big. Wrap the cookie dough around it. I rolled the cookies in white sugar, just to give them a little something extra.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Do not bake any longer! They will get very crispy. With the dark dough, it's hard to tell when they are done, just do 10 minutes. I promise.
The center is still kind of creamy, while the cookie is perfectly done.
I strongly encourage you to try these, even if you're not snowed in.

Randomness and cheesecake

Brought to you by 18 hours of sleep.  Yes, that's how long I slept yesterday.  OK, I probably didn't sleep that long, but I was laying in bed for that many hours overcoming an ubermigraine.  The kind that makes me want to scoop my eyeball out with an ice-cream scoop or anything else I can get my hands on.  The kind that makes me want to collapse on the tile floor moaning in pain, except the sheer sound of my own voice makes everything hurt worse.  The kind of pain that still lingers when I cut my eyes to the left; even today.
I hate migraines.  And I haven't had one in a while.  It came out of nowhere and knocked me on my ass and ruined the better half of my Sunday.  It sucked.
So instead of being able to show you the cool thing I did to the dinning room (cause I didn't), I'll show you the yummy cheesecake I made for a party Saturday.

I typically turn to brownies.  Brownies covered in chocolate.  Brownies layered with ice cream.  Brownies dipped in fudge.  Yum. YUM. YUM!  But, I was feeling cheesecake.  So, I thought, why not join the two into one deliciously heavenly dessert.  And, that's what I did.

I was going to 'wing it,' but I decided to find a recipe, just in case.  This one was perfect.

Bake a brownie mix per instructions in a 9 inch springform pan.  (If you don't have one, you should get one!  They're quite nifty and not expensive.)  Bake to the 'chewy' recipe time.  I would suggest going a little bit shorter on time, because they will be in the oven longer while the cheesecake bakes.

Take 3 packages (24 oz. total) of cream cheese.  Let sit at room temperature.  This will help it cream easier.  If it is cold, it will be lumpy and not get smooth.

Add 1 can of sweeten condensed milk slowly to the mixer.

Add 3 eggs. (one at a time)

Add 2 tsp. vanilla extract (I was out of vanilla and used almond, I would have used 1 tsp almond, 1 tbsp vanilla)- Using the Almond gave it a nice amaretto-ish flavor. 


Pour on top of brownie, bake at 300 degrees for 50 minutes.  Once finished, leave in oven, but turn oven off.  This should help keep the top from cracking.  Mine cracked anyway (sometimes it happens).  If you really, REALLY don't want it to crack, wrap the outside of the pan with foil and place it in a water bath. And leave it for at least an hour, maybe two.

I didn't so much care about the crack because I topped mine with whipped cream and drizzled caramel and shaved chocolate all over the top. Delish!

*Edit: It's a tsp not TBSP, couldn't imagine what that would taste like with that much extract!