Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I simply adore pumpkin, especially in the fall.  I love almost anything pumpkin: pie, bread, Starbucks pumpkin spice latte. :)  So, when Matt mentioned that our neighbor had made these delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, I was sold without even tasting them.  Even better, the recipe had three ingredients: a can of pumpkin, a box of spice cake mix, and a bag of chocolate chips.  That's it.

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Mix the pumpkin and cake mix and then add in the chocolate chips.  I stuck my dough in the fridge for a little bit so it could solidify some as it was pretty soft and sticky.  The dough tastes pretty delicious too--and there's no raw egg to worry about!

Drop dollops of the dough onto a cookie sheet and bake!  I didn't grease my cookie sheet but it may not be a bad idea--some of the cookies stuck just a bit to the sheet.  I left mine in the oven for roughly 10 minutes and the insides were still a little soft, just how I like em!  You may need to adjust the time if you try these, I'm not sure what exact effect the higher altitude may have on bake times.

These easy cookies are great for fall and I got about three dozen out of my batch...way more than two people need to eat so I'll probably take some to work and send some to class with Matt.  Once they're done baking, grab a glass of milk and enjoy!!  :)

Yum!

Homemade Chinese Dinner!

Matt and I just love our Chinese food.  We have a place here in town that we love, Hunan Springs, and we probably order from there every few weeks.  I always get beef with broccoli while Matt will change up his order.  Unfortunately, Chinese food isn't that great for you and we've been trying to eat healthier these days.  Plus, ordering out isn't so easy on the wallet either.  So, we decided we'd try our hand at making our own Chinese food with a couple recipes I found on Pinterest: baked sweet and sour chicken and baked crab rangoon.

Sweet and Sour Chicken:
This recipe originally came from here, and I've actually found a couple other great recipes on this blog too.  An important note: this chicken takes an hour to bake...plan accordingly (we didn't realize this and ended up having a late dinner).

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts

salt & pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

Sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar

4 tablespoons ketchup

1/2 cup vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon garlic salt

Start by preheating the oven to 325 degrees.   Rinse the chicken breasts, cut them into cubes, and season with salt and pepper.  Heat the canola oil in a large skillet.  Coat the chicken in the cornstarch then dip the coated chicken into the beaten eggs.  Cook the chicken in the skillet until browned, but not cooked through.

Once browned, transfer the chicken to a greased 9x13 baking dish.  Whisk all the ingredients together to make the sweet and sour sauce.  At this point, the original recipe calls for you to pour the sweet and sour sauce over the chicken in the pan and then bake it all together for an hour, turning the chicken every 15 minutes.  However, we found that our chicken was pretty sticky and doughy when we did it this way.  I think when we make this again we'll bake the chicken without the sauce and instead, make the sauce in a saucepan and heat it but use it on the side to dip the chicken into.  This way, the chicken will hopefully stay crispy and it allows each person to choose how much sauce they'd like.

We also decided to cut up a few peppers into large chunks and sauteed them in a large pan with a small amount of oil over medium heat.  We threw some pineapple in there too and added the mixture to our plate when the chicken was done.

Baked Crab Rangoon:

I just love crab rangoon but the fact that it's fried makes it delicious but rather unhealthy, so I was super excited when I found this recipe!

2 tablespoons light sour cream

8 oz reduced fat cream cheese, softened

1 scallion, thinly sliced

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup crab meat, drained

wonton wrappers (these can generally be found in the produce section)

Preheat the oven to 415 degrees.  In a bowl, mix together the sour cream, cream cheese, scallion, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and sugar.  Once well combined, fold in the crab meat.  We used imitation crab which came in large chunks so we cut our up into much smaller pieces before folding it in.  Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray with non-stick cooking spray.

Lay a wonton wrapper on your work surface and spoon about 2 teaspoons of the filling into the center of the wrapper.  Brush two adjacent sides of the wrapper with water (this will help seal the wrapper) and then fold the wrapper over on the diagonal.  Press around the filling to remove any air pockets and then press the sides together to seal the wrapper--if any air pockets are left, the wrapper will pop open while cooking and some filling will escape.  

After the wrapper is sealed, transfer to the baking sheet.  Once all the wrappers are completed (it should make about 20 or so), transfer the baking sheet to the oven and bake for about 12 minutes or until edges are golden brown and crispy.

We found that while the edges and bottom of our were crispy, the top remained a bit doughy.  Next time, we plan to turn the wrappers over about halfway through in hopes of getting an overall crisp.  Also, I don't recommend reheating any leftovers in the microwave as they get very doughy...better to reheat in the oven.  

Once it's all done, enjoy your delicious meal...we sure did!!

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes, Yum!

I've made these cupcakes twice now and they are simply amazing so I just had to share!  I love to bake and try new recipes but don't want to end up eating everything so Matt takes the goodies to work for his Soldiers.  These were a HUGE hit when I made them a few months ago and since he and his guys have worked so hard this week, I thought I'd make some for them again.  I got the recipe from my friend Megan and you can find it on her blog here.

These cupcakes are rather time consuming so I wouldn't recommend them if you're looking for a quick dessert, but if you've got the time (I think it took me about 2.5 hours total) or can split it up over two days, it's definitely worth it!!  The cupcakes themselves are chocolate with Guinness beer in them and it's absolutely hands down the best chocolate batter I have ever tasted.

There's a delicious chocolate ganache filling that has Jameson Irish Whiskey in it.  Personally, I'm not a big fan of whiskey but the combination works well in the cupcake and you can't really tell it's whiskey.

You have to almost "core out" the cupcakes so that you can put in the filling.  I used a paring knife which worked just fine.  If you have a piping bag, you can put the ganache filling in that but a ziploc bag with the corner cut off gets the job done too.

The final touch is the icing with the Baileys in it!  You can definitely taste the Baileys in the icing and it is simply delicious.  I think you could pretty much put Baileys in anything and it would taste great.

Since it's Christmas time I decided to top them off with some red and green sprinkles, just to be festive! :)

While I was baking away, Matt was having fun being playing photographer...

and Cooper was mooching hardcore! :)

Hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we do!!

Four Day Weekend!

We've had a great weekend here in the Joseph household.  Matt had a four day weekend due to Veteran's Day and we definitely took advantage of it!  We decided to take a last minute trip up to Boulder on Thursday.  The University of Colorado Boulder is Matt's first choice for pursuing his MBA and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to check out both the town and the university.  Thankfully, the staff in the business school was able to accommodate our short notice request and Matt was able to meet with the Director of Admissions as well as sit in on a finance class and meet some current MBA students.  The campus really is quite pretty and has a bit of a different feel than Mizzou.  Boulder itself is absolutely gorgeous and so close to the mountains!!  We met up with one of my old friends from high school who has lived in Boulder for the last six years and had lunch at The Sink, which is where most of the locals go (it's the equivalent to Columbia's Heidelberg).  I could definitely see us living in Boulder, or right outside of it, and there's even a hospital I'd love to work at.  Matt submitted his application tonight (yay!!) so keep your fingers crossed for him!!  We forgot to take pictures with our camera (oops!) so here are a couple from the web:

An aerial view of the campus

The Koelbel Building, home of the Leed's School of Business
where Matt will hopefully spend most of his time next year!

The mascot is a buffalo named Ralphie.

Friday was my 27th birthday (11/11/11!!) and it was so great to be able to celebrate with Matt for the first time in three years!  Last year he was in Iraq and the year before that he was at NTC in California.  We spent the day just relaxing and took Cooper to the dog park.  My gift from him was a pair of boots that I had been wanting and that I just love!  Matt made dinner reservations for us at The Pepper Tree, a fancy restaurant here in the Springs as well as baked me a cake (rainbow party sprinkle cake with rainbow party chip icing...my absolute favorite!!).  It was a great birthday full of well wishes from loved ones, but the best part really was just having Matt home to celebrate with. :)

My awesome new boots!!

And Matt :)

Today was another relaxing day: we spent the morning doing a little bit of shopping and running some errands and the afternoon was full of football...way to go Mizzou, beating Texas!  I thought we'd share the delicious dinner we made tonight: crispy chicken with creamy Italian sauce and pasta.  I found the recipe via Pinterest, which happens to be my new obsession.  It's basically like a virtual pinboard where you can "pin" things you find online under different categories like recipes, craft projects, style inspiration, basically anything you want!  It's a great way to find new recipes and we've been trying out a lot of them lately.  You can find tonight's recipe here.

The cooking process

The final product!

It turned out really well and was very tasty!  We used angel hair pasta because we had some at home that we wanted to finish off but next time we'll use the bowtie pasta as I think it would work better.  Also, the pasta sauce was pretty heavy so next time we'll try to tweak that so it's a bit lighter.  Other than that, we'd definitely recommend it!!

And, since this post has gotten a bit long, I'll wrap it up with a gratuitous picture of Cooper dog because he's  just that cute. :)

I had to hold a treat in front of him to get a picture and this
still was the best I could get. :)