Disgracefully easy 5 minute microwave fudge.

You think I'm lying to you, don't you?
You're like "HAH, yeah right, Kenzie. There's NO WAY that fudge can be all 3 of those things at once. Either it's easy, it only takes 5 minutes or it's done in the microwave. Don't mess with my head."
First of all, I'm a bit worried for you, work on your trust issues.
Secondly, YES THEY CAN!!!
And oh sweet babies, is it tasty.

You see, I'm all about NOT doing things the hard way... some of the time.
Hollandaise sauce, for instance, should be done the hard way. Vinegar reduction, clarified butter, scalding hot double boiler, whisking for 20 minutes straight, season to perfection. Out-of-the-bag hollandaise does NOT cut it for me, even though it takes a fraction of the time and cost.
But if I had to choose between spending $15 dollars on a pound of fudge that takes me over an hour to make or spending $6 dollars for the exact same amount of fudge that literally takes me 5 minutes, I think we all know which one I'm going to go for.
6 Dollars, any day of the week.

This recipe holds a very special place in my heart.
It was nearing the Christmas season and I was feeling festive, but I'm not a huge fan of baking, because I'm not overly awesome at it because I don't like following recipes. They're stupid, and they're only there to get in the way.
But they're sometimes the difference between a successful dessert and a failure. And I hate that.
Anyways, digression aside, I found this recipe online here and ran with it.
I did all sorts of combinations!
Chocolate mint, chocolate peanut butter, chocloate peanut butter toffee crunch (to DIE for) mint peanut butter (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. It makes your heart hurt by how much it sucks) chocolate maple, maple mint (hahaha that was weird) and white chocolate and dark chocolate marbled together. AWESOME.
So what I'm trying to tell you is that you can do literally ANYTHING with this recipe.

You see, all you need is:

• 1 14oz can of sweetened-condensed milk
• 14oz back of semi-sweet chocolate chips 
• 10oz bag of flavored chips, such as mint, butterscotch, cinnamon, white, etc. 
• OPTIONAL: candy chunks, sprinkles, nuts, pennies, ANYTHING!! 
• microwave-safe bowl 
• heat resistant rubber spatula
• 9x9" or 9x13" pan
• microwave 

1) Throw your chocolate chips and sweetened-condensed milk in the bowl and put them in the microwave for about 3 minutes. The trick here is to not let them burn but get them to a velvety smooth paste. If need be, go for a few more seconds until all of the chips have melted completely. Here is where you'd add in your tasty little bits of whatever. 

2) pour mixture into pan, DO NOT GREASE the pan, the chocolate will take care of keeping things oily. Once it's all patted down, here's where you can throw on some leftover candy on top to garnish it. Let this all sit on the counter until it cools down, cut, and serve!! 

And done!

Now I know that some of you (cough-N+C-cough) might be tempted to throw these in the fridge/freezer to cool quicker, but beware!! If you do that, then it's going to cool oddly, and it's all fine and dandy until they get left out on the counter on a platter and they start to melt. 

This has to do with the fat coagulating in the fridge verses it all staying together while left to cool naturally. 

Don't get me wrong, if you're planning on eating it all within like an hour (don't judge - it happens) then COOL AWAY!
It's only when you want to save some for later or others (hah, yeah right) that the fridge process would suck. 

Otherwise, store at room temperature in an airtight container until the men in your life eat it all. 

And there you have it, folks. 

Amazing, simple, sinfully delicious, and we're not even going to look at the calorie count on this one. 

Just enjoy it. Trust me. 

And as always, let me know how this goes, and what you did to make it yours!!!

Kenzie

Laziest. Cookies. Ever.

I've owed this to C and N for a very long time now.

Once, over the winter season, I had a really productive burst one day and decided that I NEEDED to make cookies and fudge.
Oh. My. God.
It was a good day.
Lot and lots of sugar.

Anyways.
One thing that I had been focusing on doing for a while (and still keep an eye out for, though I don't actively search it out as often) is finding and creating good food that is easy to make for the -ahem- culinarily disinclined.
You know who you are.
And through that noble search I came upon Lazy Cookies.

Little known fact: I LOVE white birthday cake.
If it has the little confetti specks in it, EVEN BETTER.
But since I don't really like cake from a box, I really don't make it that often unless I have an experiment or cupcakes to make for someone (um, sometimes I bribe people with baked goods).
So one day I was browsing the web and found the abstract idea of cake-cookies.
Literally cookies made from a box of cake mix!!
And I was like "Mein Gott! THIS IS HOW I CAN GET MAH CAKE ON!!!"
It was a way for me to have my white cake and eat it too, though not in cake form.
Deep, I know. Just try and keep up.

So over the next 4 months, I set out to perfect this recipe.
I was aiming for consistent, delightful cookies every single time out of every single box.
What I quickly found out is that I'm not too good at that sort of thing.
But gosh darnit, I sure made the heck out of them, and then pawned them off on to other people. Luckily, they didn't seem to mind too much :)

So without further ado and rambling, here they are!

Cake Cookies.
What you'll need:

• 1 box of cake mix, your choice of flavor 
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 large egg
• any additional goodies you'd like to add, such as chocolate or toffee bits or raisins or pretty much whatever. All is fair in love and cake cookies. 
• mixing bowl + an additional small bowl
• wooden spoon
• cookie sheet
• parchment paper (NOTE: DO NOT use wax paper. I did the first time and smoked the house up. Roommates were totally thrilled, as expected.) 
• an oven.

1) Combine all wet ingredients in the small bowl and whisk really well, then set aside.
        Also, preheat your oven to 350F. This is vital. 

2) Pour cake mix in to large bowl!
     Still with me??

3) Now add your wet ingredients to your dry, little by little, because some brands of cake mix require more moisture than other.
For instance, Betty Crocker's cake mix required almost 2 tbsp LESS liquid than Wal-Mart's no-name brand needed. If you have too much liquid it makes them kind of spongy which is too close to crappy cake for my liking. 

4) Once the desired consistency has been reached, pat yourself on the back. You're doing really good (C + N haha so proud). NOTE: If you feel like you want to shove the whole bowl of cookie dough in to your moth at once, you know you've got it right. It smells like heaven and starch. 

5) Spoon your cookie dough on to the cookie sheets that you PREVIOUSLY LINED WITH PARCHMENT PAPER (in step 3. No, don't go back and look, you already missed it. Just keep going.) and leave them in the ball shape. They'll flatten themselves out. Just leave some space in between them so they don't all stick together. 

6) Now here comes the tricky part: cooking them. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. Depending on your sea level and humidity percentage, your cooking time and results are going to vary. Heck, even for me, cooking them on a sunny day vs. on a rainy day yields different results. The temperature of the water can even change things!
But as a safe bet, set your first timer for 7 minutes, then check them every 1 - 2 minutes after. Take them out when they're still a bit soft in the middle, that way carry-over cooking won't make then too hard. 

Once they're done take them out of the oven, off of the pan and on to a cooling rack to do their thang.

And that's it!! That's the recipe for awesome, chewy, cake-flavored cookies. 

Enjoy! And make sure to let me know how they turned out - I'm a fan on knowing stuff. 

Kenzie

The post of shame.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a couple of notes to share on the fruit leather project.
I'm not going to say that it was a failure, because it wasn't. I ate the whole tray of it. Now my mouth hurts. But OH MAN was it worth it.

You see, I made a few errors (which, btw, I did correct in the recipe post).
For instance, the fruit puree that I made was much too thick.
And while I KNEW it was going to be too thick, the impatience won and I just kind of poured it in to the pan all helter-skelter like. It ended up fitting in to 2 pans, a large and a small.
I, being me, put the larger pan on the bottom and the smaller on the top.
There's a couple of problems with this scenario.
 Allow me to elaborate.

1) Putting the larger item on the bottom absorbed more of the heat and blocked the smaller tray from getting even heat, resulting in a too-dark bottom pan and a pan on the top that was dryer on the edges and still moist in the middle.

2) I don't feel like elaborating anymore. Just don't do it that way, ok?
Moving on to the good stuff.

It. Was. Amazing.
I don't even have pictures of the finished product because I ate it all.
One thing I will mention though, is that when using 2 VERY acidic fruits, be sure to balance it out with a little extra sweetener, or a more neutral fruit such as apple or pear.
Next time, little ones. Next time.

For now, it's time for me to both do some studying and price a fruit dehydrator online.
My oven is WAY too temperamental to use like this all the time.
(Like one time in the winter the element caught on fire and almost gave me a heart attack. It was a great time.).

ON TO PROCRASTINATE AND DO HOMEWORK AT 2AM!!!

Home Made Fruit Leather (which may or may not be organic.)

So there's this thing going on.
I don't know if you've heard about it...
It's kind of a fad, but I think it might be here to stay....
It's a little thing called ORGANIC. 
Now don't you be fooled - it takes a lot to become Certified Organic (I capitalized the words so you know they're important and stuff). And by a lot, I mean it takes 3 FREAKING YEARS of being completely and totally, 100% pesticide free... among other things, of course. But this is what impresses me most.
I don't know how your perception of time is working for you, but for me, 3 years is pretty much forever (mostly because I'm both impulsive and impatient). So when I hear that somewhere has been THAT awesome for THAT long, you DESERVE to charge me almost double what other producer charge for the same product.
HAHAHA, KIDDING, you don't. Not at all.
But admittedly, there's something slightly magical about organic fruits. Maybe because I don't feel like I have to clean them so much? Or maybe because I'm not worried about ingesting poison. Either way.
So back to my point: ..... Um fruit leather, I think it was?
I don't know. Let's go with that.

OH! I remember! Organic.
Long story short, since I've been in school I've had weekends off, meaning that I've been able to get to the farmers market a lot more often, which is awesome, because I LOVE farmer's markets.
Last weekend I went there, and discovered that it's rhubarb season.
Now a little known fact about me is that I have a weakness for rhubarb.
It's tart, it's sweet, and if you eat the wrong part of the plant you can die.
No joke.
So there's something that I find very appealing about it.
Therefore I bought like 5 pounds. DON'T JUDGE ME.
And I was like "OH MAN, Ima make PIES and BREADS and CANDY and IMA EAT IT ALL, and it will all be lovely and it will all be good and I will be happy."
What I forgot to take in to consideration is how very acidic it is, and how, after eating approximately 1 pound of it, you want to die.
Ha, rookie mistake.
Also, I'm poor.
So like, between the two of those things, I was sitting alone in my living room on Saturday night and I was like OH MAN, what do I do with all of this.
It's beautiful, it's 100% organic or whatever, and it's making me want to vomit... but I still love it.
So I looked in my fridge and realized that I had also bought organic strawberries and organic honey (the honey is from a few weeks ago and ohmygoodness is it amazing.) so I decided to try my hand at making fruit leather! (Don't ask how I came to that conclusion. Just don't.)

This evening I just so happened to have a few hours to spare, because my homework load was pretty light.
So here's how we're going to do this!

You'll need:

• 1lb of your favorite fruit, or a mixture of fruit!
• 1/4 cup of water
• 2 tbs to 2c. of white sugar, honey, stevia, agave sugar, etc etc. SWEETENER. gosh. 
• Heavy sauce pan
• whisk, rubber spatula and/or wooden spoon.
• a blender or food processor
• Shallow baking sheet/pan
• plastic wrap
• Oven or whatever

1) It's time to prep your fruit! Thoroughly wash and dry your fruit, because dirt and pesticides and wax are all gross. If you're working with pitted fruits take out the pits, core apple and pears and stuff, and take tops off of strawberries. Use common sense here, people. Only put the good parts of the fruit here.

2) put your water in to the sauce pan and crank up the heat, then throw your fruit in. You want to get your water up to a simmer (small bubbles coming up)  then turn it down to medium, to keep it simmering but not get too hot. All fruits have natural sugars in them, and if the heat is up too high the sugars are going to burn. That's undesirable.
   2.1) This is a good time to turn on your oven. You want it as low as it can go, usually 140 - 170. I have mine on 170 because A) I plan on leaving it in overnight and B) it doesn't go any lower. Also, it makes it cook faster. 

3) Allow your fruit to simmer along for 5-10 minutes, depending on the type of fruit you're using. If you're going with raspberries, it's not going to take as long to break down as an apple or pear would. Just simmer it until the fruit is tender and it looks like it's going to blend easily. NOTE: As someone who enjoys sweetness, I like to add a little but more water than necessary and let it reduce down. That brings out the natural sugar and helps to caramelize it, making it even more delicious and sticky. 

4) BLEND IT!!!!!!!!! Make it as smooth as possible, and thin enough to pour but not watery. Find a good balance. Like ink, maybe? You don't want it too much like a paste, because it won't dry out properly. 

5) Line your baking sheet with plastic wrap. Don't worry, the oven isn't going to get hot enough to melt the plastic. It's all good!

Pour the fruit puree on to the pan. You don't want it any thicker than a quarter inch, because it needs to dry quickly. 

6) Place your tray on the middle rack and leave your oven on low for 4-8 hours, depending on the density of your puree. You'll know when it's done by touching the middle of the pan and it comes out dry and firm.

Because I started mine later in the afternoon, I've decided to keep it in with the oven on for about 4 or 5 hours, then turn it off before I go to bed (now I'm all paranoid because this morning my Chef told me a story about how his restaurant BLEW UP from a cigarette butt and paint fumes.) and leave it in the CLOSED oven overnight so that when I wake up in the morning I have some tasty fruit leather to look forward to!

Good luck!! Let me know how it turns out :) 

Enjoy! 

And here we go!! 3rd blog's the charm, right?

Well ladies and gents, it's official: I'm in love with cooking.
A lot of you (well... those who know me and aren't just here because of Google) know that cooking's been my passion for pretty much as long as I can remember (unless my parents told me to make dinner... then I didn't want to, because hey, I had to rebel in SOME way, right?).
So in February of 2011, I packed up my bathing suit and sun tan lotion and exchanged it for a parka and boots, moving from sunny Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, my home of nearly 8 years, to Edmonton, Alberta, my town of birth, though I seemed to have put a mental block on the frigidity of the province.

As of March 8th, 2011 I was officially on my way to becoming a Chef by working in a restaurant, and on April 19, 2012, I began my first day of official schooling in the field.
Now let me tell you, unless you've actually worked long-term in a restaurant, you don't really know how TERRIBLE it can be.
Long hours, stress, deadlines, hundreds of customers, hot stoves, egomaniacs bossing you around, and too much drama to even begin to describe.
But I love it.
I thrive on it.
And from it, I've become a better (if not slightly more sarcastic) person.

But don't be fooled, being in the back of a kitchen is NOT what I plan to do for the rest of my life.
No, I want to be on the front lines.
I want to be instructing people on how to eat better, how to cut back on fat, how to stay awesome, and most of all how to ENJOY GOOD FOOD.
A lot of other people are starting to do that already, because let's face it, it's a freaking fantastic idea. I mean, how DOESN'T want to eat amazing food and not have to worry about preservative and trans fats and chemicals and other equally unappealing things that one readily finds nowadays in their meals?
I'm just here to make it a little bit easier (all the while throwing some VERY unhealthy recipes in the mix, because let's face it, I'm both human AND lazy.)
This is my personal journey, and I'm learning more than I ever expected at less than 2 years in.

Here is where I plan to post recipes that I both find and create, adding my own twist and possibly  definitely a snarky commentary to go along with it.

Here we go.