Pizza!

Ever since I started this blog I have figured out that there is nothing more rewarding than making your own (insert item here). If it exists there is a way to make it. I have learned how to make jam, frosting, three layer cake, pies, marshmallows,chips, biscuits, scones, pizza, chili, dip, peanut butter, and bread among other stuff. And I'm so glad because well it's not just about saving money on buying said stuff when you can make it for much less and have even greater quality, it's about that feeling I get right after seeing, tasting, smelling and seeing the faces of satisfaction of the people who taste the results. I love that!

Left side: Pepperoni extra olives     Right side: Pepperoni & Pineapple

Brian and I made two pizza's (can you guess which one was mine? eh...), well we didn't actually make our own dough we just added our own toppings and popped it in the oven. Much better than frozen, but I'm sure it would have been even better if we had made our own dough. There really is no need for recipe, you just put the ingredients you want! I really like Boboli pizza crusts, the taste is phenomenal, not overwhelming like I've experienced with other pizza crusts, not bland either, it's just right and the texture is great too, not chewy, not crummy I don't know they have magic pizza crusts they taste great. For the sauce or pizza I recommend it has basil!! Basil is one of the best things out there, I think I should have a basil plant (it's hard to find fresh during some months).

Pizza

Ingredients

• 2 Boboli Italian 12" pizza crusts (original not thin)
• fresh mozzarella cheese
• Bertolli Tomato & Basil sauce
• 1 green bell pepper
• Fresh pepperoni
• Olives
• pineapple 
• Parmesan cheese

Directions

Gather all of your favorite ingredients, spread tomato sauce onto pizza crusts, then mozzarella, and pepperoni and let all other ingredients follow. Follow baking instruction that are on the back of the Boboli pizza crust bag.  

Pizza was really good especially because we prepared it ourselves!

Le Strawberry Blog Birthday Muffins

I cannot believe I have been blogging for ONE whole year! YAY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY Magnolia75: The Baking Lounge! There's so, so many recipes I want to try to make and post! There is not enough time in a lifetime (I think) to be able to recreate the oh so many baking and cooking recipes that I would love to try. The few I have posted are what I like to call "the beginning". This past year I have learned a lot (I think) about baking! I know how to make a pie from scratch, a three layer cake, cobbler. I have learned about the origins of some baked goods, and ingredient substitutes. I discovered a whole new world that is baking and blogging! Places like Foodbuzz are amazing, so many blogs that I've visited and just stare (drool, really) at the food/baked goods. So much creativity and deliciousness! The baking world is amazing and everyone is so nice and approachable. I've had baking questions and yup I receive responses to them and suggestions, everybody is very helpful.  I mean there's so many fun ways to keep up with others blogs and display our master pieces or simply a cute picture of our day ( I just caved in and got an Instagram, love it, but I'm still a newbie). Definitely will keep baking, cooking and posting! I have so much to learn still!!

I have had some pretty awesome moments: like being featured on Foodbuzz recently, that was awesome, Stephanie Jaworski from Joy of Baking follows me on Twitter (I believe she is an ultimate baking goddess), I hosted my first giveaway (hopefully they'll be many more), and not to mention Christina Tosi answered a question of mine and made a suggestion about these very muffins! I still have to try her suggestion since I had already baked the muffins. But I felt so cool, wouldn't you? She's so awesome and genius!!

Happy Birthday Blog!

Le Strawberry Birthday Muffins (sugar free)

Ingredients

• 1 large egg
• 1 cup of milk*
• 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar*
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cups sugar or (I used 16 packets of Splenda instead)
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 cups fresh and chopped strawberries (For 2 cups I used an entire regular sized strawberry box)

* I used 1 cup of milk and 1 3/4 teaspoons of cream of tartar as a substitute for 1 cup of plain yogurt. You could use the 1 cup of plain yogurt of course if you have it on hand.

Directions

Preheat oven to 375F.  Make sure to grease your muffin pan if you're not using cupcake liners. *In a small bowl place cream of tartar and add 2 tablespoons of milk, mix until well combined, now add the remaining 1 cup of milk and stir, set aside.** If you're using 1 cup of yogurt you don't need the milk and cream of tartar. In a medium bowl, combine the egg, oil, butter, vanilla and milk.
Now, in a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. Add the strawberries to the flour mixture gently coat them with the flour. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir gently with a rubber spatula. Just stir enough that there won't be any powder pockets.
I used cupcake liners and filled them to the top, so that when they are baking the tops will pop out and have that muffin look. I ran out of liners too and did the same to the regular pan.  Sprinkle the tops with sugar (I used regular sugar)before baking.  Bake for 20-23 minutes, until the tops and edges are lightly golden. Let them cool inside the pan for 10 minutes, then remove the muffins to cool completely on your baking rack.

recipe adapted from Fleur-De-Licious

Muffins were very moist due to strawberries, but their tops were nice and hard, the sweetness was just right too!

Thank you so much for reading, you guys! Keep commenting I love it and please share your blog with me I would love to see it and follow you!
Bake with love :)

Migas

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY everyone!! Migas is one of my dad's favorite breakfast food. So what is 'Migas' you may ask? Well, migas is Spanish for 'crumbs', and according to the internets it is a Spanish dish well said, I would have said it was a Mexican dish but Spanish makes sense. As a child growing up in Monterrey, Mexico my mom would make Migas in the mornings or if she had had a long day we'd have it for dinner, but never twice a day. Since it was our favorite she made it every so often.

It is super easy to make all you will need is 3 eggs and 3 corn tortillas (preferably the tortillas that look yellow). I have seen other additions to the Migas such as vegetables and quite honestly that's not the real thing, that's another Mexican egg dish but not Migas. I added pieces of 'carne asada' (grilled meat) for decoration but the traditional dish doesn't have meat it only has salsa, but my dad can't really eat spicy stuff anymore for health reasons so no salsa :(

Keep the egg to tortilla ratio the same

                                                 Migas

                                                            Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 3 corn tortillas (yellow corn tortillas)
• 4-5 tablespoons cooking oil (I used Grape Seed Oil)
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 slice grilled meat or brisket (optional)
• Pace salsa (optional) (I love Pace salsa and it's not spicy at all it has a very pleasant vegetable-y, tomato and pepper taste)

Directions

Cut 3 tortillas in half and repeat until they are in a triangle shape. In a separate bowl place your eggs and 2 tablespoons of milk and combine, the milk will help make the eggs fluffy. In a large skillet pour some cooking oil about 4-5 tablespoons and drop tortilla triangles in. Stir until they are covered in oil and begin to harden, pour egg mixture and stir. Make sure the tortillas are well combined with the egg. If you choose to add salsa to your Migas it would be after the egg is cooked, but if you choose to add meat add it while the egg is still cooking so that it is well combined. 

Enjoy!

Rhubarb Iced Tea and Goodies!!

So I have heard a lot and I mean A LOT about this rhubarb plant and I had never seen it in stores and was very curious to see 1) what it looked like,  2) what it tasted like and 3) I really wanted to post about it. But I couldn't find it in stores anywhere so I simply enjoyed all the recipes I saw from other blogs featuring this supposed rhubarb. But then I went to Sprouts and found it! And honestly it looks like red celery, doesn't have a smell or anything so eh. I grabbed a couple of stalks and called it a day. I started looking at what I could make and the options are unlimited there's pie, cobbler, curd, jelly, tea, salad, baked, so many to choose from, but I settled for tea because currently I suffer from the mixer-woes, I've gone fully colonial*. The tea was sweet and still had a little tarty-ness but it was very good nonetheless. One thing though is: how did no one mention rhubarb is a very tart-y/ bitter celery-look-alike, this tea recipe actually called for 1/3 cup of sugar and no...that was not enough. But at last the rhubarb mystery is over! I can't wait to try other recipes with it I just need to find it in stores again.

*Mixer-woes & Fully colonial: terms used by a baker and blogger (me, I made these up) when they lack a beautiful KitchenAid Stand Mixer to fully be a baking adventuress and reach baking goddess potential; fully colonial is baking like in 1776 sans mixer.

Celery-look-alike: Rhubarb

A lot has been happening! Brian and I we went to A-Kon (anime convention) early this month and it was amazing! I had no idea what/who some of the characters were but it definitely was fun to be able to go, but more on that on my next post. I have also been studying like a hard-ass for my Behavioral Neuroscience class which basically I learn about the brain and how it works: I know I am pretty cray-cray for taking that class over the summer. But it had to be done. Also I received a wonderful package from Burton's Maplewood Farm! A few months ago I entered the Sweet Victory Challence contest and although I did not win it was very sweet of them to send this package along with a hand-written note, Thank you to everyone at Burton's Maplewood Farm. :)

My fave flour!! And a hefty supply of 100% pure maple syrup from their farm.

Also enclosed was the King Arthur catalog and WOW I want everything!! It has recipes and all sorts of baking products. Oh the possibilities of baking and cooking too with maple syrup. Definitely be entering next year!

Super cool back of the maple syrup. I only wish I could have been there to enjoy the festival and the maple-ness in the air.

This pitcher was full about 7 cups to the top

Rhubarb Iced Tea

 Ingredients

• 4 stalks rhubarb (cut into small pieces)
• 8 cups water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• berries (optional)
• mint (optional)

 Directions

In a sauce pan pour 8 cups of water and rhubarb place over stove at medium heat until they boil. Let it simmer in the saucepan for a full hour. After the 1 hour simmer the water should be a pinkish color drain the water from the sauce pan and place into a large pitcher, add sugar and stir very well. Place inside the refrigerator until cool. Serve with ice, mint or berries if you like.

 

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Yum!

So apparently I did something wrong on blogger and all the posts that were supposed to post automatically on their designated dates did not. Fail :(. Well yesterday I didn't have such a good day, in fact just about everything was going wrong. But during my free time at school I perused through Pinterest and a couple of blogs and I felt a little better until the end of the day when everything was so much better :)

Chocolate covered strawberries is in my opinion very, very easy to make if ya have chocolate and strawberries on hand which I think just about every blogger that bakes has on hand some form of chocolate. And strawberries are so in season I've been finding good deals on them too! Just bought 9 cases for .99 cents each...yeah! I keep telling Brian I wish I had a big freezer so that I can freeze lots of berries and fruits and homemade waffles and stuff! Oooh one day... :)

This might just be one of my favorite recipes! So useful, I've seen chocolate covered strawberries in the stores sale for an arm and a leg...seriously I was at the grocery store and saw a case of 4 for $4.99...it wasn't even fancy chocolate or anything, what a rip-off.

Also I suppose you can dip anything into chocolate not necessarily strawberries! You can also do toppings, like after dipping them in the chocolate you can sprinkle coconut, sprinkles, white chocolate, graham-cracker dust, crushed-pretzels. Maybe I'll do that next, I love pretzels-chocolate combination! Same goes for the chocolate, it can be a chocolate bar, I just used chocolate chips because I have a ginormous bag I must use it, right? I mean one cannot ever have enough chocolate, heehee. Unless you're allergic to chocolate, like my uncle, that would suck do not wish that on anybody.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (covered 20 medium size strawberries, but you can use a whole cup if you like)
• 20 strawberries (washed and dried and with the stem)

Directions

After you've washed and dried your strawberries, cover a baking dish with aluminum foil, I found this easier than parchment paper since you can fold the foil and have it stay in its place. Place all of your strawberries on the covered baking dish. I used a few strawberries that were bruised and mushy (the ones that are not entirely covered in choco in the picture) and they worked okay too. I mean if you don't mind them being mushy. In a small bowl place your chocolate chips and place the bowl in the microwave. You microwave it for 1 minute only and more if you need to, but one was fine for me. However, break up the 1 min. into segments I did 10 seconds at first then 15 and then I took it out and stirred. I did this until the chocolate was melty. All microwaves are different so it may not even take a minute to melt,  I recommend this technique so you won't burn your chocolate.

Once chocolate is melted grab strawberries, gently by the stem and dip into the chocolate as much as you'd like! After they have all been dipped place the entire baking dish in the refrigerator for 30-35 minutes. Chocolate will harden and they will be ready to eat!