Chocolate Lava

I (Isabelle) woke up with a crazy chocolate craving and decided to find a solution instantly. I'd had this recipe bookmarked for awhile and figured it would be perfect. These were ready to eat in under half an hour, which has made them a go-to from now on. And they were absolutely delicious!

Holly Jolly

What says the holidays like gingerbread and sparkles? I (Liv) love cookies and when you dip them into hot chocolate or tea they just melt. I am however, perhaps unreasonably picky about my cookies. Especially gingerbread. It has to be crunchy, but chewy and soft. It has to be sweet, but hot and spicy. Luckily, I trust the Food Network for things like this, so I decided on this recipe, in the hopes that 111 positive reviews would prove true. They did. My royal icing, used here, turned out perhaps a little too thick, but it worked. It is now finally starting to feel like Christmas. 

While my gingerbread chilled in the freezer (I was impatient and not prepared to refrigerate for longer), I decided to entertain myself. How do I do that? Make homemade marshmallows. The recipe called for unflavored gelatin which I had seen in my pantry for as long as I could remember. When I looked at the package it told it had expired in '09, so I pretended not to notice that and carried on with the recipe. Unfortunately, that poor expired gelatin failed me. It did not harden enough, so it left me with overly sticky marshmallow fluff. The gelatin has now been replaced with a new box, expiring '14. Now, I am not one to let a recipe fail... ever. Even if it totally illogical for me to keep going, I will anyway because I absolutely refuse to fail. So after sticking the marshmallows in the coldest part of my freezer for a few hours I removed them, without any improvement on the solidified front. So I worked a few magical tricks over the course of about 2 hours until I had about thirty beautiful, hardly sticky,  peppermint marshmallows. They too are magical, like myself, because they make perfectly average hot chocolate into peppermint hot chocolate. How is that for holiday magic?

December Blues: Nordstrom Café

Simply put, we like to eat. It's delicious and legend says that it makes you live longer. We're always on the lookout for restaurants with better food than our mothers can offer. Nordstrom Café combines our two loves into one with beautiful clothes and even better food. Their dessert display literally makes us feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.

We decided upon feeling fancy and ordered a mouth-wateringly amazing prosciutto and goat cheese pizza. Nordstrom apparently uses magical cheese that is insanely gooey without falling off the crust. So we ate that pretty quickly. We followed with a chocolate peppermint cupcake with light as air frosting and an unloved candy cane. We much prefer marshmallow Santas.

YOU CAN'T CATCH ME, I'M THE GINGERBREAD MAN!

This weekend, we decided to get into the Christmas spirit by putting together a gingerbread house using a kit from Deutschland. Isabelle may have eaten half of it before we even started putting it together, but she left all the orange gummies for decorating use (no one ever eats those, right?). Liv did not approve.

We used our great high school German skills to understand that we were supposed to make our own icing, or maybe it was simply that there wasn't any in this box. Liv bullied Isabelle into using this recipe and mixing it until her arms fell off. Every other time we've made a gingerbread house, we've used that little bag of so-called-icing it comes with. That stuff does not work. We literally need the force of an ironman and an hour of our time to get one of the sides to hold together.


Now this stuff works! The house held together almost instantly, and we only had to use a little, leaving plenty left for Isabelle to eat. Liv didn't approve of that either.

We covered the roof with coconut "snow" and felt like the perfect weathermen (Isabelle felt like God, but Liv's Christian). Gummy church bells on the top and a snazzy nonpareil border later and we were proud of our ginger baby (see what we did there?). And since we doubled the icing recipe, there was still tons left for Isabelle to eat. This time, Liv skipped her annoyance stage and simply shot her with the piping bag. She's still washing that stuff out of her hair. But don't worry, Liv is, too.

HAPPY BELATED THANKSGIVING!

So, this post is pretty overdue, but better late than never, right?
I (Isabelle) spent Thanksgiving with my family in surprisingly warm Chicago. My mom cooked everything but dessert, which has never really been her thing. Legend has it she nearly burned our house down trying to boil water. So I took on the classic pumpkin pie.

I followed the recipe on the back of the can, and the result was amazing. It tasted just as Thanksgiving pies should, delicious and filling. Unfortunately, I did not have time to get a picture of the finished pie before my family scarfed the whole thing down, so enjoy the pre-oven pictures below.

There are so many things that I am thankful for this year that I can't even begin to list all of them. For starters, I am thankful for my generous and wonderful family who I love so much even though we don't always get along. I am thankful for my fantastic, hilarious, and sometimes insane friends who I would not be able to live without and who make each day interesting, to say the least. Especially when they do things like this.

I am thankful for the great education I receive and how lucky I am to be able to go to school unlike so many other children. I am thankful for the happiness I've had this year and the amazing memories I've made that I never want to forget. And I am finally thankful for the little things in life, like an accidental run-in with one of my best friends at Gap and the inspiration to write a little blog post like this one.
I spent the rest of Thursday afternoon before and after the big feast watching Season 1 of Gossip Girl. Couldn't have asked for a better Thanksgiving break. Let the Christmas music begin!

HOMEMADE OREOS

I (Liv) have never really had a strong attachment to Oreos. I find the cookies dry, and the cream filling overly sweet. I think another problem with them may be that they taste too artificial, like something that would never be produced in a kitchen. However, I have now found enlightenment. I have found this godsend, these homemade Oreos. Using this recipe I created these creations of comfort and childhood.  I am honestly not one to brag about my baking but this time, I can't help it. The cookies are chewy and super chocolately and the cream is sweet and delicious. The whole story changes though, when you bring in the glass of milk. They become so good that the only possible reaction is grunts of satisfaction. 

Let's hope Isabelle decides to make something soon. 

Happy salivating. :)