The only excitement in my life this week has been my quest to make the famous Bakerella‘s cupcake pops. They looked adorable and mouthwatering, and I had to have some. Thus, I had to make some. Luckily, my mom, two of my aunts, and my grandmother all have birthdays around now, so we had a mini party on Sunday at my grandparents’ house, giving me the perfect opportunity to make a batch of these little suckers (get it…suckers, like lollipops…like cupcake pops….and I’m leaving in shame….) without the very frightening (and very real) possibility I would eat them all myself.

It was certainly a process. Friday I went and gathered all my supplies. (Luckily, my mom used to be an avid candy maker and knew what the best kind of chocolate would be for this venture…) and made my cake. Saturday, the real work began. First, I had to mix the cake and icing (without eating too much of the icing by itself) and form them into the shape of the cupcakes:

Next I had to cover the bottoms in milk chocolate (again, avoiding the eating all the supplies issue)

Then I had to dip the tops into blue candy/chocolate (I’m not sure what it is exactly, except delicious), then cover the tops in sprinkles and a little dark chocolate M+M. I was proud of how adorable they turned out.

They also made the sink look like this, which was a fun added bonus. (It’s like a party in the sink!)

AND, I’m extra proud of my organizational skills in keeping my kitchen looking like this rather than like an explosion of chocolate and sprinkles had hit the kitchen:

On Sunday, they looked adorable on the table at my grandparents’.

So, if you’ve got a spare 5 hours and a hankering for chocolate filled with cake and icing,  I definitely recommend these. My cousins ate three each and my dad and uncle (below) seemed to have fun with them, so I think they were a success.

Other than the cake pops, we had a really fun time with the family on Sunday. I think I sold my cousin on getting a Nikon camera after she walked around the party for an hour with mine. We also may have made plans to see the Hannah Montana movie together, as she is still in middle school and can be my beard to get into the movie without shame. (Not that I have any…I think I lost my ability to feel shame at the movies when I purchased my tickets to HSM3 for the third time.)

The rest of the weekend was spent car shopping with my mom. Every time we walk into a dealer, we have to explain that we need three cars in the next four months (one for my sister, one for me, one for Mom and Dad) and then have to wait as all the salesmen finishing battling to see who gets to walk us around the lot. We even had the owner of one dealership walk us around for a while. My personal dilemma right now is that I can afford to get a new car, but the new cars I want are all hybrids (because in CA, I’d get to drive in the HOV lane ALL THE TIME and if you live in CA, you know how AWESOME this would be, especially in traffic. Plus, less time out of my life pumping gas? Yes, please!), but of course, all the hybrids are way expensive, so I’d have to go used. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful to be having the option of either a new regular car or a used hybrid at all, but still, it’s a tough call.

Other than that, life has been pretty boring: working, watching ridiculous amounts of television on Monday nights (Last night my dad and I had to split up at 8 – he watched House upstairs as I watched the season premier Greek of in my room, all while our DVR taped Chuck, How I Met Your Mother, and Big Bang Theory. Then, of course, I have to watch Gossip Girl online. Is there really no other time ANY of these shows could be on?), and reading for TFA.  I’m debating (and I guess will have to decide to do by the end of the day) NaBloPoMo in April, since I’ve been slacking on the blogging front and could use some motivation. I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

• If I had seen myself walking around today in my sorority sweatshirt, Coach rain boots, and giant pink leather tote, I think I would have hated myself. 
• I really wanted to take phone picture of an advertisement on the T for Seeds of Change brand food that someone stuck an Obama sticker on, but I felt others on the train would judge me. 
• I’m impressed with my ability to get out of bed early in the morning on weekends to do things for school i.e. taking pictures of my cousin’s soccer game for photography. 
• I’m happy that I’m able to cook and bake, or else I would have nothing to occupy myself when home alone for an entire weekend. (Today’s dishes include Trader Joe’s corn bread and BBQ chicken for my dinner, corn casserole for my friend’s Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night, and amazing oatmeal cookies for myself slash maybe for the dinner tomorrow if I don’t eat them all tonight.)
• I’m leaving for Australia in a month and 8 days. That’s so freakin’ soon. 
• I’m very excited about my amazing purchases yesterday: 2 pairs of pants, four shirts, and a necklace all from Banana Republic and Express and ALL on sale. Score! 
• If it doesn’t stop raining soon, I’m going to punch the sky. 
• This was the hardest day of NaBloPoMo yet. I have very few interesting thoughts…

Lately, I fear all I’ve been eating is bread and cheese: pizza, goldfish (the wonderful combination of both), and my new favorite quick lunch: my perfect grilled cheese sandwich.

The creation started when I was visitng my parents, and my mother introduced me to the grilled cheese with jarlsberg cheese (or baby swiss) as the main component. Now, I used to be very picky about cheeses (mainly, eating only the basic italian varieties: mozzarella, provolone, and parmesan) but I went out on a limb and tried it…and it was glorious, especially on the perfect grilled cheese bread – Tuscane Pane from Trader Joes. The cheese is tart and delicious and really wonderful for grilled cheese.

When I got back to school, I bought all the ingredients to keep making my sandwich, but I also picked up some fresh mozzarella, as I always do, for my regular sandwiches. When I went to pull out the jarlsberg, I spotted the fresh mozzarella and thought it could add a lot to my sandwich. And I was so so right. The mozzarella is so subdued and a little sweet that it really allows the jarlsberg to shine, BUT it adds this amazing gooey texture that the jarlsberg lacks. Perfection. I’ve now been making them non-stop, and I’ll share with you exactly how to do it! 

(Please excuse the subpar picture taking. I was too hungry to try harder…)

For the sandwiches, I used all Trader Joe’s brand foods – light jarlsberg cheese, fresh mozzarella, and Tuscan Pane Italian Bread (either white or whole wheat works well. I’ve tried both…)

Get a skillet or similarly flat pan and start heating it at medium low heat – this is VERY important. You need a slow, low cooking style so the cheese melts before the bread burns. 

Lightly butter the ousdie of the bread, then put one layer of jarlsberg down. 

Next, break up small pieces of fresh mozzarella and sprinkle over the jarlsberg. I’ve found just slicing the mozzarella results in way too much mozzarella. 

Put the sandwich on the skillet and cook on one side for about 5 to 6 minutes or until the bread is golden brown.

Flip carefully, although at this point, the cheese should be melty enough to not fall out of the sandwich.

Cook another 5 to 6 minutes until the cheese is melted and the bread is brown. 

Slice in half. Marvel at the cheesey, gooey goodness, and enjoy!

First of all, I’ve chosen a winner in the No Pudge Brownie Mix give-a-way, or rather, random.org has picked a winner, and it is……drumroll……MELISSA! Hazzah! I’ve already bought your prize, so just shoot me an email with your address, and I’ll send you a package of deliciousness. 

Now, onto the task at hand: Inspired by both The Pioneer Woman Cooks and We are Not Martha, I decided to document my dinner preparation now that I’m in a kitchen that has working lights and isn’t infested with gnats. I decided to make my parents Swordfish with Pasta and Citrus Pesto, courtesy of Giada De Laurentiis, aka my Food Network Idol. Here goes: 

The ingredients, all found in my homeland, Trader Joe’s, include swordfish steaks, one lemon (or two small ones), one orange, basil, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, spaghetti, fresh parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.

First, start with the pesto. Of course, no pesto is complete (or is even pesto really…) without lots and lots of delicious basil. You’ll need to de-stem about three cups. Fun fact: your hands will smell like basil for the rest of the night. Gift or curse? 

Next, attempt to stuff all that green deliciousness into a food processor. 

Next, dump in half a cup of toasted pine nuts. You can toast these yourself, or you can just be mildly lazy and buy toasted pine nuts at the store. I, not surprisingly, went with the latter option. 

Next, take out the frustrations on your day on an innocent clove of garlic by thwapping it under your knife to get it out of it’s paper/shell situation and then drop that sucker into the food processor, too. 

Now is when you put the Citrus into “Citrus Pesto.” You want to zest a lemon into the food processor, preferably not with this tool I am holding, as it, soon after this photo was taken, resulted in a major cooking Fail, as all the zest ended up inside this little contraption, where I could not get it out. Luckily, I had extra lemons that I ended up grating with a cheese grater. I will soon be asking my mom for one of these so avoid future fails. 

Now, you aren’t quite done with the lemon yet. Cut that sucker open and juice it into the food processor too. We aren’t messing around here with the citrus flavor. In fact, go ahead and do the exact same zest/juice routine with the orange.

Now the fun part: blend this beautiful mixture until everything is finely chopped. Once you think everything looks sufficiently blended, slowly add in half a cup of olive oil until the mixture is smooth and mouthwatering..er…creamy. (This step, sadly, proved too difficult to photograph.)

You may have to scrape the sides at some point to make sure everything is incorporated. 

Then poor the whole mixture into a bowl, admire how green and amazing it (and you) are and set it a side. 

Now is the time when I had a minor panic attack about the mess I’d made thus far, so I took a small cleaning break before starting on the next few steps. (Can we also take a moment to stop and admire my mom’s sink…god, I love this kitchen entirely too much.) I’d also like the point out that after cleaning about half of this stuff by hand, I remembered that little appliance next to me was called a dishwasher and could do this for me. Can you tell I’ve been deprived all summer? 

After the dishes were stowed in the dishwasher (aka my savior), I began boiling a large pot of water and salted it to season the spaghetti that would eventually makes it way there. 

It was at this point I remembered I had forgotten a crucial step in making the pesto ridiculously good: the fresh parmesan! I grated a cup of parmesan cheese, more successfully than the lemon zest, on the cheese grater. 

I then added it to the pesto…

And slowly folded it in. Then, I again set it aside. Time to focus on the fish!

This fish could not be easier or more delicious. I’ve been making it for myself all summer. First, you want to make sure the fish is defrosted. Then drizzle olive oil over the top, and add salt and freshly ground pepper. (I’m sure you can use not so freshly ground pepper, but I like like using the grinder a little too much.)

After I did that to both sides of the fish, I noticed the water was boiling, so I added in the pasta and gave it a nice little stir to make sure it all got into the water alright. 

Next, I put the fish on the skillet which had been heating at medium heat for a few minutes. You can also grill the fish on a grill pan or, you know, an actual grill. I, again, just really like this special built in skillet. 

Once the pasta has been cooking a few minutes, make sure you grab some pasta water to save for later. Giada says it has all the starches from the pasta and helps thin out sauces without really thinning them too much. I agree, as I have no reason not to. 

After about five or six minutes, you’ll want to check on the fish and flip them if they are golden brown and have white creeping up the sides. At this point, you want to remind yourself it would be unsafe to test a piece of fish, because as delicious as it looks, it is not yet done. 

To take your mind off the fish, drain the pasta and put it back into the pot. Then, take that ridiculously amazing pesto and dump it all in there. Add a little bit of the pasta water to help break it up and stir it into the pasta. 

It mixed pretty easily for me, but when I found some large clumps, I just attacked them with the pasta water. Then I admired the beautiful color and the cheesy, creamy decliousness before me. Set the pasta aside and tend to the fish. Once the other side is just as golden brown, take the fish off the grill. Plating time!

As you can see, I almost made some roasted asparagus, which I also documented, but which I decided to cut for editorial purposes. (There were just WAY too many pictures…) All I did was coat them in olive oil, salt, pepper, and some Emeril’s Seasoning and cook for about 15 minutes at 375 degrees. 

I think my  parents were excited to come home to this instead of frozen pizza. All of it was gone in 20 minutes. Success!

From time to time, I come across something truly awesome and amazing that I need to share with the world. Thus, I have decided to share these with the blogging world, and today is the inaugural post! Can you feel the excitement? I thought so. Here goes: 

When Lynn and I moved into our apartment, many things were not so wonderful (dirt, bugs, a stove that was always weirdly warm…), but the one thing that was wonderful was something we found in the cabinet: half a box of NO PUDGE BROWNIE MIX. At first, we read the box and scoffed. Brownies made with yogurt? No fat? Please, these have got to be disgusting.

Now, I consider myself something of a brownie connessouir. I have very high standard. No cake-y, dry brownies here. Nope. I’m all about the melt-in-your mouth, fudgy squares of deliciousness. There was NO WAY this box of brownie mix you can cook in your microwave could be any good.  

Then one fateful day, after tiring of getting ice cream from Emack and Bolio’s all the time, we decided to test out the brownie mix. While there are directions to make the whole box at once, we opted for the single serving option. It seemed more fun (and was 10 times quicker…)

So we spooned four tablespoons of the No Pudge Mix in a bowl with two tablespoons of non-fat vanilla yogurt, mixed, and microwaved for two minutes. What came out, I have to tell you, was close to brownie perfection. If you tasted these things without knowing where they came from, you might think they were real life, butter and egg filled brownies, but no! These babies will keep you slim…er, and they taste simply delicious. 

Best of all, while researching for this post, I’ve found that their website has tons of recipes to spruce up the mix, in case you aren’t a big fan of plain, right-out-of-the-microwave brownies. I, myself, enjoy microwaving these babies up in a big bowl, then toping the steaming hot bowl-brownie with carmel pecan soy delight ice cream. Mmmm….

So where can you pick up this wonderful little brownie mix? I found some at Trader Joe’s, the Mecca for cheap-grocery-loving gourmets like myself, but my mom also found them in her local supermarket (and was equally impressed with the results). To check out if the mix is available near you, check out their website. 

Luckily, if you don’t feel like looking, I’M GIVING SOME AWAY! That’s right! As part of this inaugural Amanda Recommends post, I will give away two boxes of No Pudge! Fat Free Brownie Mix in two different flavors to one lucky reader. All you have to do is leave a comment with your favorite dessert, and you’re entered! Easy enough, if I do say so myself. I’ll close the commenting Monday, as that is when I get home and could actually buy some Brownie Mix for all you people. 

Now, if you don’t want a brownie after all that, I don’t think you have a soul…or a tongue.