A Katastrophe In The Kitchen

My mother loves that since moving I finally have a nice kitchen so she has been buying a lot of random things for me to bake with. Of course there are the essentials like flour, sugar, etc. but she tends to buy strange, unrelated ingredients like oranges and ginger root. She ran into a special at the local supermarket for oranges so she happily bought me four of them. I like oranges, but I decided to search for a recipe to use them wisely and make sure they didn't go to waste.

There were several orange recipes, but this one seemed promising and it turned out great! Check it out!

Orange Oatmeal Bread
1 orange
2 tablespoons plus 3/4 cup sugar*
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup rolled oats
2 eggs
2 tablespoons softened or melted butter
2/3 cup warm water (105-115 degrees)

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Slice orange and cut out as much of the meat as you can. While it's a bit tedious, try to keep as much of the skin out as possible as it will make it more difficult to mash the orange. 
3. In a bowl, mash the orange down to make it smoother. I used a potato masher which worked great. You can also blend it in mixer to evenly break down the orange. The smoother it is the better it will be in the bread.
4.  Sprinkle the oranges with the 2 tablespoons of sugar and set aside for 5minutes.
5. Combine flour, 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda & oats.
6. In seperate bowl, combine eggs, butter, warm water, and orange mixture.Grate a little of the orange peel into the mix to add a little zest.
7. Slowly mix in dry ingredients using electric mixture on low speed.
8. Pour batter into greased loaf pans.
9. Bake at 350 for approximately 35 minutes for small loaves or 50 minutes for large loaves, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.
10. Remove loaves and let them sit at least 10 minutes to cool before attempting to take them out of the pans.

I've heard from other bakers that some of the best creations just come to you when you're craving a certain treat. One night when my boyfriend was working overnights, I had a sudden craving for Oreos. But since I am the opposite of rich, I decided I would look through my cupboards and see what I had & hopefully be able to create some kind of chocolate cookie. I came upon this recipe, which was actually called "Homemade Oreos". It was a pretty easy recipe, but I added some changes like upping the flour and substituting a few things. They turned out fantastic so I definitely want to share.

Homemade Oreos
For the chocolate wafers:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1 large egg

1. Preheat oven in 375°F.
2. In mixer (or in my case, just large bowl with hand mixer) combine combine the eggs, butter & sugar.
3. Slowly mix in the flour mixture on low speed. The dough will gradually get thicker so it may become harder to mix but even with my wimpy hand mixer, I was able to get all of the dry ingredients together without breaking it. Encouraging!
4. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. You can use a spoon or even a moistened hand to slightly flatten the dough to help the cookies cook evenly.
5. Bake for about 9 minutes, checking frequently.
6. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool. Once the cookies become cool enough to touch, remove them from the cookie sheet.

Tips:

• The dough should form a large mass by the time you finish adding all the dry ingredients. If it is not, you can add some flour to help get the dough to stick together better and still turn out with a good cookie. I find that this helps when you don't want to start from scratch!
• The original recipe said to rotate the cookies at least once when baking. I attempted this and ended up tearing the cookies in half. They baked just fine without rotating and I liked the finished look of the cookie with a slightly fluffy top. (See Picture)

Variations:
The original recipe called for all-purpose flour, but I used Washington Self-Rising Flour. I therefore omitted the baking soda, power & salt. This helped the cookies be a little fluffier.
I did not experiment yet with adding extras like chocolate chips or nuts, but I imagine they would be a nice addition
When forming the batter into rounded balls, roll them in sugar

Sandwich Cookie Cream Filling

There were several different recipes I looked at to find the perfect combination of ingredients for a good cream filling. I've made these cookies a few times with different fillings so here at the best recipes I found

Cream Filling #1 (my #1 choice):
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla.
Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy

Cream Filling #2 (Good recipe without shortening)
2 c. confectioner’s sugar
3 T. whole milk
1 t. vanilla extract

Beat together the sugar, vanilla and milk in a mixing bowl until completely smooth.

In the beginning of May, my boyfriend & I moved into our new home. The same week as the move in, he was scheduled to work night shifts which allowed me time to go through the sea of boxes in the living room floor. Since I have a hard time sleeping when he's not home, it helps if I find something to do that will let me get rid of some energy before I wind down for bed. Moving our boxes around at 11pm and unpacking stuff helped me focus on something else for an hour or so and I would fall asleep by 1.

But then the night came when we ran out of boxes and I found myself with nothing to do. I suddenly got the idea that maybe taking some time to bake some cookies would not only let me wind down but give my boyfriend a tasty treat to look forward to. So I pulled out my cookbook and began searching for the best recipe.

Then it hit me: we just moved! We hardly had any baking supplies as I had not had the chance to go get any groceries. I looked around for something that would give me inspiration and stopped on the fruit bowl. I had two beautiful oranges left from fruit my mother had gotten me a few days earlier and began brainstorming ideas that would let me use them. I also wanted a recipe that would let me stay  in the apartment instead of going to the grocery store. I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon a few recipes for orange oatmeal bread and I had fun taking a few different ideas and tweaking them to create my own version of the recipe. I ended up not only feeling creative but feeling accomplished and stress-free.

It was from this experience that I decided to start a blog of recipes that were not only unique, but easy and could be categorized by simple ingredients. This way people like me who just want to use something they already have in their kitchen (like the orange) could experience the thrill of baking something new with ingredients they already have. It became a routine and now I love searching for recipes to use things I already have in the house which not only makes life interesting, it reduces the chance that anything will go to waste.