I’m sure you need a last-minute dish to bring to a New Year’s party (oh wait, most people are more prepared than I am??) so I present you with one of my favorite ridiculously easy recipes: beer cheese dip:
Ingredients:
2 8-oz. packages cream cheese
2c. shredded cheddar cheese (sharp is better!)
1c. beer
1 package ranch dressing mix
Instructions:
Mix.
That is seriously all. It’s like heaven on a cracker.
I really dislike the taste of beer whilst drinking it, but being from Wisconsin I’m morally obligated to ingest a certain quantity each year. Luckily, we have a wide variety of delicious foods that contain our most famous beverage: beer brats, beer cheese soup, beer battered cheese curds (I sense a theme here)… and beer bread!
This is one of the simplest recipes I know, and it’s super delicious – especially hot. I used a bottle of Matt’s home-brewed honeybee ale – it’s SO good with honey butter.
Preheat the oven to 350?.
3 c Flour (sifted)
3 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
(OR 3 c Self-Rising Flour – in which case, leave out the baking powder and salt)
1/4 c Sugar
12 oz (one can or bottle) Beer
1/4 c melted butter
Mix dry ingredients, then stir in beer. Pour into greased breadpan.
Pour melted butter on dough; bake for 1 hour.
Take out of pan and let cool for 10-15 minutes before slicing.
If you know of any other good beer-inclusive recipes, let me know!
Just enjoying the first weekend of fall doing some housework (okay not so enjoyable) and baking cookies. Cookies make everything better.
The weather is absolutely beautiful, though I heard on the news that we got our first snowflakes the other night. Madness, I tell you.
Nom nom; grapefruit and iced tea!
It’s shaping up to be a busy week at work, so I’m not sure how much I’ll be around blogland. On the radar, though, is Project Life (omg did I actually jump on a bandwagon?) and a thrilling tale about my recent expedition to the Twin Cities.
Please, tell me the exciting details of your lives so I can live vicariously through them!
I’m not going to pretend to be a food blogger; not even for a second. I’m far too impatient to make my food look pretty (that is, when I do cook), and my kitchen isn’t usually clean enough to take photos in, and I’m sure as heck not going to take the time to set up a nice photography station when I could be eating.
However, I have to tell you about this, and I can’t just post something without photos. Â I discovered the best recipe ever for making horchata.
In case you’re not familiar, horchata is a Mexican drink made from rice and/or almond flour, usually sweetened and flavored with cinnamon. It’s usually poured over ice, but I have heard of drinking it warm, too.
The first time I made horchata, I used a recipe that I found via a foodie blog that involved soaking whole almonds and rice in water overnight, then blending it smooth and adding milk, sugar, and cinnamon. Afterwards, you strain it through cheesecloth.
It was delicious, but even after straining it (twice!) through a double layer of cheesecloth, it had the consistency of a smoothie and was truly more like a meal than a beverage. It was very grainy and kind of grossed me out.
This time, I used rice flour and almond flour. The rice flour was from the Mexican grocery store, but I had to go to the health food store to get almond flour. Â Amazingly, my first experiment was a success!
2 c. water
2 c. milk
4 T almond flour
4 T rice flour
2 t cinnamon
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 c sugar (or to taste)
In a blender, combine all of the ingredients except for the sugar. Blend for 30 seconds or so. Blend in the sugar to taste.
That’s it.
I didn’t think it needed straining, but you certainly could if you wanted to. Drink it; it’s amazing.
This is one of my favorite things ever. Homemade orange julius frothy orange drink that takes about three minutes to make and has *no* egg in it! (The recipe my mom used to make contained egg whites, and she consequently stopped making it when I was young.) Â I’ve experimented with lots of different formulas, and this is by far the best.
I’m not going to pretend for a second that it’s healthy. I mean, really. I don’t even want to imagine how many calories are in it.
Shh… don’t think about it… you’ll just ruin the foamy goodness.
Ready? Here’s my recipe:
In a blender (actually, I use a mason jar on my blender. Like a magic bullet, only cooler!), combine the following:
Blend on high until it’s adequately slushy. Drink. Your life will never be the same. It’s so delicious. Mmmm.
Some wonderful things I have happened across!
1. Double Chocolate with Crystallized Ginger Biscotti from Cannelle et Vanille. This will go perfectly with what my mom and I are making everyone for Christmas!
2. What Would a Nerd Wear is my new favorite blog. She is my new style muse!
3. There are some amazing alphabets featured in the Design Your Own Alphabet Contest from Design*Sponge. Voting starts next week!
My mom is visiting today, and she was talking about how her dog is suddenly allergic to lots of things and he can’t have any treats with dye or chemicals in them. I’ve had the ingredients to make homemade dog treats for the Rors for awhile, so I decided today would be the perfect day to try them out.
I fudged around with a few recipes that I found online; the original one I found called for powdered milk, and since I have no other need for powdered milk and you can only buy it in a big box, I omitted it.
Here is my newfangled recipe.
2 jars of beef (or chicken) baby food
1 c. milk
6 tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg
1 tsp salt
2 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. garlic powder
Mix wet ingredients (including baby food) til they are combined, but not until the egg is frothy. In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and mix. Plop dough onto a floured countertop, and roll out to about 1/2″ thick. Cut with a bone-shaped cookie cutter, and bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350? for 20-30 minutes.
Clearly, Rory thinks they turned out just fine.
I baked them for about 28 minutes and they were pretty soft yet, like cookies. I imagine if you wanted them to be crunchy like dog biscuits, you’d have to bake them longer.
So I have this friend named JoLynn.
We are running buddies (no not really) and our puppies are the same age and she’s a really good photographer who did our wedding. Her husband and my husband play nazi-zombies together.
Anyway, she had a birthday last month and I decided to give my cake-skillz a try.
Little chocolate petit-fours with poured fondant and candy-clay flowers. Painted with shimmery stuff and vodka.
Seriously, these things took me all stinking day and when I finally got to take pictures, the lighting was bad.  Annnnnnd poured fondant is much harder than it looked in the pictures. I got cake crumbs in it 
But all in all, I was very proud of myself. And now I know that I am not meant to be a cake decorator and I have no desire to do it again.
