Running in 2015...

After three super busy days at my day job, and not much baking going on, I decided to try out a new recipe last night.

Dark chocolate shortbread cookies. I have wanted to make shortbread cookies forever and I finally got a chance to.  I found a recipe and gave it a try. I was very surprised that the recipe didn't call for eggs. I even googled it to make sure it hadn't been left off the recipe.  Nope, no eggs. I baked them, dipped them in semi sweet chocolate and added some sprinkles. Nothing says celebration like sprinkles. 

Josh and I bundled up, packed up some cookies and headed to Jerry and Tiffany's to run in the new year. It's officially a tradition, two years in a row. 

Worst selfie ever, but it was cold and we were out there. No wind though, so that was good. 

We took a shoefie after. We even got dog feet in the shot. Hunter ran in the new year with us. 

If you are going to take a shoefie, you must take a selfie too! Tiffany, Jerry, Patti, me and Josh. It was a great way to end 2014 and start 2015. Looking forward to the miles ahead. 

What the Heck is Going On?

It has been hard to do any blogging lately. I like to talk about food, baking, running and other goings on in my life, and frankly the running has been spectacularly bad, there hasn't been much in the way of interesting foods or baking, and life has been pretty mundane.

I have been in a food funk for a while, and while I keep looking for interesting recipes on Pinterest, I have not been interested in actually cooking any of them. Lots of simple things like sandwiches going on around here. I did eat a whole seedless watermelon in less than a week. I can't figure out why my crazy family won't eat watermelon, but I'm kind of glad they don't want to.

Sprout's has had the best seedless watermelon. I forgot to get over there to get another one today and I am very sad that I will be without more of this yumminess tomorrow.

Penny thinks that every time I have the green bowl it's full of watermelon.

As for baking, while we haven't been buying Oreos lately, and I have not been depriving my family of all things sugar related, it has been a little uneventful on the baking front. Not that I would call rice krispy treats baking exactly.

I did make these last night.

Chocolate chip brownie bars. These are really good. I used a bigger mix for the brownies than the recipe called for so they are pretty thick, but that just means more chocolate, right?

As far as running goes, it has been pretty horrific. I will talk about it more tomorrow, but it has been really, really bad all month.

For the holiday I decided to get in a spin class. My favorite teacher was teaching today and Rochelle, Kelly, Anne and I decided the best way to celebrate the holiday was to go torture ourselves and kick out booties for a little over an hour.

It's all smiles before we got started.

I think I lost about ten pounds in sweat by the end of the class. Notice how dark Ro looks next to me. I like to stay out of the sun as much as possible so Ro will look even more tan when I stand next to her in pictures.

As for life, I finally got out to go help with some of the clean up going on in Moore. I have driven through the devastation all last week on I-35, but today we actually drove down 4th Street and got to see the damage up close. It really is unimaginable. It made my heart hurt to drive through and see neighborhoods completely decimated. I just don't think that you can compare it to anything really. 200 mile an hour winds packs a punch that you just have to see in person to believe.

We helped a friend of a friend get the remains of his house cleaned up and ready for the city to come by and pick up the debris. It was overcast and windy out, we were covered in a layer of fiberglass by the time we got home.

I was so proud of Camy, she came with us and worked very hard, without complaint. This was a house a little ways down from the one we were working at. I was amazed at the number of volunteers out. There was a constant stream of people coming by offering water and differet kinds of food for everyone working. I am sure that in the same circumstances it would be like this anywhere, but it made me very proud of the state I have called home since 1985.

So that's the short version of what's been going on. The longer explination about running will come tomorrow.

 

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Beer Sprocket 2013...

This was the third year for me to be a part of Beer Sprocket. After cupcakes in 2011 and beer cupcakes last year I decided to change it up this year and bake cookies. Cookies and beer, I think they go together, but I tend to think that cookies go with everything.

I started baking on Thursday night. After making two batches of my chocolate chip cookies I made two batches of my white chocolate chip Nutella cookies. I made all of the cookies a smaller size than I usually made so they would be a bite or two.

I overbaked the Nutella cookies, and after they rested over night I decided I could not use them. I got up early on Friday and baked a couple batches of regular sugar cookies and chocolate sugar cookies.

Last but not least I made two batches of sweeties, one green and one pink. Those get glazed right out of the oven, so all there was left to do was frost the chocolate sugar cookies with chocolate frosting, and then the regular sugar cookies got white frosting and sprinkles. Last but not least was the white squiggles on the chocolate sugar cookies.

We loaded up the cookies and headed out to Choctaw on Saturday afternoon. It turned out to be a beautiful day, but it was really windy. We lost a few cookies to the very strong wind during the set up.

Kim and Jessica (aka Dancing Jessica) came out to hang out with us for a few hours. I like to think they were there for me and not just the free beer and cookies.

We were almost completely out of cookies by about 8 pm so we packed up and headed home. It was really getting chilly by then.

Another great year. I hope I get invited back next year.

 

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Best Day Ever...

I cannot type that without thinking about Spongebob Squarepants. My girls used to love watching Spongebob with their dad. I can hear him singing about the best day ever.

Friday was probably not really my best day ever, but it sure was a good one. I took the day off from work so I could get ready for Beer Sprocket on Saturday, so really my Friday sort of started when I got off work on Thursday.

I headed from work to my favorite local running store for a ladies night. They had wine, talk about my second favorite physical activity yoga, and had sports bra fittings.

One of my favorite four-year-olds was there. (It was a girls night.)

Avery learned that your "girls" are you boobies. She is the cutest. She loved the Nuun lemonade cupcakes I made, and she wanted to share her water with Lance.

I had a sports bra fitting and I have decided my next sports bra will be the Rebound Racer by Moving Comfort.

I got home and got to baking. I started with chocolate chip and Nutella with white chocolate chips.

I made the cookies smaller than I normally do, they were more of a bite sized cookie. Because of this I baked them a little differently, because of that the Nutella cookies didn't turn out like I wanted them to. I decided to leave those cookies at home.

I got up Friday morning and got to baking again. I rolled out two batches of sugar cookies and two batches of chocolate sugar cookies. I had the last batch in the oven when I left to go take the Friday morning hot yoga class at the yoga studio I have been going to. There is almost nothing I love more than a yoga class at a time that I normally wouldn't be able to go to. It was a great class, my arms were worn out by all the vinyasas.

After yoga, I made a couple batches of Sweeties, and then all that was left to do was make the chocolate frosting for the chocolate sugar cookies and the frosting for the regular sugar cookies. Other than a blister on my hand from scooping out over 600 cookies in 24 hours, and a sore hand the whole thing was very uneventful. All the cookies were done by the time I would have been getting off work Friday afternoon.

The cookies were ready to rest overnight before I boxed them up on Saturday morning.

Does this look like 600 cookies? Well it was about 580 or so. Not too bad for a days work.

 

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Not Everything in the Kitchen Has Been Bad...

I have had a few failures in the kitchen recently. It has not been all bad.

I did make some awesome Nuuncakes this weekend. I also made some blueberry muffins on Sunday morning.

We were at Sprouts on Saturday afternoon and I picked up some fresh blueberries. I promised Carson I would make some blueberry muffins on Sunday morning.

What is it about fresh baked blueberry muffins? They were very good. My family doesn't get as excited about muffins as they do about cookies and cupcakes. Maybe I should put a little buttercream on these and they would get a warmer reception. I have said before that muffins are cupcakes that are not living up to their full potential. Might have to not do the streusel topping if I'm going to go with buttercream.

Beer Sprocket is coming up this weekend and I am still working out the plan in my head. I am thinking I'm going to be doing cookies this year, change it up a bit. I did a little searchig and actually found a recipe for a cokie that uses a cherry fruit ale; I had to give it a try.

These were ok, not bad, but not fabulous. Definitely not Beer Sprocket worthy. These did turn out better that my other kitchen disasters today. Oh well, the thing with a new recipe is that there's always a chance that you just aren't going to love it, that's why you should always ave a practice run.

I did learn that the cleaning setting on my oven works wonders. I probably won't wait four years to use it again. It really stunk up the house and made it a bit smokey. We ended up heading to the movies and the grocery store while the four and a half hour process was going on. We even put the dogs in the garage so they didn't die from smoke inhalation. They were a bit freaked out by that.

Who knew that my oven could be so clean? Certainly not me. Have you even cleaned your oven with Easy Off? The self cleaning setting is a much better option. Just make plans to be out of the house when you use it.

 

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Spreading a little Nuun Love...

One Nuuncake at a time.

I love Nuun. I am constantly throwing these little tabs in my water bottle, I always have tubes in my purse, my car and a supply in my kitchen. I was excited to put together an application video to be a part of their Hood to Coast team this summer.

I decided that I needed to come up with something good for my video so I decided to combine my love of Nuun with my love of baking. (After all, I am always combining it with my running.) Lots of people use Nuun in their adult beverages, so why not use it in some cupcakes?

Here's how it came together.

As with most good recipes you start with butter and sugar.

Then a couple of egg whites. If you look closely there is a little bit of yellow in my egg whites. Separating eggs is not always an exact science.

Then the flour mixture goes in. Helpful hint: beat slowly when you add the flour or you will end up with a nice cloud of flour in your kitchen. Is White Lung something that bakers suffer from? Instead of coal dust, a combination of flour/baking soda/bakig powder/salt.

Then the buttermilk. Did you know you can make your own buttermilk by adding a little bit of lemon juice to regular milk? I never use regular milk when I bake, so I just add a little bit of lemon juice to almond milk instead. So in goes my fake buttermilk.

Finally I mixed in some Lemonade Nuun. I love, love, love this flavor. So good! The perfect addition to this recipe.

I baked these mini cupcakes for 15 minutes and then topped them with vanilla buttercream. This is my go to frosting. Butter, powdered sugar and vanilla these three simple ingredients make a frosting that is just heavenly.

I am sure you are asking yourself, how did they taste? Seriously, the cake ws so light and fluffy. The combination of the lemonade flavor with the vanilla buttercream really worked well. I took some of these for after our long run on Saturday and got good reviews. My girls loved them, and the one I dropped on the floor was gobbled up by Penny the pig dog.

Does she look like a dog that would eat cupcakes that didn't taste good?

So there you have it, what I am calling Nuuncakes. Cupcakes made with Nuun. Fuel and hydration all in one. I have plans to make some cherry limeade cupcakes this week alog with another batch of these. Spreadig the Nuun love one cupcake at a time.

 

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A Little More Baking...

I have been on quite the baking kick again. It's kinda nice. I made some of my triple chocolate chip cookies to take to Kendra's birthday party Friday night. These are packed with semi-sweet, dark chocolate and milk chocolate M&Ms. I say if one kind of chocolate is good, three is even better.

I baked up these cupcakes Sunday, but I will tell you more about them later. Just know that they were yummy.

I saw the recipe for Peanut Butter-Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips on the Brown Eyed Baker's blog a while ago. I never managed to have ay overly ripe bananas to use in the recipe, but tody I finally did. So I whipped up the batter.

I poured the batter in a lined loaf pan.

And I baked it up until it was golden brown and beautiful.

I have not had a chance to taste it yet, but based on the smells coming out of my kitchen, I think this recipe is going to have to be repeated.

 

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More Sugar Cookies...

After baking some Hostess Cupcake cookies on Friday there has been some serious cookie eating going on in the Craig house. It's a good thing I gave almost half of them to my favorite six-year-old gymnast because that meant that no one here ate those cookies. Even so we have gone through quite a few cookies in the last four days.

I decided to whip up a batch of my favorite sugar cookies this afternoon.

I wasn't feeling especially creatie, so I decided to just make circles.

I made the chocolate frosting that I used on the Hostess Cupcake cookies. I mae a little smaler batch.

Just under 2 cups of powdered sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 2 tablespoons of light corn syrup, and about 5 tablespoons of almond milk, mixed together. I used my stand mixer this time, mixing this by hand is not easy. I love how the frosting sets on the cookies. I tried to put a few sprinkles on them, but I didn't get them on the cookies before it hardened.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but they are very good. Not too chocolatey that they wouldn't go great with a nice glass of dark chocolate almond milk.

You should come by and try one.

 

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The Oven Still Works...

It is no big secret that I have lost my baking mojo this year. Today I actually made steps to get it back. Since I am not running or doing yoga for a few more days, I tried to sleep in this morning. It is harder for me to sleep in than it is for me to run ten miles.

I got up and decided to try out a new recipe that I saw on one of my favorite baking blogs a few weeks ago. Hostess Cupcake Cookies! How awesome does that sound?

You can get the recipe here. The only change I made to the recipe was I used almond milk instead of regular milk in the glaze, and I used royal icing for the squiggles. I also didn't refrigerate the dough before I rolled it out. Mostly because I was being lazy; I did put the cut dough in the freezer prior to putting them in the oven. In my opinion it's easier to roll out dough that isn't really cold.

You might be wondering how they taste. I think they are fabulous.

The best part of baking, for me, is giving them to people I care about. I know a little gymnast that I plan to box some of these chocolaty cookies up for tomorrow.

I can't wait to see what I mix up next.

 

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A Little Baking...

We had plans to have dinner at a friend's house last night. I couldn't show up without dessert. After my 18 mile run yesterday, I wanted to bake something, but I wanted to make something simple. I settled on a sheet cake.

I went with this recipe minus the trinkets. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Yum. My only complaint about the recipe is that my cake baked for almost 10 minutes longer than the recipe called for before it was set completely.

Even so, it turned out wth a very nice fluffy texture.

The cake went very well with this ice cream. This could be a very dangerous combination.

After hot yoga tonight, I've got six miles planned for in the morning. I was surprised to see this.

57 degrees at 5 am tomorrow morning? I might have to wear shorts. Looks like it will be windy though. I can't complain too much, it is January and parts of the country are freezing.

Here's to a happy monday.

 

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