Mike and I made ravioli from scratch today - pasta dough and all!

This is the ravioli post-assembly, pre-boiling.

Making pasta dough is a very arduous task; I would not recommend attempting it unless you have a pasta roller, which unfortunately, our kitchen lacks. At first we had trouble forming the dough (too much flour, not enough egg/liquid); Mike struggled with it for a good fifteen minutes. Once the dough was ready and had sat out for a half an hour we set out to flatten it down to the thinnest possible layer... but like I said above, this is not an easy task when all you have is a rolling pin. It took a good half hour (maybe longer) but eventually the dough was flat enough to make ravioli. We topped each square with a big spoonful of ground beef, assembled and sealed each individual ravioli, and plopped them in a pot of boiling water!

This was the end result - eight large scrumptious (albeit, a little too al-dente for my taste) beef-filled ravioli topped with a pepperoni tomato sauce. At least the end result was worth all the hard work.

Labels: ravioli

I made an apple pie for Thanksgiving because I'm not the biggest fan of pumpkin pie; the original recipe is from here, and I used the recipe for the crust from the first apple pie I made. I wasn't as happy with how this pie turned out. The streusel topping is delicious and the apple filling has a very appealing light custard texture, but I used Granny Smith apples like I did with the first pie and I think this pie would taste better using a different brand, something less sour perhaps. My biggest disappointment was that the pie didn't look very good; everything I make always tastes much better than it looks, but I guess that's better than if it were the other way around, no?

I had a peanut butter craving earlier and I've been dying to try another recipe from Jennifer Appel's book, Buttercup Bakes at Home, since the first one was so successful. I settled on her Drizzled Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies. (Except that I used chocolate chips since I have no chocolate chunks lying around.)

I didn't intentionally set out to decorate them so lovingly... I ended up cutting the tip on the bag full of 'drizzling' chocolate a little too big so my lines came out thicker than I expected and I also ran out a little sooner than I wished, so I improvised a little bit. The cookie itself is delicious - it has just the right amount of chocolate chips and the peanut butter makes for a nice salty cookie, rather than something overly sweet; and the drizzled chocolate adds that extra "oumph!".

I also made some coconut chocolate chip cookies earlier last week; I wasn't completely satisfied with the results - not enough coconut, not enough sugar, and too much salt. Mike and my colleagues seemed to like them enough, but I'm still not entirely happy with the results. I'm going to mess around with the left over dough a little bit and maybe post the results later this week.

Labels: chocolate chips, cookies, peanut butter

Mike loves Monkey Bread; his mom has been making it for years and he's asked me to make it on numerous occasions but I could never get my hands on his mother's recipe, so I finally caved in due to my own curiosity and put something together out of my memory of what his mother had told me.

Aside from the tedious cutting up of the biscuits, it's an easy snack to make and it's even more fun to eat. The biscuit pieces come off in sugar coated chunks that you just can't get enough of! (Do I sound like enough of an advertisement?) As you can see, I couldn't help myself, I had a few before I took the picture.


1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used a chopped nut mixture and sliced almonds)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
4 packages (10 biscuits each) refrigerated buttermilk biscuits
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350°F degrees. Sprinkle pecans in bottom of well greased 10-inch fluted tube pan; set aside.

In a small bowl stir together granulated sugar and cinnamon. Cut biscuits into quarters. Roll each biscuit piece in the sugar mixture and place in prepared pan, arranging pieces to fill the pan evenly. In a small bowl stir together brown sugar and melted butter; pour over biscuits.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until dark golden brown and top springs back when gently touched. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes.

Invert onto a serving platter. Serve warm.

Labels: monkey bread

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips
2 cups mashed very ripe bananas (about 4 large)
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 12 large muffin cups.

2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir in chocolate chips. In small bowl, blend bananas, melted butter, milk, eggs and vanilla. Add to flour mixture, stirring until just blended. Don't over mix! Fill muffin cups.

3. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool for several minutes.

Labels: banana, chocolate chips, muffins

I spent most of yesterday searching for the perfect chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe. I finally came across a recipe for Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from here, and they sounded like exactly what I was looking for.


The only thing I could find for a size comparison was a soda bottle cap, to give you an idea of the fairly immense size of these cookies:

I cut the recipe in half and got seven large cookies out of it, four of which (mostly Mike) and I thoroughly enjoyed last night. I stored the other three in a container for later consumption.

Labels: chocolate chips, cookies