Cream Corn Casserole

I'm back! Sorry for the lack of posting, been down and out and busy but I have been taking photos of what I've been making in the kitchen, I won't let you down!

I can not take any credit for the dish you are about to see.

I was given the recipe by my good friend Jill who is out by Philly. I've always been a fan of cream corn and I think this makes it 100 times better - as if that is even possible to make cream corn better...



You start this really simple side dish with one can of cream corn (you favorite kind, I just use the kind of Aldi)



Then you take anywhere from 18-21 Ritz type crackers, put them in a plastic bag...



And squish them all up with a rolling pin.



Put your cream corn in a bowl for mixing...





Add the crushed crackers to the cream corn and mix it together.



Then pour it in a small baking dish that has been sprayed with non stick spray.



Top it all off with some grated cheddar cheese (or you can mix it in as Jill suggests, so everyone gets some cheese)



Bake it for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.



What you get is a wonderful ooey gooey corny cheesy thing. mmmm.



And it scoops out nice too!



You can serve this with just about anything, even chicken nuggets.

Thanks to Jill for the delicious recipe, something that I'm going to keep and treasure for a very long time.

Lisa's Birthday Cake - Easy Pineapple Upside Down Cake

My friend Lisa's birthday is tomorrow. She's going to be 31 so I asked her if she wanted a birthday cake and she not only told me yes, but was specific on the type of cake she wanted: Pineapple Upside Down Cake. We're having her party tonight at PF Changs, and after we have stuffed ourselves, we'll drive back home for cake!

This is my first time making this kind of cake, and this is the way I chose to do it. I want you to know although I love Lisa, I was feeling particularly lazy after a bad experience this morning at Sears, so lazy baking is the key today. This will not be a from scratch cake - but lets call it semi-homemade.



I started this cake by getting out a box of yellow cake mix. You can use whatever you want but when I make a boxed cake, I do like Pillsbury because they make a nice moist cake. If you are feeling more daring you can make it from scratch.



Next you can take out your bowl and spoon - or in my case, my Kitchen-aide mixer (you can tell I'm feeling particularly lazy today) and prepare the cake exactly as it says to on the box. Normally these things call for oil, water and eggs.



While that mixes itself up, I took 1/4 cup of margarine and cut it up into pats and laid it on a 13x9 baking pan. You can use up to 1/2 cup if you'd like, I simply didn't have that much margarine laying around.



After that you need a cup of loosely packed brown sugar, light or dark. You need to sprinkle that over the top of the margarine and pop it into your 350 degree oven while it is preheating.

In about 5 minutes take it out because everything should have melted together nicely, you can stir it around and make sure it's all nice and even on the bottom of the pan... (I forgot to take a picture of that step, sorry!)



The melting butter and sugar does make a nice smell in the tiny ass kitchen that flows through the tiny ass apartment, so of course Gracie is now there to supervise.



Now for the fruit! I'm using Dole pineapples (since Danny ran out and got these things for me) and a small jar of maraschino cherries. Drain both of them, or at least the pineapple if you want to fish your cherries out of the jar.



Once that is done you can start layering your fruit onto the sugar/margarine mixture. I wanted to use as much as I could in the cake because I like lots of pineapple on the cake, as well as cherries.



Now that that is done you will take you cake batter and pour it gently on top of the fruit and sugar. Make sure you also even this out gently so everything is evenly covered.



All you do now is pop it into your 350 degree oven and bake it for about 35 minutes.



When it is all done it looks like this. Not that impressive, but let's turn it over, so the upside down pineapple is now right-side up.



I can't wait for Lisa to try this tonight. I hope she enjoys it just as much as the ones her mom use to make, otherwise it's back to the drawing board!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love love love love love these. These are my favorite cookies of all time and it's something that I've came up with when I found a Pumpkin Cookie recipe but it had walnuts, raisins and oatmeal. Ick. So I made these cookies which are soft, cakey and delish. I hope you give these a try, you'll be addicted.



Gracie will be joining me while I make these cookies as it's her dinner time and she likes eating near the kitchen, whereas Bella likes her dinner brought her location of the moment...



I start these cookies by putting in a bowl a cup of packed brown sugar, a cup of granulated sugar, an egg, some vanilla and cream it into a nice batter.



From there I add in a cup of melted butter (margarine) that I had on the stove. Then I mix that together.



Then what you need to get is a small can of pumpkin. Please don't use the large Libby cans because it's way to much, then you have to either make 2-3 batches of cookies which isn't really a bad thing, or you need to save it and then you'll forget about it and it'll go to waste. For this recipe you'll use the whole small can, this way nothing goes to waste. If you have an Aldi near you the small cans are 79 cents each.

Bargains. I love them.



So put all the pumpkin in the can into your bowl and mix it in until it becomes incorporated with the batter.



Now for the dry ingredients... Now you need to sift in three cups of flour, add in some cinnamon (I like more but not everyone is keen on it so do it to your taste) then add 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon baking soda.



When you mix it all together it'll be nice and thick, then it's time for the most important ingredient for the cookies....



Chocolate.

Add two cups of chocolate chips to the batter and mix them in.



Then put them on a baking sheet, I use a table spoon to measure them out.



Then bake them for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. And then, eat them, be them, enjoy them.

Here is the recipe!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup margarine
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 small can of pumpkin
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
cinnamon to taste
2 cups of chocolate chips

preheat oven for 350 bake for 20 - 25 minutes.

Chocolate Mocha Crinkles

These cookies I'm about to show you today are one of the ones I get requested the most but I probably make them the least.

My husband describes these as: "Fucking great."

And Stepher's Steve claims they are: "Motherfucking Delicious"

How could they not be? After all they are a Chocolate Mocha Crinkle, but when you see what goes into the cookie you'll have to trust me, they are that good.

You begin the cookie with:



1) 1 1/3 cup brown sugar
2) 1/2 cup olive oil (or whatever oil you have, it's the one I keep on hand)
3) 1/4 sour cream (please don't lose me here)
4) 1 egg.

Yeah. Sour Cream. Just trust me, it makes these cookies nice and soft, moist, and it brings out the chocolate in them. And I'm sure even if Steve knew what was in them, he'd still eat them...

Now...



You'll want to mix everything up together, when that's done you have to start measuring the dry ingredients.




Start out by sifting 1 3/4 cup flour into the bowl.

Why sift?

Sifting makes the flour lighter, and in my opinion makes a better baked good. I actually don't own a proper sifter because everyone I have breaks because I use them so much. Because of that I just use my mother's small strainer which I "borrowed" when I moved.

Sorry Mom, but you had two.



After that you need to add in 3/4 cup coco powder,



2 teaspoons of instant coffee, a teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon salt and



1/8 of a teaspoon.... black pepper.

Just do it.

It's good. I promise.



When you mix it together you'll forget that you even put the pepper or the sour cream into it.

Then just like the ginger snap recipe you need to refrigerate this dough for at least 4 hours or more so it can set nicely.



How do you know this dough is ready? You can do the spoon test much like the ginger snap dough or you can just see it when you remove a chunk.



You then take a portion of the dough and roll it into a ball and then roll it in confectioners sugar (NOT granulated)



You can normally fit about 8 on a cookie sheet, I like to not make these cookies to big as I normally make most my cookies the size of my palm, I like these to be finished in 2 bites.



While they bake, the aroma may fill the house, so be prepared for you adoring public to fill the kitchen. (No. I don't give my cat chocolate. I'm a good kitty mom.)



When there done they will look like this. You can see the confectioners sugar stays on the top creating the crinkle effect while they bake.

Hope you enjoyed the post and if these cookies look super yummy, give them a shot and shoot me an email or comment to tell me how they went, and as always here is the recipe.

Chocolate Mocha Crinkles

1 1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup sour cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour (sifted!)
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoon instant coffee
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Refrigerate dough for at least 4 hours. Roll into balls and roll in confectioners sugar. Bake at 350 for 11 minutes.

German Ginger Snaps

Ginger Snaps are probably my favorite cookie. My Oma use to make them when I was a kid and I also use to get them at church during Sunday School when Mrs. Acer would bring them in along with apple cider to dip them in. Since Thanksgiving is coming up I figured it would be a good time to start making them.

As usual I'm going to jump right into things....



You can start this recipe with 3/4 cup of melted margarine (or butter.) We all know that butter or a butter substitute is the best way to start the day.

While that melts....



Measure out a 1/4 cup of molasses. The molasses makes this cookie so please get good molasses, don't just get it at the dollar store (trust me I've seen it). I use the one with the rabbit on it.





You can add that molasses to 1 cup of brown sugar and add to it an egg and the now melted margarine. After that just mix up the batter and you'll have something that looks like this....



Then what you'll want to do is start going through your spice cabinet. For these cookies you need to make sure you have cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves and nutmeg. I also want to tell you now that if you don't utlize these spices to often except once or so a year, please throw them out. Although spices don't have an expiration date they well, go stale if you don't use them up. If you don't use them all the time try borrowing them from someone who does or get a baking buddy so this way you use them more often...


Then you'll need to sift 2 1/4 cups of flour and then the following spices:
1) a teaspoon cinnamon
2) a teaspoon ginger
3) 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
4) 2 shakes of nutmeg




When you have everything together in the bowl, mix it together....



It'll look like this, but then you have to do the hardest thing when it comes to cookies:

Wait.

These cookies aren't drop cookies. You can't just throw them on the cookie sheet and bake them up. These ginger snaps need to refrigerate for a MINIMUM of four hours. This way the dough will get hard enough for you to roll into a ball.

While you wait you can try doing the following things:
1) Go visit your Mom and give her your laundry to do. If she is awesome like my mom she'll do it and give you her BJ's card so you can go terrorize people there.
2) Go to the mall and watch all the misfits.
3) Go to Linen's and Things and marvel how it's going out of business.
4) Go to the Philly Pretzel Factory and pretend that's lunch.

At this point everything should be done.

So how do you know the dough is done?

When it does this:


The dough will be firm enough for you to roll into a ball, so take a small amount into your spoon and roll it into the ball, and then you roll it in regular granulated sugar.



Normally when you're rolling you can fit about 8 little balls on a cookie sheet.



You can then pop these cookies into the oven that is preheated for 375 and bake it for 8-10 minutes. While they bake you're house/apartment/hovel will begin to smell so wonderful and it reminds me of fall and the holidays. And if you think it smells good, wait till you see them...



But the best part is taking one an sharing it with someone who loves ginger snaps just as much as you....



Thanks for visiting the blog, and the Tiny Ass Kitchen! If you think these cookies are for you, here is the recipe!

German Ginger Snaps.
3/4 cup butter or margerine (softened/melted)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg
2 1/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 shakes nutmeg

Chill for 4 hours or more and roll in granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 375 and bake for 8-10 minutes