With a recipe in one hand and a sheet of vinyl in the other

Today was an awesome day!  It started this morning with me lugging my Cricut machine out of the black hole that is the master bedroom and breaking out the vinyl.  I've had this idea for a few weeks, and I know I'm not the only one who's had this same idea because a friend of mine told me the other night, "Hey, guess what I did?"  So my idea was to decorate my Kitchen Aid with vinyl.  Kind of like a tattoo for my mixer ;-)  It looks AMAZING!!!

And it was so easy. The hardest part was picking which design I wanted.

After my husband placed the last heart on my mixer (because, his ability to place things in a straight line is WAY better then mine) and after I did a happy dance around my kitchen I just HAD to bake something.


Today's recipe of choice: Biscoff Blondies from Motherthyme.com.  They are awesome!  For those of you who don't know what Biscoff spread is, it has the consistency of peanut butter and the taste of Biscoff cookies, a caramelized crispy cookie (the little cookies that airline passengers sometimes get).  It is so addicting.  I could eat the stuff straight from a jar with a spoon.

The recipe came together very easily and before I knew it the house smelled delicious.  I couldn't wait to try it.  In fact, I totally burnt the roof of my mouth because I couldn't wait. It was so worth it ;-)

I have a "kick ass Kitchen Aid", according to my husband and a new recipe to add to my filing cabinet.  Life is good.

With A Recipe In One Hand and a Trash Bag In The Other

BAKING FAIL!!!!

Hubby has to work tomorrow (Superbowl Sunday) so I thought it would be nice to send a few things in with him for the rest of the crew.  I started off with a sweet pepper relish and cream cheese dip (adapted from Harry and David's)

2 blocks of softened cream cheese
1 jar of Sweet Pepper and Onion Relish

Beat cream cheese and relish together until cream cheese is smooth.  Serve with tortilla chips.

Came out perfect...but then again it would be kinda difficult to mess that up ;-)

Then, I tried to adapt a mini peanut butter cheesecake recipe into a full sized cheesecake.  I made the graham cracker crust and placed peanut butter cups all over the crust.

Made the filling and put it into the oven and kept checking on it, adding minutes to the timer because the top looked too "jiggly". 

I guess I didn't add enough time.  The top of the cheesecake looked set, but I kept having this nagging feeling that it wasn't done. 

So I thought I'd be cute and cut it into slices and arrange them on a platter and then I'd know for sure if it was done.  Well it wasn't.  It took a one way trip into the trash can :-(  I've made the mini version (in a muffin tin) a million times and never had a fail.  I'm going to tweak the baking time and make this work!  Just not in time for hubby to take it to the station tomorrow.

However, all is not lost!  Last night I decided to try out the "best" chocolate chip cookie recipe.  The recipe comes from The New York Times.  This recipe uses two different types of flour and needs to be refrigerated for at least 24 hours before you can bake them. 

It also uses a sprinkling of sea salt right before you bake them (the best part!!).  I made some small changes (I used white and semi-sweet chocolate chips and I didn't make mine so big).  I've been taking them out of the oven all night and they are so good!

I wasn't sure how much they would spread out, so at first
I only put a few on the cookie sheet.

So, yes, the cheesecake was a fail but I'll keep working on it.  But, I think I redeemed myself with these cookies :-)