Be friends with yeast. It won't bite

Did you know that aside from desserts, I can also bake up some yeast bread?? Well, I can. I started when I was 11? 12? 13? Mom, do you remember?? I was young though. And I haven't made any in a loooong while. I know I haven't made any since moving in with Dustin. Ooops.

So I made some a week or so ago (I'm really getting behind on my posts) and it came out perfectly beautiful and perfectly delish. Why are people so afraid of working with yeast? It's easy peasy.
This one is Garlic Rosemary Bubble Loaf and we managed to finish pretty much all of it before it got stale.

Yea, baby.

All that work for nuttin'

Last week we made stuffed acorn squash. We (Dustin) carefully cut the tops off.

We (Dustin) scooped the seeds out.

We stuffed them full of rice and other tasty fall goodies. Sorry, no picture.

And then we realized that we pretty much hate acorn squash.

Go figure.

That being said...go see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs!!

Mini muffins will be the death of me

I was gunna put these pictures in the fall post but decided they needed their own post. These muffins were that good. I made them twice in one week. Dustin and I consumed 24 Sweet Onion Mini Muffins in one night. One night of pure bliss.

Pretend this is a picture of chopped walnuts and not a picture of chopped walnuts and chopped pecans because I ran out of walnuts. Pretend these pictures aren't from the second batch of mini muffins I made because we ate the first batch too quickly. No time for pictures. There are walnuts in these muffins which we weren't too sure about until we tasted one.

First batch had yellow onions which turned out to make a far superior muffin than the second batch with red onions.

Sweet amazing deliciousness. I actually turned down dessert one night just so I could shove more muffins into my face. I chose onions over sugar! Am I turning into Dustin??? Scary.

Eat it. You want to.

*Sigh* Now I'm considering making these for dinner. Nothing else. Just mini muffins.

I'd happily email anyone the recipe so you can have the amazing mini muffin experience for yourself.

Too many cupcakes and no one to eat it

I get overwhelming urges to bake things a couple times a week. It's starting to get to be a real problem though. I bake too much and then have a million cupcakes or cookies without anyone to consume them. I end up throwing at least half of them away. It's such a shame and it makes me wanna cry every time. I need therapy. For compulsive baking.

Last week I made carrot cake cupcakes with caramel frosting. I should've halved the recipe since I ended up with about 3 dozen cupcakes. I put a few unfrosted ones in the freezer because they actually ended up tasting more like muffins than cupcakes and would make an awesome breakfast. I threw out a bunch of the frosted ones today and it was extremely hard to do because they were so damn good. :( They had pineapple and coconut in them and everything.

*sigh* So pretty when they were first made. I messed up the frosting a tad and made it too soupy so I had to keep these in the fridge at all times after they were done.

This weekend we went to a going away party for one of the guys that Dustin works with. He's also one of the few guys we've actually hung out with so I wasn't too pleased with the news that he was leaving. But anyways, I wanted to bring my millions of carrot cake cuppies to the party BUT the party was on the beach and I knew for a fact that the frosting didn't stand a chance against the heat and humidity of this island.

So I made different cupcakes. I made 2 dozen chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. I wanted to play it safe and pick a recipe that I knew would come out awesome and that I wouldn't fudge up. It was a good choice. And it was a great hit at the party. Sadly though, we didn't stay long and ended up still taking about 6 or 7 cupcakes home that night.

Can someone please come and visit us so I can bake things and not have to see them go to waste?? You have no idea how perfect that'll make my life.

Pecan Pie Squares...want some?

Some days I wake up in the morning (afternoon) and I've overcome with the need to bake something. This happens multiple times a week. Pretty much every time I'm off from work or don't have to go until later. This happened last week.

I quickly pulled out my new giant Taste of Home Baking book and looked through every recipe. I've probably looked through it about 5 dozen times by then but had only made one thing from it so far. I knew I wanted to make something different. Something other than cookies, cupcakes or pies which is what I usually go for when I wanna relieve some stress.

Then I found it. Pecan Pie Squares.

And geezaloo, am I glad I made these! They were so easy and pretty and retardedly delish! And it made me want fall to be here so they would be more relevant.

Please take a moment and just stare at this picture. Isn't my camera wonderful??

That's me. I'm testing out Dustin's piece to make sure it's safe for him to eat.

Just so you know, I'm not very good with knives. I almost sliced my finger off a few times.

Good Lordy look at that!

Is this artistic? I don't know. I don't really care how it looked because it tasted amazing. If you don't make these and eat them right away you probably have no reason to live anymore.

Isn't it a lovely love affair?

Dustin has been having a secret love affair with my camera lately. I don't know what started it. Maybe I'm not paying enough attention to him. Maybe he just needs his own camera. Or MAYBE he can have my camera since he likes it so much and I can get a brand spanking new one! I like this idea.

But anywho, I realized just how many pictures he had taken over the days when I caught him trying to take a candid shot of me as I put together his lunch for him. I snatched the camera away and deleted the pictures ( yes plural! I really need to start being aware of my surroundings) of me. That's when I saw that there were 17 pictures that I had nothing to do with. I went through them and decided that I might as well post them.

So here they are.

Even Apollo was in on this affair and he didn't even have the nerve to let me know! We're not on speaking terms right now.

I guess I got Dustin into taking pictures of food. But unlike him, I don't wanna take pictures of every single thing I make. Just the things that I'm especially proud of or think are super cute or pretty. And I don't take pictures of recipes.

But maybe Dustin was just really proud of this chicken pot pie that I let him help me with. He DID do the crust and that's the first time he's ever worked with any kind of pastry. He did a good job and it was really yummy. I guess I'll let this one go.

See his reflection? I think it's cute. And the way he positioned the spoon makes me wanna pinch his cheeks.

This picture is adorable and completely shows what goes on every friggin' day. If we're in the kitchen, Apollo is right there waiting for us to feed him something. And he always looks so annoyingly cute doing it too.

Yogurt marmalade cake. Dustin had nothing to do with this creation but he wanted to take pictures of it anyway. The only reason I didn't was because I just wanted it in my face. It took longer than it was supposed to in the oven and I was a grumpy mess when it was finally done. I just wanted to grumble and complain while I ate it.

He made me pose with the knife and tried to get me in the shot but I wouldn't allow it. I was Sunday morning! And everyone knows that Sundays mean Tara doesn't get dressed, stick in contacts, do her hair, or wear makeup! Whats that? You didn't know that? Well...now you do. I'm quite sure I had no pants on at this time.

Why is it that...

I can't, for the life of me, flip pancakes properly but for some bizarre-o reason I rock at flipping crepes??

You'd think that I'd be worse at flipping crepes because they're basically the thinner and more delicate version of pancakes. But apparently I'm awesome at producing 10 perfectly round and unbroken crepes. Me and pancakes just don't get along I guess.

By the way, I made crepes for Dustin for breakfast yesterday. And yes, they were awesome.

Another thing I came home to

Because it's not enough that I have my own grownup kitchen to cook in. Sometimes I just wanna use a light bulb to cook tiny cakes and cookies.

I love how much Dustin really gets me. And when he gets me Easy Bake ovens.

Don't be like me

If you love novelty house stuff but don't have any spending money don't do what I do. Especially if you really love kitchen supplies. Just don't, whatever you do, go onto the Williams-Sonoma website and look at absolutely everything they have on there. You will cry because you want it all and will find amazing things that you think you need like this:
It's a lion spatula. I want it in my hands right now. It's the cutest spatula in the WORLD and it wants to come home with me. I can't stand it.

Then there's these mixing bowls. Look at these colours!! These belong to a girl named Tara! It's almost like they made these with me personally in mind. They're so pretty it makes me wanna cry.

This looks like a picture of sticks of gum and slices of bread with soap suds on them. They are actually sponges (or "spunjez" if your name is Dustin and can't be bothered with spelling anything right on our "Things We Need" list) that get sent to you all small and stuff until you "fluff" them up with water. Coolest thing everrrrrr.

I need this only because I wanna make a giant cookie that says "cookie" on it. So I can look at it.

Now, this is something we really don't need. Neither of us drink wine at all. But how cool does it look?! It might have something to do with the fact that this picture was clearly taken in someone's castle and I would really like a castle. I wish I liked wine. The only kind I like is the pineapple wine I had at Pineapple Park here.

Don't even get me started on this oven! It's too expensive for anyone normal but goodness gracious, its BLUE. I just wanna pinch those double doors! After I saw this I became very upset and decided to get off the Williams-Sonoma site because I was starting to whine and pout.

Instead I went to confectioneryhouse.com to look at things that I don't neccessary need but if I wanted to, I could buy because of the low prices. It made me feel a little better even though I didn't buy anything. I leave for NY in 2 weeks and I don't want things to get here while I'm away.

I want this. I will have it because it was cheap. You use it to cut out pretty hearts on the tops of your pie crusts. I would make the prettiest pies in the land!

I need these too. They're just too fun and it would just give me an excuse to make cupcakes every single day for a year.

Then I would make Dustin some Wall-E cupcakes and he would be the happiest little boy in the world. Because he really loves this movie. Although, I think he would prefer the meatloaf "cupcakes" I made for April Fool's Day to regular cupcakes. He's like that. He'd rather have extra dinner than dessert. And I'd rather have dessert for dinner.

Santillans can cook, dontcha know

What do you do when you can't fall asleep? I tend to make up new outfits and new recipes in my head to lull myself to sleep. It's totally normal. The other night I was thinking about food as I was falling asleep and decided that I had to make mini apple pies the next day. If I didn't make them I would DIE.

I'm not kidding.

The dough was a Martha Stewart recipe but everything else was all me. I made them in a muffin tin. Aren't they so friggin cute?!

How can you resist that?? You can't. It tasted soooo good. But then I put vanilla bean ice cream on top and promtly passed the fuck out.

With the leftover chopped apples I made apple crumble. The coolest thing (besides the pies being miniature) was that I only used 3 apples. Granted, the apples are huge here, but still.

When Dustinface got home we decided to make our own soup. Actually, I decided to make it when I was trying to fall asleep the night before and had a general idea of what I wanted to put in it. We needed to clean out our pantry.

There was a lot of Santillan teamwork that went into this tasty dinner. I have the know-how and Dustin is really good at seasoning "to taste". We were very proud of ourselves. It's sad that we won't ever be able to make this exact meal again because we didn't bother to measure or write anything down.

But we have a buttload of leftovers in the freezer!

I love being married to someone that can cook.