Cocoa Cake

The other day my friend Iris came over & we decided to make a cake. My mom sent me a recipe for her delicious homemade cocoa cake & we thought we'd give it a go. It wasn't as great as when Mom makes it, but I'd say it was pretty good nonetheless.

Here's the recipe:

3 c flour

2 c sugar

6 T baking cocoa

1 t baking soda

1/3 c oil

2 T vinegar

1 T vanilla

2 c water

First mix all the dry ingredients. Then add oil, vinegar, vanilla & water; mix until moist.

Bake at 350 for 30 min. Be sure not to open the oven in the first 15 minutes or else the cake will fall.

The frosting was a bit of an estimate-but it turned out delicious!

1/3 c butter

1 t vanilla

A bunch of powdered sugar (we just kinda guessed)

optional: cocoa to taste

optional: small amount of coffee

Then just add milk and mix until its the correct consistency

Enjoy!

-Amanda

(mis)Adventures in Breakfast.

After waking up and being slightly annoyed when i realized it was Sunday, I decided the best way to continue to put off homework (since there is no longer Aziz and dinner to distract me) was to make breakfast. Now I know what you're thinking, I make pretty good looking pancakes, I probably made those. YOUR WRONG. Several weeks ago I attempted to make what I call a Farmers Skillet. In this skillet there are potatoes, eggs, cheese, ham and onions. These are all good things when combined in my favorite omelette, so logic stands that it should taste great all mashed together, right? The first try was a complete failure. Never one to give up on food that logically should be good I tried again.

This time I looked for some tips online and made sure to scramble the eggs over the potatoes (which still seems sketchy to me). Everything else was pretty much the same, I'm out of cheddar so I used American cheese, which I can only hope contains typos because the expiration date read July 2050, lunch meat ham because that's the only kind of ham i have and i didn't think before starting and the potatoes and onions i got from jewel a week or so ago.

Now I'm aware this doesn't look like the most appetizing thing in the world, and you're sort of right, but at least it tasted better than my first try several weeks ago. Next time I think I'll stick to pancakes.

Please note if I die from some weird cheese infection, please sue kraft. Thank you.

-Sarah

Soup & Salad

As that it is freezing cold outside, I decided I wanted to warm up after my night class with a bowl of soup. In the cupboard I had vegetable noodle and tomato. Since a salad also sounded good, I opted for tomato soup because I didn't want a veggie overload. I went online to see if I could find a recipe to add some pizazz to boring tomato soup (also because I'm out of saltine crackers). What I ended up making was Creamy Citrus Tomato Soup with Pesto Croutons and I must say it was pretty delicious. The lemon sauce gave it a bit of zest and it was indeed very creamy. However, if I were to make it again, I think I'd just add some pesto to the soup to give it the garlic flavor and use the toast to just dip in. It was kind of difficult to cut the toast in the bowl and then it got soggy which isn't my favorite texture. But the flavors went really well together so it tasted good.

And in the salad, I added a tomato slice, green pepper, shredded mozzarella, craisins and almond slices to spring mix greens with spinach leaves. Then I topped it off with Italian dressing. Possibly my favorite salad creation, I used to make it this way all the time at the salad bar in the DePaul cafeteria-but I bet the veggies are much more fresh this way.

-Amanda

Pancake day!

I made pancakes and hash browns for dinner. The pancakes are the same as from an earlier post. The hash browns were just grated potatoes with a little onion and pepper. They don't look fully cooked but they are, i just used a really bad pan.

Happy Pancake Day everyone!

-Sarah

Calzone & Ed Byrne, what a lovely way to spend the evening

I believe its been about two weeks since we last made a pizza (and began this blog) so Sarah & I decided it was due time to try our hand at pizza once again. This time we wanted to be more creative than last so we made a calzone! Since I have about 3 weeks experience working at a pizza joint (Cheezies, gotta love it) I mustered up my memory on how to make these bad boys.

We wanted something different than just regular pizza & were inspired by the chicken, bacon, ranch flavor combination. We substituted marinara sauce for good ole Kraft ranch salad dressing (on sale at Target even!) and also added tomato, onion & green pepper to the meats. I almost forgot to put in the cheese but luckily Sarah reminded me before we put it in the oven.

We were much better at multi-tasking this time around. Here's all the prep work we did while the dough finished rising. Go us, right?

Despite what you may think by looking at this photo, the calzone didn't fall off the counter.

And the finished product. We brushed the crust with melted butter & garlic salt to keep it soft.

And we finished off our lovely evening by watching Ed Byrne, one of our favorite Irish comedians. Admittedly, he's one of the few Irish comedians I know, but still. Watch this, you'll laugh.

-Amanda

A Red and White Affair

Amanda's mom sent each of us a great Valentines day bag with lots of candy and cute erasers. In the bag was a huge 12 oz bag of Valentines day M&M's. As I am not one to open a bag of M&M's on my own and just eat them straight, I decided to make cookies with them. Of course I was out of both eggs and butter when I made this decision (which was on Wednesday) and only got around to making them this afternoon.

Baking seems to be become a weekend ritual for me and a lovely distraction from homework.

This is the recipe for Red's Ultimate M&M'S Cookies. I am not a huge nut fan so I didn't use any. I also like that they put the nutrition information at the bottom so I at least know how bad they are for me.

As I am trying to become a more organized person, I gathered all the ingredients I needed before I started baking. I have a picture to prove it!
After mixing making about a dozen cookies I began to get concerned because they were much crispier than I like, and our oven is known to get hotter than it is supposed to, so after carefully watching the next batch they came out looking delirious and not at all crispy. The whole process took about 10 minutes of prep and then about an hour to cook all of the cookies, plus another 10 minutes of clean up and a incident with the hand mixer.

Here are (almost) all of the finished cookies. This recipe makes around 50 cookies, so don't say you haven't been warned!

-Sarah

Salsa Chicken

When I went grocery shopping at the beginning of the quarter I bought quite a few chicken breasts that have since been forgotten in the freezer. Well, yesterday I decided I should actually make something with one of them. I had some left over refried beans and rice from a couple of days ago, so I thought I'd cook the chicken in a way that would complement those flavors. What I ended up doing was putting cayenne pepper on the chicken as it was cooking. When it was nearly done, I added medium salsa and let the chicken absorb the flavors. The salsa somehow caramelized or something and it tasted kind of like a spicy barbecue sauce, but with onions and peppers on top. Then while I was reheating my leftovers, I topped the chicken with some cheese.

¡Lo era muy delicioso!

-Amanda

Like the worlds biggest Reese's cup but better

As Valentines Day is Sunday and I have no plans for any typical Valentines Day activities I decided to make Peanut Butter Brownies. I had to go to target to pick up the brownie mix and icing, and realized we were also out of vegetable oil and brown sugar. So after getting all of those things together and emptying the dishwasher I set out to recreate the brownies we made last October.
Here is everything you need to make Peanut Butter Brownies, along with my pitiful excuse for a mixing bowl (or the pink thing behind the brownie mix).

Here is the batter already marbled and ready to bake!

Out of the oven, waiting for frosting.

After the brownies came out of the oven I made dinner, so while i was waiting for my potato pancakes to cook I mixed together the peanut butter frosting and added it to the brownies

Now for a taste test!


As predicted, the brownies taste amazing!

Happy Valentines Day, everyone!

<3 Sarah

Burger Greatness

Easily my favorite thing to make for myself is a good ol' cheese burger. Tonight I decided to spice it up a little. I added a little garlic powder along with the steak seasoning to give it a little 'pop' and fried up some bacon. I coupled this together with a slightly grilled bun (just so it wasn't so soft from being defrosted), chopped onions and the last of my tater tots. I'm slowly becoming more adventurous on my burger toppings and am looking for some tasty suggestions.

It was all very delicious and the perfect start to my homework filled weekend.

-Sarah

Spice Up Your Morning

Every once in a while, we college students need to take a break from early morning studying and have a good breakfast. Today I decided to add apple pieces and cinnamon to some Quaker's quick oats and I ended up creating something delicious. Take a bland breakfast & add in some flavor, just make sure to add in sweet apples-granny smith would be disastrous!

And if you want to be deep & philosophical, this could even be a metaphor for your day. Wake up to an ordinary morning (oatmeal) and add a little creativity (apples & cinnamon) and voilà now your day is extraordinary.

-Amanda

Oriental Experience

While the rest of the country was having pizza and subs while guzzling beer I made an Asian inspired feast.

Chicken stir fry with garlic, onion, red pepper, broccoli, water chestnuts and green beans, a pork egg roll and four pork pot stickers. Nothing to special since I make stir fry pretty regularly but have recently been having a problem with making rice. I'm not sure if it's the brand i'm using or if I have lost the gift of rice making. Undercooked rice is gross.

How I Made:
I got a lovely Wok at a garage sale over the summer, so greased it up and threw in two pieces of targets individual frozen chicken breast. (defrosted)
I don't have the means or the presents of mind to buy fresh vegetables whenever I want stir fry so I stock up on stir fry vegetable packets that can be found at jewel or target in the frozen food section and then throw in whatever real vegetables i do have, in this case onions. I let everything cook over medium heat, moving around and flipping to make sure nothing sticks or burns. When near finished threw in a little minced garlic and moved vegetables around some more. When everything is finished, after around 10 to 15 minutes, depending on chicken I throw in some kind of sauce, for this instants it was tyriakki marinade specifically for stir fry, but I like my previous brand better. let cook down and coat for a few seconds on low heat and serve with rice.

I also steamed my pot stickers using the steam from the wok, because it came with a small rack that attached to the top.
Was generally unimpressed with halftime show, commercials and game.

-Sarah

Sunday Brunch

Since I got up at a reasonable hour for a Sunday, I decided I'd make pancakes and sausage for a nice Sunday morning breakfast. As I was taking pictures of my breakfast to post, Amanda was trying to open a tube of biscuits. This lead to me talking about how my mom use to always make cinnamon rolls for breakfast. So Amanda looked up a recipe and made semi home made cinnamon rolls.

Here are my Aunt Jemima pancakes with cinnamon and vanilla and some precooked Jimmy Dean sausage. Pancakes tasted good as recipe has been perfected over the course of several years in college. Sausage tasted suspicious, not sure if this is the microwaves fault or an error in the actual making of the sausage. regardless don't think I'll be eating the rest.

Here are Amanda's cinnamon rolls after she put the butter, cinnamon, vanilla and cinnamon sugar mixture in the middle and rolled them.

This is the finished product. Some of the smaller ones ended up looking more like the letter C, but they tasted very good and sugary. I recommend eating them on a sunny Sunday while listening to vampire weekend and staring at Corporate America's poster child.

-Sarah

Pizza Night

For the past week or so, we've both been craving pizza & as that we couldn't decide on a good place to order from, we figured we'd try our luck making our own. After a successful trip to Jewel-once we figured out what makes a good green pepper, we came back & made the dough in the bread machine (a miracle invention, really). Instead of preparing the ingredients while the dough was rising, we thought it would be a great idea to lolly gag & do homework. Not the best plan. But in the end the pizza turned out great, which is all that really matters anyway.

This is our Green Peper, Onion and Bacon Pizza in the oven

And here is the finished product-deliciouso!

How we made it:

Pizza dough from the bread machine, we used this recipe

Four cheese spaghetti sauce, with extra Italian seasoning & garlic powder

Toppings: green peppers, onion, and bacon

Sargento Italian pasta cheese: mozzarella, provolone & parmesan

And we brushed the crust with melted butter & garlic

Meet the Chefs

Welcome to 411Cooks, your blogger(s) today will be Amanda and Sarah. Here we will show you the excellent food we make here in our apartment. So prepare yourself for pizza nights, burger feasts, an assortment of breakfast food and delicious desserts!

Now, we are college students so please remember we are refining our talent and occasionally get swamped by major projects and papers and end up ordering take out and eating things not worth posting.

Thanks for stopping by!