I'm baaaack!

Hey internet, I'm back! I don't even remember why I originally decided to take a break from this blog, but with the start of the new year I plan to get back on here. I didn't stop trying recipes, I just wasn't posting them. Some of the things I tried and deemed successful were:

Easy Baked Ravioli

Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup

All Purpose Chili Lime Chicken

Winter Fruit Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing

Inside Out Chocolate Chip Cookies

White Chocolate Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake

Monterey Chicken Grilled Cheese

Copycat Marie Callender's Potato Cheese Soup (Slow Cooker)

Arrabbiata Pasta

For Christmas I got a new set of really nice pots and pans and I'm so excited to be using them. They make cooking a thousand times easier! I'm excited to get back to this blog and continue my cooking adventures. Maybe eventually I'll be able to do this:

(Source: NBC's tragically cancelled show, Hannibal. I enjoy it way more than I should, but I guess that's what happens when you're a psychology nerd who loves villains.) Anyway, stay tuned for my first recipe of the year!

M&M's Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

I'd never made a skillet cookie before today but always wanted to. The slightly crisp exterior and gooey interior all topped with ice cream...oooh. This recipe seemed like a good place to start.

I didn't take pictures of the process as I wasn't sure if I'd post this, but it's no different than making your standard cookie dough. I'm definitely a fan of this recipe. It's simple and quick. I do wish we had some vanilla ice cream to go on top, but oh well. It was still really good. I can see making this for an easy dessert when we have company over for dinner. 4 stars.

Copycat Pizza Factory Breadtwists (Round 2)

I tried a recipe for these awesome breadtwists once before, but the dough was a giant pain to work with. So I was hopeful that these would taste just as good, but be much easier to make.

The dough was easy enough to make.

The recipe said to let the dough rise for a bit at this point, but I'm pretty sure it didn't. (Technically the recipe actually says "raise", but dough does not raise. It rises. I died a little inside every time the recipe said to let the dough raise. Shudder. End grammatical rant.) Anyway, I rolled it out and spread on some garlic butter.

I folded it in half and cut it into pieces and twisted them. It was at this point that I remembered I didn't have any cookie sheets available so I had to use my half sheet pan. I got ten breadtwists out of the recipe, but I had to bake them in batches.

I didn't have the kind of parmesan cheese required for these, and I figured the shredded real stuff would work just as well. I was wrong. It did not stick to them nearly as well so lesson learned. In the case of these breadtwists, use the fake stuff in a shaker. Anyway, the end result was rather bland. The original recipe I tried is definitely better. I guess I just need to find a way to make that dough less of a pain to work with. 2 stars. However, I do plan to shape them in the method this recipe uses as it is much easier than wrapping the dough around dowels.

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Sweet Chili Chicken Enchiladas

Major curiosity prompted me to try this recipe. I know I've tried a lot of enchilada recipes, but this was Asian Mexican fusion! Curiosity killed the cat...

The basic elements of the recipe were all very simple. I cooked my chicken and made the sauce.

Then came the trouble. The chicken I bought was extremely difficult to shred. I swear...I bought Arnold Schwarzenegger in chicken breast form. Ugh. After I finally managed to shred it, I was pretty convinced the recipe would be a fail.

I forgot to get a picture of the enchiladas before they went into the oven, but this is what they looked like coming out of the oven:

The end result of these was underwhelming. They weren't great, and they weren't terrible. Baking them did help the tough chicken, but I still didn't feel like they were anything special. To me, they were just a little sweeter than your standard enchilada. I didn't taste anything distinctly Asian. 2 stars.

Easy Cheesy Manicotti

I bought a crap ton of cheese this week. The majority of it was for this recipe, but we were also out of normal cheese, like cheddar. I felt a little weird going around with all that cheese in my cart, but it was for a good reason!

And speaking of cheese, here's the stuff I did use for the recipe:

I was interested in this recipe for two reasons: One, you don't have to cook the manicotti shells prior to filling them. (Win!) Two, it also has instructions about how to freeze it for a later dinner. I'm all about things that can be frozen. I really don't take the time to make freezer meals as much as I should. Anyway, filling the shells was a bit more challenging than I had anticipated and I think it was because the hole I cut in the plastic bag was a bit too big. But I made it work.

And here's where I messed up. I didn't read the recipe fully and therefore did not cover the dish with foil before baking it. >.< I noticed this mistake when I took the manicotti out of the oven and the sauce had turned a much darker color than it should have.

I was pretty convinced the dish was going to be ruined at this point, but it actually was okay. The pasta was a bit hard, but the flavor was still great. I'm confident this would have been awesome if I had used the foil. Next time I will, for sure. I'm still giving this one 4 stars because the slight fail was entirely me being stupid, not any fault with the recipe. It is very easy and came together quicker than I thought it would.

Salsa Verde Honey Lime Chicken

I was really excited about this recipe. I almost think I use my crock pot more during the summer than I do in the winter. It's just great to not have to heat up the house and still have something delicious!

Crock pot recipes don't lend themselves to super interesting pictures as all you do is dump the ingredients in the crock pot and let it do its thing. Not that I'm complaining...another perk of crock pot recipes is how easy they are! Loving it. Anywho, here's everything before cooking:

After it cooked, I shredded it and put the chicken in tacos. And I really wanted to like this recipe. But unfortunately I didn't. I don't know specifically what it was, but I just wasn't a fan of how all the flavors came together. Husband thought it was too much citrus. For me it wasn't necessarily one flavor. The overall taste didn't do it for me, but it wasn't positively awful, and it was extremely simple to make. 2 stars.

Strawberry Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes

I love summer fruit. Especially strawberries and raspberries. These definitely sounded like a good use of strawberries and lemon. The link includes a recipe for strawberry syrup that I highly recommend making with the pancakes.

I made the syrup first and it was really easy. I put everything in a saucepan and then cooked it for a bit.

After cooking it so the sugar dissolves, I first tried using a potato masher to mash the strawberries and combine everything since I didn't want to get out my blender. But it didn't work that well so I still ended up using the blender. After blending, I poured the syrup back into the saucepan to keep warm and thicken.

The pancakes weren't difficult to make either. I started with the dry ingredients:

And added the wet.

The batter seemed a bit thick, so they didn't come out nicely round and pretty. This could have been because I cut the recipe in half due to less than wonderful strawberries. Anyway, after cooking they looked like this:

For some reason, the syrup never really thickened up. However, these were surprisingly good. And the two recipes need each other, if you ask me. The pancakes are a bit on the tart side without the syrup and the syrup is a bit on the sweet side on it's own. But they're a refreshing shake up from regular pancakes that I'll definitely make again. 4 stars.