Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies - Nailed It!

Well I am finally back and all moved into my new apartment!  My roommates aren't back yet though, so I've been kind of bored. Sooo last night I decided to make cookies, because that's what I do when I'm bored.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies - Nailed It!

These cookies actually turned out surprisingly well, considering I forgot to buy baking soda when I got the ingredients..I ended up just using one teaspoon of salt instead of 1/2 teaspoon, and  adding another 1/4-1/3 cup of sugar to fix the saltiness.  The only weird part was that the bottoms were really chewy...I'm not sure if that was supposed to happen or if it was my bad.

Ingredients
4 oz cream cheese, softened (recipe called for 5-6 but I only had 4)
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups plus 3 tbsp all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips

Mix together the melted and cooled butter, softened cream cheese, and sugars. (Here the recipe actually said to cream these ingredients together, but I don't have my mixer up here and I'm not sure if you even can cream melted butter...so I just used a spoon, and it worked out fine. Just make sure your cream cheese is fully softened)

Mix together the dry ingredients and add to the butter/sugar/cream cheese mixture. Add the chocolate chips. 

 At this point the dough will be very stiff. Roll into balls and place on cookie sheet.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 12-14 minutes (mine ended up actually needing about 15-16 minutes)

Remove from cookie sheet and try not to eat too many! (or just go for it and eat as many as you want) :]

Chocolate Mousse - Nailed It!

Hey there!

Sorry it's been a while, things have been crazy. Austin and I FINALLY managed to be in the same town at the same time for the first time this summer, although he's gone again now  We made the most of our 3 days together, though.

Roses Austin brought me...awwww :]

We had a date night (he took me out to this REALLY nice restaurant.. And brought me roses!), watched a meteor shower, and cooked dinner (chicken cordon Bleu... The recipe said it should take 30 minutes to make, it took us about an hour and a half.. Whoops. Guess we should work on our cooking skills). Because I knew dinner would probably take longer than we expected, I made dessert the day before.

Mini Chocolate Mousse Pies - Nailed It!

Austin  with his mini pie :]

I've tried this recipe (Laura's Chocolate Pie... Well that's what we call it.. Its real name is French Chocolate Pie) before in a normal sized pie, but I could never quite get it to set up right. It's always delicious, but I always end up having to scoop it out of the pie crust with a spoon (don't get me wrong, I still eat it :p). So this time I decided to make mini pie crusts and keep the mousse in a piping (ziploc) bag and pipe the mousse-filling into them right before we were ready for them. The mousse set beautifully, and was the perfect consistency for piping into the mini crusts.

This is Laura's picture, but mine looked about the same :p
I'll get better at remembering to take pictures of my stuff, I promise

I remembered to take a picture halfway through... That counts, right? 

Fourteen Hour Drive Home - NAILED IT!

I'm HOME! It's so good to be back. I'm almost even ready for classes to start (almost). I got back yesterday at about 3, and haven't hardly been actually in my home since.  My friend Katie and I went to go see the Dark Knight Rises last night, and it was AWESOME!
And, I finally know who this guy is:

Still more facial expressions than Kristen Stewart

Anyway, I'm still catching up on past pins...I'm trying to get them out of the way before I try something new, and since just I'm sitting here in a puddle of sweat and jealousy, waiting for Austin to get back from nice, cool California (seriously.. it's 79 degrees there right now) to bake something so I can give it to him and avoid single-handedly eat the entire thing, I figured I should get them done now.

Lego Cake - Failed It!

Betty Crocker

My big mistake in this one was laziness. I went to the store, bought everything I needed, got back to the apartment and promptly realized that I'd forgotten to buy marshmallows to use as the bumps on top.  I had some brownie mix on hand, though, and I figured I could just bake some thin-ish brownies and cover them with frosting.  As with most of my brilliant ideas, that didn't go so well.  It was really hard to get the frosting on the sides of the brownies without them crumbling, and then they wouldn't stick to the cake when I tried to cover the top. Eventually, I just gave up on it and, once again, left it out for the roommates (It was supposed to be a birthday cake for a friend of mine..he never got it). I'd like to try this again, but with marshmallows, and maybe instead of frosting them, since that still seems difficult (I'm really bad at frosting cakes...), I would dip them in colored candy melts.

Reese's Fudge Pie - Failed It!

Reese's Fudge Pie

Finally, something that failed not because of a stupid mistake or idea of my own.  I just didn't really like it.  See how thick the chocolate layer is? Well that's ALL homemade hot fudge sauce.  Now, I love hot fudge sauce, don't get me wrong, but this was just too much.  The fudge was too thick and heavy and sticky, and the peanut butter mousse on top was too fluffy and smooshy (forgive the five-year-old's adjective).  I think we ended up picking the mini Reeses out and throwing the rest of it away.

Better than Crack Brownies - NAILED IT!

Better Than Crack Brownies

I'm not sure if these actually count, considering I made them back when Pinterest didn't exist (I found them on Stumble Upon) but now they're on Pinterest sooo I'm counting it. Because they were SOO good. They're basically brownies with a layer of peanut butter cups and peanuts, and then covered in a chocolate-peanut butter-rice krispie layer.  Seriously, they were amazing. And awful for you, but I don't even care. The only issue I had with them is that they're hard to transport once they're cut, because they fall apart (the top comes apart from the brownie layer). But that's a minor detail in light how how amazing these were.

And that's it! I'm caught up!! Hallelujah!

Except NOW what am I gonna do until Austin comes home?...crap

A Few More Past Fails

"Another post, already? Seems a bit soon, doesn't it?"
Well yeah, but I'm sitting here waiting for my dad to get home so we can begin the 14 HOUR trip back to Katy, Texas (we're only going as far as Lubbock, TX tonight though), and I am bored and antsy to get in the car so that I can get back out again.

This is kind of a depressing post, as none of these worked out...but oh well :]

No Bake Vanilla Cake Batter Chocolate Truffles - FAILED IT!

http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2011/04/no-bake-vanilla-cake-batter-chocolate-truffles.html

These turned out absolutely awful.  They are basically just sweetened condensed milk and box cake mix mixed together and dipped in chocolate.  But I thought I'd give them a try because a) I was looking for a new truffle recipe, b) I love recipes where the names have about 17 adjectives, and c) I thought what the hey, they'll be terrible for you, but you can't go too wrong with such a simple recipe. I WAS WRONG. YOU CAN.  These ended up looking just like the picture, but tasting awful. They were grainy and salty and just bad.  I ended up eating the chocolate shell off of them and throwing the middle away.

Panda Cupcakes - Failed It!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Pandas-vanilla-heart-Cup-Cake-D/

Look how cute it is! Mine did not turn out that way...at all. In the instructions it said to use some sort of Portugese edible clay..? Needless to say, I couldn't find that but I figured I could just use cake balls instead.  Except I didn't make vanilla cake balls, I used the extra chocolate cake batter from the cupcakes and thought I'd cover them in powdered sugar...nope. Didn't work. At all. The brown showed through the powdered sugar (as you probably assumed it would), and the panda heads kept falling off cause they were too heavy.  They COULD have been cute but they just...weren't.

Whoops, gotta end this a bit early. My dad's home! Time to get in the car for 6 hours! yaaay... Haha

(In other news, my brother's fiancee Laura just asked me to be a bridesmaid for their wedding!!! Actual YAAAY!!! *happy dance* Haha, I'm so psyched!! :D)

First Post and Past Nails and Fails

Hello!

So this is a blog where I try out things I find on Pinterest and write about how they come out, since there are so many things on Pinterest that just do not come out at all how I expect them to.  My friend Lindsay suggested it, and I decided what the heck, maybe it'll actually get me to try more of the things I pin, since usually this is me:

    

So here are a few Pinterest nails and fails from the past:

Baked Donut Holes - Failed It!

(this is the Pinterest pic, I didn't take a picture of mine)

"Failed It" may be too strong for these, and most likely due to badly executed ideas of my own. They came out ok, but nothing like I expected. They were mostly just  slightly sweet bread.  I omitted the cinnamon-sugar topping, as I was planning on filling them with Nutella, but that didn't work.  I basically ended up slathering some Nutella on top and left them out with the hope that my roommates would eat them. They ended up being very messy, and just generally not as good as I had hoped. These might be worth another try with the cinnamon-sugar topping.

Laughing Cow Cheese on Cucumbers - Nailed It!

(again, the picture is stolen from Pinterest) 

This is basically just the idea of spreading Laughing Cow cheese (35 calories per wedge) on cucumbers instead of crackers.  It was good (though I did miss the cracker) but I would say definitely worth the calories saved from the crackers.

Cookie Cake - Failed It!

Pinterest pic

I was looking for a recipe for a cookie cake like the ones from Great American Cookies, because my boyfriend Austin asked me to learn how to make one, and I said yes because I'm a good girlfriend (to be fair, he did help me make it :]).  This one was ok, but slightly too puffy like other homemade cookie cakes I've seen, and too salty.  

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies - Nailed It!

Pinterest Pic

Holy COW these were good! I made a batch of them last Christmas, planning on having half to set out for my family, and half to save to give to Austin.  The entire batch was gone in about four days, and I ended up having to make another and hide the ones I was saving for Austin. I'm definitely making them again next year!

I have a few more Nails and Fails from the past, but I figure you're probably tired of reading for now, so I'll save them for the next post. I figure these posts will be much shorter, and will include pictures of my actual attempts once I get up to date.

Alright, I'm prepared. Bring it on, family, I can handle your comments :]