Hamburger Cupcakes

I had fun making these little puppies. The idea came from several different sites (here's one).

To make the cake and brownies, I basically just googled a few different recipes for each and approximately averaged out the ingredients. I sort of messed up though and accidentally mixed all the dry stuff first instead of following instructions. So I figured what the heck, mixed the liquids for both recipes together (eggs, vanilla, milk, etc.) and poured half into the cake and half into the brownies. Haha. Of course the batter wouldn't mix well since I went out of order, so I had to bust out a hand blender and blend the thing!

Then the batter went into cupcake liners and got baked. The cake came out fine... The brownies had this really dense (not fudgy though) consistency. I probably would have panicked except for the fact that the denseness worked out well when it came time to slice the brownies into meat patties. So the cakes and brownies got sliced, assembled, frosted, topped with sesame seeds, and voila! Hamburger cupcakes! It felt like I was eating sliders, as far as texture and having the layers, but of course it tasted like dessert.

Sigh this might be the last post in awhile, as the due date is drawing near. We'll see...

Cajun Salmon

So if you haven't noticed, there is a dearth of posts from October 2011 until now. That's because ten thousand things happened in 2011 and were especially concentrated during those months. Primarily, we're talking about house stuff (finding the house, escrow stuff, dealing with contractors, packing, moving, unpacking, dispositioning, researching furniture...), baby stuff (OB appointments, physical therapy and physical medicine appointments due to numbness and pain in the hands, the fun paperwork of disability and insurance, baby classes, researching/buying baby stuff...), and some other stuff (work, hubby's work, family stuff, church stuff).

But then the shutdown happened! And I got to spend one whole week of downtime (and getting stuff done) with the hubby, and during one of those days, he made me Cajun salmon and rice! We got the fish from Trader Joes, came home, plopped rice in the rice cooker, and attempted to "grill" the fish on the stovetop using this pan we got from our wedding which has the grill marks. We figured out that we needed to sort of make little slits in the fish to have it cook thoroughly. This probably would have been easier with thinner cuts of fish, but he got through it and we had a nice dinner! I'm so proud of him!

Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

A friend gave me this pretty jar layered with different ingredients that make up the cookie mix for these delicious oatmeal cranberry cookies. All I had to do was add butter, eggs, and water. What a treat these were! I love how substantial they are and how they have this crunch to them, which I attribute to the walnuts and shredded wheat. I can't make these again though or else I'll risk eating them all!