keep calm and put your apron on

A lot of times in life I find myself stressing out about things - especially lately with school and figuring things out for the summer.  I also have a few other stressful things on my mind and sometimes I just want to get away from people. But I do believe I have discovered my life motto...my friend showed me this picture today and it is just too perfect =)

So next time your stressin out remember this...

Everything is going to be okay, life is good.

Rochester With My Best Friend Heather =)

This past weekend I went home with my best friend Heather to Rochester New York...we had Friday and Monday off for Easter break, it was a perfect break from school.  We had been planning this trip for months and had so much that we wanted to accomplish...and we did a good job of getting most of it done.  With both of us having an immense love for cooking and baking we constructed a list of things we wanted to make.  We ended up making two super yummy and totally adorable Easter desserts.  The first one was homemade peanut butter eggs...it was super simple to make!!  It was basically creme cheese, peanut butter, and vanilla and then we melted chocolate to coat them...we used white chocolate and dyed it green, and dark chocolate.  We really wanted to make them purple, but of course blue was missing from the food coloring and that is an essential part of purple haha but the green color was just as cute =)

Next we made my absolute FAVORITE...carrot cake cupcakes...carrot cake could possibly be one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.  And this carrot cake is out of the ordinary it has coconut and nuts and raisins and a whole bunch of yummy things in it...I am going to ask Heather for the recipe so I can put it up here =)

As you can see we made them super cute by dying coconut green for grass and adding some adorable peeps on top!

Not only did we just bake on this trip, Heather took me around to see the highlights of Rochester.  I had never been to a Tim Hortons before, and let me just tell ya it was amazing!  I got a mocha for $1.50...and it was one of the best mocha's I have ever had.  And a chocolate chip muffin that was SO good...it tasted homemade!

And last but certainly not least I finally got to have a famous Rochester Garbage Plate!  After hearing Heather talk about it every since I have known her I have always wanted to try one.  Basically, it is just a styrofoam container filled with a cheeseburger patty and your choice of homefries, regular fries, salt potatoes, baked beans, or macaroni salad...you pick two sides (I of course picked homefries and salt potatoes because I have a thing against creamy and weird textures and both baked beans and macaroni fall into the gross creamy texture category...except for williams-sonoma baked beans, I'll eat those!)

Here it is before everything was mixed together...

And here it is after...definitely not for someone who can't have their foods touch haha!  It looks gross but it was ooh so good

Apple Pie!

Everyone loves a good apple pie, and so a few days ago me and my friend Heather made one.  Being the crafty girls that we are we snuck an entire bag of apple out of the dining hall as well as two coffee cups full of butter...we're so sneaky haha.  Grabbing my favorite All Clad pan we we were off to our RD's apartment to use his oven (living in the dorms with no oven can be pretty challenging sometimes...good thing our RD lets us use his kitchen!).  Because we were at school we decided to buy pre-made pie crust (normally I would make it myself cause it tastes muuuuch better than store bought and it doesn't burn as easily).  The recipe is really simple....actually we didn't really follow one haha I just looked one up kinda as a guideline.  What I did was throw some butter in the pan and let the apples cook down a little.  You do not necessarily need to cook the apples before making them into a pie but it helps them along when they are cooking...also it tastes better to make the sauce in the pan with the apples.  After the apples begin to cook throw in about 3/4 cup brown sugar (it could have used more I'm gonna use a cup next time...) also you need 1/4 cup flour and then a bunch of spices.  I used cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a few other fall-ish spices.  Also, super important...make sure you use some type of acid (either lemon or apple cider vinegar works best).  You want to mix this into the apple mixture right before you take it off the stove.  The acid does something with the pH balance or something I don't really know the sciencey part haha.  Heather and I also attempted a lattice crust...it was harder than I thought I never did one on a pie before.  But I think it turned out pretty cute =)

About to go in the oven!

To make the crust golden brown brush it with a little egg wash and sprinkle with sugar

All baked! Yum! =)

columbus circle...i think i'm in love

Exciting things are happening for me in the land of Williams-Sonoma.  Back on spring break the regional vice president came into the store that I work at in order to do our corporate visit.  It was very fortunate that I was working that day because I got to talk to her and tell her all about my immense love for Williams-Sonoma.  To my surprise she asked me if I had ever been to the Columbus Circle William-Sonoma; and then she asked me if I would want to work a few invite only events there this summer.  I can't even begin to explain how excited I was, I couldn't believe she actually asked me that.  A few weeks later I contacted the manager of the beautiful new york city store and she told me that I could come work events with food stars as well as work a day in the store to get a feel for it. 
Last weekend my friends and I took a trip to new york city and I jumped on the chance to go visit the Columbus Circle store...and it was GORGEOUS...it has a second floor and they have an entire room dedicated to doing cooking demonstrations...I was in heaven.  Some day I will work there!!

  it has stainless steal exterior!!

 this is the other one in midtown...there were 3 williams-sonoma's in nyc!

sadly, not all citrus fruits are created equal...

So this weekend I had a giant food fail...I mean in life ya win some and ya lose some - not everything you make is gonna turn out.  Here is the story of the Orange Square failure...
Basically, I have a serious love and addiction to lemon squares, but I had been making them far too much though I should mix it up a little and try something new.  I thought I could definitely replace the lemons in the recipe with oranges because after all they are both citrus fruits, right?  Well, it didn't quite turn out like I had planned.  First off oranges are much harder to juice and you get much less juice out of a single orange.  Where I only needed to use 2 lemons for the lemon bars I needed to use 3 oranges and I still didn't have enough juice.  The final product turned out all rubbery and weird, and they were waaaayyy too sweet...I missed the tartness of the lemon squares.  Although my roommate (who loooves oranges) seemed to love the squares, so I guess they weren't a total fail.  But nonetheless, lesson learned...not all citrus fruits are created equal.  However, this will not stop me!!  Next up is grapefruit squares...or maybe lemon grapefruit squares...and my friend thinks apple squares will work....the fruit square possibilities are endless...

 

oooh the Amish...

So...its been quite some time since my last post, I don't want it to go this long again but its kinda difficult to make something new every day here in dorm life.  However this weekend I had some great food encounters!

First off I took my friend Heather to my hometown of Lancaster because she wanted to see the Amish haha so I took her around to all the hot spots.  Our first stop was, of course, Williams Sonoma where I showed her where I work...my co-workers were surprised to see my in Lancaster unannounced lol.  The second stop was Central Market in downtown Lancaster city.  Its a really neat place where people (mainly Amish, but there are other vendors as well) set up stands where they sell produce and baked goods.  Its definitely a fun experience if you have never been to a market.  I got Heather a chocolate cream cheese cupcake cause you can't leave there without one!

Next we went to Historic Lititz, where I spend most of my childhood.  We first went to the Wilbur Chocolate factory where Heather got to sample some Wilbur Buds which is pretty much the best chocolate on earth.  Each piece is handmade by these old ladies who literally sit behind glass all day making chocolate after chocolate after chocolate....

 Here they are slaving away behind the glass...personally I think this would be really fun!  But I'm sure it gets old.  They are very talented - Heather was really excited to see the huge owl they carved out of chocolate (owls are her fav!)

Here we have the original kitchen equipment that was used to make the chocolate...don't know how I feel about this, I definitely wouldn't have survived...although I do see a lot of copper which is a pretty good choice...

Here we have some fudge...yum!

After we left the Chocolate factory we went over to the Sturgis Pretzel factory where we sampled a homemade soft pretzel and got a picture outside with the giant pretzel.

After our fun adventures we journeyed back to Philadelphia where Heather had the grand idea to make Oreo Truffles...which were amazing!!  Basically all you do is put a bag of Oreos in a food processor with cream cheese and blend until the mixture is able to be rolled into balls.  Then you chill them in the fridge until they set and after you can dip them in chocolate and decorate with sprinkles.  They were super easy and really tasty!!