The Most Amazing Coffee Cake in The WORLD

Today was the last full day for our Housing and Dining summer office assistants who are these two adorable students, both named Sarah. In honor of them being awesome I made this Pioneer Woman recipe for incredible coffee cake. It is honestly the most delicious thing I have ever made.

Don't be jealous of my 5 dollar Walmart hand mixer... All I can do is whip egg whites with it since it starts smoking and going painfully slow if I try and mix anything more than that!!

Before the oven!! Over the next 40 minutes the cake part will bake up around the cinnamon chunks and get all poofy and wonderful


OH MY GOD. This is after it came out of the oven and the cinnamon sunk down so it was all throughout the coffeecake.

Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?? It was such a hit it was almost gone before I could even put it down!
<3 Hannah

Lemon Streusel Muffins

I made these lemon streusel muffins for Chris’ students. I made them in Chris’ oven which is absolutely awful so the bottoms burned but they were really pretty! You really can’t go wrong with crumbly sugar and lemon!

<3 Hannah

Peach and White Chocolate Chip Muffins

I had been eyeing this recipe on Tasty Kitchen for a few days and decided to make it for my staff for during their fall training. I figure if anyone is being forced to sit and listen to me talk for 4+ hours, they earn muffins.

Here is the pretty batter before I mixed in the chocolate and peaches! I am going through a phase right now of eating frozen peach slices right out of the bag. I highly recommend it. Especially if you are too cheap to buy fresh ones.

Glaze action shot. I made the glaze from some pear juice and powdered sugar. It was awesome.

In an attempt to get a good glaze pouring shot, half of the glaze ended up on my tray and I am not sure if it will ever come off since I let it dry and then forgot my tray in my office for the weekend... But it was worth it since these muffins were that good!

<3 Hannah

Thin Mints!

I was looking for a legitimate excuse to use a couple of my very few dollars to buy mint extract. Usually I see a random ingredient/pan/gadget in the store and buy it on a whim and discover what I can make out of it later (that's how I started making marshmallows.. I just neeeeeded that candy thermometer!) But since I finally got that zero balance back on the old credit card I have been trying to be more wise about my purchases.
So, when on the way home from dinner my boyfriend Chris makes an offhand comment about mint chip ice cream, I yank the wheel of the car around and head to the grocery store instead of home because I finally found my excuse. Mint chip ice cream.... Thin mints... Its really a small leap in my mind if you ask me.

Here are my lovely chocolate mint logs. They were supposed to be refrigerated for hours and hours then frozen for a while but honestly who has time for that so I stuck them in the freezer for 20 mins and went for a walk.

I notoriously don't let anybody do ANYTHING when I am cooking. They think I am just being nice by letting them sit on the couch and drink tea, when actually I have control issues and think no one can stir the wet and dry ingredients together like I can...Well except for a kitchenaide stand mixer.... If anyone wants to donate a pink or yellow one to me I'll gladly accept and let you watch me make you a cake or something. I made an acceptation this time and let Chris help dip the cookies in chocolate because it was hot and hurt my fingers.. I'm so sweet, right?

Medallions of chocolate minty love

After hovering over Chris' should while he dipped them in a sinful chocolate and butter mix, we froze them for a few minutes and put them on actual mint chip ice cream. But honestly the cookies were way better than the ice cream. I just felt the need to honor the "original" reason for going to the store :)
<3 Hannah

Grilled Turkey Burgers, Zucchini, and Green Beans!

I cannot take credit for any of this cooking because I watched Jenn Maro cook all of it but I can assure you I made sure it got eaten which is a very important part of the food making process.

We started off with ground turkey, cheese, and a chopped up green pepper. We also added an egg and some oats to help it stick together.

We grilled some zucchini (and I actually ate some!) and grilled some delicious green beans that we picked with the help of Mickey:

...and i guess I can give some credit to Todd who actually grew the beans.

We relaxed with some Relax wine...

And our meal was complete!

Lime Pepitas Sugar Cookies

I was feeling experimental so I made these lime cookies last week. I was nervous about adding the pepitas since I couldn't see how it could be good in them. I was right. They were just weird... But the lime cookie was awesome! I will definitely make them again sans awkward pepitas. I found the recipe here.


I got this zester for Christmas last year and I use it every single chance I get since its one of those things you almost never need but when you do you are sooo glad you own it!

They came out pretty little sugar cookies with pepitas (ugh.) in them. For some reason, probably because they were green, I wanted them to be pistachios which probably wouldn't be bad now that I think about it.

<3 Hannah

Blueberry Zucchini Muffins

In an attempt to redeem myself for the gluttony of last weeks cinnamon swirl bread I decided to make zucchini blueberry muffins! I used this recipe from Tasty Kitchen as my starting point but changed a lot if it. I substituted the almond meal for oats so I wouldn't send poor Chris into anaphylactic shock. I added in the blueberries to make them more delicious because I think all muffins should contain blueberries. I used one golden zucchini and one green one to make them pretty too. This is a particularly healthy recipe since its mainly things like veggies, whole wheat flour, flax meal (mine conveniently had blueberries in it already!), and no butter and just one tablespoon of oil.

Unfortunately despite all my attempts to make these muffins beautiful, they ended up looking FUG. I sprinkled them with oats to cover up the ugly and also a little sugar to hopefully make them taste good because I was pretty skeptical at this point.

I was pleasantly surprised at how lovely they came out!

They were pretty hearty, so not something an eight year old would go near, but not so much that Chris who only eats "health food" when I make him wouldn't try them! They were actually pretty delicious! I was very happy with them! Though if you make them, do not forget the blueberries, they pretty much made the muffin go from pretty good for a healthy muffins to awesome all around!


I am a firm believer that all muffins taste better mini. So yay for my fantastic post morning run, guilt free breakfast!

<3 Hannah

Chicken Piccata

I felt the need to make a fancy dinner after Chris got a flat tire and his mirror hit off within a couple hours of each other. We were at Costco and I saw a massive jar of capers and it was a great deal so I bought it so I could make chicken piccata which is chicken cooked in lemon, capers, and olive oil.

I dredged the chicken in a little flour and cooked it in some olive oil and butter (super healthy, I know)

After it was browned I added the lemon juice and capers and let it simmer for a while. I doubled the amount of capers it called for since I had a giant jar and knew that I would be picking them out of the pan and eating them the whole time.

Chris' grandparents donated this bottle of wine to us and we have been waiting a long time to drink it!

The wine aerator my mom gave me because she had two. I don't usually buy nice enough wine to be able to tell the difference when I use it, but it is so much fun I don't care!

Dinner! I made asparagus with lemon and pepper, and Chris made garlic Parmesan bread!

Close up! I <3 capers. I don't know who thought of pickling flower buds, but they were a genius!
<3 Hannah

Every Veggie in My Fridge Stir Fry

I firmly believe that you really cant go wrong with taking all the vegetables you have in your fridge, and cooking them up with olive oil and way too much fresh garlic. In this case, broccoli, onions, peppers, a jalapeno, zucchini, peas, tomato, carrots, green beans, some basil, and I forgot what else. It doesn't matter. It was awesome. Add in a little salad with some pepitas (SUCH a fun word to say) and some of those weird crunchy pea things, and voila! Dinner. <3 Hannah

Quinoa Burgers

While I am not a vegetarian, I end up eating mostly vegetarian food because cooking meat scares me. I also LOVE vegetarian food so it works out pretty well. I found this recipe for Quinoa burgers on Tasty Kitchen and decided to change a few things by adding fire roasted peppers and onions, and a few chili peppers in adobo sauce (one of my favorite things in the world) and some Parmesan cheese.

It was really difficult not to eat it before I made it into burger patties!! So delicious!






They pretty much fell apart and became quinoa mush more than burgers but I'm not one to judge a burger for being ugly, especially when it smelled like these did!




On whole wheat buns with a little cheddar cheese! Also green beans with lemon and "Everything" seasoning from TJ's






My shout out to my favorite TV week of the year!! Yay shark week!! So sad its over!! It was a rough day so a Yuengling was pretty much necessary.








For dessert these amaaaaaazing chewy lemon sugar cookies I am so glad I froze last week so they are still great tonight!





<3 Hannah

Grilled Tofu!

So despite it sounding like a dying animal while being grilled on a George Foreman, tofu tastes delicious topped with some Island Soyaki from Trader Joes! I paired it with some baked sweet potato slices sprinkled with seasoning salt...yum!
-Kelli

Cinnimon Swirl Bread aka Heaven

I was alone on call at Carnegie Mellon today so I decided to make a recipe I have been oogling for a while on my favorite recipe blog pioneer woman go there it will change your kitchen life forever. This was a very involved process and took like 6 hours with all the time it took for the dough to rise. But it was SO worth it!

After making the dough and letting it rise for three hours I rolled it out and covered it with cinnamon sugar.




Rolled up and ready to go in my overly buttered pan!




The lounge of the hall I live in has no air conditioning which is perfect for letting bread rise! Nice and warm so it realllly rose!




Ensuring the crust will be perfection.




Dear bread, please stop rising or you will touch the ceiling of the oven. Thanks.




Flawless!!!




These would be much prettier if I had a bread knife. But still, lovely little swirl!!





I am a little too excited right now!!




I spent the next 2 or 3 minutes happier than I had been all day!!

<3 Hannah

Marshmallows!

Kelli and I wanted a place other than Facebook to share all our delicious food, some healthy, some not. So we made a blog :)

I spent the evening making vanilla flavored purple marshmallows and this is how they turned out!



Mmmmmm!!! They are sooo good!




Obligatory Instagram shot





Pretty pretty




Thought I would see how these babies toasted over my electric residence hall issued burner!





No toasting.... Just melting... Oh Well!





Coming soon.... Cinnamon swirl bread!

<3 Hannah