Pizza with Caramelized Onions and Basil

I made pizza and put caramelized onions on top because I saw it in a food blog and it looked delicious. I used Trader Joe's wheat pizza dough and instead of making 1 big pizza out of it, I made 2 medium pizzas in an attempt both to make thin crust pizza and prevent pizza stone catastrophe. I cooked the onions before hand in a frying pan with some butter, olive oil and brown sugar. I really liked the onions on the pizza. I need to find a new tomato sauce though because I think that the one I use is too salty.

Brown rice noodles with peanut sauce

I made this recipe from this cookbook that I got a while ago. I didn't follow the recipe exactly because I didn't have all of the ingredients, and I didn't have the patience to go to the store. So the sauce was missing fresh ginger, among other items. The sauce was good but it was obvious that it was missing something. I will probably try to make a better version of this in the future because I love peanut sauce and this recipe has potential.

Brownie Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

This were pretty good. This is the recipe that I followed. I put these Trader Joe's mini peanut butter cups in the cookies. I think the cookies would have actually been better if I used peanut butter chips because there was too much chocolate surrounding the peanut butter in the mini peanut butter cups, and peanut butter is delicious. The cookies were still nice and soft which is how I like my cookies.

Crustless Spinach Quiche

I made this around 2:00am one morning when I was working on a branch predictor. This is the recipe that I used. The quiche tasted good but I think it would have been better had I left it in the oven longer, even though I did leave it in there a whole 30 minutes. I also didn't use the proportions listed in the recipe and the whole thing just made me feel a little gross. I don't think I'll make this again - at least this variation of it.

Blueberry Muffins

These were quite delicious imho. I made blueberry muffins using regular white flour and they were so much better than when I use white whole wheat flour. They did have quick oats in them and I snuck in some cracked wheat. The cracked wheat was in exchange for wheat germ, which I'm told is not a valid substitute. I don't even know what wheat germ is and they didn't have it at Henry's, so cracked wheat seemed like the next best thing. The cracked wheat added a crunchy texture to the muffins which I enjoyed. There were about 2 cups of fresh blueberries in them, when the recipe called for 1. I liked the fact that they were overly stuffed with blueberries. This is the recipe that I used.

Here's just one more picture, just for kicks:

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I made some oatmeal raisin cookies after I tried some at Trader Joe's the other day. The Trader Joe's ones were firm and crisp, which I liked. That is what I was going for with these but these are softer and thinner. I don't know how I would even make them thicker because they spread out in the oven and I don't have any control over their thickness. I think these would be better thicker because they fall apart easily. I do like the taste of them though. I used 1 stick of butter and 1/4 cup of canola oil instead of 1.5 sticks of butter (because I ran out of butter). I hope I find a recipe that yields thicker and firmer cookies! This is the recipe that I used.

Orange Cranberry Muffins

I decided to make muffins again because I didn't feel like doing any work. This is a different recipe than usual, from my humungous baking cookbook that I haven't looked at too much yet. So this is the first thing I've made from that cookbook. The recipe required buttermilk but I didn't have any (because who has buttermilk on hand or is willing to go to the store?) so I substituted it with milk and a little (balsamic) vinegar. Balsamic vinegar because I didn't have any regular vinegar. The recipe called for orange zest, orange juice, typical baking ingredients and blueberries. I used dried cranberries instead of the blueberries, and they plumped up in the baking process. I don't like the muffins that much. I think that they are dry and I just don't really like the orange with the cranberry. I don't typically like orange flavored things much in general (although I do like oranges on their own). Plus I used whole wheat white flour and that taste is just not good. These at least weren't very cake-like, which is good. I shall continue my quest to seek a delicious muffin recipe.

Here's another picture of the suckers: