Garbage Cookies!

I know they sound super weird. Haha. But they are delicious! I originally got the inspiration to throw a bunch of weird ingredients into my cookies from Christina Tosi. (She's the head baker at Momofuku and the coolest person ever. )
Instead of using her recipe, I used my base cookie recipe and added a bunch of little mix ins.  And oh man, I gotta tell you, putting corn flakes into cookies, is absolute genius.

I threw in some pretzels, corn flakes, and mini chocolate chips. I think this photo is probably my favorite because you can see the pretzel and corn chips peeking through the dough!



Ingredients:
2 Sticks of butter (softened)
1/2 cup sugar (3.5 oz)
1 1/3 cup brown sugar (11 oz)
2 eggs (room temp)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 3/4 cup flour (12oz)
3/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup pretzels or chips or both
1/2 cup corn flakes

♥

Step 1- cream butter and both sugars till light and fluffy

Step 2- crack in eggs and beat until double in size (Tosi suggests to do this step for about 10 mins)

Step 3- Meanwhile, combine all the dry ingredients and then throw it into mixer once the egg, butter, and sugars are all ready. Mix until just combined. You want to undermix the batter because you are going to throw in the mix-ins. So, you want to see some flour. 

Step 4- Throw in all chocolate chips, corn flakes, pretzels, and whatever you would like in. Mix until just combined.

Step 5- Bake at 350 for 15-18 mins or until golden brown. Keep in mind that I used a massive ice cream scoop and my cookies only came out to about 16-18 cookies. So if you make them normal sized the cooking time will vary. Just make sure you keep an eye on them!

P.s.- I use ounces when I bake because it is a little more precise. So if you bake in ounces I put the conversion in parenthesis! :)

 

Favorite Bloggers

 

The Sunday Girl

 

Miss Julia Paige

 

 Temporary Secretary

World of Wanderlust

Sailboat

I think everyone has their own way of checking out their blog feed. You could read the title, look at the picture, or even look for specific people. For me, I usually just scroll through my feed and look at the picture I like and click on them or sometimes if I want to creep, Ill look up some specific people and see if they posted anything new. For some reason I always seem to pick from some of the same bloggers within my feed. These five lovely blogs are the ones that I constantly find myself reading even when I don't notice it.

I love them for all different kinds of reasons. The Sunday Girl and Temporary Secretary are among my favorite because of their beauty reviews. I get my daily beauty product fix from them because they go so in depth about the pros and cons of the products. I love everything from the way they describe the product and to way the photograph it.

 The next two I really love because they are a bit more personal which is really nice. They have a range of topics that they talk about but the personal post are among my favorite ones. They are Sailboat and Miss Julia Paige (P.S.- Both bloggers are super nice! :)  They both write with such eloquence. Oh my word, I just used the word 'eloquence'. I feel so smart. Okay, moving on to...

 World of Wanderlust! I love, love, love reading about her trips around the world and her helpful little travel tips for the average traveler. She captures them so beautifully and her story is really inspiring. I also think I live vicariously through her. haha.

These five blogs are among my personal favorites and are run by super smart and beautiful girls. Let me know what your favorite blogs are at the moment! I'd love to give them a little look.

 

Starbucks Passion Tea Lemonade Recipe!

I added a wee bit more lemon because I like it really lemon-y!

Ingredients :

12 Cups of water (8 hot & 4 cold)

2 Tazo Passion Tea bags

1 Cup of sugar

1/4 Cup lemon ( 1-2 lemons depending on the size)

1/4 cup Honey

One of my favorite drinks to have at Starbucks, no matter the time of year, is the Passion Tea Lemonade. Its literally so soo good and totally Instagram worthy. Its just so vibrantly red and beautiful. It taste kinda like a cold passion fruity ice tea with a little lemony burst of flavor... sorta. I'm sorry, I totally suck at describing things, as you can tell. Haha. But its actually super easy to make and I'm so grateful for that cause I don't have a Starbucks within walking distance of me. So, anyway lets get started!

 

Step 1- Heat 8 cups of water while you put the 2 tea bags and 1 cup of sugar in your pitcher.

Step 2- Steep tea for about 15-20 mins while you mix the honey and lemon mixture on the side.

Step 3- Pour the lemon and honey mixture along with 4 cups of cold water into the pitcher.

Step 4- Chill for a couple hours till cold or if you're like me and cant wait then just pour it over some ice!

What is your favorite Starbucks drink?

 

Room Update | My New Closet!

 

I posted a whilleee back that I was on a mission to make my new bedroom something I had always envisioned it to be. One of my main goals was to keep my room looking as big as possible since it is pretty small. So I'm not having any darker colors in my room other than a couple of picture frames and maybe one or two decorative pieces that will work as accents. However, those pieces are soon to come along with a rug but for now its just my closet. :)

 

 

I went to Ikea to design my closet since I love Ikea and their meatballs. But, lets be honest who doesn't? I mean they're so good with the French fries and the gravy, and the cranberry sauce, oh my... okay, okay back to the closet.



So since my closet hole ( is that the right term? I don't think so.) is abnormal to the Ikea standard size I got a large and medium sized closet. The medium sized closet doesn't have hinged doors so I had to leave it exposed. I wanted the open closet to be something I could look forward to seeing when I walked into my room. So I placed a pull out drawer to put all my jewelry and knick knacks, and a rail for my prettier looking clothes along with four other drawers.

 

 

 

And then inside my bigger closet there's a shelf and another rail but I think I might add a third rail because, let's face it, I'm a girl who owns way too many clothes.

 

Everything's still a work in progress and I still have plenty of things to add and remove but so far I really like the direction that my room is headed in.

 

 

Nutella Filled Crinkle Cookies!

Over the weekend I made these amazingly delicious cookies from Laura Vitale and I had to show you guys! I made them literally three times this week and I don't regret one bit of it. However, on the second time I decided to fill them with Nutella cause' I was feeling extra funky. haha.
Since this isn't my recipe I just wanted to put in some tips if you do fill them with Nutella.

Tip 1- freeze little Nutella blobs for 15-20 minutes and take 4-5 of them out at a time. These little buggers melt quickly.

Tip 2- If you make too many Nutella blobs feel free to eat them or just throw them back into the jar. Don't worry, they'll melt like they were never frozen a day in their Nutella lives.

Tip 3- This one is super important and its more of a step to do rather than a tip to follow. Once you've rolled all the cookie dough around the Nutella blobs chill them again! This step makes them spread a lot less and look as if they didn't have the Nutella blob in them! 

The recipe from Laura Vitale-        
         http://www.laurainthekitchen.com/recipes/chocolate-crinkles/


 

           

 

        

 

 The one in the far right was chilled and spread less, which also kept the sugar in place.

Let me know if you do make them!

Someday Summary-Friday

Right now I am eating some dark chocolate covered raisins while I wait for my peppermint hot chocolate to cool down and for my mom to finish cooking so I can finally eat dinner. I'm such a little piggy.

I'm kind of depressed because it is coming close to the middle of January and that means that I have to take all my Christmas tree and decorations away. I kind of want to keep them until the middle of July. Okay, maybe not.

I got extremely bored today with nothing to do so what do I do. I do my makeup, take a bunch of webcam pictures, and then chase my dog around the backyard in the cold. Completely normal, I assure you.

And yes, the picture in the far right corner I am burping. Classy, I know.

While I was doing my makeup, I re-realized that I really love the Pomegranate lip pigment from Bite Beauty. I know I've said it before but today I was reminded of how creamy and thick and pigmented it is.

My mom also told me about Bite Beauty Lab on Prince Street. It's this cute little place where you can customize a lipstick to your skin tone and they will melt the colors together right in front of you! How cool is that? I really want to make an appointment with my mom as we both enjoy Bite lip products. Can you tell I am a little Bite obsessed?

What's your favorite lip brand?

 



Pretzel M&M Kisses

 

One of the weird traditions that I have for Christmas is that I always give a little treat along with their actual present. Last year I gave a personalized mason jar of hot cocoa, marshmallows, and chocolate chips and everyone loved it except for my dad who never drinks hot cocoa. Seriously its still in my cupboard. So, this year I made Pretzel M&M Kisses. I've seen them literally everywhere and I just had to make them.

 

The ingredients:

Pretzels

M&M's

Hershey Kisses

 

Step 1.) Preheat your oven to 200 degrees

Step 2.) Place the pretzel on a baking sheet and place an unwrapped Hershey kiss on top

Step 3.) Once the oven is 200 degrees place the pretzel kisses in the oven for 5-6 minutes.

Step 4.) Pull them out of the oven and place a single M&M on the warmed kiss.

Step 5.) Place them in the fridge/freezer until they harden.

 

So since I gave them away I did put them into little Christmas-y metal tins that I got from Michaels.