Easy Homemade Whipped Coffee Recipe

Have you ever heard of whipped coffee before? It's never even crossed my mind until recently. Whipped coffee been sweeping TikTok as the newest way to get your sugary caffeine fix. Since I'm obsessed with all things coffee, I was definitely intrigued. I watched tons of videos so that I could learn the best way to make whipped coffee, and I want to share it with you!

Peanut Butter Popcorn Recipe

Sometimes, I feel like my love for peanut butter is way deeper than most people's.  It's my go-to for any kind of decadent dessert.  Come to think of it, a couple of dollops on pretty much anything, and I'm a happy camper 😛  (hello, peanut butter BACON anyone??  Will save that nugget for another blog post...)

Coconut Rum Punch Recipe

Have you ever had a good rum punch? If not, consider this your introduction! I don't know about you, but I love coconut rum anything, and this is no exception! This cocktail is fruity, sweet, and delicious

Coconut rum punch is that it's a drink that's pretty obscure. But it shouldn't be! Honestly, for fruity tropical drink lovers, it's pretty much a holy grail, and you'll soon see why!

Watermelon Lemondrop Cocktail

I made these recently for a get-together with some friends, and they were a big hit.  Even the guys liked them :)  It's sweet and tart... a bit like a watermelon jolly rancher, but probably even more delicious.

Milk and Honey Recipe

When I received my awesome raw honey package last month, I got to asking myself what else I could do with all this delicious honey I had laying around.  Then the idea of milk and honey popped in my head.  It's a delicious-sounding phrase, you know?  It brings to mind all the pleasures there are out there in the world, right at your fingertips.

Lavender Lemon Iced Tea Recipe

I made this iced tea the other day, sort of by mistake.  It was meant to be lemonade, but I did not have enough lemons on hand!  So I took a look at what was in my cupboard, and made a quick decision to do iced tea instead.

Thai Iced Tea Recipe

There's this little Thai place on Bedford Avenue called Tai Thai.  It was there that I had my first Thai eating experience ever. With my meal, they served me a delicious orange drink, and thus my love for Thai iced tea was born.

It's a wonderful drink to serve in the the summers, and definitely for those of us with a sweet tooth :)

The recipe is super easy, as long as you can get your hands on some Thai tea.  I've seen other recipes that just use black tea leaves, but I'd say it's worth the extra bit of effort to find the Thai tea.  They roast it with yummy herbs to give it that special flavoring.

I got mine at the Chelsea Market in Manhattan, but if you don't have an Asian grocery store close by, you can always order online- it's inexpensive!





Important fashion side-note!!  As you are making the tea, do not wear your favorite silk shirt, expensive pants, etc.  There is food coloring in the tea.  It can stain your hands and counters temporarily orange, although it washed off easily for me.  It didn't seem to permanently stain, but better safe than sorry!


Recipe

6 cups boiling water
1 cup Thai tea
1/2 c sugar
3/4 cup half and half
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk

Directions

+ Add the water to your herbs, and let steep for about 5 minutes
+ Mix half and half and sweetened condensed milk in a separate bowl
+ Drain the herbs out with a strainer
+ Add the sugar to the hot tea
+ Refrigerate, or wait until cooled.  Then pour 3/4 cup of the tea into some tall glasses
+ Pour a little less than 1/4 cup of condensed milk/ half and half mixture over each tea


Enjoy!







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The Best Blueberry Muffin Recipe Ever

Blueberries are finally in season!  That means I get to dust off this amazing recipe and share it with you.

It's actually a nostalgic recipe for me... back when I was playing tons of shows, I'd make batches of these and take them on the road with me, to snack on during long car rides.  They were always satisfying, (sort of) healthy, and delicious.

And FYI, when I give something the title of "Best Ever," I don't play.  They're almost in a category all their own, because it's really like part muffin, part coffee cake.

Hope you like!!



Batter
3/4 cups wheat flour
3/4 cup white flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/3 cup almond milk
1 cup fresh blueberries


Topping
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, cubed
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon


Directions
+ Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
+ Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
+ Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder.
+ Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture.
+ Fold in blueberries.
+ Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way, and sprinkle liberally with crumb topping mixture.


To Make Crumb Topping
+ Mix together 1 cup sugar, 2/3 cup flour, 1/2 cup butter, and 3 teaspoons cinnamon.
+ Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.
+ Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.








:: FOLLOW ::

Drink Recipe: Classic Melon Ball

Vanilla Brown Sugar Body Scrub DIY

Girl Scout Cookie Drink Recipe

Soo... I'm a fruity, girly drink lover.. Yup. Despite my vast coolness in other areas of my life, I'm just not cool in this particular area. I'll just never be a whiskey-swillin', beer-worshippin' good-time-gal. Of course I'll drink beer or whiskey... but if I had a choice, I'd rather plunk down money for a drink that tastes good and looks pretty, thankyouverymuch.

But why should "girl drinks" be considered uncool anyway? Isn't that a bit sexist? Whatever. I'm here reclaiming the term here today, and they're totes cool, and you can pry the pineapple-laden margarita glass from my cold, dead hands.


Enter the girl scout cookie! Obviously, the idea is that it tastes like a thin mint. If this sounds appetizing to you, then just follow the simple directions below...

Combine the following ingredients in a tumbler with ice:

4 oz cream
2 oz peppermint schnapps
2 oz Irish cream
2 oz cream de cacao
2 oz Kahlua
1 oz vodka

Shake, and serve!

Makes 3-4 drinks




Some additional notes:

The amount of vodka you put into it is alterable, and up to your preferences. I realize the ratio isn't that big in my version, but see... I favored the deliciousness of the drink over the alcoholic content. So although I did want a little zing, I didn't want the zing to be messin' with my delicious chocolatey, creamy flavors.

Also for funsies, I made both rocks and straight up versions! I guess you could also make them blended, but I don't care too much for frosty drinks. I found the rocks to be most satisfying for my taste :)

For the martini glass rim, I just crushed some cookies in a ziplock bag, wet the rim of the glass with Kahlua, and dipped the rim in the crushed cookies. I used Keebler Grasshoppers, but I do prefer original thin mints.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Peppermint Cookie Recipe

Do you like chocolate? Do you like peppermint? If so, today's your lucky day! I remembered this recipe in JUNE, and have been patiently biding my time since then.


So this is another childhood recipe. I've already revealed a bit about my cookie-making past. But never really dug into the depth of my obsession with it :P There was one fall in my late tweens where I started baking cookies, and I just couldn't stop. Almost every day after school, I was in the kitchen mixing, creaming, and whipping ingredients into beautiful, delicious creations. It was a sort of therapy for me.

It finally got to the point where our little family just could not eat that many cookies anymore. So I started storing my uneaten batches in the freezer... bags upon bags of them. All different kinds. We eventually decided to use the stored cookies for the Christmas family dinner, when I would present my crowning achievement as a little budding baker... I put together a mountainous cookie platter to put all other cookie platters to shame. Seriously, that thing was HUGE.

Anyway, I was very fond of making things up as I went. And one day, I decided that plain sugar cookies were just so passe. So I decided to mix it up with some chocolate and peppermint, and the rest is history!



To make the cookies, I used a recipe from the Fanny Farmer cookbook-


First, preheat the oven to 325


Cookie Dough

- Cream 1/2 cup butter until light and fluffy- (except, use crisco! trust me...)
- Beat in 3/4 cup sugar
- Add
1 egg
1/2 Tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp. peppermint extract

- Beat thoroughly

- Add
1 Tbs cream or milk
1/3 cup cocoa (make sure to add this before the flour)
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 Tsp salt
1/4 Tsp baking powder


- Spoon the batter by tablespoon-fulls onto a greased cookie sheet, then flatten them with a spoon.

- Bake for 8 minutes


Glaze

- 1 cup confectioner's sugar
- 2 tablespoons of water
- 1/2 tsp peppermint extract (tip- it came out really peppermint-y, which I liked. But use less if you want a lesser peppermint effect.)

You want to make sure the glaze is really gloopy, so you have more control when spreading it over the cookies. If done properly, it will also have enough to "catch" the crushed candy when you sprinkle it on top, directly after you glaze it.

Also, make sure the cookies cool off a bit before you glaze them, so that it doesn't run everywhere.

To top it all off, I crushed some starlight mints with the bottom of a mug, and sprinkled it on directly after I glazed the cookie.


Enjoy!!

Recipe- Quinoa Sweet Potato Pies

Okayy, so these are really more like patties than pies... but 'pies' just sounds cuter :) And of course, there's totally a story behind me making them...


As you might know, I took a trip earlier in the fall with my musical co-conspiritor Saul to track vocals, guitars, and other stuffs for my exciting and newest yet-to-be-titled EP. We stayed in some cabins owned by family friends Jim and Doreen. We each had our very own cabin for the week!

One night, Saul & I were rumbling around in my kitchen, trying to figure out something for dinner. This was surprisingly hard... because we're both serial snackers and bought mostly granola, nuts, eggs, cereal and other doo-dads. We didn't really get enough supplies to make real meals every night. We were about to cobble together some god-knows-what, when Doreen popped over and saved the day with some extra food she had made- sweet potato/ quinoa and greens!! She must've been reading our minds.

I've been meaning to try my hand at it since I got back, and finally got the chance this weekend. So here's what I came up with...

You need:
1 large sweet potato
1 cup quinoa
1 tbs butter
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 shakes cayenne pepper

You need to:
- Prepare the quinoa, and sweet potato (I baked mine.) Then mash them together in a big bowl. Add the butter, salt, garlic powder, bread crumbs & cayenne pepper.

- Form into patties about 3-inches across. You can make them as big or small as you want, but I ended up liking the thinner, smaller ones better :)

- Fry over medium heat in butter, or another cooking oil of your choice.

- Do each side about 3-4 minutes each side, or until it is slightly browned.


Mine ended up turning out sort of smushy. Next time, I'll add more quinoa and bread crumbs. They were still SO magnificently delicious though. And healthy!

Best Vietnamese Iced Coffee Recipe!

I first heard of Vietnamese iced coffee last spring, when I was working at Cyber PR. It was my favorite thing in the world at the time, and I quickly fell into a fever of obsession. The addictive power is in the sweetened condensed milk, paired with the bitterness of very strong brewed coffee or espresso. I'm not around Park Slope all that much anymore. But I missed this yummalicious beverage so much, that I finally got around to making it at home.

Note- I did not make this recipe it the traditional way. If you want to make it traditionally, you will need a little metal filter like this one. You will have to make each cup of coffee by hand, as you slowly watch the filter drip, drip, drip ... That sounds like a swell time and all, but I wanted to make several cups at once, that I could store in my fridge and enjoy each morning. So I tried this easier method :)


Ingredients
12 TBS of coarse-ground coffee (bold) or espresso beans
6 cups of water
1 can sweetened condensed milk


I boiled the ground beans in the water for 10 minutes- then let them steep for another 10 minutes. Results may vary depending on the type of coffee you use. The key is, you want the coffee to be really bitter. That condensed milk is very sweet, and needs to be counteracted. I'm telling you... don't be afraid to go beyond your personal threshold of bitterness!

After the boiling was done, I strained the fresh coffee through a sieve, right into a bowl which contained the whole can of sweetened condensed milk.


Stir. Ice. Serve.

Depending on how sweet you like it, you may even want to think about brewing extra coffee. I like it pretty sweet though :)


Makes about 7-8 cups of delicious iced coffee. xx