All Hail the Baked Goods Empire

hardboiled-arbiter:

Careful steps on the sidewalk pavement echoed down the busy street, alive with the steady thrum of car engines and chatty, busy people.

It was a sweltering, Saturday evening, and as one of the top Sleuths in the city, you’d been assigned a riveting case involving the kidnapping of a top businessman’s daughter. No biggie, You thought to yourself, feet shuffling on the cement. It’s not like if I can’t solve this my career will be over. No way.

Except, you know, if you couldn’t find her kidnappers and bring her back home safe and sound you were pretty much fucked. Yeah. That was something you wanted to think about for sure. Definitely.

You retrieve a worn carton of cigarettes from your coat pocket, slipping one out of the package and igniting it with an equally worn lighter. Tilting your not so fancy, trusty white hat to reflect the rays of oncoming traffic, it’s nearly blown off your head from a gust of wind that seems to come from an alleyway behind you.

That… was pretty odd. Not like anything you’d experienced; for a while, anyway. You had a bad habit of being around when the strangest of shit went down sometimes, and your weird shit senses were tingling like none other.

Casually striding down the alleyway, you broke into a sprint once you figured you were out of the public eye, nearly tripping over a few sacks of garbage and a kid.

With how quickly you freeze at the thought, you nearly fall forward.

You twist around immediately, head jerking and cigarette flying. She looks totally out of it.

“You alright, kid?” You ask, kneeling and extending your hand to her.

You were preparing yourself to slowly comprehend what just happened to you when a sudden flash of white sprints past you and practically blows your skirt tightly against your legs. Although you couldn’t tell for sure, you were halfway positive a puzzled look was plastered onto your features.

Someone was asking if you were alright, but you couldn’t quite register it. It was sort of like one of those situations where you heard it, but you didn’t hear it. You didn’t grace the speaker with acknowledgement quite yet, but you finally understood his question. Were you alright?

You were pretty convinced you were knocked out and having a crazy dream. Or dead. One of the two. The thought makes you squint slightly.

“Oh, I’m fine!” you finally respond, looking slowly towards the only other individual in this nasty alleyway, “I’m just a lit….tle….lost…”

Your sentence practically breaks up the moment you notice who it was that was talking to you. Your voice was still enunciating the ‘s’ in ‘lost’ when it sunk in.

This was Problem Sleuth.

The Problem Sleuth.

The once-believed-to-be-fictional detective you idolized since the first comic adventure of him came out. The hardboiled, gun-but-also-a-key-slinging, getting-stuck-in-his-office-because-he-had-a-bust-of-Ben-Stiller-for-some-reason-blocking-his-door Problem Sleuth. Your heart decided to cut it quits for a second there, and you were confident you were going to pass out.

Obviously you’re dead. It’s the only possible explanation. You are having a fantastic afterlife experience.

Oh, you hope it never ends.

You force yourself to stop gawking at him enough to notice his hand was sticking out towards you. Not entirely sure what this gesture was meant to mean, you dumbly take his hand and shake it. Instead of a look of awe, you take in a deep breath through your nose and knit your eyebrows as your lips purse. Gotta look more professional.

It isn’t working.

exquisitely-delicious:

Twix Cheesecakes

makes 12 cheesecakes

Crust
1/2 package Oreos (20 Oreos)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

Cheesecake Batter
1 pound cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup sour cream
12 mini Twix bars, chopped into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F.

In a food processor, grind up the Oreos into fine crumbs. Put the crumbs into a large bowl and add in the sugar. Mix to combine. Then pour in the melted butter and mix to coat all of the crumbs with butter.

Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners. Scoop a Tablespoon of the cookie crumbs into each cupcake liner. Using your hand, press the crumbs down firmly. Set the cupcake pan aside while you work the cheesecake filling.
(Sometimes I have some cookie crumb mixture left over. So if you do too, don’t worry.)

In a bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix the cream cheese until smooth on medium low speed, about 3 minutes. With the mixer on medium low speed, add in the sugar and mix to combine. Then add in the vanilla extract and mix. Slowly pour in the lightly beaten eggs and mix until the eggs are incorporated. Add in the sour cream and combine.
Chop the mini Twix bars into small pieces. Add them into the cheesecake batter and gently fold them in.

Using an ice cream scooper, scoop the cheesecake batter into each cupcake liner. Bake the cheesecakes at 275 degrees F for 30 minutes. Chill the cheesecakes overnight in the refrigerator. Then enjoy!

Leaves fell, one by one, in the most boring and repetitive pattern one could imagine. Red, orange, yellow, orange, red. It was almost like nature was toying with the bored young lady gazing out of her window.

Gosh darnit, askbox!

I was tussling with Bro! I have to win this! >:(

2ociiallyawkward2ollux started following you

Hello, Mister Gray Fellow! Nice to meet you!

missdavestrider started following you

grapejamwithstyle started following you

paststrider started following you

Hello there all you swell people! B) I will leave my silly shades on for you!

Delicious bite size pretzel rolls

coraaaline:

I always seem to have a hankering for pretzels. I’ve finally found a simple recipe (from Delectably Mine) and made some the other day. I took it to a work party and it was a huge hit.

I made some changes from her recipe so I’ve listed what I used and what steps I took.

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup warm water

2 tablespoons warm milk

1 package of instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoon)

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoon melted butter

4 cups flour

kosher or pretzel salt

stockpot of cold water

1/2 cup baking soda

Kitchen Supplies

Oven

Baking sheet

Parchment paper

Stockpot

Measuring cups (for dry & liquid ingredients)

Saran/Plastic wrap

Slotted spoon

Steps:

In a microwaveable bowl, melt the butter (45 seconds) & warm the milk and water (45 secs - 1 min)

Combine the butter, milk, water, and brown sugar until sugar has dissolved

In a large bowl mix the flour and yeast together

Pour the liquid ingredients into flour/yeast mix.

Knead into a nice, firm dough ball

Roll out dough ball onto a lightly floured table. I covered my counter with saran/plastic wrap and rolled out the dough ball into a log. I made two logs since my surface wasn’t big enough.

Cut each log into 7 even pieces. Cut those pieces in half

Cover dough with a wet paper towel or cloth. Let the dough rest for 10 mins.

Stretch dough and form knots or a roll. Leave about 1 inch between the pretzels as the dough will expand. Cover lightly with oiled saran/plastic wrap. Let dough rest for 30 minutes

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper

In stockpot, boil water and add baking soda.

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Drop rolls into water (I did 3 at a time), boil for about 25 seconds, turning once. Remove with slotted spoon. Hold to drain water. Place on parchment paper. Repeat with remaining rolls.

Lightly sprinkle salt on rolls.

Bake rolls until brown all over. I put them in for about 12-15 minutes.

Remove from oven. Let the rolls rest on baking sheet for 5 minutes. Transfer to rack for further cooling.

Note: In DM’s recipe, she bakes bigger rolls and bakes two sheets at once. Since my oven only has one rack, I made the rolls smaller and used only one sheet.

I eyeball the yield amount. The first batch I made had about 25 and the second batch had 31.

Flour Note: The first time I used all-purpose flour for the entire recipe. The second was 1 cup wheat flour, 3 cups all purpose. The second batch came out more like bread while the 4 cups all purpose flour had more of a “pretzel” feel to it.