Tropical Quinoa Lettuce Wraps with Chicken

We decided to try our hand at some more summer recipes this weekend. The original recipe for tropical quinoa lettuce wraps can be found here but we added some minor tweaks to it such as adding some baked chicken.

Here is how ours went (makes 8-10 wraps): 

Tropical Quinoa and Wrap: 

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup chicken broth 

2 avocados (diced)

2 mexican mangoes (diced)

1 head iceberg lettuce (as opposed to butter lettuce, because butter lettuce is more expensive)

Quinoa Dressing: 

Juice of 2 limes

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp cider vinegar (as opposed to red wine vinegar)

honey to taste 

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sesame oil 

Chicken: 

3-4 chicken breasts

onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, pepper, rosemary and oregano

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350-400 degrees then simmer quinoa and chicken broth in medium heat for 10-15 minutes until quinoa is cooked. Once quinoa is cooked, fluff with a fork and let it cool. 

2. Evenly coat the chicken breasts with onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, pepper, rosemary and oregano (or whatever seasoning and herbs you have will do). Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes or until chicken is not pink inside.

3. Combine all the ingredients for the dressing in a separate bowl and mix. Once the quinoa cools to room temperature, combine it with the diced avocado and mangoes. 

You should get something that looks like this. 

4. Pour half the dressing in the quinoa + fruit mixture and mix. Then pour the other half and mix again, making sure that the mixture does not get too liquid-y.

5. Chop off the bottom of the iceberg lettuce head and carefully wash and peel lettuce. One head might make about 10-15 wraps. 

6. Once the chicken finishes baking, remove and slice into small strips.

The resulting three components to the lettuce wraps: iceberg lettuce head peeled and washed + baked chicken strips + tropical quinoa mixture. 

Then take a lettuce leaf, take a scoop of the delicious quinoa mixture and place as much chicken as you want on top. Roll/wrap up the lettuce around its filling and the lettuce wrap is ready to eat! These wraps will take an estimated 30-45 minutes to make, accounting for multitasking and waiting for the chicken to bake, and have now received the hammer and potato seal of approval. Enjoy! 

Voila! Tropical Quinoa Lettuce Wraps with Baked Chicken

Clean eating: asian chicken salad and green juice

A lot of yoga advocates are into healthy regimes and juice cleanses and all that wonderful good stuff. We, unfortunately, are not, just because sometimes grease and lots of sugar is great--even if it kind of makes you feel gross after. 

We're hoping occasional clean eating gives us brownie points for trying to be healthy. We kind of got excited on a trip to the produce shop after work because all the summer fruits were lined up in the stands so the menu called for a healthy and clean meal for dinner - salad and fresh juice!

I (potato) actually have a centrifugal juicer -- because I'm cheap and you can get them at amazon for about $70 dollars as opposed to a $400 masticator, the equivalent of the BMW for juicers. The good? It's fast and easy and I spend less time chopping things up. The bad? I can't store my juice overnight and I get slightly less yield. Today's juicy recipe is a basic (and by basic, we mean the opposite of acidic) green juice with the following veggies/fruits: 

1 granny smith apple

1/3 large cucumber

2 stalks of kale 

2 celery stems

NOTE: A kale-cucumber-celery combination is more on the savoury side with a basic taste (if that's ever a term). If you're more of a sweet juice fan, we suggest adding 1 more apple.

Here is the result. 

healthy (for real this time) green juice. Some people might think it's gross but it's surprisingly refreshing mind you...

The next part of this meal consisted of an asian chicken salad. Here it goes:

Dressing:

1 can mandarin oranges (oops. maybe not all fresh ingredients)

1 tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp vinegar

1/4 tsp sugar (big fan of sour things. sweeten more if you like)

1 pinch of pepper

NOTE: We left a bit of the syrup of the mandarin oranges in the mix while we drained most of it out. How much you keep depends on how sweet you like your dressing. 

Chicken breast: 

*** Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. Lightly coat a pan with oil (olive or canola) and pan fry until cooked inside (where it's white and not pink). Dice cooked chicken breast. 

Finally, we used mixed greens and dumped everything together. 

Voila! Asian chicken salad!

Here is the final product! Clean eating for a weeknight dinner!

Oatmeal Smores Bars

Hammer does a lot of work with children, and one of her past endevaours involved running an after school program for young girls at an intramural school. The after school program culminated into a community service project. The girls decided they wanted to donate money to the BCSPCA. For those of you who are not familiar with the non-profit, the SPCA is the Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Each year the BC SPCA rescues and saves abused pets from the cruelty of their owners, whilst trying to provide them with a better life through advocating animal adoption.

The girls decided they wanted to fundraise for this cause, and they settled on the idea of doing a bake sale after school one day. As part of Hammer's contribution, she chose to make some oatmeal smores bars to bring to the bake sale. The original recipe called for a graham cracker crust, but we decided to use oatmeal instead to add a healthy twist. Here's how they turned out:

Oatmeal Smores Bars

Oatmeal Smores Bar Recipe:

3/4-1 cup butter (1 cup if you feel the base is too dry)

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups of oats

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips (we used semi-sweet, but you could use milk, dark or even white chocolate!)

3-4 cups mini marshmallows

1) Cream butter and sugar together

2) In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients

3) Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar and mix well

4) In a 9X13 pan, spread the oat crust into the pan but make sure to separate 1 cup extra

5) After forming the crust, spread the chocolate chips followed by the mini marshmallows

6) Sprinkle the 1 cup of oat mixture you separated on top of the marshmallows

7) Bake at 325F for 18-20 minutes

Yes, the answer is yes. The pan is supposed to be filled with chocolate and marshmallows to the point that it looks like there is not a centimeter covered.

The bars turned out to be a favorite at the bake sale and we sold out within an hour! These are easy to make, and sure to please any child...and adult. 

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

What do you do with overripe bananas? Make banana bread of course!! The household of Hammer, is big on bananas so they always have bananas. But occasionally, they buy one too many and this is the result:

Overripe bananas! (photo not ours)

Overripe bananas are the best to use in baking, because of their natural sweetness. So, when your bananas are neglected for a while and turn into this, don't throw them out! After scouring pinterest we landed on this recipe. Try this incredibly easy banana bread recipe! This is the easiest banana bread you will ever make! Not to mention it's delicious! Fuss free, delicious and moist banana bread, what more could you ask for?

Here's the recipe:

Mix together in a bowl:
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda

Mix together in another bowl:
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil (we used vegetable oil)
1 cup sugar
2 overripe mashed bananas
1/4 cup chocolate chips (you can also use crushed walnuts or dried fruit if you prefer)

Here's how the batter looks once everything is mixed

Combine the wet and dry ingredients and bake at 350F for 1 hour, or 30 minutes for muffins. This took exactly an hour in our oven! But like we say, when in doubt use the trusty ol' toothpick test! You don't want to overbake the banana bread as it will become dry. It's better to set your oven to 50 minutes, and then monitor it from then on because every oven is different. Better safe than sorry! Dry banana bread is not nice.

Fresh out of the oven after an hour (it smells amazing!)

And here's the final product:

We secretly added more chocolate chips once it was in the oven, because we decided 1/4 a cup was not enough! What did we tell ya, we're chocolate fiends!!

Hammer and Potato seal of approval.

Recipe from: www.movitabeaucoup.com

Sloppy Joes Lunch

Hurray to simple 20 minute meals with whatever you can find in your kitchen! Here's what we did for some sloppy joe's

Makes enough for 4+ servings

2 whole wheat kaiser rolls sliced in half (you can use any kind of roll bread)
1 lb ground meat
3 cloves garlic
1 small-medium onion finely chopped
1 TBSP olive oil (just enough to thinly cover a frying pan)
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup bbq sauce (or teriyaki sauce can be a substitute)
5 TBSP worcestershire sauce
1 pinch of sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of pepper
Kraft 4 cheese blend (the shredded kind, although any cheese will do)

Instructions:

1. mince the garlic and chop the onions. Sautee with olive oil in a frying pan until onions turn golden brown
2. Add the ground beef and continue to heat until meat is cooked.
3. Add some salt, sugar and pepper to the mix. Once the meat is cooked, add the tomato sauce + bbq sauce
4. Slice kaiser rolls in half. Put some of the juicy meat mixture on top of the half roll and place as much cheese as you want on top. Bake in toaster oven (350 degrees celsius) for 5-10 minutes or until cheese melts and bread becomes slightly crunchy.

TADA! sloppy joes!

For added goodness, we've decided to use the half bag of Mrs. Vickies original potato chips on the side instead of having to deal with french fries. There were also no potatoes in the kitchen and well, might as well finish the chips.

Sloppy joe lunch. WARNING: not diet or healthy eating friendly. Unless you count the kaiser roll being whole wheat. or the meat as protein. or the chips as kettle cooked. Okay, let's pretend it's healthy... 

Roasted Tomato Soup with Crab Rangoon and Chocolate Mousse

Today's kitchen adventure menu was developed with the intention of making life simple, as last week's kitchen adventure deemed labour intensive. We decided we would make tomato soup with crap crab rangoon. This is a picture of what crab rangoon looked like in the recipe we found: 

crab rangoon mmm...

This is what it looked like after a mini disaster: 

Crap rangoon 

WHAT WENT WRONG!? Well, first off, we forgot to defrost the wonton wrappers so we decided to defrost them in the microwave... worst decision of our cooking careers. Lesson learned... PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE. Had we waited for the wrappers to defrost by themselves instead of popping them in the microwave, we would have saved ourselves a world of headaches and frustration.

The result of impatience.... Peeling one of these is like peeling a price sticker off a pair of shoes.... while the shoe disintegrates. 

The finished product

The recipe we found online was all in ounces, so we decided to just eyeball everything. Here are the amounts we roughly used:

1 pack of crab sticks (imitation crab) - probably 14 sticks
1/4 a block of cream cheese
Seasoning to taste (we used some worscestershire sauce, garlic powder, salt and pepper)

Mix everything together (we used our hands) and then scoop into your wonton wrappers, and bake at 425F for 8-10 minutes. Don't be impatient like us and decide to microwave the wonton wrappers!

For our main dish, we decided to make tomato soup. Tomato soup is a favorite of ours, and when it is on the menu we will almost always order it therefore we decided to give it a go. Here is the recipe we used:

800g cherry tomatoes
4 large tomatoes
4 cloves garlic
2 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup of sour cream
Touch of heavy cream
Seasoning (we used salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, garlic powder, dried basil)

Start off by roughly chopping the tomatoes and roasting them at 395F for 15-20 minutes. The recipe called for the oven temperature to be at 200C. Potato mistakenly missed the celsius and put it at 200F. After around 15 minutes, we noticed the tomatoes didn't look any different from when they went in. So after looking at the recipe more closely we realized the temperature was in celsius and we adjusted the temperature accordingly. This is also why it took us twice as long to make the tomato soup!

While the tomatoes are roasting, in a skillet cook your garlic with some olive oil. Once the tomatoes are out of the oven, pop them into a blender or food processor and liquify them. Once they have liquified, pour them into a soup pot and mix with the chicken stock. Simmer for 15 minutes, and then add the sour cream. Once the sour cream has been added, season to taste and add a touch of heavy cream to finish it off. Lastly, you can add some sugar if you find the soup too sour. We added about a spoon.

Finished product

The soup recipe turned out really good, but a little on the watery side for our tastes. We're used to the nice chunky kind they serve at restaurants. So when we make this in the future, we will probably add less chicken stock. But if you like your soup less chunky, then two cups is just right for you.

For dessert we decided on something no bake and since we are chocolate fiends, we decided on chocolate mousse. Here's the recipe we used:

1.5 cups of bittersweet chocolate
7 egg yolks
6 egg whites
4 TBSP sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 pinch of salt

Start by melting your chocolate on a double broiler, and once smooth and velvety set aside to cool. In the meantime, whip your cream till it is medium stiffpeak. Then add the sugar and vanilla. Set the whip cream aside, and whip your egg whites till it is also medium stiffpeak. Then fold the melted chocolate into the egg whites, and once everything is well mixed, fold in the remaining whip cream. Scoop into ramekins or fancy glasses and chill for as long as you'd like. We also decided on this recipe because it only called for a chill time of one hour.


Some changes we would recommend for this recipe, is using dark chocolate, unless you are a fan of sweet mousses and really melting the chocolate longer so that the final product is smoother with less grainy consistency.

Chocolate mousse chilling in the fridge

Here is our final product. Hammer's family didn't seem to mind the crap rangoon so we give it a B-. Tomato soup an A- and the chocolate mousse gets a B+.

Not a giant disaster after all! 

Summer Juice Recipe: Apple, Pear, Strawberry and Blueberry Juice

When it's nice, hot and sunny out we crave for something refreshing. What better way to enjoy the sunshine than with a nice cup of fresh juice? This juicing recipe is not only sweet and refreshing but also really easy to make! The recipe I am about to share is good for 5-6 glasses (depending on how much your juicer yields). Here are the fruits you will need:

3 Red Delicious Apples, 2 Asian Pears, 1 container of Strawberries and 1 container of blueberries

Once all your fruits have been washed and cut, go ahead and begin the juicing process! For anyone out there interested in finding out more about juicers, the main thing you need to know is that there are two types of juicers: centrifugal juicers and masticating juicers. Here's a quick comparison and breakdown of the two:

Centrifugal juicers:
+ Fast and efficient because of high powered motor
+ Good with hard fruits and veggies (ie: apples, carrots, beets etc.)
+ Cheap
+ Often have big fruit/veggie chutes (minimal prep and cutting of fruits and veggies)
- Bad with soft fruits (ie: berries, melon, etc.)
- Bad with greens (often very little yield)
- Oxidizes the juice because of its high RPM (rotations per minute)
- Juices cannot be stored and must be drank right away because of the high oxidation
- Less juice yield
- Very loud and noisy

Masticating juicers:
+ Good with almost all fruits and veggies including greens and softer fruits
+ More juice yield because of slow motor that allows the juicer to squeeze all the juice out
+ Quiet
+ Does not oxidize the juice due to low RPM
+ Can store juice for up to 36 hours after it is made (I have personally stored them for up to a week, and they still taste amazing)
- Slower and less efficient
- Often have small fruit/veggie chutes (more prep time and cutting required)
- Expensive

Choosing a juicer is very complicated, and you need to find the right type to suit your needs. Centrifugal juicers are good for those who are constantly on the go, and just want something quick and easy to make with no fuss. But for those looking to spend a bit more time juicing, with some more varied fruits and veggies a masticating juicer is the better choice. I (Hammer) personally have a masticating juicer (Omega VRT350HD) and think it is amazing. But what sold me on the idea of a masticating juicer is knowing I would be able to store my juices. I like the idea of spending an hour making a huge batch and not having to worry about juice for the rest of the week. I also like the fact that I can juice almost anything (nuts included for nut milk!!) so my juices are always different.

The Omega VRT350 in action

Pulp at the end of juicing

How do you judge how good a juicer is? By how dry the pulp is at the end of juicing! When the pulp is dry it means the juicer did a good job of getting all the juice out. Contrarily, if it's quite wet then the juicer wasn't as efficient and you didn't get the most out of your fruits and veggies.

Finished product

 The colour of the juice is actually a lot brighter than what's pictured. The lighting was bad, so the color suffered but in reality it's more of a brighter pinkish color.

Next time it's hot and sunny where you're at, and you're craving for something refreshing, try this juice recipe out! You won't be disappointed!

Have a question about juicing? Send us a message!

Spongebob and the Picnic Feast Part 2: MEAT

We put the meat on the barbie! Here is a list of all of our lovely meat/fish dishes- outdoor cooking friendly. 

Salmon!

What better way to represent the west coast with some salmon. Salmon fillet wrapped with aluminum foil and seasoned with garlic + ginger + salt + pepper among other seasoning  and cooked on the grill. You can see the grilled paneer next to it. It is advisable to bring a little butter if you plan to grill paneer, particularly because it got stuck to the grills. With a little ingenuity, this was solved by placing the paneer between two chopsticks, like so (see figure below)

Macgyver it up so that no paneer will be wasted! 

Barbecue needs a few burgers too. Nothing too fancy. Just some big juicy meat patties placed on the grill. Toasted buns, non-fat cheese...

Food on the grill... 

And maybe I should mention barbecue ribs. Yes. A nice thick slab of juicy barbecued ribs, marinated in bbq sauce for a couple of hours and on the grill for 10-15 minutes. Perfect enough for the meat to fall off the bones. Handle with care. 

bbq. ribs, burger patties, corn on the side. 

kiss the cook. Our professional griller and Claire (who made the ribs and asian slaw. She makes her own bread too, so we regard her with respect.) 

Given that we stayed long enough to catch the 10pm sunset, and that we needed to burn off at least part of all that food, we did have a short park/beach yoga session. Here are a couple of pictures of us around a giant log. We tried to be artistic.. tried... to..be..artistic..

Hammer and hanuman at the log

Potato doing firefly on the log. 

That concludes all the home cooked dishes taken to the picnic feast at the beach/park. We already did the groceries for this week's kitchen adventure, so stay tuned! 

Spongebob and a Picnic Feast Part 1: vegetarian

Introducing special guest: SPONGEBOB! 

spongebob is vegetarian. 

The reason why we made the oreo truffle stuffed cupcakes was because we planned to have a picnic the day after. We feel so lucky to have friends that can bring stuff to the table (literally) so in a two-part blog entry, we're going to break down what everyone brought to the table during our picnic feast at Jericho beach/park. 

Paneer. because spongebob is vegetarian... 

To start off, our friend, spongebob decided he would bring Paneer to the bbq. To be honest, we didn't even know what that was until last week. Paneer is type of cheese that originated from India. Spongebob was able to get some at the local supermarket and made his own blend of seasoning by adding some pre-made sauce with some seasoning. He also made some sauce out of plain yogurt, roasted garlic (via propane grill) and cumin as shown below. 

is yummier than it looks! i promise you! 

Next we had a salad appetizer. Credits to Claire for thinking of Asian Coleslaw! Yellow peppers + cabbage + shredded carrots + parsley for the veggies, rice wine + honey + peanut butter for the dressing. 

some asian slaw. we needed some healthy vegetables on top of the rest of the feast... 

Finally, spongebob also made some dessert. Some salted caramel, homemade ice cream went pretty well with oreo truffle stuffed cupcakes. Recipe remains secret though. 

homemade salted caramel ice cream. ya digg? 

But in the world of hammer and potato, one cannot really have a barbeque/picnic without any MEAT. You can now view part 2  of our picnic feast featuring culinary creations that are meat-based. Vegetarians, you have been warned.

The Parlour

We wanted pizza, so we got pizza. Introducing - The Parlour. 

The Parlour is a relatively new establishment, specializing in pizza. We must've been 8 people sharing 7 different pizzas, with plenty of leftovers after, meaning maybe 8 giant pizzas were a bit much. Here are some of the dishes we tried:

salmon tartar: salmon tartar with avocado, garnished with cilantro and served with what I'm guessing is toasted baguette

Prosecco: Haven't found many places in Vancouver that sell prosecco by the glass so this is a treat. Prosecco is a bubbly wine, and well, a cheap version of champagne--classy.

Bottle of Gehringer Riesling

The wake n bake pizza: Tomato, prosciutto, easy egg, basil, mozzarella. Fresh ingredients for a light but flavourful taste. 

Pizza prices are $17 CAD, mostly to share if you don't have a monstrous appetite. Other favorite pizzas included the Yaletown (albacore tuna, red onion , green onion, avocado, cilantro, spicy aioli) and The Standard (pepperoni, button mushroom, red pepper, onion, bacon, olive, mozzarella)--both are considered some of their best sellers. No qualms there. 

Word on the street is their white wine sangria is good too. Actually, take it from us-- their white wine sangria is pretty good.

Hapa Izakaya

An Izakaya is a Japanese tavern, primarily drinking places that serve small dishes for snacking. Hapa Izakaya's hapa hour starts at 5pm where a select number of dishes become cheaper than usual (50-70% off). We were a bit late for hapa hour (this week, so technically we arrived during sad hour). Nonetheless, here's what ended up on the table... 

Ebi Mayo: deep fried prawns coated with japanese spicy mayo

Tuna salsa dip: albacore tuna, avocado, seasoned with nori and taken with plantain chips

Ishiyaki (stone grill) bowls: on the left is the mushroom ishiyaki and to the right is spicy pork ishiyaki

Hapa Izakaya has a good selection of Sake, amongst other drinks. Moonlight pearl is my personal favorite which has less of a kick than Gekkeikan, the sake they serve if you just ask for "sake". Hapa Izakaya also has a seasonal menu that periodically changes several times a year on top of the usual hot/cold tapa favorites. I am happy to say that the Matcha Creme Brulee is a constant thing on the dessert menu, and a must try for all you matcha sweets fans out there. 

Full Vashistasana Park Adventure

One of our other favorite sunny day activities (patio eating/drinking not included) is going to the park and playing around with yoga poses and sequences we don't normally practice during class. The park is also a safe environment to try out new things because the grass is soft and the area is big enough to not have to worry about knocking over the person next to you.

This month marks our three year anniversary as yoga practitioners. Sometimes it's hard to believe we could barely balance long enough on one leg or hold a lunge at the start of our practice. Three years of consistent practice eventually evolved into this... 

full vashistasana...

occasional faceplanting almost mandatory before learning an arm balance. This was taken when we were learning how to hold koundinyasana. Grass is tasty---not really. 

sundial pose- taken with an iphone that was propped onto a bag, set on timer, and had one of us running into the pose before the camera went off. Took only a thousand tries. We try to make mundane tasks sound adventurous... 

And continues to evolve-- one faceplant at a time. 

To celebrate our three year anniversary, we submitted the first photo to yogify,the iOS yoga app created by EA to take the yoga practice anywhere, just for kicks. Hopefully this falls under the category of "inspiring". 

Details about the contest can be found here. Off to practice on a nice sunny day here! Until the next adventure! 

Oreo Truffle Stuffed Cupcakes.......and Salad.

For this weeks kitchen adventure we decided to experiment with a cupcake idea that's been up in the air for a while now - oreo stuffed cupcakes. It's one of those things that sound brilliant, but you never get around to actually doing. This one's been on our list for a year now, and I'm happy to say we finally got to it. After looking at a bunch of recipes on pinterest, we finally found one to our liking. The recipe varied, as it called for stuffed oreo truffles, which added a nice twist.

The ingredients

Oreo Truffles
1 pack of Oreos
2/3 block of cream cheese
4 tablespoons of vanilla frosting

Start by crushing all the oreos until they're fine. We don't have a food processor so we used a blender. After crushing your oreos, mix in the rest of the ingredients. We also didn't want to go through the trouble of making 4 tablespoons of vanilla frosting, so we just used the pink buttercream frosting out of the can that you see pictured above. The frosting isn't really necessary for the truffles, it just adds a bit of sweetness. You could get away by adding a little bit of sugar, or maybe some cream if the truffles are too dry.

                We love to get our hands dirty so we mixed it all the good ol' fashioned way

After mixing everything, roll them into little balls. Bigger if you like em balls big.

This is how ours came out

Cupcakes

3/4 cup softened butter
3 large eggs
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups milk

Using a mixer cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, making sure each is well incorporated followed by the vanilla extract. In another mixing bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together. Add half the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix. After the first half has been well mixed into the batter, at the second half. Lastly, add the milk.

This is how the batter should look once done

Now... if you have reached this part of the blog, congratulations. If you were somehow able to restrain yourself from eating all those deliciously rich and sinful oreo truffles, give yourself a pat on the back.

Line your cupcake tin, and fill each liner 1/4 full with batter then add the truffle in the center. Then add just enough batter to cover the truffles.

Ready to go in the oven!

Make sure you preheated your oven to 350 beforehand, because we forgot to and had to wait around before we could pop the cupcakes in. The cupcakes should be in the oven for 17-20 minutes. Ours took 18 minutes. When in doubt, rely on the trusty ol' tooth pick test.

Fresh baked cupcakes coming out of the oven!

Oreo Buttercream
3/4 cup softened butter
1/3 block cream cheese
4 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup crushed oreos (leftover from truffles)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons heavy cream

For the frosting, simply cream together the butter and cream cheese and then add the powdered sugar one cup at a time until everything is well mixed together and you end up with a very fluffy frosting. Add the vanilla extract and the heavy cream. Add more or less cream depending on your desired frosting consistency. Lastly, mix the powdered oreos in.

Now here's where things get interesting... When we got to the last step (adding the powdered oreos) we realized we didn't have enough. As we had already washed the blender beforehand, we decided to be lazy and just put the oreos in a ziplock bag and crush it by hand. As a result, we ended up with some chunkier pieces in our frosting which we didn't think was a big deal...WRONG. When we went to pipe our icing, we quickly realized the chunks were getting stuck and blocking frosting from coming out of the piping tip and heres what we ended up with:

Piping disaster

After a few attempts of trying to unclog and "save" the piping bag and frosting, we gave up and decided to just use a spatula to place the frosting. It definitely took longer, but what can ya say... we had to improvise. After all, it wouldn't be much of a kitchen adventure if something didn't go wrong!

After baking the cupcakes, we began to make dinner. Knowing that dessert would be rich, sweet and luxurious we decided on a light dinner: salad. After the piping disaster, we were glad to be making an "easy" dinner. We tossed some spinach, strawberries, goat cheese, chicken breast and balsamic vinaigrette together. We seasoned the chicken breast with salt, pepper, garlic powder, rosemary, parmesan and herbs and tossed it in the oven (400F) for 20-30 minutes turning half way through.

Our final meal

Oreo Truffle Stuffed Cupcakes

The cupcakes were beyond delicious, and officially have the Hammer and Potato seal of approval! Try this recipe out and see for yourself!

Kitchen Adventure: SUCCESS

Recipe from: www.kailleyskitchen.com