Lemon Brownies?!?

This recipe was originally found on Pinterest as "Lemon Brownies." I got the recipe from Bakerella, and I think when I found it it was also called Lemon Brownies but since then she's changed the title to Lemony Lemonies... I'm guessing she also had a problem with them being called brownies. I get it, since they're cake-like things that you eat as bars... but... doesn't hearing "lemon brownies" make you question the recipe? Anyway, I decided to make these because my friend Kenzi made them, only she didn't have powdered sugar so made the icing with granulated, which made for a crunchy topping. I was having a craving for something lemony, so I decided I'd try out the original recipe. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

 Our ingredients for the bars:

vanilla

1 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 cup butter, melted and then cooled

2 eggs

3 tablespoons lemon juice 

Not pictured: 1 tablespoon lemon zest

 For the icing:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon lemon zest

 Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and lemon zest

 Add the melted butter

 The lemon juice

 The vanilla

 And the eggs

 Stir until combined

 Pour into a greased pan

 Bake for ~25 minutes

 For the icing combine the powdered sugar, zest, and lemon juice

Once the cake is completely cooled spread on the icing.

I tried these immediately after I was done making them, and wasn't too impressed. They were definitely better the next day once the icing had a chance to harden a bit. They are good if you are looking for something easy and lemony, but they aren't the most amazing thing. I think what ruins it for me is the icing... I'm not a huge fan of the taste of powdered sugar, and with this type of icing you can really taste it... maybe it'd be better with something else... or I can always use granulated sugar like Kenzi :p

Clarisonic Unboxing and First Impressions!

So, even though I was perfectly satisfied with the Olay Pro-X cleanser and wasn't willing to pay for a real Clarisonic, my mom happened to give me one as a gift, which is not only awesome for me, but also means that I can do a comparison to see if it's really worth the money! I'll use it for a few weeks, and will update this with an in-depth comparison of the two.

 I have the Mia 2, in a limited edition coral color. They don't sell this particular one from Clarisonic, but the most similar one is $150. 

 Before even opening the box, they have all of this "scientific" information about why cleaning your face with the Clarisonic is so much better than just washing your face.

 Breakdown of the features.

 And the actual unboxing. 

 First: the actual product. It's slightly larger than the Olay Pro-X. I really like that it comes with a brush cover, because if it's just sitting in the bathroom the brushes could become gross or damaged. Also, I would describe the color as more of a hot-pink than a coral.

 Included is the sensitive brush head. There are other types that you can buy, such as normal, acne cleansing, deep pore, and delicate. 

 Also included is a travel case, which seems super handy, but my first impression of this is that it's garbage. It feels like really flimsy plastic that nearly broke when I tried to open it.

And then I tried to actually put the Clarisonic in it, and it wouldn't shut... so we'll see how the travel case goes. 

 Charger bit.

 Other charger bit.

 The handy dandy user guide, which explains that you need to charge it for at least 24 hours prior to use but does not tell you how to use the newfangled charging doohicky. 

I looked up a video and figured it out... it's a weird magnetic charger that doesn't stay connected very well so needs to be in a place that won't get jostled. 

Initially, I think that there are some improvements that could be made to the components, but since I haven't actually used the thing yet, we'll have to wait and see if it's actually better than it's $20 competitor. 

Snickerdoodles!

This week I made snickerdoodles at the request of someone in Will's office. I modified this recipe from Smitten Kitchen's. This was the first time I had made snickerdoodles on my own, but they were very easy and fast. Snickerdoodles certainly aren't my favorite cookie, but they are really good with a cup of tea!

First preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

 Our ingredients (I did half the original recipe, which made a dozen)

A little over 1 1/3 cups flour

A little under one cup sugar

1 stick of butter

1 egg

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/8 teaspoon salt

 Sift and combine the dry ingredients

 Cream the butter and almost all of the sugar

Then add the egg. At this point I also added a tiny bit of vanilla, which the original recipe doesn't call for.

 Then add the dry ingredients 

 Done with the dough

 Then combine the leftover sugar and the cinnamon

 Roll the dough into balls. The original recipe said to chill the dough so it's not sticky, but I didn't have this problem. 

 Coat the dough in the cinnamon-sugar mixture

 Set them on parchment paper and bake for about 10 minutes. The recipe says to rotate them between the top and bottom thirds of the oven, but I did this with my first batch and they burnt. I didn't with the second and they were fine.

Delicious finished product! 

I haven't had snickerdoodles in awhile so I don't know what to compare these to to determine if they were "good" snickerdoodles... but they were gone in a few days and Will's coworker said she enjoyed them, so I guess they were alright! If I can't judge them by their taste, I can certainly say that they were super easy to make, and that makes them good haha. 

No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oat Cookies!

Today's recipe is inspired by those late-night dessert cravings where you don't really want to make something, but you need something sweet, so you decide on making something super quick and easy. I found this recipe for No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies after watching a Shaytards vlog and being intrigued by a recipe they made. 

Note: sorry for the bad lighting in these photos. This is what happens when I decide to make things late at night!

 You don't need many ingredients to make this, and most of the things you should have lying around the house:

1 stick of butter

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup milk

4 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 1/2 cups oatmeal

 First, you combine the butter, sugar, cocoa, and milk on the stove until it's boiling.

Boiled and combined.

Next you add the peanut butter and stir it until it's melted.

Chocolate-peanut butter goodness

 Then add the vanilla

 And then the oats

 The original recipe called for 3-3 1/2 cups. I went with three, then thought that wasn't enough so added about a half a cup more.

 All mixed up. I let it cool a tiny bit in the pan because it still seemed to liquidy to spoon out.

The last step is to spoon them out onto wax or parchment paper and let them cool. Or don't let them cool and eat warm, gooey, delicious chocolateness. 

Overall I think that these cookies are really good, especially if you just want something sweet right now. However, I do think they were a little bit too sweet and might cut back on the sugar if I were to make them again.

PMS and Dieting!

Okay, so I am about halfway through the DietBet, and I'm having huge struggles. I was doing really well for the first two weeks, and had lost about half the weight I wanted to. The only problem is now I'm PMS-ing and I want to eat EVERYTHING. And when I'm PMS-ing I have absolutely no self control. If only I craved healthy foods, or even relatively healthy foods... but no. I have to crave sugar, and all the carbs. Sure I'll have some macaroni and cheese with some bread on the side. Cookies or cake for dessert? How about both! Ohh.. and I gotta have a latte, or maybe some hot chocolate... I'll just save that for an hour from now when I'm starving again.


Sorry for the rant, but I'm struggling so much with this. Anybody else go through the same thing, and maybe have a solution?

Eating for the DietBet!

There are 17 days left in the DietBet, so I decided to show you guys what I've been eating on a typical day. While there have been a few cheat days, most of the time things are kind of like this. 

 For breakfast I usually have something small, because I'm not too hungry in the mornings, but I need something in my stomach. On this morning I decided to have half a banana and a cup of lemon zinger tea.

 Another big part of eating healthier has been drinking more water. It's so hard for me to drink as much water as I should, but I'm trying. For lunch I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich on multigrain bread and a bottle of water.

 For a snack I had some English breakfast tea with three teaspoons of sugar and a splash of half and half.

For dinner I had pasta made with ground beef, marinara sauce, and mozzarella cheese with some sweet corn on the side. 

Not pictured is my bedtime "snack," which isn't really a snack. Before bed we usually watch TV and I'll have a cup of some sort of herbal tea, most of the time sleepy-time, or Yogi's bedtime tea. Sometimes this is paired with a not-so-healthy snack too :p

So far I've lost 49% of the weight I have to lose by May 22. It's been hard, especially since I haven't been able to exercise, so the only real way I've been able to lose it has been though dieting. But now I'm back to my normal self I'll start exercising again and the weight loss should be easier. Wish me luck! 

Concussion?!

There has been a lack of posts lately, and that's partially because I'm dieting and don't want to be tempted with baking, and also partially because I had a concussion (dun dun duuuun!). If you're wondering what happened, I was trying to fix our litter box because our kitten likes to mess with it, and just generally ruin everything, when she started causing more mischief and so I jerked my head up to yell at her, and hit my head on a 4x4 that's above the litter box. I didn't think anything of it until it was about half a week later and I was experiencing lightheadedness and something I can't describe properly. It felt kind of like my head was really full... I don't know, it was weird.

I went a whole week before I decided that I should really go to the doctor because I wasn't getting better. Once I went she diagnosed me with a light concussion, since I wasn't experiencing really severe symptoms. Then she told me the worst thing ever, that the only way to get better was to have brain rest. What is brain rest? It sounds like it could be pretty nice, just some relaxing right? No... In theory it sounds nice but in actuality it was completely terrible. First she told me that brain rest meant no school work, and that sounded great. But then she said that it also involved no TV, computer, or even texting. She said that "screen time" was one of the most straining things for the brain, and that even 15 minutes would be detrimental. So she said to have brain rest until I was symptom free for at least twenty-four hours, and to then only work/use a screen for small intervals so as not to overexert myself.

This was the worst thing ever, and I didn't exactly follow her instructions. I tried the brain rest. For a whole weekend I decided I wouldn't worry about school, and I would just relax. But you know what's really boring and hard to do? Nothing. I failed miserably at doing nothing, and ended up watching TV for most of the weekend, although I wasn't really watching completely, I mostly closed my eyes and listened to it, but I could see how it wasn't actual brain rest. Then the weekend was over and I missed one day of class because I was still feeling weird. The next day I decided to go to school, and I felt almost back to normal, but still not quite right. Wednesday was hard because I had an exercise class that I couldn't miss (exercise is also not okay for people with concussions). It was mostly okay, except for a moment in the end where I got really light-headed. As of Thursday, I'm feeling back to normal, except every once in awhile I'll get a little light-headed.

Now I'm coming up on finals, so I'm not sure what the blogging will be like. I'll either decide to actually be productive, in which case there probably won't be a lot coming up, but I also might decide to procrastinate, in which case stay tuned for more blogs!