This past Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday! (Although now, mid-week, it feels like months ago). To celebrate the Super Bowl, I decided that I was going to bake. Sunday was also my friend Josie’s birthday. She asked for funfetti cupcakes, but unfortunately when I went to the store I could only find vanilla cupcakes.

The Super Bowl was less than ideal. Although I am already not a big football fan, I was especially not interested in such a low scoring game. I also was not the biggest fan of the halftime show, so I thought that it would be good to share something positive with my floor (especially with people who hated the Patriots) after the game.

I have not made homemade icing since being at school, so I thought that when I made cupcakes it would be a great chance for me to make my favorite icing. Although I like store-bought icing, I think homemade simply cannot be beat. Luckily, I had butter in my fridge from my promiscuous brownies, so I left it out during the day so that it would be soft by the time that I decided to make my icing.

I made my cupcakes from the box, which used Betty Crocker’s vanilla cupcake mix, 3 eggs, 1/3 cup oil, 1 1/4 cup water. I usually mix the eggs first, then alternatively add the wet ingredients and mix so that I can evenly mix it. The cupcakes turned out great, they cooked in less time than the recipe called for, so I recommend to anyone baking that they set their oven timer for a couple minutes before the time on the recipe, so they don’t burn their baked goods.

My icing recipe is very simple. I use the whole box of Domino Confectioners Sugar, 1/2 cup of softened butter, 3-4 tablespoons of milk, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. I was recently given vanilla extract from Mexico, and I think that it really improved my icing. I also recommend mixing the butter first (and making sure that it is as soft as possible; I think that soft butter makes icing more fluffy).

I baked the cupcakes right after the game ended. Unfortunately, most people watching the game in the lounge had left at that point, but many people were coming from Super Bowl parties that took place elsewhere, so I still had friends to give my cupcakes to.

After I finished giving my cupcakes out, I discovered a problem: I had too much icing! (In all honesty, too much icing is way better than not enough icing) So, I put all of my icing in a mason jar, and gave it to a good friend who lives in the building (and likes jars of icing!)

He joyfully placed the drink in front of me and as it hit the table, the cackling sound of the fizzing soda filled my ears. Two cherries slowly sank to the bottom of the glass. The grenadine swirled with the Sprite, creating a rosy pink color. Even in his declining health, my grandfather always insisted on being a good host and serving his guests drinks, stubbornly ignoring my aunts when they offered their help.

I believe that everyone should take time to appreciate their grandparents. I grew up only knowing one grandparent, as my other grandparents passed before I was born or when I was too young to remember. When I was in elementary school, I spent a lot of time after school with my pop-pop. But as I moved into middle school, I became more focused on spending time with my friends than my family. Why would I hang out with old people when I could hang out with my young, cool friends? Why would I eat dinner with my family when I could shop at the mall and get the cutest clothes at Forever21? Why would I do something that feels obligatory when I can do something fun with friends? I took my relatives’ time for granted; I thought I had longer with my pop-pop and I could always spend time with him later but see my friends now.

But, at the end of 8th grade my pop-pop had a bad fall that injured his head and landed him in the hospital. Little did I know that he would continue to be under special care for the rest of his life. That summer I spent as much time as possible with him, but at that point it was too late. My grandfather changed when he fell, and he couldn’t be the good host he once was; he had no more time to give me.

During my grandfather’s last day, he noticed that he was surrounded by all of his family. But he was starting to lose reality, and thought that the nursing home was actually his house. Even as he was taking his final breaths, he continued to act as the generous man that I’ve always known. He asked around the room what everyone wanted to drink. I awkwardly told him I wanted a Shirley Temple, completely aware that he would not be able to get that for me. I never took the time to appreciate his Shirley Temples until it was too late. My grandfather could have given me so much more: wisdom, kindness, love; but I took it for granted and always thought that I could get more of those things later, in my free time.

Since then, I’ve ordered Shirley Temples at almost every opportunity I can because it gives me a chance to remember and appreciate my grandfather. I miss my pop-pop and would give anything to be able to spend more time with him, but that’s not possible. And I am certain to avoid this heartbreaking feeling of longing for someone that’s gone, feeling that there was more I could have done, again. From my pop-pop’s death, I’ve learned that it’s important to take time to appreciate the ones around you. I learned to live in the now, and appreciate my loved ones in the moment instead of pushing it back to later.

I took my grandfather for granted. I used to take my parents for granted, but when I got to college, I realized how important they are to me. I felt a tang in my heart when I felt that I was repeating my past mistakes, so I decided to call them everyday. I compliment my friends when I am thinking something positive about them. Not wanting a reciporatory comment, but to emphasize that I appreciate them and think they have wonderful traits. I celebrate birthdays, because they are the perfect opportunity to express how much I care about my loved ones. I drink Shirley Temples, because it reminds me that life is finite, and there is a lot of beauty in the fragility of life.

One of my great friends here at Penn State is Mathilde Scarlata. She is very sweet, and I feel lucky to have her as a friend. I also have a wonderful friend Josie Krieger, who shares many of Mathilde’s outstanding qualities. One time, I was sharing a story with Mathilde and I mentioned Josie in the story, and that’s when it hit me: they would make amazing friends.

So I decided to friend-set them up. It was like a blind date. And what better way to spend time with friends than baking? So I was baking s’mores cookies for a Secret Santa gift, and I invited Mathilde and Josie to bake with me.

They met for the first time, and gave each other hugs, and it was wonderful. I was so excited to see two great people start a friendship. They helped me bake, but also got to know each other and realized how much they had in common. Someone accidentally spilled the graham crackers, and they were both very helpful in cleaning it up. I also struggled a lot with crushing the graham crackers, and both girls were willing to help with the crackers.

I found out that a couple days after we baked, Josie and Mathilde got dinner together! I was so excited when I heard this, and I’m very happy that I could use baking to bring them together.

Baking is a great way to socialize. If you are looking for something fun to do with your friends, I highly suggest trying out a new recipe together. It’s a collaborative activity that can bring people together. You also get dessert out of it. So why not?

And the cookies turned out great! I have never made s’mores cookies before, but the girl to whom I gifted the cookies as well as my friends who tried the cookies loved them.

One of my good friends on my floor knows that I love to bake, so she decided to share a magazine full of baking recipes with me. In the magazine was the S’mores Chocolate Chunk Cookies recipe, which I used when making the cookies.

The recipe calls for:

• 3/4 cup unsalted sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 1/3 cup chocolate chunks
• 1 cup mini marshmallow bits (I would recommend using Jet-Puffed Mallow Bits, because regular marshmallows, like the ones I used, may melt and make the cookies a weird texture)

The directions are to:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
• Combine the butter and sugars until fluffy. Then add eggs and vanilla until combined.  
• In another bowl whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking soda, and salt. Then combine with the butter mixture. Then add in the chocolate and marshmallows.
• Bake for 10 to 14 minutes and enjoy 🙂

It has been a while since I posted about my baking experience. And although my blogs stopped temporarily, my baking did not. Over the past month, I have baked many cookies, brownies, and cakes for various events. I wanted to share some stories and lessons I learned about baking over the past month.

One of my friends celebrated her birthday in the end of October. She is a vegan, and wanted a vegan birthday cake. So, I used regular chocolate cake mix that did not have any animal products in it, and substituted the eggs for bananas. The cake did taste strongly like bananas, but it was a good combination of chocolate and banana, so it turned out tasting very good. However, the cake was very crumbly, which may be due to the change in texture from eggs to bananas. I learned that Betty Crocker vanilla frosting contains no milk products, making it vegan. So, the cake was frosted with the premade frosting, and topped with extra bananas. It turned out very successful, and the vegan cake was just as delicious as a cake made with eggs.

I also learned that although my personal favorite type of cookie is milk chocolate chip, I make M&M cookies the best. I follow the same Nestle Tollhouse recipe, however I substitute the suggested chocolate chips for milk chocolate or M&Ms. More people enjoyed my M&M cookies, and upon request, asked for the M&M cookies in the future. And since I enjoy baking for others, not myself, I continued to make more M&M cookies.

Finally, I learned that I cannot bake too early for an event. For Thanksgiving, I was asked to make chocolate chip cookies for my family. We had 37 people celebrating Thanksgiving with my family, so I had to make a lot of cookies. On Wednesday evening, I baked 48 cookies. And by the end of the night, they had all disappeared. I have five brothers, most of whom eat dessert and ate a plethora of my cookies. But some of their friends visited, all of whom also ate some of my cookies, and led to the empty container by the end of the night. So, I decided to wake up early the next morning, and bake cookies for Thanksgiving. But, I was determined to hide them from my family, so they could survive until dinner. However, at about 3 PM (extended family arrived at 4) my brothers discovered the location of the cookies, and only about half (24) of them survived. And, when I left the cookies out for dessert on Thanksgiving, they were gone before I could even try one. So I learned, when I bake for a special event, I need to be careful about who has access to the dessert before the event, and how many I make.

I had a very eventful day volunteering for Constitution Day at Grange Fairgrounds. I originally was supposed to work at the First Amendment booth with Emma Lutz. The woman running the booth was going to interview the band, so she asked that Emma and I run the booth while she was gone. We were going to hand out fliers and ask people that came to our booth what democracy means to them. (To answer that question with my perspective, democracy is about equality and giving every voice a fair chance to speak) However, before I was able to ask my first booth visitor their personal definition of democracy, Emma and I were told that our help was not needed. The woman running the booth could not interview the band as they were busy warming up. So we joined the rest of the volunteers at the Gerrymandering booth.

Emma and I, late arrivals, were asked to “take the L” by Dr. O’Hara and dress up as Gerry-monsters. This task included wearing heavy, dragon-like onesies and going around to people at the fair giving them information cards. Once we gave out all of the cards, we were allowed to remove the costume and help with one of the games. As a Gerry-monster, we told fair visitors that we had “totally fair” games to play at our booth (how gerrymandering is “totally fair”) and gave cards that provided a website with more information about the candidates positions on redistribution reform. I enjoyed going up to people and introducing myself as a Gerry-monster. I got a lot of laughs about my pun and the costume, which made the experience a lot more fun. At the end of the day, it didn’t feel like I was taking an L, I genuinely enjoyed meeting new people.

I met a couple that moved to State College from Texas. They told Emma and I that they were very excited to be in a swing state as opposed to a state that always goes red. They were also very happy to see young adults volunteering and being active in their community. We discussed our classes because they were really interested in what students are learning, and wanted to know more about RCL. They thought that the civic artifact project sounded intriguing and were pleased to know that students were taking a rhetoric and civic life class. A lot of people that I talked to wanted to learn more about candidates’ opinions on redistribution reform and did not realize that they could find information about it online.

After I handed out the last of the cards, Emma and I came back to the booth and helped with the Gerry-monster drawings. With that activity, people were asked to draw a monster out of a gerrymandered shape. There were two little kids who drew terrifying monsters, and seemed to have a lot of fun with the activities. But the booth really brought to attention how unfair gerrymandering is, and how it is truly a monster.

This weekend, Penn State played against one of their rivals, University of Pittsburgh. Since the game was played at Pitt, many Penn Staters on my floor gathered in the lounge to watch the game. Since I am not the biggest football fan, I decided my attention would be better spent elsewhere, particularly on baking. I decided to make chocolate chip cookies, because it’s an easy recipe that feeds a lot. (I made 5 dozen cookies because I baked them smaller so there could be enough for everyone.)

On Saturday, I went to McLanahan’s to get chocolate chips. My secret to chocolate chip cookies: milk chocolate chips. Semi-sweet chocolate is not sweet enough for me, and I think that Nestle Toll House milk chocolate chips make cookies so much better. I bought milk chocolate chips, and on a whim decided to get white chocolate chips as well.

But when I finally started baking, I realized it would probably be too sweet to have white and milk chocolate chips, so I decided to try something new: I made white chocolate chip cookies.

I followed the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I simply substituted the milk chocolate with white chocolate and did not add any nuts. I have baked many chocolate chip cookies (including over 100 cookies in a 3 hour period), but these cookies were by far my favorite. Not just because of how I liked them, but because of the reactions that I got from the people on the floor.

When someone eats something I bake, they tell me they like it; that’s just being polite. But there was an obvious distinction between the last time I baked and this time. Many came back for seconds or thirds (some even fifths or more).

I made many friends that night, by simply offering them a cookie. The cookies were an easy conversation starter, and I got to speak with a lot of people I normally wouldn’t. I found out that one girl has a back injury like me, and I ended up giving her some of my IcyHot packets that I no longer need, just because we started a conversation about cookies. Then, during the week I was asked to help someone bake a cake, because they recognized that I bake a lot.

I think that something that adds to a sports gathering, or any gathering at all, is food. In my eyes it brings a community together, and it adds another level of enjoyment to an event. I think that my cookies helped make the victory, which was pretty great on its own, even sweeter.

But, I now have a bag of chocolate chips in my dorm room. Do any of you have suggestions for what I could bake with them next?

I was recently informed about a recipe for cake mix cookies. I usually stick to my chocolate chip cookies, but I was excited when I learned about this new recipe and I wanted to try it out. So last night, I baked about two dozen cookies and I was very happy with how they turned out.

Even something as simple as baking cookies comes with challenges. I did not have any bowl to mix the ingredients in, so I split the recipe in half, and made the cookies in two tupperware containers; it was not the most exquisite way to bake cookies. I have an electric mixer, but unfortunately the outlet in the kitchen does not work, so I could not use my mixer, and had to use one of the whisks and eventually just my hands. I also discovered that the recipe called for more oil than I wanted because by the time I was done mixing, my hands were glistening with oil. Yum.

The cookies baked slowly in the oven, the recipe suggests baking them for 6-8 minutes, but they baked for about 10 minutes. I had a can of icing with me, and put icing on about half of the cookies. I usually make the icing by hand, but unfortunately I did not have the ingredients to make my own icing. (Side note – If any of you try out this recipe, I would highly recommend adding icing to the top of the cookies, especially when they are warm.)

Overall, I think this was a success, everyone that had one seemed to like it. I will attach the recipe below, as well as the link to where I found inspiration for the recipe.

1. Make sure you have a bowl, a baking sheet, and a mixer
2. You will need: 1 box of Pillsbury Moist Supreme Funfetti cake mix, 1/3 cup oil, and 2 eggs
3. Preheat the oven to 375°F
4. Crack the eggs and mix them, this makes it easier to add the other ingredients
5. Add the other ingredients and mix it all together
6. Roll the dough into balls about 1 inch, and make them about 1 inch apart
7. Bake for about 6-8 minutes (depending on the oven, it may need more time) Bake until the edges are golden brown or it can be picked up without falling apart
8. Let cool and enjoy!
9. *Bonus step!* Add icing to warm cookies if desired