I recently purchased a chalk board for the kitchen because I wanted to plan out the dinners for the week, plus it looks pretty damn cute! I would also like to make an effort to post the dinners for the week every week on The Oven Mitt. If a noteworthy dinner is in the works, it will definitely have it’s own post too. 
This week, we’ll be having:
Sunday – Fend for yourself night
Monday – Homemade marinara sauce with penne pasta
Tuesday – Crunchy honey chicken with a salad
Wednesday – Turkey burgers with fries
Thursday – Chicken caesar salad
Friday – Burritos
Saturday – Dinner out with my family
Please don’t mind my terrible handwriting. As you can see, I have the penmanship of a serial killer.
Tonight, I will definitely be taking photos of the marinara sauce in action. It’s mostly my mum’s recipe, with some of my own tweaks.
My parents and little sister will be coming up to visit this weekend, so there won’t be much cooking going on. We’ll be having some amazing pasta at La Strada in downtown Palo Alto on Saturday night. Then on Sunday, we’ll be enjoying an amazing dinner at Fog Harbor Fish House in San Francisco. Yes, we have it all planned out because we want to make sure the parents eat well while they visit.
If you have any amazing dinners that are a staple in your home, please let me know about it! I’m always up for trying new dinners. Have a great week!
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that I recently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. My boyfriend received an awesome job offer and we drove up here January 1st, 2013. Heck of a way to start the new year! We were in corporate housing for a month and used that time to look for a house to rent. After countless viewing appointments and applications, we found the perfect house! Not only is it exactly what we were looking for, but it’s below our original budget! 
We’ve been scrambling the past two weeks to get settled in and have very few boxes lying around at this point. I’m happy to say that it’s really starting to feel like home. I would love to give a home tour soon, but we’re still purchasing furniture and clearing out the last of the clutter. Once everything is all set, I’ll go picture crazy! You can see a lot of the pictures I post in my personal life on my Instagram account: Cobo521.
I wanted to give a little behind the scenes look at where my baking/cooking magic happens, the most important room in the house… The Kitchen.
Not that I could really complain, but there is a ton of natural lighting coming through and it will be quite obvious in the photos. I tried to take down the exposure a bit, but only so much can be done.
As you can see, I really like plants! My favorite part of this kitchen is definitely where the sink/island is. There’s a huge window that brings in so much light, making everything feel so open. Towards the back corner, you can see my “bread basket” which is literally a random basket I found with a green bow wrapped around it, some bananas, my Kitchenaid mixer and some cookies (of course)! Along the window sill, I have some candles, toothpick and some plants.
Here’s the other side of the stove, where the fridge and coffee goods sits. It’s a bit hard to see with the dark backsplash, but we have a Keurig coffee machine, which is amazing! Plus, our little coffee pod carousel, my favorite is the Starbucks Sumatra and pretty much all of the teas.
This is our “stuff” corner. My owl salt/pepper shakers, words cannot describe how much I love them. Then you’ll see a white board, where my boyfriend and I write sweet nothings to each other or to-do lists. Have some coupons attached to the board as well. In the giant goblet, there’s a bunch of pens and little odds and ends that we may need. The little notepad wedged in between is where I write down grocery lists, recipes, etc. The plastic container is our puppies food, she’s hardly a puppy anymore, she’ll be one year old in April! The white boxes are for mail organization, otherwise there would be paper and mail all over the counter.
Anywho, this probably wasn’t as exciting of a post as I thought it would be, but at least you can see where I bake for you! St. Patrick’s Day and Easter are coming up, so I’ll be getting some recipes up for those holidays as they come. I’m thinking some treats with alcohol will be essential for St. Patrick’s Day! A carrot cake will definitely be in order for Easter as well. I hope everyone is having a great day!
Categories: Uncategorized
When it comes to Valentine’s Day treats, it’s always something red. Red cake, red brownies, red cookies, red candies. Here’s a cake that is perfect for your Valentine and it’s not even red! A decadent, dense chocolate cake with some spice! Nothing better to top this cake off with, then some homemade whipped cream. This recipe is for a smaller cake, it’s only one layer from a 9″ square pan. Much more intimate, don’t you think?
Ingredients:
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup hot coffee
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Cream the butter and sugar.
In a separate cup/bowl, stir the cocoa powder into the hot coffee and set aside to cool (even though it will smell incredible and you’ll want to drink it up!).
Add the eggs into the butter mixture, one at a time.
Then add the milk and vanilla extract until all ingredients are smooth.
In a separate bowl, mix all remaining dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg).
Alternate between adding the dry ingredients and the cocoa coffee mixture into the butter batter, until all ingredients are well combined.
Pour the batter into a greased 9″ square pan and cook for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow cake to cool before decorating with the whipped cream.
Ingredients for the whipped cream:
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 tbs. confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
Whipped cream is super easy to make, just beat all of these ingredients together on high speed until you have soft peaks forming.
Once the cake is nice and cool, you can decorate your cake however you want. I smoothed the whipped cream over the whole of the cake and added some flair to the edges. I finished off with some cinnamon drops for a little bit of Valentine’s Day red. Share this cake with your love, friends or family!
Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching!… So quick, in fact, that I almost forgot about it. Oops. Thankfully, my good friend Mandey from MamaMandolen.com reminded me and even suggested we do some collaboration. Well, collaborating is what we did! I’d say we’re a great team, as we created an awesome Valentine’s spread with my baking and her craftiness. I decided to make some red velvet brownies, nothing says love like red and chocolate.
Ingredients for 9″x13″ baking pan:
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tsp. white vinegar
• 1 tbs. red food coloring (if desired)
• 1 bag of dark chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Beat the vegetable oil and sugar on medium speed for about a minute.
Add the vanilla extract and eggs to the sugar mixture, one at a time until smooth.
In a separate bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients (flour, baking powered, salt, coca powder).
Slowly beat the dry ingredients into the sugar mixture until all is well blended.
Mix the vinegar and red food coloring in a small dish and pour into the brownie mixture and blend well.
Add some chocolate chips and/or nuts and stir until well combined.
Pour the brownie mixture into a greased 9″x13″ baking pan and place in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until the edges start to pull away from the pan.
Out will come a moist brownie with a crumbly top crust.
Mandey was sweet enough to let me use her beautiful home for a backdrop and she decorated the table and brownies with tons of adorable handmade Valentine goodies. She even included some pink milk! If you’d like to learn more about Mandey’s crafts, home, beautiful twin boys and more, you won’t be disappointed in checking out her blog, MamaMandolin.com!
This is a special post, where my mom is doing the bakin’. It’s the holidays, which means mom is whipping up her famous fudge! She’s always baking other goodies as well, baklava, pistachio bark and cookies. It changes every year, but the fudge is definitely the staple! I took down her recipe and got some action shots of her creating the chocolatey epicness that the family devours every year.
The Ingredients for 2 lbs of fudge:
3/4 cup butter
1 (5oz.) can of evaporated milk
3 cups sugar
1 (7oz.) jar of marshmallow creme
1 tsp. vanilla (she prefers to eyeball the amount, but guesses it’s about a tsp.)
1 (12oz.) bag of milk chocolate chips
2 cups of walnuts
Mom recommends getting every ingredient and tool that you’ll need before getting started, as time is important with making fudge.
In a 4 quart pan, melt the butter on medium-high heat.
Once melted, add the evaporated milk and sugar, stirring constantly.
Use a candy thermometer and continue stirring until it reaches 234F, then remove from heat. This usually takes about 5 minutes.
Scoop in the marshmallow creme.
Stir until smooth.
Working quickly, add the vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.
Once all ingredients are combined and smooth, pour the fudge into a greased 9″x13″ dish.
Spread evenly and stick the dish in the fridge for at least one hour.
Once it’s nice and firm, you can cut the fudge out and eat it up!
The holiday must-have for my family is definitely the peanut butter blossoms. I enjoy making these so much because they’re simple to make and everybody enjoys them. Another great thing about the recipe is that you can easily axe the Hershey Kisses and make regular peanut butter cookies. I’m happy to add that I finally have a tripod! Even better… it was free! I was taking family photos at my parent’s house on Thanksgiving and my dad whipped out a tripod that I’ve never seen before. He mentioned that they hadn’t used it in over 5 years, so I gently suggested that it would be a great early Christmas gift to me… he agreed! The less fortunate news, I didn’t exactly take photos with well manicured nails, so please don’t mind my partially painted, bitten up finger nails.
Ingredients for 4 dozen cookies:
1 cup butter
1 15oz. jar peanut butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
Hershey Kisses
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Cream together the butter, peanut butter and both sugars.
Beat in one egg at a time and add the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Slowly beat the flour mixture into the butter/sugar.
You’ll know you’re getting somewhere when your mixer can no longer take it anymore.
This is where you may want to use your hands to combine all of the ingredients well.
Roll the dough into balls and roll them in sugar, this will keep them from spreading and create those beautiful cracks.
Place the sugared dough balls onto a greased or parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake for 9-12 minutes or golden brown.
While you’re waiting for the cookies to bake, unwrap the number of Kisses you will need.
As soon as you take the cookies out of the oven, press a Kiss into the center of each cookie.
Allow the cookies to cool and enjoy!
It’s beginning to look… a lot… like… Chriiiistmassss!
One of the easiest, yet tastiest things you can create for the holiday season is peppermint bark. It’s always been a favorite of mine and I don’t even like candy canes that much! As long as something is paired with chocolate, it’s got my vote. The beauty of peppermint bark is that you can tweak it to whatever works for you. A lot of people just use white chocolate and mix in the candy pieces, others don’t use candy canes at all, but use peppermint extract instead. I decided to have one layer of dark chocolate, one of white chocolate and then sprinkle some candy cane bits on top.
Ingredients:
1 12oz bag of white chocolate chips
1 12oz bag of dark chocolate chips
4 candy canes crushed
Melt the dark chocolate chips and spread evenly into a 9in. pan, lined with parchment paper. (If you’d like thinner bark, use a larger pan)
Place the dark chocolate in the fridge while you crush the candy canes and melt the white chocolate.
Take the dark chocolate out of the fridge and spread the white chocolate on top.
Sprinkle the peppermint pieces over the white chocolate.
Place the bark in the fridge for about 45 minutes to an hour. Break the bark into pieces and enjoy!
I prefer to store my peppermint bark in the fridge, but it can also withstand room temperature storage.
