Caramel Apple Cookies

Fall is here (or as we call it in Florida slightly cooler summer) 

but never the less it is the time I enjoy the most.   

 To celebrate we decided to try out a recipe we found and kinda follow the directions.

You will find the original recipe HERE.

But here is what we actually did:

1 cup flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp cornstarch

1/8 tsp salt

2 tbsp salted butter (melted)

1 large egg

1 1/5 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup dried green apple

1/4 cup diced caramel squares

We doubled the recipe so both our families could have some.

For the dried apple in this recipe we took 2 granny smith apples and diced them up and placed it in a dehydrator overnight at 135 degrees.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

So in the original recipe it said to use 3 caramel squares... It just didn't sound like enough, we also just love caramel. I didn't keep track of how many squares we cut up, but it came to about 1/2 cup by the time I was done.

Start by mixing all your dry ingredients minus the brown sugar.

Find yourself an adorable panda cub to help with the wet ingredients.

Whisk the wet ingredients.

Wait for your panda cub to loose interest in what you are doing and resume on your own, add in the brown sugar and stir until the lumps are gone. 

Mix your wet and dry ingredients together to form a soft dough.

And add in the most important parts.

Apples

and caramel, may need to break this one up some to mix well.

Use a tablespoon to measure the cookie dough and place on a greased baking sheet,or parchment lined baking sheet... in fact we highly suggest the lined baking sheet. 

The cookies did stick to the pan a bit.

Bake for 10-12 mins

When they were baked they didn't flatten, so next time we may squish them beforehand.

Now these cookies were very good, they however did not taste like caramel apples.

You could taste the caramel and when you got a piece of apple you could taste the apple. 

It just didn't taste like the caramel apple I was very much hoping for.

Rachel said she liked them fresh, right out of the oven. They most defiantly needed more apples.

It was also panda cub approved!

We will be playing with this recipe more and we hope you try it out.

This weeks cat pic is of the adorable Thorin! And his big eyes that get him almost anything he wants.

^o.o^

Eggplant Lasagna

First I would like to start off by apologizing (yet again) for the few and far between posts.

A combination of work schedules and Rachel planning her wedding we have not been able to get together as much to cook. We are trying to work things out so we can do more when we do meet up.

Without further ado here is our Eggplant Lasagna recipe, you will need:

1-2 eggplants 

(depending on how big you eggplants are, we ended up using 1)

a jar of your favorite pasta sauce

15 oz ricotta cheese

2 tomatoes

1 1/2 cup cooked Meat of your choice

(We used gator meat, we are southerners, we eat gator ^_^)

2 cups Italian shredded cheese

and 1/2 shredded cheese set aside

Slice you eggplant in the thinnest slices that you can. Rachel's knife sucks so we could not get them very thin.

Put a bit of sauce on the bottom of your baking dish and add your first layer of eggplant. 

Dice up your tomatoes (about 1 per layer)

Layer with your meat and tomatoes

Pasta sauce on top and add another layer of eggplant

Next layer is ricotta. 

And more tomatoes! You just keep layering until you reach the top of the dish you are using.

Our last layer was just sauce and gator meet.

and 2 cups of cheese on top!

bake at 350 for 40 mins.

The cheese on top will be crispy (it's the way we like it)

We add 1/2 a cup of cheese after it is done baking.

Wait a few mins for it to cool and serve!

It was wonderful, and in case you are wondering gator taste like a weird fish/chicken hybrid.

Rachel said it was perfect. When we make this we usually end up under cooking the eggplant, but we finally got it right.

This weeks cat pic will be put on hold because we have an adorable panda cub who tried our recipe this week. She thought it was yummy.