Ingredients:
4 hot dogs (or similar sausages)
sticks! (to impale them on, muaha)
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
25g butter, melted
2/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 cup sugar
1 egg

Instructions:

Decide, for crazy unknown reasons, that you MUST have a corn dog. Look everywhere for the frozen kind that are all over the place in the States. Completely fail to find them. Curse Switzerland, and wish you were home already… and then realize they’re actually not that hard to make, if you’re baking them.

Impale a hot dog on a stick and set aside.

Mix all dry ingredients together, then add milk and butter. Stir, add egg, stir again. Dough should be thick and sticky and biscuit-y.

Take about 1/4 of the dough, lay it on a piece of parchment baking paper, and smush it flat. Place the impaled hot dog in the middle and then wrap and pinch and twist it to cover the whole thing.

Plop on a baking tray.

Repeat!

Bake at 220 C for about 10 minutes.

Serve with ketchup.

Enjoy! (but try not to impale YOURSELF on those evil sticks…)

Instructions:
1.  Plan a cooking date with one of your friends.  Decline all other invitations to allow this date to happen.

2.  Go downtown with Greg and buy the needed ingredients at Migros.  (Make sure to buy normal Coca-Cola, not Diet/Light or Zero, because the real sugar in the soda is needed to make this recipe turn out right.)  Then go back to home and start cooking something without a recipe and with only a vague notion of how it is supposed to turn out.

3.  Accidentally make way too much rice.  Suggest that Greg pawn the rest of it off to the members of the residence meeting that is that evening. 

4.  In a sauce pan, heat up a little olive oil and fry the chicken wings a little to make sure that they are cooked.

5.  Once the chicken appears to be fried enough, pour on top Coca-Cola and soy sauce in a 4:1 (respectively) ratio, so much that the chicken is well covered.  The coke of course is going to foam a bit, but stir it around a little bit to make sure that the two liquids mix well.  Allow to simmer on a medium heat until the chicken takes on a golden-brown color.  (Approx. 30mins) 

6.  Add a well-minced clove of garlic to taste, and don’t forget to flip the chicken a couple of times to make sure that it doesn’t burn, and that it gets well coated in the coke-soy mixture.

7.  Use the cooking time to eat some plain rice, in hopes that it will disappear quicker.  Be miffed that you made so much.  Or alternatively, take pictures with Greg, and do homework that you should have done yesterday.

8.  Once the Coca-Cola and soy mixture have boiled sufficiently and thickened, and the chicken looks about right, turn off the stove and serve on top of rice. 

9.  Have Greg state that it is quite good for a first try.  ^^

Topping:
1 can pineapple circle slices (about 5 – depends how big your frying pan is)
canned mandarin orange sections
butter
brown sugar
dark rum

Instructions:

Use your biggest frying pan.

Put enough butter in that when it melts it will pretty well cover the whole bottom.

Once it melts, cover butter in a sprinkle of brown sugar and add a splash of rum. Cook this mixture down until it becomes caramelized – you may need more sugar than you think. Medium-low heat.

Once it’s pretty much caramelized, add the pineapple slices. Let them drip before putting them in the pan – you want as few juices as possible. Arrange them in a pretty pattern – fill in any holes with the mandarin oranges. Let it sizzle for a little while, but not scorch. Remove from heat.

Mix up the cake batter – dry ingredients first, then the wet all at once and stir well.

Pour the batter into the frying pan, on top of the caramelized sugar and sizzled pineapple.

Bake it in the frying pan at 220 C for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Use parchment paper to help you upend it onto a plate to serve, pretty-side up.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup Ghirardelli chocolate powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1/2 cup mascarpone (OR: 1/3 cup cream cheese and 1/6 cup sour cream, blended together)
1/2 cup butter
1 bottle (12 oz) Guinness (OR: 8 oz milk and a quarter cup of raspberry jam if you’re a teetotaler.)

Instructions:
1. Take out eggs, butter, mascarpone, and Guinness if they’re in the fridge – you’ll need them to be room temp. In the mean time, do whatever you like! Or be a good student/lame person and use this time to study, even though it’s your birthday.

2. Combine dry ingredients (but ONLY 1 cup sugar) and set aside. Use the smaller of the two big bowls for this; everything’s going to end up in the bigger bowl (or spilled on the table). Be careful – chocolate powder is even worse than flour and gets EVERYWHERE.

3. At some point you should probably preheat the oven to 325 F (or 160 C).

4. Cream 1 cup sugar with the butter. (See, here’s the other cup!) Add eggs, one at a time, beating smooth afterward each. Hopefully you have an electric beater, because otherwise your arm is going to hurt tomorrow. Add the mascarpone (You really need to wait until it’s room temperature, otherwise you’ll need a whisk and… well, just trust me. More trouble than it’s worth.) and beat until smooth.

5. Begin adding the dry ingredients. Alternate with Guinness (or milk and jam). If you’re trying to make a few cupcakes for a Mormon girl who lent you the silicone cups, this becomes difficult. Without the Guinness/milk it’s very hard to mix and becomes the consistency of cookie dough. But you can’t really do anything but add all the dry ingredients and then scoop some into another bowl before you add the remaining liquids. So I don’t recommend making some of each unless you really love the teetotaler, or you planned ahead better than I did or you make a half batch of each. I ended up with 3 raspberry and 21 Guinness… it was complicated.

6. Once it’s all blended smooth, scoop it into the muffin tins/ silicone cup thingies / whatever you’re planning on baking these in. (Add sprinkles to the raspberry ones so you can tell them apart.)

7. Bake at 325 F / 160 C for approximately 25 minutes. Toothpick test finish.

8. Let them cool, and frost them with your choice of frosting! (I made up a vanilla buttercream. Butter, confectioner’s sugar, splash of vanilla, some milk… blend! Basically up to you, whatever consistency you want. I suggest starting with half as much butter as you want frosting, and just adding stuff from there.)

9. Pass them out to everyone you love! Eat two yourself! Forbid your roommate from calorie counting for one day! Have one for breakfast tomorrow! Celebrate, because it’s your birthday and you can bake if you want to!

Ingredients:

Instructions:
1.  Have a crap ton of papers to write.  Decide that you are going to focus and get them done.  But first clean your desk. Because you can’t work on a messy desk.  Find a crumpled piece of paper with a recipe on it. Remember that it is a pancake recipe that you got from Kate Polsky.  Deduce that you have to make the pancakes now, because it is likely that you will lose the little paper.  And if you lose the little paper, it would be tragic. Or something.  You are definitely not procrastinating.

2.  In a bowl mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Crack one egg and mix it in.

3. Melt the butter in the little frying pan that you have and add it to the sugar.  Then add that mixture to the first along with the milk.

4.  Heat up a frying pan and grease it with a little bit of butter.  Pour the mixture in small portions (pancake-like ones) and flip once small bubbles are visible in the batter.  Have some of the batter be eaten by Pauliwhirl, since she can’t eat pancakes once they are cooked. Be confused as to why.

5.  Feed the pancakes to roommates.

6.  Decide that now you can start writing those papers . . . after you type up the recipe of course . . . you are definitely not procrastinating . . .

Instructions:
1. Promise Pauliwhirl that you will make carrot cake for her.  Keep putting it off because work, school, and Oktoberfest got in the way.  On a random Thursday dig up that notebook in which you wrote Jordan’s recipe.  Miss Jordan terribly.  Wish she was still at Franklin.

2.  Get Pauliwhirl to grate the carrots into a bowl.

3.  In another bowl mix the flour, baking soda and powder, spices and salt.

4. Slowly add the flour mixture to the grated carrots.  Make sure that all the carrot bits are well covered.  Since Pauli gave blood the day before, she can’t really hold the bowl up so help her.

5.  In a separate bowl combine together the sugar, eggs, yogurt, and oil.  Go ask your neighbors for 2 eggs.  Promise that you will give them some of the finished product.  Realize that you don’t have yogurt, use buttermilk instead.  Hope that it produces the same results. Add this mixture to the other.

6.  Mix really well and then pour into a greased pan.

7. Bake for 45mins at 350°F (175°C), then reduce to 325°F (160°C) for 30mins.  Makes one loaf.

8.  Let cool. Be too tired to wait for it to cool, so go to bed.  Forget about the carrot cake until your Tea Party at 20:00.  Serve it to your guests, and when they ask for creamcheese frosting, tell them they can suck it.

Ingredients:

Instructions:
1.  Refuse to study for midterms. Your friends in UK are just now starting their first week of classes!

2. Plan a midterm revolt.  While making picket signs, put butter in a sauce pan over medium heat.

3. Once the butter is completely melted add the sugar, milk, and cocoa powder.

4.  Realize that you have no instant oats, add normal oats instead.  Let the mixture boil for about 2mins.

5.  Remove from heat, and mix in the peanut butter.  Use up all that was in the jar.  Add peanut butter to your shopping list.

6. Add vanilla to the contents and mix well.  Tell your roommate that you think you threw up something once with the same consistency.  Continue stirring.

7.  Place small globs onto parchment paper.  Leave them alone for a while to set and shoo everyone out of the kitchen.

8.  Once you have acutally written out a study guide for your Industrial Organization of the European Union class, go to the kitchen and have a cookie.

Ingredients:
1 Jar of satay sauce. (We used Foodex brand.) Or find a recipe and make your own?
1 small eggplant
3 carrots
2 chicken breasts, cubed
cooked rice

Instructions:

Go to an Asian Grocery. Get excited about everything. Find a jar of satay sauce. Remember how delicious it was when you had it in Glasgow with your Scottish uncle and his Malaysian wife at that awesome hole-in-the-wall restaurant… try to describe it to your roommates, but get stuck after “delicious” and “peanutty”. Buy it anyway – they trust your food judgments. Usually.

Let it sit in your cabinet for a while, because you have neither chicken nor skewers.

Buy chicken. And eggplant! Forget skewers.

Grumble, but decide to make it without skewers. And decide to bake it, as you don’t have a grill or anything like one.

Cube the chicken, and set it to marinate in the sauce for a few hours while you’re in class.

When you come back, preheat the oven to 220 C. Pour the chicken-and-sauce into a lasagna dish.

Dice the eggplant and slice the carrots into spears. Add to mixture in dish. Stir to coat.

Drizzle sesame oil over the top of the exposed/uncoated vegetables.

Pop in oven! Let bake for about 45 minutes, or until carrots are tender and chicken is cooked all the way through.

In the meantime, start cooking rice to go with it – jasmine or basmati would be best.

Give a plate to the only roommate who can’t write in an Asian language to decorate and photograph… So no, the doodle doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a doodle.

Type up your recipe…

Ingredients:

Instructions:
1. Crave banana bread, but find out that you have no bananas–only zucchini.  Realize that you’ve never had zucchini bread. Decide to make it.

2. Look up recipes online, and find four that all look good.  Notice that they all vary slightly with regards to quantity, butter vs. vegetable oil, whether or not to add yogurt.  Make all four recipes simultaneously.

3. Peel the zucchini.  Realize that you don’t have a peeler, resort to using a knife.  Feel like you are sharpening spears.  Get an impulse to watch Rambo: First Blood.  Shred the zucchini using a cheese grater.  Set aside.

4.  In a separate bowl beat the eggs until foamy. Add the sugar, oil, and yogurt.  Notice that the recipes seem to use either oil or yogurt.  Hope that nothing odd happens because you used both.  Set this bowl next to the zucchini one.

5.  In a third bowl mix with a spoon flour , baking soda and powder, and the spices.  Notice that the nutmeg is missing.  Get your roommie to dig around in the storage box that you haven’t unpacked yet, because you don’t know where to put all that tea.  Determine that Tanzi took the nutmeg along with the dill.  Add a little bit of allspice instead of nutmeg, while knowing that you really should be putting in nutmeg. 

6.  Add the egg mixture to the dry mix.  Combine well, and then add the resulting mixture to the zucchini bowl. Fold mixtures well with a wooden spoon.

7.  Grease a bread pan and pour the batter evenly.  Realize that you never added any salt.  Once again hope that there is no weird consequence.  Bake at 375°F (190°C) for 50-60mins.  Makes one loaf.

Ingredients:
Spring greens or lettuce of some sort
A tomato
A cucumber
a few carrots
Goat cheese (that melts well)
a baguette
honey
apple cider vinegar
a lime (one per four people, approx.)
sunflower oil (or other veggie oil)
sea salt

Instructions:
Go to Paris.

Go to the Dôme café at métro St. Paul. [4-6 Rue de Rivoli, 75004 Paris. Tel: +33.01.42.78.56.48]

Have a goat cheese and spring greens salad with honey-lime dressing, if it’s still on the menu. (Hope that it is!)

BE BLOWN AWAY. Swear you will one day recreate the salad.

Try. Decide to melt the cheese and put it straight in the salad. Discover that, while tasty, this gives it a different texture, as the cheese turns into crumbles. (Completely neglect to blog that attempt.)

Try again. After hauling all ingredients up the hill, agree with your roommates when they declare partial removal of clothing is necessary due to the heat. And anyway, you’re turning on the oven.

So strip down a little. Or a lot. Your choice, here.

Preheat the oven, to melt slices of cheese on slices of the baguette – pop it in the oven at about 200 while you prepare everything else.

Wash and shred/chop greens, tomato, cucumber, carrots. That should be easy enough.

Make the salad dressing: 1 part oil to two parts apple cider vinegar, about a quarter cup total per serving. For each quarter cup serving: small spoonful honey and 1/4 teaspoon salt. (Tablespoon lime juice if you remembered to buy a lime.) Mix vigorously! Wish you had a proper shaker…

When cheese has melted nicely – or when it’s nice and warm if you find the goat cheese you bought isn’t exactly melting as planned – take the baguette/cheese thingies out of the oven.

Toss all salad ingredients together and serve on plates (or in large, shallow bowls) and garnish with the baguette cheese thingies.

Declare it almost a success, but continue plotting the next attempt… (if only I could get the cheese right… and remember the lime…)

Type up your recipe…