Speculoos Cookie Butter Blondies

Have you ever heard of this thing called Cookie Butter? Otherwise known possibly as Speculoos or Biscoff spread? I think it's sort of new. Or maybe a resurgence of an old thing, made new again. Whatever the case may be in terms of its timeline, the fact is this: it's made from those Biscoff type cookies that they apparently serve on Delta airlines. Or used to serve? To be honest, I haven't been on a Delta flight in more than 10 years so I don't know!

The spread has a slight cinnamon-y taste to it. You can use it to spread on crackers or those thin ginger molasses cookies, or you can bake it into stuff much like you would peanut butter.

Can I tell you a secret? I thought I was going to love this spread. Something called Cookie Butter can only be a wonderful thing, right? Well... honesty time: I like peanut butter better! I think if this tasted like chocolate chip cookie dough, I would lose my mind, but as it is, it's only okay. You can totally disagree with me on this! Maybe I just don't have enough of a fond memory of those cookies, because to be honest, I don't remember them at all!

Oh well. It's still fun to bake new things. I will say that I think the original recipe asked you to bake these for too long. Mine came out a little dry. That's why I've got the 20-25 minute recommendation on the below recipe. Start low and go higher if you think it needs it, but since the dough is dark to begin with, you're not going to get a huge brown around the edges effect. Also? I hate hard edges on brownies and blondies and bars in general, so don't overbake these unless you like that.

Speculoos Cookie Butter Blondies
(via Two Peas and Their Pod)

1/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup Biscoff Spread
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8x8 pan and set aside.

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and brown sugar, stirring constantly until smooth. Remove from the heat, and stir in the Speculoos Spread, stir until creamy and combined. Set mixture aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.

Add the egg to the Speculoos mixture and stir until smooth. Add the vanilla extract and stir to combine. Pour the mixture into the prepared dry ingredients, and stir until batter is smooth. Fold in white chocolate chips.

Transfer the batter to the prepared pan, spreading the batter evenly to the edges of the pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove blondies from oven and place them on a wire rack to cool. Once cooled, cut into squares and serve.

In photos:

 Melting brown sugar and butter.

Add the Speculoos cookie butter.

Whisk together your dry ingredients. Flour, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon.

Add the egg and the vanilla to the wet ingredients.

Add the wet ingredients into your prepared dry ones. Sticky!

 Fold in your white chocolate chips.

Press that into your prepared pan. Tip: use a rubber spatula!

Bake it at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Don't overbake.

Cut it up into squares!

Have yourself a little square. Or two. Or more. I won't judge.

Red Velvet Ice Cream

Sometimes, things just sound better than they actually turn out to be. For me, red velvet ice cream sounds pretty amazing, but in practice is only okay. But you know what, I'm pretty sure this is only me, because I seemed to forget that I don't actually like chocolate ice cream in any form.

If faced with a choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream, I will invariably always choose vanilla. Always. Chocolate or strawberry ice cream? Strawberry, though let's be honest, I'd still prefer vanilla here too. Unless it's a milkshake, and then strawberry would be the winner. It's a confusing place in my brain, I guess, but there you have it. My taste buds are dessert specific, and they don't like chocolate ice creams!

That being said, if you are one of the untold millions who does like chocolate ice cream, then heck, you'll probably like this about 100 times more than I did. I also suspect I would've liked it even better if I had the patience and/or time to also make a batch of cream cheese-y ice cream and do some swirl action, making it taste more like a red velvet cupcake. Because yes, red velvet cupcakes are, in fact, my favorite of cupcakes. Wrap your head around it!

Red Velvet Ice Cream

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 6 large egg yolks
• 3/4 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 Tablespoon red food coloring
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cooking Directions

1. Bring cream to a simmer in a medium sauce pan. Meanwhile, thoroughly whisk together egg yolks and sugar. Pour some of the simmering cream into the egg yolk mixture while stirring (this is so the eggs don't start cooking!). Add this mixture to your cream still in the pan, making sure you're stirring all the while.
2. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat.
3. Stir in buttermilk, cocoa powder, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla extract. Pour into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap so that the wrap is in contact with the top of your mixture; refrigerate until thoroughly chilled (around 4-8 hours).
4. Freeze in an ice cream maker according to its directions. Transfer your ice cream to a covered container and place in your freezer for at least two hours to get the best consistency.

Recipe via Yum Sugar

In photos:

Egg yolks and sugar. That's a lot of egg yolks, dude.

Add them into your cream and keep it on low heat while stirring every now and again.

Cook that for a while until it's thick enough to cover the back of your spoon without dripping off too easily. Custard-y!

After you've added in the buttermilk, chocolate, vinegar and food coloring, transfer to a bowl. I'm not entirely sure the vinegar is necessary in this recipe, but I went with it. Please note I also strained the stuff in the pot to go into the bowl because I was using powered buttermilk and it's just not great for ice cream recipes due to lots of chunks. So, real, actual buttermilk works better.

After you've let that stuff above sit for until it's completely cooled in the fridge (I let mine go overnight), put it in your ice cream maker and let it go to work. After you've got yourself some soft serve type ice cream, transfer it to a freezer-safe container with lid. It just fit into that container there. Barely.

Let it freeze for a while so it can turn into actual real ice cream, and voila! Red Velvet Ice Cream!

Supernatural 7x18 "Party On, Garth"

Well, it happened. I knew it was coming, and it came, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. For those who haven't watched the episode yet and don't want to know the big "twist" ending, avert your eyes, because here it is: Bobby is, in fact, a ghost. Traveling with the boys via his old flask that Dean keeps on him at all times, and responsible for all of the stuff we assumed he was responsible for. The missing beer, the appearing pages, and tonight, a moving Samurai sword.

And here's the thing about a show like Supernatural. Yes, it allows people to come back from the dead, and that's half the fun of the show, that you can always bring back someone. But that also becomes a problem too, because you can always bring back someone. Death is impermanent, and therefore not as affecting as it would be on nearly any other show. And the death of Bobby just felt so final to me, that I'm not sure how I feel about them already bringing him back. I think I kind of felt the same thing about bringing back Castiel too, but perhaps in an even bigger way, now that I think about it. At least the Bobby thing was hinted at, but Cas it was just like oh he's been here and we'll find him at just this right moment. Anyway, I'm not going to keep going on about it. Let's just get to the recap.

Party time, excellent!

A couple brothers end up getting killed by some apparent invisible monster. Garth, the hunter we met in an episode that shall not be named, thought he had killed the thing after the death of the first brother, but calls in the big guns when whatever it is apparently is still around and looking for more gruesome bloody kills. They get to investigating, and soon figure out that the thing in question is not actually an invisible killer werewolf, but rather something that requires you to be drunk in order to see it. But what in the world could that possibly be, we wonder?

It turns out that there's this whole backstory drama surrounding this beer company that brews Thighslapper Ale. You see, one of the former owners was ousted from the company when he didn't want to sell his stake to some uppity up types. He was pissed, so he decided to get revenge on his other two partners by using some bad mojo. Then he killed himself. I'm not sure why he killed himself before he could see his handiwork go awry, but who knows. Because whether he wanted it to or not, this thing he summoned into a Sake bottle turned out to be a Shojo, a kind of Japanese spirit that haunts breweries and such. Only this particular shojo goes after the thing that the suicide dude lost, his "baby" of the company... aka the babies of his partners.

Okay let's try to make that more understandable, because I feel like I did a terrible job. This dude loved the brewery like it was his baby, so when he was ousted, he decided to get revenge, an eye for an eye sort of deal, and used this Shojo ghost demon thing, only it takes the eye for an eye to mean that it should kill the other dude's babies rather than the dudes themselves. Because that's more poetic or whatnot. Alright, that makes a little more sense.

She's to your left! I mean, my left!

Anyway! Now that they know who the Shojo is after, they split up. Dean goes to get the specific weapon they need while Sam trails the sister of the aforementioned dead brothers, and Garth finds out that the other owner dude had a secret love child, so he goes to protect that guy. Only he has to be drunk in order to see the Shojo, so of course once she shows up and wants to kill the kid, he gets knocked out. Sam also shows up, and also gets knocked out. That leaves it to Dean, who has the killing weapon anyway, and who is also the only sober one, to kill the demon. Luckily, Sam wakes up in time to be able to tell him where the demon is, since Dean can't see it. Some fighting happens, the sword goes flying, and voila, it magically slides back across the floor to Dean, and he's able to gank that creepy Japanese horror movie villain. And everyone lives and Garth gives them hugs and it's just all happy happy, right? Or IS IT?!

While hunting this demon thing, however, Garth was astute enough to notice that their EMF meters kinda went weirdo whenever they were around Dean's flask, aka Bobby's flask. He surmised that maybe Bobby was actually still around, just, you know, ghostly. Sam also admitted that he thought as much back when that whole beer thing happened before, and tried contacting Bobby, but it didn't work. Now that this sword thing has happened, Dean is starting to wonder if maybe they're right, only when he tries to reach out, nothing happens. Maybe they're making it all up, like how normal people sometimes think they see their dead loved ones around too?

It turns out, no, they're not just making it up, because we actually get to see a glimpse of Ghost Bobby, who is apparently having a hard time making direct connection with the boys despite his attempts at indirect connections. He even calls them idjits and says balls, so you know his catchphrases are intact in the afterlife.

Random Thoughts:

- Despite what it may sound like, I actually quite enjoyed the episode, particularly all of the drunk stuff. Why is watching drunk people so funny? Even in real life, if you're sober, it's hilarious.

- I loved the consecration of the Samurai sword with the "running spring" of bottled water.

- Poison by Bell Biv Devoe, need I say more?

- Mr. Fizzles. The best was when he said he didn't approve of LIARS. Hahahaha

- So are Sam's visions gone forever? Will they eventually come back? Will Cas be able to fight off the hallucifer? Questions to be answered at a later date, I guess.

- Another mini hiatus until April 20th.

Quotes:

"You've been Garthed." - Garth

Sam: Have either of you ever heard of Thighslapper Ale?
Garth: Is that a stripper or a beverage?
Dean: Beverage. For douchebags.

"Beer's not food, it's whatever water is." - Dean

Dean: Wow. Party on, Garth.
Garth: I don't even usually drink beer. Messes with my depth perception. Especially when I skinny dip.

Sam: Can you even get drunk anymore? It's kinda like drinking a vitamin for you, right?
Dean: Shut up.

"Come with me if you want to live." - Garth, getting his Terminator on

"So your theory is, we're practically regular people about something for once." - Dean

Previous Episode -- Next Episode

Yogurt Scones

What's this? Another recipe that uses yogurt? Yeah, man. That's what happens when you've got peach yogurt coming out of your ears, and you just can't take eating it straight. But I've already discussed this. We don't need to talk about it again.

We can, however, talk about these scones. Or maybe The Hunger Games. But it's probably more appropriate to talk about the scones. Did you know that this is the first scone recipe I've featured on here? Did you know that it's the first time I've even made scones?!

That just sounds crazy, I know. But I somehow thought myself not a scone person. As to why I felt that way, I really cannot answer you, because I just don't know. Sometimes you just go through life having never eaten something for no good reason. Not that I'd never had a scone. Because I must have had one at some point, right? It's just I can't really remember it. Hmm.

Oh well! Despite my scone unfamiliarity, I have to say I really liked how these turned out. Yummy scrumdiddlyumptious. That's totally a word.

Yogurt Scones
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups Bisquick (or equivalent)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• sugar for dusting

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Combine Bisquick and sugar. Stir beaten egg, yogurt and butter together in a separate bowl. Add that mixture to the Bisquick until it all just clings together.
3. Knead gently on a floured surface approximately 8-10 strokes. Form a 6 inch circle with the dough and cut into 10 wedges.
4. Sprinkle with sugar and place on an ungreased baking sheet.
5. Bake 10-12 minutes until golden.

In photos:

Bisquick and sugar mix together. If you don't have Bisquick, you can instead cut together 2 1/2 cups flour, 3 3/4 tsp baking powder, 5/8 tsp salt, and 2 1/2 Tbsp shortening.

Egg, butter and yogurt all mixed.

Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff and it should look something like this.

Knead it some on a floured surface until it all holds together well.

Push it out into an approximately 6 inch circle and cut it up. 10 wedges is recommended, but I only did 8 since I used the pizza cutter and it was easier.

Sprinkle with sugar and arrange them on your ungreased sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden. Enjoy delicious scones!

Supernatural 7x17 "The Born-Again Identity"

Oh you do that research.

You guys, I have been having some serious DVR issues ever since I moved all of my stuff into the new entertainment center. For some reason, any time I want to record on The CW, the channel goes completely out. I checked it literally 20 minutes before Supernatural was meant to start to make sure it was okay, and it was FINE, then when I went to start it from the recording, there was the black screen of death AGAIN. WTF?! UGH. This happened last night with The Vampire Diaries too! And it's literally ONLY The CW that goes out. All other channels are perfectly fine! Epic frustration! Damn it all!

Anyway. The real question is, were you satisfied with tonight's episode, or left feeling as frustrated as I am when cursing at my DVR? I'm somewhere in the middle.

After last week's episode, Sam has officially really started to lose it. He can't sleep thanks to the Lucifer in his head, who won't let him. Somehow he ends up roaming the streets alone, or rather stumbling the streets alone, even goes so far as to try to buy some sedative-type drugs from a dealer, but it doesn't work. Instead, he ends up stumbling straight into oncoming traffic, kabang, kapow! To the hospital, then, Batman!

The hospital folk are, however, just plain baffled at his state, because no matter what they give him, he won't go to sleep, and from what Lucifer tells us, the longest a person went without sleep was 11 days. Sam's already at around four or five, I think, at this point. Things are looking rather grim, but Dean is determined to find a way to fix him, despite all odds stacked against them, and despite Sam kinda sorta accepting he was probably going to kick it because of this thing.

Rollin' with our old homies.

But, Dean eventually gets wind of this new healer on the market, a man who goes by the name Emmanuel. He tracks down the guy, only to be surprised to find that this Emmanuel is none other than our previously dearly departed angel Castiel. Only, he doesn't remember anything, not even his BFF Dean. Dean decides to keep him in the dark for now, hoping he'll be able to help Sam anyway. But on their drive back to the hospital, they encounter some demons who have also heard about this healer guy's suspicious powers. But before the demons can hurt our Dean, one of their own comes to his rescue, and it's just a past villain party up in here! Meg!

Yep, Meg is back. She wants to help Dean with Cas, because I guess she doesn't want Crowley to find out he's still around, because she and Crowley have a beef, though I don't truly remember what said beef is about, but hey, a beef they have, so she's on Dean's side. For now, anyway.

Meanwhile, Sam's mental state has been deteriorating, but not to a point where he can't help a conveniently haunted fellow patient rid herself of her ghostly murderous brother. And this is where I have to say the episode did not work for me. Was she actually real, or was she part of a hallucination? And if she was real, that was really way too convenient, and easy to do. Like, boom, that ghost was dead and gone. I mean, that bracelet? I said, actually out loud I said, "There's a bracelet on her wrist, dude, obviously the ghost can follow her because of the bracelet." I mean, jeez. ANYWAY. Right after they get rid of the ghost, the doc comes in and says they want to try something new on Sam since the drugs aren't working. Some kind of surgery. Hmm. That doesn't sound too good, does it?

Outside the hospital, the trio has arrived, only to find the place surrounded by awaiting demons. With only one demon-killing knife, the odds aren't so great. Except they are, because, as Meg so kindly reminds us, this "Emmanuel" character is actually an angel and can get rid of all those dudes snip snap. Only he doesn't know it, blah blah, more whinging about whether to tell him, except he overhears them arguing about it and the cat gets let out of the bag regardless of Dean's concerns.

So, Cas goes and gets to smiting, which also has the added bonus effect of triggering his memories. And boy are they some terrible memories to behold. He's all "What I did was so wrong, I can't ever fix it, why would I come back?" etc. etc. Dean's like duh, because you want to at least try to fix it, obvs. He even gives him his busted up trenchcoat that he'd been keeping in the trunk. You know, for old time's sake. Okay, fine, guess he'll go try to fix Sam.

Just in time, too, because one of the demons has Sam strapped down and getting some serious electroshock therapy. Cas gets rid of that guy and attempts to fix Sam's wall. Only, it doesn't work. It turns out, the wall has been crumbled so completely, there's nothing he can do to fix it. But, he does have another idea. And perhaps you figured it out as I did before he did it, but instead of fixing the wall, he took all of the crap going around Sam's head and drew it into his own. So... angels can have hallucinations? Hm.

But, hey, Sam seems to be all better. Good thing, too, because his fingernails were starting to fall off. Yuck. And guess what! They just leave Cas there in the hospital. That just seems like a real dick move, but I guess I don't know what else they could do either. Meg also stays behind to watch over him. For what real purpose, I'm not sure, but probably we'll find out soon enough.

Random Thoughts:

- A mention of Faith! So long ago!

- The magical "breeze" that blew out that business card for Dean, obviously we're meant to think it's Bobby's ghost. Honestly I expect them to go there, and I really don't want them to for some reason.

- Are you guys happy to see Cas again, or no? I feel like people are very divided on the subject.

- I'm not sure I was satisfied with this amount of crazy Sam. Hmm.

- I really liked whatever song that was they had playing as Cas smote the demons.

Quotes:

"Stupid Satan." - Lucifer

"Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Now this one I could have. Sets unrealistic goals, check. But, has trouble keeping healthy relationships? Not so sure about that one. Thoughts?" - Lucifer

"This silence is very uncomfortable." - "Emmanuel"

Lucifer: Lobotomy?
Doctor: It's okay, we're not talking lobotomy.
Lucifer: Darn.

Meg: You're an angel.
"Emmanuel": I'm sorry, is that a flirtation?

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