Baby Yoda Cookies

So, for my son's birthday I decided to make Baby Yoda cookies for his class treat. I am a big fan of semi-homemade treats; I find they tend to have less margin of error and also it's easier when you a working parent juggling 10,000 things.  I used all store bought ingredients to create these super cute, lil' green guys. I'll take you through and tell you everything you need and how to make Baby Yoda cookies below!

Image from Wikipedia.

Unless you've been living under a log, you'll know that Baby Yoda has taken over as the prince of cute. I'm not a Star Wars person and I've never seen the Disney+ juggernaut, The Mandalorian, but I've seen enough Baby Yoda memes to know a hot trending topic when I see one. My husband and son, however, are Star Wars fans and equally big fans of Baby Yoda or "The Child" as he is officially known.

Ingredients:

1 roll (16.5 oz) Pillsbury refrigerated sugar cookies
1/4 cup of flour + more for surfaces
Green Frosting
Chocolate Frosting
Black Frosting

Tools:
Rolling Pin
Cookie Sheets
Angel shaped cookie cutter

You'll want to squeeze/dump the roll of dough in to a mixing bowl and knead with 1/4 cup of flour. Make sure the dough is really cold as it will get warmed up as you knead.

Dust a cutting board or counter and rolling pin with flour. Take a ball of dough and roll out until 1/4"-1/2" thick. Thinner works better as the thicker cookies do not hold shape as well.

Use an angel cookie cutter to cut out your Baby Yodas. Now I've seen some people say to "cut the head off" their angels, but my angel cutter is perhaps not the fanciest and I think looks good as is.

Place your cookies on an un-greased cookie sheet and bake at 350F for 8-11 minutes depending on how hot your oven is. Mine were light golden and done in 8 minutes.

Let cool on sheet 3-4 minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cool, first frost his little green face. I used an in the bag frosting for this and smoothed out with a butter knife as my icing spatula was too big. I'd squirt green frosting on a few at a time and then go back to smooth out.

Next I used a tub of frosting to spread on his brown robe; again a knife works well here and you do not need a lot of icing. I had two batches and went through maybe 1/5 of the tub.

Finally I used a round tip on a tube of icing (all pre-packaged, so only cleaning up the tip) to dot on black circles for eyes. Once the eyes are a bit dry, I'd press down and flatten any that were a bit sticky-uppy. If you press when wet they won't go down and will just stretch up more.

I let the frosting fully dry out over-night in a cool, dry place (I stuck back in my turned-off oven) and then transferred to a plate or ziplock.

Are Baby Yoda cookies hard to make? NO. The decorating is slightly time consuming but it is worth it for all the awwwwws you'll get for the Star Wars or meme loving person in your life.

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85 Calorie Double Chocolate Muffins

               DOUBLE CHOCOLATE MUFFINS UNDER 100 CALORIES!!!!

Ok, yes I'm yelling and yes I've disappeared for a wee bit. A lot has happened and gone on since I've last posted, including me eating healthier. Today I adapted Chelsea's Messy Apron's recipe and made these amazing double chocolate muffins and they are TOO amazing not to share. They are only 85 calories each AND gluten free!

Double Chocolate Mini Muffins

• 1/2 cup, Cocoa powder
• 1 tsp, baking soda
• 1/2 tsp, baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon, Salt
• 2 tbsp(s), Dark Brown Sugar
• 2 tbsp(s), Splenda
• 
  

• 1/2 cup, Jif- Creamy Peanut Butter
• 1/2 cup, Unsweetened Applesauce
• 1/2cup, Vanilla Greek Yogurt
• 2 tsp, Vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp, Honey
• 2 large, Eggs
• 4 tbsp(s), Home ground Oat Flour 
• 7 tbsp, Semi Sweet Chocolate Baking Chips (reserve 2 tbsp)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray a 24 count mini muffin tin with non-stick spray. Do not use muffin liners! The muffins won't come out well.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the  dry ingredients: cocoa powder, oat flour (blend GF oats until they are a flour consistency. Make sure to measure the oats AFTER being blended), baking soda, baking powder, salt, brown sugar and splenda.
3. In a separate bowl, combine peanut butter, applesauce, Greek yogurt, vanilla, and honey. Beat until completely combined.
4. Slowly add in the dry to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
5. Add the egg and combine until incorporated.
6. Stir in 5 Tbsp of chocolate chips and distribute the batter evenly across the muffin tin.
7. Top the muffins with the remaining 2 Tbsp of chocolate chips.
8. Bake for 18-22 minutes (my oven took 20) or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
9. Let muffins cool 3-4 minutes, or until cool to touch and remove from pan to finish cooling.
10. Try not to eat them all while they are still ooey-gooey melty and warm.

Honestly these were so good AND my kids loved them. They taste super indulgent (like lava cake Blondie Boy said) and are only 85 calories each! I really don't think you can get much better with a  low calorie dessert! Full nutritional information below!

Scotch Lamb: Minted Lamb Koftas and Spiced Lamb Pittas

I'm always up for messing about in the kitchen, I don't think it's a secret that my wife is not the world's most confident cook, so faced with the bulk of the food prep in the house I tend to gravitate to things that I enjoy: a lot of the time that's red meat. Perhaps surprisingly then, lamb is not something that we often eat at home. I'll often have it at an Indian or Thai restaurant but I didn't eat much lamb growing up and Blondie was pretty convinced that she didn't like it at all. So when Scotch Lamb asked if I'd like to do something for them I was pretty keen to try something I don't normally do, as well as convince her that we should eat it more often!

I think the obvious thing to do with lamb would be some kind of stew or hotpot, so in an attempt to do something a bit different I made one dish which I cooked outside on the barbecue and one "inside" dish. Possibly my favourite thing about the challenge was that, as well as having two very good meals, I discovered an amazing butcher. I picked up the meat from S. Collins and Son in Muirhead, it's a fairly short drive from the city centre (just past the Crowwood Hotel) and I can't adequately describe how amazing it is. I've already been back inside a week and I'll be a regular visitor from now on!

For my outside recipe I made:

 Minted Lamb Koftas

1kg lamb mince

3 large cloves garlic

2 slices stale bread

1 tbsp cumin

1 small green chilli

15g fresh mint leaves

Zest of one lemon

Salad leaves

Yoghurt Sauce (recipe below)

Salt

Pepper

 1) Season the mince and knead

 

2) Pulse the bread, cumin, mint, lemon zest, garlic and chilli in a food processor until a fine crumb and season season with salt and pepper.

 

3) Mix with mince and knead until evenly mixed.

 

4) Form into sausage shapes and skewer. If you have flat metal skewers so much the better. I didn't and the round wood ones just tend to spin in the meat, unless you do what I did and use two per kebab. This means you can turn the meat much more easily and it breaks up less on the barbecue. I made 8 large kebabs from the 1kg but they could be sized however you like.

 

5) Preheat barbecue to a medium-high heat, we want the outside to be crispy and a little charred.

  

6) Once the outside looks crispy all the way round (2 mins each side-ish) then turn the heat down to medium and cook for a further 8 minutes, turning halfway through. If you make them smaller, obviously they'll cook quicker.

 

7) Check that the koftas are cooked through and serve with salad and yoghurt sauce. I make the meat a little spicy with the green chilli, so I like a cool sauce with them but it could just as easily be some kind of chilli sauce. I made them as the main part of a meal but at a large barbecue I would make smaller ones and serve them as finger food.

The meat mixture could make a really nice burger if formed differently. I think next time I might try using the same spicing and making burgers, maybe topped with halloumi and the same yoghurt sauce.

 

Inside the house I made:

Spiced Lamb Pittas

Half leg of lamb

2 tblsp curry powder

2 tblsp smoked paprika

2 tblsp dry coriander

2 tblsp cumin

1 tblsp chilli powder

1 tblsp garam masala

1 lamb stock cube

2 green chillies

1 pepper

1 onion

4 pitta breads

salad 

Yoghurt sauce (recipe below)

Here is my delicious half leg of lamb. I think most often people would roast it whole, so what I'm about to do to it may seem like sacrilege...

 

1) Cut off the external fat, debone and dice it (leaving the internal fat on). Yes, it's a pretty expensive cut to dice and the recipe would probably work just as well with shoulder but using leg make it so damn good. The meat will be stay in cubes, not flake and it will be melt in the mouth tender at the end. It's definitely worth it. Your butcher would probably dice it for you but I wanted to do it myself.

 

2) Mix the dry spices and dredge the meat until covered.

 

3) Add a little oil to a saucepan and heat to a medium-low heat. Add the chopped chillies, meat and crumble the stock cube over the top.

 

4) Cook at a low heat for 1-1 1/2 hours. The lamb will release quite a lot of liquid and in an ideal world that will be all the moisture we need. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world so I checked every 15 minutes and topped up with 1/4- 1/2 a cup of water at a time so there was just enough so that it didn't dry out.

 

5) About an hour in we should have something like this. The lamb should still be solid pieces but it should pull apart pretty easily.

 

6) Add tomato puree until you have the consitency of a curry sauce. Add chopped peppers and onions and cook for another 10 mins, I prefer veggies to still have a little bite so stop before they go soft.

 

7) We should then have something like this. Toast the pittas in anticipation of the upcoming feast.

 

8)Fill the pittas and serve with salad and the yoghurt sauce. (same one, recipe below)

 

The lamb is spicy but not too spicy and hopefully by using the leg it will be so soft and tender as you won't believe. Having said that by substituting shoulder for leg the cost would reduce substantially and it would be quite a decent option for a cheap midweek meal.

Both meals were a pretty big hit in our house. Like I said lamb hasn't been an integral part of the meal rotation in our house for a while but now that I've shown what I can do with it I'm expecting it to be featuring much more in future.

Yoghurt Sauce

I use this with everything from Greek and Mediterranean spiced food to Indian, including my infamous Greek Nachos (which would also be delicious with lamb, that's now my next project!) It's piss easy to make but tastes amazing.

200g Greek yoghurt

15g fresh mint

A lemon

1/4 cucumber

1) Zest and juice the lemon. Chop the mint and mix it together.

 

2) Add in the yoghurt and mix until combined. Finely chop the cucumber and mix in.

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Transatlantic Blonde were provided lamb for the purpose of creating these recipes but all opinions and creations are our own.

Grilled Steak and Cheese Sandwiches

Our local grocery store is Morrisons so since it is only a 10 minute walk away we were really excited to hear about our new cheaper Morrisons. From this past bank holiday weekend they have cut the prices on over a thousand of your favourite products. Not temporary reductions or supermarket smoke and mirrors but new every day low prices on the things you buy every week. How fab is that? So we headed to the store to see how much it would be to make one of our favourite recipes: Grilled Steak and Cheese Sandwiches.

If you haven't been to a Morrisons in a while now is the time to go. The new remodelled stores are amazing and remind me of grocery stores back home in America!

There are misters on the fruits, vegetables and herbs! These are common place in stores in America but I've only ever seen them at Morrisons in the UK!

We love that Morrisons have proper butchers in store. We've found that the meat at Morrisons is always a higher standard and better quality than other stores.

How drool worthy is the bakery counter? There are tons of freshly made creations like donuts, cupcakes, cookies and more! I was so tempted!

I was good though and stuck to the plan to get our ingredients for the steak sandwiches, lots of fresh fruit for smoothies and some few World Cup stickers for a certain little helper!

Steak sandwiches are one of our go-to meals and shopping for ingredients at the new cheaper Morrisons works out to only £3.12 per person! Plus lots of leftover peppers for Blondie Boy to snack on the rest of the week and some fly baguette for NotBlondeHusband to make a midnight snack! We cooked the sandwich two ways, regular for me and spicy for NBH.

Grilled Steak and Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients
2 Scotch Beef Prime Popeye Rump Steaks
Medium Cheddar Cheese
Salad Peppers
Sliced Mushrooms
2 White Onions
Bird Eye Chillies
1 Baguette
Mayonnaise
Sriracha 






1) Roughly chop one pepper into large pieces, chop onion. De-seed and finely chop four small bird's eye chillis.

2) Season steak. Regular sandwich seasoned with salt and pepper, spicy sandwich add dry chillis.

3a) For regular sandwich, pre-heat pan to a high heat. Add peppers and cook for five minutes until charred. Turn down heat, add onions and cook for a further five minutes, add mushrooms and cook for five minutes until onions are translucent and mushrooms are cooked.

3b) For spicy sandwich, pre-heat pan to a medium heat, add chopped bird's eye chillis and onions, cook for five minutes, add mushrooms and cook for five minutes more.

4) In same pan cook steak to desired temperature (we like medium, medium-rare).

5) Slice steak and put in baguette. Top with desired veg and cheese. Melt cheese under pre-heated medium grill.

6) Add desired sauce: mayonnaise on regular sandwich, sriracha on spicy. 

7) Serve and enjoy!

This is one of our go to dinners and I'd say we have it at least every two weeks since it is so easy and quick to make. It's a great way to enjoy steak without having to spend a lot of money. We find these are great on their own but you could serve with fries or a side salad, too!

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Transatlantic Blonde were provided vouchers for the purpose of this shop but all opinions are our own.