Cranberry Pistachio Cookies

I love making these cookies because they aren't too sweet.

The red cranberries and green pistachios make this a perfect Christmas cookie, but they're great any time of the year!

Back in college, my friend made cranberry pistachio cookies, but lost her recipe!

So I made a couple different recipes I found, and these were definitely my favorite.

Thanks Slow Cooked!

the dough.

rolling

rising

ready to come out

icing

Sorry I'm such a novice at these baking pictures.  I usually just snap pictures with my phone, so the quality and artistry is sub-par. Oh well, all that matters is the taste anyway. :)  

Rolled Sugar Cookies with Lemon

There are times when rolled cookies just do NOT come out the way you want them too.  They spread and fatten - like this hilarious pin on Pinterest - and it can be very frustrating.

However, I found this recipe that truly delivers on its name - The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies. 

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of just plain sugar cookies, so I added some lemon zest to freshen up the flavor and to make them more appealing to my citrus-loving fiance for his birthday.

I think Elliot liked them too. :)

Again, I used my 100-piece cookie cutters and loved the results.  The letters definitely look like children's refrigerator magnets. Haha. But we love babies, so that's okay with me.

Have a MERRY CHRISTMAS with Gingerbread Cookies!

I know I've been a terrible blogger, but as you can tell, I'm in the updating mood.

This past semester, I was generally too busy to bake, so as with anything you don't practice, I got a bit rusty.  I had a couple mishaps that definitely discouraged me from baking again... BUT thanks to my beloved GG's (Glendale Girls) - Hera and Christine, they helped restore my baking desires.

We decided to bake and decorate gingerbread cookies together in true Christmas spirit.

First, we used "Eileen's spicy gingerbread men" recipe and doubled the batch.  Substitutions:

1. Used butter instead of margarine (just cuz that's what I had on hand)
2. Used ground ginger instead of fresh ginger
3. I don't have nutmeg and cloves, but what I DO have is a "Pumpkin Pie Spice" blend that has a mix of ground nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon that I used instead

We rolled out the dough and used my 100-piece cookie cutters from Wal-Mart!

Next, we made a couple different colors (black, white, yellow, green, red) of frosting - just powdered sugar, water, and food coloring - in ziploc bags.

It definitely took us a couple tries to get used to the flow of the frosting and to get our creative juices flowing.

We had several .. interesting.. cookies, but plenty more adorable ones. 

We made stockings for each of our GG's and these were some of my favorites.

After a while, I got tired of doing just the same, typical gingerbread men, so I made some new characters.

Going clockwise, 

• Classic GB man by Christine
• Christine's elegant Christmas tree
• Christine's GB Lady in red
• My classy GB gentleman
• Hera's clean, cute Christmas tree
• Hera's sweet little GB girl
• Hera's uniformly executed plaid stocking
• My California-Christmas bikini-clad GB girl
• My Shrek GB Ogre (in honor of our Halloween costumes)
• And my favorite - my GB Little lad who loves berries and cream. hehe.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Jesus loves you. hehe.

Do you see what I see?

A tooth, a tooth folded in my sight,

From a cup that was filled with delight,

From a cup that was filled with delight!

hehe.

This was a half gingerbread latte + half pumpkin spice latte.  Delicious!
I love holiday Starbucks drinks.  So sad that they'll be gone soon :(

Lemon Bars

My fiance loves citrus-flavored desserts, so I made these for his birthday.

Nice, easy recipe found here. 

Only changes to the recipe:

1. I grated some lemon zest into the dough.  I was using the lemons for the juice, so why not make use of the rest of its goodness, right?
2. It was definitely difficult taking the lemon bars out of the pan even though I sprayed cooking oil on it.  So for next time I'm going to try laying down some greased wax paper first, which should hopefully help!

Red, White, and Blue(-Green) Velvet Cupcakes

In honor of Independence Day, I decided to make Red and Blue Velvet cupcakes!

Red, white, and blue-green =\

But, as you can tell, the blue food coloring didn't come out quite as expected. 

I made one batch of cupcakes, split it into two, and then put the food coloring in last, so maybe it affected the colors. boo. 

I also bought some star-shaped sprinkles to go with the theme.

Happy Belated 4th!

Composite Restorations

The first half of the semester, we've been doing composite preps (AKA drilling the hole for white-colored fillings), but as of two weeks ago, we started restoring (filling the hole) and it is so much fun! I totally love it.  Way more fun and prettier than amalgam (metal fillings).

This is before:

Prep (drilled) on the two middle extracted teeth (class II).
Notice the caries on the 3rd tooth (black rotten spot)

This is after:

Composite Restorations (tooth-colored fillings) - Lingual view

Occlusal view

And here's one more tooth:

Before: Note the decalcification on the middle tooth (white lines)

During: Cut it down to imitate a fracture (class IV)

After: Then built it back up - no more white lines!
(My mesial contact is too narrow.)

Isn't dentistry so cool?
I'm so blessed to be studying and doing what I love.
God, you da best.