Doritos Jacked Test Flavors (SPOILER ALERT!)

I heard from everybody's favorite Fat Guys that Doritos had launched a few new flavors this summer. The spiffy marketing twist is that, like the white Air Head and cafeteria glop, these are mystery flavors. They are differentiated only by the color of the bag and the "Test Flavor Number" taunting you from store shelves.

Obviously, when Doritos (which are, like, the fourth best chip in the universe--especially the Spicy Sweet Chili ones) get all interesting, I have to try them. Thus, I forced my roommate to go out and buy ALL THE DORITOS. He came back with two out of the three because, as it turns out, the blue bag isn't vegetarian-friendly. Not cool, Doritos.

Your Mom Wants You to Make Lemon Cupcakes

Mother's Day is coming up in, like, three days. That means you have three days to come up with some magnificent way to tell your mom you love her.

Tell her with cake.

Everybody knows food speaks louder than words (especially beans....beans speak very loudly), so what better way to tell your mom "thanks for putting up with me" than with fresh lemony cupcakes buried under mounds of fresh lemony frosting? Trick question. There is no better way.

Okay, maybe a free trip to Paris, but we're broke, so cupcakes it is.

This recipe was originally posted by FriedBlueTomato on AllRecipes.com. It is by far the best from-scratch cake recipe I've ever tried. I didn't drop an F-bomb once.

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
Zest of 3-4 lemons
1 cup milk
3 tbs lemon juice

Plus:
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 tbs lemon juice
Yellow food dye (optional)

Instructions:
1. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

2. Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy. Do not mistake for a kitten.

3. Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.

4. Mix in the vanilla and lemon zest.

5. Gently beat in approximately 1/3 of the flour mixture, then half the milk, and half the lemon juice. Gently beat in another 1/3 of the flour mixture, the rest of the milk, and the rest of the lemon juice. Gently beat in the rest of the flour until just combined. Don't abuse your batter.

6. Spoon into a muffin tin lined with pretty cupcake papers and bake at 375 for 17-20 minutes until your house smells good and stabbing your muffins with a toothpick does not result in lemony bloodsplatter everywhere. Lick the bowl. No, seriously. Do it.

7. Let your cupcakes cool in the pan while you whip up some frosting.

8. To make frosting, beat the heavy cream until it starts to thicken. Gradually add in 3/4 cup of powdered sugar and 1 1/2 tbs lemon juice. Keep beating until your arm falls off or mixture gets all thick and frosting-like. Add yellow food coloring for extra lemony emphasis.

9. Let the cupcakes finish cooling on a wire rack and then frost until beautiful.

If cake making isn't really your thing, you can also bring your mother flowers (cliche!) or spend a whole crapton of time giving your younger siblings noogies until they agree to do a photo shoot with you, and then spend a whole other crapton of time going through the photos and cropping them and editing them and printing them and then arranging them in a little album.

Since I opted for the latter option and would hate for all my craptons of time to go unappreciated, here's a sneak peek at our highly unprofessional photo shoot.

Also, just because I love you guys, here's the JPG for the album cover in case you want to make one for your mom. I printed this up at 4.5x6.25" to fit our album, but you can stretch it and skew it any way necessary, just right-click and "Save As."

Happy Mother's Day!

I shared this recipe in Eat Drink & Be Mary's Delicious Dish Tuesday Linkup. Go check her out!

Mike's Hard Peach Lemonade Review

Confession time: I like girly drinks.

I know, I know, I lost all my street cred over a bottle of pink lemonade, but let me tell you, it was worth it.

This is Mike's Hard Peach Lemonade, one of their seasonal offerings this year. It is delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I may or many not have semi-accidentally pounded three of them before I remembered to take pictures.

Super Delicious Strawberry Smoothie

I recently developed a smoothie obsession. No, not a green juice obsession, but a super-sugary mega-delicious nearly-a-milkshake smoothie obsession.

And really, who could blame me? It's strawberries. Everybody loves strawberries.

If you don't love strawberries we can't be friends.

I originally started drinking these because I heard there were health benefits to yogurt and strawberries and I'm sure as hell not about to start working out to be healthier, so strawberries and yogurt it is. After, like, the second day, I was hooked.

These things are absurdly easy to make, especially if you have a tremendously awesome blender like this:

They're also absurdly easy to make because they require a whole five ingredients, one of which your freezer might make all by itself. (Ice. That ingredient is ice. If your freezer grows its own strawberries, call me.)

Before I tell you how to make this spectacular smoothie, let's take a second to discuss sweeteners. According to the internet, sugar makes you fat and all the other sweeteners are trying to kill you with brain tumors and heart attacks. Since I don't particularly want to be a fat dead person I sweeten these with stevia. So far nobody has told me stevia will kill me, and if you're that person, please just keep your mouth shut. For this smoothie I've been using four packets of Walmart-brand stevia or one tablespoon of Truvia. I tried it with honey one day and it wasn't so great, but you can use it if you want; I'm not the Smoothie Police.

Once you've selected your non-lethal skinny-person sweetener of choice, you'll also need 1/2 cup of plain yogurt (you could probably use vanilla too, but I'd skip the sweetener altogether in that case), 1/2 cup milk, 6 ice cubes, and 8-10 strawberries (frozen or otherwise).

Dump all that stuff into the blender and let it do its thang. On my tremendously awesome blender this means a whole fifteen seconds on liquify. Every now and then I splash in a little extra milk if my strawberries are supremely hefty, but that's usually unnecessary.

I like to drink my smoothies out of super-spiffy hurricane glasses (hi, Charlie!!!) because they are super-spiffy and they make me feel fancy.

Also! You can mix it up with all kinds of different fruit. I've tried cherry-berry blend with less than stellar results and have come to the conclusion that blackberries really aren't for me. My favorite combo so far was mostly strawberries with a few chunks of pineapple thrown in. And yes, I'm sure you could use fresh fruit, but I'm cheap and lazy and until the fruit in the grocery store starts looking not-gray, I'm sticking with frozen.

Anybody out there have a smoothie recipe I should try? I'm fair game, so long as it doesn't taste healthy and isn't, yaknow, green.

P.S. This recipe liked up with Eat Drink & Be Mary! Go check her out!

Brand Wars: Blizzard vs. McFlurry

It's time for Brand Wars again! Today we're pitting Dairy Queen's M&M Blizzard against McDonalds' M&M McFlurry.

Dairy Queen's claim to fame is the classic Dilly Bar, but a close second is their line of Blizzards.

McDonald's, on the other hand, is known more for their burgers and Big Mac than their diabetic comas in a cup.

Homemade Hummus for Humans

Sometimes you just need the sweet lovin' of some chickpeas at 3am, and I'm here to tell you that the night stocking crew at the grocery store does not take kindly to people pounding on the doors in their pajamas wailing for whipped beans.

Enter the mini food processor and hard-to-find tahini.

Thanks to these two marvelous components, we are able to concoct our very own hummus at 3am, in our jammies, without putting on shoes or getting arrested.

After you've rounded up your mini food processor and hard-to-find tahini, take stock of your kitchen.  Make sure you have the following:

1 can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 clove garlic (or semi-artificial garlic replacement)
Pinch of paprika

If you don't have all those things, pull on your bunny slippers and bang down the doors of the grocery store until they agree to send out paprika and lemons. For best results do this even if the store is open. Send me a copy of the security footage.

After they let you out of the holding cell, come home and whip up a batch of hummus. Make extra to share with your parole officer.*

Start by rinsing your chickpeas to remove any cooties and let them drain while you work on the rest of the ingredients.

Throw your tahini and lemon juice in the mini food processor. Process it until it's all thick and creamy. Do not mistake it for frosting. While hummus is one of the most delicious foods known to mankind, squished up sesame seeds have yet to be deemed an acceptable topping for chocolate cupcakes.

Once your lemon-kissed tahini (we's getting fancy up in here) is all creamy and fabulous, throw in your olive oil and garlic and salt and paprika. Blend some more.

When your mouth starts to water, add in half of your mostly-drained chickpeas and blend some more. When you can barely stand it anymore, add the rest of your chickpeas and blend again. If it's looking a little thick you can add some H2O.

After much blending, consume immediately. This does not leave time for fancy serving dishes or an array of cheeses. Say a quick thank you to the chickpea gods and dig in with some pretzels or crackers or veggies or fingers, whatever happens to be closest.

If you are feeling extra-patient, run some roasted red peppers (you can buy them in jars next to the pickles) through your food processor and mix those into the hummus for an transcendent snacking experience.

*The jury is still out on whether hummus points are as effective as brownie points, but it never hurts to try.

Monkey Bread and Easter Recap

On Saturday, per family tradition, I threw an Easter egg hunt for the boys--namely, my roommate and my little brother. I may have gone a little overboard in the hiding process.

At any rate, they found all the eggs and traded them in for Easter baskets.

The Easter baskets were demolished in all of about thirty seconds, and everything was awesome, so I made some monkey bread.

I'd never made monkey bread before. I will quite possibly never make monkey bread again.

Sure, it looks great from the front....

...but then you turn it around and the whole thing kind of falls apart. Literally.

I don't know what I did wrong. The recipe calls for a whopping five ingredients, one of which comes pre-made in the grocery store. Ought to be foolproof. But no, apparently not.

To soothe my defective monkey bread wounds, my roommate made a ginormous Easter dinner on Sunday.

That's an enormous plate of meatballs (because not all of us eat ham), mashed potatoes, secret recipe stuffing, and my favorite -- green beans and crackers. All this food is absolutely healthy, low carb, and most definitely does not contain a pound of butter.

Calories don't count in delicious.