Copycat: Starbuck's Frappuccino

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this post!

To begin, I am in love with Starbuck's frappuccinos and I spend a lot of my pretty pennies to have one when I go shopping or after a bad day. I needed a more wallet friendly version to satisfy my caffeine fix.

Oh, but today! Playing around in my kitchen this morning, I found (to me) the perfect copycat to my favorite drink. I am sipping my delicious coffee as I write this post and still can't be happier with the results.

Frappuccino                                       Makes 3 cups

1/2 cup fresh extra bold coffee

2 cups lowfat milk (2%, 1% or skim) 1/4 cup granulated sugar or sugar substitute
1 tablespoon dry pectin

For Vanilla
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mocha 
2 tbl chocolate syrup and only 2 tbl granulated sugar

1. Combine all ingredients in a covered container. Shake until

sugar and pectin are dissolved.

2. Pour over ice if desired, top with whipped cream.

Sorry it's not the best picture, I need better glassware

Calories calculated using Sparkrecipes Calculator:

Vanilla Frap: 219 calories per 1.5 cup serving. 

Mocha Frap: 221 calories per 1.5 cup serving

Simply "Batty" Halloween

So this year I'm not really feeling the Halloween "vibe." I usually don't decorate for Halloween anyways, just a seasonal Fall kind of decorating that I can leave up September through November.

This year I was inspired to do a bit more. Keeping it simple and still nature inspired. I also needed a spash of something to welcome my guests for my upcoming Pumpkin Party.

I have to say, I love this a lot. It was also a lot of fun to see cars slowing down as they drove by to look at it.

Inspiration came from MADE and Country Living (they used stiff felt, if I could afford it, so would I)

please ignore my awful landscaping

Total cost of project: $4.80

Halloween Bat Decoration

Materials:

Black 8 1/2 x 11" Cardstock
Bat Template
Sharp Scissors
Glue Dots or scotch tape
Preserve-It (Krylon) -Optional

1. Take tracing paper and enlarged the bat, 100%, 75% and 50% tracing it each time (paper against the computer screen) to get three different sizes.

2. Cut out templates and fold a black piece of paper in half. Hold one of your templates over the folded side of the paper and just cut around the pattern, don't bother tracing at all. No one will know if they are not perfect.

I am against wasting paper. I just can't do it, so I used as much space as I could on each sheet. I got 8 bats out of the small, 6 from the medium and 3 from the large.

Half my bats were traced on the UNFOLDED side, making them two pieces. I was OK with that. I played around and liked how the pieces also looked like bats flying and not just the part of a wing.

Some of the pieces I doubled up when hanging, so in the end had 5 different looking bats!

3. Cut and cut until you have a nice variety of bats. My house took 100 bats or about 15 pieces of paper.

4. Once done cutting (or tired of cutting), pull out your glue dots, push and stick to any surface. These wonderful time savers are removable, but use common sense when hanging them.

5. For the pieces of bat wings, hold them to the side and see how they look like flying bats, or double them up and use one glue dot for both so you can see two wings. These are great filler space bats!

I bought some Preserve-It (Krylon) which is used to preserve photos and paper. I don't want to be cutting out bats each year! So I gave my bats a spray before hanging to give them a little defense against the evening dew and daytime humidity. I'll update on how they survived after Halloween (8 days away).

I hung my bats wanting them to look natural, flying in a smooth stream across my house. We have bats around here in California, but not the kind thay fly like these. Oh how I'd love to witness something like that!

Enjoy this project and have fun with it. You've got to love those easy, thrifty and big impact ones!

Fig Bars- Fig Newtons

I have been experimenting a lot with foods I never used before. Earlier this week I used vanilla bean, and then semolina flour, and yesterday I wanted to do something with figs. I have always loved figs. I used to eat them from my neighbor lady's tree all the time when I was little.

They are also great for Halloween because they look like brains when you cut into them! These bars are great too, because they have a purple-y center and you don't see many purple desserts :)

I bought two pounds of figs and decided to try to make a copycat version of fig newtons. Soft buttery cookie with a chewy (and healthy) center.

This recipe couldn't be easier to make, I just pulled some of my old stand by cookie recipes out and decided the best way to keep the chewy and moist center was to turn my fresh figs into a jelly. I hope you enjoy it. I think the jelly recipe was a little too bland and needed more sugar, but I took some over to my family to "test" them, and I came home with an empty plate...so you be the judge.

Fig Bars

Filling

2 lbs fresh figs

1 c sugar

1/2 water

Cookie

1/2 c butter room temp
1 c sugar
1 egg

1 tbl milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder

1 3/4 c all purpose flour

1. Dice figs and soak in water in a saucepan for an hour. Add sugar and cook medium high heat, mashing figs and stirring until a thin jam consistency. Remove from heat and let cool for an hour.  
2. Cream butter, sugar until smooth. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add remaining dry ingredients and mix well.
3. Remove dough and form a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and place in fridge for an hour.
4. Preheat oven to 350F. Take half of dough and on a lightly floured surface, roll out into a rectangle shape to fit into a lightly greased (ideally) 13"x 9" pan. I used my 11"x7"x1" pan and the cookie was thicker but still good. Lay into the pan and gently press down, just to smooth.
5. Top bottom cookie layer with fig filling. Doesn't have to be pretty :)
6. Roll remaining dough and cover figs.
7. Bake for 30 mins or until lightly brown.
8. Cool and cut into squares.

Makes approximately 30 cookies.