Abigail Kimball

I've shied away from fried donuts for sooo long because I was always afraid they'd turn out burnt on the outside, doughy on the inside, and irregularly shaped. Talk about mistake-making trauma! My terrible history with deep-frying food has already been explained in my  fried chicken post . However, I love to repeat it. In a nutshell, no matter how many blog posts, cookbooks, youtube videos and lectures from experienced grandmas I carefully noted, my frying would end up in a giant mess of greasy, burnt, terrible tasting articles of unidentifiable food. Recently, I got up the courage to try fried chicken, once again! I hit a treasure trove when I found this AMAZING video by  Divas Can Cook . She was so mind opening, I have no idea what clicked, but somehow I suddenly knew how to fry. So, donuts will be no-problemo, right? Right, except for My Big Mistake of leaving my test donut in over-heated oil for 10 minutes while I got utterly absorbed in meticulously cutting perfe...

So, these are basically a granola bar or a healthy rice krispy. For those who are already super healthy with a low-sugar diet, you can trick your kids (and self!) into thinking they are eating rice krispies. When really, it's just a granola bar with the same texture and way better ingredients. Nowadays, it seems that either granola bars are way over-priced for what's in them, what's in them isn't healthy but it's cheap and tasty, or they have the best ingredients, flavor, and nourishment but are way to expensive for your budget. I noticed this a few years ago, and strove to find the perfect granola bar recipe that wasn't too crumbly, didn't have extravagant ingredients that are great but normally aren't in our pantry, was easy to make and didn't take much $$$. After trial and error, I discovered a recipe my mom had printed out and tried. Unfortunately, it had been printed and stuck on the fridge for a semi-permanent encampment of 3 months. I d...

I've made a lotion tutorial before, which you can see  here , but honestly, it wasn't really lotion! It was more of whipped butter. I guess a lot of the lotion DIY's out there were more of that texture though, so it wasn't like I was misguiding anybody. This time, I tried a butter. With skin butters, the whole idea is that you whip oils already called butters (shea, mango, etc.) with a non-solid oil like almond, olive, or avocado. However, depending on the amounts and ingredients, you'll get different textures. The one that I made is more solid because cocoa butter is so hard. Actually, a good improvement to the recipe would be to add twice the amount of almond oil. However, as soon as it hits the skin, this body butter goes on smoother ever. It feels so amazing you can't even believe it's real! Being much less messy and complicated, this is a better recipe than my other one for beginners. Basically, you melt, chill, and whip. Let's get ...

This recipe is tried and true. It's the one I always remember us making when I was little. Obviously, there's many out there, and lot's of different types. This one is a hard sugar cookie recipe, but you can subtract 2 minutes from the  cooking time and it will be nice and chewy. You definitely won't  finding these like the ones you buy that have 1/2 an inch of frosting and who knows what chemicals. Not that my recipe is any healthier. It's half sugar and butter, but I find that better than "preservatives" and "thickeners" and "emulsifiers." Kinda grosses me out to not know what's in my food unless it's Hot Cheetos. Those have a special exception. Laughing emoji. Anyway, I love this one because you can flavor it, color it, top it, and shape it. Quite a versatile recipe. This time, I decide to make pinwheels for St. Patrick's day. I also did crosses and 3 leaf clovers but didn't take pictures of those because th...