#13 - Homemade Ranch Dressing

Today I made my own ranch salad dressing from a recipe I found on thefresh20.com!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Plain Greek Yogurt
1/2 cup Buttermilk
Clove of Garlic
Few leaves of fresh chives
Handful of Flat Leaf Parsley
1 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
1 tsp Salt

Add to food processor and mix! Ta-dah! If you don't have a food processor you could chop everything up super tiny and mix it in a bowl. :)

The dressing was pretty good and has way less calories than store-bought ranch...not to mention it's not filled with things I can't pronounce (and I work in science!). The buttermilk we had was pretty thick so which made the dressing much thicker than store bought dressing. Next time I may add a tablespoon or two of water and see how that works. Anyhoo, it's inexpensive to make...so give it a try!

#5 - Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cheeseball

I have a belated holiday gathering today and that makes for a perfect time to try a new recipe! Months ago I saved a peanut butter cheeseball dessert recipe on Pinterest and today I made it.You can make it too! The Girl Who Ate Everything posted the recipe on her blog. :)

Cream cheese, peanut butter, chocolate and brown sugar served with graham crackers and apples. This is going to be delicious! Isn't it gorgeous!! It was so easy to make!

#2 - How to Make Soft Pretzels

I've never really thought about how soft pretzels get their chewy golden outside shell...well I hadn't thought about it until I decided to try to make some and realized that pretzels truly are just bread. There's really nothing really different (other than a slightly different ratio of water to flour but nothing drastically different) about the pretzel recipe compared to normal bread. Today I learned what makes pretzels have a different texture than bread. 

Pretzels are dipped in a baking soda dissolved in water before baking. (Lye used to be used instead of baking soda! EEK!!) This alkaline solution reacts with the dough and gelatinizes the starch on the surface. This makes the outside of the pretzel sticky which allows the salt to stick to it and it also gives the finished pretzel a nice golden outside.

Check out these awesome pretzels I learned to make using a recipe from allrecipes.com!