S'Mores Krispies

I made these a while ago and the were life changing! I didn't take pics the first time because I was in my blogging slump, so now that I am trying to get back into the groove, of course I had to make them again just so I could blog about them!

Ingredients:

• 1 bag (10 oz) Mini Marshmallows
• 1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate chips + 1 for topping
• 1 box (12 0z) Golden Grahams Cereal
• 6 Tbsp Butter
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
• Non-Stick Cooking Spray

Directions:

In a 9x9 inch baking pan, spray with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.

In a large non-stick pot over medium heat, melt butter. Add in marshmallows and stir together with butter until marshmallows have melted and become creamy. Stir in vanilla extract.

Fold in grahams cereal until all marshmallows and grahams are evenly mixed together. Mix in 1 cup of chocolate chips.

Spread treats into sprayed baking pan. Press into pan and sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup of chocolate chips on top of the treats, lightly press into top of treats to make sure they stick.

Place into fridge for 10 minutes to cool.

Slice into bars and serve. Devour.

Seriously, you guys... I don't really care for real s'mores over the campfire, but I freaking loved these!!

Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

I heart salty sweet combos. The other day, I grabbed a bag of chocolate chips at the store with the intention of making just chocolate chip cookies. Then I thought, I have pinned numerous versions of chocolate chip cookie recipes... Maybe I will try one of those instead. I came across this pretzel one and just so happened to have bought pretzels that day so thought I would give them a try. 

I got the original recipe from "Sugar Cooking". I modified my recipe a bit.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. of salt
• 1/4 tsp. of baking soda
• 1/2 cup of butter at room temperature
• 1/2 cup of tightly packed light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
• 1 egg (beaten)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 cup milk chocolate chips (or an entire bag)
• 1/2 cup pretzel pieces (I used butter pretzels and forgot to measure)

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
2. In a larger bowl, beat the butter and sugars together on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). On low speed, slowly add the beaten egg and vanilla extract. Beat to combine, scrape down the sides of the bowl.
3. Add the flour mixture and beat just until there are no more streaks of flour. Stir in the chocolate chips and pretzels. Cover and refrigerate for an hour.
4. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Scoop out well rounded tablespoonfuls of the dough - leave about 2 inches between each ball. Bake for 10 minutes. If you prefer crispier cookies increase the baking time by 1-2 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before removing.

I'm still not really sure how I feel about these cookies. They aren't amazing. I guess they're OK if you're looking to change up the standard chocolate chip cookie. And it's definitely better than putting nuts in your cookies. With that said, I'm not likely to make these again, but don't feel like I wasted my time giving them a try.

Orange Crush Cupcakes

Don't judge my cupcake decorating skills! (Or lack of skills!) I usually make K do the decorating portion, but for some reason, I did these on my own. As long as they taste good, who cares what they look like, right? Part of the issue is I see on TV the people that bake cupcakes for a living use an ice cream scoop to measure the amount of batter for each cupcake. I try this trick, but my ice cream scoop must be bigger than the ones they use because my cupcakes always overflow!

I got the recipe from "i heart nap time". She called the cupcakes Orange Cream Cupcakes... which, to me meant they were going to taste like an orange creamsicle. It didn't. But I imagine it could with a few changes. Also - you should really go check out the pics of her cupcakes. WAY cuter than my little disasters!

Ingredients:

• 1 16.5 oz white cake mix
• 1 3.4 oz pkg instant vanilla pudding
• 6 Tbsp orange jello powder save 1 Tbsp for frosting I bought two of the larger boxes of jello thinking that one might not be enough and I would be super agro if I was in the middle of making the cupcakes and had to go back to the store for more jello. One was plenty.
• 3 egg whites
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup orange soda room temperature
• 1 8 oz cube of cream cheese softened
• 1 cube (1/2 cup) salted butter softened
• 1/2 tsp orange extract
• 3 cup powdered sugar

Directions:

• Pre heat oven to 350. 
• Combine cake mix, vanilla pudding and 5 Tbsp of jello in a large bowl. 
• Beat in egg whites, vegetable oil and orange soda. 
• Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes.
• Place batter in cupcake liners and bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. 
• Remove the cupcakes from the pan and allow to cool. 

Frosting:

• Combine cream cheese and butter in a large bowl. 
• With a mixer beat until smooth.
• Add jello, orange extract and powdered sugar. 
• Mix until fluffy.
• Frost cupcakes, top with a cute gummy orange candy, and enjoy! 

My opinion: They were good, but not great. I think the orange cream cheese frosting was too much.It would have been much better with a vanilla frosting - giving it more of the orange creamsicle taste I was hoping for. If I were to make them again, I would definitely change the frosting.

The Nieces

Luckily, I made these right before we had family come into town for 4th of July and they were more than happy to help us eat them. My one niece devoured hers and then raved about how good it was. A little while later, I was talking about the cream cheese frosting and all of a sudden she was saying she didn't really like the frosting that much. Apparently, she doesn't like cream cheese frosting. Kids. SMH... LOL I was the exact same way when I was her age. 

 

Lemon Cake for Kamtastic!

The photos wont do this particular blog any justice because well, I didn't take any because I didn't think I'd be blogging it because it's not what I do these days. However, I am on vacation this week so I was feeling some blog motivation!

Here's the best picture I have:

I told you the pic wouldn't do the cupcakes justice. Don't worry, I'll get to the decorations!

I got the recipe from Martha Stewart's website. I know, I cringed too, but I wanted to make something special and from scratch so I gave her a shot. The recipe is for cake, but I made cupcakes since I thought they'd be easier to have at beach bonfire b-day party.

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pans
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest (I used a total of 4 lemons for the whole recipe.)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup low-fat buttermilk
• 1 lemon, thinly sliced and seeded
• Lemon Buttercream frosting

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 8-by-2-inch cake pans, tapping out excess flour. (Or put cupcake liners in a cupcake pan) In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest.
   
2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. With mixer on low, beat in eggs and yolks, one at a time. Beat in 2 tablespoons lemon juice. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix just until combined.
   
3. Divide batter between pans; smooth tops. (Or fill cupcakes about 3/4 of the way full - I did still smooth the tops, but I'm not sure it was necessary.) Bake until cakes pull away from sides of pans, 32 to 35 minutes. (Or bake cupcakes for 20 minutes - until a tooth pick comes out clean.) Let cool in pans 10 minutes. Run a knife around edges of pans and invert cakes onto a wire rack.
   
4. These next two steps pissed me off. Once again, I didn't fully read the recipe before committing to making it. It wasn't as big of a pain as I thought it was going to be, but it annoyed me none the less. While cakes are baking, bring remaining 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water to a boil in a saucepan. Add lemon slices and simmer 25 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer lemon slices to a waxed-paper-lined plate. Stir remaining 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice into syrup.
   
5. Using a toothpick, poke holes in warm cakes on rack. Brush with lemon syrup. Let cool completely. Frost cooled cupcakes and top with candied lemon slices. <~ I skipped this last part. 
   
   
   We tested them out before frosting them and they were lemony delicious!!! They were so lemony, I almost skipped the lemon frosting. Once they were frosted with the lemon buttercream frosting tho, you could barely tell the cupcake was lemon too! I do think if I were to make them again, I would skip the lemon frosting. The lemon cupcakes were too much work to not give them the spot light! 
   
   
   
   
   
   Ok, for the decorations. I saw a pin on Pinterest where someone put they're kid's pic on cupcakes for their 1st b-day and I thought it was hilarious. I had to do it! So I sent my friend's wife a text and asked her for a funny picture of her. She sent me one, I had 25 wallets printed out, I glued/Mod Podged the pics to scrap paper and I got to cutting them out. (You could skip the gluing to scrapbook paper part if you want, I just wanted them to have pretty backs.) Once they were all cut out, K glued tooth picks to the backs and we stuck them in the cupcakes. 
   
   
   They were a hit! Party guests thought they were hysterical and dubbed them the "Redneck Army". LOL! They seemed to enjoy the cupcake, as well! 
   
   

   

   Good times! Happy Birthday Kamtastic!

    
   
   
   
   

Glazed Apple Fritter Cupcakes

Oh. My. Delicious!!!!!

I got this recipe from Chasing Some Blue Sky and I'm calling mine cupcakes - she called them muffins. Mine don't look as pretty as hers do (go ahead and click the link so you can see just how different they look!) I am pretty sure they tasted as good, if not better. (My glaze is much thicker - hence the "better".)

Here's how it goes:

For the Apples:
2 large granny smith apples, 1/4 inch dice
3 tbsp butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp water

1/3 cup flour

For the Cupcakes:
2 large eggs
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

For the Glaze:
2 tbsp butter melted
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp hot water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. 
2. Line 14 muffin cups with cupcake liners (14? Who has a 14 cup muffin tin?!)
3. In a skillet add apple ingredients except flour (It was at this point I realized I didn't have enough cinnamon and had to run out to the store. It was the most frustrating cinnamon run of my life. Fortunately, there were no casualties.) and cook over medium heat until apples are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in flour to coat apples (this prevents apples from sinking to bottom of cupcakes)
4. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt
5. In a large bowl beat together applesauce, oil, and sugars till smooth. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla and mix thoroughly  
6. Stir the flour into the batter alternating with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined. Gently stir in apples until just combined
7. Spoon batter into cups (I used an ice cream scoop), filling the cups, and smooth tops (AKA shake the cupcake pan a little to level them out). Divide batter equally among prepared cupcake cups. Bake until cupcake tops are a pale golden and springy to the touch, 15 to 17 minutes, rotating halfway through baking time. (I checked mine at 15, then added two minutes, then added one minute so I cooked mine for 18 minutes - just in case you failed basic math.)
8. Cool cupcakes in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 10 minutes before glazing. 
9. To make the glaze, In a medium bowl mix together the melted butter, confectioners sugar, vanilla and water. Whisk until smooth. (I doubled this.)
10. When cupcakes have cooled slightly, dip the muffin top into the glaze and allow the glaze to harden. Once hardened, dip a second time and allow to harden before serving. (I didn't do the second dip, the glaze was thick enough with the first dip. Not to mention that if the glaze on the cupcake is going to harden, the glaze left in the bowl is going to harden too - and it did.)

Sometimes when I bake or cook a new recipe, I get scared to taste it. I'm not sure if it's because I am scared of a total failure or if it's that I don't want to be disappointed, but I was struggling with trying them. I took half a dozen to K at work to share with her co-workers and I told her to tell me what they're reactions were. Before I even made it home, I got a text that they were a hit so I went right in the house and did my own taste test.

Holy moly those are good!!!! They might have even topped my pumpkin cupcakes I made for Thanksgiving!

I highly recommend this recipe! It's worth every calorie! 

Better than Pumpkin Pie

And believe me when I tell you I LOVE pumpkin pie! But, I am the only one in my house who does so usually half of the pie gets thrown out and then I overindulge in the left over cool whip. So this year, I decided to try something different... and they were a HIT!

Of course there are hundreds of pumpkin something or other recipes on pinterest, but I picked this one.  The pin led me to Mama B's Blog with the simplest, most delicious cupcake I have ever made.

Ingredients:

• Cake mix of choice (I used a spice cake mix but I imagine any flavor would work. - I wonder if a white cake would pull out the pumpkin flavor more. Hmmm...)
• 1-15 oz can of Pumpkin Puree

Frosting:

• 1 package of cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup of butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups of powdered sugar

Mix the cake mix and the pumpkin puree in a stand mixer. Fill your muffin tin holders 3/4 of the way full with the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Let cool completely while making your frosting.

For the frosting: mix all of the ingredients together until fluffy and frost your cooled cupcakes!

 The frosting is key. After baking the first batch (I made two so K could take some to work for her pot luck), of course I needed to taste test the cupcake to make sure it wasn't poisoned. I was actually a little concerned because it wasn't that spectacular. In fact, it seemed kind of bland and left a weird after taste. But I continued on.

Before I even frosted the cupcakes, I "accidentally" got some on my finger so, of course I had to check that for poison too and OH EM GEE! It was so good I about dropped to my knees. (Ok, that's probably a little dramatic, but I have to get the point across that it was good.) My SIL thought it was so good, she wanted just a bowl of frosting, skip the cupcake. I'm telling you - it was good. Did I mention how good it was? ;o)

I scooped the frosting into a piping kit (which my piping skills leave something to be desired as you see in the picture above), and started frosting these little pieces of heaven. I was able to exercise some self control and wait until after we ate our Thanksgiving dinner to test it out and seriously, I don't think I will ever buy another pumpkin pie again in my life! It was ah-mazing!

A few tips -- The cupcake batter comes out unusually thick. I questioned it, but it just made the cupcake a little more dense than the average cupcake, which I think made it better. Some people on Mama B's Blog said they added a little water. I s'pose you could do that, but I don't recommend it - they were perfect without the water.

Like the professional cupcake bakers I watch on TV, I used an ice cream scooper to scoop the batter into the cups. The first batch I made, I did a whole scoop... it was fine, but they came out a little bumpy and more like muffins because they expanded so much when they cooked. After that I did about 3/4 of a scoop and they turned out perfect... I got 28 cupcakes total and probably could have gotten 32 if I would have done smaller scoops for the first batch.

Last, but not least, we stored our cupcakes in the fridge. Partly because I feel weird about leaving cream cheese based food out. I'm not sure what the rule is, but I would hate to cause all my taste testers food poisoning because I left a dairy product out too long. Also, that's typically how we store our cakes. I don't know why, but I think cake tastes better cold. 

I really hope you will partake in this awesome, super simple, delicious treat! I promise, you wont regret it. If your a little skeptical of the pumpkin... or the fact that there's only two ingredients in the cupcakes, fine... don't make the cupcakes that way, but do yourself a favor and make the frosting... slather it on anything.

P.S. I hope you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving and found yourselves realizing you had more than enough to be thankful for.

Apple Cheesecake Bars

I got the original recipe from The Girl Who Ate Everything. She called hers Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars. I decided to leave the Carmel off my title because the first night K and I ate this, I forgot the caramel. The second night, I remembered the caramel but as I grabbed the jar of caramel off the counter, I realized that it wasn't caramel at all, but it was butterscotch sauce. So, technically my version didn't have any caramel at all.

Ingredients: 

Crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

Cheesecake Filling:

3 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons, divided

3 large eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 

 

Apples:

3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg 

 

Streusel Topping:

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup quick cooking oats

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1/2 cup caramel topping

 

Directions:

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

 

For the crust:

In a medium bowl, combine flour and brown sugar. Cut in butter with a pastry blender (or 2 forks) until mixture is crumbly. Press evenly into a 9×13 baking pan lined with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake 15 minutes or until lightly browned. 

 

For the cheesecake filling:

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese with 3/4 cup sugar in an electric mixer at medium speed until smooth. Then add eggs, 1 at a time, and vanilla. Stir to combine. Pour over warm crust. 

 

For the apples:

In a small bowl, stir together chopped apples, remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Spoon evenly over cream cheese mixture. 

 For the streusel topping: 
In a small bowl, combine all ingredients. I like to really combine it by using my clean hands to thoroughly combine the butter into the mixture.

Sprinkle Streusel topping over apples. Bake 40-45 minutes, or until filling is set. Drizzle with caramel topping and let cool. Serve cold and enjoy! Make 16 servings.

It's a lot of steps, but I think they're worth it. Next time I might use more apples, but it was delish just the way it was. I would make it again, for sure but it was waaaay too much for just me an K. It would have to be a dish I share in the future, or take to a gathering.

S'Mores Brownies

Where's the Graham Cracker part of the S'More?
We'll get to that.

 More like S'mores Brownies disaster. SMH

Recipe swiped from Prevention RD. I just read that she is a Registered Dietitian. I am not really sure what Dietitian in their right mind would recommend this recipe, but at the same time - right on to her for not being a stiff Dietitian that says you can't enjoy life's little pleasures. :o)

Ingredients:

• 1 pack brownie mix (Betty Crocker,  Duncan Hines, etc. – my selection had 18 servings, 140 calories each)
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups miniature marshmallows
• 4 graham crackers, cut into chunks
• 2 Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars, cut into each segments

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray 9×9-inch baking pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Prepare the brownie mix according to the directions on the box (or use your favorite homemade recipe) using the oil, egg, and water.

After baking, remove the pan from the oven and set the oven to broil at 500-550 F.

Cool brownies for about a minute then sprinkle the marshmallows over the warm brownies. Make sure to cover most of the area. Sprinkle the graham crackers on top of the marshmallows. Broil about 4-5 inches from the heat for 30 seconds to a minute until the marshmallows are golden brown. Watch carefully so that they don’t burn. Sprinkle with Hershey’s milk chocolate bars.

Sounds simple enough, right? Sure... if you're not me. LOL

If you look back at the picture on the top, perhaps you wonder where the Graham Crackers are, huh? Well, here they are ----

Burnt to a crisp and in a separate bowl.

OK, first of all, we have an electric stove/oven and electric sucks. I did exactly what the recipe said, set it to broil, had the rack where I thought it was meant to be, put the dish back in the oven and set the timer for 2 minutes and before the two minutes were even up, I smelled burning and took out the dish to find my Graham Crackers burnt to a crisp.

If (and that is a giant IF) I were to ever make these again, I would probably throw the brownies back in the oven without the Graham Crackers and I would probably crumble/crush the crackers, instead of cutting them. It was unnecessary to have such neatly cute Grahams.

Anyway, I immediately pulled all the Graham Crackers off the brownies but still put the chocolate chunks on it. The end result left something to be desired. They were very rich, the marshmallows were gooey (duh) and I just didn't care for them. But then again, I don't really care for real S'Mores either. So there ya have it.

Peach Treat

This was a tasty, refreshing little treat but waaaay too much for my family of two. Next time I will definitely half the recipe.

Of course I screwed up the recipe. SMH, I really don't know how I manage sometimes! LOL Check out A Little Tipsy for the original recipe. Below is how mine turned out. It went a little something like this:

Photo borrowed from A Little Tipsy

Ingredients

•  2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 pkg graham crackers, crushed
• 1/3 cups oats
• 7-8 large peaches 
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 1/4 cup lemon juice 
•  Cool Whip 

Directions

• Mix graham cracker crumbs, powdered sugar, oats, and butter together. Put a layer in the bottom of your pan, saving some to sprinkle on top. 
• Mix the lemon juice with the can of sweetened condensed milk. Pour over the peaches and mix until peaches are coated. 
• Pour peach mixture into pan over crust. 
• Top with Cool Whip
• Sprinkle with left over crust mixture. 

Mine looked more like this one.
Photo borrowed from A Little Tipsy

So the original recipe called for whipping cream, I am assuming to make your own whipped topping. My oversight of that ingredient and getting Cool Whip instead is sort of comical. It was probably a Freudian slip. See, I love Cool Whip. I have ever since I was a kid. If we have it, I will sneak a spoon full from time to time and have even been known to have a bowl of it like ice cream. I LOVE it.

Anyway, it turned out fine. I assume not much different than the original recipe. The lemon was a little overbearing on the first day, but seemed to have not been as bad the second day. It doesn't have a very long shelf life so either eat it fast or prepare it for when you are planning to have company.

Lemon Buttercream Frosting

We recently had another good friend celebrate a six year anniversary so, of course, I wanted to bake her a cake! We asked her wife what her favorite cake was and she said lemon cake with lemon frosting. Easy enough, right? Perhaps... but this is me we're talking about. Nothing is ever easy and it's always an adventure.

I was doing this last minute so I just bought a boxed lemon cake mix and was going to make the frosting myself. My intent was to make this one, but somehow missed the frosting that was an ingredient so I didn't get any at the store. Before I even started making it, I was wondering how 2 cups of powdered sugar and a quarter cup butter was going to turn into frosting, but I have taught myself to trust the process... so I started blending the two and immediately knew my first instinct was right. So I looked at the recipe again and that was when I realized I needed frosting. It was already 11:30 at night and I didn't want to go back to the store so I improvised.

I had also pinned this recipe which I knew didn't call for frosting because it needed 3.5 cups of powdered sugar.

Ingredients

---

• 3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick) softened
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 T lemon zest (the rind of a lemon)
• 2 T lemon juice

How to make it

---

• mix the butter, lemon zest and vanilla together, making sure all the lumps are gone.
• add the milk, and quickly cream it into the butter mixture.
• by the 1/2 cup, mix in the sugar.
• once the sugar is all in the bowl, cream on "high" for two minutes. (I use this time to clean up)
• mix in lemon juice.
• spread heartily and enjoy!

Photo courtesy of Group Recipes

The other recipe only called for 1/4 cup of butter so I had to get creative in softening the other 1/4 cup of butter.

Then I got to the part with milk and ours was a little expired. I happened to have a can of  Sweetened Condensed Milk so I threw in a quarter cup of that, but it was too thick. I don't think I have ever worked with Sweetened Condensed Milk before - it was not what I was expecting. I didn't want to keep adding that so I said screw it and added a quarter cup of the couple day old milk, crossing my fingers that it wasn't bad. None of us got sick and it got rave reviews! Whew!

Banana Cookies

K and I have an overabundant amount of borderline rotten bananas in our freezer. I'm not sure how that happens. We have the best of intentions of eating the bananas and then next thing you know, they're all black and we just throw them in the freezer knowing we'll eventually make some banana bread or banana cake.

The other day, I was thinking about it and there are all kinds of banana recipes out there, but I couldn't recall ever seeing a banana cookie recipe. So I went on a mission to find one and came across this one. It claims to be a 70 year old recipe and that was in 2008... so it must be a 74 year old recipe by now. Well, it was an honor to get to try a recipe of such age!

The Recipe:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1 cup of mashed bananas (about 2 ½ large bananas)
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 2 cups of flour
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground mace or nutmeg I used mace because I'm not a fan of nutmeg, but they're actually quite similar.
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
• 1 cup of pecans (walnuts and chocolate chips are fine alternatives) 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
2. In a bowl, mix the mashed bananas and baking soda. Let sit for 2 minutes. The baking soda will react with the acid in the bananas which in turn will give the cookies their lift and rise. 
3. Mix the banana mixture into the butter mixture. Mix together the flour, salt, and spices and sift into the butter and banana mixture and mix until just combined.
4. Fold into the batter the pecans or chocolate chips if using. Drop in dollops onto parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake for 11-13 minutes or until nicely golden brown. Let cool on wire racks.

Makes about 30 cookies.

I didn't have a full bag of chocolate chips so I added them to the last batch and what a difference they made!! The cookies are delicious without them, so don't worry if you don't have any.

 

Pear Crisp & a Little Blog Bashing

Who needs food staging when you discover Instagram?

Our friends have many fruit trees in their back yard and the other day K came home from their house with a bunch of pears. I knew we wouldn't eat all of them so I went on a mission to find a recipe for a Pear Crisp. The winning recipe came from The Pioneer Woman blog. It also helped that I had all the ingredients on hand!

The Recipe:

FILLING INGREDIENTS:

• 4 whole (to 5) Large Pears (Bosc Work Well) (I don't even know what a Bosc pear is.)
• 2/3 cups Sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt

TOPPING INGREDIENTS

• 1-1/2 cup All-purpose Flour
• 1/3 cup Sugar
• 1/3 cup Firmly Packed Brown Sugar (So what that a little extra fell in the bowl when I was getting it into the measuring cup. It didn't hurt anybody.)
• 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/2 cup Pecans, Very Finely Chopped (I don't love nuts so I used 1/2 cup of  Quaker Oats)
• 1 stick Butter, Melted

Preparation Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Peel the pears (I didn't do this because my hands give me issues and they kept cramping when I was trying to peel them) 
• Core, and dice pears. 
• Place into a bowl and stir together with 2/3 cup sugar (I'm not 100% positive all that sugar is necessary - keep reading) and 1/4 teaspoon salt. 
• Set aside.

• In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans. Stir together. Drizzle melted butter gradually, stirring with a fork as you go until all combined.
• Pour pears into a baking dish. (I used a 9x9 Pyrex)
• Top with crumb topping.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
• Place pan on top rack of oven for an additional 10 minutes, or until topping is golden brown. (I didn't do this last step. I baked it for the 30 minutes on the second to top rack and after the 30 minutes, the topping looked golden brown to me so I skipped the extra 10 minutes on the top rack.)

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. (I absolutely did this!)

So, this is where the blog bashing begins. I think some of these food bloggers aren't always 100% honest. At least this is what I have started telling myself to make me feel better when a recipe doesn't turn out absolutely perfect like the food blog makes it seem. Haha.


My Crisp was crisp, but it was a little (ok, probably more like a lot) soupy underneath. Maybe soupy wasn't the right word because it didn't really ruin the dish, but there was a lot of juice on the bottom that the blog never mentioned. I suspect it might have been from the 2/3 cups of sugar I mentioned earlier that I thought it might not have been necessary to use quite that much. Maybe less sugar would have produced less juice.

Also, I thought the pears would cook more like apples. When you bake apples, they tend to soften - pears do not. Out of the five I cut up, only two were ripe enough to be soft. The others went in the oven hard, and came out of the oven hard. Not rock hard, of course, but definitely not soft like I was thinking they would come out.

Overall, it was good. Would I rush out and buy more pears so I can make it again? Probably not, but if someone were to give us a bunch of pears again, I'd make it again.

Now for a little more blog bashing:

I give myself such a hard time because my pictures don't look as good as "real" food bloggers. Granted, I just discovered Instagram and that seems to help (see demo below), but I don't think I would ever spend the time and energy trying to stage food the way real food bloggers do it. Kudos to them for putting in the effort, though. So, if you're a reader of my blog - you will get crappy pictures, but you will get honest truths about cheffing mishaps, recipe mishaps, and overall reviews. Granted, I wont blog the total disasters (unless it comes with a funny story), but I will give my honest opinion about my recipes. I mean, c'mon, do you really think that every single recipe food bloggers blog turns out amazing and tastes spectacular? I doubt it.

A real food blogger's photo.

My photo before Instagram

My photo after Instagram

 OK, maybe the Instagram doesn't help as much as I thought it did. Well, at least it makes it look like I tried.

What do you think of the new Bon Appetit?

Adventures in Cake Decorating

I learned something valuable about myself this weekend. I am not destined to be a cake decorator - or even a baker. 

Don't get me wrong, I love to bake. However, I learned Friday night that I prefer to bake only for those I know and not on a grand scale. It's a lot of pressure to bake for multiple strangers!

A friend of ours celebrated a 20 year anniversary and I committed to making the cake for the celebration. Her favorite cake is a Pepperidge Farm White Coconut Cake - a cake I have never made before and didn't really understand. Is it coconut cake with white frosting? Is it white cake with coconut frosting? I was unsure and either way, I should have definitely done a trial run before making a cake for 100 people. 

K said it was white cake with coconut frosting so I went on a mission to find a recipe for coconut frosting. Most of them were really lame... using just coconut flavoring and they sounded boring. I finally found a cream cheese coconut frosting and - HELLOOOO... I LOVE cream cheese frosting so I was sold. I know, I know... It wasn't my cake so I should have kept searching for a regular coconut frosting, but I was running out of time so I just went with it. 

On my way home from work, I went to the store and bought four boxes of white cake, a ton of powdered sugar, a ton of cream cheese, a ton of butter and some coconut. (I should have realized right then and there that the ratio of coconut to everything else was off, but I didn't.)

Let the disasters begin.

I put the first two 9 x 13 cakes in and they came out looking great. I was off to a good start! I let those two cakes cool and threw in two round cakes. When I thought the first two cakes were cool enough, I attempted to get them out of their baking dish. Uh oh. They weren't coming out as easily as I had hoped. &%$#! What did I do wrong?!

K worked in a bakery for a while so I left them to her to figure out how to get them out without crumbling them to pieces. It was a hopeless cause!

This was at about 10:30 PM. We took a moment to figure out a game plan. I certainly didn't have the time or energy to bake four more cakes, let them cool, then decorate them. I decided we'd do some cupcakes since it's pretty hard to mess those up and bake another 9 x 13 cake (K was able to piece a 9 x 13 back together.) If the cake fails again, at least we will have the cupcakes for our friend, and everyone else can eat a store bought cake!

See? It's hard to screw up cupcakes. They looked so good someone stole one before I could even take the picture. I felt really bad though because after I got back from the store, I was super frustrated and realized that these cupcakes weren't being baked with love. :o( I told that story to someone at the party and they said, "I feel that same way sometimes too. It's OK, angry cake tastes good too." That made me feel a little better.

So the cakes weren't the only disaster. While the cupcakes were baking, I thought I better start making the frosting so K can start frosting the cake she saved. I mixed all the ingredients together, stirred in the coconut and... It barely freaking tasted like coconut!!! The coconut was the whole point! GRRRRR! Well, it was too late now to change the recipe, so I just had to go with it and hope it worked. 

K had the brilliant idea that she would make a sand dollar to put on the cake because our friend as a sentimental connection to them and recently got a tattoo. That was kind of a nightmare too. The sand dollar started out much larger than it ended up, but I think K did a nice job and recovered nicely. 

Not bad, right? I mean, it's no Ace of Cakes or Cake Boss, but it worked. 

And for the final product we had a beach scene with a sand dollar:

 

I think it turned out pretty cute considering we were up until 3:30 am baking and getting the initial frosting done. We did the finishing touches the next morning before the party... We wont mention how we were almost an hour and a half late, but I guess better late than never. The guests seemed to really like the cake... Either that, or they were being nice. LOL 

When all else fails, cover the scraps left over in chocolate frosting and devour. At least that's what we did. :o)

Carmelita Melt Down

A couple of weekends ago, the SIL and I got into a serious baking kick. I think we baked four different sweet recipes. Ridiculous.

She made these things called Carmelitas. They are delicious, but a little on the rich side. Of course, K loved them. At first I was just like, "of course she does". It wasn't until the SIL said that the Carmelitas reminded them of something their grandma made that I decided I would make them for K sometime in the future.

The SIL got the recipe from Lulu the Baker. She doubled her recipe and I was debating doubling mine. K loves a sweet after dinner and the SIL said it freezes well so I figured, what the heck... I would go ahead and double the recipe.

The Recipe
32 caramel squares, unwrapped
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside.
In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda.
Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of an 8x8" pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crust.
Pour caramel mixture over chocolate chips. Crumble remaining oatmeal mixture over caramel.
Return to oven and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned.
Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.

*A stint in the fridge will help them cool off if you're pinched for time. They shouldn't be served cold, but all of that molten caramel takes a long time to cool down. They should be stored and served at room temperature.

**To make a 9x13" version, simply double the amounts. 

The key word there? "Simply". Apparently in the world of me, doubling a recipe isn't so simple.

I didn't double the flour. I thought I doubled the butter but in hind sight, my math brain was taking the day off and what I thought was a cup and a half of butter was really just the 3/4 cup it called for. And in reviewing this recipe for the blog, I am pretty sure I didn't put the full amount of brown sugar in.

Hence, the "Carmelita Melt Down".

The SIL "Melt Down"

Despite the melt down, and it being more caramel than anything else, they were still a hit. K devoured them, the SIL had an even bigger meltdown when she attempted to warm it to put over ice cream (above), and my boss nearly put himself into a sugar induced coma because he ate so many of them.

So, I guess even with major mistakes, it was still a hit and comes highly recommended. I think from now on I will stick with the recipe and stay away from doubling.