Hot Chocolate Chip Cookies

OH MY GOSH these are SOOO good!  I made em up myself!  They really do taste like hot chocolate!  Make them!  Here is the recipe:

Hot Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 sticks butter at room temperature

1 cup Baker’s sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 and 1/4 cups all purpose flour

4 packets of hot chocolate mix…. don’t use sugar free…. just because 

1/2 cup each white chips, milk chocolate chips, and semi-sweet chips

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream butter and sugars until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined. In a separate bowl, combine flour, hot chocolate mix, salt and baking soda. Add to wet ingredients in 3 to 4 parts, making sure all is incorporated.  Fold in chips. Chill the dough for an hour or so.  Use a 1/4 cup as a scoop to scoop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper.   Bake for 9-11 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan.

Anyone Can Make These: Plain Peanut Butter

Now for the plain version of the easiest peanut butter cookies ever.  They are a little boring if you just subtract out the chocolate chips so you have to alter them a little.  Do everything as before, make your tablespoon-sized doughballs and then what I do is squish it with a buttered, sugared glass and then do my criss crosses with the fork.  You don’thave to do both, I just like the graininess of the sugar on the outside and I like the nostalgia of the criss crosses.  My mom used to let me do that part 🙂  Take a flat bottomed glass and rub your stick of butter on it, pour some sugar in a bowl, and then dip the glass in the sugar before squishing each cookie. 

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 large egg
1 cup sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat over to 325 degrees.  Mix egg, sugar, vanilla, and peanut butter until well blended.  Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.  Remove from fridge and roll into tablespoon size balls.  Place on cookie sheet a couple inches apart from each other.  Flatten with the bottom of a sugared glass cup and make fork hatches if desired .  Bake 17 to 19 minutes until slightly brown and yummy looking.  Cool on sheet for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack.  Enjoy!

S’more Please

OK, I have been working on getting my own brownie recipe down for awhile now and I think I’ve figured it out… so now its time to try and play around with it and see how much I can mess it up 🙂  I saw a picture of a toasted marshmallow somewhere on the internet and I thought smores sounded darn tasty.  I am not a super huge graham cracker person so I needed a sub- vanilla wafers!  Lots of people do it… the Pioneer Woman uses nuts in hers, other folks use sugar in theirs- mine is basic.  SO I didn’t want to top the brownies with the cookies cuz it would be right, so we ended up with a crust, brownies, and toasty marshmallows on top.  AWESOME.  If you are really into smores authenticity you can sub out the vanilla wafers with graham crackers.  When I read this post back it seems a little hyperactive…..

Smore’s Brownies

Crust

1 box Vanilla Wafers

1 stick butter, melted (doesn’t matter if its salted or not)

1 teaspoon Vanilla

Brownies

3/4 cup butter

4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened baking chocolate

2 cups white sugar (I like bakers sugar)

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup flour

1 cup chocolate chips

Topping: Just mini marshmallows! 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Make the crust: grind the wafers in a food processor until they are fairly finely ground and then dump them into a 13 X 9 in glass baking dish… add the melted butter and vanilla and stir it all together until its moistened.  Press the crust all the way to the edges (here you can thin it out and up the sides if you want). 

Make the brownies: Melt the butter and chocolate together in a glass bowl (either in the microwave or over a put of water on the stove- I prefer the second way but remove from the stove/pot before continuing).  Stir in the sugar, then mix in the eggs and vanilla.  Stir in the flour and then fold in the chocolate chips.  Pour into your prepared crust.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes and then sprinkle the marshmallows A LA sweet potato caserole style and return to the oven.  DO  NOT LEAVE YOUR POST.  Stand there and keep an eye on them until they are brown (about 5 and 1/2 minutes) and remove.  The marshmallows can burn quickly and unless you are one of those wierdos that jams your marshmallow directly into the middle of the camfire, you don’t want this.  This is the point where you will get a little worried because the marshmallows will all puff up and look like they are exploding out of your dish… just keep going till they are brown.  It’s OK.  Take them out of the oven and set them on the stove and walk away.  Give 10 to 15 minutes and the marshmallows will all shrink up and sink down.  I learned the hard way that cutting these bad boys is a bit of a challenge.  To avoid the stickiness, spray a sharp knife with cooking spray and dissect as usual.  YUM!

Happy Birthday Lawanna

Happy Birthday to Lawanna!  She is one of the co-owners of the doggie daycare that our dogs go to: PoochesPlace.  Doggie day care is absolutely awesome for those with pooches who have never tried it.  They play their hearts out and then crash in the car on the way home.  I didn’t see her on her birthday so the night before when we went to pick up our pups I took her this card:

and this cake:

Which truly is the best coffee cake EVER and you can find the recipe here:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/06/the-best-coffee-cake-ever/

Make it.  Today.

Treat of the Week: PW Cinnamon Rolls

OK- if you can spare about 2 hours ever…. I highly suggest you make these!  Of course, again, I am working from my Pioneer Woman cookbook… it hasn’t let me down yet!  I started these little gems yesterday morning….. scalded the milk and added the yeast and whatnot let it cool (did the dishes)… let them sit for an hour with the yeast (cleaned the living room) and then rolled them out!   That was a first for me!  The recipes makes TWO 30″ X 10″ rectangles that you add butter and sugar and cinnamony goodness to and roll up… my problem?  Where do I roll out a 30 inch rectangle?  I ended up cleaning off one whole side of the island in my kitchen and flouring the whole thing.  Truly if you do other things during the milk cooling and dough rising, this doesn’t take much of your time!  I ended p with 6 whole tins of them- froze 5 and baked one (I had to try them!).  I also have a homemade pizze crust and 2 pie crusts in there right now!  Now I am prepared for any event!  Again, I highly suggest her book and if you don’t have $30 for it right now… go browse her website, its free and its worth it!  http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/

I must apologize for the poor photography compared to other Treats, the kitchen doesn’t make a great studio!

Treat of the Week: Cake Balls

This weeks story is one of tragedy AND success.  I love Bakerella (http://www.bakerella.com/).  I have been a fan of her Cake Pops for a long time.  I finally tried to do it myself… and here is what happened:

Not pretty.  They were too heavy and just slid down the sticks!!!! I tried to make them smaller and see if that helped:

Its not all beautiful and perfectly round like hers… but it was my first time!  Unfortunately this used up most of my blue sugar so I decided to back up, re-evaluate, and start again.  The cake balls were already made, they just needed their coating.  Since I love to grind up chocolate chips and roll my cupcakes in them, I decided the best move would be to remove the sticks and make them “Cake Ball Truffles”:

 They turned out well and I’ll definitely try again!  Here’s my take on this, DON’T try to do this when you have a deadline!  If you are planning these for someones birthday or a specific occasion- do a practice round first!  Its all about technique!  I like them and I think the second round will be better!  To see how they are done:

http://www.bakerella.com/red-velvet-cake-balls/

I used a yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting and then dipped them in melted dark chocolate and ground up chocolate chips.  Learning lesson!!!!

Goodbye Andrea

One of my best cashiers at work had her last day Friday 😦  She is the grandma to us all- she makes us all kinds of goodies and treats and tells us all to be nice to each other.. . naturally the traditional grocery store cookie cake wasn’t going to cut it this time!  I found a great cake recipe in the Rachael Ray magazine that I alway go back to.   So I started with the white cake recipe (which normally makes a four layer white cake) and made cupcakes with it… then I used my regular buttercream frosting recipe, but added a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice to make it nice and zesty!   Then, I busted out my ultimate cupcake trick- throw some chips (white, chocolate, butterscoth, it doesn’t really matter- coordinate to your cake flavor) into the food processor and grind ’em up.  Next frost your cupakes and just roll them in your ground um chips…. add a ton to the texture and flavor and they look really impressive with minimal work! 

 

For the cake:

  http://www.rachaelraymag.com/Recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-index/dessert-recipes/Golden-Cake

For the frosting:

 http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-index/dessert-recipes/Vanilla-Frosting

Lunch Lady… Dinner?

Who hates canned sloppy joe sauce???? I won’t mention the name, but I DO NOT like it!  I started making these last fall and I have to say, they make a GREAT comfy food for a warm night (indoors) watching TV.   They are super easy and really really good.  I usually make them for my husband and myself  but I’ve had a few friends try them and they liked ’em a lot too!  We like to eat them on Texas Toast but I really could just scoop a big spoonful onto some Ruffles and have some Hillbilly nachos!   There are choices with this recipe too… you could add diced onion instead of onion powder… or you could use ground chicken to cut the fat from the beef.  Here’s the recipe:

Sloppy Joes (8 servings)

2 lb ground beef                                   1 Tbsp + 1 tsp prepared mustard

2 c ketchup                                            1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 c water                                            1 tsp onion powder

1/4 c brown sugar                              1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp + 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce      

1)  Brown meat in a medium sized saucepan and drain.

2)  Add all the other ingredients and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes or until sauce thickens and reduces.

Mmmm Cupcake

As a part of my “lets play with cake mix series” I decided to make doctored up cupcakes for one of my employees’ birthdays… and MMMMMMMMMMM!!!!   Now, there are such crazy people in the world that do not like chocolate- don’t make these! I took a chocolate cake mix and mixed it according to the directions on the package – meanwhile I was melting one 4.4 ounce bar of chocolate in a makeshift double boiler on the stove (see below).  I then stirred that and some extra cocoa powder (2 tablespoons) into the mix.  I baked according to the box and then cooled them and frosted them with canned frosting- which I also added 2 tablespoons of extra cocoa powder to.  I ground up some Dove dark chocolate squares in the food processor and rolled each cupcake in the chocolate bits… mmmmmm cupcake!

Cheeseburger Pie

Gooey goodness!!  This is most definitely a favorite comfort food at our house!  We used to make cheeseburger pie with the filling on the bottom and Bisquick crust on top (like chicken pot pie), but it never “ate” well.  It came out all in a goo didn’t keep the shape of a pie piece.  So I’ve been compiling the parts of different recipes I’ve seen until we finally landed on this one, which is our favorite!  This is the basic recipe, but the great thing is you can add whatever your family likes (or needs!)- mushrooms, onions, olives, you name it!

Cheeseburger Pie

1lb ground hamburger meat

1 cloves chopped garlic (or just a dash of garlic powder)

dash of onion salt

1 Tbsp prepared mustard

1 Tbsp pickle juice

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup milk

1 package shredded cheddar cheese

1 tube refrigerated crescent rolls

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Brown hamburger meat with garlic and onion (olus salt and pepper if desired).  Drain meat.  Stir in mustard, pickle juice, flour, milk, and 2/3 cup of cheese.  Set aside.  Spray pie plate with Pam and arrange cresent roll triangles around the pie plate- trimming the edge to fill in holes.  Add meat filling and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, when the crust starts browning, cover with pie guard or strips of aluminum foil just around the edges.  Add the remaining cheese to top the pie filling and bake until cheese is well melted.  Let sit for a few minutes and enjoy!