Peanut Butter Brownies from Scratch!

My most recent pride & joy, the peanut butter brownies started the whole kitchen play day on Saturday morning! I knew I wanted to make something to send to work with Kyle to share with the guys (they love that and I enjoy making yummy stuff for them). I asked if Ky wanted chocolate chip cookies or brownies and he requested brownies. We have lots of ingredients, but didn't have a mix, so I looked online and found out I could make brownies from scratch. At this point, let me interject and say that I've never desired a brownie recipe from scratch because we've found a winner and it can't be beaten. Ghirardelli makes the BEST double chocolate brownie mix, hands down. However, since we didn't have it and I was up for a challenge, I decided to make these myself, and change them up a bit to become peanut butter-y :)

I found a good recipe here and set to work. I preheated the oven to 350, and greased a rectangular bread pan (we don't have a square pan and I didn't want to double to 9x13 this time). Then I gathered these ingredients:

- 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup applesauce! (saw the recommendation in the notes on allrecipes.com and decided to cut out the butter). LOVE this change.
- 1 cup white sugar (stuck with this, might try blue agave syrup in exchange for some sugar next time, but I need to find out the conversion).
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat flour)
- 1/4 tsp. salt (kosher)
- 1/4 tsp. baking powder
**Note: I also added about 1/3 cup of chocolate chips and 1/4 cup of peanut butter. This is key.
**One of our roommates said that if you want gooey brownies, you should add olive oil, so I put in a little bit of that, too!

I followed these instructions:
1. In a large saucepan, melt butter warm applesauce. Remove from heat, and stir in sugar, eggs (beaten beforehand) and 1 tsp vanilla. Mix in cocoa, flour, salt and baking powder, (then chocolate chips and olive oil). Be careful not to over-mix! Spread batter into pan.
2. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Mine was extra moist, so I gave it about an extra 8 minutes in the oven, until a skewer stick came out a little chocolaty, but not too wet.
3. Cool.


THEN came the frosting...
3 tablespoons butter, softened (I did use the butter here, since it was a lot less)
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup confectioners' sugar
**I added in a little cinnamon and about a 1/4 cup of peanut butter!

To Make Frosting: Combine 3 tablespoons butter, 3 tablespoons cocoa, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 cup confectioners' sugar. Add sprinkle of cinnamon and stir in peanut butter. Frost brownies while they are still warm.

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To say that these brownies were delicious is an understatement. They were super moist, peanut buttery and even tasted a little different texture-wise with the applesauce. I wanted to make sure they were done, but might cook for a few minutes less if I were to make these again because in the end, they were a little bit cakey on the outside. Still so good and the icing was awesome. Kyle brought these to work after I enjoyed 1 and everybody loved them. We shared a couple with roommates, too, and they left a little thank you note with a big 'YUM!' on it. Hurray :) They were a hit! Fun to make something new, change it up and have it work :) I love it! So glad we have this blog to document it all, too!!!

Coconut Bars

Made these with the kids I was watching this Summer. See their blog for the recipe. Coconut bars would be a great dessert to bring along to a party :) Click here!

Zucchini Bread

This zucchini bread (with carrots, walnuts and raisins) is delicious. Here was the recipe that I used:

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts
optional: grated carrot (about 1/2 cup) and raisins (as many as you'd like)

Directions:
Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Yum yum yum, enjoy :)

Fruit Kabobs

We made these a few weeks ago when we had friends over and I've been hoarding the pics without sharing their delicious sweetness (sorry for the delay). I was between making cookies and brownies and ran to the store for a few things when I spontaneously nixed both ideas and decided on fruit. Fruit and dip. I didn't want to buy dip though, so I pulled out my trusty (well, most of the time, anyway) iPhone and looked up dip recipes. I decided on one that had:

an 8 oz package of cream cheese, softened
a 7 oz. jar of marshmallow fluff

Not the healthiest dip, but keep in mind that we only used a tiny bit per bite of fruit, maybe, and that I still have more sitting in my fridge (although I think it's about ready to go by now)

Anyway, you just blend them up, it gets fluffy and sweet (but not too sweet) and according to Kyle, you can't even taste the cream cheese (which is good, bc he doesn't like it).

It was a hit, and the last-minute bamboo sticks that I grabbed at Giant (i think they were only $.99 and will last us awhile) were fun to load up with all kinds of fruit. We put out apples, strawberries, grapes and mango, all amazingly sweet and fresh :)

Just a nice Summery idea, and there are tons of dip recipes online (including one for a pumpkin spice dip which I think I'll pull up again in the fall...mmm)

Flag Dessert- Happy 4th of July :)

I have a cookbook called Just For Kids which is lots of fun :) There's a great dessert recipe with pound cake, whipped topping, strawberries and blueberries in a flag design and I wanted to make it for the 4th. I loath Cool Whip, so I looked into some other whipped topping options and found that it's pretty easy to make yourself. So I did. And it's delicious. Here's the recipe:


Whipped topping: (from here)
2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 Tbsp. confectioners sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
**Note: I got a quart of heavy whipping cream. It was barely enough and I could've possibly used a bit more.

For the cream, I just blended everything together until it forms stiff peaks (wait, it'll happen) then refrigerated it until I was ready to assemble my dessert.

For the dessert:
1 12 oz. pound cake (although I think I got a 16 oz. family size one, and it was fine)
2 pints fresh strawberries
2 cups fresh blueberries

For the dessert, cut the pound cake into 16 pieces. Spread 8 of them in the bottom of an 8x12 dish/pan, then cover with 1 cup of sliced strawberries and 1 cup of blueberries. Spread half of whipped topping, then 8 more pieces of cake, then the rest of the whipped topping and make your flag design with the remaining berries (slice those strawberries in half). Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Be creative, have fun, and enjoy- it's amazing :) Happy 4th of July!

Irish Potatoes- a St. Patty's Day treat :)

MMM mmm good. Here's the recipe:


- 1/4 cup butter, softened
- 4 oz. regular cream cheese (not lowfat or whipped)
- 7 oz. shredded coconut/coconut flakes
- 1 lb. powdered sugar, plus extra for coating hands
- 2 tbsp. ground cinnamon (I used a little bit more)

Preparation:
With mixer, cream together cream cheese and butter in a medium bowl. Mix in sugar and vanilla, being careful to add sugar slowly to avoid creating a large sugar cloud. Stir in coconut flakes. Put cinnamon into small bowl.

Coat dry hands with a little powdered sugar and using your hands take small pieces of mixture (about 2 teaspoons apiece) and form into potato shape. Drop potatoes into cinnamon and roll to coat. Place on baking sheet. When all the potatoes have been formed and dipped in cinnamon, refrigerate for several hours until firm.

These were so creamy and yummy. As you roll and coat these with cinnamon, you'll notice they get a little too creamy and tough to work with. When this happens, put the mixture in the refrigerator for a few minutes, then try again. You'll want to keep the potatoes at room temp or cooler once they're made so they don't get too sticky, but this was a great recipe.

Source: http://entertaining.about.com/od/stpatricksday/r/irishpotatcandy.htm

Super Bowl Football Rice Krispies Treats

We basically followed the recipe for rice krispies treats, so nothing particularly special here, except that we used Cocoa Krispies, a leaf cookie cutter (since we don't have a football, we just smoothed the edges after cutting) and some vanilla icing and voila! They turned out nicely- a little crunchy at first, but delish once chewed a bit. Not sure what we could have done differently to make them softer- maybe a little more butter (we used 1/4 cup, although we saw another recipe that called for 1/3) or not cutting them into shapes (but where's the fun in that?!). Here's what we used:

5 cups rice krispies
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 bag (about 40 large) marshmallows
optional: icing

Melt butter on stove, add marshmallows and turn into marshmallow fluff over low heat. Remove from heat, quickly add cereal. Once coated, pour into a 9x13-ish pan to cool. **Tip: if you use a buttered silicone spatula, this is SO much easier!
If you're going to be cookie cutting, do it fast before your treats cool. Buttering the cookie cutter may make the job easier, too.

For the icing, we used a disposable cake decorating bag, although you could use any plastic baggie, cut off the corner and squeeze it on out! We put laces on some treats and added an outline to some. They were very festive and fun :)

Of course, you can add all sorts of goodies into rice krispies treats, and even add peanut butter to the mixture for an extra special kick. Mmm, enjoy!

No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

I made these while babysitting back in high school and after coming across the recipe again this weekend, decided to make and bring them along to a friend's house for dinner. They were so easy to make, used very few ingredients and are absolutely delicious if you're a peanut butter & chocolate fan like me! Enjoy...

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/4 lb. unsalted butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
3 cups oatmeal

Combine sugar, cocoa, butter, milk, peanut butter and salt in large heavy saucepan over medium high heat. Bring to a soft boil. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla, then oats. Drop by tablespoonfuls on waxed paper and let harden. If transporting, place layers of cookies between wax paper in container so they don't stick together.

This batch made about 16 large cookies for us, but we could've easily made them smaller and gotten 20-25.