Chocolate Cream Pie

The other day I had just the right amount of the right ingredients to toss together a homemade chocolate cream pie – graham crackers and butter for the crust, instant pudding and milk for the filling, a cup of heavy cream for the whipped cream (with a bit of sugar), and a nice chunk of organic chocolate to shave on top. I love impulsive cookery when it works out!

I had a photo of the entire pie, but the up-close shot of the shaved chocolate was much more interesting that the ragged edges of the homemade graham cracker crust. 🙂

Delicious Ginger Cookies

Our friend Tom not only gifted us with a fantastic (and fantasically heavy) new cookbook, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich, full of all kinds of amazing cookie recipes, he got us started by baking up some of the most amazing ginger cookies – with THREE kinds of ginger: candied ginger, minced ginger AND ginger powder. They were sooo delicious – with that cracked and sugared exterior and the soft, chewy insides, and the sweetness mixed with that hint of hot ginger spice. Just AWESOME. What? You want a photo? FINE…

We’ve only started to delve into all of the deliciousness promised in this cookbook, but even just on these cookies alone I highly recommend it! Click on the cookbook below to go to amazon and check it out in greater detail!


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Lemon Blackberry Thumbdrop Cookies

Had the urge to bake cookies today!

I used our usual Thumbdrop Cookie Recipe (below) but swapped out the almond extract for two teaspoons of lemon extract, and filled the cookies with blackberry jam.

They’re very tasty, and imagine they’d be really nice with ‘afternoon tea’ or the like, as they are somewhat delicate in flavor with that burst of berry. Happy Friday!

Thumb Drop Cookies

3/4 cup margarine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 3/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 tespoon salt

Mix oleo and sugar till well blended, add eggs, mix well. Add extract. In separate bowl mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to margarine mixture, mix well. Roll into small balls on a greased baking sheet. Put finger into center of cookie and put in jelly or jam as desired to fill hole. Bake 350 degrees 10-12 minutes or until done.

Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last week I made soft and chewy peanut butter cookies, with chocolate chips. They came out SO good. If you want to try an alternative to the more traditional crunchier type peanut butter cookies – this’ll do ya.

 

I started with an online recipe and made a few small tweaks, as usual. Here’s the recipe:

Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup smooth or chunky peanut butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups chocolate chips or chunks

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In medium size bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In large bowl, combine butter, peanut butter, brown and white sugar until creamy.

Add eggs. Stir well.

Stir in the corn syrup, water, and vanilla. Gradually stir in the flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Place loaded teaspoons of the dough on ungreased cookie sheets. Even when the dough is soft these cookies do not spread, so if you want your cookies a little flatter, pat each teaspoon of cookie dough down into a flatter cookie shape before baking. You can leave each drop of dough as is if you want them a little bumpier and irregular.

Bake each sheet of cookies for 9 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. After baking, cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Mmmm… cookies……

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Loaded Baked Potatoes

Here in the northern hemisphere, we’re edging into the kind of weather that’s great for meals like roasts, casseroles, and, yes, loaded baked potatoes! This one has sharp white cheddar cheese, bacon, and chopped green onions…

Other topping ideas include… diced tomatoes, parmesan cheese, broccoli, and probably a lot of other leftover things you have in your refrigerator. We usually eat loaded baked potatoes as a main dish, since eating them WITH other food seems like WAY too much to eat at one sitting, but your mileage may vary of course.

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Organic Marshmallow Farmer

This design began with a really weird conversational tangent, became an Out of Context Quote, and then ended up on a t-shirt!

I think most kids would choose “Organic Marshmallow Farmer” as their desired career path if they were aware of their existence – they are a small, but growing community! *grin* Besides, marshmallows grown and harvested the all-natural way simply taste better. (Click the t-shirt to see all the apparel and other items available to advertise this environmentally humorous choice of vocation.)

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Portuguese Sweet Bread

A little while ago we bought Easy, Fabulous Bread Making: A collection of quick, no-knead, homemade bread recipes by Barbara Mack (who is an online friend and independent author. And the book is now also available in a Kindle Version) and have been practicing our art of bread making as we get a chance. These are all no-knead recipes in the book; the first rise is done entirely in the refrigerator and you leave the dough in there anywhere from 8 hours to 5 days, so plan ahead and don’t get impatient! (My biggest ‘folly’ with bread making – LOL. But let me tell you that at least 8 hours of slow ‘refrigerator’ rising gives a GREAT flavor!)

Yesterday morning I made her dough for Portuguese Sweet Bread. At about 5 p.m. I took it out of the fridge, formed it into a boule (round loaf) on an oiled baking sheet as recommended. After about 3 hours it finally started to do more than ‘unchill’ itself and started to seem more like bread dough again. But then I broke from the directions and put it in a glass bowl I could also bake it in so it retained it’s shape and more depth, as it seemed like it was spreading out more than rising. It turned out to be a good move – the final bread came out nice and round and golden brown:

As it was too hot and too late to taste it last night, I had a healthy piece for breakfast and it tastes absolutely delicious! I doubt if it will last more than a day here. I will definitely be making this again!  Thanks, Barb!

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Banana… Er… Blueberry Bread

Four+ days of hot, humid weather did not shine kindly upon the three bananas we had in the kitchen, but I didn’t realize that until I was half done making the batter for banana bread. The peels had only the usual amount of black and spots for ‘just’ overripe bananas, but the insides were unusable – bleh. After a quickly passing state of panic where I considered hightailing it to Canada and leaving the recipe remnants for the next person passing through the kitchen (probably the dog), I, instead, thought of what else I could make this bread into. I almost decided on applesauce bread since I spotted two apples in the fridge, but then, glowing like a beacon, with heavenly trumpets sounding, I saw them…. blueberries! Yes!

Instead of the bananas, I added a little milk for the necessary moisture, then mixed in a cup and a half of blueberries, spread it in a pan with a sprinkling of sugar on top for crust, put it in the oven, and crossed my fingers. (Yes, I know it wasn’t THAT much of a stretch to switch the recipe from banana to blueberry, but allow me my drama, dangit!)

Here’s what it looked like when it came out of the oven, just a little while ago:

Looks like it has a light crusty top, so that’s a good thing. And as soon as it’s cooled and I can take it out of the pan, the taste testing will begin! And continue on until it’s been tested into oblivion.

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Blond Brownies or Congo Bars Recipe

A few weeks ago I made a pan of blond brownies, or, technically Congo Bars. They were very tasty, and luckily I got a photo of one before the pan was gone:

This is an awesome recipe – just mix everything all together, and you don’t even have to grease the pan!

Congo Bars

2 2/3 cups sifted flour
2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teasspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening, melted
2 cups brown sugar
3 eggs
1 cup chopped nuts
1 6 oz. package of chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients. Pour into a 9X13 inch pan, bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes.

Devil’s Food Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

I hadn’t planned on making cupcakes today, but you gotta follow your impulses! Maybe this is my way of celebrating the Spring Equinox! Yeah… I’m SURE that’s what it was… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 😀

So I used a recipe I got from the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook that we got for Christmas – Devil’s Food Cupcakes. I halved the recipe though, because I only wanted a dozen, and then I tossed together a classic vanilla buttercream frosting.

Devil's Food Cupcakes

As you can see in the photo, instead of spreading the frosting on with a knife, I got a little fancier. I made a pastry bag with wax paper (and tape), cut off the tip, inserted a decorating tip, then swirled the frosting in a spiral. Then, I sprinkled it with a touch of additional cocoa.I purposely didn’t lay the frosting all the way to the edge of the cupcake to be sure that none of it would fall off the side, to make it easier, or maybe ‘cleaner’ for the fingers, plus, I don’t like cupcakes that are overloaded with frosting.

I almost don’t want to eat them now! Of course, I don’t expect that sentiment to last long – this is CHOCOLATE we’re talking about here – LOL.

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