Cake Mix Biscotti

I feel like so many people have been trying to kick the processed foods out of their life. This makes me so happy! Being one of those people who actually can't stomach overly process foods the way I used to, I'm glad to come across more and more recipes that show ways to make this easy and be able to share recipes that can help others do the same. This recipe actually constitutes as semi-homemade rather than from scratch but there's a reason why. About 6 months ago I got pretty fed up with the "food" that was in my pantry. Boxed noodles, potatoes, brownies, cakes, rice, and so on - I had it all! I finally donated all that food because I wasn't eating it anymore and I had found really amazing substitutions that I actually preferred more. HOWEVER I kept a few things (like my boxed cake mix) to see if there was anything I could make with it, besides cake. I decided to make biscotti instead. That's how this cake mix substitution came to be. This is a fun way to clear your pantry of that processed powder you have in your pantry or cupboard and bring new life into foods that you're slowly trying to work your way out of.

What You'll Need:

1 box of chocolate cake mix

1 cup of AP flour

2 eggs

1 stick of butter (melted)

1/4 C of water

Chocolate for drizzling (optional)

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

2. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and make a dough. I know it sounds like a lot of butter but it's totally worth it, I promise!

3. Divide dough into two pieces and place on a lightly floured work space.

4. Flatten each piece into a rectangle - 1" thick and 3" wide. You'll end up with two rectangle-shaped chocolate dough pieces. I know you can tell this is going to be good!

5. Bake each rectangle for 25 minutes on a foil lined baking sheet, until it firms up then let cool for a few minutes or until it's cool to the touch.

6. Slice each piece into 1.5" thick pieces and place back on a baking sheet. You'll end up with around 14 pieces. Bake for another 15 minutes to make them really crunchy.

7. Let them cool and drizzle with chocolate or a little powdered sugar. I chose to omit this process because I figured I had my calorie intake for the moment. Sure does sound good though!

8. Serve with coffee and ENJOY!

*Some delicious add-ins are walnuts, dried cherries, or chocolate chips!

Brownie Pizza

 It's been a long time since I've posted a dessert but the time has come and I think you're going to like it! It all started the other day when I had a basket full of fresh strawberries and nothing to do with them. I planned on eating them like so but decided to make a dessert instead, the problem was that I didn't know what to make. Out of nowhere I remembered this dessert my mom had brought home from work once and knew that was exactly what I was going to make. We call this incredibly decadent dessert Brownie Pizza but Mike calls it a tart and I'm not sure why. And even though there is fruit on this, I recommend putting the calories away for this one.

What to Do:

1. Start by making a brownie mix according to the directions on the box. You can use a homemade brownie mix or the box stuff. I obviously don't bake much (if you follow my blog you know I like my baking shortcuts) so I gladly used my usual boxed brownie mix. Oh simplicity.

2. Instead of putting the mix in the usual 13x9 baking dish, put it on a cookie sheet that is really well greased. I believe the one I used was 13"x10". Cook for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. 

3. 15 minutes later you'll have exactly what you need. Make sure you let it cool completely. This is a cold dessert so I recommend letting it sit out or in the fridge for a couple of hours.

4. Next it's time to make the frosting. Use one package of cream cheese and 1/4 cup of sugar and beat together until the sugar is totally incorporated. If you taste it, you have to try not to eat the whole thing right then and there. Trust me, I know how tempting it will be.

5. When the brownie is fully cooled you can either move it to a fancy platter or leave it be on the cookie sheet. Because I'm not a baker I tend to have to little luck with my baked goods being transferred cleanly and in one piece so I opted to leave it on the cookie sheet. No biggie. When you have the brownie correctly placed slather (yes I meant to type that) the cream cheese frosting on top, making sure that you get the ends and corners with extra. I usually hate the edges of baked goods which I why I tend to over-compensate with them.

6. Now for the healthy stuff. I've never used any other fruits than bananas and strawberries but if you ever try this and use something else, please let me know! The important thing to remember for the fruit is to make sure all of the slices are even AND that they are patted dry to get rid of any extra moisture. You can just use a paper towel for this.

*I used two medium sized bananas and laid those down first because I know they go brown and I wanted this to look pretty.

7. Then add the strawberries.

**This is where it gets interesting.

8. Heat the fudge according to the directions then drizzle it over the brownie. You can also use chocolate syrup but I already had the fudge so I used it. 

Voilà! Foodie heaven! When you eat this you get a chewy, moist brownie with a sweet cream cheese taste. And just when it becomes too much you get the freshness from the strawberries and bananas that cut down the decadence and add their own refreshing sweetness. It's pure magic! I owe this dessert to my mother who brought it home and now has the recipe forever on my blog! Thanks mama! So I hope this has tempted you to get up and eat something sweet! Go ahead, go - I won't judge you. Until next time, cheers!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

These are the most awesome little bites of amazing that I have ever had. After I made these I had them in my refrigerator and would just take one out and eat it whenever I felt like it. These should be as common in a refrigerator as butter or eggs. I got the recipe from Love & Olive Oil after seeing the awesome reviews on it. What I like most about this recipe is that it's essentially EDIBLE COOKIE DOUGH! I know for a fact that I'm not the only one that loves eating cookie dough but feels a little guilty eating it raw. I tried a recipe once for an edible raw cookie dough that was made with cream cheese and it was good...but it tasted like cream cheese - not like I was about to bake cookies (which is what my friends and I were looking for). This, folks, is the real deal. I plan on making these again for a girls night, date night, or night in. I absolutely adore these - so I'm sharing them with you!

What You'll Need:

2 1/2 C flour

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 C butter (room temp)

3/4 C of granulated sugar

3/4 C of brown sugar (well packed)

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 C of milk

1 C of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

dark chocolate for dipping

Start by mixing butter and sugars until they're creamy and then add the milk and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix your flour, baking soda, and salt then add that to your sugar mixture.

Measure out your chocolate chips and fold those into your batter.

You'll have to let this sit in the refrigerator for an hour-ish, I know, I hated it too. When it's been long enough, or like me, you take them out after about 30 minutes, it's time to roll them into 1" balls and place on a baking sheet lined with wax or parchment paper. You're going to hate me for this to but now you have to put these in the freezer for another 30 minutes.

A few minutes before you take them out, get your chocolate melted. You can double-boil them or just use these nifty little containers like I do. All you have to do is put in the microwave for a few minutes, then you get perfectly melted chocolate.

This is just a warning from one foodie to another but because the cookie dough is so cold, the chocolate won't coat as smoothly as it would if it were room temp. See what I mean though, they're not very sexy (but I promise the taste isn't affected at all).

After they're covered in chocolate all you have to do is eat them. I recommend the thinnest layer of chocolate you can get because they actually taste better with less. With these, less is more (unless you're eating them...). LOOK! This is what's waiting inside, hidden beneath the wonderful chocolate. Mmmm...

Foodie Love

I didn't cover all of mine with chocolate because I didn't like the way the chocolate was coming out so I only did half. I actually liked the way both came out. Both are completely addicting! Besides waiting for the dang things to cool off and freeze, they're so easy to make. You could easily whip some up and serve them while looking totally sophisticated. Enjoy!

Unbelievable Chocolate Cake

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I'm not much of a baker (the fact that things can go terribly wrong if you add too much of something terrifies me and isn't good eats). It's safe to say that when I need cakes made I turn to my girl Betty Crocker for assistance. That's why this post is such a surprise, even to me! This is how it started...

I was surfing the net (yeah I just said that) and saw I picture of chocolate cake so I decided to make it. Literally, that's all that happened. The website that started this chocolate cake obsession was Foodess- I think I need to send her a thank you card... and a Christmas gift, and perhaps my first born. I actually was looking at another one of her recipes first and saw the thumbnail of the cake titled "Moist Chocolate Cake" on the side. Sold. Without thinking about it, I wrote down the recipe, turned off the television, went to the store, came home and started making that exact chocolate cake recipe. The funny thing is that even as I took pictures I didn't plan on blogging about this because I assumed it wouldn't turn out - boy was I wrong. How could I not share this with my fellow foodies??

What You'll Need:

2 C Sugar

1 3/4 C Flour

3/4 C Cocoa (Hershey's Dark Blend)

1 1/2 tsp Baking powder

1 1/2 tsp Baking soda

1 tsp Salt

2 eggs

1 C Buttermilk

1/2 C Unsalted butter (melted)

1 Tbl Vanilla extract

1 C Hot coffee

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and start your coffee so you won't have to wait for the last minute.

Mix your sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Use wisk to make sure everything is fully mixed. I recommend buying a brand new thing of cocoa powder even if you have some because you'll end up using a lot of it, especially if you make your own frosting too (like I did - scroll down).

As your fellow foodie, I just feel like I should warn how much mess the cocoa makes. I mean I literally found it all over my kitchen - and it's the hardest thing to clean. So I warn you, be careful when you're measuring it. Please.

Add your eggs, buttermilk, butter, and vanilla to the bowl of dry ingredients. Use your wisk to mix everything a little so when you use your mixer, flour won't go everywhere. With a hand mixer or a standing mixer, mix your ingredients on medium speed for two minutes, or until everything is fully blended. 

By now your coffee should be done. Pour one cup and pour it in your bowl. I've seen recipes before that call for coffee and I've always ignored them. I will never do that again. If you really don't want to use coffee you can use 1 cup of boiling water, but I suggest trying the coffee first.

Grease your pans with Pam or butter, but make sure you grease it well. Pour the mix evenly into two 9" round pans. I don't have any 9" round pans and didn't feel like buying any so I poured mine into two 8" x 8" square pans. I'm sure this is against some baking rule but I'm not a baker, so I know no such rule. Bake these babies for 30 minutes, insert a toothpick into both and make sure they come out clean.

When they're done take them out and let them cool on a rack. This new, fabulous baker had some issues with the cake sticking to the pan when I flipped it onto the rack. With the mess of cocoa still around me, chocolate batter on my clothes, my hair in a bun I don't remember putting up and the fact that I was still rocking this cake - like hell I was going to let a little sticking mess up my cake now! Of course this just meant I had to make my own frosting to cover of the mess...

So I'll let you in on how this went...

Frosting

What You'll Need:

1/2 C Softened unsalted butter

2/3 C Cocoa powder

1 tsp Vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

Mix all of your ingredients in a bowl. Use a spoon to mash the butter so it isn't clumpy and to (slowly) blend with the cocoa. I used my the wisk-looking attachment for my hand mixer to whip my ingredients. Guess what - I've never made my one frosting before. And guess what - I probably never will again. Not because it wasn't interesting but because I wasn't sure how sweet it was going to be and Betty Crocker pretty much seems to have her frosting down. BUT I do think the one I made really goes with this cake.

Everything is going to be really clumpy so add milk until you get the consistency you want. Add more powdered sugar for more sweetness.

When you're cake is completely cool start frosting your cake. Mine was not completely cool - but keep in mind I didn't find the recipe until like 8:00 at night so I didn't really feel like waiting a lot longer. Put one layer on a plate or cake platter (I don't own anything like that so I used a cookie sheet, how ironic) and things turned out delicious, not beautiful, but delicious. Put one layer of cake down, some frosting, the other layer of cake, and frost the rest of the cake. I know my frosting isn't pretty but it's so good, I just kept adding it. 

Now for the pretty pictures of what we had. I think I should say that Mike was skeptical over me baking a cake from scratch and hearing there was coffee in it. Now, well he eats a piece every few hours, it's that good. Mike is eating it as I type (I believe it's the 4th piece today *smiles*). I can't blame him. This is the moistest cake I've ever had in my life. It's rich, decadent, and almost fudgy. I'd love to know what anyone else thinks, or if anyone else tries this! I hope you find it as fabulous as we do!

 

 

 

Chocolate Yogurt Dip

 Confession. I've been making this dip since I was a child. I found it in my first children's' cookbook when I was probably six. A few years ago I needed a fancy Valentine's Day dessert that could be done without taking too much time. Right away I thought back to this really easy dessert, and I've been making it ever since. All these years later, and having made it for Michael a few times now, he actually asks for it. Since my favorite dessert EVER is chocolate covered strawberries, and since recipe is just a variation of them, I enjoy making it.

The ingredients are really simple (you couldn't ask for an easier dessert)!

What You'll Need:

2 6 oz. containers of Strawberry yogurt

1 jar of Hot fudge topping

Strawberries (or your favorite fruit) for dipping

Mix both yogurt containers with 3/4 of the jar of fudge. Make sure the fudge is room temp so it mixes completely with the yogurt. I've never used any other kind of yogurt than strawberry but I absolutely love it. I imagine peach flavored yogurt would be pretty good too but I still like my strawberry.

I can pretty much eat this by the spoonful, and I'm not ashamed to admit it - it's delicious and look, it's done! You dip your strawberries right in the bowl or serve it up individually with a platter of fruit if you really want to get fancy about it. Either way it's all going to get eaten - trust me!

Holiday Cookies- It's Never Too Late

I won't lie it's been a while. Moving to a new city, being on my own, and starting at a new university. I've been meaning to blog- honest I have but it took a cold for me to actually sit down and find things to do. I got a Nikon D3000 for Christmas specifically to feed my love of photography (thank you Michael) :) so I really have been wanting to get back into this. One of the first things I was able to take pictures of was our holiday cookies. I got my camera before Christmas because he knew it would be helpful :) We made 3 different types of cookies- sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles, and classic chocolate chip. We made all 3 at the same time and rotated which ones we cooked (just to mix it up I guess).

Most of the the Ingredients


Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies
We got our recipe from Alton Brown's Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. They are the perfect chocolate chip cookies and I don't know anyone that hasn't liked them.
Mike says the more brown sugar that goes into them, the chewier they'll be so I added about 2 T extra. We also doubled the batch so we yielded around 60 cookies from our batch.

Yes. This actually happened. :)

The Sugar Cookies
I got this recipe from my mom. We've been using the same recipe as long as I could remember. At first the dough seems crumbly but you really have to compress it down. After that, it should be the perfect sugar cookie dough.

I use powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the dough from sticking.

Chocolate Crinkles
These are another favorite of mine. They are a good mix between a cookie and a brownie. You should always let cookie dough chill in the fridge before you bake it but because the chocolate gets melted so the dough is pretty warm.

Push the cookies down a little because they don't flatten much in the oven. I dusted the flattened cookies with powdered sugar when they came out and they were insanely good.

I didn't post the recipes because I'm not sure if people want that info for 3 cookies but I do have them. I hope you like them :)