Peanut Butter Bars That Make You Go NUTS! :)

Hi!

I hope all of your summers have been going well, although I know that many people have gone back to school by now. No matter what occupation or education you are in, a sweet can always brighten anyone's day! Recently, I had the need to bake something, but didn't want to actually "bake" something. Does that make any sense? I settled on a super-easy "no-bake" dessert. For those who have tried and enjoy peanut butter, this one is for you! All I can say is sooo yum, with no thought required. We can all use one of those once in a while!

This is another go-to recipe that is sure to be a non-disappointment! My mom has been making it for years thanks to her friend Carrie.

PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE BARS 
Ingredients:
11/2 Sticks Butter, melted
1 Cup Peanut Butter
2 1/2 Cups Powdered Sugar
2 Cu[s Graham Cracker Crumbs
1 Pkg. Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chip Morsels

Directions:
1. Blend butter, powdered sugar, crumbs, peanut butter in a large bowl. Mix well.
2. Press into a 13x9 pan. DO NOT GREASE THE PAN! (It will make the bars soft and mushy. Not a pretty sight!)
3. Refrigerate for one hour.
4. Melt the chocolate chip morsels over a double boiler or in the microwave at a low power (maybe 4 or 5 at 30 second intervals.)
5. Pour the melted morsels over the pan of bars, spreading it so it is completely covered.
6. Refrigerate for another 15 minutes.
7. Cool and cut at room temp or freeze then bring to room temp and cut.

First, Powdered Sugar!

Graham Cracker Crumbs

Adding the Peanut Butter and Butter

A totally mixed batter!

Pressed into the pan...

Melted chocolate on top!

Side View of the Completed Bar! 

As a new school year begins for many, I wish all who are experiencing this a wonderful time back at school! For those who are out of school, I wish you all the best! Keep smiling!

What is your favorite recipe that includes peanut butter?

˜Victoria˜

Hot Chocolate Brownies To Celebrate A Graduation

Hi!

I know that it has been a while since I have posted and I am sorry, but I do have a good excuse. No, my doggies did not eat my recipes! We had family in town for the past week. When there are two families living under one roof, things can get pretty crazy and the regular rhythm of life definitely gets thrown off track! Before the relatives came in town, though, I was asked to bake some treats to bring to a close family-friend's home in celebration for their daughter's graduation. After the graduate requested a chocolate dessert for her party, I knew exactly what to make.

Chocolate is fun ingredient to use in baking because it comes in many flavors and forms. The recipe I chose to make involves many flavors and textures of chocolate and turns into a melt-in-your-mouth brownie. But what makes these brownies soooo good? They don't use cocoa powder. NOPE! Brownies without cocoa powder, but with hot-chocolate mix. And YES....I use a hot-chocolate mix that includes those mini marshmallows. These brownies might sound weird and even gross, but trust me, nothing can compare to them.

How did I come up with using hot-chocolate mix for these brownies? It is actually a funny story. I was watching my brother many years ago and he wanted to make brownies. Ok, I told him, we would use a mix. Well, we found no mixes, which used to be a staple in our household. So my brother and I turned to the internet, which once again it came in use. We found a recipe called "Good Ol' Homemade Brownies" from the website http://bunsinmyoven.com. The recipe looked perfect and my brother and I set to work baking.

As we worked we came to the step where we needed to add 1 1/4 cups of cocoa powder. I went into the pantry and found out that like the brownie mix, we were out of cocoa powder. I didn't want to scrap the batter we had already began to make, so I did some digging in the pantry. I saw hot chocolate mix and decided it would have to work.

I continued making the recipe as it was written except for the last step of adding 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips. We hit another bump. We only had about 1 cup left. I did some further digging to find left-over hershey bars that my family used for s'mores and some white chocolate chips. I chopped the bars and added enough of the chocolate chips to make another cup.

The final product? The BEST BROWNIE WE HAD EVER HAD! No kidding. Not even joking. :) These are some seriously amazing treats.

Now, my altered recipe is our go-to. We never use cocoa powder for this; only hot-chocolate mix. And you may be wondering how they went over at the graduation party. Well, I am glad to say that they were a hit! Not a crumb left.

Ingredients:
1 Cup (2 sticks) Butter
2 1/4 Cups Sugar
4 Large Eggs
1 1/4 Cups Hot Chocolate Mix
1 TSP Salt
1 TSP Baking Powder
1 TBSP Vanilla Extract
1 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
2 Cups of Mixed White, Semi-Sweet, Milk Chocolate Chips (can add chopped hershey bars if like)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish.
2. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter completely. Stir in sugar and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. Do not allow sugar mixture to boil.
3. Pour butter mixture into a large bowl or stand mixer, beat in cocoa powder, eggs, salt, baking powder, espresso powder, and vanilla extract. Mix until well combined.
4. Stir in the flour and chocolate chips until well combined.
5. Spread into prepared pan (batter will be very thick and sticky) and bake for about 30 minutes, until a tested comes out mostly clean. The edges should be set and the center should still look slightly moist, but not uncooked. Cool on a wire rack.

Two Sticks of Butter in Pan Beginning to Melt 

Butter Totally Melted 

Adding Sugar to the Melted Butter

The Butter and Sugar Totally Combined 

The Butter/ Sugar Mixture After Being Poured into the Large Silver Bowl

Eggs Added to Bowl

Adding the Hot-Chocolate Mix 

Adding the Salt...

Adding the Baking Powder and Vanilla Extract

Adding the Flour...

Adding the Chocolate Chips and Hershey Chunks

Mixing the Batter...

Putting the Batter into the Oven

Out of the Oven!

With Some Extra Pizzaz! I Drizzled Some White Chocolate On Top

All CUT! DOESN'T IT LOOK AMAZING!??!

Let me know what you all think about using hot chocolate in the mix! Do any of you have any fun mix-ins to your brownie recipes? 

˜Victoria˜

A Birthday With A Side of Carrots

Hey!

It is been quite a while since I have posted, but I guarantee that this post will make up for the days that lacked one! 

In my family, I am the one known to be the "baker" or the "cake-lady" and so on. Cake is most definitely my FAVORITE dessert to make. I love to experiment with new recipes and flavors, in the hopes that my baking will expose my family and friends to textural and sensational palates that they didn't think even existed. Maybe this is weird, but in my opinion, it is so much fun to see others eat your food! It makes me feel as though I have accomplished something and given those I care about something they can love too. 

As my Daddy's birthday was coming up, I knew I would be baking him a cake. I'm really lucky that my Dad is such an easy-going guy and that he will eat anything I put in front of him! But since this is HIS birthday, I made him choose what flavor cake he would like. He loves anything banana and has always loved a good carrot cake. Well, my family had already eaten two cakes made with banana recently, so I decided to make my Daddy a carrot cake. I had never made a carrot cake before, but I knew exactly where to look for the perfect recipe: The Internet. 

This thing called the Internet honestly amazes me. I don't understand it and I don't think I ever will, but, it sure does come in handy! 

When a recipe on allrecipes.com came up with over 1,400 reviews and a perfect 5 stars, I knew that would be the recipe I would use. This recipe is called "Sam's Famous Carrot Cake" and I can see why it is considered famous! This  a moist and delectably tantalizing cake! Each bite was like a party in your mouth! And the weirdest part of this cake?: I didn't use cream cheese frosting! NOPE! NO CREAM CHEESE! You can continue to gape. Trust me, I miss that great frosting, but with a family that is lactose intolerant; eating dairy and then getting sick is not worth it. 

I could continue to rave on about each aspect of the cake, but I took a lot of pictures. So hopefully those will do a lot of the explaining for me! 

The cake was a HIT with my family. The frosting I chose was a whipped cream frosting. But, again, because my family is lactose intolerant I found a recipe that results in a frosting that is similar in taste and texture to a traditional whipped cream. This recipe was again found on allrecipes.com. This one is titled "Cool Whipped Frosting" and has 4 1/2 stars. I doctored it a little to fit the needs to my specific carrot cake and was very happy with the results. I wish I had put more on the cake! 

Below is the recipe for Carrot Cake and Cool Whipped Frosting:

"Sam's Famous Carrot Cake" Ingredients: 

3 Eggs

*3/4 Cup Buttermilk (I used 1 TBSP Lemon Juice and then milk that filled up to the 3/4 cup mark)

*3/4 Cup Veggie Oil (I used 1/2 Melted Coconut Oil and 1/4 Veggie Oil)

1 1/2 Cups White Sugar 

2 TSP Vanilla Extract

2 TSP Ground Cinnamon

1/4 TSP Salt 

2 Cups All-Purpose Flour

2 TSP Baking Soda

2 Cups Shredded Carrots

1 Cup Flaked Coconut

*1 Cup Chopped Walnuts (I used Pecans)

1 (8 Ounce) Can Crushed Pineapple With Juice 

1 Cup Raisins 

Directions: 

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C.) Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan. (I used 2 9-inch round pans because I wanted a layered cake.)

2.) In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside. 

3.) In a large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk*, oil*, sugar, and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour mixture and mix well. 

4.) In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts*, pineapple and raisins. 

5.) Using a large wooden spoon or a very heavy whisk, add carrot mixture to batter and fold in well. 

6.) Pour into prepared pan(s), and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for an hour* (Using the two 9-inch pans, mine were done in only 35 minutes! Be careful and keep an eye on the cake(s) while in the oven.

7.) Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. * (I froze mine for about two days so that they were easier to frost on my Dad's actual birthday!) 

* See Note Above

Cool Whipped Frosting Ingredients: 

1 (8 ounce) Container of Frozen Whipped Topping, thawed *( I used about 1 1/2 containers) 

1 (3.5 ounce) package instant pudding (I used vanilla) (I used a 6 1/2 serving box to hold up with the higher amount of cool whip...also, very cool because you can use whatever flavor you want!)

1 Cup Milk (If only using 8-ounces worth of cool whip, I would only use 3/4 cup of milk! I adding milk sparingly until I got the texture I wanted.) 

1 TSP Vanilla Extract (I only used to one TSP even though I used more of the other ingredients because I didn't want to have too strong of a vanilla flavor)

Directions:

1.) In a medium bowl, combine pudding mix with milk and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Gently fold in whipped topping until no streaks remain. Spread evenly over cake. 

Add the flour to a medium bowl

2 Cups of Flour in the bowl

Adding the baking soda to the same bowl

Adding the salt

Adding the cinnamon

Cinnamon in the bowl

Mixing the dry ingredients

Putting in three eggs into another bowl

Then, add the buttermilk

Adding the Coconut Oil and Vegetable Oil Mixture

Then, add the 1 1/2 cups of sugar

The sugar on top of everything else!

Dumping in that vanilla...

Adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients

Continuing to mix! I think it is almost done.

Now, in a separate bowl, add in the shredded carrots! 

Don't those really look beautiful?

Adding the coconut.

All of the coconut in the bowl!

Then, add the pineapple.

Three of a kind!

And now for a heaping cup of raisins!

Carrots, Coconut, Pineapple and Raisins

About to chop up the nuts! (I have always loved doing this part)

Now, adding in the chopped up nuts.

Mixing all of it together!

Now, mix in the carrot mixture with the actual batter. Make sure to throughly incorporate one another! 

I then evenly distributed the batter into two 9-inch round pans after greasing them. Into the oven they go!

Up close!

Right out of the oven! Smelling so good :)

Up close after baking! You can see all the ingredients almost. 

After being decorated and frosted. I crushed some more pecans and added them to the sides. 

Another view of finished cake.

Top of the cake.

Up close to inside of the cake. 

An actual slice! Yum Yum YUMMY!

Side View

Maybe we ate too much??...Nah. Not ENOUGH! :)

Look at all that deliciousness! Sooo moist...mmmmmnnn

All the hard work was well worth my Daddy's face. He couldn't get enough and I succeed at a carrot cake thanks to "Sam's Famous Carrot Cake" and "Cool Whipped Frosting." If you ever need a good carrot cake recipe...this should from now on be your go-to! Also, this frosting is fantastic and if you love Cool-Whip, well, you are totally set! 

What are some of your favorite birthday cake flavors? Let me know in the comments below!

Happy Birthday Daddy! I love you. 

˜Victoria˜