My 100th post!! Let's celebrate with a Chocolate Overload!

One Hundred Posts! Wow. Who knew? When I started my blog it was a way to keep track of things I'd made and to share recipes with a few friends. I don't have a following, and that is ok, this blog is still very much for my friends and me. I do wish more friends and family would leave comments just so I know you're still out there, but I still appreciate you taking the time to view the blog.



This cake is the one I made for my mom's birthday. She is such a chocoholic, this was the perfect cake for her. It is a Chocolate Velvet Cake with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting decorated with dark and white chocolate curls and pirouette cookies. It is rich, chocolaty, and DELICIOUS.




The recipes for the cake and frosting both came from MYRecipes

Chocolate Velvet cake layers

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 (16-ounce) package light brown sugar
3 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 (8-ounce) container sour cream
1 cup hot water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Preparation
Melt semisweet chocolate morsels in a microwave-safe bowl at HIGH for 30-second intervals until melted (about 1 1/2 minutes total time). Stir until smooth.

Beat butter and brown sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer, beating about 5 minutes or until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition. Add melted chocolate, beating just until blended.

Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add to chocolate mixture alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Gradually add 1 cup hot water in a slow, steady stream, beating at low speed just until blended. Stir in vanilla. Spoon cake batter evenly into 3 greased and floured 8-inch round cakepans. Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool in pans on a wire rack 10 minutes; remove from pans, and let cool completely on wire rack.


White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting:


Ingredients

* 3 cups white chocolate morsels
* 3 (8-oz.) packages cream cheese, softened
* 3/4 cup butter, softened
* 7 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Preparation

1. Microwave white chocolate morsels in a microwave-safe bowl at MEDIUM (50% power) 3 minutes; stir until smooth.

2. Combine cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl; beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Add melted chocolate, beating well. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended. Beat at medium speed until mixture reaches desired spreading consistency.

Peanut Butter Candy Bar Brownies

Add this to your holiday baking. It is delicious and easy. Everyone who love peanut butter will love this. They are very rich so make sure you have a glass of milk handy. I left out the coconut because I made these for our youth group and most kids are not coconut fans.

I found this recipe at myrecipes.

Yield

28 small bars or 18 large bars

Ingredients

• 1 (16-oz.) package peanut-shaped peanut butter sandwich cookies, crushed
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 (14-oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 5 (1.5-oz.) packages chocolate-covered peanut butter cup candies, coarsely chopped
• 2 (2.1-oz.) chocolate-covered crispy peanut buttery candy bars, coarsely chopped (we tested with Butterfinger)
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate morsels
• 1/2 cup honey-roasted peanuts
• 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut

Preparation

Combine crushed cookies and butter in a medium bowl. Press crumb mixture into bottom of a greased aluminum foil-lined 13" x 9" pan, allowing foil to extend over ends of pan. Bake at 350° for 6 to 8 minutes.

Combine condensed milk, peanut butter, and vanilla in a medium bowl, stirring until smooth.

Sprinkle chopped candy bars, chocolate morsels, peanuts, and coconut over crust. Drizzle condensed milk mixture over coconut.

Bake at 350° for 27 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in pan. Use foil to lift uncut brownies out of pan. Peel foil away from sides of uncut brownies, and cut into bars.

Study for exams or make sugar cookies?

which one would you pick? Yep that's the one I picked too. I haven't posted much lately because I had exams this weekend. I finished them today but yesterday before I took the first one, I made sugar cookies for our church youth Christmas party. Sure I could have been studying, but I HAD to make these cookies ya know?



The sugar cookie recipe is the same one I posted in October when I made the candy corn cookies. These cookies were Christmas themed for the party. I used a wilton pan you filled with dough to make the shapes instead of rolling out and cutting. It was so much easier and was not messy at all.

This is the pan:




Now that exams are over, I hope to be blogging a lot more so keep checking back for new recipes.

Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

Aren't these super cute? And they are really easy which makes them even better. Just whip up your favorite sugar cookie dough, add food coloring, and you have a cute cookie. I made these for our church youth group meeting this month. They were a big hit with the teens and adults there.

Sugar Cookies

1 Cup Butter, Softened
¾ Cup Sugar
1 Egg
1 Tablespoon Milk or Cream
1 ½ teaspoon Vanilla
3 Cups of Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
½ teaspoon Salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
Add the egg, milk/cream, and vanilla. Mix until combined.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Mix only until blended.

For basic sugar cookies:
Form into 2 balls and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. I usually make my dough the night before and let it warm up at room temp for a bit.

Roll out flat, cut into desired shapes. Bake for 5-8 Minutes

For Candy Corn cookies:
Divide dough (I made two batches, one colored orange, the other batch divided with 3 oz melted chocolate chips added to make it brown) Line a loaf pan with wax paper and leave some wax paper hanging over the side of the pan. Layer the colors into the loaf pan. Put it in the refrigerator to firm. When firm, make slices and then cut them into triangles.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling

First let me say, thank you to the bloggers who emailed me asking where I've been. It's nice to know someone missed me :) I started school and work at the same time after a couple of years of being a stay at home wife. It's been a transition for everyone. Plus for the last couple of weeks any of my extra time has been working on my grandmother's 80th birthday party. I hope to have pictures for the blog when it finally gets here.

Now on to the whoopie pies. I haven't had a lot of free time to cook, but I still find a little time to surf some of my favorite blog sites. When I saw the Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling on Culinary Concoctions, I could not wait to make them.

It's homecoming at our church tomorrow and everyone will be bringing lots of cakes and pies. I wanted to make something a little different and this recipe fits the bill. I usually would not make a new recipe to take somewhere, but since this made little bites, I knew I could give it a taste before taking it to church. Now I just hope everyone else loves them as much as we do.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

This weekend was Bible School at our church. I signed up to make cookies. The next question was then, what kind of cookies would go over well with the kids? Of course chocolate chip was the first to come to mind, but since I didn't know what everyone else was making, I figured there would some chocolate chip cookies made by someone else. (And there was) My next favorite cookie is peanut butter so those would be it. Of course I had to figure out a way to make plain old peanut butter cookies more fun. Thanks to a bag of hershey kisses, I knew peanut butter blossoms would be it.

Here is the recipe I used, it was on the back of a bag of unwrapped hershey kisses. Boy I'm glad I didn't have to unwrap all those kisses. I made a double batch of these cookies and they were almost all eaten. The kids and the adults seemed to love them.


Peanut Butter KISSed Peanut Blossoms
Ingredients:

* 48 HERSHEY'S KISSES Brand Milk Chocolates filled with Peanut Butter
* 1/2 cup shortening
* 3/4 cup REESE'S Creamy Peanut Butter
* 1/3 cup granulated sugar
* 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
* 1 egg
* 2 tablespoons milk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* Granulated sugar



Instructions:

1. Remove wrappers from peanut butter filled chocolates; place in freezer overnight.

2. Heat oven to 375°F. Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

3. Shape dough into 48 balls (about 1-inch each). Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.

4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool 3 to 4 minutes. Press frozen peanut butter filled chocolate piece into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Remove cookies from sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. 48 cookies.

No Bake Cookies

These are one of my favorite childhood cookies. They have so many different names. I've heard them called Carolina Delights (I'm a tarheel, it's to be expected we would name them for ourselves), No Bake Cookies, Boiled Cookies, etc. If you were taking them some where or serving them to guests, we called them Carolina Delights. If you were making them for a snack at home, they are boiled cookies.

I usually called them Boiled Cookies because that is how they are made. I made them for friends when we lived in New Jersey and told them they were Boiled Cookies. They had a big laugh and I could not figure out why. Keep in mind, I have a very southern accent so they thought I was saying "Bull Cookies".

I guess considering what they look like, Bull Cookies work.



You decide what you want to call them, other than delicious.

Ingredients:
2 Cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup cocoa
1 stick butter
1 pinch salt
3 cups oatmeal (quick cooking)

Mix sugar, cocoa, milk and butter together in a pot. Melt on medium. Heat until it comes to a full boil. Boil for 1 minute without stirring. Remove from heat. Add vanilla, salt, peanut butter and oatmeal. Stir well. Drop on wax paper. Let cool. Eat.