Cookies and Cream Brownies

Guys! I finally had enough forethought to take pictures of the treats I was making to finally post on here. These are amazing. Eat them. Here's how:
First of all, make a 9x13 pan of brownies. I just did a store bought, because I think the flavor is not important, it doesn't have to be a spectacular brownie, the added stuff is the star. BUT!!! Before baking, after you pour the batter into the pan, place 15 Oreos on top of the batter and push in slightly.

Then you bake like normal, according to box. All right, let it cool completely. Like, hours after its out of the oven, make the frosting.

For the frosting:
8 tablespoons vegetable shortening (Crisco)
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup marshmallow creme (such as Fluff)
3 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar
Beat shortening and butter in a stand mixer with the paddle attached (or a hand mixer). Mix in marshmallow creme and vanilla. Slowly mix in powdered sugar. Spread frosting evenly over top of the brownies. Top evenly with mini Oreos.

For the rest:
About 1 1/4 cups (or more) Oreo Mini Cookies
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 teaspoons very hot water
Melt the butter and corn syrup in a small saucepan. Turn off the heat and stir in the chocolate chips, then stir in the water to thin. Drizzle over the top of the frosting. Chill the frosted brownies for at least 1 hour until the frosting and topping sets. Enjoy.

These are so dang good. The frosting is nice, and isn't too marshmallowy (I don't really like the flavor of a marshmallow) and oh man, the topping is good. Recommended.

Many Much Treats

I had to make many much treats for the fiesta last night, and I thought I would share them here. First of all, I made cupcakes, of course. Twinkie Cupcakes, in fact.

The recipe could be found here: (it’s a little long) Twinkie cupcake.

And also, I made Apple Pie Fries, and sadly, I forgot to get a picture of them when they were done! I got one of me cutting them, but that’s not impressive. Find the recipe here and they are delicious.

It took all afternoon to make these delicious items, and a fruit dip I’ve talked about before, so it’s not that exciting. I recommend these items, though!

Day 40–Peanut Butter BrownieCakes

So today, I wanted to bake something. I didn’t know what, but I really did. Finally, after a day of thinking, I decided to make some brownies. I had a recipe that someone gave me at Christmas, and what you do is mix a can of coke with a brownie mix. I put them together, and it was waaay too runny. I had another box of brownie mix, so I threw some of that in there. It got to be too thick, so I threw some diet coke in there (True story). It got too runny, so I threw the rest of the brownie box in there, and then it needed something else to thicken it up, so I added a few tablespoons of flour. Of course, when you add flour, it makes it a cake, instead of a brownie, but I was just dealing with it as I went.

So finally, the mix was doable, and I scooped it into mini cupcake cups, and in the middle of each one, I put a piece of peanut butter cup, that I had chopped up earlier. Now! It was ready. I threw them in the oven, baked for about 13 minutes, and then took them out. After letting them cool, I topped them with a peanut butter frosting.

It made 72 mini cupcakes. You read that right, it made 72 of them. Anyway, there’s not really a recipe here, because it all happened so hard by accident. I can give you the recipe of the frosting, because that really did work out quite well. The browniecakes were good, of course, but the frosting really brought it home.

1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup butter
4 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 cup powdered sugar
4ish TB milk

Beat peanut butter and butter until smooth. Add the vanilla, and then sloooowly add the powdered sugar. Like 1 cup at a time slow. Then, add 1 TB of milk at a time until you dig the consistency. Mine was 4, maybe yours is less. I don’t judge, and I’m not here to tell you what to do. But this was crazy delicious, with a really good consistency of both cake and frosting.

A Recipe Book

Wednesday, March 15, 2012. This day, I had purchased some vital items that were going to be made into a recipe book. I was having the first of my many mouth surgeries, so I figured that with all the laying around I’d be doing, I would be able to work on my recipe book, and finally compile the recipes that I’d been collecting for the last few years. Up to this point, when I needed to use one of these recipes, I just grabbed the scrap of paper I had written it on, but now, they’d be combined and awesome. So...I never worked on it. I did other things during the recovery time of that surgery, and then, when I had others, I had other things that were more pressing, so I kept putting off the recipes. Finally, a few months ago, Chelle got some cute software for making recipe pages, and I decided it was time to finally get going on this project. A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to start typing up the recipes. It took me a few weeks to get it done, and everything put together, and then finally, yesterday, I printed off all the recipes, and today, I finally put them all together. After I put them all together, I separated them by genre:

And after I had them separated there, I alphabetized them, and then combined them into the sheet protectors. I had them in there, one for each protector, but then I had them 2 in every one, back to back. So after I got those all done, I put them into the binder, and then I had to print off the cover pages, and the tabs. Finally, I had done them all, and had the tabs in there.

So I was jazzed to have them all done, and then I got the final cover page finished, and this is what the binder looks like, totally complete:

And now, 1 year and 7 months after I bought all the stuff for this, I finally have finished my binder, and I am so jazzed to finally have it finished.

Lemon Bars

Well, it was Monday yesterday, which means it was treat-making day. I picked something really easy and relatively soft, since I will still be without my eating teeth for another few months. (That sounds really weird when you put it like that. Huh.) I found the recipe on Pinterest, naturally, and it’s literally the easiest thing ever.

Recipe:

1 can (15.75 oz) Lemon Pie filling

1 box (18.75ish oz) Angel Food cake mix

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the 2 ingredients by hand until combined. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan, and bake for 20 minutes, until the top is goldeny brown. While the bars are cooling, sprinkle powdered sugar on them. Let cool completely before cutting in and enjoying.

Now, when I first put the pie filling into the bowl with the cake mix, this is what it looked like:

Of course, it concerned me, because I couldn’t figure out how it would work. Then as I started mixing them together, a little poof of white cake powder went up in the air and I inhaled some, which made me pretty sure I would get some kind of lung disease from it. Cake-lungs, that’s gotta be a thing. Luckily, I haven’t felt any ill effects from it as of yet.

That’s it. And it produces these delicious bars of awesomeness that have the texture of angel food cake, but it’s all lemony delicious. This is what they looked like out of the oven:

Mmm so good these were, I recommend them to everyone, especially since they take no time at all to make.

Oreo Brownies

Of course, it’s Tuesday, which means I’ll be sharing a recipe that I made last night. I don’t know what it is about Mondays, but I do like to bake on them. I think mostly because it’s one of my only “free” nights nowadays, so I’m like to bake. Plus, with my surgery being tomorrow, I’m trying to get all my chewing stuff done now, while I still can.

I was in a brownie mood last night, so I browsed through Pinterest to see what kind of brownie treats they had, and I found this: Oreo Brownies. It’s literally the easiest thing ever. You just take a brownie mix; follow the directions to make it. After your batter is mixed, you add in about a half a package of Oreo cookies, all smashed. I’m sure you can use a food processor to make them, but I used a Ziploc bag and a rolling pin. Worked pretty well for me. Mix the Oreo’s in pretty well, then pour into a 9x13 pan, and cook according to the directions. When they’re done, take them out, and let them cool for probably an hour or so, you don’t want them to be warm at all.

The recipe that I took these from were way fancier, after they had cooled, she had taken a glass cup and cut the brownies into circles, then frosted them. I just cut them into boring old squares, and frosted them that way. I used a buttercream frosting that was linked into the recipe, here it is:

½ cup shortening

½ cup butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 cups powdered sugar

2 Tbs milk

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, shortening, and vanilla. Blend in the sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the milk, and continue mixing until light and fluffy.

Then I used a frosting bag and a fancy tip and frosted each cookie. Then I used a few Oreos smashed up, and decorated the tops of the frosting. If you want, you can put a whole Oreo, or a mini Oreo and put it on top, for like, a garnish. Here is my finished product:

So, no muss, no fuss, these were easy and delicious, if I do say so myself.

Pizza Rolls and RB Cookies...a classic combination

These are just a few recipes I’ve made lately. Of course, they all come from Pinterest, as all of mine do now. What did I ever do without Pinterest? I made one of these for dinner the other day, Pizza Rolls. I took a picture of them while I was assembling them, but not of the finished product. These are ridiculously easy to make. Get a tube of crescent rolls, pepperoni, and string cheese. Unroll the rolls, and place 5 pepperoni slices on the larger end, and place a half of string cheese on those, and roll it up. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown. You can dip them into marinara sauce if you’d like. I didn’t, I found them delicious on their own.

Next, I made Root Beer Float cookies. Yesterday, at work all day, I really wanted to bake something. I kept thinking all day, but it wasn’t until the end of the day that I figured out what to make. I figured it would be easy, and that I’d have all the ingredients in my house. I came home, looked in the cupboard to make sure I had root beer extract. I have vanilla, almond, mint, but no root beer extracts. Dang it! So I went to my local Target to get it. I looked high and low there, even asked an employee (who kinda refused to help me, that was irritating) and finally, had to give up. I went over to Smiths, and found it there, huzzah! I don’t know how much root beer extract usually goes for, but I bought a small bottle there for 8 freaking dollars. That seems excessive, but what could I do, I now had my heart set on these? So I bought my things and went home to make them.

As I was making them, I was getting my brown sugar, and found that I didn’t even have enough! I had to borrow from my brother, a neighbor. Sheesh, I shouldn’t have been making cookies, it seems! They were really easy to make, which is always a plus in cookies. I let them cool, and put the root beer frosting on top, and holy cow, they are soooo good. So root beery too. I recommend them. Here’s the recipe, in case you want it:

Ingredients:

(Cookie)

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp root beer extract

4 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

(Frosting)

4 cups powdered sugar

¾ cup butter, softened

3 Tbsp milk

1 tsp root beer extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in buttermilk and root beer extract. Combine dry ingredients, gradually add to creamed mixture. Drop by tablespoons onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. For frosting, mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Beat until smooth. Frost cooled cookies…enjoy!

Now, the cookies in the photo from the site I got them on showed big, smooth cookies, perfectly frosted, yada yada yada. But when I spooned mine onto my cookie sheets, they were just lumpy little buggers, not really taking a shape. So my cookies are taller than they are wide, really. They still are good, they’re just not very pretty. But they are tasty, I recommend them to everyone

Best Chocolate Cookies Ever

I wish these had a better name, I really do. Unfortunately, the name of these delicious cookies is plain old ‘4 Ingredient Chocolate Cookies’. How boring. I found this recipe, as I do with all my recipes of late, on Pinterest. I’ve been wanting to make them for weeks, but not having any teeth to chew things really cut down on my baking. But – and this is exciting for all of us - I am really close to being back to full strength. I can eat some things now. Not anything super chewy or hard, but I’m doing good with sandwiches, breads, oatmeals, I ate some chips…the possibilities are endless, and they’re getting better every day, and it’s about bloody time, as I had this stupid procedure done a month ago now. Anyway, to celebrate being able to eat (mostly) I made these cookies last night, and holy cow are they the most delicious and super easy to make.


Ingredients:
1 pkg chocolate cake mix
1 8-oz frozen Cool Whip, thawed
1 egg
½-3/4 cup powdered sugar (I won’t lie, I didn’t even measure the powdered sugar, I just dumped some in a bowl)
Directions:
Mix the first three ingredients together until very well incorporated. The dough will be stiff.

Drop by teaspoon into the powdered sugar, rolling to coat the ball completely. Place the ball on a baking pan that has been lined with parchment paper. Press down the ball with the bottom of a cup that has been dipped in the powdered sugar. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the cookie has cracked open and appears just slightly wet within the cracks. Cool completely, store in covered container. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Ok, that’s the recipe as it came from Pinterest; here are a few observations of mine. These things were really hard to roll into a ball. At first, I just scooped the dough straight into the sugar, so it was like, a glob of sugar and dough, but it looked awful. So I decided to roll them up in my hands before, and that created a holy mess of craziness that left most of the dough in my hands. I did what I could, but I only made about 22 cookies, so nowhere near what the recipe said. It still worked out, though, and I ended up with delicious cookies, so I think I still win.