DreamWorks Pictures' THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY - Madeleines Recipe

I don't know about you, but I am getting even more excited to see The Hundred Foot Journey! They keep releasing recipes to try and this one looks AMAZING! It shows something so simple that looks like it requires a lot of work. Madeleines are basically a small sponge cake that are baked in a special shell shaped pan. I looked on Amazon and found that they aren't too expensive with the average around $12! I have never tried to make them before because I always thought they would be 1) Hard to make and 2) ingredients I was allergic to and hard to made substitutions for. With this recipe below, it is neither of those things! I am hoping to buy a pan and try this recipe soon! I'm thinking they would be great dipped in some milk chocolate! What do you think? Have you ever made madeleines before?

Black and White Cookie Recipe AKA Awesomeness!

So, I have been hooked on this wonderful series written by Joanne Fluke. It is the Hannah Swensen's Mysteries. They are great little "cozy murder mystery" books that I just love to read! They all have wonderful recipes in them and it is so hard to read the book without wanting to stop and make the recipe! She has also released a Lake Eden Cookbook which has all the recipes in it and also includes some new ones never published! One recipe I have now made 3 times in the last week is her Black and White cookies! They taste like a brownie and a cookie all in one. They also remind me a bit like a chocolate crinkle! They are wonderful and you will just have to make them yourself! Good luck not having the whole family eat them all before you are done! Good thing it makes about 5-6 dozen!

Joanne Fluke's Black and Whites

DO NOT PREHEAT OVEN! DOUGH MUCH CHILL BEFORE BAKING!

2 cups Chocolate Chips (12 oz package)

3/4 cup Butter ( 1 1/2 sticks)

2 cups Brown Sugar

4 Eggs

2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract

2 Teaspoons Baking Powder

1 Teaspoon Salt

2 Cups Flour (not sifted, packed down!)

1/2 Cup Powdered Sugar in a bowl for later

Melt the chocolate chips and butter in a large bowl in the microwave. It took about 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. Mix in the brown sugar and let it cool. (I did about 10-20 minutes) 

Add in the eggs, one at a time, until mixed well.

Mix in the vanilla extract, baking powder, and salt.

Add the flour one cup at a time until well mixed.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put into the fridge for at least 4 hrs. (Overnight is even better!)

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll into 1-2 inch dough balls. This will get a bit messy but well worth it! Drop the dough balls into the powder sugar and coat them well. 

Place them onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for 12 to 14 minutes. Don't worry about pressing them down, they will flatten as they cook!

Move to a wire rack after 1-2 minutes after pulling them out of the oven. 

Grab a nice big glass of milk and try not to eat them all!

ENJOY!

Flourless Monster Cookies Recipe

First off, I didn't know how these would come out....amazing!! Second, I have an allergy to all nuts including peanuts. So, instead of peanut butter I use Soy Butter. How they would turn out with peanut butter I would think would be the same but sometimes it seems the soy butter dries things out a bit more. It's not as sweet of a taste either but to me, that's better! I have accidentally had peanut butter last year by eating a Reese's egg at Easter time thinking it was a Hershey's one. To me, peanut butter is so sweet now from that little comparison between my panic attack/allergic reaction. So, just FYI all my recipes are nut free if you ever wondered! So on to the amazing Monster Cookies!!!


Flourless Monster Cookies Recipe

1 Stick Butter
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Teaspoon Corn Starch
3 Eggs
1 1/2 Cups Soy Butter (or your choice)
2 Teaspoons Baking Soda
4 1/2 Cups Quick Oats
1 Cup Chocolate Chips
1 Cup M&Ms

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugars. Add in vanilla and corn starch and mix well. Add one egg at a time until mixed. Add in Soy Butter (or peanut butter of choice) until incorporated. Add in baking soda. Then add oats until incorporated. Then add chocolate chips and M&Ms. (Add extra if you feel the need!) Drop onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 mins. Now this is where it might be different with peanut butter than soy butter. If you over cook them, they seem to dry out more and crumble. Leave them a bit doughy and they are perfect!!!

I have made these twice now in the last 4 days and both times I tried to measure out the same but they came out different. First batch was thicker and easier to get off the pan in one piece. My next ones I made today were flatter and gooey and would squish more and break because they were thinner. I left them on the pan about 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack and that seemed to help. Either way, they were gone by the end of the day! To me, that is a successful cookie!

Monday Freezer Meal Recipe - Cinnamon Toast Muffins

Our family has the staple of eating cereal for every breakfast. I really don't like cereal and after a while they all taste the same. I looked for recipes for muffins that could work in the freezer and came across these babies. To me, they are a mixture of a doughnut and a muffin. For the husband, they tasted like * Nom, Nom Nom* His words exactly! The great thing is after you bake them, you can freeze them and then that way you can have one for breakfast in the morning! I love the variety this will add to our breakfasts in the morning!


Cinnamon Toast Muffins
2/3 Cup (about 10 tablespoons) butter, melted
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1 Cup Milk
3 Cups Flour
3 Tablespoons Baking Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Teaspoon Ginger
1/4 Teaspoon Cloves
1/8 to 1/4 Teaspoon Nutmeg (I swear if I put this in a recipe, I can really taste it so I go lighter on it)
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Mix together the sugar and butter. Stir in the eggs and milk.
In a separate bowl, combine all your dry ingredients.
Slowly stir them into your wet ingredients.
Put 20-24 cupcake liners into your cupcake pans. You can also spray them with non stick spray if you would like. You can also put them into a mini loaf pan if desired.
Bake 350 Degrees for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

To Freeze:
When you take them out of the oven, put them onto a cool cookie sheet and put them in the freezer for 10-15 minutes until they are cooled off. This helps to keep them from moisture escaping in the bag and them sticking if you put them in too soon. If you don't have room, you can always leave them an hour or two on the counter and then put them in the bag to freeze. Doing this though may result in your stash going down!

To Reheat them:
You can leave them out overnight to thaw or if you rather you can put one in the microwave for 30-45 mins to reheat. I believe this option makes them last a little bit more!


And now for picture overload!!! Enjoy! If you make them, let me know how they turn out for you! I think next time I might try adding a bit more cinnamon and cloves to get even more flavor dynamic!

Do You Bake? Oh La La Garlic Bread Seasoning Review

*This post is not compensated in any way. I bought the product, loved it so much that I wanted to share it with you! All thoughts and opinions are my own*



My friend Amanda has been sharing many pictures of a new business she sells for called Do You Bake?. I kept seeing the food and drooling. All of the items are 100% natural and they do not us preservatives or additives in any of the items. That made it seem even better to try!

For Christmas, my husband let me buy a few things to try. One of them was the Oh La La Garlic Bread Seasoning. I was hooked the minute I saw the picture and had to buy it! Even better is that there is NO SALT added in the seasoning mix!! I love the garlic spread I can find at the local grocery store, but it is so packed with so much things I can't even pronounce! Not to mention how expensive it can be. It comes in a bottle just like most seasonings you can buy at the store.

You open it up and the smell just takes you away! It smells SOOOOO good!!! Then all you got to do is add about 2 tablespoons for every 1/2 teaspoon of the seasoning.

So simple! I like my things a bit more garlicy so I did add a bit extra but not too much!

After mixing it, it just slide off the spatula like it was meant to be! To make garlic bread sticks in our house, we usually shop the clearance bread at the store or go to the local bread outlet store and get hot dog buns. They make for some AMAZING bread sticks!

Don't they just look amazing?!

I could have easily made the whole pack of hot dog buns (16 total when pulled apart) with the stick of butter and the seasoning. But instead, I saved 3 buns for tomorrow for lunch time. Knowing what exactly is in my spread is wonderful! Even better the price it will save me! We hardly ever use up the tub from the store before it is bad. With this, I just need a stick of butter! The bottle should make about 9 batches of bread sticks for my family. That's about $10 compared to $3 for the tub at the store!

Again, amazing especially with my Italian Stuffed Shells!

Make sure you go to Do You Bake? and take a look around! There is more there than just seasoning! They also have different kinds of beer breads, cookies, dips and cheeseballs, and even doggie treats for your little fur babies!! They seem to add new items and have specials all the time. If you have any questions, feel free to email Amanda! She is very knowledgeable of the products. If she doesn't know the answer, she can find it fast!  You can also go and like her facebook page Slim Pickens Studio! She will run contests from time to time and sometimes posts specials you can only get through her!

Craft Time: Cupcake in a Jar

This past weekend, I got to make my sister in law's graduation cake. LOTS of fun! I got to thinking of something fun and different to do. We had a few pint mason jars so I decided to make cupcakes in a jar! Let me start off by saying, I made zebra cake and cupcakes :) When you cut into the cake, it actually did look like a zebra pattern! I was impressed! It was so much fun to make too, and the kids loved how messy it got!

Here is a picture of the cake before it went into the oven to bake!

Some instructions I have seen say to bake the cupcakes without the liners. I haven't ever had a good experience doing that so I figured since they are were all "zebra" the lines wouldn't be as visible :)

First, take off the cupcake liner and put the cupcake into the jar.

 Then you take your frosting and put a bit on top of the cupcake. Doesn't need to look perfect as it's the middle layer!

Because I was using the pint mason jars, putting two cupcakes into one jar was a bit too much. So I cut the cupcakes in half and put just one half into the jar on top of the frosting.

Next, I took my frosting and piped it onto the cupcake all "fancy" like! Then my daughter took the "zebra" sprinkles and put them on top!

Last to do was put the lid back on! For the tops, I took some cardstock and traced the top to get the circle to put on top with a stamp. You could do this with fabric or any other idea you can think of! You could also put a ribbon around the jar. The possibilities are endless!

Close up of the finished yummy project!

Chocolate Chip Soy Nut Butter Balls

So, I have allergies. One of those is nuts. So I have to find and/or make up my own recipes. One I had seen was these "energy" balls. They just sounded so good! They had nuts in them. And more nuts. And then some more almond flour. You see where I am going! Well, being the great baker/cook I am, I turned it into a great recipe I can make for myself :) The results? Yummy little bites that I personally can't eat more than one or two of and be able to still get that sweet tooth under control!

Instead of just doing cups, teaspoon, tablespoon, etc, I got out our scale and did the measurements that way but will put them as the measurements!

Chocolate Chip Soy Nut Butter Balls

8 Tablespoons School Safe Soy Nut Butter

2 Tablespoons Honey

Pinch of Salt

2 Tablespoons of chocolate chips 

(if you have mini chocolate chips, might just do 1 Tablespoon)

3/4 cup of Quick Oats

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Roll them into balls. You can measure them if you would like! I measured them and it made 14 - 20 oz balls. Put them in the refrigerator to firm and also be able to semi help you from trying to eat them all! 

Let's Make Some Whoopie!!

Whoopie Pies that is!!! My hubby loves the recipe book I bought awhile back. We have tried the original chocolate with chocolate buttercream and the marshmallow creme. Today however, we decided to change it up and make vanilla whoopie pies with chocolate buttercream :) Best book ever I tell you is Whoopie Pies: Dozens of Mix Em, Match Em, Eat Em Up Recipes! It has been well used and I can tell when I open it up and have flour, powdered sugar, and who knows what other ingredients in it!!

I forgot to take a picture while mixing it up and baking it, but figured you would want to see more of the after pictures anyways :)

Before:

During:

After:

The recipe says it can make up to 48 2 inches whoopie pies to make 24 sandwiches. I was able to make 32 pies so 16 sandwiches total. I think they are more like 4 inches then 2 inches! I definitely made the husband's night! Hit the spot for him!

Best Ever Peppernuts

When I was little, our church participated in an International Bread Festival held once a year in November. We would all get together at the church and help make peppernuts. We would usually spend the day making them and rolling them into shape so they could be put on the cookie sheet and frozen to be cut and cooked later. With my family now, I love to make them together and now that the girls are getting older its fun to see them have fun helping to make them!!!

Today since it has been such a cold and rainy/icy/snowy day, I decided what better time to make peppernuts! The recipe is pretty easy.

Best Ever Peppernuts Recipe

Preheat Oven 350F Bake for 5-10 mins

2 Sticks Butter

1 Egg

2 T Molasses

1 1/2 cups Sugar

3 1/4 cups Flour

2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp cloves

1 tsp ginger

Mix them all together.

Roll them out. You can stop here if you want and put them on a cookie sheet, cover and put in freezer if you want. Sometimes doing it in two steps is nice when you don't have a lot of time! I find making them and baking them at the same time makes for some chewier peppernuts. When you freeze them, they are a bit less chewy and more like the traditional harder ones.

Cut into pieces about 1/2" to 1" depending on size you want! Try to keep them around the same size!

Place them on cookie sheet with enough of a space so they don't bake together.

It's always fun to have some help!

Place them in the oven at 350F and bake for about 5-10 mins depending on size. Its always good to start with 5 minutes and work your way up if they aren't completely done.

Let them cool for about 5 minutes then transfer them into your container of choosing.

Of course, its hard for the container to stay full!!

I hope you enjoyed one of our Christmas/Holiday traditions! I make them more than just Christmas time, but when it gets cold like this and with the lights and holiday all around, I just can't think of a better time for peppernuts!