Sweet Tooth Attack

Who says you can't have S'mores when it is snowing out?

When I was growing up, my family spent many family vacations camping...And I don't mean pack up the 5th wheel, or load up the camper, I mean, tent camping! It was a great past time that I think we have gotten away from true camping as the generations pass. I plan on getting my girls out into a tent to camp this summer...even if it is just in my backyard!

So, back to the camping story. We used to have the typical "S'more" while camping - graham cracker, slab of milk chocolate bar, a toasted marshmallow, topped with of course, another graham cracker. I don't remember the exact story of how the "new" name came about. I am sure my 'memory of an elephant, brother' can recite the reason, but we started calling these campfire creations - "S'nuffs" as in, "THAT'S ENOUGH!" I am guessing we overloaded on them during one of our excursions!

Give this recipe a try of you like S'mores, but Sweet Tooths, BEWARE!!! My co-workers will benefit from this trial, as I was given a hard time about not recently sharing any of my quest attempts! Hope they will enjoy this tomorrow morning!

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) (84 grams) unsalted butter

1/4 cup (55 grams) light brown sugar

6 tablespoons pure maple syrup or golden syrup

1/2 cup (65 grams) all purpose flour

2 cups (190 grams) old fashioned rolled oats

1 cup (100 grams) graham cracker crumbs (or crushed digestive biscuits)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling:

1 cup (170 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups (90 grams) mini marshmallows or 1 cup marshmallow creme

S'More Granola Bars: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and place the rack in the center of the oven. Butter (or use a non stick vegetable cooking spray) a 9 x 9 inch square pan.

Melt the butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup (golden syrup) in a medium sized saucepan, placed over medium heat. Once the sugar has dissolved remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the flour, oats, graham cracker crumbs, salt, making sure all the dry ingredients are coated with the butter mixture. 

Press about half of this mixture onto the bottom of the prepared pan. Evenly sprinkle with the chocolate chips and marshmallows. Top with the remaining crust mixture. 

Bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 20 minutes. Cut into squares while they are still warm.

From Bread to Brownies! A little catching up....

Its been a while since I have blogged, as it is definitely hard to keep up sometimes! I have continued to bake, so don't think that I baked all of these things in one weekend....it has been a few weeks!

So, to start out the yeast breads, I had to start with White Bread 101. While, I am not a fan of white bread, I thought I would give it a try. This recipe was so easy, especially since I threw all of the ingredients into my bread machine, and turned it to the dough setting. I then, threw it a pan and let it do its second rise, and voila!! I thought I took a picture of this, but apparently, I did not! Oops! I will actually make this bread again. My daughter really did love it with peanut butter and jelly for her school lunch. It also made a mean piece of toast with a little bit of honey. Here is the recipe, give it a try, I think you will find many good uses for it.

White Sandwich Bread: King Arthur Flour

It also made a mean french toast...Which leads me into my next recipe: Rich French Toast. I followed this recipe to the T, and it definitely made an awesome breakfast, very rich. My husband does not like french toast, but he even commented that this was a good recipe. I think using the white bread from the recipe above made it over the top. Make sure to dust with with cinnamon sugar, and of course, a good size drizzle of maple syrup!

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/french-toast-recipe
I followed this recipe as it states here, and even used a drop of butter rum flavoring, which put this breakfast on the sinful list!

Next, for Nate's birthday, he did not want a traditional cake....bummer, as there are a lot of cake recipes that I have to make..... He instead wanted brownies. I did not get a picture of these either, but not to worry, I see myself making these again in the near future. This recipe is the quintessential brownie recipe. It was ooey gooey on the inside and had a crisp crust on the top. They were so good! I chose not to add any additions to these brownies, as the simplicity was perfection! I have tried the "On the fence Brownies" in the Cookie Companion KAF Cookbook, which is one of my favorites, but these were so sinful! Every one should give this recipe at least one shot!

 6 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks, 5 ounces) unsalted butter
5 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2, cups sugar
1/3 cup light corn syrup
1 1/3 cups unbleached all purpose flour

In a medium-sized saucepan,  melt the chocolate and butter together over low heat.
Set aside to cool slightly.
ln a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs, vanilla, salt, sugar, and corn syrup together until light and fluffy., which takes a few minutes. Preheat the oven to 375oF and lightly grease a 9 x l3-inch pan. Stir the flour into the chocolate and butter mixture. Fold the chocolate batter into the egg mixture, stirring to combine. Spread the batter into the pan. For extra glossy top, brush 1 TBSP milk. Bake the brownies for 35 minutes; top should be crisp but toothpick inserted into the center will come out coated with chocolate. Remove the brownies from the oven and let them cool for several hours before cutting into squares.  That is the toughest part, and probably something that I did not do!

If nothing else, give this brownie recipe a try!

Cookies and Pies!

Simple Sugar Cookies: King Arthur Flour

So on to the sweets! I started with the cookies and bars, and in the last couple of days, I have now made 2 of these cookie recipes. I have decided to put a check mark by those that I have made, so that I can keep track, as my first (two) methods of how I was going to accomplish this quest has gone out the door!

Simple Sugar cookies was first (see link to recipe above), and I actually used some of the variation suggestions: how to give my cookies some personality! As I am not a huge fan of just plain sugar cookies, I decided to replace 1/4 cup of sugar for lemon flavored instant pudding mix, and of course, I doused the cookies with a little lemon drizzle on top! They were pretty good, and my young girls loved them, as they did not last in my house very long. I did not try (due to the small cookie eating monsters in my household) adding a teaspoon of espresso powder and chocolate chips, but I may try those someday soon!

I just tried the Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies out of the All Purpose Baking Cookbook as well. I have made a few versions of KAF chocolate chip cookies....and yes, there are many versions! This was a perfect chewy chocolate chip cookie.

12 TBSP butter                           1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 cup light brown sugar          1 large egg
1/4 cup light corn syrup                2 1/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
2 tsp vanilla                                  2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 375 F. Beat the butter, light brown sugar, and corn syrup together until fluffy. Beat in the vanilla, baking powder, salt and baking soda and then mix in the egg. Beat well. Beat in the flour, then stir in chocolate chips. Drop by tablespoon full on lightly greased pan and bake for 12 minutes. You can flatten the cookies if needed. I actually added 1/4 cup extra flour, as I did not add the optional 1 cup of chopped nuts that it suggested. They were pretty darn good!

Of course, chocolate chip cookies is always a good standby cookie, and I like mine chewy, so this is an awesome recipe! I will try the crispy to see how it compares, but one at a time for now!

Well, lets not forget about the pie section. At the beginning of this chapter, there are a few recipes on how to make various crusts for the variety of pies in the chapter. Well, I made this pie on a school/work night, so I cheated and actually used a pre-made pie crust. HEY! Don't judge me, its my blog, my rules!!! Plus, there are many more pie fillings to go, so many more opportunities to try the various pie crusts. I decided to try:

Mr. Washington's Cherry Pie (link below)
Presidential Cherry Pie: King Arthur Flour

I actually canned my own cherries, so I drained them, reserving liquid as stated in the recipe, and made from there. The pie was great! I used the quick cooking tapioca, and it did leave the pie filling very thick and it held up well. I only had to cool it for a short time before cutting into the pie, which was key in this house!

(It appears in this picture that I have some major cleaning of my stove that needs to happen... ;-)  )