Happy weekend y'all!

So, I haven't blogged all week, and there is a reason behind it.... Since started the blog, I've gained 4 lbs!!!!!! All from eating my own goodies. I noticed I had been feeling a bit chunkier than usual, but I figured it was because i hadn't been to the gym! But I stepped on the scale and there it was.... SO I need to stop eating all of my goodies and continue baking AND exercising. I wonder why all pastry chefs are not obese?!?!?

So I am researching (going on pinterest) healthy goodies to make and I'll be posting about those.
I did find this recipe that looks AMaze balls..... Using pretzel m&ms. Healthier right? Well, not really but it's a start! I think I'm going to try this next week!


CARAMEL SWIRLED PRETZEL M&M BLONDIES
Ingredients

1 cup butter (2 sticks) room temp
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup light brown sugar packed
2 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp coarse Sea salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups Pretzel M&Ms
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 (14oz) bag caramels unwrapped
1/4 cup milk
How to Make

Preheat oven to 350°
Spray a 9x13 with baking spray. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugars together in a large mixing bowl.
Add vanilla and eggs and mix well.
On low add baking soda, salt and flour stirring until combined.
Fold in your pretzel M&Ms and chocolate chips.
In your prepared pan press 2/3 of your batter into the bottom of the pan.
Bake for 8-10 minutes until just beginning to set, but not golden brown.
While the bottom is baking put your unwrapped caramels into a microwave safe bowl along with your 1/4 cup milk. Microwave for 2-3 minutes, stirring every minute until melted.
When the bottom is done pour the melted caramel on top.
Drop in spoonfuls the remaining batter and spread over the caramel as well as you can.
Continue baking for 15 minutes until golden brown and the caramel is bubbling.
Set oven to 350°
Let cool completely before cutting into squares

Yellow cake with Rolos...don't knock it til you've tried it!

This is a recipe I've seen floating around Pintrest for a while now, and it is so darn easy!

-1 box cake mix dry (I used Betty Crocker yellow cake)
-5 oz can of condensed milk
-40 Rolos, cut in half
-1/2 cup butter, melted

So it is important to remember that we are just using the cake mix dry... No extra ingredients! We (my friends Sierra and Liv) ended up substituting half water half milk to lessen the calories (and we kind of goofed) but it's up to you. Just add the cake mix, condensed milk, and butter into a bowl and combine for about 2 minutes.
Then, pour HALF the mix into a 9x12 pan and pop that sucker in the oven (350 deg) for about 7 minutes. During this time, chop up those Rolos because it takes a while to get the foil wrapper off! And let me tell you, it takes self control not to eat them all!!!

Once the 7 minutes is up, take the pan out of the oven and carefully place the Rolos on top of the cake. I put them caramel side down so it would be extra gooey! Then pour the remaining batter on top of the Rolos.
Now bake for about 20-25 minutes or until done!
The other important thing to do is let it cool for about 30-40 min....something we did not have the will power to do. The cake was a bit crumbly but let me tell you.... It was amazing!!!!!! Yellow cake and Rolos are meant for each other!

I'm seeing double: Double chocolate pumpkin spice muffins!

Since it's the end of August and I had a day off today, I figured it was a good idea to bust out the good 'ol canned pumpkin! I just love pumpkin..it is such a comfort food in my opinion, and it is naturally low cal! I found a recipe for chocolate pumpkin muffins, and it was a low cal option to boot!
Here are the ingredients:
1. 1 box of chocolate cake mix (You can use a no sugar added option...I used Betty Crocker)
2. 15 oz. can of Pumpkin Puree.. Libby's brand is the BEST
3. 6 oz. chocolate chips....Guittard is my brand of choice here!

Using a muffin pan, I put aluminum foil liners in the little cubbies, and started mixin!

You just simply mix the powdered cake mix with the can of pumpkin for about two minutes.

Then add the chocolate chips...you can tell I may have added a few extra ;) The batter is pretty thick, so it takes a while to NEATLY fill all those cubbies (i'm sure thats not the right word to describe the muffin pan holes hehe).  I put a few choc chips on top so they would be all nice and melty! I also added a bit of pumpkin spice on top, just for an extra pep.
Set the oven on 350, put those bad boys in the oven for about 25 minutes. 

Let me tell ya, they are so moist (I know I hate that word too) but they were...and tasted amazing!

Chocolate chip cookies get a make over: WHOLE WHEAT!

 Okay, just so you all know I usually don't bake THIS often, but I'm just real excited about blogging about sweets that I couldn't help it....


So, on to the chocolate chip cookie make over: whole wheat style.  Now, I was a bit skeptical of the whole wheat factor..I mean why fix somethin when it ain't broken? But let's be real guys, white flour is terrible for your body, and I've heard that wheat flour gives a really great texture to cookies so I thought I'd give it a whirl! I used this recipe from Betty Crocker's website (listed below). I used "Guittard" brand chocolate chips because they are my fav....I think they're better than Ghirardelli!
I will say that this dough was A LOT thicker than your average dough so I did add a 1/4 cup olive oil and I think it did the trick.  After about 20 minutes these cookies were ready to cool.  I made them a bit clumpier than usual so they were not as pretty looking.  But they were amazing.  They were more filling than your average cookie and much more flavorful! I did not take a picture of the final result because they flew off the cookie sheet so fast! But I did include a pic from the Betty Crocker website...let me tell you, mine did not look as pretty!

• PREP TIME 30 Min
• TOTAL TIME 40 Min
• SERVINGS 36

 

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1cup butter or margarine, softened

1teaspoon vanilla

1egg

2cups Gold Medal® whole wheat flour

1teaspoon baking soda

1/2teaspoon salt

1package (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips (2 cups) 

 

 

 

 

http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/whole-wheat-chocolate-chip-cookies/391acf6b-df6c-49d3-894b-4ac705dc9cb2

I've gone Bananas: Banana Bread Brownies

While perusing Pintrest, I saw an amazing picture of banana bread brownies.  I clicked on the picture and it led me to an amazing blog "life's simple measures".  One of the things I love about Pintrest is it leads me to discover all these great food blogs! As I mentioned before, I'm trying branch out from my main beau chocolate, so I thought this recipe would be a great experiment.  I've seen many different variations of this recipe, but this one featured a brown butter frosting....aka heaven (take my word for it).  Preparing the batter for the brownies was pretty straight forward, but I'll have to try this with whole wheat flour instead.  Using the walnuts is optional, so I left them out and instead used crushed pecans on top of the frosting.  The recipe calls for a bake time of about 25 minutes, but because I used a smaller pan and my brownies were thicker (like cake thickness), I had to leave them in the oven for about 40 minutes.  This is the tricky part: you have to prepare the brown butter frosting so it is ready when the brownies are.  Because I had to wait so long for mine to bake, the frosting began to stiffen up so I had to keep heating it up on low.

Now for the frosting, you have to BROWN the butter by melting only the butter on the stove until it turns a light brown color.  This is a hard thing to do because the butter will burn really fast so you have to watch it! Then I added the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla the recipe called for.  Once it was all nice and melted, I poured it right on top of the brownies, while they were still warm.  I added the pecans and let them cool off for an hour.  I ended up taking these to a party at Matt's friend's house later that night, and let me tell you..they were a hit! I think they lasted about a half hour. I definitely will be making more of these!   I copied the recipe below so you can try them too!

http://lifessimplemeasures.blogspot.com/2012/01/banana-bread-bars-with-brown-butter.html

Ingredients:

Banana Bread Bars:

1-1/2 c. sugar

1 c. sour cream

1/2 c. butter, softened

2 eggs

1-3/4 (3 or 4) ripe bananas, mashed

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 c. all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. salt

1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Brown Butter Frosting:

1/2 c. butter

4 c. powdered sugar

1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 tbsp. milk

Directions:

1.  Heat oven to 375F.  Grease and flour 15x10-inch jelly roll pan.  For the bars, in a large bowl, beat together sugar, sour cream, butter, and eggs until creamy.  Blend in bananas and vanilla extract.  Add flour, baking soda, salt, and blend for 1 minute.  Stir in walnuts.

2.  Spread batter evenly into pan.  Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

3.  Meanwhile, for frosting, heat butter in a large saucepan over medium heat until boiling.  Let the butter turn a delicate brown and remove from heat immediately.

4.  Add powdered sugar, vanilla extract and milk.  Whisk together until smooth (it should be thicker than a glaze but thinner than frosting).  Using a spatula, spread the brown butter frosting over the warm bars (the frosting will be easier to spread while the bars are still warm). 

Yield: 2 dozen large bars

Almost mid-night snack: Greek yogurt pancakes

So those of you who follow me on Instagram saw my post yesterday of the greek yogurt pancake recipe I made. (See below). As I read the recipe, I realized how easy it would be to make! I used 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 6 oz greek yogurt (can be flavored) and 1 egg.  It is important to mix the yogurt and egg separately until there are no lumps, and then combine all ingredients.  The batter was very thick so I had to make sure the pancakes cooked all the way through.  The recipe calls out for four pancakes or 8 small ones but I opted for three large ones and ate them all myself...(oops?)

Once off the griddle, I realized they tasted  a bit too plain so I added natural agave syrup and a banana.  Definitely helped to sweeten it up a bit.  After eating them, I realized how much better I felt eating these pancakes versus your typical diner pancakes which are soaked in oil and butter.  They were not as heavy as I had anticipated either!

Since I had an early dinner, my stomach started rumbling around 10 pm (naturally).  I'm also blaming my hunger on my workout Matthew took me through today...so since I worked out, I get to eat more..right?!
I bought whole wheat flour and blueberries yesterday keeping in mind this recipe because I wanted to see what a difference the wheat flour would give it.   I'm slowly trying to stop using white flour since it has little to no benefits for your body. By using the same amount of everything except using the wheat flour instead of white, I realized the wheat flour gives the pancakes a heartier, healthier feel.  I also added 1/4 cup oats to add a bit of texture, and used 1/2 cup frozen blueberries to add some natural sugar. The result.....amazingness....duh! However,  I reaaaalllly need to work on my pancake flipping abilities.... and hitting the gym tomorrow! (but so worth it)

Reese's cookie brownie

So this was the first pintrest dessert I tried: Reese's cookie brownie.  Just by hearing the name, my mouth starts watering! There is just something about peanut butter, chocolate and more chocolate...or is that just me? 
The ingredients are pretty simple: box of brownie mix, pre-made cookie mix, and a bag of reeses.  Now, I could have not cheated and made my own cookie dough, but I wanted to try the recipe first as listed.  Using a muffin tin, take a piece of cookie dough and smush it right in there, so it is flattened.  Then, place a reeses upside down on top of the cookie dough, followed by the brownie mix.  Ideally, you want to have the muffin tin filled 3/4 of the way since the mix will rise while baking.  I left it in the oven at 375 for about 25 minutes.
 The result: HEAVEN!!! First you bite into the cookie dough, followed by the peanut butter, then by more chocolate.  Now, don't just take my word for it.  I had two of my girlfriends over who also raved about how amazing it was! The picture above shows you what fatties we were: cheetos, sour patch kids, and these delectable treats....hey, it was girl's night after all!

Moral of the story: This is a great, quick, easy treat to make for the girls, guys, work or school!