Puppy Chow

I grew up in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was a time of microwaves and convenient health foods. And Bartle & James. Remember those commercials? Whatever happened to those guys? Hmm.
It was also a time of American Gladiators and with all the talk of the new series this week, it got me thinking about those days of growing up. Now, when I was growing up, my mom was a bit of a health food junkie. We didn't eat a lot of processed foods (except the occasional bag of wedding cookies), if we wanted something sweet... she'd make us some Grandma Cookies. We also didn't have any types of sugary cereal. Only cornflakes or regular cheerios for us. She always added brown sugar to it for us, but no fruit loops or cocoa puffs. To this day, I've never had captain crunch or lucky charms.

Anyway, I think I seem to remember having chex cereal a few times, but we never made puppy chow or muddy buddies or whatever you want to call it with it. No, I only had puppy chow when I went to slumber parties. I never really even knew what it was or how to make it. I just knew that it was covered in powdered sugar (my favorite) and that it was crunchy and chocolatey. In other words, Heaven in a Bag.

Recently, I bought some chex cereal after seeing a recipe on tv for making faux fried chicken with chex cereal. You can read about the chicken here. So, since I have a huge box of chex lying around and with the nostalgia that American Gladiators brought back... I decided to finally give these a try.

I didn't make a full batch. I actually just kind of eyeballed everything. I melted some hershey chocolate bars with a spoonful of peanut butter and some butter in the microwave, poured it over some chex cereal and then shook it in a bag with the powdered sugar. I let it harden on a piece of parchment paper and then this morning, I decided to shake it with some more powdered sugar (have I mentioned how much I love powdered sugar?). It is just how I remembered. So sweet and crunchy. The perfect pop in your mouth snack.

Chex Puppy Chow

Before the second coating of powdered sugar.

Banana Muffins

So, apparently, having very ripe bananas is a huge factor when making banana muffins.

I bought bananas that were fairly green at the grocery and then tried to make muffins out of them that night. I even tried microwaving them (something I saw Rachael Ray do on tv once). But, these muffins just aren't sweet enough. And I know it's because my bananas weren't anywhere near overripe.

The banana slices on top were pretty gross, too. Not sure if that had something to do with the bananas not being ripe enough, or what.

Anyway, I will try this recipe again with bananas that I've had lying around for awhile. I do love muffins and will hopefully be making more in the near future.

Banana Muffins

Meringues with Chocolate Chips & Nuts

I don’t like meringue. I love coconut cream pie, chocolate pie, etc… but I always, always remove the meringue. It’s gross. My Aunt Peggy always calls it “calf slobber” and I think that's the perfect way to describe it. I always leave the calf slobber lying in my plate.

So, since I don’t like meringue as a topping, I never ever tried meringue cookies. I mean… egg whites and sugar? Baked? How can that be tasty, right??

Well… I was wrong.. egg whites and sugar are tasty! Very tasty in fact.

On a whim, I decided to try this recipe … (another Smitten Kitchen recipe, yes… I know, I have a very small repertoire of blogs from which I pull recipes from). The reason I was drawn to trying meringues, is that I recently saw someone eating one… and I thought to myself.. hmmm.. that texture seems crunchy and chewy all at the same time…. I like that idea.

So, I baked these. And they were freaking delicious! Chewy and crunchy and the chocolate chips in them are so sweet and kind of like grouped together in a wonderful little explosion when you bite into the cookie! I added a little coconut to mine, too. I love me some coconut.

So, now, I’m wondering.. does everyone love meringues? Or are they as exotic and strange sounding to everyone else as they are to me?

Blueberry Muffins

It’s funny how your tastes change as you get older. When I was growing up, I always thought I hated blueberries. I never liked blueberry flavored candy, blueberry muffins, blueberry pie. Nothing. I wouldn’t even try anything with blueberries in it. And, we never had blueberries around the house, either, so, the unknown factor was definitely in play there.

About 3-4 years ago, my mom started buying fresh blueberries to eat with my parent’s breakfast. And for some reason one day, I opened the carton, popped a couple in my mouth and was in love. They were sweet, but also tart and a perfectly semi-firm texture. They were delicious! Where had they been all my life?

Now, I love blueberries and try to eat them as much as possible (they apparently have all kinds of healthy antioxidants in them).

Last night, I went on a bit of a baking spree. I am sick of making regular cookies and my palate was sick of cookies, as well. I wanted something rich and different. So, I looked around for some good muffin recipes. I found a few and even a cookie recipe that sounded good and I headed off to the grocery store list in hand.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before… but the grocery store I go to is prime guy territory. There are always lots of attractive single guys milling around in the grocery store. Last night was no exception… in fact, I actually had a fairly embarrassing encounter with a crush of mine. There is a guy that comes into my work sometimes (maybe once a month) and I’ve always had a huge crush on him.. he’s really nice, cute, has an incredibly sexy deep voice and striking blue eyes. Definitely drool-worthy. I’ve even gone so far as asking my brother (who I work with) to give me the scoop on this Adonis (ok, Adonis might be a stretch, but he is hot), but he didn’t really cooperate, he just told me he was too young for me. Hmph. Well, anyway.. who did I bump into in the baking aisle last night??? Yes, him. There was no ducking out of the situation, as we basically met each other head on. So, we exchanged pleasantries (I wasn’t sure if he really recognized me or not) and there was a girl on the other side of the aisle, that I was afraid might be his girlfriend, so I totally stiffed up and kind of skirted by him after a few moments. Come to find out, they weren’t together. Arrrg.. I’m always screwing up situations like that. I am so not a slick flirter.

Anyway, I got home and whipped up these blueberry muffins. They turned out really pretty! And very tasty! And I used half white whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. They could actually be a little sweeter for me, but still a good muffin. Good texture and flavor. I’ll make these again!

On a side note… I got a kitchen scale for Christmas:
And I absolutely love it! I’ve been using it some and I’m realizing that I’ve been using too much flour and not enough brown sugar, etc… so fun to measure things out precisely! I highly recommend a kitchen scale if you are kind of anal about measurements!

Peanut Butter Cookies

I run. Not just for exercise or for the stress relief, but just because I really enjoy it. I haven’t always been a runner though. I’ve only been running for about 2 years It’s gone from being something that I just wanted to see if I could do… to something that I have to do.

Ever since I started kicking my mileage up to train for marathons, I notice that I crave salt so much. I contribute that to the fact that I always sweat buckets when I run, and I’m depleting my electrolytes and salt reserves when I run (who know if the salt part is really true, but it sounds good, doesn’t it?).

Previous to these random and serious salt cravings, I never really thought much about peanut butter cookies. They were never sweet enough for me. I preferred sweeter, chocolatey desserts. Not anymore. Now, I'll get these urgent and random salty, sweet cravings. I rummage around in my kitchen, I eat some popcorn (with extra salt added to it), then I immediately eat some hershey kisses. Salty and then sweet. In that order.

A couple of months ago, I made flourless peanut butter cookies Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies . I don’t even really like peanut butter cookies that much. But those cookies were so deliciously sweet and salty, that I have been craving them ever since. I keep opening my freezer hoping to see one that I forgot about, but alas, they’re all gone and have been for awhile now.

Since I started this blog, I hate baking the same recipe twice. Mainly because I feel like I can’t really blog about something more than once. It’s too boring. So, even though I’ve been wanting to make those cookies again, I’ve refrained.

So, this weekend, I really wanted those salty-sweet cookies, and I decided to make these cookies instead. Smitten Kitchen Peanut Butter Cookies

I chose to use half shortening instead of butter (and actually now that I type this, I think I actually forgot to add the water that you are supposed to add when you substitute shortening for butter in a recipe, ooops) and I didn’t use chopped peanuts. I used chocolate chips and m&ms.

These were really good cookies. But, honestly…. I still prefer the flourless ones. They did satisfy my salty sweet craving, though. At least for a time.

Savannah Cheesecake Squares

Yup, another Paula Deen recipe. I know, I should be cut off, but she makes such yummy, easy desserts! It's hard to say no!

This is what I made for Christmas at my Grandma's House. It's always an issue to figure out what to make to take there. Obviously, I want to take pictures and blog about the dessert. And that's fairly easy to do when you're only making 4-5 people wait on you (like in my immediate family gatherings) to take 31 pictures of your dessert, but when you've got 25+ people gearing up to hit the dessert line, it's a little harder to snap so many photos. So, I got smart this time. I decided to make a bar cookie. That way, I could cut them out, take pictures of them at home and then transport them to grandma's. Perfect!

These are good. Not WOW good. But, good. I opted to eat other things on the dessert table... pecan pie, white chocolate covered peanut butter cracker sandwiches (mmmmm.. I gotta make those), brownies. But, I did eat one of these while I was cutting them and plating them and they are good, rich cheesecake bars. I think they need a little more pizazz. Like some chocolate chips or nuts or fruit or something. But good for times when you just need something basic and creamy.

I did get a few compliments on them though... and they were even competing against a whole other cheesecake on the buffet line!

Savannah Cheesecake Squares

(What makes these "savannah" cheesecake squares instead of just regular cheesecake squares, I have no idea. I guess Savannah just sounds better).

Pecan Pie Cheesecake

Jennifer at Bake or Break has never let me down. I've made quite a few of the recipes that I've seen on her site and they always turn out delicious!

When I saw this recipe on her site a few weeks ago for Pecan Pie Cheesecake, I knew I had to try it for my family's Christmas Dinner. My favorite pie (maybe even dessert) is a pecan pie. And so this cheesecake immediately spoke to me.

Every Christmas, my family has a cheesecake. It used to be a turtle cheesecake that my mom bought. But for the past couple of years, I've been making the cheesecake. This year, I wanted to try something a little different... A little more special than your typical cheesecake and this fit the bill.

This cheesecake is absolutely amazing. I think I overcooked the pecan pie filling on the stove, because it turned out REALLY hard to eat. It had an amazing flavor, but it was just soooo hard and chewy. Next time (and yes, there will definitely be a next time) I will cook that filling less. But the texture and flavor of the cheesecake was delicious. I am also going to try this cheesecake as just a plain cheesecake sometime, without the pecan pie part. The filling is just so rich and decadent, I think it's the brown sugar. I had never made a cheesecake with a vanilla wafer crust, either and found it to be awesome, also!

This cheesecake was so good, that even those non-sweet eaters in my family were raving over it. Oh my god. Go out and make this cheesecake immediately. You will not be sorry.

I can't even write a coherent post because just thinking about this cheesecake makes my head spin.

Thank you, Jennifer.