Paper Bag Apple Pie

This recipe is from an old church cookbook, and it's a great little twist on traditional apple pie!

You'll need a regular brown paper grocery bag, plus the following ingredients:

1 9" unbaked pie shell
about 7 cups peeled & sliced apples (for a deep dish pie I use about 10 small apples)
2 T lemon juice
3 T flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c sugar (I always include this because I use tart apples to make pie; if your apples are sweeter you won't need as much sugar)

Topping:
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c flour
3/4 c butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened

Combine apple slices in a large bowl, with lemon juice, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, & 1/4 c sugar.  Toss to coat evenly.  Put into pie shell.  Combine topping ingredients, which makes almost like a sugar cookie or a shortbread dough, and spread/pat it evenly over the top of the apples. 

Slide pie carefully into a brown paper bag, on top of a large cookie sheet.  I always make sure to invert the side folds of the bag so they're poking OUT, so that the paper doesn't absorb the butter from the topping & crust.  Fold the end and secure with paper clips or staples.  Bake at 425* for 1 hour.

Using a paper bag allows the pie to bake evenly and it turns out just right every time!  Also, one little note: I have made this pie probably 10 times and I've never had the paper catch fire in the oven.  It often gives off a burnt paper odor as it's cooking, but it's never a very strong smell and it's only for the first little while of cooking time.

Give this recipe a try; the cookie-like topping on the pie and the paper bag technique make it a winner!

Molten Lava Cakes

This is one of my favorite recipes! These are so delicious! I first got the recipe from RealMomKitchen, who had found it on OurBestBites. My latest batch (pictured) were just slightly overcooked so the "molten lava" filling wasn't as molten as usual; I just left them in the oven a minute or two long. But, you can still get the idea and they were still delicious! My little trick is that I make a 1/3 batch, which makes two muffins' worth, when it's just for my husband and I. Or... just for me :) Enjoy!

Molten Lava Cakes

4 T real butter
1/3 c sugar
3 large eggs
1/3 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, melted (8 oz is about 1 1/3 c bittersweet chocolate chips. I usually use semi sweet and it's still delicious!)

Additional ingredients:

powdered sugar for dusting
whipped cream for serving (or vanilla ice cream)

I always bake these in muffin tins (recipe will make 6) but you can make slightly bigger servings by baking them in 4 ramekins.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. To prepare pans, use your fingers (or the butter wrapper) to rub butter in the muffin tins or ramekins. Sprinkle in some granulated sugar to coat the entire inner surface and tap out any extra and discard.

In a bowl with a mixer beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Combine flour and salt and slowly add it into the butter mixture just until combined. Stir in melted chocolate by hand, just until combined. Don’t over mix.

Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups or ramekins and then place them on a baking sheet. Bake just until tops of cakes no longer jiggle when pan is lightly shaken, about 8-10 min for a muffin pan, and 10-12 for ramekins. Remove from oven and let stand 10 min. If using muffin tins, invert the tin and place an individual cake on each serving plate. You can do the same with the ramekins, or just serve them as is. Dust with powdered sugar and serve with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream (or ice cream).


These are rich and delicious; a real treat! And, made with "normal" ingredients so they can be whipped up any time and not just for special occasions.

How-to: Lattice Top Pie Crust

I love making lattice-top crusts on pies; it's not very hard and it definitely makes a good impression! The last time I did this (Thanksgiving) I took step-by-step pictures; hopefully this will help if you've even wanted to do this but been unsure how.

Start by rolling out your pie crust; it doesn't have to be pretty. I prefer to cut mine with my fluted pastry wheel (seen right off to the side in this shot below). You can just as easily use a paring knife. If you're a perfectionist, use a ruler to make nice straight lines... this wasn't a particularly pretty batch for me. The reason I didn't just cut straight lines all the way across my crust is because I rolled this out quite a bit bigger than the diameter of my pie, so I knew I wouldn't need such long strips. I start with shorter pieces and lay one on top and one on the side, like this (this was a creamy pear pie... most of the time your covered pies won't be so liquidy!) Time to start weaving! Add another slightly-longer strip across the top, below the first one, and another one next to the side one. Each time you add a new piece, look to see where it's supposed to go under or over each perpendicular strip... taking turns every other one. So, this new piece I'm laying here needs to go OVER the bottom horizontal piece, but UNDER the one above it. So, no big deal; I just lifted that horizontal piece up with my other hand, and held it up while putting the vertical piece in place. Then, lay it gently back down. Here, I've lifted up a vertical piece in order to lay the bottom horizontal one underneath it.And right after that, the horizontal piece is in place and ready for the vertical piece to be replaced across it.
Voila! Just keep going like that until the whole pie is covered! Horizontal, vertical, horizontal, vertical. Now, for this pie I chose to lay the pieces pretty close together. For a nice red berry pie I like to have some of the pretty color showing through, so I would leave more space between the lattice strips. With this creamy pear pie being so liquidy, I didn't want all that liquid to have much chance to escape. Once the pie is covered, trim around the outside of the pie plate with a paring knife, leaving about 3/4" hanging over. Going around the circumference of the pie, roll & tuck in the crust inward so that the edges are sealed shut and so that it looks nice and even. You can even make a pretty edge if you want, but I think with a fancy lattice top it doesn't need pretty edges.

For this pie I brushed it with melted butter and sprinkled it with cinnamon & sugar before baking it. And look how nice it turns out.
Here's an apple-blackberry pie I made a few months ago, using the same type of crust. You can see the lattice better on this one since I spaced out the strips better. This pie was brushed with butter and sprinkled with plain sugar before baking.
So there you go; happy pie-making!

Creamy Pear Pie

This recipe was recently featured on Our Best Bites and I couldn't wait to try it. I made it for a "pie party" we attended over the weekend and it was a big hit. It's peary delicious! The sweetness is just right; it tastes great plain without any whipped cream or ice cream... although, I wouldn't turn this pie down if it was heated up with some vanilla ice cream on top!

Ingredients:

1 double pie crust

About 1 1/2 lb firm (not too ripe, not too green) pears, peeled and sliced

(I used about 5 Bartletts)

1 T all-purpose flour

1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk

3 oz cream cheese

2 T milk

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ginger

2 T butter, melted

sugar & cinnamon for sprinkling

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450. Roll the bottom of the pie crust into the pie plate.

Toss the sliced pears in the flour. Arrange them evenly over the pie crust in the pie plate. Set aside.

In a blender, combine the sweetened condensed milk, cream cheese, milk, cinnamon, and ginger. Blend until smooth. Pour evenly over the pear mixture. Use the remaining crust to form the top of the pie (I liek doing a lattice top). Brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with sugar & cinnamon.

Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the creamy mixture had thickened. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature.

I love doing lattice-top crusts on pies and soon I'll have a tutorial on here! So fun and really not as difficult as you might think. Guess what else is not that difficult? Homemade pie crusts! I've tried a few recipes for crusts over the years and they always taste better than store-bought. For this pie I used Our Best Bites' favorite crust recipe and it was lovely:

1 1/4 c flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 + 1 T shortening (I used butter flavored)

3-4 T ice water

Combine flour & salt; cut in shortening with a pastry blender. Add ice water gradually and, with your fingers, gently turn over the dough until all the water is incorporated and it forms a ball. Be sure not to over-mix or over-work the dough. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until using. This makes a single pie crust, so you'll need to double this recipe for a double-crust pie.

Special Occasion Cupcakes

I bought a TON of cake mixes when they were on sale at the grocery store last month, so now whenever I'm tasked with bringing a dessert to a group function, I wonder what I can make that requires a cake mix in its preparation. For my piano recital this week I decided to make cupcakes, but a fancier-than-usual version. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com; and I topped them with a sour cream chocolate frosting that I adapted from another allrecipes.com recipe. The result was delicious.

Self-filled Cupcakes

1 chocolate or devil's food cake mix, plus ingredients to prepare it (eggs, oil, water)
8 oz cream cheese (1 brick), softened
1/2 c white sugar
1 egg
1 c semisweet chocolate chips

Prepare 24-30 cupcake tins with papers (I did 30); preheat oven as directed on cake mix instructions. Mix up cake mix ingredients according to box directions and set aside. In a smaller bowl, cream the cream cheese with the sugar. Then add egg and blend well. Stir in chocolate chips.

Fill each cupcake tin 1/2 full of chocolate batter, then top with about 1 T of the cream cheese mixture. You should still have some of the chocolate cake mix left; spoon a little bit on top of the cream cheese mixture on each cupcake. Don't stir it around or marble it; just allow the cream cheese mixture to stay in its own little glob.

Bake according to box directions.

They'll look something like this:
I didn't have quite enough chocolate batter to top each cupcake with an additional spoonful but I wish I had. The ones without it (like at the bottom left of the photo above) sunk down in the middle ~ which just had to be compensated for with extra frosting.


Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting

1 c semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 stick (4 T) butter
1 T cocoa (unsweetened powder)
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 c sour cream
2 T cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
about 4 c powdered sugar

In a medium-large microwave-proof bowl, melt the chocolate chips, butter, cocoa, and salt together. Heat in 15-20 second intervals, stirring in between. It only took about a minute total for my microwave to melt it completely. Allow this mixture to cool for about 15 minutes; then beat in the sour cream, cream, and vanilla. Beat in the powdered sugar about a cup at a time. Add more or less than 4 cups depending on desired thickness.

This frosting has a nice tang to it due to the sour cream, and it's just the right amount of chocolatey-ness. It was plenty for frosting my 30 cupcakes. This frosting would also be great on a sheet cake or brownies.
Each cupcake had a moist, yummy surprise with the cream cheese and chocolate chips inside! I will definitely make these again sometime.

Next time, I'll be better prepared with some pretty cupcake baking papers. Like these. Are those the cutest or what!

Rocky Road Brownies

I was taking dinner over to a family in my neighborhood who is moving; I wanted to bring a dessert that was easy but more interesting than plain old brownies. These turned out so yummy!

Ingredients:

Any 9x13 brownie mix
2 c mini marshmallows
1 c chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)
1 can store-bought chocolate frosting


Prepare brownie mix and bake as directed. When brownies are finished, take out of the oven and sprinkle marshmallows and nuts over the top, then return to the oven for about 5 more minutes. Afterwards, while still warm, spread entire can of chocolate frosting over the top of the marshmallows and nuts with a large spatula. To make the frosting easier to spread, put it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds first.

This will take quite a while to cool and set up; put it in the fridge for half an hour to help it along if you're in a hurry. Once the brownies & frosting are completely cooled, they will hold together and you can cut them. Delish!

Paper Bag Apple Pie

This is a tasty recipe I got from an old church cookbook; I have changed a few minor things about it. Cooking the pie in a brown paper bag allows for nice, even browning with no burnt edges. It bakes perfectly every time.

1 unbaked piecrust

5-7 Granny Smith apples, or other tart baking variety, peeled and sliced

Filling:

2 T lemon juice

1/4 c sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 T flour

Topping:

3/4 c sugar

3/4 c flour

3/4 c butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened

Combine apple slices (thin) with filling ingredients in a large bowl. Transfer to pie shell. Then, you can use the same bowl to combine the 3 topping ingredients; mix with a fork until it's the consistency of cookie dough. Pat the topping evenly over the apples; going all the way to the edges.

Open a heavy brown paper bag (grocery bag) and lay it on its side onto a large baking sheet. Slide pie into the bag, fold the end and secure with paper clips. Bake at 425 for 1 hour.

Pumpkin Bread

I used a recipe I hadn't tried before; it was so moist and delicious! I made a few little changes to the recipe I found on allrecipes.com, and here's what I came up with.

1 c butter, room temperature (2 sticks)

3 c sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

3 c flour

1 tsp salt

1 T baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp ground cloves

1 can pumpkin (15 or 16 oz)

semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare two regular loaf pans by spraying with non-stick spray. Cream butter and sugar together. Add vanilla and eggs; beat for a few minutes until creamy and well-combined. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. Add dry mixture to mixer. Mix on low speed just until combined, then add pumpkin (and chocolate chips if you want them) and continue mixing on low just until combined. Divide batter into two loaf pans (Pam Baking works perfectly for this!) and bake for one hour at 350.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (the best?)

I follow several cooking blogs and I like to read cookbooks for fun, and occasionally I'll come across a recipe that claims to be THE BEST chocolate chip cookies. Well, although I always like my own version the best, I am always willing to try the others. And while every chocolate chip cookie recipe I have tried is certainly GOOD, I still always come back to my own recipe as my favorite. Differences in oven, baking sheets, method, quality of ingredients, etc. affect the outcome of anything you bake; I'll give you my recipe here and a few tips for how I like to make them. I won't claim that they're "the best" since that is obviously subjective, but they're MY favorite :)

1 c shortening
1/2 butter (one stick), slightly softened
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 1/2 c brown sugar
4 eggs
1 T vanilla
5 1/2 c all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
chocolate chips... about 2 cups or 12 oz


This is a double-batch; it makes about 5 dozen cookies for the size I make them. I use a stand mixer, which isn't absolutely necessary but does make it easier!

Cream together shortening and butter. Add both sugars, and mix for a while until well-combined and light and fluffy. Add the eggs, keep mixing for while until light and fluffy. Beating the heck out of these first few ingredients makes for a better chocolate chip cookie! Then add the vanilla.

Lots of recipes will tell you to mix the salt & baking soda with the flour separately. I don't think this is necessary. If there's any chance that your dry ingredients have lumps in them, sift them first. But almost always I just put my first cup of flour into the mixer, put the salt & baking soda on top of that, and mix it well. Then add the rest of the flour. Mix until just combined (no need to mix it to death) and then add the chocolate chips.

I like to refrigerate the dough for a while before baking; I think they turn out better that way but if you need to bake some right away that's okay too. I prefer nice aluminum half-sheet pans with a Silpat mat when baking cookies. They bake nice and evenly, not too done on the bottom; plus you have the non-stick benefit of the Silpat. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.

If you store all the dough in the fridge, it fits pretty well into a 2 qt/half gallon container. If you don't eat too much of the cookie dough on its own, of course! Oh, a quick note about fats. I like to use a combination of shortening and butter: butter for its flavor, and shortening because cookies usually turn out more fluffy with all or part shortening. If you use all butter the flavor is fabulous but they'll often spread out too much when cooking. I'll shift the ratio with these if I'm almost out of shortening or something, but stick with 1 1/2 cups total fat and they should turn out okay.

Enjoy!

Aunt Jessie's Buttermilk Cake

An old time family favorite!

2 1/2 c sugar

1 c shortening

3 c flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 c buttermilk

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp lemon extract

4 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a bundt or angel food pan by greasing it with shortening, then dusting with powdered sugar.

Dissolve baking soda into buttermilk. Cream sugar & shortening. Add eggs and lemon extract; mix well. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and finally buttermilk/soda; mix until just well blended. Scrape batter into prepared pan; bake at 350 for 1 hr 15 minutes. It's done when the center of the cake springs back when you press on it.

If you halve this recipe it's just right for a regular loaf pan. Or, bake a full recipe in two loaf pans and give one of them to a friend!

I like to ice the top of mine with a simple lemon icing... just combine a couple tablespoons of lemon juice with enough powdered sugar to make a good drizzling consistency. In my family we adore eating this buttermilk cake with this frozen dessert!

No-machine ice cream

This afternoon my kids and I made homemade ice cream, but without an ice cream maker! I saw this recently on Kevin & Amanda's Recipes and I had to give it a try. Ready for the ingredients?

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cups of heavy cream

That's it! Your base for some very creamy, tasty, no-machine ice cream. All you do is mix in whatever flavorings, fruits, add-ins, etc. that you want to, into the sweetened condensed milk. Beat the cream until stiff peaks form, and fold it into the other mixture. Then put it into a container and into the freezer for several hours until it's firm. It couldn't be any easier, could it!

If you click on that link above, Kevin & Amanda post several recipe ideas using this easy base. But today with my kids, I gave them some ideas for recipes and we just experimented... knowing that we couldn't really go wrong! We doubled the recipe and then split it into four portions for my four kids. Here are our flavors:

peanut butter, with peanut butter chips and white chocolate chips

chocolate with white chocolate chips

chocolate with mini marshmellows

strawberry

For each flavor, we added a little vanilla. For the peanut butter, we added about 1/2 c of creamy peanut butter. For the chocolate, with one of them we used cocoa powder and a little sugar to offset the bitterness; for the other chocolate we used hot chocolate mix powder. That made for a good flavor but it was a little grainy; it didn't completely dissolve. For the strawberry, we hulled a pint of strawberries and put them in the blender, then mixed them with about 2T sugar. Remember, each of these batches were a 1/2 batch.

Since the batches were small, most of them were frozen in about 5 hours. The strawberry batch yielded more because of the bulk of a full pint of berries, and took longer to set up.

I would encourage you to try this basic recipe and be creative with the flavors! Next time I'm going to make a mixed-fruit one; I'm thinking peaches and bananas. I couldn't convince any of my kids to choose that as their flavor today. This base makes for a very nice texture and if you don't mind waiting several hours for it to freeze, go for it!

Strawberry Shortcake Flag Cake

Since I didn't really follow a "recipe" when making this cake, I just posted the picture w/o recipe instructions. I made it on Sunday (the 4th of July) and brought it to a dinner with some friends. It got rave reviews and I thought about posting a recipe for it, but then tonight when one of the friends told me that she was so full from eating so much of my cake that she couldn't eat anything until 1pm the next day, I thought, okay, I'm posting this! :)

As usual, I didn't do much measuring of anything... but I do remember what I did. So here goes:


1 box white cake mix, plus eggs & oil to prepare
8 oz brick cream cheese, softened
4 T (1/2 stick) butter, softened
up to 1/2 c milk
powdered sugar (you will need less than one 2 lb. bag)
about 50 blueberries
1 lb strawberries
2 T white sugar
1/3 c shortening
Cool whip (or whipped cream)


Prepare one regular white cake mix into a 9x13 pan. Once it has been out of the oven for about 10 minutes, carefully dump it out of the pan upsidedown onto a cooling rack. May I recommend Pam for Baking! It's even better than regular Pam; has a little flour in it and is especially for greasing cake pans.


Prepare your berries: Wash, hull, and thinly slice all strawberries. Take about half of them and put into a small mixing bowl. Mix 2 T sugar into them and set aside. We'll use those for the inside of the cake. For the remaining strawberry slices, spread them out on paper towels to absorb their moisture. These are the ones we'll put on top for the stripes. Rinse blueberries and set on paper towels too.


With a hand mixer, mix 8 oz softened cream cheese with 1/2 stick of softened butter. Add 1 tsp vanilla and a splash of milk (2-3 T). Once that's well-blended, add some powdered sugar until it's a good consistency for spreading. I would say 2-4 cups; just keep adding 1/2 cup at a time until you like the consistency.


Now we're going to split the cake. You'll need a very sharp, very long knife for this. I like to put the top side down on a 9x13 cake, so I put the whole (cooled) cake upside down on my serving board, the carefully cut off the top layer and move it (with both hands underneath for support and spreading out your fingers so it doesn't break!) to another surface.


Evenly spread about HALF of your cream cheese frosting on the inside of your cake (split layer). On top of the frosting, spoon your macerated strawberries (that means they've been soaking in their own juices & sugar and getting nice and juicy for you) evenly. Don't let the berries & juice go too close to the edges. Go ahead and spoon all the strawberry juice on there; it will only make the cake more yummy! Carefully place the other half of your split cake on top of the berries.


Now, you'll need some more frosting to cover the whole cake. Starting with your leftover cream cheese frosting, add about 1/3 c shortening and mix well. Add 1-2 T milk. Add some more powdered sugar (maybe 1-2 cups) until it's the consistency of a nice buttercream.


At this point I decided I wanted the frosting to be lighter... in color and in consistency. So I folded in about 1/3 to 1/2 a tub of Cool Whip to the buttercream/cream cheese frosting. After doing that, frost the entire outside of the cake.


Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours before serving, AND... shortly before serving, make your stars and stripes with your berries. I had drained my sliced strawberries on paper towels but they still bled by the time of the party; I'd put them on about two hours beforehand.


So there you have it! It was very yummy.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

1 store-bought chocolate pie crust (or follow recipe for homemade crust, below)

8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened

1 c creamy peanut butter

3/4 c powdered sugar

1 c heavy cream, whipped

white & dark chocolate for garnish

With a hand mixer, blend cream cheese, peanut butter, and powdered sugar until well-combined. Whip cream in a separate bowl; fold whipped cream with peanut butter mixture. Gently spoon into pie crust; chill for at least two hours before serving. It sets up but not entirely firm; next time I'll put it in the freezer for about half an hour before serving. This is very good and melts in your mouth!

In the photo above, I melted about 1/4 c white chocolate chips and 1/4 c milk chocolate chips in two separate bowls in the microwave. To drizzle, I put the melted chocolate into two small ziploc bags, sealed them and punctured a small hole with a sharp knife. Then just squeeze the melted chocolate out; it's much easier to do it this way than to dirty up "real" drizzling equipment; just throw the ziploc away when you're done! Having this little bit of extra chocolate on top was a great combination with the peanut butter filling.

When I made this, I had a store-bought pie crust that I had intended to use... I picked up the bowl of filling ready to spoon it in, and it slipped and fell down right on my pie crust! The crust broke into a hundred pieces and was useless, so I had to come up with a recipe for a quick new crust. This one worked really well, and I think it tasted better than the store one would have. Most chocolate crusts are made from crushed oreos, or crushed chocolate graham crackers. I didn't have either of those things on hand but I always have regular graham crackers, so I used those and it worked very well. My favorite kinds of recipes are the ones with ingredients that I always have on hand anyway!

Chocolate pie crust

1 sleeve graham crackers (usually about 9)

2 T cocoa powder

1/3 white sugar

5 T melted butter

Preheat oven to 375. Putting half the graham crackers in at a time, crush in a ziploc bag by rolling over and over with a rolling pin until they're reduced to crumbs. Put graham cracker crumbs in a medium bowl; add cocoa and sugar. Combine with a fork, then pour in melted butter and mix well. Press crumbly mixture evenly into a regular pie plate (will be enough for deep dish too); bake for 10 minutes. Cool before putting peanut butter filling in it.

Cream Puffs / Éclairs

A couple of weeks ago we were invited to a friends' house to watch a football game. When I asked what I could bring, my friend said, "Well... my husband's birthday is on Monday and I was going to make him a cake, but he doesn't like cake. So I was wondering if you could come up with a good dessert?" Boy, no pressure or anything! Actually it was a fun challenge. I didn't want to show up with just cookies or brownies, and I wanted to bring something that would be conducive to football-watching (finger food), and yet be interesting/fancy enough for a birthday semi-celebration.

And so I made these babies. They were so yummy.... if they were in front of me right now I'd gobble up four or five in no time :)


Cream puffs

2 c water
1 c butter (2 sticks)
1/4 tsp salt
2 c flour
8 eggs

In a large saucepan combine water, butter, and salt. Bring to boiling. Add flour all at once, stirring vigorously. Cook and stir until mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat. Cool for 10 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with a wooden spoon after each addition. (Get ready for lots of stirring... this part is a real pain but it will be worth it!)

Drop dough by heaping tablespoons onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 400 for 30-35 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack. Cut tops from puffs; remove soft dough from inside. (I don't cut the tops all the way off; I leave them attached on one side so they'll stay together better later.)


Cream filling

1 box instant vanilla pudding mix
1 1/2 c milk
1 c cream
1 T sugar

Combine package of pudding with milk; whisk for 3 minutes and put in fridge to set. Meanwhile, put cream and sugar into a medium, chilled mixing bowl. Beat with a hand mixer until it's completely whipped. Remove pudding from fridge; add whipped cream to pudding and gently fold together.

Put a heaping spoonful (however much you want) of cream filling into each baked cream puff. Top with chocolate glaze if desired.

Chocolate glaze

4 oz semisweet chocolate (or about 2/3 c semisweet chocolate chips)
3 T butter
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
3 T hot water (or more)

Melt chocolate and butter in a medium saucepan over LOW heat, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Stir in powdered sugar and water. Add additional hot water if needed to reach drizzling consistency. Spoon over filled cream puffs.

Store cream puffs in the refrigerator.


To make these into true eclairs, they need to be that long skinny shape. Put cream puff dough into a frosting bag fitted with a large plain round tip (about 1/2" opening) and pipe fat strips of dough onto a greased baking sheet. This recipe will yield about 24 eclairs; I got about 3 dozen smaller-sized, round cream puffs out of them, each being about 3 inches in diameter.


Note: this cream filling recipe is my favorite for banana cream pie! Prepare a regular pie crust (baked), slice 2-3 bananas into the bottom of it, and fill with one batch of this filling.

Cream puff and chocolate glaze recipes courtesy of Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

Mock Black n' Whites

Do you know about the ease and convenience of cake mix cookies? I guess since I'm such a "from scratch" girl it took me a while to figure this out. But the possibilities are endless, and today I came up with these little cuties. It's pretty standard that you can take any regular box of cake mix, add two eggs and 1/2 c oil, and you have instant "cookie dough." From there you can mix anything with it, like nuts chocolate chips. Or, don't mix anything in, but use two colors like this! They were a big hit with my kids, my church choir, and our dinner guests.


1 box white cake mix
1 box devil's food cake mix
4 eggs
1 c vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 375. You'll need two medium-sized mixing bowls. Empty the white cake mix into one bowl; add two eggs, 1/2 c oil, and mix well with a spoon. In the other bowl, empty the devil's food (chocolate) cake mix, then add 2 eggs and 1/2 c oil and mix well with a spoon.

There are two schools of thought for the scooping of the dough. You could use two separate teaspoons so that none of the dough mixes together, or if you're not preparing these for a fussy crowd you can just use the same spoon (which is what I did). In fact, I just scooped a little chocolate dough, and then a little white dough right with it, then with my other hand took the double-dough-ball off the spoon and onto my cookie sheet lined with Silpat (since that's the only thing I bake cookies on). I didn't do any fancy forming; just plopped the dough down so that an equal amount of each color was showing, and the cookies turned out nice and circular and lovely. A couple of them were more marbled-looking, which would be very easy to do; just smush a little bit of the two colors of dough together.

Anyway, bake them at 375 for about 9 minutes. I got about 5 dozen black n' white cookies out of the 2 cake mixes.


I just thought of a fun idea; you could make rainbow colored cookies by making a batch of white cake mix cookie dough and coloring small portions of it different colors. The cookies could be solid colors or any combinations. How fun would that be! I'll have to do that for my kids sometime for a fun surprise.

Super Rich Chocolate Mousse Cake

This is so chocolately, so delicious, so rich... if you love chocolate you will love this cake! It does take some work to make, unless you're like me and love to bake, then I wouldn't really call it "work!" But it's a procedure so I have only made it for very special occasions (like my good friend Dana's 30th birthday, as you can tell by the picture). There is no flour in this recipe... only chocolate, eggs, sugar, butter, and cream! Those are the only ingredients!

Ingredients

For the cake:

1/2 lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter (and melt 2 T of the butter)
8 oz semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces (or 1 1/3 c semisweet chocolate chips)
8 large egg yolks
3/4 c white sugar
4 large egg whites


For the filling:

8 oz semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces
2 1/2 heavy cream
2 T white sugar


For the dark chocolate Ganache:

1 1/2 c heavy cream
2 T unsalted butter
18 oz semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces (so about 3 cups chocolate chips)


Directions

Cake:

Lightly coat the insides of 3 9" cake pans with melted butter. Line each pan with parchment paper, then lightly coat the parchment paper with more melted butter. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Heat 1" of water in the bottom half of a double boiler over medium heat. Place remaining butter and 8 oz semisweet chocoalte in the top half of the double boiler. Tightly cover the top with plastic warp. Allow to heat for 10-12 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir until smooth, and hold at room temperature.

Place the egg yolks and 3/4 c sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle. Beat on high until slightly thickened and lemon-colored, about 4 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat on high for an additional 2 minutes.

While the egg yolks are beating, whisk 4 egg white in a large stainless steel bowl until stiff, but not dry, and 3-4 minutes (I did this with a hand mixer, not a whisk).

Using a rubber spatula, fold the melted chocolate mixture into the beaten egg yolk mixture. Add a quarter of the beaten egg whites and stir to incorporate, then gently fold in the remaining egg whites.

Divide the batter between the prepared pans, spreading evenly, and bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Remove the cakes from the oven and allow to cool in the pans for 15 minutes. During baking, the surface of the cakes will form a crust; this crust will normally collapse when the cakes are removed from the oven. Invert the cakes onto cake circles, remove the parchment paper, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. (They will be quite thin.)

Filling:

To prepare the dark chocolate cream, heat 1" water in the bottom half of a double boiler. Tightly cover the top with film wrap and allow to heat for 8-10 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir until smooth. Transfer the melted chocolate to a stainless steel bowl and set aside until needed. Place heavy cream and sugar in the well-chilled bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a well-chilled balloon whip. Whisk on high until stiff peaks forms, about 1 1/2 minutes. Remove the bowl from the mixer. Use a hand whisk to combine 1/4 of the whipped cream into the melted chocolate until smooth and completely incorporated. Add the combined whipped cream and chocolate to the remaining whipped cream and use a rubber spatula to fold together.

Ganache:

Heat the heavy cream and the butter in a 3-qt saucepan over medium high heat. Bring to a boil. Place the semisweet chocolate in a 3-qt stainless steel bowl. Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Then stir until smooth. Chill 1 cup of ganache for at least 1 hour. Remaining ganache should be at room temperature.

To assemble the cake:

Arrange one of the cake layers in a 9" springform pan, evenly spread half the filling over the cake and top with the second layer. Add remaining filling and top with the remaining cake layer. Chill 2 hours. Transfer chilled cup of ganache to a pastry bag fitted with a star tip. Remove cake from springform pan and coat sides and top with room temperature ganache. Using chilled ganache, decoratively pipe stars on top of cake. If desired, coat sides of cake with grated chocolate, cookie crumbs or chopped nuts.


My notes:

• I usually just use regular salted butter in recipes like this when it calls for unsalted, and it turns out fine.

• All those instructions about preparing the cake pans may seem like overkill but if I were you, I would do it. Parchment paper and all. Being flourless, this cake is really sticky (similar to brownie consistency) and I don't think it would come out of the cake pan in one piece without the parchment paper. Also, I don't have 9" cake rounds so I used 8" and that was fine.

• If you don't have a double boiler, which I don't, just use a medium saucepan with a glass bowl sitting on top of it. The most important thing is not allowing any of the water to get into the bowl (it won't agree with the chocolate).

• I don't know how important it is to use a stainless steel bowl when they tell you to, but I did it that way. Also, you will use about a million bowls in this recipe if you don't reuse them as you go... just make sure when whipping the egg whites that that bowl is very clean, or else they won't whip well.

• Chilling your bowl and whisk (whip) before whipping cream is a common technique; it's supposed to make the cream whip better. I always put my bowl and whisk in the freezer for a few minutes beforehand. Also, the cream needs to be nice and cold too (not having sat out on the counter for a while).

• I tried using a springform pan for this and for me that was one step too many. The point of using one is to make sure your cake is nice and straight-sided as it chills. But if you are very careful to spread your filling evenly and make it nice and straight when you're assembling it, and it sits level in the fridge, it should do just fine.

• When eating this cake, I had to put a big dollop of whipped cream on top to cut the extreme chocolate flavor. So, have some extra cream on hand to whip up when serving.

• To make the "30" on my friend's cake, I printed out a big 3 - 0 on cardstock and cut it out with an Exacto knife. I left the middle of the zero attached in two thin spots. Then I held the piece of cardstock over the cake, close to it but not touching since the ganache was still wet and sticky, and I dusted it with powdered sugar.

• Oh me oh my, this is good cake.

Recipe courtesy of foodnetwork.com

Pumpkin Crumb Cake

1 18.25 oz package yellow cake mix

1 egg, beaten

1/2 c butter, melted

1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree

3 eggs, beaten

1/2 c white sugar

1/4 c packed brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 T butter, softened

1/2 c chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray or grease one 9x13 pan.

Reserve 1 cup cake mix. In a large bowl, combine the remaining dry cake mix with 1 egg and 1/2 c melted butter. Mix well, and then pat into prepared pan.

In a large bowl (I used the same bowl), mix together the pumpkin, 3 eggs, 1/2 c white sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Pour over crust.

In a medium bowl, combine reserved 1 cup cake mix, 1/2 c sugar, and 3 T softened butter. Crumble over pumpkin filling. Sprinkle nuts evenly over the top, if desired.

Bake in a preheated oven for 40-45 minutes.

I got this recipe from my friend Stephanie's blog and I served it a to a crowd this morning. It was a hit! I didn't include nuts because I had decided pecans would be best, but then I didn't have any when I went to bake it. I will use pecans next time.

This is so tasty but it's best the first day; after it has been covered up for a while the top loses its nice crunch (but it's still perfectly delicious).

Recipe courtesy of allrecipes.com, photo courtesy of Stephanie

Crunchy Caramel Corn

1 stick butter (1/2 c)
2 c brown sugar
1/2 c corn syrup
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
3 bags microwave popcorn, popped (I use Orville Reddenbacher's 94% fat free)


Preheat oven to 250. (That's 250, not 350!) Put popped popcorn into a large turkey roaster or two large casserole dishes. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Once completely melted, add brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Stirring constantly, cook over medium until mixture comes to a boil. Once boiling, stop stirring and allow it to continue to boil for four minutes.

Meanwhile, put the roaster or pans with the popcorn into the oven. Once the caramel mixture has boiled for four minutes, remove from heat and stir in baking soda and vanilla. Remove roaster from the oven and drizzle caramel over the popcorn, stirring to coat.

Return roasing pan to the oven for 15 minutes. Take it out and stir it. Then back in the oven for 15 minutes. Take it out and stir it. Then back in the oven for a final 15 minutes (45 minutes total). After it has cooled for a few minutes, break it up into pieces and enjoy... or wait until it cools completely.

This is a yummy homemade version of Cracker Jack; we loved it!


(I got this recipe from allrecipes.com but made a few changes to it)

Crazy Everything Bars

I am my church's choir director, and I firmly believe in bringing goodies to our weekly choir practices. Occasionally I have volunteers bring something but I usually do it myself, so I'm always looking for new ideas for cookies or bars that will feed a crowd. I found this recipe on this blog, and she got it from Martha Stewart. The official recipe name is "Rocky Ledge Bars," but when I made them (and then ate a couple) I decided to give them my own name, silly as it is. They are super yummy and were a big hit last week with my choir!


(image courtesy of Martha Stewart)




1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1 1/2 cups packed dark-brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1 cup semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup white chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup butterscotch chips
18 soft caramel-candy cubes, coarsely chopped


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Line with parchment paper, allowing a 2-inch overhang on the longer sides. Brush parchment with butter (not overhang).

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix butter and brown sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla; mix until well combined. Mix in flour mixture until combined. Fold in half of each of the marshmallows, chocolates, butterscotch chips, and caramels.

3. Spread batter in prepared pan. Scatter remaining marshmallows, chocolates, butterscotch chips, and caramels on top. Bake until top is golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack. Lift out of pan, and transfer to a baking sheet. Refrigerate until set, at least 30 minutes.

4. Remove parchment, and cut into about 16 triangles. Bars can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 1 week.


Tips:

• I used regular old chocolate chips and white chocolate chips instead of chunks, which was just fine. Also, I didn't have any caramels on hand so right before I put it in the oven, I drizzled some caramel topping (for ice cream) on top; it bubbled up and made them look even more tasty. I used light brown sugar since that's what I had, which was fine, and I don't know how important using "coarse salt" is but I used Kosher. And, I used regular salted butter and it turned out great.

• I didn't use parchment paper. In fact I actually doubled this recipe and cooked it in a half-sheet pan (13x18x1) which fit, just barely, and I just sprayed it really well with Pam beforehand and it did fine.

• You could put really any combination of goodies into these bars. I thought coconut would be nice and will add it next time. The dough is a nice, generic bar dough that lots of stuff would go well with. You could use peanut butter chips, different kinds of chocolate, nuts, etc. Mmm, coconut with macadamia nuts and caramel would be tasty wouldn't it? This would be a great recipe to experiment with. Enjoy!

Frozen Fruit Sherbet Dessert

This is one of my favorite treats in the summertime! It's so easy and so delicious. For special occasions my family eats it with Aunt Jessie's Buttermilk Cake, which I will post soon...



1 carton (1.5 qt) pineapple sherbet (I've only seen it at Fry's/Kroger's)
1 16-oz container of frozen sliced strawberries (sweetened is fine)
3 bananas, sliced or chopped

Leave sherbet out to thaw, just soft enough to mix the other ingredients in. Also, let the strawberries thaw out (or they may need a little help in the microwave). In a large bowl, mix strawberries (along with the juices) and banana slices into the sherbet. You can return the mixture to the freezer in the original sherbet container or use a slightly larger container... if you use the original container you'll have a little extra that won't fit; perfect for a hot afternoon treat to reward yourself!

This freezes quite solid and is hard to scoop right out of the freezer, so get it out a little while before serving.