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National Dessert Day

October 14th has been declared

National Dessert Day!

The NationalDayCalendar suggests: observe National Dessert Day by going out to a dessert shop or restaurant and indulging in a sweet treat.  Post photos on social media using #NationalDessertDay

It must have been women’s intuition because I set into dessert making mode before I knew about the celebratory day.

I’d lost that lovin’ feeling for the apples that I had been taking to work for lunch

and decided I would make them into something LB couldn’t resist.

This is an EASY dessert recipe and there’s no easier way to make something LB cannot resist than creating dessert!

At bettycrocker.com I found this recipe for

Apple Dump Cake

by Betty Crocker Kitchens

Thank you Betty Crocker!

Aside from pumpkin, apple is the flavor of the season. While baking, the fragrance of apples and cinnamon wafted through the kitchen creating an atmosphere of autumn.

This dessert is delicious served warm and topped with cool whip!

Apple Dump Cake

  • Servings: 8-10
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print
Ingredients
6 cups chopped apples
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 box yellow cake mix
3/4 cup melted butter
Directions
Heat oven to 350°F.
Spray 13×9-inch glass baking dish with cooking spray.
In baking dish, mix chopped apples, walnuts, sugar and cinnamon. Spread evenly in pan. Top with dry cake mix;  shake to distribute evenly. Pour melted butter over top, covering as much of the top with butter as possible.
Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until top is light golden brown and bubbly around the edges.
Cool 15 about minutes before serving.

It is apparent that the apple dessert is not going to last all week.
Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

Summertime Lime Pie

The Kitchen airs several times a week on the Food Network, but thanks to the DVR, I am able to watch it when I’m doing time on the treadmill.

It is one of my favorite programs and it’s co-host, Jeff Mauro is one of my favorite television personalities.  During The Kitchen’s summer series, I’ve learned a lot about preparing seafood, proper grilling, and picked up several ideas for making chilled desserts.

Yesterday I created a version of one of those chilled desserts which included

Fresh limes

Fresh whipped cream

And believe it or not,

fat free sweetened condensed milk.  This was by accident as I picked up the fat free variety while not giving my full attention to grocery shopping.  Great Value is Walmart’s brand and Walmart is not a fun place to shop.  It stands to reason that I was likely running through the store as quickly as possible.

The fat free sweetened condensed milk is not required for a delicious dessert, although mine turned out deliciously.

My Summertime Lime Pie is adapted from Jeff Mauro’s 5-Ingredient Quick Frozen Key Lime Pie which he deems as

Level: Easy

Makes 1 pie

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk (not necessarily fat free)

1 tablespoon fresh lime zest

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

1 store bought graham cracker pie crust (or you can make your own)

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

lime slices, for garnish, optional

Directions

In a chilled mixing bowl, beat 1 cup of the heavy cream into stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, mix together the sweetened condensed milk, lime zest and lime juice.  Fold the mixture into the whipped cream.

Pour the filling into the pie crust and spread evenly.  Freeze until set, 3 to 4 hours.

Combine the remaining 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream and the confectioners’ sugar. Whip until soft peaks. Spoon the whipped cream over the frozen pie.

Garnish with some curled lime slices and a cherry, if desired.

As with most of his desserts, LB has to have a cherry on top!

 

 

Summertime Lime Pie

  • Servings: 8
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 tablespoon fresh lime zest

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

1 store bought graham cracker pie crust

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

lime slices, for garnish, optional

Directions

In a chilled mixing bowl, beat 1 cup of the heavy cream into stiff peaks. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk, lime zest and lime juice.  Fold the mixture into the whipped cream.

Pour the filling into the pie crust and spread evenly.  Freeze until set, 3 to 4 hours.

Combine the remaining 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream and the confectioners’ sugar. Whip until soft peaks. Spoon the whipped cream over the frozen pie.

Garnish with some curled lime slices.

 

Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!

National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day is observed annually on August 4th.

According to National Day Calendar, this is a day to enjoy those tasty bits of chocolate in your favorite cookies.

I don’t need a special reason to bake cookies, but I’ll take it!

Because chocolate chip cookies are a US favorite, we thank Ruth Graves Wakefield for her creation of chocolate chips, and also celebrate her name on National Chocolate Chip Day in May.  For if it weren’t for her curiosity and invention, there wouldn’t be any lingering in the kitchen waiting for the oven timer to ding.  If Ruth had never wondered what chunks of chocolate would taste like mixed into a sugar cookie dough, we would not know the joy of chocolate chip cookie dough.  Nor would we know the ecstasy that is to taste a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie.  If it weren’t for Ruth Graves Wakefield, entire generations would have been denied the bliss that is a chocolate chip cookie.

Thank you Ruth!

It may be that she is equally responsible for all those other nuggets of goodness.  Morsels of butterscotch, peanut butter and white chocolate enjoyed in much the same way we enjoy our chocolate delights.  Nothing, though, rates quite as high as the chocolate chip cookie that Ruth Grave Wakefield brought to us in 1937.

No… Nothing.

(source)

HOW TO OBSERVE

Make your favorite chocolate chip cookies and throw some extra chocolate chips into the mix! Give this recipe a try. Post on social media using #ChocolateChipCookieDay.

 

LB and I endured Hurricane Irma in 2017 with these Chocolate Chip Cookies.

 

Today I used a recently discovered Pinterest recipe for Soft Batch Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

It is posted on my Pinterest COOKIES! board and also on the site from which it was found: Averie Cooks.  If you are looking for a quick chocolate chip cookie fix, it is important to note that these cookies require refrigeration for at least 2 hours before baking.

 

 

 

Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

Marbled Cake Massacre

This may be the saddest cake story ever.

On June 27th my daughter Stephanie tagged me in a Tasty video Facebook post:

“This gorgeous 4th of July Marbled Cake will add a spark to your Independence Day! “

I loved it and shared the video as one of my Friday Favorites.  You can find the recipe here.

The following Sunday I baked the three marbled layers.  After they cooled, I wrapped them in clear plastic wrap to store until July 3rd when I would put the cake together and add the finishing touches.

On that fateful Tuesday evening [while I worked to complete my masterpiece] as I put the final layer in place, I noticed a rather larger crack.  Nevertheless I continued and began frosting the cake, hoping the frosting would help to hold it together.  It did not.  One third of my top layer fell off of my cake.  My first inclination was to throw it across the room in the trash.

At that point my brain disengaged and my insanity accelerated: I decided I would smash the broken layer together, invert the cake and frost the bottom.

So I did.

And I turned the entire cake over.

It wasn’t meant to be.

LB and I discussed it at length.  He suggested there may be a problem with the egg substitute that I used.  I thought it may be the way I stored the layers.  Or maybe because I used the wrong size cake pans.  I know better than to tamper with a recipe.  But alas, I did tamper.

Unable to bear the thought of disappointing Stephanie, LB and I headed to Winn Dixie for the ingredients necessary to begin again.

And I began again.

I imagined the Jolly Rancher fireworks would be the most difficult part of the cake creation.  Strangely enough it was the easiest part.

There was no do-over involved.

And because I did not plan on adding sparklers to the finished product [as is shown in the Tasty video], I made extra fireworks.

Not too shabby for a second attempt.

 

Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

LB’s Favorite Oatmeal Cookies

Also Kim’s Favorite Oatmeal Cookies!

Sometimes you have a craving for a small bite of sweetness.

Sometimes You

JUST NEED A COOKIE!

 

Or several.

And since you are always on a diet, there are no cookies in the house.

Desperate times call for desperate measures…

It is Time to Bake!

These Oatmeal Cookies are soft and chewy but also crispy on the outside.

They’re also very hard to resist!

To make these cookies you will need:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 2 eggs, 2 tsp. vanilla, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 2 cups flour, 2 cups oatmeal, 1/2 cup coconut, and 1/2 cup pecans (pronounced pee-CANs) which are optional.

This is what to do:

Cream together butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla.  Brown sugar contains more moisture than white sugar. If you’re like me and you enjoy tweaking recipes, remember… it is important to include brown sugar as it lends itself to softer, chewier cookies.

Whisk all dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.  Whisking will aerate the flour and thoroughly mix the salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well.

Measure cookies using a tablespoon and roll into balls.

Then lightly press onto a parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake at 350°

for 8 minutes.

My recipe makes about 6 dozen.

Pictured is slightly less than 6 dozen because I’ve already enjoyed taste testing.

Here’s the Recipe:

 

LB's Favorite Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

2 cups flour

2 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup pecans (optional)

Directions:

Cream together butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla.

Mix all dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well.

Roll into balls 1 Tbsp and lightly press onto  parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.

prettyis.me

 

I’ll be referring to this recipe again.

 

Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

What’s Up Wednesday

Happy Wednesday

wednesday GIF

to say the least.

And with that, I bring you another edition of

What’s Up Wednesday

Which is not an account of this peculiar young member of the Addams Family, but all about what is happening in my world on this wonderful midweek day.

Here goes…

 

What We’re Eating This Week

As I’ve mentioned before, LB can eat anything he wants and Kim has to watch what she eats or she will pay the price.  HOWEVER once in a while I throw caution to the wind and go on a baking spree.  In addition to the Mother’s Day pound cake I baked on Sunday, I baked the best oatmeal cookies ever!  The cake went home with Mama, but the cookies are still here.

And they keep screaming at me.In an effort to save myself, I have banished most of them to the freezer.

 

What I’m Reminiscing About

Having dinner with the little ones on Mother’s Day.

 

What I’m Loving

This tiny little Glammy’s girl is already 3 months old.

  I am loving her tiny profile, tiny hairdo, and tiny pink gingham Mother’s Day dress!

 

 

What We’ve Been Up To

Work Work Work all week long and fun on the weekend!

 

What I’m Dreading

My 6 month dental visit is coming up.  While I’m sure it is just as pleasant as any dental event could possibly be, I don’t love it and always leave feeling slightly damp from the experience.

 

What I’m Working On

Being positive.

This requires a lot of self talk.

 

What I’m Excited About

Memorial Day Weekend which gives me an extra day to be OFF WORK!

I found this fun collection of celebratory paper products at Costco which would be great to use for a Memorial Day cookout

It doesn’t take much to get me excited!

 

What I’m Watching/Reading

There is neither a show that I feel I have to see, nor am I reading anything at the moment.  I’ve thought about using Audible to listen to books while I commute, but that plan has yet to be put into action.

 

What I’m Listening To

Me: “Alexa, play Hall and Oates Greatest Hits”

Alexa: “Shuffling songs by Hall and Oates”

 

 

What I’m Wearing

At the moment I’m wearing workout clothes.

Some of the pictures in this post feature a favorite Old Navy blouse that I wore Sunday.

For work today I wore a pretty blouse from LOFT.with light blue jeans

and these shoes.

 

What I’m Doing This Weekend

At the moment I anticipating sleeping in on Saturday morning.  My Saturday evening plans are not yet secured so I’ll save those for another post!

 

 

What I’m Looking Forward to Next Month

My Birthday happens next month.

While I’m not looking forward to my new number (age is just a number, right?), I am totally looking forward to another day off from work.

 

 

 

Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

 

Chocolate Lava Cake 101

Chocolate Lava Cake is a dessert that I decided I wanted to learn to make.  A google search that began with “how to…” lead me to “how to learn something new everyday”.  I decided that learning something new everyday sounded like a good idea.  Do you know how much information you consume every day?  Today I read that we are constantly consuming information in amounts that can be measured in gigabytes.  In case you didn’t know, one gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Click here for a more detailed explanation.

To put this into perspective, 1 gigabyte equals an entire pickup truck filled with paper (source).  According to this site, we consume 74.92 gigabytes of data every day. That’s enough to fill 74 pickup trucks filled with paper (source).

Wow.

For LB the number is likely doubled.

“Boy Genius”

 

 

What does this information have to do with the [blog post title] Chocolate Lava Cake?

Nothing.

But it may appeal to any technical enthusiast that happens onto my blog.

 

Also it has everything to do with learning something new.

That said, welcome to

Chocolate Lava Cake 101

What you’ll need for class:

•             no stick cooking spray

•             cocoa powder (for dusting)

•             8 Tablespoons butter

•             2 ounces bittersweet chocolate

•             2 ounces semisweet chocolate

•             1 1/4 cups powdered sugar

•             3 eggs yolks

•             2 eggs

•             1 teaspoon vanilla

•             1/2 cup all-purpose flour

•             Recommended for topping: vanilla ice cream, berries, whipped cream

Here is how it is done

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Spray four ramekins with non stick spray and place on a baking sheet.

 Dust ramekins with cocoa powder.

Microwave the butter, bittersweet chocolate and semisweet chocolate in a large bowl on high for about one minute, until the butter is melted.

Stir until the chocolate is also melted.

Stir in the powdered sugar until well blended.

Mix in the eggs and egg yolks. 

Add the vanilla…

and the flour…

and wisk.

Divide the mixture among the ramekins.

Bake until the sides are firm and the centers are soft, 11-13 minutes.

Let cool 1 minute. Invert onto plates or serve in the ramekin while warm…

 with one or all of the recommended toppings.

And now you know about chocolate lava cakes as well as gigabytes.

We’ll be well rounded in more ways than one.

 

 

Chocolate Lava Cake

  • Servings: 4
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

Ingredients

•             No stick cooking spray

•             cocoa powder (for dusting)

•             8 Tablespoons butter

•             2 ounces bittersweet chocolate

•             2 ounces semisweet chocolate

•             1 1/4 cups powdered sugar

•             3 egg yolks

•             2 eggs

•             1 teaspoon vanilla

•             1/2 cup all-purpose flour

•             Recommended for topping: vanilla ice cream, berries, whipped cream

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Spray four ramekins with non stick spray and place on a baking sheet.  Dust ramekins with cocoa powder.

Microwave the butter, bittersweet chocolate and semisweet chocolate in a large bowl on high for about one minute, until the butter is melted. Whisk until the chocolate is also melted. Stir in the powdered sugar until well blended. Whisk in the eggs and egg yolks.  Add the vanilla. Stir in the flour. Divide the mixture among the ramekins.

Bake until the sides are firm and the centers are soft, 11-13 minutes. Let cool 1 minute. Invert onto plates while warm and serve with recommended toppings.

prettyis.me

 

 

 

Special thanks to Lacie at easypeasypleasy.com for the lesson on “How To Add And Embed A Printable Recipe To Your WordPress Blog”.

 

Thank you for taking time out of your day to stop by my blog.

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