Nutella Crinkle Cookies

My husband's boss in town for a couple of days.   He had to fly 1/2 way across the country to get here, and after his meeting here; he's going to a couple more places to visit.  I'm a big believer in hospitality and making being away from home a little less stressful, so I decided to make some cookies for hubby to take to the office with him.

I LOVE chocolate crinkle cookies.  Lately with the cost of nuts being through the roof, I've had to be creative in including the nutty taste in my cookies!  Enter Nutella...ok honestly it didn't start out as a food enhancer.  My 5 year old has sensory issues and will eat only certain foods...peanut butter is one of them. We were hoping to slowly switch out the peanut butter with Nutella...but he would have nothing to do with it..so being the mother of invention at our home...I started baking with it.

Nutella Crinkle Cookies Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

4-6 oz of Nutella spread

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Topping:

1 cup confectioners sugar, sifted

Directions:

Beat the eggs and sugar until thick, pale, and fluffy (about 3 to 5 minutes). 

Then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the Nutella and beat until incorporated.

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture, stirring just until incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm enough to shape into balls (several hours or even overnight).

After chilling dough....preheat oven to 325 degrees F and place rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place the sifted confectioners sugar in a shallow bowl. First, form the chilled dough into 1 inch balls, and then roll each ball in the confectioners sugar. Make sure each ball is completely coated, with no chocolate showing through. Place the sugar-covered balls on the prepared baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart.

Bake cookies for about 8 to 10 minutes or just until the edges are slightly firm but the centers are still soft. (For moist chewy cookies do not over bake. Over baking these cookies will cause them to be dry.) Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. These cookies are best eaten the day they are baked.

Black Magic Cake...Mandy Style

Black Magic Cake
slightly adapted from recipe on Just-a-pinch

Cake
1 3/4 c all purpose flour
2 c sugar
3/4 c cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 c strong black coffee, cooled
1 c sour cream
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 tsp real vanilla extract


Directions for Cake:
Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl or stand mixer.
Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla.
Beat at medium speed for two minutes. Batter will be thin.
Pour batter into a greased and floured 9x13 pan or two 9 inch cake pans.
Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes for a 9x13, or 30-35 minutes for layer pans


CHOCOLATE FROSTING
1/2 c margarine, softened
2 oz melted unsweetened chocolate, cooled
3 c powdered sugar
3 Tbsp milk
2 tsp real vanilla extract


Directions for Frosting:
Combine frosting ingredients and mix with a hand or stand mixer. Spread frosting on cooled cakes.

Crazy Cooking Challenge-Blueberry Muffins

I stumbled upon a great idea on a great blog!! I'm super excited to be participating in it!


It's called the Crazy Cooking Challenge.  Please, please vote for me...I'm #80.




It's once a month. You're assigned a special ingredient or item that you have to make. In the past they've had chocolate cakes, fudge, mashed potatoes, even spaghetti. 


This month it's Blueberry Muffins. 

Once the challenge is "on", if you are participating you peruse around the internet looking for a blog that has a recipe that you'd like to try and go for it!!! So the recipe I found that sounded delicious was for a lemon blueberry muffin. With Easter being this weekend, I thought it would be a great addition to our Easter table.
I hope that you'll enjoy the recipe and make sure to check out the other recipes in the blog hop!


The blog I chose the recipe from is "The Girl Who Ate Everything".

I am not a big blueberry fan.  Must have been some childhood trauma that my mom didn't tell me about.  I love all other berries but blueberries...we have a "I'll tolerate you in small doses" kind of relationship.

When I was looking for a recipe, I wanted something that was fresh and not heavy.  These muffins DID NOT DISAPPOINT.  I really liked them.  Okay, not enough to say that I love blueberries but enough to say, "WOW, those are pretty tasty".

When I went to the store to buy blueberries, I saw some yogurt and thought...hey I can use that in place of the milk to give it some tang.  It really did...if you don't like yogurt or don't think it will be something you'd like, please follow the original recipe that is just 1 cup of milk.  It did make the muffin light in texture.

My husband on the other hand, LOVES blueberries and he devoured two muffins! 

Lemon Blueberry Muffins
slighty adapted from original recipe
Makes 12 muffins.

My beauties :-) 

  

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

zest of one lemon
1 egg

1 6 oz yogurt and milk to make 1 cup

1/2 cup softened shortening or butter (I used butter)
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries **note if you use frozen please toss with a little flour to absorb the extra liquid.  I used fresh.

Topping 

1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 T lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar

Mix dry ingredients and set aside. 

Beat eggs, milk mixture  and  butter. 

Add dry ingredients and stir to combine. Stir in blueberries gently. 

This part is soo beautiful I had to add a picture,

Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. 

Combine butter and lemon juice for the topping. 
While the muffins are still warm, dip the tops in the butter and lemon juice, then dip in sugar. 


They are tasty and I hope that you'll add them to your muffin recipe box! 
Enjoy!






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12 Hour No Knead "Sourdough" Bread

Original recipe found at budget bites

Here is my adapted recipe :-)

3 cups flour
3/4 tblspoon yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water

In large bowl (need room for expansion)
Mix together with a spoon the flour, yeast, salt, sugar, with water.
The dough will be sticky but not goopy.

Cover loosely with saran wrap and leave on the counter overnight.

If you don't want to make bread in the morning you can cover and put into the refrigerator.

Take dough out of bowl and put on lightly floured surface and shape into whatever shape you'd like.
Let it rise for 30 minutes. 1 hour if taken out of the fridge.

Preheat oven and add an oven safe container with water.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes

Tomorrow I am going to fold in some cheese to the bread and see how it goes.  It has an awesome sourdough fermented taste.

Savory Biscuits

My husband and I love the breakfast sandwiches at Jack in the Box.  Since we've moved to the east coast and we don't have Jack in the Box; I've been on a mission to find a biscuit that would be enough to fill in for an "at home" breakfast sandwich.  I found a recipe of Paula Deen's biscuits but have adapted it to what I hope will be super tasty for our family!  Click on the link for Paula's recipe. :-)


It makes 12 good sized biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small bits *See hint*
1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese 
1/3 cup crumbled crispy bacon, cooled
1/4 cup dried onion
1 cup soured milk (I used 2/3 cup sour cream and 1/3 cup milk)

Directions

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 425°F. Grease a baking sheet with butter, oil, or cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. (I used my hands but a pastry cutter would work or even 2 knives) Add 1 cup of the Cheddar, dried onion, bacon to the flour mixture and toss to combine. Gently add the milk mixture into the flour mixture until all of the flour is moistened. *Do Not OverMix!*

Form into biscuit shape..handling them as little as you can. Bake until light golden brown and firm to the touch, 13 to 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

*HINT* You can also cut the stick of butter to 6 tablespoons (a stick is 8 Tablespoons)  freeze the butter and then grate into the mixture.  I keep a couple sticks of butter in the freezer to have on hand.

Taste Test: I think they taste AWESOME! buttery and fluffy. My husband didn't like the bacon in the biscuit and said if I had left those out...would be even better than JIB.

Homemade Ho-Hos!

I was watching Food Network tonight.  It was Cupcake Wars.  I *LOVE* cupcakes.  Little bites of lushness!!  Before kids...I made everything from scratch...now I am a more semi-homemade kind of cook.

So I took a dark chocolate cake mix and made it according to directions with one little tweak. I added about a 1/4 cup instant coffee to the water, and used melted butter instead of oil. I know quite the rebel!

Since I have 2 little boys...I made 24 cake bites for them to have and the remaining cake batter I was able to make 12 cupcakes.  Tomorrow I am going to metamorphosis plain chocolate cupcakes into a yummy favorite of mine..Ho-Hos! I will post pictures after I finish them tomorrow.

I used 1/2 jar of marshmallow fluff and add softened cream cheese until it was the consistency I wanted.

I have an injector that I'm not sure where I got it from...I think the dollar store...but it worked perfectly

You can buy them at Amazon at this link cupcake filling injector