1st Day of school.... You know you gotta have something SWEET waiting for them...Why not try this: Marshmallow Fudge Brownies! 

Ok Ok Ok! I can not tell a lie! This is totally from Pinterest! I wanted to try something new for my kids and this is what I decided on.....Really it was a hard decision...I mean have you seen Pinterest lately? There's a million things I'd love to make! Oh how I need to work out more often! I'm trying to find the original post so I can share it with you ans also so no one gets mad at me!!!

So let's get started Pre heat your oven to 350! You will need the following ingredients:

1 cup buttered softened (Ok the original recipe called for margarine)

2 cups sugar

1/3 cup cocoa

4 eggs

1 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp vanilla

1 10 oz bag of miniature marshmallows (Now don't you just know it's going to be good?? How can it go wrong with marshmallows!?)

First mix butter, sugar and cocoa in mixer and mix well: 

Next add one egg at a time mixing well before adding the next egg. Now add vanilla mix. then you are ready to add the dry ingredients flour, & salt mix well...I couldn't believe how fluffy and light it looked it reminded me of frosting!

See doesn't it look yummy...It is yes I tried it!!

Now grease a 10x15x1 in pan...(Next time I make this I will just use my jellyroll pan it is a little larger but I think it will work better we'll see!) Spread the batter evenly in the pan. See what I mean it looks like frosting!!

Now bake at 350 degrees for 22-25 minutes (I should have cooked mine just a couple more minutes but oh well they tasted great and my kids loved them!) I have to share my little helper here with you isn't he just the cutest!?

When you can insert a toothpick into the center of your brownies and it comes out clean they are cooked! Pull out of the oven and sprinkle the whole bag of marshmallows over your brownies put back into the over for 3 minutes or until they just start to become golden : Looks like Heaven 

Ok while it is cooling off you can get started on the yummy frosting:

1 cube of butter

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tablespoons cocoa

2-3 cups of powered sugar (You will need to add powdered sugar to your desired thickness)

Mix all the above ingredients until smooth, then when the brownies are completely cooled off frost. Just a note I think I frosted mine a little too early....I couldn't help it my 9 year old son was walking into the house yelling "Hey! Mom did you make us something for our first day of school!? SO I had to hurry and frost them so he could enjoy and boy did he enjoy as did my other kids when they got home however they would NOT let me take their picture! Darn kids!

ok these are still really warm and really needed to set up a little more but we couldn't wait...they looked better later

WIUW: Cake Mix Cinnamon Rolls!

Now go back and read the name of these cinnamon rolls again! Don't you just love it! Yes! It really uses a Cake Mix! Well If you are reading this then You might be like me looking for some quick and easy yummy breakfasts to make for your back to school kids (Naoni's kids start today! I'm kind of jealous we don't go back until after labor day.)

Ok, so no doubt you've obviously figured out our first ingredient... Now lets give you the rest!

1 white or yellow cake mix

2 pkg yeast

1 tsp. salt

2 cups flour

2 1/2 cups hot water

3 cups flour

butter to taste

cinnamon to taste

sugar to taste

Ohmygosh! I just realized that there are eggs in the picture and NOPE this recipe does not call for eggs!! Oops sorry my bad!

combine the first 4 ingredients, mix well.

Add 2 1/4 cups of hot water. Mix.

Add 3 cups flour and knead (yes knead you'll have to take your rings off and use your hands its the only way! Trust me!) Once your done it should look something like this:

Now let rise until double in size.....I let mine rise for about 45 minutes and it looked like this hope you can see the difference:

Now take your dough and roll it out into a large rectangle shape (I had sprinkled a little bit of flour on my surface, but I'm not sure you would even need it?!)

Now melt butter and spread onto dough (I used 1/4 cup) Then sprinkle your desired amount of sugar and cinnamon

 

Now roll up your dough

Now cut into 1 - 1 1/2 in slices and place on pan and let rise until double it's size

While you are waiting for your rolls to rise pre heat oven to 350 degrees (I let my pan of rolls sit on the stove top to help them rise faster!)

Once your rolls have doubled in size place them in your oven and bake for 20 min

While your rolls are baking you could make up a quick frosting I just used:

1/4 c butter melted

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

dash of salt

 then add powder sugar until it reaches the consistency you want (You'll want it a little thinner than normal frosting)

You might wanna let your rolls cool off a little more than I did I got a little carried away with all of the icing but come on doesn't it look yummy?????

So my kids aren't actually dressed and ready for school (Hee hee it's almost 10 at night here! we're all about ready for bed I hope! PS the boy in the middle is part of our extended family....not my son by birth but by friendship to my son and has been with us most of the summer!)

Well I hope you all enjoy your cake mix cinnamon rolls! I have a kitchen to go clean!

Banana Muffins WIUW

With school getting ready to start soon… (agghhh I know bite your tongue right!) Wow has summer flown by as much for everyone else like it has for us? Really I’m not sure where it’s gone!  We have one week until school starts.  I can’t believe it.  So I’ve been talking with my kids about what they want to take for lunches this year.  They get so bored with PB&J so we are going to try and mix it up more this year and they came up with some great ideas.

I decided that I’d work on getting some new breakfast items to try out for school this year too so this is today’s WIUW Banana oatmeal muffins.

Banana Oatmeal Muffins

And would you believe I found it on Pinterest? here is the link.  Also it helped that we had breakfast for dinner so it went well with our dinner. 

And yep of course it was easy.  I’ve never made batter in the blender but wow I’m totally sold.  Pour everything in the blender mix until smooth and pour into the muffin pan.  My favorite was just pouring no scooping out the batter so quick and clean!  Yep that’s my style!

Here you go!

2 ½ C Old fashioned oats (not quick)

1 single serving cup of plain low fat greek yogurt

2 eggs

¾ C sugar – or sweetener of choice – (could use 2Tbs stevia)

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

2 bananas

* Makes 12 Muffins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Do not use paper liners.  Either spray the pan or use silicone or foil liners (or – now is the time to look into a silicone pan. Yep I’ll be looking into that soon)

Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until oats are smooth.

Pour into muffin pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

And test on your would be consumers!

Mine totally passed!  Yahoo!  Here’s to one new breakfast for school days.  Throw in a side of fruit, some juice, maybe some yogurt. Yay not cold cereal everyday!  (as a total side note I NEVER get a fun pic of all of my kids! yes one is still missing-she was in the high chair out of the pic but still messy hair end of day this is one of my new favorite pics)

So when do you start school?  I know some have already.

WIUW  My Family's Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies! So Super Soft and Chewy!

I don't know about the rest of the country...But here in Wisconsin we have been having a heat wave! My kids have been begging me to make these cookies, but with the heat I just couldn't do it it would have heated the house up too much even with the air conditioner on! Well Today we finally cooled down a bit.. only about 85 degrees, but the humidity has really dropped off and that is what counts! So I baked!!

Here is a list of ingredients needed:

1 Lb butter softened (I only use butter NO margarine or shortening!)

2 Cups Brown Sugar

1 1/2 Cups Gran. sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp Vanilla

6 cups flour

 1 1/2 tsp soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 bag 12oz Milk choc. chips or semi sweet whatever you prefer

Lets get started! First preheat your oven to 350 degrees

CREAM TOGETHER:

The butter, and both sugars, I like to mix this well before adding anything else.

The butter and both sugars not mixed yet! however after the above mixture is well mixed add your eggs and vanilla and mix until nice and creamy.

Before adding the dry ingredients I usually take one cup of flour and place in a separate bowl, then add the salt and soda and mix well before adding to the sugar and butter mixture.

I then dump this dry mixture into my batter and mix well, my reasoning is that the soda and salt will be well mixed into cookie dough....Does anyone else do this when they are baking?? After you feel that this cup of four and salt and soda mixture is mixed in well you can start adding one cup of flour at a time into your cookie dough.Next add your chocolate chips and mix. DO NOT ADD MORE FLOUR than what is called for (Please) I think this makes your cookies hard! If for some reason you think that your cookie dough is too sticky  then put the cookie dough in the fridge for a 1/2  to 1 hour. 

Now you are ready to bake your cookies! (although my kids think that it is now time to eat the cookie dough!) I usually just use a tablespoon and drop the cookie dough by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet as such

Sorry as you can see my cookie sheets are well used!!! Bake your cookies 8-10 minutes, however try not to overbake them. I usually cook them until they are starting to get brown around the edges, according to my husband he thinks that they look a little doughy in the middle (This is a good thing!) I pull the cookies out at this point and let them sit on the hot cookie sheet. They will continue to bake a little more while they cool off and will not be doughy when you eat them but they will be soft and chewy and YUMMY!

Of course in between baking cookies I had to feed this little guy some baby cereal with bananas!!

but it won't be long and he'll be enjoying these cookies with the rest of my kiddos!! Hope you all enjoy these cookies as much as my family does!!!

Bread Sticks YUM!!!

Are you ready to Whip it up with us? Here's this week's whip it up Wednesday.

This week I found a recipe here of course it was from Pinterest that just made me giddy.  I was so excited to try it!  For many of the Utahans you’ll know what I’m talking about.  This recipe is for breadsticks like you get at Salt Lake Pizza Factory.  You know the twisty ones on a stick that are the real reason you go there (oh wait it’s the real reason I go there).

They really are like melt in your mouth fantastic breadsticks and how fun that they are twisted around a stick.

So once I found the recipe I had to try it.  I was really excited. And really they are easy so we know that’s a plus in my book.

Here what you need

1 Tbs yeast

2 Tbs Sugar

1 ½ C Warm water

1 Tbs Oil (Olive oil worked great)

1tsp Salt

3 ½ C Flour

¾ C Melted butter, divided

3/8 tsp garlic salt

½ tsp dried rosemary

1 Tbs Parmesan cheese

8-  ¼” wooden dowels, cut to 18” lengths (or 8 – 12” skewers – I used these but I won’t next time.  You need the longer length.)

First combine the yeast, sugar and warm water.  Let that sit for a few minutes to active the yeast.  I’m too lazy to measure the temp. of the water and my mom told me a great trick for the temp.  Just use water that is the temp. of what you would use in a bath.  So that’s what I do and it works every time!

Once the yeast is activated mix in the oil, salt and flour and knead for 5 minutes.  I put my dough in my kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook, but it wasn’t mixing well.  Maybe if I would have let it mix longer it would have eventually mixed in all the flour but I wasn’t very patient so I just started kneading it by hand. But it kind of seemed like maybe there wasn't enough dough to mix well.

Pull your dough out and spray / oil your bowl then put dough back in and bowl and turn once to coat with oil.  Then cover and let rise until double in size.  I then went for a nice Sunday drive with the hubby and I think that the dough actually ended up rising too much. (oops the Sunday drive may have not been the best idea I didn't get too many pictures)

Next split the dough into 8 sections.  And then grab the kids.  Let them help roll the dough into snakes about 16-18” long – This is where the longer sticks would be nice.  I had almost too much dough to fit on the 12” skewers.  Plus you don’t have handle for your bread stick if you use the skewers.

As you can see some of our "snakes" were struggling to become snakes.  Then you just need to roll them onto the skewers and use a little water at the ends to help the dough stay.  Again because I used the 12" skewers I had to squish the dough to get it all on the stick.  Which I think also resulted in the "falling" that happened during the next rise.  So you place the sticks over the edges of a pan and then let rise until double again.

Before baking use 1/4 C of melted butter and brush on bread sticks.

Bake on 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.

While baking mix up the other 1/2 C melted butter with the garlic salt, rosemary and parmesan cheese.  use this mix to immediately spread over bread sticks when they come out of the oven!  YUMMMM!

Okay so these totally did not last very long at my house! They were downed pretty much before anything else made it to the plates.  But I need to tweak it just a little.  I used wheat flour instead of white so that kind of changed the taste.  Also I think the fact that I let the dough rise too long the first time and not having long enough sticks to wrap the dough, really contributed to the fact that my dough was really sagging.

It's a little embarrassing to show you this next pic but remember I told you I am NOT the cook right?

Ok see what I mean look at the 2nd one back it was sagging so much it was touching the pan.  But hey no worries it still tastes great!!

So next time you need a bread stick give these a try.  I promise you will like them!!

Thanks for stopping by
--Naoni

WIUW Fruit Delight!

Now I have to tell you that the original name of this dessert was "Cherry Delight" But I love to mess with/alter recipes and found that this recipe works great with many different types of fruit in fact our family's favorite is Peach! 

OK so the original recipe called for

 1 can of cherry pie filling

1 white or yellow cake mix

1 cube of butter

But as you can see in the picture above I like to keep lots of different variations on hand: cherry, strawberry, peach and lemon...I have NOT tried blueberry but I bet it would be good too!! The reasons I love this dessert, besides the fact that it tastes yummy, is it is very easy and fast to make plus great for the summer because it doesn't heat up your kitchen on a hot day!

Alright lets get started! First take one can of pie filling of your choice and dump it into your crock pot. We used peach.

Now melt one cube of butter, and add your cake mix to it, mix the 2 together well.

After you've mixed your butter and cake mix well spoon drop the cake mixture over the top of your pie filling in the crock pot.

Cook on low 3 to 4 hours or on high 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Spoon into serving dishes, and serve with whipped topping or ice cream, if desired. This is pretty close to a fruit cobbler without all the work! I hope you'll try this recipe out and let me know what your favorite fruit is. I've also been thinking about trying this recipe out with a chocolate cake mix and cherry pie filling or lemon pie filling and a chocolate cake mix....as strange as that may sound at least it used to sound strange to me until my sister-in-law introduced me to chocolate cake with lemon and boy is that good!!! If I get a chance to try one of these options I'll post my my family's reactions! 

Also if you haven't noticed there seems to be a trend going on here, I really go for those quick n easy recipes! And if I can find a way to make a recipe easier and it still tastes good I do it.....does this mean I'm lazy? 

Enjoy! Chelle

Whip it up Wednesday ...Blackberry Cobbler

Okay here's our 2nd WIUW.  Blackberry Cobbler - YUM!

This was first inspired by something I found here on Pinterest.  So have you ever ordered from Bountiful Baskets?  It is a favorite for us!  And often I get add ons.  So a couple of weeks ago I ordered 2 blackberries as add ons knowing I would freeze a lot of them for smoothies.  Well once I saw the Blackberry cobbler I knew that I wanted to try this with some instead of freezing them all.  And yep it was a good choice.  Now I can't wait for my own berries to come on but that isn't until Sept. so this will have to do.

Funny enough I wasn't sure if I really wanted to try a new recipe so instead I went to a Betty Crocker fav(Fresh Peach Cobbler).  I had to tweak it some to make it with blackberries.

So anyone else ready for some?  Lets get started... Heat oven to 400

Here's your berry mixture

1 1/4 C Sugar

3 T cornstarch

1/4 tsp almond extract

4 C blackberries (I used closer to 4 1/2 C)

Mix sugar, cornstarch, in a sauce pan.  Stir in blackberries and almond extract.  Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils.  Boil and stir 1 minute.  Pour into ungreased 2-quart casserole dish; keep blackberry mixture hot in oven.

Okay now this is yum!!  Heck you could use it as a syrup over pancakes, ice cream whatever but just stay with me here.  Lets move to the cobbler part.

3 T shortening
1 C flour
1T sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C milk

Mix the 1st 5 ingredients by cutting the shortening into the dry ingredients.  You can use a pastry blender or by crisscrossing 2 knives.  You want the mixture to be fine crumbs.  Then stir in milk.

Drop this onto the berry mixture

Now just bake for 25-30 minutes until topping is golden brown.    And serve with your favorite topping!  My choice is ALWAYS ice cream!!!  But I'm sure whipped cream would be great too but the truth ice cream is pretty much always in stock in my home and whipped cream isn't always!

So go ahead and enjoy!

Oh but don't forget to come back next week.  I was still on a blackberry kick so I have something else next week and let me tell you my kids devoured it!

Thanks! --Naoni