Read Your Recipe!
When faced with a dessert buffet, I often find myself coming back to the rice krispie treats. They’re just so chewy and reliable. Even a bad rice krispie treat is still really good. I’ve made these fancy ones and then later made these decadent peanut butter ones. These faux “Quaker Oat Bars” were akin to this new recipe, but not quite. When I’m sharing with you today takes the cake when it comes to the health factor. I mean, seriously, when’s the last time I actually put the word “healthy” in a title?
Typically, I don’t like to mix fruit and chocolate. Bananas and strawberries are the exceptions. I am well aware that chocolate and orange are a famous pair, but I haven’t been on board until just recently.
I used to love those 60 calorie sugar free chocolate pudding snacks. I say “used to” because when I was pregnant and then nursing I avoided a lot of sugar substitutes, and when I bought a pack recently I was surprised at how eh I found them to be. In trying to go the “whole foods” route in general, the ingredients list on those babies is reason enough to say a permanent bye-bye.
I like this title because it seems like it rhymes, but it actually doesn’t. Cake is fun to make because it’s fun to eat. The only problem is, most cake recipes serve 16 people. I so infrequently bake for 16 people, that I barely ever make cake (which is why pie is awesome. Shout out to pie).
I like this recipe mostly because the title rhymes. Just kidding. I like this recipe mostly because IT’S AWESOME. I made it somewhat on a whim – I had all of the ingredients on hand and I’ve been stuck in the house with a sicky-poo toddler for three days. What I ended up with was a much lighter, even easier to make version of something we ALL know and love.
Food is super trendy – just check Pinterest. It’s like an explosion of green smoothies and 3 point crockpot dinners. Buckeyes are a sweet that I do actually remember from childhood but haven’t seen at a party for years and years. A sweet, peanut butter dough ball enveloped in bittersweet chocolate and chilled to perfection. Who let this go out of style? And why? Let’s bring it back. Come on, all together now.
We made this recipe in the second level cooking class during our “lighten-up” unit. I’d d take favorites like mac and cheese, pizza, brownies and cupcakes and make them lower in calories and total fat. This brownie recipe paved the way for the unit as they’d cringe during the intro but then devour every crumb by the end of the class, exclaiming passionately over the fudgy texture and deep chocolate flavor of the lightened up brownies. I’d be like, “hello, why would we make something gross that I wouldn’t want to eat?”. Silly doubters.
It’s hot. I like to treat days that are over 95 degrees as “rainy days” – I don’t make myself feel badly for staying put all day in our frosty little home.
Ahh chocolate bread. I make this often and always to great reviews. I take no credit for recipe creation, it is almost straight out of a cookbook called Baked Explorations (Poliafito and Lewis). It’s pretty much can’t miss. It was already on this site but the pictures were horrible and I hadn’t yet made the cream cheese spread. Made the cream cheese spread this past week – ate cream cheese spread with bread. Died. Came back to life to write this post so that you, too, could experience the extraordinary culinary death provided by cream cheese spread.
Walking to Charly’s to get ice cream down in Cape May, NJ, was one of my favorite events of each week in the summer. Also, your current fave ice cream flavor was a big discussion point among your friends and apparently spoke volumes about who you were as a person. For years I was cookies and cream (so vanilla), then I took a turn for the dangerous when I ventured into peanut butter chocolate land. An old favorite that I would return to occasionally was mint chocolate chip – the white, not the green (get it right).
The most economical thing you can buy at the store is frozen spinach. True story. The SECOND most economical thing you can buy HAS to be bagged corn kernels. I bought a 2 lb. bag of kernels for under two dollars. You can make well over 100 cups of popcorn from the kernels I bought, whereas for a package of bags I could make only 12.
This recipe turned out to be a surprisingly easy way to make a lot of dessert. This would be fantastic to bring to any event where lots of people would want just a bite of something sweet after dinner. These bars have a shortbread crust, a chewy pecan filling, and just enough chocolate to tie it all together.
When I was younger, Christmas was everything sweet and wonderful. People gave me presents, I ate lots of chocolate, etc. After my first married Christmas, I realized that the Christmas hullabaloo has a stinky side; it flies by in a rush of anxiety and expectations. See, when you’re married, you have to buy twice the amount of gifts because apparently all the men went to the same man-class that told them they don’t have to buy Christmas presents.
If you’re anything like me, a small amount of chocolate is necessary after almost every meal. Double chocolate Ghiradelli chocolate chips are in my pantry and I routinely grab a handful every morning while I’m waiting for my coffee. Chocolate and coffee pair famously well, no?
A friend dropped off cookies the other day (which were delicious), and she mentioned that she checked this site to make the chocolate chips that I probably had on here, but was surprised to find there wasn’t a recipe to be found!
