All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel
Pumpkin Cake Mix Sandwich Cookies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling- The perfect fall cookie treat that you can whip up in around hour. Fun and yummy!
So I was on the news last night!!
It really was so weird that I got to see myself on TV. But it was really cool too.
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I am loving winter in Florida.
It’s a joke to call it winter. It’s been amazing out. We had one cold weekend so far and you would have thought the end of the world was coming. People reacted to at the grocery store the same way that people in Boston reacted to snow storms. Everyone at the grocery store was all bundled up and talking about how cold it was. I was standing there in a sweat shirt like “yo, you have no idea…” It was like 45 out. ha!
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On Sunday night Price, Autumn, and I headed down to Rhode Island to Lincoln Woods State Park to meet our wedding photographer, Lefebvre Photo, for our engagement photo session.
In practice of late, I was not prepared at all. #ugh #storyofmylife
We went out to Kohl’s in the morning to get some coordinating clothes, mainly plaid shirts and a dress for me to wear. Of course, I couldn’t find anything to wear. I don’t mean I couldn’t find anything that I liked since I basically LOVE all of Lauren Conrad’s current line. I mean, I couldn’t find anything I wanted to wear for the photos. Of course!!! So mini meltdown later, I rushed out to Gap Factory Store and Old Navy after lunch and threw together a $6 white tank top, with a $12 (originally $45!) sweater, some jean capris and sperry’s. And wished I had a Xanax.
Thankfully, the photo session was fun since I was a ball of nerves. The location was amazing with shafts of golden light shining through the trees. The leaves were a lovely mix of greens, oranges, and yellows above us and below our feet. Our photographer was great with setting up shots and getting us to joke around when deep down I wanted to throw up from nerves and just the thought of how corny all of it was. I went to college and worked with Danielle years ago so it definitely helped keep me semi calm as we recounted the worse boss in the history of bosses. Plus, we got to talk about our babies as her daughter is just 2 weeks older than Autumn. Besides Danielle’s wedding and engagement photography she also takes newborn and baby photos so incorporating Autumn into our photos was really easy. I’m looking forward to getting our photos in a few weeks. I’ll be sure to share them when I get them 🙂
Anyway, these bars are so delightful! They are the perfect combination of flavors. I think peanut butter and banana are best friends, better than peanut butter and jelly. Yep, I said it!!! Jelly is great but too sweet at times, and you can’t dip jelly into a jar of peanut butter, like how you can with a banana… wait, you don’t do that? Err, me neither…
These Peanut Butter Banana Bars are one of the best ways to use up past their prime bananas. I swear we always have past their prime bananas. I’d assume I should buy less bananas but when I do it’s the week Autumn has decided she wants 2x as many as usual and then I need to get more anyway. It’s like that when we buy milk… if I buy a 1/2 gallon for a month and we run out every week I’ll then buy a gallon and we will only drink a glass before it goes bad. #thestruggle
I loved the texture of these bars that the banana and the oats give it. The oats make it feel like fall. I[‘m sure that doesn’t make any sense but it totally feels like a fall treat. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it all throughout the year but if you have it I’m sure you’ll think “Man, I gotta make these again this fall.”
Seriously, this frosting.
You can skip the frosting but then we wouldn’t be friends as the frosting adds to much to the bars to enhance the flavors and texture. I just love biting into the bar and getting my teeth through the frosting first before getting to the fluffy bar. Plus, frosting always wins.
Makes 16 servings
Ingredients
For the Bars
For the Frosting
Process
Bars Sourced from Bake or Break, frosting from I am a Honey Bee
Another Monday. Another exhaustive start to the week.
Pricer and I kicked some garden butt this weekend. He worked in back attacking weeds and digging out the million rocks and chunks of broken concrete in the ground there. (Major thanks to the contractors, who instead of having the chunks of the driveway they dug into hauled away, just threw all of it into the garden. THANKS d-bags.) I worked in front digging up part of the lawn to plant some flowers and some seeds for 5 varieties of flowers, including moon flowers and canterbury bells. Plus some container work transplanting some little trees into bigger pots and prepping for some summer veggies and herbs.
Man, I wish I had a slice of this bad boy for breakfast today. It would totally jump start my week!
Moist banana cake topped with a dreamy cream cheese frosting. It would totally work for dessert or breakfast. Right?!?!
I just made this cake last week but I’ve already planned on making it again soon. I bought more bananas for them to chill out and get nice and soft so they can be whipped up into this stunning cake.
This month’s Secret Recipe Club recipe is from K&K Test Kitchen. Mother and daughter duo, Kim and Kelesy, started the blog in 2010 as a creative outlet to be able to document and share cooking adventures with family and friends. Since they they have made some fantastic recipes that had me really interested when i was browsing their blog.
It’s funny tho. As I scrolled through the recipe index I saw their Banana Bundt Cake and immediatly knew that tthe recipe that I would make. Still I browsed aorund and saw some great recipes that I wrote down just to give a try one day. Like this Sun-dried Tomato, Corn, and Bacon Pasta sounds awesome. And I think I’ll have to make this Strawberry Peach Sangria one day for Thirsty Thursday.
Stop by K&K Test Kitchen to check out this Banana Bundt Cake recipe along with many other scrumptious recipes!
Makes 8-12 servings
Ingredients
Process
Ingredients
Process
Adapted from: K & K Test Kitchen
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Check out my previous Secret Recipe Club Posts
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I previously wrote about Price’s birthday and how great a day it was. Well, the one thing that was missing was a birthday cake. I had originally planned on leaving early that day so I could make the cake before dinner, but that did not work out. Then, I intending to make it after dinner since I’m used to baking pretty late, but we drank quite a bit so that was scraped and we just went down the road for a little piece of cake. No worries, it all worked out but I still owed Pricer a cake. So the birthday cake became a First-Day-Of-Work cupakes. (I realized I left my can pans in CT in August for my dad’s Bday)
Back to Price… I told him to pick out a cake for me to make. So he picked out a few of my cookbooks and went to work. He picked a Hummingbird Cake from The Baking Bible: From the Oven to the Table. We had never heard of this cake before. I wanted to know why it is called a Hummingbird Cake, so I did a little research. My research yielded that the reason behind the name is unknown. It is suggested that is has to do with how sweet the cake is, being that hummingbirds eat nectar. The cake has Southern origins, but word spread about this cake when it was featured in Southern Living in the late 70’s.
The cupcakes were easy to make and produced a great result. The cupcakes were rich a moist- from the oil in the cake. While I like {cup}cakes with butter in them I appreciate baking with oil since I don’t have to wait for the butter to come to room temperature. And without having to cream butter and sugar together I didn’t need to use a mixer for the cake portion. The pineapple also made for a moist cake. However, the banana flavor was much more dominate than the pineapple flavor. I admit that just mashed up bananas and figured ‘close enough’… this just goes to show that measuring is really important! The frosting is a basic cream cheese frosting and it tied the whole thing together.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray or line 2 12 cup cupcake pans.
Sift together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and baking soda in a large bowl, set aside.
In a medium sized bowl, combine the wet ingredients together. Incorportate the wet ingredients and chopped pecans into the dry ingredients. Mix throughly with a wooden spoon.
Divide the batter into the cupcake pans. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean
While the cupcakes are baking, make the frosting by combining the soft cream cheese and butter. Add the sifted sugar and vanilla extract, and mix until smooth.
Once the cupcakes have cooled, frost with the cream cheese frosting. Top all with chopped pecans.
Two weekends ago I ventured into the territory of baking with yeast. I learned how working with yeast can be a pain in the ass but if it works you get great results. My first attempt was a miserable fail with a sticky, dense, dead ball of dough. I figured out my milk was at 112 and the was way too hot for my yeast so I tried again at 100 and SUCCESS!!!
I went through all this trouble because I saw these amazing Peppermint Bark Buns at Fake Ginger. I could have gone for the peppermint and chocolate filling but I am not a big fan of white chocolate so I decided to stick with a cinnamon roll and this would be a springboard into making the cinnamon rolls.
These cinnamon rolls were worth the trouble since they were an amazing treat for the weekend. Plus I felt like I conquered a big fear with using yeast. I made an orange frosting for them which was good- a nice complement to the cinnamon but standard milk based frosting is more my thing. I think eggnog would be fantastic!
makes 12 rolls
Ingredients
Dough
Filling
Glaze
Process
*I did not do this since I wanted them right then and they turned out fine. So this extra rise is up to you.
There are a lot of people who celebrate their birthday’s in August, including my family and the people I work with. I try to bring in a cake or cupcakes for the people I immediately work with to help celebrate their birthdays. But this time, 8 in one month was a lot to take on! So I figured that I could bring in 1 big one for the office to enjoy with the all the birthday people. I love to bake but I am not bakery! Especially with 4 birthdays in a row!
I made a massive carrot cake for the 8 people who have August birthdays. Requested by Kellie (August 8th birthday)
Serves 24 (but you can get 36 decent pieces out of it)
2 pound of carrots
3 cups of all purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
8 eggs
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed
2 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup raisins
2 cups walnuts, finely chopped (optional)
Preheat oven to 350. Line and grease 2 11”x8” baking pans.
Peel and grate carrots (fine shred with a food processor is okay but a grater has the best results)
Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
In a very large bowl, beat the eggs until blended. Add the vanilla, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and oil and beat until well incorporated.
In three batches, add the dry ingredients, mix well.
Fold in the carrots, raisins, and walnuts until they are mixed evenly throughout.
Divide the batter evenly between the two pans.
Bake for 40-45 minutes, test for doneness.
Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan. Let it cool completely on a rack prior to icing.
24 oz (3 8oz packages) cream cheese, softened to room temperature, cut into small pieces
¾ cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, cut into small pieces
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 cups of sifted confectioner’s sugar
Using an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the vanilla extract to the mixture. Slowly add in the confectioner’s sugar. Beat until fully incorporated and smooth.
This recipe can be reduced in half.
The last time I made this recipe I left out the raisins and walnuts (afraidof nut allergies in the office) and it was a lot drier. This cake was very moist but not as easy to work with, especially when icing it!
It was nice that we were able to gather the majority of the office to get together for some cake and signing instead of our teams. We figure that we will now have a birthday cake for the month and it will be done during the staff meetings. hmmm what will I make for September?
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