Lunch Lady Bars

Earlier this spring I was trolling the internet for recipes when I stumbled upon this glorious recipe that is a combination of oatmeal, peanut butter, and chocolate. Merely reading the ingredients, I KNEW I was addicted. This recipe has all the right elements. The perfect marriage of flavors that were meant to be together, this recipe is quick, easy, and makes enough to take half the pan to a party while leaving the other half at home for you to devour.  The girls at Six Sisters' Stuff do not disappoint, and this recipe is no exception.

In fact, this recipe is so delish that my friends and I have re-dubbed it, "Soccer Mom Crack." I know that is not a very nice name and is right up there with "Slutty Brownies" on the offensive food titles...but I warn you and you will be HOOKED.

When I make this recipe I do deviate a smidge from the recipe. I use quick oats because that is what the hubs prefers in baked goods, and I use a bit more peanut butter in the base layer. Additionally, I use more peanut butter in the middle layer. I do not bother measuring it out, instead, I simply slather the peanut butter on. When it comes to the chocolate frosting, I am LAZY, therefore, I use the pre-made stuff. It takes about two cans of the frosting to cover my bars.

I have made this recipe twice this week for parties. Unfortunately not a single bar is left for me to include a picture.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

We love desserts in the Wheeler home. Especially desserts that we can grab and run; cookies, muffins, cupcakes, etc....

This was super easy.

You will need:

• Chocolate cake mix of your choice and the ingredients listed on the box to make. I chose German Chocolate.
• Tub of your favorite frosting, or your favorite frosting recipe. This day I used cream cheese frosting.
• Tub of that microwavable dipping chocolate. I would have preferred to use dark chocolate, but Hero is not a fan of the dark stuff, so I used milk chocolate.
• Can of cherry pie filling.

Directions:

1. Mix the cake as directed on the box.
2. Line your muffin tin with paper liners. My cake box said it would make 24 cupcakes, so I lined two of my muffin tins with the liners.
3. Fill paper liners with cake mix about 2/3 full. I have the large pampered chef scoop and I use one scoop per cupcake.
4. Spoon 2 to 3 cherries into the middle of each cupcake batter. There is no need to push it into the batter because the batter will rise above the cherries.
5. Bake as directed on your cake mix directions.
6. Cool completely before frosting. I love to pipe my frosting onto my cupcakes using the largest star tip I have.
7. Melt the dipping chocolate according to the package directions, drizzle on cupcakes.

Because I used cream cheese frosting I kept my cupcakes in the refrigerator. It might be a good idea to do that any way if it will take your family more than two days to eat the cupcakes due to the cherries being in the middle, the cupcakes will probably mold quicker because of the cherries.

Enjoy....I know we did.

Edible Thanksgiving Table Decorations

Here's some super yummy Thanksgiving table decorations to file away for next year. I got the recipe for these here, The Booth. A cute crafty blog. They turned out yummy, and there were enough left over to enjoy the whole weekend.

Here are my tips I learned by doing;

• The recipe for the turkeys call for candied corn, I couldn't find any so I used Reese's Pieces. Next year I will buy candied corn at Halloween.
• We did the "tail" cookies first, and then assembled the bodies and beaks. Then without wasting any time we attempted to attach the tails to the bodies. We quickly learned to let the tails set out over night, otherwise it breaks in two.
• We found it was easier to put the "tail feathers" on by smearing on a bit of frosting to the cookie and then adding the candy. When we tried putting the frosting onto the candy and then attaching it to the cookie it made a huge mess and most of them fell off.

Enjoy...we did!

Brownie Bites

So Mother Goose posted a brownie recipe today that looked absolutely YUMMO! Check it out!

That got me thinking, Phillip doesn't like fancy brownies, but I do. I remembered having a yummy brownie bite at a party once. So while at the commissary today I bought a brownie mix, and two types of our family's favorite candies; York peppermint patties, and Reece's Peanut Butter Cups.

Here's what you will need;

• 1 pkg of your favorite brownie mix
• ingredients to make it according to the directions on the back
• your favorite chocolate candy

I mixed the brownie mix as directed on the back of the box. Then using my smallest scoop I scooped one scoopful of brownie mix into each of the mini muffin spots in my mini muffin pan. I had sprayed the mini muffin pan with cooking spray.

Keeping Phillip in mind, I put one York peppermint patty(the little ones) on 8 of the brownies, and one mini peanut butter cup in another 8 of the brownies, leaving 8 just plain.

I baked the brownies at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. They baked all the way through....but turned out to be a gooey mess that were hard to get out of the pan.
So once I got all these brownies out of the pan, no worries they are still edible and yummy just not pretty, I washed the pan. For the second batch using the rest of the mix I decided to use mini cupcake liners in the pan....and it worked like a charm! For the second batch the ones that got the York peppermint patties only got 1/2 a patty per brownie.

Second batch worked a little better, now the paper liners don't want to come off very easily. Hmmm....I will have to think on this one.....maybe the next time I will set aside a smidgen of the brownie mix to dust the muffin tin with after I spray it...or use cocoa powder to dust with.....let me know if you try one of those ideas and how it turns out.

Enjoy....I know we will.