Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake

by penji1

triple choc bundt cake 004

My daughter Courtney is getting married this Tuesday and family members are starting to arrive for the wedding.  My mom and dad arrived yesterday so I made them some food knowing that it might be the only time I have to do that while they are here.  I made them “Slow Cooker Italian Spaghetti Sauce”, “Easy Homemade Rolls” and this delicious and easy cake from one of my favorite blogs, “Six Sister’s Stuff”.

cake:

1 package Devil’s Food chocolate cake mix

1 (3.9 oz) box instant chocolate pudding mix

1 cup sour cream

1 cup oil

4 eggs

1/2 cup warm water

1 cup milk chocolate chips (I think next time I make this I will add more chips, 1 1/2 – 2 cups)

1  Preheat oven to 350.

2  Mix together cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, oil, eggs and water, then stir in chocolate chips.  Pour batter into bundt pan sprayed with nonstick cooking spray (I use Pam for Baking).

3  Bake 45 – 50 minutes or until top is springy to the touch and a wooden toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Cool cake thoroughly in pan for about 90 minutes (I only did about 30 and it was fine) before inverting onto a plate.  Dust with powdered sugar or top with frosting (see recipe below).

frosting:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup milk

1 – 2 teaspoons vanilla

3 tablespoons cocoa

2 – 3 cups powdered sugar (I used 2)

Mix all ingredients together and either spread or pipe on top of cooled cake.  (I tried to copy their picture so I put the frosting in a large Ziploc bag and piped the frosting in large loops back and forth around the cake.)

Leprechaun Crunch

by penji1

St Patrick's Day party 007

And the other treat from our St Patrick’s Day party, Leprechaun Crunch or Leprechaun Bark, whichever you prefer.  Found this recipe on a website called “Business 2 Community”.  I only had a small taste of this but it was delicious.  I took the recipe from the website as a starting point but then changed it up a bit so, as always, I’ll give you the original version with my changes.

1/8 cup sprinkles (I used white glitter sprinkles but didn’t really measure, just sprinkled until it looked good)

1/4 cup broken pretzels (I used about 1 cup I think)

1/2 cup marshmallows from a box of Lucky Charms cereal (I used all the marshmallows in the box.)

18 oz (about 1 1/2 bags) white baking chips (I used two 12 oz bags of Wilton green candy melts and 1/2 cup white chocolate chips.)

1  Line a 9 x 9″ pan with parchment paper.  (I used a 13 x 9″ jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with sides, you could use a regular 13 x 9″ pan, I just wanted it to be thinner like bark and I lined the pan with foil.)

2  Melt chocolate chips in microwave at 1 minute intervals stirring and heating until smooth and melted.  (If you are using both the candy melts and the chocolate chips, melt them in 2 different bowls.)

3  Pour melted chocolate into lined baking pan, smoothing to make as flat as possible.  (I melted the green candy melts and poured them into the pan and then I melted the white chocolate chips and dropped the melted chocolate by spoonfuls into the pan and then used a knife to make a swirly pattern in the green.)

4  Sprinkle pretzels, marshmallows and sprinkles over the top, pressing them down gently into the chocolate.

5  Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.

6  Cut and serve.  (I broke them into random pieces for more of a bark like treat.)

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Here is the other block we made at our party!

Copycat Shamrock Shake

by penji1

St Patrick's Day party

Had a fun activity night last night with my girls from church.  We got a jump on St Patrick’s Day by decorating some wood blocks (see picture) and by eating some St Pat’s themed treats.  First up, this knockoff of a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake.  The recipe comes from a blog called “No. 2 Pencil”.  It was pretty tasty, better than an actual Shamrock Shake I think because it tasted like real ice cream and I don’t think that McDonald’s really does taste like real ice cream.

4 cup slow churned vanilla ice cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

1 1/2 – 2 cups low fat milk

3 tablespoons sugar

green food coloring

Combine all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.

Homemade Oreos

by penji1

homemade oreos 003

Made these beauties with my beautiful girls from church tonight!  So much fun and so yummy!  The recipe comes from a blog called “pen n’ paperflowers studio and design”.

cookie ingredients:

1 Devil’s Food cake mix

2 eggs

1/2 cup oil

vanilla cream filling:

1/4 cup room temperature, unsalted butter

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

2 – 3 cups powdered sugar (2 was about right)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1  For cookies, heat oven to 350.  Blend cake mix, eggs and oil.  Roll dough into small balls (we used my Pampered Chef mini scoop).  Place on cookie sheets and bake for 8 – 9 minutes.  Remove from oven and cool for 1 minute before removing from sheets.

2  For filling, cream butter and shortening together then add powdered sugar and vanilla.  (I doubled this so the cookies would have a good amount of filling and it was just the right amount.)

3  Assemble cookies by spreading filling on the bottom of one and then pressing another on top!

Paula Deen’s Mountain Dew Cake

by penji1

Mountain Dew Cake 002

I have a friend at work who is a huge Mountain Dew Throwback fan so when I saw this recipe on Pinterest, I knew just who to make it for!  It comes from a blog called “The Big Red Pot”.  Can’t tell you how it tastes obviously but it smelled pretty good while baking, won’t know until tomorrow how it is!

1 box lemon cake mix

1 (3.4 oz) box lemon flavored instant pudding mix

1 (12 oz) can Mountain Dew (I used a Throwback)

3/4 cup oil

4 eggs

1  Preheat oven to 325.

2  Whisk together cake mix and pudding mix.  Add in eggs, oil and Mountain Dew.  Mix on low for 30 seconds then on medium for 2 minutes.

3  Spray bundt pan with cooking spray (I use the one for baking) then pour batter into pan.  Bake 45 – 50 minutes.

4  Let sit in pan 20 – 30 minutes before removing.

(I mixed up a simple glaze of powdered sugar and milk to drizzle over the cake and then I sprinkled Pampered Chef Lemon Sprinkles over the top for decoration and added flavor.)

Cafe Rio Chicken

by penji1

Cafe Rio chicken 002

So here’s what’s left of the 2 pounds of Cafe Rio chicken that I made for lunch/dinner today.  Cafe Rio is one of my husband’s favorite restaurants so I thought I’d give this recipe a try and I was not disappointed!  It was really easy to make and tasted awesome!  The recipe comes from a blog called “Chef in Training”.

2 pounds chicken breasts

1/2 small bottle of Zesty Italian dressing (which is 8 oz or 1 cup), I used Zesty Free Italian dressing to cut down on calories and I don’t think you can taste the difference

1/2 tablespoon minced garlic (I used 2 cloves of fresh garlic)

1 package Ranch dressing mix, mixed with 1/2 cup water

1/2 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 tablespoon cumin

Place all ingredients in crock pot.  (I put the chicken in the crock pot and then mixed the remaining ingredients in a large measuring cup with a whisk and then poured it over the chicken.)  Cook on high 5 – 6 hours or on low 8 hours.  Shred with fork.  (Here’s the best tip I’ve ever learned from going to many years of “Taste of Home Cooking Schools” –   put the cooked chicken into the bowl of your mixer and then with paddle attachment, mix on low speed until chicken is shredded, I didn’t time it but I’m pretty sure it took less than a minute and it works like a charm!)  Here’s what I did with the sauce left in the crock pot after removing and shredding chicken, since it had lots of chicken bits and stuff in it, I strained it and then mixed it into the shredded chicken.

Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

by penji1

Outrageous Chocolate Cookies 006

What better way to spend a day off work than making cookies?  These are a Martha Stewart recipe and will please the chocolate lover at your house, actually please may not be a big enough word, they will send the chocolate lover at your house into a blissful state of joy!  🙂  (If such a person exists at your house, you might want to double the recipe like I did because 2 dozen just won’t be enough!)

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped (I used chocolate chips)

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

2/3 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 (12 oz) package semisweet chocolate chunks (I used chips here too)

1  Preheat oven to 350.  Heat chopped chocolate and butter in microwave safe bowl in 20 second intervals, stirring between each, until almost melted; do not overheat.  In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

2  Beat together eggs, brown sugar and vanilla on high until light and fluffy.  Reduce speed to low and beat in melted chocolate.  Mix in flour mixture until just combined.  Stir in chocolate chunks.

3  Drop heaping tablespoons of dough 2 – 3″ apart onto baking sheets.  Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until cookies are shiny and crackly yet soft in centers, 12 – 15 minutes.  Cool on baking sheets 10 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Puddin’head

by penji1

frosting recipe

How fast can 2 able bodied reasonably talented in the kitchen young ladies (ok, 1 youngish lady and 1 younger lady) put together a birthday cake?  Turns out the answer is pretty darn fast!  Yesterday was Jaren’s (my daughter’s fiance) dad’s birthday and Courtney wanted to make him a cake but it was like 7:30 at night so what to do, what to do?  The answer is hurry and bake a chocolate cake in the guitar shaped pan we have and call it a ukulele and then frost it just as soon as it has cooled off!  But wait a minute, there is no powdered sugar to make the buttercream icing, how could that happen?  And then one remembers the marvelous thing called Pinterest which is just chock full of all kinds of ideas such as how to make frosting without powdered sugar and sure enough there is this adorable and versatile recipe called Puddin’head from a blog called “Not Just Cute” which is tasty and delicious and, the best part, we have all the ingredients for, yippee!  Cake and birthday saved, crisis averted!  And so now I give you the recipe which saved our day!

1 package vanilla (or any flavor you like I guess) pudding (any size)

1 container Cool Whip (any size), thawed

Mix pudding mix with half the milk called for on the box just until it is starting to thicken then fold in Cool Whip.  Ta Da!  Done!

She says she has used any combination of pudding box sizes and Cool Whip container sizes, all with good results.  You can color it easily as you can see Cort did with the decoration color.  She also uses it for fillings in cupcakes, serves it with pancakes and waffles, in place of just plain Cool Whip in recipes, your imagination is the limit, I’m thinking it would be great in a trifle.

Mini Chocolate Cupcakes

by penji1

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And the last dessert from Courtney’s bridal shower, adorable little chocolate cupcakes.  The recipe for the mini cupcakes comes from a blog called “Baking Bites” while the presentation idea comes from another blog called “Savannah Smiled”.  I love the presentation with the mini cupcakes sitting in a plastic goblet on top of candies and then topped with a decorative pick.  Since it was a wedding shower and it is so close to Valentine’s Day, I went with the conversation hearts for the candy and then to match those, little heart cut out on my cricut and attached to a toothpick.  Cute, cute, cute, people are so clever!  The cupcakes tasted ok, nothing special though.

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1  Preheat oven to 350.  Line 48 mini muffin cups with paper liners.

2  Sift together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

3  In another bowl, whisk together milk, oil, vanilla and vinegar.  Pour into dry ingredients and stir just until combined and no streaks of flour remain.

4  Distribute batter evenly into prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.

5  Bake for 10 – 12 minutes, until a tester inserted in center comes out clean.

Applesauce Cinnamon Quick Bread

by penji1

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I found these adorable little tiny paper loaf pans at that same store in SLC, “Gygis”, where I found the candy mold.  That place is heaven for people who love all things food like me!  There is a coffee cake that I make which is very cinnamony so I thought I’d make some tiny loaves of cinnamon bread for Cort’s shower.  I found this recipe on a blog called “Lemon Drop”.  The house smelled so heavenly while these little guys were baking, it was awesome!  I haven’t tried one yet so I can’t tell you how they taste but I bet it’s great!  This recipe made 24 mini loaves.

2 1/2 cups flour

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup chunky applesauce (I used smooth)

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2/3 cup milk

2 tablespoons oil

1  Preheat oven to 350.

2  Spray large loaf pan with baking spray (the kind with flour).

3  In large bowl, whisk together first 4 ingredients.

4  In medium bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients.

5  Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients, blending just until combined.

6  Pour into loaf pan and smooth top.

7  Bake 55 – 60 minutes or until toothpicks inserted in center comes out clean.  (My minis only took about 15 – 20 minutes to bake.)

To finish these off, I mixed together powdered sugar and milk until I got a thick glaze then I poured it into a ziploc bag, snipped off a corner and then piped a curvy line on the top of each loaf to pretty it up!)