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Food, Sweet

Apple Turnovers

These are delicious, promise!

We might have picked way too many apples when we went to the orchard. There’s nothing wrong with that, just now I have to find some way to cook them all up. Just eating the apples raw does not appeal to me, especially when I have half a peck to eat. So I went to the store and bought a thing of croissants in the dairy section. You know the ones for those too lazy to make them from scratch. (That’s like, what, everyone, right?)

Need:
2 small apples (or one mega apple), peeled and diced into small cubes
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
1 tablespoon butter (not margarine, we love our fat here)
Container of croissant rolls from the dairy section

Preheat the oven to 350 (or whatever your croissant rolls recommend). In a frying pan heated on low-medium, I placed two apples, peeled and diced. With that I added the cinnamon, sugar, and butter. Cooked until softened, which was about as long as my oven took to preheat, say about 10 to 15 minutes. I like my apples with a bit of a bite, so if you like your inside of your turnovers mushier, just cook them longer.

Look at all that cinnamon!

Now it may look like a lot of cinnamon, but I like it that way. You don’t, then use less. After all, you’re eating them… unless you want to drop off a few here. I’ll take your leftovers. When that’s all cooked through, it’s time to roll out the croissants…

Whoops, I may have ripped them when pulling them out of the can.

A spoonful per turnover is perfect. Roll it up and then cover the sides. I flip over the turnovers so the closed part is underneath. Then cut a small hole in the top of each one to let air out.

Almost ready for the oven.

Cook for the time on the croissants, these were 12 minutes.

Perfect!!

Now I just have to not eat them all.

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October 18, 2012 by
Food, Sweet

Peanut Butter Cheesecake Bites

So I was offered up the proposal to either go to the gym and work out, or stay at home, drink wine, and make dessert. Take one guess what I opted to do.

It tastes way better than it looks, I promise.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup  chocolate chips
1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
2 pkgs. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened (I used one regular and one reduced fat package)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 325. (At this point, we opened a bottle of wine, best decision of the night). However, you should probably combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and 1/4 cup of sugar. Put 1/2 cup of the mixture on the side, press the rest into the bottom of the baking pan. I used a 9 x 13 inch pan (the beauty that I use to make my awesome lasagna.)

Making the crumby base.

Then we proceeded to mix in another bowl the following: softened cream cheese, rest of the sugar, flour, and vanilla extract.  Add eggs one at a time, mix until smooth. We didn’t have an electric mixer, so it took a while. But the workout is worth it. Beat in the peanut butter and fold in the chocolate chips. Pour in baking dish, crumble the rest of the graham cracker mix on the top of the cream cheese mixture.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until set. Let cool, then refrigerate. Believe me, it was delicious. And let it cool, because we didn’t at first (because we were so eager to eat it), that it wasn’t as good as it was cool.

Yum!

Yum, yum!

I sprinkled a bit of sugar on top of the bars after I cut them. Gave them a bit of an extra bite.

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September 25, 2012 by
Food, Sweet

Pistachio Cake

Fact: I have no need for the amount of baked goods I make. I have no idea what possesses me at 11:30 p.m. on any given night to say, “Yes, I think I’ll bake a cake, or cookies, or brownie bars.” It’s one of the many wonders of the world. Just as curious as why I decided I wanted to make something with a vanilla cake mix and pudding mix. This is what I came up with, a good old fashioned, very moist pistachio cake. It needs no frosting, but if you’re so inclined, you certainly could put something on it, like a glaze.

Pistachio Cake

Ingredients:
Vanilla Cake Mix
3.4 oz dry pistachio instant pudding mix
4 eggs
1/4 c vegetable oil
1 & 1/4 c water
Green Food Dye, optional

Preheat oven to 350. Mix everything together and place into a baking pan. Bake for 35 minutes. Easy, simple, done! If you want to make it more green, just add some green food coloring to the batter before baking.

 

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September 13, 2012 by
Food, Sweet

Sin Bar: Chocolate & Peanut Butter

I have a weakness for chocolate chip cookies, I go weak in the knees for brownies, and I’m pretty sure I’d sell my first child for something delicious with peanut butter (especially when I’m on a diet). As you can tell from this post, I’m either not on a diet, or I’m trying to fatten everyone in my vicinity so I feel better about myself.

I came up with this recipe when I was wandering the supermarket. I pretty much was holding a box of brownie mix and a cookie mix and wondering which was the better of two evils, if I had to eat one or the other.  And I realized I didn’t want one or the other, I wanted both. (I also had a hankering for peanut butter, but that was just not going to happen unless I spooned it into my mouth since I ran out of bread the other day and didn’t want to buy a new loaf.) So in an effort to kick my diet out the window and succumb to sweets, I bought it all and decided to make these bars. (Which are delicious!! And possibly deadly.)

Yes, I used boxed, but you don’t have to. It was 11 at night and I was being lazy, so I thought this would be quicker to just make them boxed. I ended up making the brownie part first. I lined the 8 x 8 tray with wax paper, because 1) I know the tray is old and gross (s0rry, guys, it’s true), and 2) I needed to lift it out of the pan so I could use it later for the cookie layer.

I baked it at 350 for 50 minutes… making it then midnight by the time these puppies came out. However, they were perfect and I let it cool enough that I felt I could pull it out by the wax paper and onto the cooling rack (making sure it was still in the wax paper.)

So I mixed up the cookie mix and kept the oven at 350. Relined the pan with wax paper.

Then I put it in the tray, making sure to leave some room at the edges. Baked that for about 20 minutes. Just keep an eye on it, I originally thought it would take only 15 minutes, but being as thick as it was, it took a few more minutes before perfection. I let that cool and then went to work on the bottom layer. You really want these layers to cool, believe me.

So I put a layer of peanut butter on the brownie layer. Took about half a cup of creamy peanut butter, put it in a bowl in the microwave for 20 seconds and make it all melty and smooth. Then, making sure not to get it over the edges, I covered the brownie. But I was missing something, it felt…

Of course! I needed to add mini chocolate chips. It was only a handful and just wanted a small sprinkling. Then I made sure the cookie layer was completely cool. I even put it in the fridge for a bit so it could get hard enough for me to successfully pull off of the wax paper and flip onto the brownie layer. Believe me, this was actually very hard to do since it was after midnight and I was already exhausted. Why, again, did I want to make these in the middle of the night??

Took the whole thing, once it was together and put it in the fridge over night. Then I took a bread knife and cut it into bite-size (as bite sized as I could get) pieces. Now, to hold myself back from eating them all.

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August 20, 2012 by