…add  generous scoops of ice cream–your fave.  I used Calder’s chocolate chunk chocolate.

Mix in 4 marshmallows into a pot of homemade chocolate ganache over low heat and stir until the marshmallows are mostly melted and incorporated.

Top with something crunchy–toasted walnuts or almond slivers, salty roasted peanuts, coconut, graham crackers…more chocolate!

Eat….mmm.

Related posts:

1. Granola Bar Cookies
2. Leave it to me to make a blondie that’s actually brown
3. And for dessert…

Cut up one small onion, one medium summer squash and two cloves of garlic.  Mix together with a cup of sharp shredded cheddar, a tsp of salt, a half tsp of black pepper and a tablespoon of ancho chile powder.

Cut the tops off two large poblanos, clean out the seeds and insides and then stuff as much of the squash mix as possible.  Pour a bit of tomato or enchilada sauce on the bottom of a small pan, place peppers on top.  Pour any leftover squash mix over the peppers followed by more tomato sauce until peppers are fully covered.

Cover with tinfoil and bake at 425 for 40 minutes.  Uncover, sprinkle with more cheese let bake another 5 or until cheese is melted and gooey.

Enjoy!  Serves two.

Related posts:

1. Potato, Squash and Arugula Quesadillas: the non-recipe recipe
2. Tonight’s Dinner: Lemon Tarragon Chicken Kebabs with Bell Peppers, Squash and Pineapple
3. that is some pig: hoisin pork and peppers

I know what you’re thinking: oh geez.  Here we go again.  Yet another post where she tells us about how she hates to bake but then bakes (delicious, delectable, decadent) desserts anyway.  I just can’t take it anymore.  I just can’t handle this gastronomical rollercoaster!

Well, never fear.  Because this time it’s different.  I promise.  I’ve changed.  I’m a new person.  And I’ve done that for you.  I promise that I will be everything a baking-hating person should be.  In fact, not only do I hate baking but I, in fact, did not bake last night.

Oh sure, I mean, there’s an image of a deliciously rich dessert attached to this post.  But I didn’t bake it.  Honest.  Would I lie to you?  I told you, I’m a whole new person.  No baking and I mean it.  These bars are actually unbaked.  For all you Twilight fans, that means this dish is like the Edward of the dessert world.  But healthier looking.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

• 3/4 cup butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups quick cooking oats
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter

1. Melt butter in a pot over low heat. Stir in brown sugar, vanilla, and oats. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Press half of mixture in to the bottom of a buttered 8 x 8 dish.

2. In a medium micowave-safe bowl, microwave the chocolate and peanut butter for about 40 seconds, then stir until smooth and thoroughly mixed. Pour the chocolate peanut butter mixture over the crust.

3. Sprinkle the remaining oat mixture over the chocolate and peanut butter, pressing gently to form a crust.

4. Refrigerate until set.  Cut and serve.

Who needs an oven?

Related posts:

1. Me Want Cookie or How I learned to stop worrying and love the (banana chocolate chip) bar
2. Oh Granola
3. Apricot and cinnamon are totally going together but don’t want anyone to know

Thankfully, all you’ll need to defeat these zombie cupcakes with is a hearty appetite.  And maybe a pitchfork.  Or a regular fork.  These cupcakes were originally done by the Sweetest Kitchen and after I saw them, I figured—hey!  That’s a cute cupcake trick that I can actually do!  My friend Lindsay can decorate awesome cupcakes.  Me?  Not so much.  I’m a pretty good cook and an okay baker but decorating?  Not so much.  I lack the artistic talent to do anything beyond rudimentary.  So I was very excited to find these cupcakes because not only do I have an obvious, alarming and awesome affinity for zombies, but these are a tasty, fun and festive way to celebrate Halloween.

I got the zombie hands and the black baking cups from Bake It Pretty, which is now one of my favoritest sites ever.  For the cake, I decided to make a pumpkin cake, homemade, and I used a store-bought chocolate frosting, because it was easier.

First I mixed together the cake batter (recipe below) and poured it into the muffin tins. I got about 15 cupcakes from the mix.

Then, once the cupcakes had cooled, I pulled them onto a plate and applied a generous amount of frosting to the top of each one.

Then I crushed about a dozen regular oreos and poured the crumbs into a bowl.  I started out by dipping the cupcakes into the crumbs, but it worked much better when I just poured the crumbs over each one and patted them down.

Now for the gravestones…apparently Oreo makes an oblong shaped cookie called a Fudgee.  I used about 8 Fudgees; I pulled the cookies apart and scraped off the filling.  Each cookie side was the perfect shape for a gravestone.  After that, it was time to apply the zombie hands. Zombie spirit fingers?

They look pretty good, if I do say so myself.  And quite tasty as well.  Delicious, pumpkiny, chocolatey, crunchy and gooey topping.  Now that I’ve eaten one though, I feel a bit unsated.  Like I need something more.  Like I’m craving something else.  Like maybe I want….braaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnsssssss.

Pumpkin Cupcakes
1/2  cup butter, at room temperature
1  cup  sugar
2  large eggs
1  cup  canned pumpkin
1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
1 1/2  cups  all-purpose flour
2  teaspoons  baking powder
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4  teaspoon  salt
1/4  cup  milk

In a bowl, with a mixer on medium speed, beat butter and sugar until smooth.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add pumpkin and vanilla and beat until well blended.

In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Stir half the flour mixture into pumpkin mixture. Stir in milk just until blended. Add remaining flour mixture and stir just until incorporated. Spoon batter equally into 12 muffin cups lined with paper baking cups.

Bake in a 350° regular or convection oven until tops spring back when lightly pressed in the center and a wooden skewer inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.  Let cool and frost.

Related posts:

1. Vanilla cupcakes with roasted banana frosting
2. Cuckoo for Coconut Cupcakes
3. This cupcake has a nice body, butter face…

This is one of those recipeless recipes.  Pretty much you can insert just about anything you think sounds tasty.  Like the rest of my life, I didn’t have a plan…I just went with what I had.

First, I got a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from the store. Those things can be complete lifesavers, because sometimes you just have neither the time nor the inclination to roast a whole chicken.  They can be very salty though, so watch out for that.  Anyway, I pulled the meat off the bones and then shredded it finely with two forks.  I mixed the white and dark meat together; you can use all white, all dark or anything you like.

Then I added in some fresh avocado, about half of one chopped, some oregano, salt and pepper and fresh lemon juice and mixed everything together thoroughly.

Then I started building up the sandwich: on one piece of bread, I layed a slice of provolone cheese followed by a few slices of apple.  Yes, apple.  It provides not only additional nutrition and light flavor but crunch!  Then the chicken mixture went on top of that, followed by one more piece of cheese, followed by the last piece of bread.

Then I turned on my electric griddle (obviously you can just use a skillet over medium heat if you prefer) to about 350F and brushed it with a bit of olive oil.  When it was hot, I put the sandwich on it and then put a small glass pan on top of the sandwich to push it down.  If you had a panini press, you’d use that.  I don’t have a panini press.  So using another pan or a foil-covered brick or something stable and heavy will work; the gist is that you want something that will press the sandwich down and encourage good contact between the pan and the bread.  It’s all about communication these days, isn’t it?

After a few minutes, I flipped the sandwich over and browned the bread on the other side.  Then just slice…and eat! You get a nice dark color from the bread, a refreshing crunch from the apple and creamy goodness from the avocado and chicken.  THAT is a sandwich.

Related posts:

1. Sorry Charlie, Peanuts are for eating, not for reading: Peanut Chicken Stirfry
2. Tomato Chicken Sauté, or “Let’s See Hansel and Gretel Push Me into THIS Oven”
3. So a chicken gets dressed up for the ball…

Make a little bed out of puff pastry.  Bake until…well, puffy, about 15 minutes at 350F.

Sauté one giant onion, sliced, a few cloves of garlic, sliced, and a few sprigs of thyme, not sliced, in some olive oil and butter, cooking slowly for about a half hour until thoroughly caramelized, like this:

Roast bacon in the oven at 400F for about 15 minutes.  Drain and lay over puff pastry crust.

Layer caramelized onions over bacon

Garnish with goat cheese.

Cut and serve with soup

Ta da.

Related posts:

1. Joie de vivre: bacon, onions, butter, potatoes, goat cheese, mushrooms, cream and wine
2. Leek Onion Rings
3. Tart it up

I just had to share it with you.

First, a layer of French vanilla ice cream.

Then some pomegranate glaze (leftover from cheesecake!).

Then more ice cream.

Then a heaping spoonful of chocolate sauce (I use melted chocolate plus a bit of milk).

More ice cream.

Then pomegranate and chocolate together.

Sprinkle with nuts.

Stare at it.

Eat it.

Yay.

Related posts:

1. Tirami-sumofdat chocolate tiramisu
2. Poms Away, Vol. 2: the Cheesecake Chronicles
3. Pomegranate-braised ancho-chocolate beef: it's what's for dinner. And maybe dessert. No, just dinner. Maybe dessert.

Now, I have to give credit for this to bake-tastic blogger Bakerella, whose Easy as Pie post gave me the idea and made me think, “Hey I could do that.”  Normally, the thought “Hey I can do that” combined with actual baking is a dangerous, dangerous thing that just leaves my kitchen covered in flour and me swearing that I will never bake again and stick to what I do best, which is…well, as yet undiscovered, but will most likely be something covered in barbecue sauce.

But anyway, there was just something about the idea of tiny little pies that appealed to me, and I will say, the fact that this particular case came from mostly premade ingredients also appealed to me.  I don’t know what it is, but as a cook, I have no problem mincing my own garlic, grating my own cheese, roasting onions for hours to make a pissaladière or spending three days in the pursuit of the perfect pork rib, but I swear to God I hate having to core, peel chop and sauté down apples for pie.  I also don’t do pie crust.  This is why I pretty much don’t make pie.  I don’t actually really even eat pie.  I’m more of a cookie kind of gal.

But Josh loves pie.  He wanted cherry.  Being that I hate cherry (opposites do attract), I made half a batch of cherry pies and half a batch of good old apples.

So at 9pm on Saturday night, after a full afternoon of seeing 9 at the theater followed by the Homegrown Festival, dinner at Argerio’s and a three-times-longer-than-normal-drive-home-in-football-traffic, I set out to bake me some pie.

I had purchased two boxes of Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts, the kind that come rolled up in little pouches.  Starting with the first box, I defrosted them a bit in the microwave, then opened one pouch up, pulled out the crust and rolled it out a bit with some flour on my cutting board.

Then I went in search of cookie cutters.  Thanks to my mother-in-law and some coworkers, I have a bevy of baking basics in my closet–pastry brushes, cookie cutters, various silicone pans in various holiday-themed shapes.  I wanted these to be pretty simple though, so I just used a basic heart shape and a basic star shape.  Later, I determined I wasn’t a huge fan of the star and so began using just the rim of a glass to make circles.

I started with the apple pies.  They were heart shaped.

First I cut as many heart shapes out of the dough as possible.  The remaining dough I set to the side.  You can roll it out and make more.

Then I put a small bit of apple pie filling in the center of half of the heart shapes.

Pressed another heart shape on top of the pie filling and pressed the edges down with a fork.  Repeated for all the rest of the pie cutouts.  Brushed with an egg wash (just one egg white lasted me the entire batch), sprinkled with sugar and bake in the oven at 375F for about 10 minutes.

While warm, I sprinkled a bit more sugar and some cinnamon on top.
I did this for both rolls of pie crust in the first package.

Then I got out the second package.  These would be the cherry pies.  I made stars first, and then decided they were too messy and switched to half-moon shapes.

And otherwise, the process was the same as before.

As well as for the half moon shapes.  I started with round circle cutouts (made by using a regular drinking glass), placed a couple cherries in the middle and folded the circles over.

Then for the heck of it, I tried making just two little regular pie shapes.  They worked out the easiest, and you could get the most filling in.

At the end, I dusted the cherry ones with powdered sugar.

Josh loved them.  He was just absolutely tickled by the entire idea.  And I have to say, the entire process only took me about an hour.  I did them in 4 batches.  It was also somewhat relaxing, since my hands were busy but the work was menial enough that I could chat with Josh and not worry about missing something.  I will definitely try these again.  They’re a nice, cute little change to the regular desserts you might take to parties or just little snacks you can keep at home.

Like a tiny little bite-sized-bit of deliciousness.

Related posts:

1. Oatmeal Cream Pies
2. Lemon Bars, or How Many Lemon Jokes Have You Got?
3. Pie in the Sky

Homegrown Festival

Related posts:

1. Don't Forget! Homegrown Festival this weekend
2. Thai Thai, Kerrytown and Cake Nouveau: Weekend Adventures in Local Food
3. Friday Foodie Finds: the Ypsilanti edition

So as a thank-you to Jill, I decided to (have Josh) pick a good looking recipe out of the book and make it, so that Josh could bring it in and Jill et. al could enjoy the deliciousness of the gift.  And because thank-you notes are better dipped in chocolate and banana.

So the recipe that Josh picked (surprise surprise) was banana chocolate chip bars: bananas, peanut butter cookie dough and chocolate chips.  With chocolate frosting.  You have a little drool right there.  You might want to get that.

This recipe is in somewhat new territory for me, because I didn’t have to do anything from scratch.  I know that sounds backwards—to most people, making things from scratch is new territory.  Not for us anymore.  In fact, I’m not generally allowed to buy pre-made cookie dough or frosting.  But this recipe, I had to do basically nothing except put it all in my mixer (the recipe suggests using a bag but…why would I do that?  The dough is sticky.  Mixer.) and then put it in the oven.  Um, okay.

I mean, particularly since I didn’t even go to the store until 8pm, since I had to work late and then we had to walk the dog and then dinner was to be had.  (We cheated and went out for dinner.)  So this recipe is great for those last-minute baking needs, or for those of you with a particular affinity for Betty Crocker.

Banana Chocolate Chip Bars

1 18oz package of refrigerated peanut butter cookie dough (I just used a 16.5oz one)
1 c. rolled oats
1/2 c. mashed bananas (I used about 2 fairly well ripened bananas, maybe about just actually 3/4 c.)
1/2 c. mini semisweet chocolate pieces (Those who know me know that I don’t bake with semisweet chocolate.  I used milk chocolate morsels, or I suggest dark chocolate for you cocoa aficionados)
1/2 c. peanuts (which I just skipped)
1 16oz can chocolate and/or vanilla frosting

Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease a 13x9x2 baking pan.  Combine cookie dough, oats, banana, chocolate and peanuts in a mixer and mix until well combined.  (Like I said, the actual recipe suggests putting everything in a big bag and kneading it by hand to mix things together.  You can do that; it’s probably cleaner, but frankly, the dough is pretty sticky due to the banana and peanut butter and mixer was just as easy.  Plus, I didn’t have any bags that big.)

Remove dough from bag and pat evenly into prepared pan.

Bake 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool and frost with desired frosting.

Eat!

So there you all go.  This post is my gift to you, and you can all thank Jill for it. 

Related posts:

1. Vanilla cupcakes with roasted banana frosting
2. Double Chocolate Chip Almond Cookie Pie
3. Chocolate chip (and pumpkin spice) cookies: best in the world?