Monday, July 26, 2010

Cocoa Loco Krispymallow Treats

Tonight I decided to try out a Hungry Girl Recipe. I have a few Hungry Girl cookbooks and receive daily emails, but don't make the recipes that often because they typically call for a lot of ingredients... and some are ingredients that I don't always love to use (sugar substitute, etc.) I saw this recipe a while back and thought that it sounded good. It's a healthy treat.

Hungry Girl's Cocoa Loco Krispymallow Treats 

Ingredients:3 tbsp. light whipped butter or light buttery spread (like Brummel & Brown)
3 cups mini marshmallows
3 cups Chocolate Cheerios cereal
3 cups puffed wheat cereal
1 1/2 cups Fiber One bran cereal (original)
One 1.53-oz. package Reese's Pieces candy, lightly crushed
One 1.69-oz. package Milk Chocolate M&M's candy, lightly crushed

I started by spraying cooking spray in a 9x13 inch baking pan. I then took the Brummel & Brown 




And melted it in a large saucepan over low heat. 




Once the Brummel & Brown was melted, I added the 3 cups of mini-marshmallows. 


And stirred the mixture until it was completely melted. The original recipe says that it will take a while, but it was pretty quick. 

I combined the 3 different cereals.



Then poured the cereal into the saucepan and stirred everything up until the cereal was well coated with the marshmallow mixture. 


Once everything was combined, I poured the mixture into the baking pan. 




Pressed it down- then added lightly crushed M & M's and Peanut M & M's (the store didn't have a small bag of Reece's Pieces). And pressed them down into the crispy treats. 


I put the pan in the refrigerator to cool. Once treats were set, I cut them into 15 pieces. They turned out pretty good- and if you're counting points, they're only 2 points each- not bad. 

I have the original recipe if you're interested in a copy of it. 









Sunday, July 25, 2010

Baking Bridal Shower


Yesterday, my wonderful bridesmaids threw me a "baking" bridal shower at the Lutz Cafe and Pastry Shop. It was so much fun! We enjoyed a number of different delicious desserts.


Since my bridesmaids know me so well, they put together this beautiful cookbook for me with contributions from everyone attending. I cannot wait to try out some of these recipes and share the results with you.






In addition to this cookbook, I also received a lot of great cooking and baking tools. I'm currently staring at all of the boxes and wondering where everything is going to fit... but we'll figure it out!

Donna gave me a cookbook that belonged to my mom, and a pizza cookbook that belonged to my dad.


I have memories of making personal sized pizza's with my dad and brother on New Years Eve many years ago. I hope to bring that tradition back to life and this will be a great guide for that!


Thank you to all of my friends and family for making Marc and I feel so special and so loved. All of your gifts were very thoughtful and generous, and I will use every single one of them!

Friday, July 23, 2010

Stars & Stripes

I had the brilliant idea to make patriotic cookies for the Fourth of July. I had just received a cookie cutter set that included a cookie cutter for every month. I also experimented with making royal frosting for the first time using gel food coloring.

Making the cookies was a very long, tedious process. When I rolled out the dough, it kept crumbling. When I cut out star, flower and sunburst shapes, the tips would break off. I imagined beautiful red, white and blue icing, and somehow ended up with pink, yellow and blue! I was so disappointed with these cookies when I finished them. I was almost too embarrassed to serve them to my friends at our BBQ. I told Marc about 50 times that I wouldn't be making any more sugar cookies with icing for a very long time.


When I stood back and looked at the stars and stripes all together, I thought, maybe they're not so bad.... hopefully they'll just taste ok.

Turns out... my cookies were a hit! And now, of course, I can't wait to make more! Not too bad for my first try!

Welcome!

Thank you for visting my blog! I'm very excited about creating this after being an avid food blog reader for over a year. I have recently discovered my passion for baking and would love to have a place to show off what I have made. I love to bake in my free time and my goal with this blog is to make something new every week or two and to post it. Wish me luck!!!!