Chocolate Caramel Apple Slices

One of my personal favorite ways to eat an apple is in the form of caramel apples. Something about the sweet, sticky caramel combined with the juicy tartness of the apple makes for a perfect combination.

To make the apples easier to eat, I dipped individual slices rather than dipping the entire apple at once. If you frequent Pinterest at all, I am sure you’ve seen something similar to this. Some people, myself included, have had difficulty making these, because the caramel does not stick too well to the pre-cut apples. To overcome this I dipped the apple slices in chocolate first (which sticks without any problems), then drizzled caramel over the top. I made two different versions, but don’t feel limited by what I made.

The first, and my personal favorite, is similar to a turtle. For these, I dipped each apple slice in melted chocolate, allowed the chocolate to set, then drizzled some caramel over the top and sprinkled with chopped pecans.

The second kind is a chocolate peanut butter combination. To make these, I melted some chocolate candy melts, stirred in a spoonful of peanut butter, and dipped. The proportions are really up to you; start with a single spoonful of peanut butter, and add from there if you want a more distinct peanut butter taste. For decoration I also drizzled some melted peanut butter over the top. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of these, so you’ll just have to believe me when I say they were beautiful and delicious.

The possibilities of flavor combinations really are endless, limited only by your own imagination.

Peanut Butter Brownie Bites

I recently took a vacation to visit all my family back home in AZ. It was a wonderful trip, and I loved seeing everyone, but sometimes my family can be a little stressful. And normally when I'm stressed, I bake. But I couldn't, because I was staying with family; I didn't really feel like I could just commandeer my in-laws' kitchen. So once I got back to my own home, one of the first things I did was whip up these bad boys. They are the perfect combination of fudgy brownie and salty peanut butter.

They are also super easy to make. Simply bake your favorite brownies in a mini muffin tin. I used Duncan Hines box mix. Follow the instructions on the back of the box, and bake for 16 minutes. For half of the brownie bites, I placed half of a Hershey's dark chocolate candy on top immediately after removing the brownies from the oven. This allowed the heat of the brownies to melt the chocolate a bit. For the other half, I stirred in peanut butter chocolate chips. I don't know if you've seen them in the store, but they are a fun swirl chip, half peanut butter, half chocolate. You could also just leave the brownies plain, if that's your preference. I thought both versions I tried turned out super tasty.

While your brownies are cooling, whip up the peanut butter frosting. Beat together 1/2 cup softened butter with 2/3 cup peanut butter. Then, slowly add in 1 cup powdered sugar. Simply pipe that onto your brownies, top with a mini peanut butter cup, and you are good to go! Find a friend to share these with, or gorge yourself on them. Believe me, once you eat one, it's hard to stop.

Mini Peach Cobbler

Like most people, I have many favorite desserts. Topping the list are cheesecake, crème brulée, and magic cookie bars. However, since autumn is approaching, my mind is on pies, cinnamon, and fruit, so I made peach cobbler!

I wanted to make it mini, but couldn’t find any winning recipes out there for a mini cobbler. This version is adapted from my normal peach cobbler, with just a few adjustments to make it cupcake-sized.

There were many options for making peach cobbler in mini form. The easiest is probably to simply put some peaches in a cupcake pan and cover with normal cobbler batter. That would work, but I wanted to be able to pick mine up to eat it. To achieve that, I decided to make a sort of crust out of the cobbler first, pre-bake it so it wouldn’t get soggy, and then add peaches and a bit more cobbler on top for looks. It turned out perfect!

Do you want to know what I did? Of course you do!

First, mix white cake mix with butter until you reach the consistency shown below. Spoon that mixture into a lined cupcake pan, pressing down with a cup to get an even layer. Save a bit of the mixture for the topping.

Pop the crusts in the oven and bake for about 5-10 minutes, depending on how you prefer your cobbler. The longer you leave it in, the easier they will be to hold while eating; I like mine fairly soft, so 5 minutes was perfect.

Next, add peaches. Use fresh if you have them; if there aren’t any on sale, you can use canned (which is what I had to do). Add some cinnamon to get that autumn flavor.

Add a few drops of the cake and butter mixture on top of the peaches, then bake at 350 for an additional 20 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool (if you can resist the delicious smell coming your way) for 5 minutes.

You should go make these now.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn

Chocolate. Peanut Butter. Popcorn.

Only three ingredients to make one of the most addicting snacks you will ever eat. How can you beat that?

Want to know how to make it? It couldn't be simpler.

First, melt 1 ½ cups of milk chocolate. I used chocolate almond bark because it is what I had on hand, but regular chocolate chips would work just as well. You could also use semi-sweet or a blend of milk and semi-sweet chips depending on how sweet you want it.

Next, stir in a big spoonful of peanut butter, roughly ½ cup. Stir until it is all incorporated into the chocolate.

Pour the chocolate mixture over 1 bag of popped popcorn*. It can be a little hard to stir; to make it easier, use a bowl that is bigger than the amount of popcorn you have. This way you don’t have to worry about popcorn spilling out when you stir.

Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper. Once the chocolate mixture is evenly distributed, spread the popcorn out onto the cookie sheet and allow the chocolate to set up so it is no longer melted, about an hour. If you need to set it up faster, you can put it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. Once it is all set up, break it up into chunks and enjoy.

For a fun way to serve this, you can put it into cupcake liners (shown above), or package it up into bags and give it away. It would make a great Christmas or Holiday gift that is delicious, simple, and inexpensive; perfect for this stressful time of the year.

*For the popcorn, you can either pop your own if you have a popcorn popper, or if you are like me, you can just buy Newman’s Own Organic Popcorn. I bought it at Walmart, so it’s easy to find, and there is no butter or salt added, so it is great for things like this.

Brownie Bottom Cheesecake with Nutella Whip

Summer is here! With school finally being done for the semester, I'll hopefully have more time to post on here! To celebrate the end of the semester, I decided to make this yummy dessert:

I wish I could take credit for this brilliant concoction, but alas, someone wiser than I came up with it (follow the link for the recipe!). Martha of The Kitchen Cookie has tons of yummy looking desserts (she has savory food too, but I'm more interested in the sweet :), including quite a few cheesecakes that I can't wait to try! I'm still not very confident in my cheesecake abilities, so I prefer to see how others spruce it up, then copy them :) Maybe by the end of the summer I'll be willing to make my own concoction!

This cheesecake is quite simple, and very delicious! I needed to cook the brownies just a little longer, I think. Mine sort of oozed out of place when I poured on the cheesecake. Maybe it's because I cheated and just used box brownie mix, and it takes longer to cook? I guess I'll just have to make it again! Other than that, I love how it turned out. Martha piped her Nutella whip on with a fancy star tip all over, but mine was too soft, and the details got lost. So, I just used a spoon to give it a rough finish, then covered it with shaved chocolate. Maybe not as fancy as hers, but I still think it looks good!

Nutella Cookies

So, a while ago I bought some Nutella from Costco a while ago, and my family has been pretty slow going through it. I decided that to try and speed along the consumption rate, I would try to make cookies with it! The first attempt turned out okay, but not great. This attempt, however, turned out FANTASTIC! I think they are super yummy, and wanted to share them with you guys!

Ingredients

1 cup butter-flavored shortening

1 cup nutella

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 bag Hershey's Kisses

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream shortening, nutella, and both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy.

3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix until blended.

5. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add slowly to the butter mixture and mix on medium speed until completely combined.

6. Shape 1 inch balls around Hershey's Kisses and place in mini muffin tins. Bake for 8-9 minutes. Allow to cool slightly, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.

I used a Peanut Butter Cookie recipe from the Cookbook Queen (love her, she's HILARIOUS! If you haven't read her blog, you should definitely check it out!), and adapted it slightly for what I wanted. If any of you try these, let me know how they turn out!

Guest Post: Ashley from Ashley's Craft Corner

Today, we're lucky enough to have a special guest post from one of the most awesome bloggers out there! Okay, so I might be a little biased, but she pretty much helps me out with all of my crafts, and I probably wouldn't have a craft blog at all if it weren't for her!

Without further ado: Ashley, from Ashley's Craft Corner!

Hi everybody! I'm Ashley from Ashley's Craft Corner (and Lori's big sister hehe). When Lori asked me to do a guest post I knew exactly what I wanted to share.

My inspiration came from this project. I contemplated making something very similar for my older brother and his wife for Christmas and asked my sisters what they thought. We decided that it wasn't a good fit for my brother, but Lori said that she liked the idea. I knew that if I was going to make some art for Lori that it needed to be a rooster. This is what I came up with.

I found an image I liked online, then had my hubby take the image and make an outline of each section as a vector image so that I could cut it out with my Silhouette. I can't really give a better description than that because I don't really know what/how he did it (I just sent him the image and asked him to make it work with my machine).
If you don't have a Silhouette (and hubby who is good with computer stuff) here is what you can do:
Print out your image.
Cut out each section. It will be kind of like a puzzle at this point.
Trace each section onto your paper of choice. I prefer to trace onto the backside of my scrapbook paper so that I don't have to worry about any lines showing on the finished product.
Cut out each traced section.
Mod Podge each "puzzle" piece onto a sheet of card stock. Add any wording you want at the bottom. Once it is dry give the whole thing a coat of Mod Podge, then frame it (after it dries).

I was pleased with the results and I think Lori was too!