When life gives you snow....make brownies!

My backyard looks like this today
So I made these

We are expecting 18-24 inches of snow this weekend. We are not expecting BeanieDaddy to make it home from work tonight. So, to get us through the afternoon and into tomorrow I decided to make brownies. Brownies seem to be the forgotten child of the chocolate dessert family. At least they are here. I'm more apt to do a cake, or cupcake or candy or something else. Brownies are usually an afterthought for some reason.

But I knew I had the ingredients on hand (at least I was pretty sure) and a page from my Southern Living Christmas Cookbook with a menu for a coffee and chocolate party has been taunting me for weeks. However, I had to make some alterations. The recipe calls for bittersweet baking chocolate and I had semisweet. After doing a little investigation, I learned that you can add unsweetened cocoa to the semisweet chocolate and you would have something closer to bittersweet. Also, the recipe calls for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate morsels. I have had a bag of raspberry chocolate morsels in the pantry waiting for a home so I used them instead. The result: pure heaven. It turned into one of those desserts that is so yummy but a little too rich to eat too much at one time. The hope is that these will last a while.

Here is the full recipe with my changes.

Dark Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from 2008 Southern Living Christmas Cookbook
1 cup butter
8 ounces bittersweet baking chocolate squares
2 cups raspberry chocolate morsels, divided
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, toasted
1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt

Microwave butter, bittersweet chocolate, and 1 cup morsels in a 4-quart bowl at high 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or until chocolate is melted, stirring mixture every 30 seconds. Whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Toss together walnuts, 1 Tbs flour, and remaining 1 cup of morsels. Stir remaining four and salt into sugar mixture. Stir in walnut mixture. Spread batter into a greased 13- x 9-inch pan.

Bake at 350-degrees for 30-40 minutes or until edges begin to pull away from pan (a wooden pick inserted in center will not come out clean). Cool on a wire rack.

In addition to the brownies, I made this pulled pork marinade recipe from The Naptime Chef. I doubled the recipe and added 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper and a little more than a pinch of red pepper flakes to give it a little more of a kick. And wow did it add kick. The smell of the pork roast cooking in the crock pot all day is amazing. I think this will be my go-to marinade/barbecue recipe from now on. Too bad Dad won't be home tonight, but there will be plenty when he returns.

Christmas Dinner Revisited

I have to say that one of the highlights to Christmas dinner was our first course, Cream of Curried Peanut Soup. It was simply scrumptious and I have been craving it ever since we had it. It was super easy to make. In fact, I made it a day ahead of time and simply warmed it up just before serving. I had never had peanut soup and questioned if I would like it. Again, completely surprised by the outcome and will most certainly make it again. Plus, I wasn't alone in liking it. Everyone enjoyed it, even my mom who tends to be a bit picky.

Good Bye Summer

It is crazy to me that summer is already coming to an end. Each summer seems to get shorter and shorter as I get older, so I hope that the warm lazy days seem to linger a bit more for JillyBean. These were always my favorite days as a kid - getting to stay out late, run through the neighborhood with friends, swim - and I want Jilly to have the same experience.

We made our last batch of fruit pops last week, and wouldn't you know it they were the best. The peaches seemed much sweeter than those we used the last go around and I have decided that fresh peach pops are a little more refreshing and tastier than strawberry, even though I like to eat strawberries more on their own. The fruit pops will soon be replaced with homemade applesauce, baked cinnamon apples, pumpkin bread and hot cocoa. Not bad replacements, but certainly not as fun to eat as frozen pops or fudgesicles.

Our summer is not officially over. We still have our summer vacation approaching, although the calendar will say that it is fall. We are heading to Bald Head Island in a week and are holding out hope that the warm weather sticks around a bit longer for a few nice afternoons on the beach. But once we return our focus will be on getting ready for Halloween, then Thanksgiving and then Christmas is upon us. It's hard to believe that the year coming to an end.

Sweet Temptations

I am a follower of a fabulous cake designer's blog called Cake Journal. This woman makes some amazing cakes and I can only wish that I had half of her talent. Actually, what I really need is the patience to make such beautiful creations.

I can say that I do make pretty good cakes. I can usually bake pretty well. It's the decorating part where I fall short. So, I was super duper excited to see a new e-mail pop up in my in box from Williams-Sonoma touting their new cookie cake pan.

The recipe is for a chocolate cake and you can either spread frosting between to two ends or ice cream. I vote for ice cream.

Twisted Pumpkin

Kappa Prep had posted a yummy looking Martha Stewart recipe a couple of weeks ago and I made it for dinner last night - penne pasta with creamy pumpkin sauce. Yum! The only strange thing was getting past the idea that the sauce wouldn't taste like pumpkin spice like I'm used to having in a pie or pumpkin bread. You know how your brain is used to something being one way but it isn't so it takes a bit for you to get used to the new thing? That's what it was like with this recipe. Still, it was a success and something that will be made again.

The deviation that I made from the recipe was not garnishing it with the toasted rosemary. A couple of reviewers didn't care for it so I passed on it, too. I did toast/fry it as the recipe says just to have the flavor, but tossed it out.

Baby Crocker

JillyBean and Beanie Mom made banana bread yesterday. It was the perfect project for a cool rainy fall afternoon. JB mashed the bananas and did a great job. And because we love all of you who follow along here, we are sharing our fabulous banana bread recipe. Well, it isn't exactly ours. We got it from a cookbook that JB's Great Grandma Patterson gave Mom many years ago. It's a compilation of recipes from members of her church - church cookbooks are the best. There are three banana bread recipes in the book and the one submitted by Mollie Erwin Custer is to die for. Enjoy!

Banana Bread
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 Tbs canned milk
2 cups flour
3 mashed (ripe) bananas
1 cup chopped nuts
pinch of salt

Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs, flour and milk, then soda and baking powder. Mix well. Add bananas, nuts and salt. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour at 325-degrees