Pumpkin-shaped Buckeyes. {Recipe and Printables}

Last week was awesome. I can't wait to tell you about my trip to Auburn (go Tigers!) and Atlanta, and I have several books and things I'm excited to share as well. However, it will be Halloween in two days and I've been meaning to share my special creation with you. I suppose this could be a Halloween OR Thanksgiving treat, since it's not really spooky or anything like that. (Although, I would love to see someone make these into some little ghosties or something!)

First of all, do you know what buckeyes are? My mom used to make them for Christmas, only they are called "peanut butter balls" at our house. They are traditionally dipped in milk chocolate and are basically like homemade Reeces Peanut Butter Cups. They are goooood. These are only slightly different, as they are dipped in white chocolate. (This is probably obvious to you, but the switch to white chocolate was made in order to dye the chocolate orange for pumpkins.) They turned out super cute and delicious, in my humble opinion.

Pumpkin-shaped Buckeyes

Mix together the following ingredients, until well-blended: 1 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/2 cup butter (softened), 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 3 cups powdered sugar (or as needed, until dough will form a ball that will hold together and not fall off of a toothpick).

Form peanut butter mixture into 1-inch balls. At this point, I recommend placing the formed balls into the freezer to chill. It is not necessary, but will make the rest of the process easier.

Prepare some "stems." I used Jolly Rancher bites, and used kitchen scissors to cut them into quarters. You could probably be creative about what kind of candy you use here, just as long as it's about the right size and color.

Melt candy-coating white chocolate. The package you buy includes a microwaveable tray, so you just pop it into the microwave. Follow the instructions on the package so the chocolate doesn't become lumpy or crystallized. Add red and yellow food coloring until you have orange-tinted white chocolate. My tip here is to use a very high yellow to red ratio. A little red and a lot of yellow seemed to give us the best "orange."

Remove the peanut butter balls from the freezer and dip in chocolate. I did this by inserting a toothpick into each ball and rolling the ball around in the chocolate until coated. Set on aluminum foil or wax paper to dry. Meanwhile, place the stem at the top of the pumpkin (while chocolate is still melted).

And, voila! So easy, and cute! (If I dare say so myself.) If you'd like, you can print out some little bag toppers if you want to gift these in ziploc baggies. Just print these out at 4x6 on some cardstock, fold them in half horizontally, and staple onto the baggie. What cute fall treats are you making? I'd love to hear about it or see photos! Happy Fall!

Recipe Review: Pumpkin-Chocolate Cookies

This recipe came to me via Janssen at Everyday Reading. It has come to my attention recently that lots of people don't actually love the taste of pumpkin. This is sad, but understandable. For me, my love of pumpkin is actually more of a love for fall/winter holidays and everything that comes along with them. Pumpkin is the seminal holiday vegetable, in my book. And, unlike most vegetables, it is associated primarily with sweets. (Awesome!) 

That being said, these cookies have only a very faint pumpkin taste, so if you aren't too much into pumpkins, these may be a good way to feel seasonal but still make something you will enjoy eating. From what I could tell, the pumpkin mainly functioned in adding some moisture, but with the cinnamon/nutmeg/clove combo, you end up with something a little more festive than your usual chocolate/chocolate chip cookie. I made a few minor adjustments for simplicity's sake and because I wanted some chocolate chips instead of just melted chocolate in the cookie. Overall, they were just as advertised: crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and perfectly delicious. 

Pumpkin-Chocolate Cookies
adapted from Everyday-Reading.com

makes about 2 dozen

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/16 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
2 teaspoons vanilla

Melt the butter in a small bowl; cool in the refrigerator slightly (so it is warm, not piping hot). Meanwhile, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium mixing bowl. Add the pumpkin, vanilla, and sugar. Remove the butter from the fridge and combine with chocolate chips briefly, allowing the chocolate to melt slightly before pouring into the flour mixture. Combine all ingredients. Drop golf-ball sized spoonfuls onto your cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes, cooling afterwards for several minutes. 

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Samoas Girl Scout Cookies and (Healthy) Ice Cream

Today I will be sharing two recipes which I tried recently and which worked well. The first:

Samoas cookie bars. These really are quite similar to the Girl Scout cookies, which I love. The only two ingredients you might not have on hand are coconut and caramels. Otherwise, these are quick and easy and quite delicious.

I adapted the recipe slightly from the original, which I found here. In the original recipe, the bars are lifted out of the pan and dipped in chocolate, so that you have chocolate on the bottom and the top (more similar to the actual Girl Scout cookies). This seemed like a little too much work for me, and they turned out yummy without dipping in chocolate. My only other recommendation would be to reduce the shortbread ingredients (maybe to 2/3 of what she lists?) I felt like the cookie to coconut/chocolate ratio was a bit high.

Okay, and since Chad and I are Gettin' Healthy, we don't do dessert during the week. But Tuesday was Chad's birthday, and it felt totally wrong not to make something, you know? Chocolate Covered Katie has a recipe for easy peanut butter ice cream. I followed this recipe, but omitted the sweetener and the vanilla, instead using vanilla soy milk (not the unsweetened kind). The flavor was yummy. I could definitely eat this while Gettin' Healthy.

Peanut Butter Ice Cream (adapted from chocolatecoveredkatie.com)

1/3 cup peanut butter (I used natural)

1 cup vanilla soy milk (I'm sure almond would work great too--whatever kind you drink)

1/16 tsp salt

2 bananas

Puree and freeze (this may take a few hours). Then, enjoy! Simple and yummy.

Pineapple Tofu Stir-fry

This recipe came highly recommended. "Since we found this recipe, we eat it at least twice a week," said Maggie. (Note: I never knew Maggie to be a tofu eater in all the 10-ish years since freshman year of college, so I felt like this was really saying something.)

"I never thought I liked tofu, but I would definitely eat that again!" said Chad. I agreed: and I have eaten (and enjoyed) tofu before.

So, whether you are intimidated by, grossed out by, or just plain too good for tofu, this recipe is definitely worth a shot, imho. Enjoy!

Pineapple Tofu Stir-fry 

{source}

you will need:

• 1 8-ounce can pineapple chunks or tidbits, 3 tablespoons juice reserved
• 5 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon ketchup
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar
• 7 ounces extra-firm, water-packed tofu, drained, rinsed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 3 teaspoons canola oil, divided
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons minced ginger
• 1 large bell pepper, cut into 1/2-by-2-inch strips

 

1. Whisk the reserved 3 tablespoons pineapple juice, vinegar, soy sauce, ketchup and sugar in a small bowl until smooth. Place tofu in a medium bowl; toss with 2 tablespoons of the sauce. Let marinate for 5 minutes. Add cornstarch to the remaining sauce and whisk until smooth.
2. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Transfer the tofu to the skillet using a slotted spoon. Whisk any remaining marinade into the bowl of sauce. Cook the tofu, stirring every 1 to 2 minutes, until golden brown, 7 to 9 minutes total. Transfer the tofu to a plate.
3. Add the remaining 1 teaspoon oil to the skillet and heat over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add bell pepper and cook, stirring often, until just tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Pour in the sauce and cook, stirring, until thickened, about 30 seconds. Add the tofu and pineapple chunks (or tidbits) and cook, stirring gently, until heated through, about 2 minutes more.

Mint Oreo Brownies

Happy St. Patty's Day! Yesterday was not my free day (thanks to the flan episode with my Cuban clients; see previous post), but I still wanted to make a treat to hand out to the ward choir since they were singing in church today. My original idea was to make some variation of these mint brownies, sold famously at the BYU bookstore. But I wanted to simplify things some, and wound up with something fabulous AND easy! So I thought I'd share. The filling (which was really supposed to be frosting), turned out with the exact consistency and taste of mint oreo cookie filling. It was an accident, but I have made the frosting enough times that I know exactly what I did differently to make them turn out that way (melted the butter all the way on accident). So we ended up with "mint oreo brownies!" Get it? Like mint oreo cookies, only with brownies on the outside instead of cookies. Yummmm.

all you need right here, plus some eggs, oil, and water

this is what the filling will look like after you mix it up

the filling shouldn't be sticky or anything--you should be able to flatten it right out or roll it out.

I cut mine into little squares so they'd fit nicely between the brownie squares.

. . .like so.

you can smoosh 'em together a little if you want.

beautiful.

I was equally (if not more) excited about the sticker-buttons I made to go with the brownies. Kiss me, I'm Irish I sang in ward choir today! Cute, right? :) I printed them out on mailer label paper so I could cut them out and stick them over the plastic wrap.

I was pretty excited to tote these off to church.

here's Chad, sporting his sticker. he is my number 1 choir supporter/participant.

The choir did well. (phew). I think everyone was nervous (congregation included), but it came together just fine. I am proud of them. And I hope they all got lots of kisses. Oh, and here's the recipe in full, if you're interested. Printable version here.  

Mint Oreo Brownies

You will need:

1 Brownie Mix

Water, eggs, oil (per brownie mix directions)

Chocolate chips (optional)

3 cups powdered sugar

½ cup melted butter

¼ tsp mint extract

5 drops green food coloring

To Prepare:

Prepare brownies according to instructions on box, sprinkling chocolate chips before baking if desired. Bake in a large pan (9x13). Allow to cool before applying filling. For filling, mix melted butter and powdered sugar, adding food coloring and mint extract. Cut brownies into small squares. Roll out filling, and cut filling into squares. Layer brownie squares and filling with filling in between two brownie squares. Enjoy!

Oatmeal-crust Pizza

I made this pizza dough recipe several weeks ago and it was probably some of the best pizza we've made at home. But now that we're doing this health challenge, I don't feel super great about consuming good ol' fashioned white-flour pizza dough. (There's no rule about grains/flour, but I sorta feel like if we're gonna eat healthy, we might as well eat HEALTHY.) So yesterday, we tried out the new grinder my mom gave us for Christmas! We had oats on hand, so we ground them up for our flour and replaced flour with oat flour in the above recipe. It worked pretty well!

We loaded the pizza up with fresh veggies and fresh mozzarella cheese (YUM!).

Oh, and in case you're wondering: the recipe worked mostly okay with the oat flour. It seemed to require a bit more of the oat flour than is called for in the recipe, just to make the dough not totally sticky. Since we ran out of oat flour, we ended up having to add maybe 1/2 cup of regular flour. Overall though, it was a success and SOO good! I am excited to use the grinder for wheat and rice and other things, too.

Candy Corn Cookies

Tomorrow--an update on the prank war with the neighbors.

But today, some pictures of the cute Halloween treats we made on Wednesday. I got the recipe from ourbestbites.com (love that site!). Of course, you can go to their website and get a great tutorial, but I was so fascinated and excited about the process that I took my own pictures.

You start with great sugar cookie dough (this is the recipe I will probably use for the rest of my life, after trying it Wednesday--amazing!), divide it into three sections, and color two of the sections yellow and orange, respectively. (You leave one section white, of course). You layer them into a clear-wrap-lined loaf pan, and chill for an hour or overnight. You want each layer to be about 1/4" tall, so my dough didn't fill the whole length of the loaf pan.

Once the dough is chilled, you slice very thin pieces (like you would a loaf of bread). Cut out some triangles (I want to say "inverse triangles," but I don't know if that really describes what I mean. Check out the bestbites page if you need a picture). 

I also made some hearts, just because I thought they would be cute. 

 And we dipped everything in sugar.

What a fun treat and so fun to give away! A couple of our neighbors insisted it was the best sugar cookie they had tasted, which is a first for me and made me feel pretty awesome. Overall, a smashing success.