Brownie Pudding

I know what you're thinking.  Brownies and pudding have their respective places.  I mean, one is eaten off of a napkin and the other has to be put into a bowl (or a goblet if you're fancy).  So how do you combine the two?

Honestly, I don't know how it works.  It's like magic. 

Some things are better left unexplored.  We need a little more whimsy in our lives.  Just leave it be.  It's magic.

BROWNIE PUDDING
Recipe from Better Homes and Gardens
1 c. flour
3/4 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. milk
2 Tbsp. cooking oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. chopped pecans (or walnuts)
3/4 c. packed brown sugar
1 1/2 c. boiling water
1/4 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1.  Grease 8x8x2 inch pan.

2.  Stir together flour, granulated sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.  Stir in the milk, oil and vanilla.  Add in the nuts.  Pour brownie mixture into pan.

3.  In another medium bowl, stir together brown sugar, boiling water, and 1/4 c. cocoa powder.  Pour over the brownie mixture in the pan.

4.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.  Serve warm with ice cream on top!

When you cut into it, the 'pudding' will have mysteriously moved down to the bottom.  It is like a brownie and hot fudge in one pan!  a.k.a. Magic!

Meringues

I've always been a fan of cookies for breakfast.  I mean, who isn't? 

I remember when I was little staying overnight at my grandparent's house and the next morning my sisters and I would get up to see Poppop out in the living room dipping cookies into his coffee for breakfast. 

As a five year old, it was clear to me that that was the only good reason for growing up...let's be honest, at 24 that's still the only good reason I can come up with!

These cookies are not exactly what I like to call a "breakfast cookie" (like oatmeal or molasses - which in my mind are health foods), but they are cookies that are only ready in the morning.  So if you take them out of the oven and bite into one, who am I to judge?  No one, that's who!

(Special Valentine's Day trick - shape the meringues into heart shapes!)

CHOCOLATE CHIP MERINGUES

Recipe from Great Grandma

2 egg whites

6 oz. chocolate chips

3/4 c. sugar

1.  Preheat oven to 375.

2.  Beat egg whites until soft peaks form.

3.  Gradually add sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.

4.  Fold in chocolate chips.

5.  Drop by tablespoons onto a greased cookie sheet. 

6.  Place cookie sheet in oven and immediately turn the oven off!  Leave overnight.

7.  Wake up to deliciously sweet, crunchy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside cookies!

Lemon Bars

There are a lot of things in life that are fun.  Playing with puppies for example.  Laughing 'til your sides hurt.  Dancing in the streets.

But packing is not fun.  We have to move next month.  This is the time of year that we learn just how much stuff we have.  All that stuff has to fit into cardboard boxes.  We will use sharpies.  We will mark the boxes with words like, "kitchen," "bathroom," and "clothes."  We will do it.  But it won't be fun.

Maybe we will draw pictures on the boxes.  That might be fun.

Something else that is fun is opening a birthday present from your BFF Forever Juje!

A couple weeks ago Juje sent me a box filled with a delicious lemon quick bread, earrings, a giraffe, and the most beautifully-crafted card with mountains on it, sealed with a kitty sticker (she gets me!).

You know what else she put into that box?  Lemons from her family's own lemon tree!  They were beautiful!  They had wrinkles, and brown spots and thin rinds that weren't holding pesticides.  These lemons deserved these lemon bars:

(The rest of these lemons deserved to be juiced and frozen in an ice tray for easy defrosting later.)

LEMON BARS
Recipe from Mrs. Hart
2 c. flour
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 c. butter
4 eggs, slightly beaten
2 c. sugar
4 Tbsp. flour
4 Tbsp. lemon juice
powdered sugar, for dusting

1.  Blend together flour, powdered sugar and butter until like cornmeal.  Press into a 9x13 pan (use your fingers, it will be ok).  Bake at 350˚ for 15 minutes.

2.  Beat together eggs, sugar, 4 T. flour and lemon juice until light and fluffy.

3.  Pour onto crust.

4.  Bake 25-30 minutes.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

*Should be golden color - Watch!

Happy National Pie Day

How come I didn't know that it was National Pie Day until this morning?  I totally would have stayed home and baked instead of trudging through the "freezing mist" to get to work this morning.

Maybe tonight, after teaching yoga, I will be really motivated to make the miniature cherry pies (in a jar) that I have had pinned for a while.

In the meantime, if you have some time today, I highly recommend you celebrate this totally legit holiday.  Throw some ice cream on top, kick your feet up, watch some horrible reality TV (I'm lookin' at you Bachelor), and enjoy.

If you're looking for recipe ideas, don't forget to try these out:

You can take this Pie Crust and fill it with whatever you want, and if you're drawing a blank - no worries...try one of these:

Apple Pie
Ice Cream Pie (for Southern readers only!)
Quiche (for those that are still sticking to their New Year's resolutions)
Pumpkin Pie
Keylime Pie

24 Candles (Coconut Cake)

That was it.

That was the last year that I could have a birthday cake with only a single box of candles. 

Austin made me this delicious (and good-looking) coconut cake for my 24th birthday this year.  It was a lot of candles to blow out, but thanks to my Ujjayi breath, those candles didn't stand a chance against my lungs! 

If my wish comes true, I'll let you know.

Recipe from Paula Dean.

Orange Oatmeal Bread (bread machine recipe)

Here is a recipe for all of you married folk out there.  If you're not married, you can make it too but I'm assuming you don't have a bread maker.  I'm pretty sure I'm the only unmarried person in the world with a bread maker.  I probably am also the only person that uses her bread maker often enough to justify taking up the space.

But we're going to change that.  When you see how delicious and easy homemade bread can be, you will use your old wedding present just as much as I do!

ORANGE OATMEAL BREAD
Recipe from The Bread Machine Cookbook II
By: Donna Rathmell German
1 1/3 c. orange juice
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. grated orange peel
2 c. oats
2 c. bread flour
2 1/2 tsp. yeast


1.  In the order listed, add all of the ingredients to the breadmaker.

2.  Run the bread maker on it's normal setting (about 3 hours).

See!  That was easy!

Birthday Cake!

Ever since I can remember, my mom has made my birthday cake for me.  Every year it is the same (except for that one year when I really wanted purple (read: brown) icing...that one didn't get repeated) white cake, lemon filling, white butter cream frosting with pink flowers and green leaves.

When I was little, I would eat all the cake out first and save the icing (a.k.a. "The Best Part") for last.  Now, I have a different system.  It's pretty scientific...hard to describe, but it results in an even distribution of cake and icing throughout the entire piece.  Absolute perfection!

Today, I am turning 24...I'm kind of freaking out about it (In the, I'm-getting-older-and-I-have-no-clue-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life kind of way!), but I'm not even going to try to replicate my mom's cake...I'll have a milkshake instead!

I'll post another recipe or 2 this weekend, but for now you can just look at pictures of the cake I made for Austin back in September.

Have a great 3 day weekend!

p.s. If you want to make this cake, click here for the recipe for the icing and the cake is just from a box!

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are emotional eaters out there.  And while I may eat slightly more when I have a bad day, my real issue is emotional baking.  After a bad day, there is nothing that can cure my woes like baking.  Baking anything really.  Just the act of taking simple ingredients, mixing them all together, and adding some heat can really change things around.

So last week, after a particularly frustrating day at work, I came home, got out my mixer, and got busy. 

This recipe had another mission: to use one of my brand new pans!  Enter: browned butter.

Bacon Waffles

You're not on a diet right?  Let's not do that.  Let's just eat what we want. 

Then go to yoga.

You'll never be happy eating egg beaters. 

You know what would be better?  Beat your own egg whites and add them to some butter, flour, and some other things and make some waffles!  Oh!  Let's add some bacon to the mix too :)

Twenty Eleven

Everyone else out there with a blog is doing one of those "year in review" posts this week.  I was thinking, hey I want on that bandwagon!  Then I started thinking about it and realized that I didn't have a book published.  I didn't speak at a blogging conference.  I didn't even get a puppy this year.  I don't have any pictures to show you.  But really, I did quite a bit this year, even if I didn't get a million followers on Call Me Fudge.

I moved all the way across the country:

I graduated from college (technically December 2010, but I walked in May 2011):

Replacing Fireworks with Stars

For New Year's Eve this year, we decided to do something other than watch A Rockin' New Year's Eve on the couch and try not to fall asleep.  We didn't even bother trying to stay awake.  I think we were asleep by about 9:00.  Coincidentally, we woke up at 11:55p.m. because the wind was really ablowin'!  I woke up because we were sleeping in this and I thought we were going to get suffocated when it collapsed:

Luckily we didn't.  We also didn't get eaten by the bear (probably deer) rummaging around our campsite, most likely looking for our pic-a-nic basket.  So, we survive another year!  Now we just have to wait until that whole Mayan-End-of-the-World thing happens. 

For the specs: Austin and I strapped on our backpacks, hiked one of the most popular sections of the Appalachian Trail until we reached McAfee's Knob.

We ate some hot dogs with cheese in them, mixed into our rice.  We roasted marshmallows and squished them between graham crackers and old chocolate bars.  It was windy and smoke kept blowing into our eyes.  We didn't want to spend the new year crying (due to the whole smoke in the eyes thing) so we played cards in the (newly splinted) tent, including the longest game of Crazy 8's ever...in the history of children's card games.  We talked about our 2012 goals, and enjoyed solitude, together (I know it's an oxymoron, but it makes sense).  It was the most perfect New Year to date!