Friday Favorites, 6.10.11

Summer has hit Boston this week. Big time. We've had a couple days in the high 80's/low 90's. Phew. It's hot. This is what I'd love to be doing right now:

In "honor" of this summer-like weather, for this week's Friday Favorites I thought I'd share a few of my favorite Barbershop recipes when the weather gets warm...you know, the recipes that do not require turning on the oven! By the way, I did bake this week though, despite the super warm temperatures. The end product was totally worth it though....see the picture below. ;-) This recipe will be coming soon to the blog!

Okey dokey, time to share a few easy recipes that do not require baking! Perhaps I should re-name this post "What's NOT Baking in the Barbershop?!".....?

1) No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

These are ridiculously simple. Annnnd, they're ridiculously good. I made a batch earlier this week actually!

2) Easy Icebox Cake

Looove how easy this one is. And it's so versatile too! You can make it with any flavor pudding under the sun.

3) Banana Soft Serve

This requires ONE ingredient. Bananas. It could not be any easier.

4) Homemade Ice Cream (without an ice cream maker!)

This kind happens to be chocolate peanut butter. Mmmmm.

5) Butternut Squash Dip

This dip may be my favorite dip ever. Ever. You gotta try it if you haven't yet! It takes five minutes to make.

6) Smoothies! Who doesn't love a smoothie when the warm weather hits?

We've got...

Green Monster Smoothies

Cinnamon Bun Smoothies

and

Yum Yam Smoothies

And they're all fairly healthy too! :)

Alrightie, that's going to do it for my round-up of recipes that do not require baking. Let me know if you try any of 'em!

Pretzel M & M Cake Mix Cookies

Greetings yet again from the Barbershop! I wish I could post on my blog every day. Sadly though, I don't have nearly enough time to cook and bake a recipe that's worth posting every day...and in reality, I really don't have time to blog every day either even if I did have worthy recipes! But, I really love writing about my goodies and I do hope you enjoy reading about my adventures in the kitchen too. :)

Now, onto another sweet treat for you! You know how I love my cake mix cookies. When this girl's short on time and needs to make a quick batch of cookies, I often choose to use the tried and true cake mix trick. This recipe is another example of how creative you can be with cake mix cookies! 

I had purchased some pretzel m & m's, and although they are quite yummy to snack on by themselves, I had the urge to bake with them. I also had some Snyder's pretzels on hand and thought, hmmmm, why not put the two together in a cookie? :)

(Aren't those cute little bowls? My friend Steph sent them to me as an awesome thank you when I sent her some Pillsbury bake-off bars. Thanks, Steph! Love these dishes :)).

Ingredients:

-1 box yellow cake mix (this recipe would also be super yummy with a chocolate cake mix!)

-2 large eggs

-1/4 to 1/3 cup vegetable oil

-1 cup pretzel m & m's

-1 cup pretzels, crushed

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease cookie sheets. Mix cake mix, eggs, and oil with a spoon until well-incorporated. Mix in m & m's and crushed pretzels until they're evenly distributed. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheets, about 1.5 to 2 inches apart.

Bake for 8 - 10 minutes, or until the tops are very slightly browned. Let sit for 1 - 2 minutes before removing to cool completely on cooling racks.

I had fun snapping some pictures of these. :)

As with all cake mix cookies, they have a cake-like texture to them (no surprise there ;-)). Every time I make cake mix cookies, they're a huge hit, no matter what the combination of cake flavor and ingredients I add. Love love love these! The sweet and salty combo in this particular cookie was great, as was the fact that it had both soft and crunchy textures to it as well. A winner in my book (cookbook that is). 

See you soon!

Friday Favorites, 6.3.11

It's June! This is crazy. After this month, 2011 will be halfway over. What?!?! :)

You may not realize this, but June 3rd is National Donut Day. If you go to any Dunkin' Donuts and buy a beverage, they'll give you a free donut. Nice! Now that I've made my own homemade donuts though, I think I prefer my own over those from DD's. It was totally coincidence too that I posted about my own homemade baked blueberry donuts this week!

In honor of this fun food holiday of National Donut Day, I thought I'd share with you a few other donut recipes I've bookmarked and hope to try at some point with my awesome donut pan (thanks again, sista, for the great gift!). In no particular order, here are some donut recipes that may make you want to make your own donuts too. ;-)

1) Pumpkin Cinnamon Apple Donuts from Cherry Tea Cakes

(photo from Cherry Tea Cakes)

These would be amazing in the fall! Well, actually, I'd eat them any time of year really... ;-)

2) Baked Donuts with Chocolate Glaze from Lemon Drop

(photo from Lemon Drop)

Simple and sweet. These look delightful.

3) Baked Chocolate Doughnuts from Lara Ferroni

(photo from Lara Ferroni)

You should look at all of her pictures of these chocolate doughnuts on her website. Amazing! In fact, you should look at more of her photography as well (not just of these doughnuts). I am up very late writing this post, thanks to the fact that I can't stop looking at her food photography. My eyes are exhausted and I'm as tired as can be, yet I'm drooling over donuts... This is how I spend a great deal of my spare time, friends. I browse recipes and can't stop staring at the appetizing photos on food blogs. Doesn't everyone do this?? 

Look, Lara Ferroni even has a whole cookbook about donuts!!

Are you going to eat a donut today in honor of this fun food holiday? I think I just might! If for some reason I don't eat one though, you can bet I'll at least be daydreaming about one...or maybe two...

Baked Blueberry Cake Donuts

Mmmm, blueberries. I love when spring rolls around and berries start to be in season. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries... In the food blog world, I start to see all sorts of "berry good" ;-) recipes on other blogs come spring.

Blueberries were on sale last week so I bough a bunch of them! I considered making blueberry muffins, but those sounded a little boring to me. Don't get me wrong; I love a good blueberry muffin, but I really wanted to try something different. For Christmas, my sister had given me a donut pan that I still had not used as of last week. Although I've bookmarked several donut recipes over the past few months, I hadn't gotten around to making any yet! So, that time finally arrived. I found a great recipe for baked blueberry donuts and I was on my way!

The recipe is from the blog, "Eat Good 4 Life." I adapted it slightly though because I did not have the whole wheat pastry flour called for in the recipe. Apparently pastry flour makes a baked good have a lighter texture. I decided to substitute all-purpose flour and white whole wheat flour for the pastry flour, and the donuts still turned out great in my opinion. If you have pastry flour though, go ahead and use it!

Ingredients:

-1 cup all-purpose flour

-1 cup white whole wheat flour

-1/2 cup sugar

-2 eggs

-1 to 1 and 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

-1 tsp. baking powder

-1/2 tsp. baking soda

-1 cup low-fat milk (I used 1%)

-2 Tbsp. olive oil

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1/2 tsp cinnamon

For the sugar coating:

-3 Tbsp. melted butter

-1/2 cup sugar

-1 Tbsp. cinnamon

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray donut pan with cooking spray. In a bowl, mix the eggs, milk, sugar, olive oil, vanilla, and cinnamon. Add flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk until combined. Carefully fold in blueberries (I coated my blueberries in a little bit of flour to keep them from sinking in the batter). Fill each donut hole about 2/3 - 3/4 full.

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes. Cool for about 5 minutes before removing from pan and cooling completely on a cooling rack. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon. In another bowl, place the melted butter. Dip each donut in the melted butter, followed by the cinnamon sugar.

Makes 12 donuts.

I love the different "pattern" of blueberries in each donut.

Butter, cinnamon, and sugar will make just about anything better. :)

Despite not using pastry flour, I thought these donuts were still pretty light and fluffy; they definitely had a cake-like texture to them. The blueberries were plump and juicy and just plain delicious. I would totally make this recipe again! I do think, however, that they tasted best when eaten the same day (or one day later). After a couple days, they lost some of their light, fluffy texture. They were still darn right tasty though.

It was fun trying something different with these blueberry donuts. Trying this recipe has inspired me to try more donut recipes (sooner than later!). Do you have any donut flavors or recipes you'd like to see me try? :)

Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Peanut butter and chocolate. It's a match made in heaven. I know plenty of other people have used that same phrase to describe peanut butter and chocolate, but heck, I'm going to use it nonetheless. :)

These brownies are a combination of a couple recipes... The peanut butter swirl part is from my Martha Stewart Cookie book that I've mentioned in the blog several times (including recently when I made these surprise cookies!). And the "base" brownie recipe is my go-to from scratch brownie recipe that is so super simple and delicious. It's from Nestle and I use it all the time when I need to whip up a quick batch of brownies!

Brownie Ingredients:

-2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

-1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

-3 eggs

-1 and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

-1 cup granulated sugar

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

-1/4 tsp. baking soda

Peanut Butter Swirl Ingredients:

-4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

-1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

-3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

-1/4 tsp. salt

-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 13 x 9-inch baking pan and line with parchment, allowing a 2-inch overhang. Butter the parchment lining.

For the brownies, melt 1 cup of the chocolate chips and the butter in a 2-quart saucepan over low heat; stir until smooth. Remove from the heat and stir in eggs. Stir in flour, sugar, vanilla extract, and baking soda. Stir in remaining cup of chocolate chips.

For the peanut butter filling, stir together the butter, confectioners' sugar, peanut butter, salt and vanilla in a bowl until smooth.

Pour one-third of the brownie batter into the prepared pan; spread evenly with a spatula. Drop dollops of peanut butter filling on top of the batter, spacing about 2-inch apart. Pour remaining batter on top, and gently spread to fill the pan. Drop dollops of remaining peanut butter mixture on top. Gently swirl peanut butter filling into batter with a butter knife, running the knife lengthwise and crosswise through the layers.

Bake until a cake tester inserted into brownies comes out with a few crumbs, about 25 - 30 minutes. Let cool slightly in pan, about 15 minutes. Lift out; let cool completely on a wire rack before cutting into squares. Brownies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.

These are seriously good. They're moist, dense, and very flavorful. The extra cup of chocolate chips adds a nice, slight crunchy texture too. I love how incredibly easy these brownies are as well. If you're looking to change it up from your typical brownie recipe, I'd suggest trying these! Perhaps with a tall glass of cold milk?! :)

Friday Favorites, 5.27.11

  First of all, I must apologize for this week's Friday Favorites being posted on a Monday! Oops. I have been good each week about posting on Friday since I started Friday Favorites... But this past week just got away from me and I didn't have time to post! 

I am excited about this week's post though. I'll be highlighting the recent celebration my family had of my grandmother's 85th birthday! My grandma actually turned 85 back in January, but we had a surprise party for her last Saturday, May 21st. That's one way to be sure the guest of honor doesn't suspect anything...have the surprise five months later. ;-) My grandmother (I should say our grandmother too for my siblings and cousins, and mother for my mom, aunt, and uncle!) is amazing at age 85. She is very active and independent and is an inspiration to us all! We all love and respect her so much; the party was only one small way for us to recognize her and all she has done and stands for. We are incredibly lucky to have her! :)

For this special occasion, my mom asked if I'd bake cupcakes. Obviously I agreed! One of my grandmother's favorite flavors is raspberry, so I made lemon cupcakes with a raspberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting. And then for the chocolate lovers out there, I made my favorite darn good chocolate cupcakes with a mocha frosting. The mocha frosting was to-die-for. I had never made it before, but you can be sure that it is a keeper and will be my go-to mocha frosting from now on!

Here are my lemon cupcakes with the centers removed, prepped and ready for the raspberry filling!

I've made this lemon cupcake recipe before; you can read all about it here. And for the raspberry filling, I used the same recipe as with the strawberry filling I've made for these lemon cupcakes....but I substituted raspberries for the strawberries, clearly. :) The frosting recipe is also the same as in my original posting about the lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting.

I love filled cupcakes!

The mocha frosting that I used for the chocolate cupcakes was taken from Annie's Eats. Deeelish. Seriously. If you ever need a mocha frosting recipe, I highly recommend that you try this one! Here it is for you.

-16 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature

-3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

-1 Tbsp. instant coffee granules

-2 tsp. hot coffee

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer at medium-high speed until smooth, about 1 minute. Mix in the confectioners' sugar on low speed until just mixed in, then increase the speed to medium-high and continue to beat until smooth and light, about 2 minutes. Mix in the coffee granules, hot coffee, and vanilla until completely incorporated.

 

I took Annie's suggestion and topped the cupcakes with chocolate-covered (dark chocolate!) espresso beans. Yum yum yum.

 

By the way, thanks to my mom for allowing me work space in her kitchen last weekend. :) I somewhat took over the kitchen for a few hours... And the rest of my family did ALL my dishes. Amazing! I am going to bake in my mom's kitchen more often!

Now, onto a few pictures from the celebration! Here's our grandmother as she walked into the restaurant and realized that we had something up our sleeves... 

 

Our family loves surprises!

A few shots of the cupcakes... I made some regular-sized as well as some minis! Everyone loves a mini cupcake. It makes you feel like you can eat more than one if you have one big and one small...

 

Here is my Aunt Cathy, pinning a corsage on the lovely guest of honor!

 

My Uncle Bob said a few words about my grandmother, and then he passed around the cover of Time magazine's issue when they highlight the world's 100 most influential people. Check out the person in the middle of the magazine cover. Very clever, Uncle Bob!

 

 We, of course, believe that our grandmother deserves to be on that cover!

Happy birthday again, to our wonderful grandmother and mother! We love you so much!!