Devilishly Good Chocolate Cake with Decadent Peanut Butter Frosting

Welcome back! I am excited to be blogging again so soon. Now that our Internet is smoothly working again, I hope to keep bringing you recipes at least once a week. I'll do my best. ;-)

As you can tell from the title of this post, this recipe involves chocolate and peanut butter...always a winning combo. I really hope you try this recipe the next time you make a cake. It is delicious...or, rather, devilishly good. :)

The recipe is from my Cake Mix Doctor book, so yes, it's not from scratch. But I am okay with that and I hope you are too! The recipe is as follows:

-1 package (18.25 oz.) plain devil's food cake mix

-3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder

-1 and 1/3 cups buttermilk (or yogurt!)

-1/2 cup vegetable oil

-3 large eggs

-1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease two 9-inch round cake pans OR a bundt pan (which I used). Then dust with flour (or cocoa powder), and set the pan(s) aside.

Place the cake mix, 3 Tbsp. cocoa powder, buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down the sides again as needed. The batter should look well blended. Pour the batter into the pan(s), smoothing it out with a rubber spatula. For 9-inch pans, bake 28 to 30 minutes. For a bundt cake, bake for about 45-50 minutes (that's how long mine took to bake; it may take longer). Remove from oven and cool on wire rack for 10-15 minutes. Then gently remove the cake from the pan(s), and cool completely on rack before frosting it.

Now, it's time for the most amazing peanut butter frosting. It's a Barbershop guarantee that you're going to love this frosting! :)

-1 cup creamy peanut butter

-8 Tbsp. (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

-2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

-3 to 4 Tbsp. milk

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

Place the peanut butter and butter in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until fluffy, 30 seconds. Add the powdered sugar, 3 Tbsp. milk, and vanilla. Blend again on low speed until the sugar is well combined, 1 minute. Increase the speed to medium and beat until the frosting lightens and is fluffy, 1 minute more. Blend in up to 1 Tbsp. more milk if the frosting seems too stiff. Use at once to frost the cake! The recipe makes about 3 cups of frosting, enough to frost a 2 or 3-layer 9-inch round cake, a 13 x 9-inch cake, or a 10-inch bundt cake.

I made this cake for a little thank you celebration we had at work for a great volunteer who helped us out  in the lab this summer. It was a hit with my coworkers, I must say! I personally think it was one of the moistest (that's a tough word to say!) chocolate cakes I've ever had. It was pretty dense too! And the frosting really just made it sooo good overall. It was like a giant peanut butter cup! There wasn't a slice of cake left...it went so fast that I completely forgot to take any pictures of a slice of it! All I have is a picture of the final product before I brought it in to work. Oops! Here's the cake in my handy dandy cake carrier before I brought it in and it quickly disappeared...

Hope you all have a lovely, relaxing Labor Day weekend...  I hope to bake something "fall-like" this weekend, so I'll keep you posted if I do! I am so excited that my favorite season is just around the corner!! See you again soon!

"Ultimate" Sugar Cookies

Hi again! I'm actually blogging just a few days after my last post. What do ya know??! This is a miracle. This post will be short though; I'm not sharing a new recipe with you, but I am showing you a variation on another recipe you've seen at the Barbershop before....Mom's Famous Sugar Cookies. :)

I made another batch of sugar cookies recently for Mike's ultimate frisbee team. It was their end-of-season tourney, so I knew I had to do something special! The team's name is Fetch, so I thought I'd go for sugar cookies in the shapes of dog bones and dogs. I had to do a little hunting to find sugar cookies in those shapes, but I succeeded! I ended up finding them at a neat kitchen store on Newbury Street. They had tons of different, fun shapes. I had to restrain myself from buying every one of them!

Below are some fun pictures for your viewing pleasure. ;-)

And here's a picture of Fetch! Great season, all!

S'mores Cookies!

Hiya! I don't know what's gotten into me... Yet again, I haven't blogged in FOREVER. Well, I guess I've been a "wee" bit busy again, so I blame my lack of blogging on my lack of time to do so! I also blame the crazy Internet issues at our house...that has not made blogging easy at all!

I do, however, have a very fun and easy recipe for you here. Ever thought about making "s'mores" cookies? I hadn't...until one day when I was trying to think of a little change up I could do with my classic cake mix cookie recipe. I had actually recently used mini marshmallows to make candy pizza, so I think I had marshmallows on the brain...  And I had chocolate and graham crackers too. Voila! We have s'mores, friends!!

Here's the recipe for you:

-1 box (18.25 oz) chocolate cake mix

-2 eggs

-1/4 to 1/3 cup vegetable oil

-2/3 to 3/4-ish cup of crushed graham crackers (I didn't measure - sorry!)

-2/3-ish cup mini marshmallows

-1/2 to 3/4-ish cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and grease cookie sheets. Mix the first three ingredients (by hand with a spoon or spatula is fine) until well-incorporated. Then mix in the remaining "add-ins" of marshmallows, graham cracker crumbs, and chocolate chips.

Form approximately 1-inch balls with the dough and drop onto greased cookie sheets. Bake for 8 - 10 minutes or until cookies are set.

A few points of note with this recipe... The cookies don't necessarily form all that well into uniform balls, thanks to the marshmallows protruding everywhere! So don't worry about the shape of your cookies with this recipe. ;-) It is also a rather gooey cookie when baked! You may have some gooey-ness that seeps out of the cookies while baking and sticks to your cookie sheet. No worries there either. This recipe is a good lesson in being flexible and no worrying too much about the appearance of the finished product. In short, it's a fun recipe! The ooey gooey nature of these cookies is what I loved best.

I'd say this recipe is perfect for this winter when you're craving s'mores but can't really go outside to melt marshmallows around the campfire... Make your own version of s'mores cookies inside instead! That's not to say you can't make these cookies during any other season though, obviously... :)

Hope to see you all SOONER than later next time! I have so many yummy recipes just waiting to be shared with you!

Classic Banana Bread

WOW. Has it really been about three weeks since my last post? I think it has! I am really bummed about not having had much time to blog lately. I miss it! Hopefully I can write more in the near future. Maybe you've been missing me as I've been missing blogging for you? It'd be nice if that was the case. ;-)

Anyway, I'm coming back to you today with a delicious recipe for a classic banana bread. Everyone needs a great banana bread recipe, right? I'd say so! You may remember my previous post for marbled chocolate banana bread. That's one of my all-time favorite quick breads. When I had some very ripe bananas last week, I considered making the marbled chocolate version, but then I thought that I should find a new, traditional banana bread recipe that I really like. And bingo, I found it! It's a Cooking Light recipe that can be found here. After trying this bread, I decided that I loved this new recipe. I did make a couple changes though, as I usually do! I used half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose (as shown in the first picture below). I also just so happened to use peach flavored yogurt, inadvertently, even though the recipe calls for just regular yogurt. Peach was all I had! It worked though, and you couldn't detect that peach yogurt was used, don't worry! But maybe that was the secret ingredient though that made the bread yummy?  Hmmmm...

Here are a few pictures for you.

Dry ingredients.

The unusual peach yogurt!

Wet ingredients.

The batter, all ready to go into the oven. As you can see, it made one regular sized loaf and one small one.

Final product, being sliced for consumption!

I brought this bread home to share with my parents last weekend, and they really liked it too. I love that it's very tasty, moist, AND a cooking light recipe! You know what I just realized I meant to do with a slice of this bread but just never did? I thought it'd be yummy to toast a slice of banana bread and top it with some peanut butter... Doesn't that sound deeelicious? Maybe I'll do that next time. You can be sure that I'll report back to you when I do!

Hope to see you again much sooner than three weeks from now!

Beer Onion Chive Cheese (BOCC) Bread

Two weeks! That's the amount of time that's passed since I last blogged. And that's much too long! Where does the time go? Since school has ended, I've somehow been much busier....hmmmm. That doesn't seem right!

But anyway, I do actually have a recipe for you here. It's a delicious quick bread made with beer. Can you go wrong with adding beer? I don't think so! As you can read from the title, this bread also contains onions, chives, and cheese. YUMMM! I've made this recipe a few times now. It's super simple in terms of the steps and the ingredients involved. Have I mentioned that you can't go wrong with this recipe? ;-) I found this recipe in Cooking Light, and here is a link to it for you.

There are multiple variations you can make with this bread, depending on the type of beer you choose to add, the type of cheese, and any herbs you might also add. There are probably endless combinations! The link I gave you above shares some suggestions of ingredients to add, but be creative and add other things too! This past time while making this bread, I used good ol' cheddar cheese and a pilsner style beer (see below - gotta love Sam Adams!). And then I added fresh, chopped chives from our garden! I think the addition of fresh herbs is a must in this recipe. :)

Here are a few more pictures of the process for you.

Sauteed onions!

Dry ingredients, onions, and cheese...

I like this picture of the addition of the beer...all foamy and yummy! The baker is allowed to drink any leftover beer, of course. ;-)

Mmmmm, fresh chives.

Ready for the oven!

Or wait, is it ready?

Nope, it also needs some butter or margarine drizzled over top before baking!

Final product! Soooo good. I prefer to eat this bread warm or toasted. I don't add any extra butter to it, but if you prefer that, I say go for it. But I just think it's delicious as is! And remember, it's a Cooking Light recipe...

No guilt as long as you enjoy in moderation. ;-)

Hope to see you again soon...sooner than two weeks from now!!

Candy Pizza!

Yes, candy pizza...you read correctly! Apparently I like to make pizzas that are not your typical tomato sauce, cheese, and toppings... Remember my Breakfast Pizza post? Yummmm. Actually, I do love making regular pizza at home, but I just haven't blogged about it yet. I'll have to do that soon! In the meantime, I'll share with you a very fun recipe for a dessert-themed pizza. :)

My mom used to make a delicious candy pizza for us when we were younger, and that was my inspiration for this one. When I decided to make this the other day, I was not planning ahead very well and I did not have time to chat with my mom beforehand to get her recipe, so sadly this is not the same original recipe she used to make. However, it is very close in terms of its flavors, toppings, and overall deliciousness! You can read the recipe that I followed here. It's from good ol' Betty Crocker!

Now, the main difference between the recipe I used and the one my mom used to make is the crust...  Both pizzas have a peanut butter crust, but my mom's was from scratch, whereas I used the shortcut of Betty Crocker's peanut butter cookie mix, pictured below.

You can read the exact instructions in the link provided above, but essentially this recipe simply involves making the crust with the peanut butter cookie mix, oil, and an egg and pressing it into a pizza pan, after which you add whatever toppings your heart desires!

I added dry roasted peanuts and semi-sweet chocolate chips...

...and butterscotch chips and dark chocolate m&m's.

You bake those toppings for a while before adding the mini marshmallows (which I like to think of as the pizza's "cheese"!!).

The marshmallows only bake for the last 7-8 minutes or so.

Look at them all puffy and fluffy! :-D

For a fun touch at the end I drizzled on some chocolate syrup and caramel sauce...

And that's all there is to it, friends! This recipe literally takes about 30 minutes from start to finish. Sooo easy! I think it'd be such a super fun recipe for kids too. They'd love to pick out some of the yummy candy toppings and put them on the pizza themselves, I bet! I think it'd be tasty to add different types of candy bars or candies, chopped into smaller pieces... Reese's peanut butter cups? Snickers? Milky Way? Hello!! 

I've got a busy week, but I hope to post again before the weekend is here...we shall see! Stay tuned for more yummy Barbershop goodies. ;-)

Summertime Strawberry Dessert

Welcome back and happy 4th of July weekend, all! This is a special Barbershop post... Are you wondering why? Well, it's my 60th post! 60! And in honor of this milestone, I thought I'd share a yummy, cool summertime dessert that is red, white, and blue, which is obviously appropriate for the holiday! Here you go. :)

I was looking for something cool and summery to bring to a friend's going-away party. The recipe I ended up with is a combination of a couple different recipes. I did not follow one exactly to a "t," as you might say. What I ended up making was inspired by this Strawberry Pretzel Squares recipe and this Tropical Strawberry Cream Pie recipe.

Essentially, this dish was a graham cracker crust recipe, topped with a cream cheese/cool whip/sugar layer, which was then topped with a jello/fruit layer, as you can see in this picture below. :)

I'll share with you the ingredients I used as best I can... I have to honestly say that I did not always measure exactly! Since I wasn't baking something that is "scientific" (ya know, something that needs flour, baking soda, baking powder, etc.), I figured I could improvise a bit!

-1 and 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs

-5 Tbsp. of butter or margarine, melted

-2 cups cool whip (I used light)

-8 oz. softened cream cheese (I used light)

-1/4 cup sugar

-instant JELLO gelatin, strawberry flavored (I used two packages that were each 4-serving size)

-3/4 cup boiling water

-1 cup ice

-1 cup sliced strawberries

-1 cup blueberries

Now, as far as the jello goes, you can certainly use whichever flavor you like! I actually used one package of strawberry flavored gelatin and one of raspberry; you can see their different colors here! They were also sugar-free.

You could switch up the fruit you use as well. It's your call! That's the beauty of recipes like this. Another change you could make is what you use for the crust. I used graham cracker crumbs, but the two recipes I worked from used even different items - one used crushed pretzels and one used crushed vanilla wafers. Yum to either of those options!!

Here are your instructions:

Mix the crushed graham crackers with the melted butter. Press this mixture into a 9-inch pan (I used a square glass pan, but you could probably even use a pie plate).

Next, with an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and sugar until well blended. Then gently mix in the cool whip with a spoon or spatula. Top the graham cracker layer with the cool whip layer.

Add the boiling water to the gelatin and mix until the gelatin is fully dissolved; then stir in the ice until it's melted. The jello should be very slightly starting to solidify at this point.

Next, mix in your fruit and refrigerate the jello mixture for 5 minutes or until it's thickened but still "spreadable." At that point, top the cool whip layer with the jello and fruit mixture.

Refrigerate the entire dish for 4 hours or until set (mine was fine after 2 hours actually!). 

When I served this, I topped each slice with the remaining cool whip too...everyone got a dollop. I just really wanted to use the word dollop. :) This dessert was definitely a hit with our friends! I'm always a little nervous when I try new recipes for the first time, but once people had their first bites, I knew it was a keeper. Unless they were just trying to humor me, they indicated that this is a very delicious dessert! Perhaps the next time I make it I'll try different flavored jello or a new type of fruit! I bet peach jello with fresh peaches and pineapple would be good. Mmmmm, I can almost taste it now. ;-) And it tastes like summer to me!

See you next time, and once again, happy 4th of July!