Fondue is probably one of the easiest and fun  desserts you could ever make. Seriously. Place a half a cup of heavy cream and a bag of chocolate chips into a crock pot with some vanilla. It can be kept warm in a crock pot and only takes an hour to melt!  We dipped strawberries, bananas and donuts. The bananas seemed to be everybody’s favorite. I preferred the donuts, and I kept 2 of them for myself to have for breakfast or a snack tomorrow morning.

We didn’t have any fondue forks, but there were left over skewers from shrimp kabobs, that I made earlier this summer.

I really like this new lens of mine. These pictures were taken with flash turned on and they didn’t turn out too horrible.

Bavarian Vanilla Almonds {Candied Nuts} from My Baking Addiction

Ingredients
1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract if you are using regular granulated sugar instead of vanilla sugar
1 tablespoon water
1 pound almonds or pecans
3/4 cup of vanilla sugar (if you do have vanilla sugar, simply substitute regular granulated sugar)
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons of Vanilla Fleur de Sel (if you do not have Vanilla Fleur de Sel simply substitute fine grain sea salt)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, combine egg white, vanilla extract and water. Beat mixture until frothy. Stir in almonds and mix to coat.
3. Gently combine sugar, cinnamon, and sea salt and stir into almond mixture, thoroughly coating all nuts.
4. Evenly spread nuts onto prepared baking sheet and place into oven.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
6. When cool, pack in an airtight jar. They will keep at room temperature for about 2 weeks.

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I still got a lot of stuff done, even though I had a problem with my car today.Usually, when something happens to my car, my future hubby’s car will have something happen to it too. (Like getting stuck into a snow bank on Friday night. ) I was so looking forward to going home and playing with my new camera lens today. Unfortunately, my car had to not start, and a guy from the shop had to come and give it a jump start. All because the dang lights were left on. There goes another $45.00 down the drain. A good thing we’re getting bonuses this month.

Tomorrow, we’re having a dinner party at our house. We did a lot of cleaning tonight and I prepped the spinach lasagna rolls early and made these nuts. They’re going on top of a salad with romaine lettuce, mandarin oranges, and dried cranberries. Maybe even a cucumber too. So, all I have to do to tomorrow is toss the salad, put the lasagna rolls in the oven, turn the crock pot on for the fondue, and bake the garlic bread. Having a double oven rocks. And so do these nuts! Almonds are also good for a filling snack.

Ingredients

For the Cookies:

• 1 ounce semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1/2 ounce milk chocolate, chopped
• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon red food coloring
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the Filling:

• 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
• 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise and seeds scraped

Directions

Make the cookies:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper or silpats.
2. Combine the semisweet and milk chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave at 50 percent power until melted, about 2 minutes. Whisk until smooth.
3. In the bowl of a stand up mixer mix the melted butter, sour cream, eggs, vinegar, vanilla and food coloring just until combined.
4. In another bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in four equal batches, mixing each batch completely before adding the next. Stir in the melted chocolate.
5. Scoop batter, using a medium cookie scoop (I leveled the scoop off),  onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies spring back when lightly pressed, 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer to racks to cool completely.

Meanwhile, make the filling:
1. Beat the cream cheese and butter with a mixer until smooth. Beat in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla extract or vanilla seeds.
2. Sandwich a heaping tablespoonful of filling between 2 cookies; repeat with the remaining cookies and filling. Refrigerate 30 minutes before serving.

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The future hubs and I are a fan of Whoopie Pies. Mine didn’t turn out as red as some of the ones I’ve seen on other blogs. My guess is because there was a little bit too much cocoa powder in it or chocolate. This recipe calls for both melted chocolate and cocoa powder. I even made some little heart shaped whoopie pies, take a look.

I’m not a very big fan of Red Velvet, but I made an exception for Valentine’s Day. All it is, is food coloring and some cocoa powder right? So, why the big deal? Maybe it’s just because red is a pretty color. Who knows?

Some of them don’t really look like hearts and others do. I had bought this heart shaped pan at Michael’s a few weeks ago. I tried different amounts of batter on the board, and you don’t need much at all for these little hearts. If I would have known that you could draw out your heart figures on some parchment paper, I could have totally avoided buying that pan. Oh well… it wasn’t that much only 5.00. I used a piping bag to fill frosting.

My first attempt at making cake pops wasn’t a huge success, but I learned some things. Before dipping them in chocolate make sure the cake balls are cold or almost frozen. If you try dipping them in chocolate when they’re warm the balls will crumble apart. Another thing I learned, is that you have to read the instructions on the back of the candy melt bag. I picked up these red chocolate melts at Wal-mart (taste delicious) for Valentine’s Day.  The first time I tried melting these in the microwave the chocolate didn’t melt. It got way too hard. The back of the bag says you can re-heat the chocolate by adding in some vegetable shortening and that didn’t really help it all. The second time worked like a charm if you set your microwave at half power.

I really like those candy melts. They melt a lot better than chocolate chips. When dipping things into the melted candy melts they look nicer too. My friend taught me that. I think from now on, I’ll just by candy melts whenever I want to dip something. Here is what you need to make cake pops:

1 box of cake mix

1 6 oz cream cheese

1 bag of candy melts

Follow the back of the box to make the cake. In a bowl mix together the cream cheese and cake until crumbly. Form Balls. Put in freezer  for a couple of hours before dipping. All you have left to do after the balls have hardened a bit is to dip them in whatever color of chocolate your heart desires.

I was kind of skeptical about putting anything on a stick. You can put just about any type of food on a stick. It does look cute and as you can see my first attempt at making cake pops didn’t work out so great. Just got to keep on trying. They’d be really fun for a bridal shower or baby shower.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 package mini marshmallows
5 cups Fruity Pebbles cereal

In a large pan, melt the butter with your stove turned to medium heat. Use a wooden spoon to stir the butter Pour the whole bag of marshmallows into the pot and stir them until they are melted and mixed with the butter. Add the cereal into the pot and stir it up until all of the cereal is well mixed. Pour the mixture into a large bread pan which has been sprayed with nonstick cooking spray.  Allow bars to cool slightly before serving.

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Fruity Pebbles were my favorite childhood cereal, and guess what I’m having for breakfast tomorrow morning! No, not Rainbow Rice Krispy treats!!. I haven’t had fruity pebbles in a long time for breakfast. Usually, during the weekdays I’ll have a piece of fruit and some oat meal. On the weekends, I will have a little bit of fun and make something like cinnamon rolls or muffins.

I found these rainbow treats at a site called babblefood.com.

What was your favorite childhood cereal?

I’ve been playing around with this banana ice cream lately and making it a lot. I was craving a banana split parfait and thought, I could make it really healthy. Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients:

Pineapple Filling:
a container of light coolwhip
1 can of crushed pineapple
1 box of  Instant vanilla pudding

Ice cream:
5 or 7 medium sized bananas.

Toppings

Carmal Sauce, Chocolate syrup, Sprinkles, and maraschino cherries

1. For the pineapple filling mix togther the pudding (powder form) and can of crushed pineapples. If the
pineapples look like they have too much liquid you can drain some of it out. Fold in the coolwhip.

2. Freeze ripe bannas for up to an hour. Process them in a food processor until it resemebles an ice cream
consitency.

3. Layer Ice cream and then cool whip mix. Top with chocolate or caramel until you get to the top. Garnish with
sprinkles and cherries.

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It doesn’t beat a real banana split parfait, but it helps the waste line. You don’t even miss out on all the heavy cream that’s in regular ice cream. Try this, you’ll be surprised!

The cool whip mixture came from a cake topping. Ben likes to call it Cups. It’s so good even with out a cake, and that is why we just eat the pineapple and cool whip mix in a cup now.

Dulce de Leche Ice Cream
adapted from Gourmet
makes about 1 1/2 quarts

2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 lb dulce de leche
1/8 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Bring milk and cream just to a boil in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, then remove from heat and whisk in dulce de leche until dissolved. Whisk in vanilla and transfer to a metal bowl. Quick-chill by putting bowl in a larger bowl of ice and cold water and stirring occasionally until cold, 15 to 20 minutes.*

Freezer mixture in ice cream maker until almost firm.

Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and put in freezer to harden, at least 1 hour.

Ice cream keeps up to 1 week in freezer.

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This weekend wasn’t very successful in finding any good recipes. This ice cream recipe was ok, it didn’t have the consistency of regular ice cream that I’m used to eating. I loved the dulce de leche flavor.

I bought a heart shaped mini muffin tin on Saturday at Michael’s. I have some ideas for that. Already made some chocolates with dulce de leche in the middle of them. Those didn’t look very pretty when I took them out of the tins, so I didn’t put them up on the blog.

I watched Sandra Lee today on her new show: Money Saving Meals. She made a Pork Ragu that looked really good and so did the round 2 recipe. I even have a leftover pork butt in my freezer so I’m going to try making that on Friday this week. I’m always looking for different ways to use pork butt other than to make pulled pork out of it. Not like that’s bad either. Normally, I don’t care for any of Sandra Lee’s recipes. Especially,  the ones on her Semi-Homemade show. I’m finding these recipes on her Money Saving Meals show to be more flavorful and fun.

Makes 2 cups

6 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, bring milk, sugar, and salt to a simmer over medium. Remove from heat and whisk in baking soda (mixture will foam). Return to a simmer and cook over low, stirring occasionally and skimming off any foam, until sauce is deep golden brown and lightly coats a spoon, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Pour through a fine-mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl. (To store, let cool and refrigerate in an airtight container, up to 2 weeks.)

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This isn’t the recipe that requires you to stick a can of sweetened condensed milk inside a crock pot. I’ve tried that recipe before and it worked out great, however I wanted to try making it this way too.  If you have a gallon of milk that’s about to spoil, this is a good recipe to use to get rid of that milk.

The recipe is kind of misleading and says that it only takes 45 minutes to an hour to make. Mine took almost 2 hrs and 30 minutes to make.  At first, I had it on low and then I turned it to medium high, because it was taking forever to get done. If I had kept it on low, it would have taken me over 3 hours to make it.  It finally started turning into a caramel type consistency afer about 2 hours. It’s amazing what boiling some milk and sugar can do!  If you don’t want to wait 8 hours for a crock pot to get it done, this a lot faster if you have some time on your hands. Tomorrow, I plan on making some pumpkin bread pudding with dulce de leche to use it up. Or, I might just put it on some ice cream or lick it all up with a spoon.

Whenever I go to the ice cream aisle in a grocery store, I look to see if I can find dulce de leche. It is never near that section and sometimes you can find it in the Mexican ingredients aisle. I was wondering what the difference was between just caramel sauce and dulce de leche. The main difference is that dulce de leche is made my reducing milk and sugar and caramel sauce is just sugar. Sometimes with extra ingredients added like butter or whipping cream.

*Note 1/22/10

I tried making this again and it took an hour and 45 minutes at a medium high temp. My oven has numbers so I set it at 7. Getting to be a lot less time.

Ingredients:

• 2 large cans (16 oz.) refrigerated buttermilk biscuits
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (be sure that clumps are broken up)
• 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
• (Optional: 1 cup pecan halves or walnuts)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a bundt pan generously with non-stick spray.

Prepare two dipping bowls.  In the first, pour the melted butter.  In the second, whisk together the sugars and cinnamon until well-mixed.

Place the biscuits on a cutting board, and use a large knife to cut them into quarters.  Then dip each piece first in the melted butter, then transfer it to the second bowl and roll it in the sugar until well-coated on each side.  Then place each piece loosely in the bundt pan.  (Don’t press the pieces together — they will expand when baked!)  Repeat.  If you would like to add in pecans/walnuts, just add them in with the dough at random.  Then pour the extra butter over the top.

Bake for about 40 minutes or until the top springs back when touched. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Carefully invert onto a plate, and serve immediately.

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Question of the day is: Why is this called monkey bread?  Most of the theories I read on the Internet say that it was because monkeys liked to pull apart things. Eventually you end up pulling apart this bread. Others say that it’s because it’s shaped like a monkey puzzle tree. If you’re not sure what that is google it.

I made this when I got home from work this morning.  Did you know Pillsbury crescent roll dough has pretty much the same  ingredients as their biscuits do? I ended up cutting the roll of crescent dough into cubes just like the biscuits. I  can’t believe how simple this recipe is  and why haven’t I made it until now? Well,  I guess that’s two questions of the day then. If you haven’t made monkey bread before do it now! It tastes like a cinnamon roll, just the shape is different. You place the pieces of dough that are dipped in cinnamon, sugar , and butter into a bundt pan, so that it comes out looking like a pretty ring. Bake, and eat!

My favorite new snack is to take a tablespoon of peanut butter with some Nutella and just lick it off the spoon. It kept me full for a good 3 hours after lunch time. Then I saw these Nutella brownies posted on foodgawker.com and thought I would give them a try. Wow, these are really good and they only have 3 ingredients in it! Beat that Claire Robinson from 5 ingredient Fix. No offense to Claire, I really like her show.

I had half a jar of lemon curd left over from making some Christmas cookies. It’s almost the same consistency as Nutella, so I thought, why not try making Lemon Curd brownies? Look at me, coming up with a great idea. All these brownies are missing is some bacon! Peanut butter would also be good with these little brownie bites instead of Nutella.

Nutella Brownies (makes roughly 12 brownies)

• 1/2 cup Nutella
• 1 egg
• 5 tbsp flour
• icing sugar for dusting (you could also top with chopped hazelnuts)

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a mini muffin tin.
2. In a large bowl mix the Nutella and egg together until smooth.
3. Add the flour, mix until completely incorporated.
4. Try not to eat the batter, there is just enough to fill the muffin tins.
5. Pour batter into mini muffin tin, filling till about 3/4 full.
6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
7. Let cool completely, then dust with icing sugar.

Nutrition Info:

Calories 74
Total Fat 3.52g
Total Carbohydrate 8.94g
Protein 1.42g

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon fine fleur de sel, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

Prep the pan.

Line an 8-inch-square baking pan with parchment paper, allowing it to drape over 2 sides, then brush the paper lightly with oil.

Boil the sugar.

In a deep saucepan (6 inches wide and 4 1/2 inches deep), combine 1/4 cup water, the sugar and corn syrup and bring them to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil until the mixture is a warm golden brown. Don’t stir — just swirl the pan.

Heat the cream.

In the meantime, in a small pot, bring the cream, butter and 1 teaspoon of fleur de sel to a simmer over medium heat. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Finish the caramel.

When the sugar mixture is done, turn off the heat and slowly add the cream mixture to the sugar mixture. Be careful — it will bubble up violently. Stir in the vanilla with a wooden spoon and cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until the mixture reaches 248 degrees F (firm ball) on a candy thermometer.

Fill the pan.

Very carefully (it’s hot!) pour the caramel into the prepared pan and refrigerate for a few hours, until firm.

Cut the caramel.

When the caramel is cold, pry the sheet from the pan onto a cutting board. Cut the square in half.

Roll it up.

Starting with a long side, roll the caramel up tightly into an 8-inch-long log.

Cut into pieces.

Sprinkle the log with fleur de sel, trim the ends and cut into 8 pieces. (Start by cutting the log in half, then continue cutting each piece in half until you have 8 equal pieces.) It’s easier to cut the caramels if you brush the knife with flavorless oil like corn oil.

Wrap the candies.

Cut glassine or parchment paper into 4-by-5-inch pieces and wrap each caramel individually, twisting the ends. Store in the refrigerator and serve the caramels chilled.

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When making this recipe, don’t forget to add the water into the sugar and corn syrup mixture  and let the mixture get to a golden brown color. The last time, I tried making these the caramel didn’t get warm enough and ended up falling into one big lump. It was still good though. This time, I let the mixture get to 248 degrees, which is a firm ball stage. Hopefully, that doesn’t happen again.
I like being on vacation.I can take photos outside in our patio in natural light and not have to take them down stairs. I’m trying to update my blog with something new everyday since I’m home for 2 weeks. It gives me something to do and keeps me busy. I might just have to go and buy some chocolate to dip these caramels in.They melt in your mouth!

One thing, I’ve learned about making candy is never give up! Use a digital thermometer too, because I found out the one that I had bought at Wal-mart is 3 degrees off from my digital one. I think I’m just going to end up throwing that one  away. I want to go to the store today and look for some snow flake sugar cookie cutters.