Pinkies!!!

I know what you must be thinking.  Nothing for over a year and then BAM! two posts in one day.  And to that I say: Stop complaining and enjoy the beauty that is this yummy recipe!  I saw this on Pinterest.  It was called Strawberry Brownies.  The Prince is a fan of strawberry desserts, so I decided I should give it a whirl.  When I served him one after dinner and proudly said, "These are strawberry brownies!"  He looked at it and said, "You mean pinkies?"  Not only is that name infinitely cuter, it is in fact more appropriate.  So pinkies it is, and here is how you make them...

Ingredients:

a strawberry cake mix

1/3 cup of oil

2 eggs

1 cup powdered sugar

1 1/2  tablespoons of milk or water

Mix the cake mix, oil and eggs...

Mix the ingredients until it becomes a sort of hard to stir ball of dough.  The recipe said that it would be thick, and this was not an overstatement...

Press the dough into a 9x13 pan...

Bake at 350 for 14 minutes.  That seemed like a very odd, specific time to me, but it was perfect!  They were done at exactly 14 minutes.  Now to make the glaze!  Did I forget to mention there is a glaze?  Well, there is!  In a small bowl combine the powdered sugar with milk or water, your choice.  We split the difference and used half and half...

Stir until you get to this consistency...  I had to add some extra half and half, so just kinda eyeball it...

Spread the glaze on top of the pinkies, cut, serve and eat!  Look how pretty they are...

This is another easy, few ingredient recipe but it was really tasty!  If you don't share the recipe, no one will know how easy it was.  I thought they were the perfect balance of rich, sweet and dense but not too dense.  Try them and let me know what you think!

No Bake Peanut Butter Thumbprint Cookies

I'm baaaaaaack!!!  Back in the kitchen, back to baking... well sort of.  This is a "no bake" recipe so I guess a better description would be that I'm back to kitchen calamity and making fun things to eat.  Yeah, that's it!  Thanks to my new trusty assistant, my sister, Chessa Banks!  (Thanks Chessa for willingly helping and inspiring me to get started again.  Love you, Sister!  :-D)  Ok, let's get started....

Ingredients: 

2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup honey

Jam, jelly, preserves... or in my case chocolate!!!

I subbed the jam/jelly/preserves for chocolate for several reasons, but mainly because my favorite flavor combo in the world is chocolate and peanut butter.  So first things first, we need to make these graham crackers crumby.  We were in my sister's almost adequately equipped kitchen, so we used a blender for this process...

It worked out just fine!  Pour them into a medium bowl and add the peanut butter.  Baking tip of the day:  before you measure your peanut butter, spray your measuring cup with nonstick cooking spray, like this...

Then bask in how amazingly easy it falls out of your measuring cup...

Voila!  Do the same thing when measuring your honey or any other sticky ingredient for that matter.  And for my friend Meredith who says peanut butter isn't sticky, any other messy, pain in the butt to measure ingredient.  :-P  

Stir until all of the ingredients (all three of them) are well combined...

Then roll them approximately one inch balls (Long time readers will know that had I been home, I would have used  my trusty scoop to measure equal amounts, but I wasn't at home.)...

Place them on a cookie sheet and make a "thumbprint" impression...

Then fill the "thumbprints" with the filling of your choice.  I suggest you do what we did.  Throw some dark chocolate chips into a makeshift double boiler...

Then fill the cookies with delicious, silky, slightly scalding chocolate...

Then put the finished tray in the fridge to set up...

These were super simple and are super yummy.  I was wondering how they would set up and was a little skeptical that they would hold their shape, but I was impressed.  They did!  This would be a fun recipe to make with kids.  There are almost no dangerous implements used and you could let them get creative and choose their own fillings for the thumbprints.  (Though if they choose anything other than chocolate, they are wrong.) If you'd like to read the original recipe, you can find it here.  Enjoy!