German Chocolate Fudge Bites

Ok. So apparently peanut butter week is over. 

This recipe does have ground up pecans in it, so that sort of counts.

You know. If you squint and hop on one foot.

These German chocolate fudge bites from Chocolate covered Katie are a pretty healthy treat.  The main sweetness of these chocolate-y treats comes from dates!

Apparently I like dates.  Even though they look like bugs.  But with this recipe, it's not like you're popping a squishy buggy shaped critter in your mouth.  The dates get pureed in the food processor along with pecans, cocoa and coconut. 

I'm sure if you used unsweetened coconut and omitted the chocolate chips, they would be even better for you.  Of course I did nothing of the sort.  Momma's got a sweet tooth that must be satisfied!

The fudge-y treats were perfect when I wanted just a little something sweet.  They were chocolate-y without being overwhelming.  Sometimes in the summer I don't like the way a piece of chocolate melts and coats the inside of my mouth.  For some reason it makes me feel warmer. 

I stuck these little babies in the freezer because they didn't seem to want to hold together properly otherwise.  This helped them last a bit longer as I don't go into the freezer nearly as much as I do the fridge.  They were a nice cool little snack.  They were firm from the freezer, but not jawbreakingly so.

Oh and did I mention that there is no baking involved?  Yeah.  Another reason why these are the perfect sweet for summer!


German-Chocolate Fudge Bites from Chocolate Covered Katie  (Makes 10-14 balls)
3/4 cup pitted dates  (120g)
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/16 tsp salt
2 T cocoa powder (or raw cacao powder)
2 T shredded coconut
1/3 to 1/2 cup raw pecans
optional: feel free to add some mini chocolate chips

Blend all ingredients together very well. (I recommend using a food processor.) Squish the dough together. Roll into balls, cookie-cuttered shapes, or bars… or you can even use it for a pie crust!

Peanut Butter Ritz Fudge

One of the Christmas cookies I would always convince my mom to make at the last minute were Peanut butter Ritz sandwiches. If you haven't ever had this, get yourself some peanut butter, Ritz crackers and some white chocolate. What you do is make little sandwiches with the peanut butter and the crackers, and then dip them into white chocolate.

Salty and sweet can't be beat. (Just so you know, I'm doing that raise the roof thing with my arms when I say that.  You should too.)

Why didn't we ever make them any other time of the year? Oh yeah. Cause my mom was mean. (Hi mom!) That's where I learned it from. Tradition!

Anyhow that awesomely crazy cool lady over at Cookies and Cups found a way to make this treat faster, easier and more betterer. Yeah! I know. You are saying that's impossible. She is a kitchen genius. She made it into Fudge. NGAAAAAAA!!!

Ok. I can year you inside your head. (Did you know?) I can hear you saying, lady, how can fudge be easier than dipping little sandwiches in chocolate? She makes cheater fudge. CHEATER FUDGE. What?

You haven't heard of that either? (Do we live next door to each other under adjacent rocks or something?)

Cheater fudge is when you take a bag of chips, melt it, and stir in a can of frosting. This is fudge even I can make without messing up.

To make the pb ritz white chocolate fudge all you have to do is the above and then stir in peanut butter Ritz Bitz. Yeah!

Look at those layers!  So much goodness, I can't even stand it.

Blockette can't stand it either.
Why yes. She is trying to kiss her cookies. Sometimes it's just better not to ask.


Peanut Butter Ritz White Chocolate Fudge from Cookies and Cups
1 (16 oz) can vanilla frosting
1 (12 oz) bag white chocolate chips
2 cups Peanut Butter Ritz Bits

Grease or spray lightly a 9×9 or 8×8 pan. Melt chips in a double boiler or the microwave. As soon as they are melted, stir in entire can of frosting. Fold in Ritz Bits. Spread into prepared pan and chill for 30 minutes. When firm, cut into squares.

Cake Batter Truffles

Back in September I made Cake batter Ice cream. It was oh so very tasty, but it left me with a LOT of leftover cake batter.

I used some of it up making cake batter pancakes. The pancakes used only 2/3 cup of the cake mix. I still had loads more.There was no way I was going to toss all that cake-y goodness out. I was certain I could find more tasty treats that would use up my pretty pink cake mix.  Then I was browsing the blog Chef in Training and I came across two recipes for cake batter truffles.

One recipe had sweetened condensed milk in it. This seemed very similar to the Snickerdoodle truffles I made last year for Christmas. Those snickerdoodle truffles were amazing, but I wanted to try something a little bit different.  The recipe I chose seemed like it would hold up a little bit better out of the fridge.  The condensed milk versions got almost too soft when they got to room temp.

These are a big hit with Blockette. Pink cake is her favorite.  Plus anything with sprinkles is a winner.  Hmmm, maybe I should put rainbow sprinkles on her mushrooms and black beans!!!

Cake Batter Truffles from Chef in Training
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup white sugar
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup yellow cake mix (I used pink strawberry)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3-4 Tablespoons milk
2 Tablespoons sprinkles (I forgot to add this)

Truffle Coating:
16 ounces (8 squares) almond bark (or white candy melts)
4 Tablespoons yellow cake mix (I left this out as I wanted the coating to be white, not pink)
sprinkles

Beat together butter and sugar using an electric mixer until combined. Blend in vanilla. Add cake mix, flour, salt, and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add 3 Tablespoons of milk or more if needed to make a dough consistency. Mix in sprinkles by hand. Roll dough into one inch balls and place on a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet. Chill balls in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to firm up.

While dough balls are chilling, melt almond bark in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. Stir between intervals. Once melted, quickly stir in cake mix until incorporated completely. Using a fork, dip truffles into almond bark and shake of excess bark by tapping the bottom of the fork on the side of your bowl. Place truffle back on the cookie sheet and top with sprinkles. Repeat with remaining balls until finished. Chill cake batter truffles in the refrigerator until serving. Makes around 24-30 truffles.

S'mo'nes

Why do people always come up with cool ideas before I get around to thinking of them myself? Campfire cones from Chef Jessica Bright definitely falls into that category.  I think I would have gotten around to inventing them myself, given enough time...and sleep.  Ok, so it never would have happened, but I think I have established that I live in my own happy little fantasy land.   Don't ruin it for me!

I've decided to rename them S'mo'nes, as they are s'mores in a cone.  Yeah!  We are far to suburban to have a campfire, so we just stuck them on the grill.  Grill Cones just sounds weird.  Makes me think traffic needs to be diverted around our grill or something.  So S'mo'nes it is.

We weren't sure how long to cook them on the grill so we had to keep opening them up to check for doneness.  I think with enough practice we, and by we I mean Mrblocko, will know exactly how long to cook them for.

If you are going to fill your cone with chocolate bits, please remember that when chocolate melts it retains its shape until you "disturb" it.  If you keep the cone on the heat thinking that the chocolate is going to get gooey, you will burn the chocolate.  This is not a good thing.  In fact, it is chocolate abuse and I will come to your house and beat you about the head and neck areas with a foam noodle, which may or may not be decorated like a lightsaber.

Also remind your munchkins that the insides of the cones are going to be molten hot, more so than a regular s'more.

I think Blockette had as much fun creating her s'mo'ne as she did eating it!

Lemon Buddies

I don't know a single person who doesn't love muddy buddies. You know Chex or Crispix coated in chocolate peanut buttery powdered sugar goodness. But that is not an option when you have a nut allergy. Lemon buddies from Real mom kitchen are a nice summery alternative for those folks who are sadly deprived of the joys of eating nut products.

This is another recipe I made way back in June for Relay for Life.  One of the other kids on our team happened to be allergic to peanuts. It was nice to have a snack that was safe for him to eat.

The lemony flavor was a much better fit for a summer treat than the muddy buddies would have been.  While the muddy buddies are addicting like crack, they are heavier somehow.  Maybe it's not the flavors, it's the metric ton that gets consumed in one sitting.

The Lemon buddies were good, but not quite as good as the original muddy buddies.  That was probably a good thing with all the walking we were doing that night.  Consequently, there were quite a few leftovers.  Maybe because of the humidity, the lemon buddies lost their crunch after the first day.  I've never had that problem with the muddy buddies, then again I've only ever made them in the fall and winter.

Lemon Buddies from Real Mom Kitchen
9 cups Rice Chex® cereal
1 1/4 cups white vanilla baking chips
1/4 cup butter
zest of one lemon
2 tablespoons juice from the zested lemon
2 cups powdered sugar

Measure rice chex into a large bowl; set aside. In 1-quart microwave safe bowl, microwave chips and butter uncovered on High 1 minute; stir. Microwave about 20 seconds longer or until mixture can be stirred smooth. Then stir in the lemon zest and lemon juice. Pour the melted mixture over cereal, then carefully until evenly coated. Pour into 2-gallon resealable food-storage plastic bag. Add powdered sugar. Seal bag; gently shake until well coated. Spread on a cookie sheet to cool. Once cooled, store in airtight container.

Cookie Brittle

I think it is pretty clear that I have a horrible case of an overactive sweet tooth. Dessert of some sort after dinner (and sometimes even lunch) is pretty much the standard in our house. So, you'd think that I would have kept better tabs on the amount of brown sugar in the pantry. I used the last of it up and forgot to write it down on the grocery list.

In order to follow the rule of only going to the grocery store once a week, I knew that if I wanted some dessert I was going to have to find a recipe to suit the ingredients I had on hand. This proved to be more difficult than I first thought. Most of the recipes that didn't have brown sugar in them also contained one random key ingredient I didn't have either.

A search from my binder of printed recipes yielded a big goose egg, so I headed over to my computer to examine the insanely long "recipe to do list." As luck would have it, I found Chocolate chip cookie brittle from Piece of Cake. I actually prefer making bars over cookies. It's not that I prefer eating cookies over bars. That is definitely not the case as I love them both equally. Bars are so much less fussy. You scoop them out once and bake one pan. Yeah, I really am that lazy. Cookie brittle is definitely the lazy baker's dessert.

Man was this stuff ever addicting. One might even say "cracktastic." When I eat a regular chocolate chip cookie, I can usually stop at 2. Alright...3. But with these little cookie bits I kept wanting more and more and more until I have to put them on the highest shelf in the pantry to stop myself. (Yes reaching up to the highest shelf in the pantry is too much work for the 12th piece of cookie brittle. Do not attempt this technique after having only had 3 pieces of brittle. The highest shelf is not enough of a deterrent! I've found putting something out of reach only works after you've had a ridiculous amount.)

Aside from being delishious and highly addictive, the recipe is one that can be easily altered to suit your needs and tastes. I did not have a full cup of dark chocolate chips. (I didn't even have any semi-sweet chips either!) So I used a scant 1/2 c of dark chips and a scant 1/2 c butterscotch chips. I also added 1/4c coconut. The author of the blog wrote that she thought this recipe would be tasty with butterscotch chips and coconut. I figured, since I already had to use the butterscotch chips, why not not toss in some coconut too. Also I used salted cashews since those were the cashews I had in my freezer.

I'd never had a cookie with cashews in it before. Mrblocko loves cashews, but thought it would be weird. He worried that it would taste weird and I would have wasted the precious cashews. Nope. The flavors blended together in face-stuffing goodness.

One final note about this recipe: if you want the brittle to be in jagged pieces, follow the recipe's instructions to break the cookie up after it has cooled completely. If you want more uniform pieces, cut the bar once the cookies have just barely set up. A pizza wheel works brilliantly.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brittle from Piece of Cake
1 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsalted roasted cashews
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (60% cacao–I like Ghiradelli)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and set a rack to the center position. Pour the melted butter into a large bowl, and stir in the vanilla. With a wooden spoon (or your hands, if your prefer), add the sugar, salt and flour and mix to combine–the mixture will be somewhat crumbly, like a moist pie dough. Stir in the nuts and chocolate chips. Press the mixture in a thin, even layer onto an ungreased cookie sheet (use the chocolate chips as your guide–try to get them in as close to a single layer as possible throughout the dough, and you’ll have the right thickness). You may not fill the entire sheet with the dough–that’s okay.

Bake for 23-25 minutes, until light golden brown (the edges will be a bit darker than the center). Let cool completely before breaking into whatever sized pieces you desire. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Giant Mountain of Goodness

I was going to post about this great original idea I had. Oh I was so proud of myself. I had all of these extra homemade marshmellows and a few extra oreos ...why not combine them into one tasty treat covered in chocolate. But how to keep the marshmellow from falling off the oreo? Aha! Peanut butter could be my glue. What sweet perfection.Then not one week later I decided my recipe to-do list had gotten out of control. It was time to weed out the recipes that I realistically wasn't ever going to make. As I was cleaning, I came across this from Picky Palate. Oh how my heart sank. It wasn't my idea after all. I was only remembering something I had seen and wanted to make a long time ago. Oh well. At least I remembered cuz they were a hugemongous stack of scrumptious.

Pop-py Chow

Yes, you read that title correctly. Poppy chow, not to be confused with Puppy chow (aka muddy buddies). Poppy chow is made with popcorn and puppy chow is made with Chex or Crispix cereal.

I had super high hopes for this recipe and I wound up being quite underwhelmed. How could this be so? Really, what is there not to love about the combination of chocolate, peanut butter, butter and powdered sugar. If this combination is great on cereal, it's got to be equally great on popcorn. Meh.When the topping mixture coats the cereal, the end result has some crunch to it, when the same mixture coats, popcorn, it gets kind of mushy. I never realized how much the crunch played a part of the deliciousness. Mush factor aside, I did find myself uncontrollably eating copious amounts of this popcorn. It is addicting even in it's imperfect state.

This snack was best the day it was made. The older it got, the chewier it got, and not in a good way. After three days, the center of the popcorn was sometimes so gummy I had to spit it out. So essentially, after a few days, the popcorn was just a method of transporting the peanut butter chocolate coating from the bowl to your mouth. I was 100% OK with that.

So, after I've said all this, why would you make the popcorn version in the first place? Well, popcorn is insanely cheaper than cereal. Or maybe you have a family of sneaky cereal eaters and you have plans to make puppy chow to take to some gathering that is in a few hours and discover you are missing cereal and are too crabby/lazy/unshowered/etc to go to the store. Of course that is assuming that you have a bag of popcorn kernels in your pantry. If you don't then I guess you are outta luck!

You can find the recipe for poppy chow over at Tasty Kitchen.

Poppy Chow from Tasty Kitchen
9 cups Air-Popped Popcorn
1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
½ cups Natural Peanut Butter
¼ cups Butter (1/2 Stick)
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1-½ cup Powdered Sugar

n microwave or double boiler, melt chocolate, peanut butter, and butter until melted. Stir in vanilla. Place the popped popcorn* in a large bowl and pour the chocolate mixture over all. Stir until evenly coated. Add the powdered sugar and stir until each piece is covered. Spread out on cookie sheets to set the chocolate. Try not to eat the whole batch immediately. If you have any leftover, store in an airtight container.

*Be sure to first remove any unpopped kernels from the popcorn! We don’t want any broken teeth!

A Very Cherry Infestation

This fall, while waiting for Blockette to come home from school, I was very innocently reading in the garage. Out of the corner of my eye I saw this brown thing. I screamed so loud when I realized it was a rather large brown rodent. Luckily, no one else heard me scream. Or if they did they just thought it was a crazy lady screaming over a mouse.

Well that little guy multiplied. He and his whole clan invaded my kitchen. Aieeee. Wait...look how cute they are...and delicious. Who knew that about mice?These little cherry mice , from Craftster, couldn't be easier to make. The trickiest part is remembering to dry off the cherries before dipping them in chocolate. (If you don't the chocolate will harden upon contact and make things a wee bit difficult for you.)

Blockette was upset that I was making these for the church bake sale, and not for her. I found that odd considering she does not like maraschino cherries. I had a few in the jar that were stemless so i dipped them for her to try. Apparently, chocolate makes anything edible, chocolate and cuteness.


Chocolate Mice from Craftster
Maraschino cherries with stems (stems become mouse tails) Drain and dry off well
Hershey kisses
Sliced almonds (pair them in similar sizes- 2 per cherry- for mouse ears)
Chocolate for coating

Melt the chocolate (BUT NOT the kisses) and start dipping each cherry by holding onto its stem/tail. As you lift it out of the chocolate, attach a kiss to the end opposite the stem (this becomes the head), and place on a clean sheet of wax paper. Before chocolate sets up insert a pair of almond slice ears between kiss and the cherry body. This can get a LITTLE MESSY so you'll probably want to stop and wash the chocolate off whatever you've gotten it on, before you Dot the eyes on with pink gel icing (eyes are cuter if you put them very close together)

Fairy Candy....FAIL

When Blockette had "Leoparditis," in my feeble attempts to cheer her up, I told her I was going to try to make something called Fairy Candy. Some people may know it by: Honeycomb, Angel food, sponge toffee, sea foam, hokey pokey, cinder toffee, or yellow man. It is pretty common in candies from everywhere but the U.S. Off the top of my head, Violet Crumble and Crunchie are the two most famous candy bars that contain this type of sweet filling.

The little sickie was quite excited at the prospect of a treat that was named after fairies. I felt like such a great mom. Until...

I remembered things that require a candy thermometer NEVER turn out. This time would be different right? I mean if I can conquer yeasted bread, surely the curse of the candy thermometer must be broken as well. Right? Hahahaha. right.

I let the mixture come up to 150 C like the recipe stated. I think it needed to be at that temp for more than 1 second. I took it off the heat and added the baking soda. I think I should have combined the baking soda with a whisk instead of a wooden spoon. I was so afraid that I would loose the bubbles, I did not stir it enough.

This is what happened when I poured the mixture onto my silpat sheet. Yeah, it looks like a big old mess of cat yack.

Once on the silpat I noticed the white flecks of the baking soda that did not get mixed in properly. So I tried to stir it on the silpat. This only made things worse. It broke up what little bubbles there were in the candy.

I crossed my fingers and hoped maybe it would be salvageable. A half hour later the mixture still had not set up. Not a good sign! So, I stuck the batch in the fridge to cool for another hour and I was able to break the stuff into shards. At least it looks better at this point.I called Blockette into the kitchen and told her the fairy candy was ready to test, but I warned her that I didn't think it had turned out the way it was supposed to. We each took a bite, I smiled, crunch, crunch! It tasted good. Hooray! ...or was it.

The third crunch, turned into cries of help from Blockette. "Mommy it is all stuck to my teeth! I can't get it off. Mommy get it off." The initial crunch turned into very very sticky sticky toffee. Blockette LOATHES it when things stick to her teeth. She is very particular about that. Oh she was so mad at me.
Now I had an already cranky sick kid, who was now disappointed, upset and even more cranky. Talk about messing things up. Once we got Blockette's teeth free and clean from the offending concotion, she scowled at me and said, "Next time you shouldn't screw up."

My sentiments exactly. I do like how the candy tastes, and I don't mind the chewy parts. I did find a good use for all that candy. I've stuck the whole batch in the freezer, and when I feel like having some tea, I plop in 2 shards into the bottom of the mug before adding the boiling water. The hot water melts the candy and gives it a nice honey-maple flavor.
If you'd like to try your hand at making this candy, here is the recipe:

Maple syrup honeycomb candy from Feeding Time
Hopefully you'll have better luck than me!

Honeycomb Recipe from Feeding time blog
1 cup sugar
55ml honey
40ml maple syrup
60g butter
1/2 tbs baking soda
250g chocolate, melted

Put the sugar, butter, syrup and honey into a pot and stir over medium heat. Simmer for 5-7 minutes or until mixture reaches (300F) on a sugar thermometer. Take off the heat. Add bi-carb soda. Stir until golden and foamy. Pour into a cake pan that has been lined and greased. Set aside till cooled and hard.

Five Minute Fudge

This summer has been so terribly awfully hot. I know other areas in the country are feeling the heat more than we are in Chicagoland. Even in down state Illinois there have been plenty of days when their temp has been ten degrees higher than here.

So what do you do when you have a craving for something sweet and it's just too hot to turn on the oven to make cookies? There are tons of no bake cookie recipes out there and things like Rice Krispie Treats that you can "bake" in the microwave. I didn't have all the necessary ingredients, and no way was I leaving the comforts of my air conditioned home for a sweltering meltiness of my car. Enter Easy Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge from Momma Hen's Kitchen.

This fudge only has FIVE ingredients: Sugar, milk, cocoa, peanut butter and vanilla. Score, I always have that stuff on hand. Even better than that, this type of fudge does not need a candy thermometer.

I don't know if I've mentioned on here before. The candy thermometer and I are not friends. The last few attempts at making candies as resulted in disaster and horror. I fear that thermometer like campers lost in an abandoned summer camp that is situated over an Indian Burial ground right next to the old insane asylum that is also right next to the maximum security prison where people frequently get abducted by aliens.There is nothing to fear about this fudge though. The picture above was taken right after I poured it into the pan. You can see that it starts to set up right away. My fudge never set up as well as I wanted it to, even after storing it overnight in the fridge. This was probably due to the excessive humidity and that I don't think I let the fudge boil for long enough.

The directions say that once the milk, cocoa and sugar comes to a rolling boil, let the mixture boil for one minute. I started timing at the point I thought was a rolling boil, but at one point the mixture bubbled up even more rapidly than what I thought was a rolling boil. The next time I make this I'm going to start the timer once the mixture reaches bubble insanity.

Even though it was hot out, the time I spent in front of the stove was minimal, less than 5 minutes. I can stand 5 minutes of extra hot for a pan of fudge. It's worth the suffering for the reward you will reap.

I was impressed that the consistency of the fudge was quite smooth. That meant to me that I didn't screw it up. It's easy to crystallize your fudge and get a grainy texture. I think I can improve the fudge's texture the next time I make it. I read that you will get a smoother fudge if you don't scrape the sides while you are boiling it. I will give that a try the next time I make these guys.

Please beware when you make this fudge. It is definitely crack for people. It's not just called five minute fudge because you can make it in five minutes. You can also eat the whole batch in five minutes. I probably could have eaten the entire pan in one sitting. However, I had restraint. I only ate one row instead. I should get some sort of medal...or even better...another pan of fudge.

Easy Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge from Mamma Hen's Kitchen
2 cups sugar
2 heaping tbs cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Butter an 8" x 8" baking dish. Place peanut butter and vanilla extract in a large bowl. Bring sugar, cocoa powder, and milk to a rolling boil. Boil for one minute. Pour mixture over peanut butter and vanilla. Beat for one minute, until thick. Pour into greased baking dish. Allow to cool before slicing.