Cookies and Cream Sammies

{It’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe, but I’m back! And now, I’ve folded Laurie’s Food Files into my main blog, Scene of the Grime, hence the new blog header. You can still access my recipes by going to http://lauriesfoodfiles.blogspot.com or you can go to http://sceneofthegrime.blogspot.com and click on the FOOD FILES button. Either way, I love to have you come visit me in my creative kitchen!}

Want a quick and easy idea for a fun family dessert? How about this:

What you need:

Ice cream (any flavor)

Cookies (homemade or store-bought soft cookies)

What you do:

1-Set your ice cream out for a few minutes and let it soften.

2-Scoop a small amount of ice cream out and place it on a cookie turned upside down.

3-Now place another cookie (right side up) on top and gently press down.

4-Wrap cookie in wax paper. Put all wrapped cookies in a freezer bag and store in freezer.

5-After dinner, take out your sammies and serve with a smile!

This recipe will be saved in my Food Files for your convenience. {This post may be linked to blog parties on my linkies page.}

Hugs and Yums, Laurie

Caramel-Glazed Peaches & Pineapple Cobbler

Plato said this, and I have to agree!

Well, out of the “necessity” of my wish to make a dessert for my parents using only the contents I had on hand, the Caramel-Glazed Peaches & Pineapple Cobbler was “invented!”

Ingredients: 3/4 stick butter, 1-1/2 cup milk, 1-1/2 cup flour, and 1-1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 can pineapple chunks (drained), 1/2 can peach slices (not drained)

Directions:  (1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (2) Place butter in casserole dish (9x13, 8x11, 9” round) and put in oven to melt. (3) Mix milk, flour and sugar in a separate bowl. There will be a few lumps. (4) Take dish out of oven. Pour mixture into dish. Do not mix with butter, just pour over it. (5) Now, put pineapple and peach slices into dish, again not stirring in. (6) I usually pour the peach “juice” in as well, again not mixing. (7) To “glaze” the cobbler, I drizzled caramel ice cream syrup over the top of the dish. I added some more caramel about 1/2 way through baking. (8) Bake in oven for about 30 minutes, until top is starting to get brown and crusty.

The results? Yum-dilly-icious! It was a flavorful, scrumptious dessert! Oh cobblers, I love you, I do, I do. {This post may be linked to blog parties in my sidebar.}

Yums & Hugs, Laurie

So Easy Fuji Apple Cobbler (A 1-1-1 Recipe)

Dollar General never ceases to amaze me! Today, I found the following:

I love, love Fuji apples – have you tried them? So, I was thrilled to find some Fuji apple pie filling for $1 at DoGen. They really have unique canned food items, check em out!

Anyway, I used a simple 1-1-1 recipe to make a cobbler using this yummy filling. I call it 1-1-1 because it helps me remember the ingredients:

• 1 can filling
• 3/4 stick butter/margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup self-rising flour
• 1 cup milk
• cinnamon-sugar to taste

I microwaved the butter to melt it right in the 9-inch round glass casserole dish I used to bake the cobbler in. Then, I mixed up the sugar, flour, and milk in a separate bowl. Once it’s mixed (you’ll have some lumps, that’s okay), I poured the mixture into the casserole dish, right over the melted butter. Do not mix the mixture and butter together – just pour it in and leave it. Last, pour the apple filling in and, again, do NOT mix it in. Bake the dish in a 350 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes, until the crust is browning on top. (Another thing you can do is, when the crust is starting to solidify in the over, you can pull the rack out and sprinkle a cinnamon-sugar mixture over the top, then push the dish back in to finish baking.)

Here’s the finished dish:

Oh, goodness, was it yummy!!!! You can use this recipe with any fruit or fruit filling and it is easy to double for a 9”x13” size dish/pan. I’ve made dozens of peach cobblers (using canned peach slices) using the 1-1-1 (or 2-2-2) recipe and people always love them!

Hugs & Yums, Laurie

Shades of Summer Cookies

Hi! I was making some dippy cookies the other day and I came up with a new twist! In the Wintertime, I’m planning to call them Cocoa & Cream Cookies, but since we’re in the midst of summer heat right now, I’m calling them Shades of Summer Cookies – as in the shades of no tan to a little tan to a dark and luscious tan! Heehee!
Vanilla or chocolate? You don’t have to choose with these delicious dessert cookies! I’ve taken storebought oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies (of course you could make your own!) and dipped one side in meltable vanilla candy coating and the other in chocolate candy coating - yummalectable!!
Now, you could also use food coloring to turn your vanilla coating different colors and dip them that way as well, to coordinate with an event, party decor, etc. There’s no limit to the possibilities! Have fun!
{This post may be linked to blog parties in my sidebar.}
Hugs & Yums, Laurie

Toffee Times Two

Didja know there are 2 versions of toffee – one real and one fake?! I’ve made both and I like both, but I have to say the 2nd version is a little easier on the teeth! Now, I can’t take any credit for these recipes, just passing along the info and my culinary stamp of approval :)!

TRADITIONAL TOFFEE:

Ingredients

• 2 cups butter
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts

 

 

Directions

1. In a large pan, combine the butter and sugar. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the butter is melted. Allow to come to a boil, and cook until the mixture becomes the color of a brown paper bag. Stir occasionally.
2. While the toffee is cooking, cover a large baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.
3. As soon as the toffee reaches the proper color, pour it onto the baking sheet. Sprinkle the chocolate over the top, and let it set for a minute or two to soften. Spread the chocolate into a thin even layer once it is melted. Sprinkle the nuts over the chocolate. 
4. Chill in the fridge until set. Break into pieces and get to servin’!

FAUX TOFFEE:

Have you ever made faux saltine toffee?  Here’s a fun recipe to try that will amaze others when you tell them (if you tell them) how you did it:

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 (10 ounce) package saltine crackers
• 1 (12 ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat melt butter with brown sugar; bring to a boil and remove from heat.
3. Arrange crackers (salt side up) on the bottom of a casserole pan/dish. Pour butter mixture over crackers.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crackers. Bake for another 5 minutes.

One thing I love about both types of toffee is they are made with ingredients you are likely to have on hand in the kitchen!  Gotta love not having to wait for a grocery run to make a sweet goody!

Hugs & Yums, Laurie

Bringing Home the Bacon (Brownies)!

Have you heard of baking brownies with bacon?  Seeing that dessert a few times on the internet had me intrigued. So today, we went for it!

All you do is make up the brownie batter as directed, pour 1/2 the batter into your pan, crumble up lightly cooked bacon and sprinkle over the batter, then pour the remaining batter on top of the bacon layer.  Bake as directed…
Try really hard to be patient…
Start jumping up and down in anticipation when they come out of the oven… (by the way, I’ve had my perfect brownie pan since December and really like it!)

Let em cool, just a little, then remove from pan and serve to sounds of appreciation muffled by chewing and mmmmmming!

Hugs & Yums, Laurie

COOL CUSTOMIZED COOKIE CAKE (for my C!)

My youngest son’s birthday is coming up tomorrow and I wanted to do something a little different to personalize his birthday cake.  He is a HUUUUUGE NY Jets and Dallas Mavericks fan, so I went in that direction.
I lucked out and found a large cookie cake with no writing on it yet on discount at Kroger for $2.49 (regular price $9.99, I guess it got a little smudged thus the markdown).

Before (an example)                       After

  

I made stencils of the team logos by looking them up on the internet and hand-drawing the letters on paper plates.  I cut the letters out and laid them on the cookie cake.  I did 1/2 of the cake at a time.  I spray painted over each 1/2 with the appropriate team colors using a cake decoration tool called color mist spray (like airbrush).  When I lifted the letters, I had impressions of the logos left in white on the team color backgrounds.  I also used paper over the other 1/2 of the cake when i was spraying to get a clean dividing line.

 

Then, I hot glued tiny segments of a drinking straw to the back of small wooden sports balls I got at Michael’s for 25 cents each.  Once the glue set, I pushed the straws down into the cake so it looked like the balls were kind of hovering over the cake.

 

I also cut a “C” (my son’s initial) from red cardstock paper and floated it above the center of the cake using the same technique.  Added an “8” candle and I was done!  I didn’t want to just trash the stencil letters that are now airbrushed, so I hot glued them to the top of the cake holder lid for extra pizzazz.

Now I just have to cover the entire holder with foil or something and hide it somewhere until the big day!!!  Hope my sweet boy is surprised and happy!  I love him so. (Don’t ya love his green eyes?)
Hugs & Yums, Laurie

CANDY CHOCOLATE PUDDING CAKE (w/magic ingredient!!!)

{How on earth did I manage to get so many goodies into one dessert name?  You can’t tell I like sweets, can you?! }

A couple months ago, I discovered an interesting way to use canned pumpkin (no, not that interesting!).  Anyhoo, apparently you can mix canned pumpkin with any boxed dry cake mix in place of all the other ingredients you usually have to add (eggs, oil, etc.).  Who knew?  I have done it a couple times with yummy-good results, both with yellow and chocolate cake mix.  With the yellow, it looks/tastes a little pumpkin-y, but ultra-moist.  With chocolate, it’s just rich chocolate goodness!
This weekend, I noticed a can of pumpkin I needed to use.  By the way, I can’t find it year-round, so I buy extra during the holidays.  This time, I added the canned pumpkin to a box of fudge brownie mix, iced it with chocolate frosting and topped it with M&Ms (you could sub in any icing, candy you like).  Lookie here!

 

Oh.my.goodness.  Combining the dry brownie mix with the canned pumpkin resulted in a super decadent baked-pudding-consistency chocolate cake!  The frosting and candy just added more sinfulness to it all!  We are all thoroughly enjoying it! If you wonder what I mean by pudding-consistency, this cake reminds me of the chocolate molten-center cakes, but a little more solid.
It’s so much fun to experiment in the kitchen with new ideas! And how can you go wrong with chocolate and candy involved?!
Hugs & Yums,

FRUITY BOUQUET

Happy Easter, everyone!  Hope you all had a blessed holiday and enjoyed a wonderful Easter dinner!  We spent the day with my hubby’s family and had a delicious midday meal.  We brought three contributions to the feast:  the swirly sugar cookies I posted about a couple days ago, brown rice casserole and this fruity beauty:

  

We used a hand-sculpted and glazed vase (a $2 thrift store find), accented with springy ribbons and filled it with fruit “flower” kabobs for a fresh seasonal side/dessert!  We had lots of fun presenting the goodies in a creative way.  So now that we have a fruit turkey and a fruit bouquet under our belts, what’s next?!  Fruit fireworks?  Hmmm…
Hugs & Yums,