No Bake Peanut Drop Cookies

I needed a lot of help getting ready for school this year. So I invited a lot of friends over to help me cut out some laminated things for my classroom. I bribed them with desserts. I needed something fast to make, but still tasty and unique. I found this great recipe after doing some searching on no-bake cookies. I love no-bake cookies but wanted to find another one besides the traditional no-bake oatmeal cookies. These turned out great - especially if you are a peanut butter lover. 

I have these awesome tool that is perfect for measuring peanut butter. You pull the tube out and set it to the amount you need. Fill with peanut butter then use it as a push tube to push out the peanut butter.

Ingredients:
2 packages of 16 oz. chocolate wafer melts
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 cups unsalted peanuts
2 cups mini marshmallows
3 cups of crispy rice cereal
2 bags of 7 oz. peanut m&m's


Directions:
Melt chocolate wafers in a double boiler, microwave, or if you have a chocolate melter like me. (I use it for cake pops)
Quickly transfer to a large bowl.
Mix in peanut butter until completely stirred together.
Mix in peanuts, cereal, and marshmallows.
Scoop about 2 tablespoons of the mixture onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.
Top each one with a peanut M&M.
Place in fridge until they set. 

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

I just love dessert! I found a great recipe for Cookie Dough Cupcakes. 


Ideally you would make cookie dough from scratch, the cupcake batter from scratch, and the frosting from scratch. But I pride myself on taking the easy way out if I think the results will be just as good. So I bought a tube of cookie dough and used a box of cake mix to make the cup cakes as well as a can of chocolate frosting. I thought the results were fantastic! You can judge me, but I'm ok with it.


Check out this awesome old-school mixer we have at the beach house. Works just as good as my one at home!



Ingredients:
1 tube of cookie dough (you probably won't use the whole package)
1 box yellow cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/3 cup canola oil
3 eggs
1 can of chocolate frosting








Directions:
Roll the cookie dough into 1 inch balls and place in freezer for 2 hours. 
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Using a mixer, beat eggs.
Add cake mix, water, & oil and mix on medium speed for a couple minutes until smooth.
Place cupcake liners in a cupcake tin and fill most of the way (but not all of the way) with the cupcake batter.
Place cookie dough ball in center of each cupcake. 
Don't worry about the ball being completely covered, it will be covered when it bakes. 
Bake in oven for about 20 minutes. Check with toothpick to make sure that the cupcake is cooked through, don't worry about the cookie part.
Remove and let cool for 10 minutes before covering with frosting.
Serve with sprinkles if you so desire!






I had some leftover batter and cookie dough so I poured the rest of the batter in a square cake pan and placed 9 cookie dough balls in the middle then baked it the same way, but a little bit longer because it was cake. It was equally awesome.

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

More Baby Shower Fun

If you want some great baby shower ideas, then you've come to the right place!


I recently shared about my sister-in-law's belated Baby Shower. But I also helped throw a baby shower for my friend Jessie last month. Such a great shower! Her mom, Kelly Steadman, owner of All Things Beautiful, was my fabulous wedding florist 5 years ago, and let me tell you, she knows how to throw a party! 


This was an owl-themed baby shower for baby Trevor. 


For food we did a slider bar as the main meal.

But we also had fruit kabobs, cups of pasta salad, veggies & dip.

But I just loved these mini twice-baked potatoes. So cute!

All the food was great, but dessert was even better! We had a dessert bar. We had owl cookies. Kelly made these delightful sugar cookies with blue fondant and chocolate icing. The noses are chocolate covered sesame seeds. The mouths are candy necklace pieces. 

There were chocolate cigars in honor of Baby Boy Smoker. 

The best part was the Make-Your-Own S'more Bar

Besides the traditional ingredients that you use to make a s'more, we also included Reese's Peanut Butter Cups & Peppermint Patties. So good! And everyone could make their own on the fire pit. 

And of course, no party would be complete without cake pops! We did owl cake pops as favors and baby boy cake pops that were ready to eat. Check out that sweet cake pop stand!

These two were a highlight for a lot of the guests at the shower!

HOW CUTE IS THIS!?!??!

Isn't it nice to have a florist in the family???

My very own mother helped out with this shower by making this poster using her cricut. We all signed a leaf with a word of encouragement for baby Trevor. Then the leaves will get attached to the branches and it will be hung for him in the nursery. So stinkin' cute!

This post is so long I will need to stop here. But another fantastic part of the day, besides the great weather, was the baby shower games. Instead of doing traditional games, my friend Ashley found lots of Minute-To-Win-It games with a baby-theme to them. They were a riot! Stay tuned for a later post on that. 

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

S'more Cookies

My husband loves making s'mores around the campfire and his favorite dessert is warm chocolate chip cookies, so when my mom showed me this recipe, I just knew I had to make them. 

My brother-in-law came to town and I got together with some of my in-laws and my awesome nieces and we decided to try these out for dessert.


What you do is you construct a s'more. (half size)

Then you encompass the s'more in cookie dough. And bake it.

It was delicious, but it turned out to be a hot mess. They kind of just fell apart. Check out the pictures on this blog to see what it should have looked like. 

I think the strategy is to use A LOT of dough or to make homemade dough. I tried just using a big container of cookie dough. I think you actually need 2 containers to make about 8 cookies. As you can see, because we didn't have enough dough, some of the s'mores weren't completely covered and I think that might have been where this recipe went wrong. The chocolate and marshmallows need enough time to melt without the actual cookies being burnt.

I'm anxious to try this recipe again sometime soon, but for now it at least tasted good though it didn't look too pretty.

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

No Bake Oatmeal Cookies

My youngest brother-in-law is a freshman at college this year. He just celebrated a birthday and we wanted to send him a care package to show our love. For the record though, this one is not your average Stoltzfoos man. He tends to do things differently. He doesn't like all the desserts that the rest of the family likes. So we decided to send him party mix and puppy chow because we thought he'd at least like those. I also wanted to try out these no bake cookies on him as well. They are good and if it turns out he doesn't like them, well they are incredibly EASY to make. No sweat at all. I would highly recommend bringing these in to the office to share or sending them in a care package of your own. They are really good! They are especially fun to make when your niece helps you make them. :-)



Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter (or just smooth pb)
3 cups quick-cooking oats
1 teaspoon vanilla


Directions:
In a medium saucepan, combine sugar, milk, butter, and cocoa.
Bring to a boil and cook for 1 1/2 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter, oats, and vanilla.

Drop teaspoonfuls onto wax paper. Let cool until hardened.

What do you think? Comments? Suggestions? I would love to know that you visited my blog. Please leave me a message letting me know you were here! Did you try out a recipe? Let me know! I would love to hear from you :-)

Creme De Menthe Squares

Probably my favorite dessert of all-time. It's one of the only things I remember from Christmases growing up :-) And that we left Beer and M&M's for "Santa Claus" rather than milk & cookies (you think I would've known a long time ago that Santa wasn't real!).



Cooking club had a cookie exchange this month. Did I mention I ADORE my cooking club??? Did I mention I have the most amazing cooking club EVER??? We are so fun together! The plan was to bring some cookies to exchange or an appetizer to eat. I brought chicken pesto pizza along with my creme de menthe squares. But others brought sugar cookies & ginegerbread cookies already made that we decorated together during the evening. That was a fun little project and a cute idea. And did I mention we all had to wear aprons??? Best part!


There was a prize for best cookie & best apron. Best cookies went to the Peanut Butter ones by Amanda. You can't really compete with PB, can you?


My mom was in town earlier this week and we made the Creme De Menthe squares together. After I made her chicken pot pie for dinner. You know it's a special recipe when you get to bust out your Kitchen Aid mixer! It was a very long process. So long that I had to call it quits and go to bed. Luckily, my mom finished it for me. The final results were fabulous! So fabulous that I made another pan the next night!!!




INGREDIENTS:


Brownie Layer

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1 can Hershey syrup

Mint Filling

• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 2 cups confectioner's sugar
• 3 tbsp green creme de menthe
• green food coloring (if you want it a darker green)
• mint cake gel (if you want it extra minty)

Chocolate Glaze

• 6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
• 6 oz melted butter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Cream butter & sugar until smooth.
3. Add beaten eggs, one at a time, mix thoroughly.
4. Add vanilla, salt, and flour. Mix until well blended.
5. Add Hershey syrup. Mix well.
6. Pour into greased 13 x 9 baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes or so. Then cool completely.
7. Cream butter & confectioner's sugar until smooth with a mixer.
8. Add Creme de menthe and mix thoroughly until of spreading consistency. 
9. Frost brownie layer with the mint filling (ONLY IF BROWNIE LAYER IS COMPLETELY COOLED)
10. Refrigerate to harden mint layer. Approximately 20 minutes or more.
11. Melt butter & chocolate chips over low heat. Stirring constantly until smooth.
12. Cool to room temperature. Spread over mint filling covering entire layer. 
13. Cool until glaze hardens. Cut into squares before serving.

I would love to know that you visited my blog or tried out a recipe. Leave me some love & encouragement!