Apple Straws

Long time, no blogging. Talk about life getting in the way! It has been busy around Holy Hannah's headquarter. Tyler has been studying his behind off for his CPA exam this Saturday (please send prayers his way)! We have been looking for houses. Krista and Mike have been redecorating their house. Needless to say baking has been on the back burner. 

I got the itch to do some baking and provide some good study fuel for Tyler. I made his favorite cookies, Snickerdoodles. Nothing like a jumbo size Snickerdoodle to make debits and credits and auditing more appealing.

Snickerdoodle Cookie

I then got the brilliant idea to "experiment" with my potato chip cookie recipe. I had picked up a bag of Apple Straws from Sam's club a few weeks ago and thought these were my ticket to the perfect fall cookie. Instead of using crushed potato chips, I would use crushed Apple Straws.  Well lets just say I am not quite ready to try my hand at Top Chef Just Desserts. I have come to the conclusion I am more of a follow a recipe to a T type person. Oh well you live and you learn. The snickerdoodles turned out great and that was all the mattered.

Here is a picture I thought was pretty artsy fartsy. Impressed? I am.

Apple Straws = Epic Failure . The End. Happy Wednesday!

Apple Peanut Butter Bars

A coworker of mine went and picked apples last week, so jealous, and she gladly shared with me some of her loot. I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to make so I turned to the Internet to find a delicious recipe. As luck would have it my favorite recipe website, Tasty Kitchen, had lots of recipes. I went with an Apple Peanut Butter Bar recipe. Super simple and a perfect Fall treat!

Cookie Base:
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 1/2 cup honey
- 2 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup of flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt

Apple Filling:
- 5 whole apples - peeled, cored, and diced
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 whole lemon, juiced
- 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon

Crumble Topping:
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup oats
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons peanut butter
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

Start with the Cookie Base
Combine the peanut butter, honey, oil, and vanilla extract. Mix in the flour, baking soda, and salt until just combined. Chill in the freeze for 10 minutes

For the Apple Filling
Peel, core, and dice the apples. Toss with flour, brown sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon. Let sit for about 10 minutes

Prepare the Crumble Topping
Combine all the crumble topping ingredients together. Use your fingers until you get coarse crumbs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Press the cookie base into a greased 9 x 13 baking pan. Layer on the apple filling and then top with the crumble topping. Bake for 30 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

Apple Peanut Butter Bars 

Apple Peanut Butter Bars

One of the BEST combinations  =]

Strawberry Banana Muffins

Nothing like cleaning house, or I guess you could say cupboards, when it comes to baking. I had a couple extra bananas and strawberries left over and decided to use them up before they went bad. I chose a Strawberry Banana Muffin recipe with a brown sugar topping. Personally I could do without the muffin and just eat the topping but that might be frowned upon by my doctor.

For the Muffins:
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2/3 cups white sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 whole egg
- 1 whole very ripe banana
- 1/3 cups milk
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil (optional)
- 1 1/2 cups strawberries, hulled and diced

For the Topping:
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/4 cup butter, chilled and cubed

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees and line a 12 muffin serving pan
2. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
3. In a smaller bowl beat the egg and then add the banana. Mash the banana using a fork. Once combined add the milk. If they mixture doesn't appear to be creamy add the vegetable oil
4. Mix the banana mixture with the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in the strawberries. Pour into prepared liners.
5. In a different bowl combine the sugar, flour, and cinnamon for the topping. Cut in the cold butter until you get coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the muffins.
6. Bake for 20 minutes and eat while hot!

Strawberry Banana Muffins

Top View of the Crumble Topping

Full Strawberry chunks

Overall consensus on the recipe that it was very good, however my batch could have used a few more strawberries. But I suppose that is what happens when you try to make it work (Project Runway anyone? I am so ready for Josh to go home).

Weekend Baking

Happy Monday Holy Hannah's followers! Surprisingly I got off my behind and did a little baking this past weekend. Yesterday was the perfect day to stay in your pajamas all day and warm the house using the oven. I made some of our favorite recipes and whipped up a few new ones.

The classic recipes made for my dear mother were

Strawberry Lemonade Bars

Our last breath of summer!

and

Chocolate Chip Walnut Banana Bread

Tomorrow I will share with you a new recipe I made. Quite delicious if I do say so myself. Happy Monday!

ROTM Trial Run

As promised, I baked the ROTM this past weekend. Yes, I said I was going to do it last week but I kind of forgot to. And hey, better late than never!

It was really simple to make and I tried my best to do step-by-step (day-by-day, fresh start over, a different hand to play...name that family sitcom! anyone?) pictures of the process. Not my strong suit since when I'm baking, I'm in the zone. But here goes nothing.

[Ingredients]

First, I combined the two chocolates, butter and cocoa into a microwave safe bowl.

Quick shout out to my FAS (Favorite Aunt Shannon) for the lovely set of microwave/dishwasher safe bowls she gave me as a house warming present! :) Aren't they cute?

I heated this for thirty seconds, then stirred. Heated thirty seconds, then stirred. This happened 4 times for me. If Emilee were making these in the ghetto-fab microwave at my parent's house, it would have taken at least 9 times. Just sayin'.

After all of the chocolate was melted, I set this aside and grabbed a new bowl. I put the sugar, eggs, vanilla, coffee and salt in this bowl and whisked with a fork (who's surprised that my kitchen doesn't have a whisk? no one? yeah, me neither). Side Note: I am not a huge coffee drinker so the THREE TABLESPOONS of coffee was pretty much out of the question. I didn't want to omit it completely so I added a little less than 2 tablespoons.

I, of course, forgot to take a picture of a few steps in this time frame. I'm working on this though. I asked my doctor what's wrong with me that I remember what I wore on the third day of school in 8th grade but can't seem to remember where I put my keys or cell phone. She recommended (and I forgot what she recommended so Emilee asked her yesterday when she went to see the same doctor) I start taking some vitamin D. I'll report back if this helps... I digress.

Anyways, next I added my chocolatey-buttery mixture to my sugar/egg/coffee bowl and stirred. Then added the flour and stirred a bit more.

Last, but certainly not least, I crushed up about 20 Oreos (Milk and America's favorite cookie) and added most of those to the mixture. I put this mixture in my already foiled pan and topped it with the remaining Oreos. I baked this for 33 minutes in my oven (16 minutes if you're at my parents house with possessed oven) and called it good.

I was a little nervous because they smelled so much of coffee but they ended up being quite delicious. I shared with a few of our friends we had dinner with and I brought a few to work and received a compliment on them from all. I highly recommend them! However, another side note: I never drink coffee and rarely drink pop, so my caffeine intake is usually low. I had one of these at about 8:30 pm and was a Chatty Cathy for the remainder of the evening and had a hard time falling asleep. So baker beware...

And with that, I'll leave you with this happy thought :)

Stanley Cup

Brady is one lucky kid. Not only did he have the coolest baseball cake in 2009, remember this? He got baseball cake pops in 2010, shown here. This year the kid got 2 birthday cakes, all thanks to his second favorite cousin Krista, ahem we all know who number one is. =]

For his friend birthday party two weekends ago Krista made him the Vanilla Bean Strawberry cake. He loved it! For his family birthday party Krista made him this beauty. The Stanley Cup

Stanley Cup

I would have to say Brady is one lucky kid. Krista is incredibly talented and was able to whip up this replica in a short amount of time. Krista said the look on Brady's face was priceless when he saw the cake. Cheers, here's to another year of making Brady's birthday a success, and no we did not dent this cup!

Pokemon or House ?

My good friend and coworker, Megan, closed on a house last Friday. Woohoo, super exciting!! After making bride and groom cake pops and pool party pops, I had a few extra cake balls laying around. I decided I would try and make them look like houses. My plan was to make 3 houses and make cute tags saying "Congrats on Your New House!"

Well lets just say it did not go according to plan. I was crunched for time and was feeling a little rushed. I had the houses assembled but needed to add the detailing.

This is a picture of what the houses looked like pre-decorating. Not too bad, it had the general shape of a house.

House Cake Pop

Krista was put in charge of making it look cute. I left the kitchen for awhile and when I came back I couldn't help but laugh. She managed to create a broken home or what I took to calling Pokemon.

Pokemon

Can we all agree this is not our best work? This is just to let you know we are all human and are capable of making some pretty ugly creations. Plus, its a good laugh!

Hopefully you all have a great, long Labor Day weekend. Our little cousin, Brady, has put us up to a pretty tough cake challenge for his birthday cake. Check back Tuesday for an update.

Check these out! Thanks Jenny :)

Check these out!
My BFF Jenny got Mike and I the cutest house warming gifts! The adorable serving trays below which will be great for all the parties I will be hosting :)

Isn't she sweet? She also gave us two beautiful wine glasses and potholders, which I desperately needed. Don't ask how someone who bakes as often as I do could survive for over a month without a single potholder in the house!

I'm going to miss Jenny, she left today to go on a big adventure this week to Guatemala for the next two months. She is involved with a non-profit organization called Champions in Action. Check out their site, they do a lot of cool stuff for kids in Guatemala! I'll miss you Jenny, come home soon please!

Side Note: The new ROTM is up, I have yet to make this recipe but it is FOR SURE on my agenda for the long weekend and I'll give you a full report back next week on how it turns out :)