Tag: stress-baking

Food

Chocolate Chip Bars

Amanda

I often find myself craving cookies without the desire to make individual cookies. Mostly because I’m lazy and sometimes because I have had too much wine. Before you feel too badly for me, I found a solution – Chocolate Chip Bars.

These were a favorite of my Mom’s when we had to make cookies fast, but had other things to do other than clearing out a batch every 14 minutes. These can be made in a 9×13, a heart shaped cake pan, a skillet, or a microwaveable mug. The best part about these is you can make them as “done” as you want. My preference is to eat them with a spoon.

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Chocolate Chip Bars

  • Servings: 12-16 Bars
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print
Ingredients:

  • 2 1/4 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup softened unsalted butter
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • (1 cup nuts)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Cream butter, sugars, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, and salt.
  3. Add in flour and mix until just combined.
  4. Add chocolate chips (and nuts).
  5. Distribute into an ungreased 9×13 pan.
  6. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Food

cinnamon + popcorn = God’s favorite snack

Amanda

Really. This snack is absolute perfection. One of the very few things I have tasted on this earth that might be deemed worthy of God’s snack bowl. For some reason I have been craving cinnamon like crazy the past few weeks. I think it started at a Super Bowl Party we went to.

They had cinnamon popcorn – it was delicious! But really buttery – now I’m no butter-hater, but I’m also not a Paula Deen. Save for my chocolate chip cookies I usually try to skim back on the butter a bit, if for nothing more than the false belief that what I’m eating is somewhat healthy.

So after going through two bags of Stacy’s Cinnamon Pita Chips and trying to stifle my craving with Cinnamon Sugar Toast (throwback!) I decided to Pinterest some Cinnamon Popcorn. I still don’t really know how I feel about Pinterest. I love the fact that I can stalk other people’s weddings and look up nice quotes, but sometimes I feel like it is just the same stuff over and over again – however, tonight Pinterest delivered. Beautifully. I found a recipe here – and modified it a bit… I visit Garrett’s enough that I know how to make sugar coated popcorn. So I used some tricks I siphoned off of them.

Amanda’s Cinnamon Popcorn

Ingredients:

  • 2/3 c unpopped popcorn (or 8-10 cups popped)
  • 1/2 c butter
  • 1/4 c + 1 T white sugar
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 – 2 T cinnamon sugar

Directions:

  • Heat oven to 300 degrees.
  • I made the popcorn in my handy dandy Whirley Pop, courtesy of Charlie’s parents. (A little bit of olive oil with the 2/3 c kernels)
  • After the popcorn was done I split it up into two bowls.
  •  Melt butter, sugar, and cinnamon in the microwave until the sugar is dissolved.
  • Add vanilla.
  • Pour 1/4 of the mixture over one bowl and a 1/4 of the mixture over the other bowl.
  • “Toss” the popcorn. Move the bowl in a motion so that the kernels fly around (not TOO much flying) and they get nice and coated!
  • Pour remaining mixture evenly over both. Repeat “toss.”
  • Lay popcorn onto an aluminum foil wrapped baking pan (I had to use two).
  • Sprinkle popcorn with cinnamon sugar.
  • Bake for 5 minutes – remove from oven (BE CAREFUL IT IS HOT – IT WAS JUST IN THE OVEN), use the tin foil to pour popcorn back into mixing bowl and repeat tossing action. Spread back onto aluminum foil and baking sheet. (Do for the other one).
  • Bake for another 5 minutes. Remove from oven…

…And then try not to eat all of it in one sitting. Because you will. Like I did…

I know this seems really involved – but I think that tossing it made the difference between it being soggy buttered popcorn tasting into crispy almost Garrett-crispy popcorn!

My posts may (hopefully) be slowing down as I lead up to the Bar, but one thing is for sure – the stress baking will NOT!

Amanda

Food

my name is amanda…

Amanda

… and I am a stress baker.

I am not talking about your usual here and there, oh lets make brownies… I am talking straight on… in the past week I have made four different type of baked goods and I don’t plan on stopping soon.

The Bar exam is literally eating away at my soul, and so the only way I feel human again is to make tasty treats and feed the people I love. And myself.

Another thing about me… I love S’Mores… in any form. Trader Joe’s has these little S’More bits that I will eat an entire box of without blinking. The combination to me is just genius. So today I was hardcore craving S’More cupcakes, but there was simply no time to get chocolate cake mix… but I happened to have some Ghirardelli brownie mix…

S’More Brownies (Amanda’s Version)

Ingredients:

  • 8 T unsalted butter, melted
  • 2 c graham cracker crumbs
  • 2 T + 1 t granulated sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 Box Ghirardelli brownie mix (1/3 c veggie oil, 1/4 c water, 1 egg)
  • “Enough” mini marshmallows

Directions:

  1. (Steps 1 & 2 taken from above linked blog) Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line 8×8-inch pan with foil so it hangs over the edges a bit. Spray with nonstick spray. (You can use 9×9-inch pan, but baking time might need slight decrease and your end result will be a thinner brownie).
  2. Prepare crust: In a medium bowl, mix butter with crumbs, sugar and salt. Press crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan. Bake until golden, 15 to 20 minutes.
  3. Mix up brownie mix (so much faster).
  4. Pour into baked crust, bake according to box directions.
  5. After brownies are done sprinkle “enough” (to cover) mini marshmallows. Sprinkle with any extra graham cracker frosting. Broil for 3-6 minutes depending on oven.
  6. Try not to eat right away because it will BURN YOUR MOUTH OFF. Seriously, learn from my mistake
  7. Remove aluminum foil from pan and cut brownies (I waited a bit first).

These babies are EXACTLY what the doctor ordered – SO yummy and delicious. I hope you have reasons to make these other than stress-baking, but if not… these are the perfect cure!

Amanda