Grilled Pound Cake S'mores

My family gets together for family dinner on Sundays. I am often put in charge of either bringing or making the dessert.  My mom found a recipe for grilled pound cake s'mores and thought they sounded like a perfect way to celebrate the end of summer so I took over making them for her.  Of course we adapted the recipe a bit too. Here's our ingredients (plus butter not shown).  It didn't call for the chocolate indulgence spread but we were glad we got it (great thought mom!).

So you slice the pound cake into 12 slices to make 6 s'mores sandwiches.  Lightly brush melted butter on the bottom side of six slices and spread chocolate on the top (we made half with milk and half with dark).  The butter helps to prevent it from sticking to the grill while giving you the beautiful grill lines and the chocolate spread helps work as a wonderful glue to hold in the chocolate chips and mini marshmallows.  

 

I used 12 mini marshmallows and a handful of chocolate chips per slice.  Then top with another slice of pound cake that has chocolate spread facing inwards and brush melted butter on top.  We grilled the s'mores sandwiches on low heat for about 3-4 minutes per side.  So glad we used the chocolate spread because without this "glue"  chocolate chips and marshmallows would have been falling out when we flipped them for sure!  Be sure not to burn the bottoms but allow them to grill long enough to give grill marks on the cake and melt all the goodness inside.  They were pretty yummy, an interesting take on s'mores, and the perfect way to celebrate summer winding down. 

Baby Time

 A friend is having her second baby soon, and I made some goodies for it (the gender is a surprise). Since she has now received said gifts I finally get to post this!  A group of us girls all get together for a game night about once a month and we all were to decorate a onesie for baby.  Well, mommy-to-be is a big fan of owls so I knew right away that I wanted to go with an owl theme. I came across a tutorial to sew little felt owl ornaments HERE and adapted the pattern to make a larger stuffed owl toy first.  Then I used the pattern to paint an owl on the onesie using acrylic paint mixed with fabric paint medium. I like how it came out, and so did mommy-to-be!

 I also like to knit hats for new babies so I picked yarns that would go with my color scheme and came up with a little gray, white, and yellow striped double ribbed design. It should fit newborn-3months.

 All the other onesies were cute too but I didn't bring my camera so you'll just have to take my word on it.  I also made a baby face cake to celebrate the little one to come.  It's made of cookies and cream cake in a dome cake pan and frosted with colored butter cream icing.  The little paci in the mouth is my favorite.  (I had to re-do the nose twice and I'm still not a huge fan of it but it worked.  Guess I need more practice on cute baby noses.)  It was yummy and that's what matters most.

Pin-tocity and Pin-cess

Pin-troctiy:  Trying an idea you saw on Pintrest and having it fail in a major way.

Pin-cess: Having a new thing you try based on Pintrest and it turns out a major success.

In this post I'll show you that I've experienced both. But first a little laugh to help demonstrate what a pin-trocity really looks like.

So I've been seeing this thing where you use permanent sharpie markers and rubbing alcohol to create a tye-die effect on a t-shirt.  Here are the two examples I kept seeing, followed by my pin-trocity:

 

Let's just say it's not fail proof!

I took an old hand me down blueish grey shirt of Hailey's to give this a try.  My colors weren't really bleeding the way in the pictures.  Maybe it was because I used 70% instead of 91% alochol.  Maybe because the fabric wasn't staying stretched tight enough over the flimsy plastic cup.  Maybe I doused it with too much alcohol too quickly instead of drop by drop in the center.  Whatever the reason I soon abandoned it as a lost cause and just went crazy drawing "fireworks" on it in sharpie and squeezing it all together so that the alcohol that was already on it could help "spread" the design.  I hate it.  But I think I learned enough from this flop to give it another go some time in the future.  We'll see.

Here is the pin-cess I made a few weeks back: layering cookie dough, Reece's PB cups or Oreos, and topping it with brownie batter to make one delicious dessert.  Here's a peek mid layering of both:

 I baked them in cupcake liners for easier removal from the pan.  I think they took about 18-20 minutes to bake at 350 degrees.  While they both turned out good, I REALLY loved the Reece's one.  For added indulgence to help celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday we then topped them with ice cream, caramel and chocolate sauces and a sprinkle of toffee peices.  Here is the final yumminess.

Great.  Now I really want to eat these again.  I think I see them in my near future.

Freezer Chili

I've been seeing a lot of pintrest interest in both freezer cooking and crock pot recipes lately so I decided to rework one of my meat and veggie chili recipes to accommodate both.  The thing that makes it so cool is that you prep once and get three meals out of it, one to cook and enjoy that day and two to freeze for easy tasty future meals. Here's my recipe (I tripped it!):

 

I write the directions on the bags of chopped veggies before I throw them in the freezer so that I know what to add and how long to cook it.   Also this is pretty mild (so that my 2 year old will still eat it) but if you like spicy add more chili powder.  I usually sprinkle more in my bowl at the end to accommodate my spicy taste.  Here's what you need for one meal:

I like a mix of bean types, just use your favorite or whatever you have on hand.  Also, since mine was made with ground beef this time I used beef broth, but I like it with ground turkey and chicken broth too!  Here's it all served up and ready to eat:

 Yum!