Popcorn Balls!

Sorry this recipe is a little late! It's a family tradition, which started well before I was born, to make popcorn balls every Thanksgiving when the family was all together. A few years ago, we made so many popcorn balls, that we had 10 people working on making them, 3 popcorn poppers (along with microwave), 3 pots of caramel being made, and 5 huge tubs for mixing the two together! So make sure that you have lots of room to make these, and somewhere to store them. And strong teeth is a must! To start off, you will need:
4 quarts popped popcorn
1/4 cup molasses
3/4 cup Karo syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 cup sugar

However, because we make so many of these at once, we often times the recipe by 4. Here is the amount of ingredients you would need to make it as we do:
1 cup molasses
3 cups Karo syrup
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons melted butter
4 cups sugar
And for the popcorn, we literally, excuse my French, pop a shit ton of it and eat the left overs.

So bring everything except the popcorn, to a boil, and once you can lift the spoon with the mixture forming a fine thread, pour it over the popcorn. Now you have to work fast. Mix the popcorn with a spoon, NOT your hands. This will be extremely hot so be careful not to hurt your hand. Once all the popcorn is covered, then layer your hands in butter. I know this sounds nasty and unsanitary, but the butter is the only way that you can handle the popcorn and not get burned. Plus it makes it easier to form the balls. So once you are covered in butter, form the popcorn into balls and wrap in foil.
You can eat these right after making them, but like I said, they will be hot. This is something that we do every year and give away bags of them to family and friends that all love them. It's definitely a stressful experience when you're making 3 huge batches at once, but it's the memories made making them that I love more than actually eating the popcorn balls. Hope you have fun with these!

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Bon Bons

These are literally my absolute favorite of all the Christmas sweets my family makes. Sometimes when we run out of chocolate, we freeze the peanut butter balls and just pull them out whenever we want a quick treat. 100% absolutely perfect. They are so delicious that you will need to make them. Some recipes have rice krispies in them, but I have never made those or try them. So I guess you can try it out, but I have no opinion on those kinds. So, here's how it goes!

2 cups peanut butter
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups crispy rice cereal
4 cups powdered sugar
12oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Melt peanut butter and butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Stir in the vanilla, then add the powdered sugar and mix well. It might seem a little dry at first but will start holding together the more you mix. I usually just use my hands, so much easier! Form into 1-inch balls, firmly packed. Place on a cookie sheet and freeze for about 30 minutes, or until they are firm.
Melt the chocolate chips and oil together over very low heat over the stove, stirring often. Dip each ball into the chocolate and put on a cookies sheet, that has wax paper over top. Make sure you have freezer room first though, and chill until firm.
You can eat these right after you dip them in chocolate, or after they have hardened, or even frozen. However you'd like to enjoy this sweet is totally up to you. Hope you like this one!

Frosted Flake Wreaths

Tis the season! Christmas is here and it's time to make so many delicious treats for friends and family! This is a recipe that my mom used to make when I was younger, unfortunately she hasn't made them in the recent years because I ate them all before she could distribute them. Anywho, these
are extremely cute and creative and I hope you enjoy!

To begin you will need:
1/3 cup butter
4 cups of mini marshmellows
1 teaspoon of green food coloring
6 cups of Frosted Flakes cereal
Red cinnamon candies

First melt the butter in a pot, and add in the mini marshmellows. While this is melting, you should lay down wax paper on the counter, so you can put your finished product here to harden. Once this is mixed and the marshmellows have melted as well, add in the food coloring. You may add more than just the 1 teaspoon if you'd like, it all depend on how bright you want your color to be.
Add in the cereal once the food coloring is stirred well in the mixture. Make sure every piece is coated so that it sticks together well once it is laid on the wax paper. You can then spoon out the cereal mixture onto the paper into a doughnut shape, and add the red cinnamon onto the top of the wreaths, so that they look like berries.
When this has hardened, you may peel off your tasty treat and serve to others. I hope this will be on your to do list over the holidays!

Cupcakes!

So everyone knows how to make cupcakes. Just go to the store and buy a box of the mix and follow the instructions. Easy as pie right? My senior year of high school we did a thing called "#1 Fans". It's where each senior football player gets a senior volunteer that's a girl, to send them a new surprise everyday of the rival week. I volunteered because I had a few close friends who played and who wouldn't want to do something like that? It was a blast! Some of the days we had to make them a shirt, another was a hat, a CD filled with pumping music, a poster that would get hung up in the main hallway, and a dessert. I chose to have my best friend, Zach, as my football player. Now, everyone at my old high school knew that I was the queen of nobake cookies, so if I made those, Zach would automatically know it was me, and the whole surprise element would be ruined. So, I got the idea to make cupcakes like they do on the show DC cupcakes. They turn a regualar dessert into a piece of art by making them look like a painting. They first sketch out the design they want, and put a grid over top of it. I made a grid of 24 cupcakes, so 4 wide and 6 long. This way when I wrote out what I wanted, I knew exactly what to put where, this is how the end product looked.

 

 

They were scrumptious! Friday when I was at home, bored, I decided to put a smile on my current boyfriends face by making him cupcakes. I only used 12 cupcakes this time, and I used the same strategy as I did with Zach's cupcakes. These ones were obviously more "lovey dovey" because they were for my boyfriend. But hey, they still tasted good. I put them in his car while he was at work so he could also be surprised. Needless to say, he loved them :)

Pumpkin Pretzels!

Happy (almost) Halloween everyone! I was doing my daily catch up on Pinterest this past Friday, and I stumbled across this cute little snack. Pumpkin pretzels! After I looked over the recipe, I decided to quick make a batch because my parents were going to a football game that night, and it would fit perfectly into my moms purse.

Honestly, this treat took me about 20 minutes, total. This includes time for the chocolate to harden up. Yeah, these are like a little piece of heaven.

So, you will need:
1  bag of smaller pretzels (salted, unsalted, doesn't matter)
1 bag or bar of white chocolate
1 Tablespoon of shortening
Green M&M's
Orange food coloring

Melt the chocolate and the shortening together as according to directions on the chocolate wrapping. The shortening makes the chocolate thinner so that it's easier to dip the pretzels in. Don't substitute anything else for the shortening though. Butter, milk, water...NO! Don't do it, you will ruin the consistency and probably the taste too, so just take my advice and don't do it.

Add a few drops (or however much you see necessary) of foodcoloring, to make the chocolate orange. Mix this up well so you don't have chunks of the food coloring lingering around, that would be nasty to bite into. I suppose that you don't have to color the preztels, such as for Christmas, my mother and I dip Christmas preztels into the plain white chocolate, it just depends on the kind of presentation you want.

Next, dip the preztels in the chocolate and place on wax paper. I use a fork for this so that my fingers don't get all messy. Another advantage of this is that you aren't left with a small part without chocolate, because your fingers were there. Overall, how you want to do this is your decision.

Place the M&M in the part where the 2 strips of pretzel come together, as you can see from the picture above. Let the chocolate harden for about 5 minutes and enjoy!

And there you have it, a wonderfully quick snack. Even boys could make this, no offense guys but not many of you can bake! I figured, tis the season, why not post about pumpkins!

Hot Chocolate Cookies!

It's obviously fall, and football is the sport of the season! I attend everyone of my old high schools football games, because my sister is on the Varsity Cheer team. So, over the course of the season, I have invested in a lot of hot chocolate. I decided that I would look up some good recipes on Pinterest, just so I could make some interesting flavor and drink it around the house. Then, I found a small piece of heaven. Hot. Chocolate. Cookies. I can hear the angels singing. I have very few complaints about this so be sure to put this on your to do list!

You will need:

1 stick butter

7 bars semisweet chocolate (or only 20 ounces)
1 1/2 cups flour1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder1 1/2 teasp. baking powder

1 1/4 cups light brown sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 teasp. pure vanilla extract

1 bag of large marshmellows

 

To begin, using a medium saucepan, melt the butter and only 12 ounces of chopped chocolate, stirring frequently, over medium heat. Let cool for 15 minutes. While doing this, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.

Next, using an electric mixer, beat the sugar, eggs and vanilla at low speed until smooth, 2

minutes. Mix in the cooled chocolate mixture just until blended. Add the flour mixture in smaller batches, just so when you start the mixer that it doesn't fly everywhere. Mix on low speed until just combined. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour. Now go kick back and relax. This waiting part is extremely boring.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Form the dough into 1 inch balls with your hands, then align about 16 balls 2 inches apart on each cookie sheet, flattening slightly. Bake until the tops of the cookies crack, so roughly about 12 minutes. While the cookies are baking, snip 8 marshmallows in half crosswise. Cut the rest of the chocolate into smaller bars, you will be placing them on individual cookies to melt, so make sure they are all about the same size.

Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and gently press a piece of chocolate, and a piece of marshmellow (sticky side down!), into each cookie. Bake until the marshmallows are just softened, about 4 minutes. Transfer the pans to racks to cool for 5 minutes; grate the remaining chocolate over the hot cookies. Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to the racks; let cool. Repeat the process with

the remaining dough, marshmallows and chocolate.

 

So there you have it, magnificent cookies! However, these are rich! When you eat one, make sure you have a glass of milk to compliment it! Another thing to take into account, if your audience doesn't like marshmellows, this was a huge waste of time, money, and effort. I spent about 10 dollars just from buying the chocolate, and the rest of the ingredients I had at home. But, after I slaved for 2 hours making them, my mom complained, "oh, I don't like marshmellows". COOL. Big waste of my time then...on the other hand though, delicious cookies. I would make these again in a heartbeat. Hopw you enjoy them! :)

 

Mint Brownies!

I have been on a mint craving lately! This was a Pinterest find and I voted it gold (and my family did too) ! Beware how much mint extract you put in however, you don't want your brownies to taste like a nasty toothpaste or mouthwash, nasty.

You will need 3 different groups of ingredients, because this is a layered brownie. First you will make the actual brownie portion, and this is from scratch. Second, the minty layer of amazingness, and third a chocolate layer as a topping (ganache).

Brownie:
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup of Unsweetened Chocolate
1/4 cup Andes Creme de Menth baking chips
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1/2 tsp Mint extract
2 Large eggs
1/2 cup Flour

Mint Layer:
1 stick of butter
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 Tbsp water
1/2 tsp Mint extract
Green food coloring

Chocolate Ganache:
1 cup Heavy whipping cream
1 cup bittersweet chocolate

Brownie Directions!
Preheat your oven to 325. The directions I found said to use an 8x8 dish and line it with foil. I followed directions, and that seemed unnecessary. Why line a glass dish with foil? It proved to be a waste of time, and if there was holes in the foil by pressing it flat, your layers went through the holes and made it uneffective. So, scratch that piece of information,
Melt the butter, chocolate, and Andes cips together. You may want to chop them up into smaller pieces so that they melt faster and don't burn in the pan. Remove from heat once completely melted.
Stir in the extracts and sugar, and add the eggs in one at a time. Finally mix in the flour and mix until smooth. Make sure not to leave any excess flour or whatever on the side of the bowl!
Pour batter into the pan and bake for 25 minutes. Let it cool completely before topping it with the mint layer.
Now another one of tips, don't make this. Don't get me wrong, the brownie batter tasted amazing, but I think any store bought, generic, brownie mix would work just fine. However, if you do buy a premade mix, make sure it is compatible with an 8x8 pan. The only drawbacks from doing this would be that they would be missing out on the Andes mints and mint extract. But the next layer should make up for it if you do it right.

Mint Filling!
Whip the butter until nice and fluffy. Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix until creamy. Take caution with the powdered sugar, this is some messy stuff! If you go too hard at first you will end up covered in sugar, I mean that wouldn't be a bad thing, but then your mint filling won't taste right.
When you add in the food coloring, only add a few drops. You don't want to add a whole spoonful, or anything near that amount, a little bit goes a long way!
Spread this over the cooled brownies and let harden in the fridge or freezer.

Ganache!
Chop up the chocolate so they are in smaller pieces and dissolve better in the cream.
Bring the heavy whipping cream to a simmer and remove from heat. This can bubble over quickly, so keep a close watch on this!
Pour the cream over the chocolate and whisk until smooth. Let this sit and cool in the bowl for approximately 15 minutes. Once this is finished, you are fine to pour this over the mint layer.
If you would like to, wait 10 minutes for the chocolate to set up some, and sprinkle some of the Andes mint on top.

Let this entire concoction sit in the fridge for another 30 minutes, and voila! These are extremely rich, so only cut into small portions and enjoy! This treat does take some time, so before making, allow yourself 2 hours to prepare. I hope you love this as much as my family does!