The Nifty Foodie

I’ve been making a ton of frozen treats lately. With the crazy heat outside, I feel like the best way to “cook” is to not use any heat at all. Sure, some ice creams use eggs, but since you have to cook the ice cream mixture in that case, I’ve been trying quite a few quick (egg free) ice cream recipes.

One of my favorite ice cream treats is a Sonic Blast with Reese’s cup pieces mixed in. Reese’s cups for me is just one of those candies I can’t say no to. I can only buy them if I have a recipe in mind, otherwise I tend to black out and find myself surrounded by Reese’s wrappers. Those things are my weakness.

In a brief, insane (yep, insane…I’m trying to lose some weight y’all!) moment, I thought to look up recipes for Reese’s ice cream, and I came across this one. Two great things…it comes together quickly and it’s egg free (no cooking!). Taste wise? Let’s just say that I’m thankful that I bought the fancy little ice cream cup that I have, because 1/2 cup of ice cream fits in there and in my mind, it feels like I’m eating a full bowl. I really could have eaten the whole container in one serving, I imagine.

Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream
Source: barely adapted from Recipe Girl (originally found in the Cuisinart Ice Cream book)

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups peanut butter
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 cups whole milk
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cups chopped peanut butter cups

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the peanut butter and sugar and beat the mixture for 2 minutes until it’s very smooth. Add the milk to the bowl and mix everything on low for another 2 minutes, until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the heavy cream and vanilla extract and beat the mixture on low for another 2 minutes, until the ice cream base is well-combined. Chill the mixture in the fridge for an hour.
2. Take the ice cream mixture out of the fridge, give it a quick stir to make sure nothing settled and add the ice cream to your ice cream machine, and churn the mixture according to your manufacturer’s instructions. Add the chopped peanut butter cups, and stir them into the churned ice cream. At this point, the ice cream will be like a soft serve ice cream. If you’d prefer a more scoopable consistency, place the ice cream in a freezer safe container and freeze the ice cream for a few hours. Enjoy!

I absolutely love seasonal candies. When it comes to Easter, it’s so dang hard to resist my favorite candies in pastels. It just makes them that much cuter. This doesn’t bode well for my thighs, since I’ve probably consumed about 45902 Cadbury caramel eggs this season alone. When I was walking down the candy aisle earlier this week, I thought about baking with Easter candy just so I could have yet another excuse to buy another bag of candy. Then it hit me when I saw the Peeps: S’mores. I know I’ve seen s’mores cookies on a few food blogs before, so I grabbed a bag of Sixlets and Peeps (as well as another box of Cadbury caramel eggs…ugh).

When I got home, I thought that colorful sprinkles would make these cookies even cuter. I mean, why not? I ended up finding a bottle of rainbow (chocolate) chips by the sprinkles. I think that was fate, since the original recipe called for mini chocolate chips, which I didn’t have (whoops). So, with all of these colorful ingredients on my counter, I was pretty darn excited to make these cookies! In fact, when the first batch of cookies were done, I really didn’t wait long to pull one of these off of the cooling rack and devour it. And y’all, these cookies are just awesome. Not only are they super cute and colorful; they’re insanely addictive. This recipe also makes quite a few cookies for sharing. I used my small cookie scoop to scoop these on the cookie sheet, but since this dough spreads a good bit, it still makes a decent sized cookie. In the end, I had enough cookies to share with both mine and H’s coworkers this time around.

Easter Candy S’mores Cookies
adapted from Two Peas & Their Pod, originally from Baked Perfection

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup Wilton Rainbow Chip
• 1 1/2 cups chopped Easter Peeps (appx. the same size as mini marshmallows)
• Easter Sixlets

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking soda and salt, until well blended.
2. In another bowl, using a mixer, beat the butter for about 2 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the sugars and beat for about another minute.
3. With the mixer on low, add the vanilla extract and the eggs, one at a time, scraping the bowl after each addition. Add in the flour mixture slowly, and mix on low until just combined.
4. Fold in the rainbow chips with a spatula.
5. Using a small cookie scoop (appx. tbsp. sized), scoop the cookie dough out, giving about 2 inches between each cookie (like I said, these do spread). Bake for about 7 minutes and take the cookies out of the oven.
6. Immediately add the sixlets and peeps, by pressing them gently into the cookie. Place the cookies back in the oven and bake them for another 3-4 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on a cooling rack, and serve!

Snickers bars are my diet nemesis. The candy bars are 280 calories each (yep), and I could seriously destroy one in a couple of minutes. Now that I’m calorie counting, 280 calories is a lot when you get under 1600 calories each day, but in my opinion, calories don’t count for one day of the year. Your birthday. I turned 28 on Friday, and since Snickers are my favorite, I decided to make these cupcakes to celebrate. Now, of course, I could buy a cake at a bakery and spend $30+, but heck, where can you find SNICKERS cupcakes? Not any place around here, that’s for sure!

The hardest thing for me was bringing home two bags of mini Snickers to make these bad boys happen. I totally ate about 10-ish mini Snickers that week, so I obviously don’t have any willpower against this candy….at.all. Oh, and when it came time to make these Thursday and cut the candy up for the filling….yeah, totally snuck a few tiny bites. Whoopsie!

I will admit, these cupcakes were more time-consuming than I thought, but it’s worth it to give these a try. Just don’t do it on a weeknight, like I did.

If you’re concerned about me completely killing my diet, I’ll let you know that since I could have totally eaten all 20 of these cupcakes, I ended up giving most of them to H to bring to his coworkers. His coworkers absolutely loved these, and some of these actually wanted to know how much they would be for me to make them. So, I guess they weren’t a flop haha! My opinion? Heaven in a cupcake. Oh yes…if you love Snickers like I do, just make these cupcakes.

Snickers Cupcakes
Source: mildly adapted from Annie’s Eats, cupcakes originally from Martha Stewart, frosting originally from My Baking Addiction

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. coarse salt
16 tbsp. unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk
1 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
2/3 cup sour cream, at room temperature

For the filling:

1 bag mini Snickers chopped into fourths (I found it easier to do this after the Snickers were in the freezer)
1/4 cup salted butter caramel sauce

For the frosting:

16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 lb. confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup salted butter caramel sauce
Pinch of coarse salt
2 tbsp. heavy cream

**To garnish the tops, you’ll need 20 mini Snickers.**

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and mix together until the ingredients are well-combined. In a smaller bowl, whisk the cocoa powder and hot water together until it’s a smooth liquid.
2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sugar using medium heat. Once the butter has melted, remove the mixture from the cook top and transfer the mixture to a mixer bowl. Using the paddle attachment on the mixer, beat the butter/sugar mixture on medium-low speed for a few minutes, until the mixture has cooled (you don’t want to cook the eggs when you add them). Add in the eggs and egg yolk, one at a time, beating the mixture well and scraping down the side of the bowl after you add each egg. Add in the vanilla and the cocoa mixture and mix until well-combined. Then, turn the mixer on low and add in the flour mixture in two batches, and alternating with the sour cream. You want to beat the mixture until just combined (don’t overmix).
3. Using a medium cookie scoop, add the batter to your cupcake pans (lined with cupcake liners) until each cup is about 3/4 full. Bake the cupcakes for 18-20 minutes (rotating the cupcake pan once when the cupcakes are halfway done with baking), until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Allow the cupcakes to cool in the pan for a few minutes, and move them to a wire cooling rack to finish cooling.
4. Once the cupcakes are completely cool, cut a cone shape out of the center of the cupcakes using a paring knife. Using cooled caramel sauce, add 1/3 cup of the caramel sauce to your Snickers pieces and mix until the candy is coated in caramel. Then, add a spoonful of the filling to each cupcake.
5. For the frosting, using a paddle attachment on your mixer, whip the butter on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add in the confectioners’ sugar with the mixer on low speed, a cup at a time (to avoid a mess), until the mixture smooth and creamy. Add in the caramel sauce (which should be just a tad on the warm side for this), vanilla and salt on low speed, and mix until well-blended. Add in the heavy cream, and mix the frosting on medium speed for a few minutes until fluffy and smooth.
6. To finish the cupcakes, frost the cupcakes to your liking (I used a Wilton 1B tip), drizzle on some caramel sauce, and place a mini Snickers on the center of each cupcake.

Happy early St. Paddy’s Day y’all! When I was a kid, my family used to go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New Orleans. The parades for St. Paddy’s Day aren’t anything like the ones at Mardi Gras. The prized throws are vegetables. That’s right, y’all. They throw vegetables at these parades. Cabbage, carrots, potatoes…you name it! I remember catching these things as a kid, and thinking that these were the most boring throws ever. Of course veggies are boring to a kid! The tradition is that you take home your catches, and then make a stew for your family for the holiday.

The fun part for me was when some older men would walk in the parade carrying these huge displays of fake flowers, and they would hand them to the ladies and little girls. My sister and I used to compare bouquets at the end of the parade, and man, it was so much fun to get flowers as a little girl!

Sadly, I haven’t been to a parade in a long time, which really should be remedied next year, but the memories I have from my childhood just make me so psyched for the holiday. Not to mention, St. Paddy’s Day is the week of my birthday (as well as my sister’s)! Her birthday is actually today! If you’re reading this, Happy Birthday Sis!

As far as these cookies go, I’ve been wanting to make these M&M cookies for a while, and since I had a bag of Christmas M&Ms leftover from the holiday bake-palooza, I took a few minutes to take out the green M&Ms, add some white chocolate chunks and make these cookies finally happen. I have no idea how that bag of M&Ms lasted this long in our house, actually, but I guess I’m getting some willpower from the good ol’ diet.

Strictly for quality control purposes, I had to try one of these bad boys. It took a lot for me to not grab a second or a third, because I just LOVE M&M cookies! This recipe couldn’t be easier either, since it only requires one bowl. I’m all about doing less dishes, so these cookies are even more awesome because of that!

M&M White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Source: mildly adapted from Sing For Your Supper, originally from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/3 cup & 1 tbsp. granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar, light or dark
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose Flour
• 2 tbsp. milk
• 1.5 cups M&Ms
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chunks

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and prepare two baking sheets lined with parchment or Silpat sheets.
2. Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, for about two minutes. Add the baking soda, baking powder, salt and vanilla and mix until well-incorporated. Add the egg and mix until blended. Scrape the bowl down, add the milk and mix again.
3. Add the flour and beat the mixture until just mixed together. Do not overbeat.
4. Using a spatula, lightly stir in the M&Ms and white chocolate chunks.
5. With a regular cookie scoop, drop the cookies on your sheet, allowing 2 inches between each cookie. Bake the cookies for 14-16 minutes, until the cookies are a light golden brown and slightly browner along the edges. Allow the cookies to fully cool on the cookie sheet before serving.

A couple of weeks ago, I was scouring Target’s 90% off post-Christmas sale. By the time that sale comes around, all of our Christmas stuff is put away in the attic, but I usually don’t have my sights set on decor at that point. I go to the 90% off sales for birthday wrapping goods. I know that sounds weird, but when you can buy bright colored curling ribbon, white or kraft tissue paper, and/or solid colored gift bags for pennies on the dollar, it’s completely worth it. Sometimes I also go in hoping to score some hidden treasures to keep Lane Bryant in business, like a bag of Ghirardelli holiday candies or in this case, a bag of cinnamon M&Ms.

When I originally saw these, I was hesitant to purchase them, because I didn’t know if these M&Ms were a subtle cinnamon spice or red hot cinnamon-like chocolate candies. I’m not a big fan of red hots, so I didn’t want to take a chance. Well, that is, until the bag was 90% off. Who can refuse a big bag of M&Ms for thirty cents?

So, I gave them a try one night and was pleasantly surprised. These M&Ms had just a hint of cinnamon spice, which proved to be a little addictive. So, before I ate the whole bag, I got to googling and saw these cookies on Picky Palate.

I thought my problems were solved. Bake up these cookies to bring to coworkers and use up all the M&Ms. However, the quality control side of me took over, and before I knew it, 3 of these cookies were gone. There’s nothing like a freshly baked cookie…just couldn’t help myself here…these were insanely good!

To prevent myself from no longer fitting in Lane Bryant (they have size limits, too haha!), I put these cookies away in a container to bring to coworkers. Thankfully, these cookies were so awesome that by the time I went back in the break room to heat up my lunch, my cookie plate only had crumbs remaining. I’d say these were a winner.

Cinnamon M&M Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from: Picky Palate

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks softened unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp. pure vanilla extract
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 bag white chocolate chips
• 1 9.90 ounce bag Cinnamon M&M’s

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Using a mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar and white sugar in a bowl for 2-3 minutes on medium to medium-high speed, until the mixture is light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs and vanilla extract. Mix for about a minute on low, or until well combined.
3. In another bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt together with a whisk. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. Add the cinnamon, rolled oats and white chocolate chips and mix on low until the mixture is just combined.
4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. With a medium sized cookie scoop, scoop out the dough and place each cookie about an inch apart on the sheet since these cookies spread a little. Press the cookies down slightly, to just flatten them, and press 4-5 M&Ms on each cookie.
5. Bake the cookies for 9-12 minutes (I let them go for 12 minutes, which made them barely brown along the edges), and allow the cookies to cool for a few minutes before moving the baked cookies to a cooling rack.

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