Congo Bars

I'm sure you are all wondering by now how I choose which recipe I will make. And even if you aren't wondering that, you could pretend to wonder such a thing and humor me. The proces is: If I don't have a taste for something specific, I just start looking through the recipes while paying attention only to the ingredients without regard to the category or title of the recipe. It goes something like, "I have sugar. Yep, eggs, too. No, no butter milk. Next." And, eventually, I find a recipe that I have all the ingredients for that also doesn't contain too many ingredients that I either can't eat (such as cream cheese) or have no interest in eating (such as figs).

Today I stumbled upon the recipe for these congo bars. The large amount of brown sugar in the recipe. I didn't realize that these "congo bars" are just a type of chocolate chip cookie bar until I was making them.

They are nice and chewy and chocolately. I like these better than the previous recipe for chocolate chip cookie bars that I posted. Unless you don't like brown sugar very much, I vote that you make these. The recipe makes a decent amount of cookie as well. I used two 9x9 inch pans and the cookies are approximately 1/2 inch thick. Be sure to grease and flour the pan or the cookies will be difficult to remove.

Congo Bars (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2/3 C shortening
2 1/4 C brown sugar, packed
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 t vanilla
2 3/4 C sifted flour
1/2 t salt
2 1/2 t baking powder
1 C chopped nuts (optional)
12 oz chocolate chips

Place shortening and brown sugar in the mixing bowl.

Cream them together.

Pour in the eggs and vanilla.

Mixy mix.

Dump in the flour, salt, and baking powder.

Mixity mix mix mix.

Mix chocolate chips mix mix stir.

Press and spread the dough.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes or so. Don't overbake these or they wil probably be rocks and not cookies.

Cool it and then cut into pieces. As many or as few as you want. You can even just have two big cookies if that is what you want.

Enjoy!

Banana Cream Cake

A lot of my baking lately seems to revolve around what my little taste tester would like to eat. He loved the blueberry cake a few weeks ago. He also enjoyed the strawberry shortcake cupcakes. This week, I made a banana cake and he enjoyed that as well. He has also now started to say “cake”, so I’m doing a good job.

I’m not sure if I like this banana cake more than the one I made back in October. This one is nice and fluffy and very cake-like. The flavor is different enough from banana bread that you can tell it is supposed to be a cake. I can’t remember much about the previous banana cake except that it was delicious. I was out of milk, so I didn’t make the cinnamon frosting for this cake. Maybe next time.

Banana Cream Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

2 1/4 c sifted flour

1 1/4 C sugar

2 1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1/2 C shortening

2 eggs

1 1/2 C mashed banana (approx 3 bananas)

1 t vanilla

Throw the first 7 ingredients into the mixing bowl and add 1/2 C of the mashed banana. 

Beat this together for 2 minutes. You may need to scrape the sides of the bowl after 30 seconds to make sure everything mixes in.

Add the remaining 1 C bananas and the vanilla.

Beat for another minute.

Pour into a greased and floured 9x13inch pan.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-25 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan. Cool completely.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

Here is a lazy, lazy post from me. The reason? The weather is being awful and plaguing me with migraines. I still wanted to bake something, however, so I pulled something out of my long list of bookmarked blog posts to bake. This one is from Bakerella. If you want to see lovely pictures and the recipe for the chocolate frosting, go there.

How do you make this delicious looking thing? You buy a box of Betty Crocker Original Supreme brownie mix. Make the mix according to the package and place it in a 13x9inch pan. Then take a package of Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix, make it according to the package, and place globs of the cookie dough into the brownie mix. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40ish minutes and let cool.

I probably don't have to mention this, but these are very unhealthy.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes

It isn't quite strawberry season in Ohio, but the strawberries are on a buy one get one free sale. That means I can make lots of delicious strawberry desserts! My immediate thought when I saw this sale was to make strawberry shortcake cupcakes. So I did. And I'm very glad that I did. Doesn't it look delicious? It is very much.

I baked yellow cake from scratch for these cupcakes. I'm not sure that I like the recipe, but it goes well with the strawberries and fluffy white frosting. I may have overbeat the eggs into the batter because the cake fell a bit after baking. Instead of using whipped cream, I used a fluffy white frosting because I can't have too much dairy without getting sick. This frosting makes a good substitute for whipped cream; it isn't too sweet and is very, very fluffy.

Yellow Cake (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

1/2 C shortening

1/2 C butter, softened

2 C sugar

4 eggs

2 2/3 C sifted cake flour

2 1/2 t baking powder

1 C milk

1 1/2 t vanilla

Sift together the sifted-before-measured cake flour and baking powder. Set aside.

Cream together the shortening, butter, and sugar until well blended and kind of fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat until fluffy.

Alternate mixing in the flour mixture and the milk. The additions should be: flour, milk, flour, milk, flour. Be sure to mix well between each addition and after the final.

Scoop the batter into paper lined muffin cups. Fill the cups 2/3 full with batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, slice your strawberries and make the fluffy white frosting. The recipe is from allrecipes.com.

Fluffy White Frosting (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

1 C sugar

1/3 c water

1/4 t cream of tartar

2 egg whites

1 t vanilla extract

In a small sauce pan, combine the sugar, water, and cream of tartar. Warm over medium heat while stirring occasionally. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves and the mixture starts to bubble.

Meanwhile, beat together the egg whites and vanilla until soft peaks form.

With the mixer on a medium speed, slowly pour the melted sugar mixture into the egg whites. Beat together for 8 minutes or until stiff peaks form. The frosting will be nice and cool by the time it reaches the stiff peak stage.

Assembling

Now you get to assemble the strawberry shortcakes. Excited? You should be! 

First, take a cupcake, peel the liner away from the sides, and set it on a plate.

Next, take a sharp knife and cut the cupcake horizontally into two pieces.

Place some of the frosting on top of the bottom half of the cupcake. Next place some strawberries on top of the fluffy frosting.

Replace the top half of the cupcake. Repeat the frosting and strawberry steps. You can even pretend you are able to make flowers out of the strawberry slices like I did.

Now eat a ton of these because they are delicious.

Enjoy!

Porcupines

I have no idea where the name of this recipe comes from. Nothing of it resembles a porcupine and it sure isn't made from porcupines. The flavor of this actually reminds me of the filling for stuffed cabbage. These are really easy to make and go well with mashed potatoes and corn, as pictured. This working out so lovely gives me hope for the other main dish recipes in this mess of recipes I have.

The recipe for Porcupines didn't give specific amounts for most of the ingredients, so I'll just guess at what I used. Feel free to adjust amounts to suit your tastes. You probably don't even have to measure anything to make this. I do recommend using a lean ground meat or it will end up a greasy mess (I know this from a failed attempt at meatloaf not too long ago...). You can most likely assemble the meat part of this dinner in advance and refrigerate or freeze it.

Porcupines (Printer-friendly PDF version)

1 pound lean ground beef

1/2 C long grain white rice, uncooked

1/4 C onion, chopped

1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1 can Tomato puree, 29oz (the large can)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Place the ground meat in a bowl with the rice, onions, salt, and pepper. Mix together until well combined.

Roll the mixed up meat mixture into balls, approximately the size of golf balls.

In a casserole dish, mix the tomato puree with the salt and pepper.

Place the meat balls into the tomato mixture.

Cover and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 1/2 hours.

Serve with mashed potatoes.

Enjoy!