I did want to drop in, however, and let everyone know that I have fixed the problem with pinning my items to Pinterest. Turns out, the problem was with Flickr, the site I use to host my pictures. Someone somewhere didn’t want their flickr pictures pinned, and rather than setting up something in order for people to opt-out of Pinterest, they opted EVERYONE out. Without telling me. So I spent forever trying to figure out what was going wrong before I finally hit on the right google search and figured it out. A quick change of my Flickr settings, and we’re back in business.

So if you’ve tried to pin my recipes lately and been unable to, I’m so sorry! The problem is fixed now (I hope– if not, PLEASE let me know!), so feel free to pin away!

Thanks for your patience,

Jenn

I love lemon poppy seed muffins. If I get to choose a muffin, it will almost always be lemon poppy seed. Although, the chocolate chocolate chip muffins sometimes win out.

I bought a jar of poppy seeds awhile back with good intentions, and finally decided that it was time to make something with them! I found this recipe and happened to have all the ingredients, so that was all the further I needed to look.

Later, I noticed that it said “the grated lemon zest and freshly squeezed juice give these muffins a light fresh flavor – not too sweet.” Well, hmmm… Don’t get me wrong, the muffins were good, but they were not exactly what I had in mind. They might be exactly what YOU are after though! A friend I shared them with insisted that they were perfect as is, and no changers were needed. Feel free to try these, and let me know what you think.

Do you have a favorite lemon poppy seed muffin recipe?

Lemon Poppyseed Buttermilk Muffins
Source: My Gourmet Connection

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons poppyseeds

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease a standard-sized muffin-pan.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
In a separate bowl, combine the egg, melted butter, buttermilk, vegetable oil, lemon zest, lemon juice and lemon and vanilla extracts. Stir into the dry ingredients, add the poppy seeds and combine thoroughly.

Spoon the batter into the muffin pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer muffins from pan to a cooling rack immediately.

I made these cookies to RAVE reviews. In fact, I made these at the same time that I made the Cookies N Cream ones, and I think the others really suffered in comparison because these were SO good!

This is not actually the first time I’ve made these. I made them for a family gathering probably 3 years ago now, and they were very well received then as well. Unfortunately, the Coconut Creme kisses that are on top are a seasonal item and therefore only available during a short time of the year. If your local store hasn’t sold out of it’s 50% off Easter candy, I suggest running out and grabbing at least one bag of these. They are really good on top of a cookie, but the Kisses are really good on their own as well! Not that I ate all of the other ones I unwrapped after I ran out of cookie dough or anything… *cough*

These cookies were not difficult, but they are kind of involved. Even with the turn in the refrigerator, rolling the balls of cookie dough in coconut will be sticky and messy. It’s worth it though! The cookies turn out soft and flavorful. I even had a professed coconut hater LOVE them. Can’t beat that ringing endorsement!

Coconut Creme Macaroons
Source: Hershey’s, back of the Coconut Creme Kisses bag

1/3 cup butter, softened
1 package (3 oz.) cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons almond extract
2 teaspoons orange juice
1 1/4 up all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 cups sweetened coconut flakes, divided
Hershey Kisses filled with Coconut Creme

Beat butter, cream cheese and sugar in large bowl until well blended. Add egg yolk, almond extract, and orange juice; beat well. Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in 3 cups of coconut.

Cover; refrigerate 1 hour of until firm enough to handle. Remove wrappers from chocolates. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll balls in remaining 2 cups coconut. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven; immediately press chocolate on top of each cookie. Cool 1 minutes, carefully remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. About 4 dozen cookies.

I have had these cookies bookmarked for AT LEAST a year. See, the Hershey Kisses that are on top of these cookies are the Limited Edition Cookies ‘N Cream Kisses. They are, in fact, seasonal kisses that are available in the spring, around Easter. Don’t be like me. Go out and buy (at least one) bag of these kisses so that you can make these cookies. In fact, go ahead and grab a bag of the Limited Edition Coconut Creme kisses while you are at it. They are delicious, and will be featured in a cookie that I plan on posting next!

These cookies were worth the wait, though. They were really easy to make. Everything came together really quickly, and I liked that they have a rest in the refrigerator– gives me a chance to clean up some of the mess I’ve made before it’s time to pull the cookies out of the oven. I have a small kitchen, so a baking mess plus cooling racks don’t always work out so well

Most of my taste-testers admitted to not being too crazy about cookies ‘n cream (what?! I know, right?), but thought the cookies were good anyway. I really enjoyed them. They had a good flavor and were the perfect texture! I may make a trip to the grocery store to buy another bag of the kisses so that I don’t have to wait until next year to make them again!

Cookies ‘n Cream Kiss Cookies
Source: Visions of Sugar Plum

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup coarsely chopped Oreo cookies
24 cookies ‘n cream kisses

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat cookie sheets with cooking spray.

In a medium mixing bowl, sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt. In a large mixing bowl, using a mixer on medium speed, beat cream cheese until softened. Beat in butter until creamy. Beat in sugar until well combined. Beat in egg, vanilla and almond extract until combined. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually beat in flour mixture until just combined; stir in Oreos until combined.

Chill cookie dough in the freezer or refrigerator until cold. Place rounded tablespoons of dough onto cookie sheets. Bake 12 minutes or until puffed and light golden brown around edges.

Remove pans from oven; press a kiss in the center of each cookie. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

Makes 2 dozen cookies

If you’re anything like me, you often have a number of overripe bananas on the counter. Since I live by myself, I have a hard time eating up a bunch of bananas before they get too ripe to eat. I also end up throwing them away a lot because I don’t get around to baking with them either. (I really need to learn to at least get them in the freezer!) This time, however, I was determined to make something with my bananas rather than throwing that money in the trash. I went looking for a chocolate chip banana muffin recipe I remembered seeing last week. While I searching, I found this recipe instead. Search over, previous recipe completely forgotten! It didn’t hurt that I also had strawberries in the fridge that were starting to look pretty sad!

Technically, these would need to have pineapple in them to be actual Banana Split Muffins, but since they contain bananas, strawberries and chocolate chips, they seem close enough to a banana split in muffin form to me! Banana split muffin is also much easier to say than strawberry, banana, and chocolate chip muffins.

These came together really quickly and easily. It took me maybe 30 minutes from the time I pulled out the ingredients until I pulled them out of the oven and turned them out on a wire rack to cool. I ate one for breakfast this morning, saved a few for pictures, and took the rest to roller derby practice for the girls. The muffins got pretty good reviews, and they were up against fresh baked brownies, still warm from the oven that someone else brought!

I ate one as is, but I have to say, it would have been really good warmed in the microwave for a few seconds with some butter slathered on it. Mmmm! I will definitely be making these again in the future. Probably the next time I have bananas and strawberries on the verge of going bad at the same time!

Banana, Strawberry and Chocolate Chip Muffins
Source: For the Love of Cooking

½ cup of butter, softened
¾ cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
3 overripe bananas
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
10-12 fresh strawberries diced
1/2 cup of chocolate chips (I used mini chocolate chips!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees then coat a muffin pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs, bananas, and vanilla then continue beating until well combined.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together, mix well. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture and stir until just combined. Add most of the diced strawberries and most of the chocolate chips then gently mix them into the batter.

Spoon the batter evenly into each muffin tin. Place the remaining strawberries and chocolate chips on top of each muffin.Place into the oven and bake 18-20 minutes or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the muffins cool on a rack.

We are rapidly approaching the end of comfort food season. In fact, in my area of Indiana, we are at the beginning of an unseasonably warm week! This makes me happy because my roller derby team is participating in the St. Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday, and I am very much looking forward to not nearly freezing to death like we did last year. All this to say, I’m glad I made this soup last week!

But maybe it’s still chilly where you are, and you’re wanting a nice, comforting bowl of soup. If so, you are in luck! I bookmarked this recipe ages ago, and finally decided to pull it out. I love baked potato soups, but most of the recipes I’ve found are rather difficult, or at least involved. Not the case with this one! The best thing about this recipe though is how adaptable it is! I included the original recipe at the bottom of the post here, as always, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: That’s not exactly how I made my soup! *gasp* I know those of you who have been around with me for a long time are probably shocked, me being the dirty little recipe follower that I am.

I’m not crazy about onions, so instead of including the chopped onion that is called for, I shook in a bit of dried minced onion. I also just shook in some pepper instead of measuring, and added a shake or two of garlic powder while I was at it. Garlic makes everything better. The biggest change I made? When it was time to add the cream cheese, I also added about half of a 3oz package of real bacon pieces. Ohhh yeah! I topped my serving off with some cheddar cheese and sour cream. It was super easy to make and crazy delicious! I’ll definitely be making this one again.

And just a tip I picked up from reading the comments on the original recipe: some people had issues with getting the cream cheese to melt. Based on their suggestions, I made sure my cream cheese was super soft, and then I whirled it around in my mini processor with a little bit of the hot soup before adding it to the crockpot. It worked perfectly. I think the only thing I’d do differently next time is stick my immersion blender in there for a bit.

Crockpot Potato Soup

Source: Pearls, Handcuffs & Happy Hour

1 30oz. bag of frozen, shredded hash browns
3 14oz. cans of chicken broth
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1 pkg. cream cheese, NOT fat free

In a crockpot, combine everything EXCEPT for the cream cheese. Cook for 6-8 hours on low heat. About 1 hour before serving, add cream cheese and keep heated until thoroughly melted. Serve with cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, green onions, or whatever else you think would be good!!

You may have noticed by now that I generally take my baked goodies to work to foist off on my coworkers. Well, one of my coworkers in particular has been asking me to make “those chocolate covered peanut butter rice krispie things” for a couple of months now… I finally decided to go ahead and fulfill his request, but I’d never made them before, and I didn’t have a recipe. A quick google search turned up “chocolate scotcharoos” on the Rice Krispies website.

They certainly looked like the right thing, I just wasn’t too sure about the butterscotch chips that the recipe called for in the chocolate layer. However, I decided that if some peanut butter is good, then more peanut butter was better. So I swapped the butterscotch for peanut butter. I actually ended up using a bag of Nestle’s chocolate and peanut butter chips, mostly because they were on sale.

These treats ended up being super easy to make… I think the hardest part was cutting them in pieces once they were done. (We won’t talk about the fact that my kitchen floor is STILL sticky.) I recommend lining the pan with parchment paper, and then spraying down the whole mess with cooking spray before you get started. It will make your life much easier later! I think I cut the treats into 32 pieces, but they were super rich, so you would be fine to cut them even smaller!

As always, I took them to work, and everyone RAVED about them. I actually had to cut some people off because they ate so many in one sitting! I still don’t know how they did– I was in a sugar coma after eating just one!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats
Adapted from: Rice Krispies

1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter
6 cups rice krispies
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips (I used one bag of the chocolate and peanut butter chips)

1. Place corn syrup and sugar into 3-quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar dissolves and mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Add KELLOGG’S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated. Press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Set aside.

2. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips together in 1-quart saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Spread evenly over cereal mixture. Let stand until firm. Cut into 2 x 1-inch bars when cool.

Note: Before measuring the corn syrup, coat your measuring cup with cooking spray–the syrup will pour easily out of the cup.

You may be able to tell from the color scheme of the M&Ms, but I originally planned to have these made and the post up by Valentine’s Day. I’ve been sitting on it and not wanting to post though cause honestly? Making these was like a comedy of errors. But when it comes right down to it, I originally created this blog to share my adventures in the kitchen– including the failures! It’s easy to only want to share the “perfect” stuff… I’ll let you in on a secret though. Even those chefs with super fancy food blogs have failures in the kitchen. They might even have a dirty stove top, and imperfect lives! Seriously. Blows your mind right?

So anyway, back to these pretzel buttons. They are a similar concept to the Rolo Turtles I posted a couple of weeks ago. I’ve had a simple pretzel button bookmarked for a long time, but then I saw this version with Hugs instead of Kisses on Pinterest and knew that I wanted to try it. And then everything went to hell!

The first batch I pulled out of the oven was PERFECT. The chocolate softened perfectly, they looked pretty, all was good. Then I decided that I wanted to try and hurry them along in setting up so I could have my pan back for another batch. I put the pan in the freezer to cool for a few minutes, which would have been fine, except I only have a small fridge top freezer. And my small fridge top freezer doesn’t have any shelves in it at all. So I had to balance the pan on top of what was already in there. While I was getting ready to take the second pan out of the oven, I heard it: “Shhhhhhh…. THUNK. thud thud thud thud thud.” Sigh. My pan of pretty pretzel buttons slid off of its perch, into the door of the freezer and piled on top of each other in a mess of pretzels and melted chocolate.

The second batch out of the oven melted WAY too much. The third pan out of the oven only melted about halfway. Almost all of them dried in a way that made them look scary even though they tasted good. I took the ones with the hugs (but not the ones with the Kisses I made at the same time) to work, and there were only about 4 left when I arrived for work the next morning. Everyone raved about how good they tasted. (Though, they were also there at the same time my boss left a container of really horrible brownies made from a box… maybe they were just amazing in comparison?! ) So the lesson learned there is even if your goodies don’t LOOK perfect, they can still taste good and be enjoyed!

Pretzel Buttons
Source: g*rated

Pretzels
Hershey’s Hugs
Plain M&Ms

Directions:
Preheat oven to 200°.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or Silpat. Place the pretzels on and top them with the hugs.
Bake for 4-5 minutes until the chocolate is shiny and soft (but NOT melting – they should still hold their shape).
Carefully place an M&M in the center of each hug and press it down to spread the chocolate.
Allow to cool completely and enjoy!

It does not get easier than this. Seriously.

These turtles are all over the place around Christmas, and I actually bought the ingredients before Christmas last year but never got around to making them. I finally decided to get everything out, though, and I cannot figure out why it took me so long.

The most complicated part of making these is unwrapping the Rolos. And I read somewhere (after I had already purchased a bag of wrapped caramels) that you can just buy the rolls of Rolos that are at the check-out lane and you won’t have to spend any time unwrapping them at all! Genius!

You can use almost any shape of pretzels for this. I used small twists, but I’ve seen them made on the specialty holiday shaped pretzels, rings, the waffle looking squares that some brands have. Just lay out some pretzels and top each one with a caramel. Melt them in the oven for a few short minutes and then press a pecan half on top. Wait for them to harden. Or stick them in the freezer for a few minutes if you are impatient and need your pans free to make a batch of cookies or something.

The last step might actually be the hardest one of all– Try not to eat them all in one sitting.

Rolo Turtles

Pretzels
Rolos
Pecan Halves

Place pretzels in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Place an unwrapped rolo on top of each pretzel. Bake at 250 degrees for 4-5 minutes (no longer), and remove from the oven. The rolos will be in the same shape coming out of the oven as they went in. Carefully press a pecan half onto each melted rolo. Placing the pan of turtles in the freezer for several minutes will help the rolos firm up enough for storage.

I made these cookies to take to my dentist’s office on Monday. That seems like a strange statement, and a lot of people thought it was when I told them what I was doing with these cookies, but it makes sense, I swear. A few cleanings ago, I was telling my hygienist about these cookies and she was just raving about how good they sounded and let me know that it was actually okay for people to bring in goodies, despite it being a dentist’s office.

So I resolved that I would make cookies for them at some point. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. I had a cleaning scheduled and I COMPLETELY forgot about it. Luckily I live close to the office, so when I got a phone call 10 minutes after the appointment was supposed to start, I was able to quickly get over there. She made a couple of comments about how she thought maybe I was busy making cookies. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for all the employees of my dentist, I needed a cavity filled on Monday. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to make good on my promise.

I decided to make a peanut butter cookie, but knew I didn’t want to make just a classic peanut butter cookie. I plugged “peanut butter cookies” into Google and started scrolling. Originally I had been thinking that I would find something with chocolate chips, but this chocolate peanut butter cookie caught my attention and I was sold.

They received rave reviews from everyone I shared them with, and a lot of recipe requests, but I’m not completely sold on them. I think they need some chocolate chips.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
Source: Amanda’s Cookin’

1/2 cup shortening (or butter flavored shortening)
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
3 tbsp milk
1 tbsp vanilla
1 egg
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Combine shortening, peanut butter, brown sugar, milk and vanilla in large bowl. Beat with electric mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add egg. Beat just until blended.

Combine flour, cocoa, salt and baking soda. Add to creamed mixture at low speed. Mix just until blended.

Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls (using a cookie scoop works great) 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet. Flatten slightly in crisscross pattern with tines of fork.

Bake for 7 to 8 minutes, or until set and just beginning to brown. DO NOT OVERBAKE. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet. Remove cookies to racks to cool completely.