Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cereal Treats

Summer is officially winding down, can you believe it? It's that back to school time of year again, and I know many people have already gotten started, or are about to start in the coming weeks.  I always loved going back to school, and I loved it until the real heavy workloads started getting piled on.  When I was little though, I loved heading back to school and getting all of my stuff ready, whether it was my "first day of school outfit," or my school supplies, or picking out a new lunchbox.  A lot of thought needed to be put into the lunchbox! It had to be cool and pretty, and at the same time, meet my mom's standards for efficiently transporting my lunch from home to school without a disaster happening.  My mom would usually pack me a sandwich, a juice box, a fruit, and a sweet treat for dessert or snack time.  My favorite were the Little Bites Mini Muffins and Brownies, but every now and then she'd swap in a Rice Krispy treat, which I also really looked forward to. 

These Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cereal Treats are a throwback to one of my favorite lunchbox snacks. Back in the day, I only ever tried the plain Rice Krispy treats (did they have other varieties back then? I don't even know), so this chocolatey version was a very welcome change.  I used Cheerios, but you can use whichever cereal you like and change the flavorings to what suits you the most.  They're highly adaptable and incredibly easy to make, so they're a great make-ahead treat option for your little one's lunchbox (or for bringing along to work!).  For more pics and the full recipe, head on over to the Make and Takes blog!

Salted Caramel Cashew Popcorn for the Make and Takes Blog!

The Academy Awards are SO soon!!!!!  Do you guys get excited about the Oscar's?  I'm one of those people that literally count down the days until awards season (although I'll be honest, the Oscar's are the only ones I actually watch).  I get super excited for the day that the nominees are announced, and once that happens, well, I'm all about scheduling my weekends and free time to watch as many of the nominated films as I can.  I haven't done as well this year as I have in years past, but I'm hoping that I can watch at least one or two more films by the time the Academy Awards take place on Sunday night.  I have my Sunday night all planned out: I'm going to wear my comfiest sweats, plop myself on my bed, turn the television on, and not move for anyone or anything until the winner for Best Picture has been announced.  It sounds like a perfect evening, an evening that could only be made more perfect by the addition of some salted caramel cashew popcorn. 

This is a super fancy yet super easy popcorn to prepare.  It's perfect for snacking on, and perfect to enjoy during the Oscar's on Sunday, whether your Oscar viewing party is just you or a group of your friends.  The only thing I'll warn you about with this popcorn is that it's really dangerous- once you start eating it, I can almost guarantee that you'll have hard time stopping!  For the full recipe and additional photos, head on over to the Make and Takes blog!

Stuffed Soft Pretzel Bites

I don't know how long I've been waiting to make and share these soft pretzel bites with you, but I can assure you that it's been a while.  A really, really long while.  I first had this idea, oh I don't know, maybe way back in the day when I first made these amazing soft pretzels.  That was only like 2 and a half years ago or so.  I knew the idea for pretzel bites was a good one, I just needed time to actually sit (or stand, I guess) and make them.  I always wanted to make them around this time of year, and since the idea first popped into my head, two Super Bowl Sunday's have come and gone, and no pretzel bites were ever made.  This year, I decided, would be a year of change.  I was going to make sure I made these pretzel bites no matter what!  I took some time on Sunday to mix up a big batch of soft pretzel bites, and I can say that I have no regrets.  These pretzel bites were some seriously amazing snacking material that need to make an appearance at any and all Super Bowl/football/sports/midnight snack parties from now on. 

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to make stuffed pretzel bites, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to actually stuff them with.  I knew it had to be something easy that I already had inside my kitchen (as is the case for most of my baking predicaments).  The first thing I thought of was a jalapeño cream cheese.  I love anything with hot jalapeños, so a homemade cream cheese spread studded with spicy peppers and sharp cheddar seemed to be a perfect solution.  I also wanted to create a sweet version of these pretzel bites, to resemble my favorite mall soft pretzels.  Deciding what to fill the sweet pretzel bites with was easy, since I still had some Hershey's chocolate spread left after working doing some work with them.  I used the hazelnut flavor, and I'm so happy I chose to use chocolate in half of these pretzel bites.  The combination of the rich chocolate spread and the coarse salt on top of the pretzel bites was just too good for words.  It was the perfect sweet and salty snack!

Buffalo Chicken Empanadas for the Make and Takes Blog!

Hello everyone!  This is literally the latest I've ever published a blog post, but believe me.  I've had a super, super, super long day.  Today I started a new freelance position, and of course, with my luck, my first day just had to be the day right after a huge snowstorm hit Long Island.  Sigh.  I was so stressed the night before just trying to think about how the hell I was going to make it to work on time that I completely forgot to write this post in advance and schedule it to publish automatically (I actually realized I had forgotten to do so while I was standing on the train in the morning, and I got really upset at myself).  Then, after a super, super, super long day at the office, my brain just stopped working and I got on the wrong train, and ended up going downtown into Brooklyn instead of uptown towards Manhattan.  Now, I love Brooklyn, but it was literally the last place I wanted to be tonight.  I just wanted to be home already!  After a very extended commute home due to weather complications that messed up all the trains heading to Long Island, I finally made it home.  It's 10:30 PM, and I've just finished dinner.  I'm about to just put on my comfiest sweats, curl up in bed, and fall asleep to the sound of terrible reality television, and hope that tomorrow goes just a little more smoothly.  In the meantime though, here's those empanadas I promised you guys yesterday afternoon.  There was no way I was going to fail on my promise!

With the Super Bowl coming up in just a few days, I thought it was high time that we make some awesome snacks!  I have a few more yummy goodies to share with you guys in preparation for the big game, and these empanadas are the first.  I'm hoping a few of you guessed they were going to have a buffalo chicken filling, due to the celery sticks and blue cheese dressing in my Instagram pic, but if not, here's a formal announcement:  I MADE BUFFALO CHICKEN EMPANADAS GUYS, AND THEY WERE AWESOME.  

And with that, please head on over to the Make and Takes blog, where you'll get the full recipe instructions and more pics!  

Chocolate and Pretzel Rice Krispie Treats

Who doesn't love a good rice cereal treat? I don't think I've ever met anyone that doesn't, or at least, I don't think I have.  I have so many memories of eating Rice Krispie treats from way back in the day when I was in elementary school and my mom would pack a snack size treat in my lunchbox.  Those were definitely one of my favorite snacks, and while I don't eat them anymore, every now and then I get a huge, inexplicable craving for that marshmallowy sweet flavor, and I just have to have one. It's a good thing most vending machines carry Rice Krispie treats, because it means I can easily satisfy my craving no matter when it strikes.   

With Halloween literally just a week away, I thought it would be fun to make a few Halloween-inspired treats that would be fun to make with kids, because who doesn't love homemade treats?  Amazingly, this thought happened to cross my mind at the exact moment I began to feel a Rice Krispie craving start to settle in, so it was obvious that I needed to include homemade Rice Krispies in my bag of homemade Halloween treats. I'd never actually made Rice Krispies before, but the steps really couldn't be any simpler.  If you can melt butter and marshmallows together, stir in some rice cereal, and press the mixture into a square pan, then you can make a batch of Rice Krispie treats without any problems.  

Fig and Raisin Granola Bars

I'm sure I'm not the only one around here who had their fair share of favorite school lunch snacks.  I know that my personal favorite, ultimate, best-school-lunch-ever snack was a bag of Entenmann's Little Bites blueberry muffins.  Their brownies, chocolate chip, and banana muffins ranked pretty high on the best snack ever list, but the blueberry muffins simply couldn't be beat.  I have no idea why they were my favorite, but I do remember feeling a slightly irrational sense of happiness whenever I opened my lunchbox and saw that my mom had packed me some blueberry muffins.  Other favorite lunch box snacks included Rice Krispy treats, strawberries, the occasional chocolate chip cookie, and granola bars.  Chewy bars, to be exact.  You know, the ones that are loaded with sugar, chocolate chips, and other unnecessary sweeteners?  To be fair, the lunches my mom packed weren't all that bad.  They typically consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread (I was the sad kid in elementary school without a Wonder Bread sandwich, but in retrospect, I'm eternally grateful for that), a small juice box, a fruit, and one of the previously mentioned sugary snacks.  After elementary school, I guess I outgrew Rice Krispy treats and Chewy Bars, and chocolate chip cookies, muffins, and brownies became treats to enjoy only on very sporadic or special occasions.  After a very long time without having a Chewy bar, I happened to come across one during my senior year in college, and I decided to eat it, for old time's sake.  

Let me tell you.  That was a huge mistake. Ok, maybe not huge, but it was nevertheless, a mistake.   

I legitimately wasn't able to finish the Chewy Bar.  I got maybe about halfway through it before I had to get rid of it.  I was in shock at how overwhelmingly sweet it was, and I felt my throat and chest hurting with every bit that I managed to swallow.  I couldn't believe I actually used to like them when I was younger.  My taste buds have obviously matured from when I was 8 years old, and I find most of my favorite childhood snacks to be staggeringly sweet.  I really just happen to find most things to be too sweet in general.  I'm constantly watering down juices, adding less sugar to almost every recipe I try out, and using very skimpy amounts of frosting when I frost a cupcake for myself.  But, I digress.  The point is, that Chewy Bar left such a bad taste in my mouth (literally), that I got an urge to make myself a granola bar that I would actually want to eat.  I really love granola, and since it's so simple to make, I knew I had to come up with a batch of perfect granola bars. It took me longer than I thought to get around to making them, but I figured they would be the perfect snack to bring along for the long car ride up to New Hampshire when we helped my sister move into school. These granola bars feature a healthy helping of dried figs and raisins, and are sweetened with honey and applesauce.  Chopped walnuts provide a little bit of crunch here and there, and they are such an improvement over the granola bars I used to eat when I was younger.  These are thick, chewy, a little crunchy, and loaded with dried fruit in every bite.  Homemade granola bars are really infinitely better than any granola bar from a package.   

Mini Corn Dog Muffins

Looks like one of the biggest weekends in American culture is soon to be upon us, Super Bowl weekend!  Let's be perfectly clear that football and I just do not mix.  Forrealz.  It may be totally un-American of me, but I'm sure I'm not alone in my sentiments. I've just never taken the time to sit down and attempt to understand the rules of the game, and my memories of the football games that I have seen are both limited and unpleasant.  I've only attended football games in high school and at this past year's homecoming, and both types have been underwhelming.  In high school, our symphonic band (which was a fantastic band) was forced strongly, strongly, strongly encouraged to participate in the school's pep band.  Attendance was required at a minimum of three home games per season (or something like that), and I dreaded going to each game.  I just wasn't into it!  My disdain for this American pastime continued into college, and I have only attended a single football match, and it was at this year's homecoming (and I only stayed for about fifteen or twenty minutes of the game).  What can I say, I got bored!  

For me, I look forward to the Super Bowl for three reasons: the commercials, the half time show, and Super Bowl snacks.  Buffalo wings, chips, pretzels, all kinds of dips, and most Super Bowl food items tend to come with bacon in some form or another.  These are all good, wonderful things.  I figured I needed to supplement my favorite Super Bowl foods with a treat of my own, and these mini corn dog muffins were at the very top of my list of things to make.  

Glazed Apple Cider Doughnuts

Sometimes, I feel like I am doing a disservice to my family and friends (and even myself at times) by baking so many treats like alllll the time, and then having to actually EAT the things I make, and then subsequently forcing other people around me to help me out with the eating bit, since I can't actually eat everything I make. That was a long sentence, but it's ok.  I've also decided that baking large quantities of things, regardless about how healthy (or as it always is in my case, NOT healthy...), is totally ok too.  What I usually do is tell myself that this is a treat, not to worry about it, and that I will just have to go extra-hard during that day's workout.  This is then what I repeat to everyone else that I give baked goods to, and encourage them to do the same. 

Aside from this helpful little advice, I tell myself that making unhealthy treats once in a while is ok, as long as it's done in moderation.  Take these glazed apple cider doughnuts.  The last time I made doughnuts was for my sister's birthday, and that was wayyyy back in March (remember these Birthday Chocolate Glazed-Doughnuts?).  Since that was like SEVEN months ago, I figured enough time had passed that frying up a batch of doughnuts was not only justified, but also necessary.  Leave it to my sister to once again suggest a delicious and doughnut-related idea.  Glazed apple-cider doughnuts were her request, and I once again, had to oblige. Spiced cake doughnuts with an apple cider glaze seemed too delicious to even consider passing up, regardless of how many calories they had or how not-healthy they actually are.

Ok, I'm done trying to rationalize my baking addiction/unhealthy-but-delicious baking habits now.  Let's just be honest with each other now.  Fried doughnuts are bad for you.  Fried doughnuts are also really yummy.  Make them, eat one, and be happy. Yeay!

Totally DIY S'mores

I love living away from home while I'm at college.  I'm not trying to be rude to my mom and dad or anything (really, I promise!) but living away from home is really one of the most defining moments of my college career, a fact I'm sure many people would agree with.  It's such a great way to meet new people and build really lasting friendships, and learn to be more independent.  One of the nicest things about living in a dorm setting is that there's always someone to hang out with, whether it's for doing homework, or just relaxing in front of the tv after a long day of classes.  Study breaks are also one of my favorite things about living at school.  We always have one study break a week, and two people are in charge of providing snacks or some kind of activity to help us all get a moment to catch our breaths and take a pause from whatever work and stress we have going on in our lives.  One of the first study breaks we had during my junior year was a s'more night!  I loveee s'mores, so I made sure that I went to this particular study break.  We essentially just had graham crackers, chocolate bars, and marshmallows (duh), and we microwaved the marshmallows to get them all nice and gooey, and then sandwiched them between the graham crackers and our chocolate bars of choice.  It was such a fun and simple (and yummy!) way to get to know everyone on my floor.  

As much as I may love s'mores, they're not a treat that I grew up eating, or eat very often.  I've only ever gone camping once (I'm not too much of a nature person, you see...bugs kind of freak me out), and I think that was the first time I ever had a s'more.  That was many years ago, and I think there's only been a handful of times since then that I've made s'mores for myself.  Regardless of that fact though, I know that I am totally a s'mores kinda gal, and surprise, surprise...a craving for s'mores struck a couple of weeks ago.  I knew that I had to remedy it, and that whenever I got around to it, I wanted super homemade s'mores. I wanted them to be perfect, and if making them entirely from scratch was the way to get perfect s'mores, then that was what I was going to do.  And you know what?  They were perfect, in every possible way.  My s'mores craving was wonderfully satisfied. 

Birthday Chocolate Glazed-Doughnuts

It's my little sister's birthday today!  Actually I lie.  She's turning 17, so she's not really little anymore I guess.  She's currently working with Habitat for Humanity somewhere in Tennessee, taking a well-deserved break from midterm exams, SAT prep classes, ACT prep classes, potential college list-making, etc...I definitely DON'T miss that part of my junior year of high school!  For her birthday this year, she requested nothing more than a batch of yeast doughnuts covered in chocolate glaze and rainbow sprinkles...I obviously had to oblige, because after all, let's just be honest with ourselves.  Chocolate glazed-doughnuts with rainbow sprinkles are just a tad irresistible.

I always like to make something special for my sister's birthday.  It usually ends up being a cake; last year, I made her this really adorable 3-layer yellow cake with chocolate buttercream, and I decorated the top with three chocolate butterflies.  So cute!  This year, she went with a more non-traditional approach.  I was honestly kind of bummed out about it initially, because I had been hoping/wishing/praying/crossing my fingers and toes that she would somehow magically say she wanted an ombre cake, only because I've been dying to make one for the longest time now, but alas, she did not (HINT HINT for next year...).  But then I got over it and myself, and I realized that doughnuts could just as easily be a really lovely birthday treat. 

Churros con Chocolate

There's something special about fried dough.  Yeah I know, that's a great way to start out this post, writing about fried dough, but it's really true.  It's just really good, and it's even better when it gets rolled around and completely covered in cinnamon sugar.  What's not to love? The calories and added fat you say?  Psh.  Indulging is totally acceptable every now and then.  I merely consider those to be irrelevant details when I fry up a batch of churros, and worry about them later.  Churros are just too good to pass up.

It's a Halloween Party!

It's October 7th today.  That means Halloween is only 24 days away.  That's three and a half weeks.  There's no time to lose, Halloween Party planing needs to start NOW…or soonish I guess.  There's really no reason to put it off because #1, Halloween is quickly approaching, and #2…these Halloween treats are too cute to put off any longer.  Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I couldn't put this post off any longer.

When I went home last weekend, I had it set in my mind that I would make a batch of really great Halloween-inspired spiderweb cupcakes.  Something cute and simple that anyone could make.  I honestly hadn't really thought of making too many other Halloween things, but I knew that my spiderweb cupcakes would be great.  I enlisted the help of my mother, who is fantastic when it comes to all these sort of decorative/ seasonal type of things, and she wasn't too keen on the spiderweb idea.  At least she wasn't too keen on making only spiderwebs.  That's right.  I was going to make ONLY spiderweb cupcakes? That just wouldn't do.  My mom had so many great ideas, and I really couldn't say no to any of them, they were just too good!  

Pop Tart Pops

I never really ate pop tarts as a kid.  My mom just never really bought them for us; I guess she thought they were unhealthy, or contained too much sugar to be part of a good breakfast.  She was probably right.  I only grew to really like pop tarts after getting to try them at friend's houses following a sleepover, and then once I got to college, pop tarts came back as an easy way to satisfy some late night cravings or as a way to keep myself going at 6 am during an all-nighter before a studio review...fun stuff...let's not think about that right now.


I still don't think of pop tarts as being a breakfast food...I mean come on, they're full of an obnoxiously sweet filling and are covered in frosting and sprinkles, to me that just doesn't feel like breakfast, but seems to be more of a snack, or something I'd like to treat myself to at the end of the day.  I decided mini pop tart treats were the way to go, and given the whole "let's put everything on a stick" craze that's been going on, I decided to give it a try.  Oh my goodness, were these things cute.