homemade boberry biscuits

I bought some blueberries the other day in hopes of making boberry biscuits (like the ones from Bojangles) just to find out all the copycat recipes are made with dehydrated blueberries. I decided to go for it anyways with the fresh ones. I like these with the fresh berries so much better! This recipe is really good although I think my biscuits turned out a little softer than the ones at Bojangles.

{sorry for the bad photo quality. i got lazy and took this with my phone.}

Honey Vanilla Pound Cake

I made this Honey Vanilla Pound Cake and served it with strawberries for Easter lunch. It was a small crowd so we took 2/3 of the bundt cake home with us. Knowing that Glen and I couldn't and shouldn't eat the rest of the pound cake by ourselves, I took a good bit of it into the office. Who knew it would be such a hit? It was moist with a slight and subtle honey flavor. It would go great with a cup of coffee. My co-workers have already requested me to make another one to bring in!

York Peppermint Brownies

I saw a blog the other day about brownies with York Peppermint Patties in honor of St. Patrick's day. I decided to skip the homemade brownie part and just try boxed brownies stuffed with peppermint patties. If you like mint and chocolate you should try these with a glass of milk. They were super easy but a fun twist on just plain brownies.

Cheddar Herb Biscuits

I have been waiting to make these biscuits, but I knew I would eat more than my share of them so I wanted to wait till we had a lighter, healthier dinner to go with them. Sunday night we finally grilled some chicken for a grilled chicken salad. This is something we had put off for quite a while because we have been busy or it got to cold at night. Well, yesterday was perfect. It stayed light outside longer and the temperature was just right. We spent practically the whole day with our doors open. I missed the grill. I am not sure if this chicken was especially exceptional or maybe its just been that long since we grilled something.

I only made the bread part of the biscuits not the topping. I also made 12 full biscuits instead of the mini ones. We added a bit of butter in between each biscuit, and it hit the spot. These would be phenomenal with a little bit of ham in between. I plan to try that later this week!

Triple Chocolate Cake

I had to make dessert for my girls book study group. I decided to pull out the cookbook put together by Glen's grandmother and decided on triple chocolate cake. Its delicious, easy to make, and goes great with vanilla bean ice cream. Not regular vanilla, Glen insists on vanilla bean and I agree. Thanks Ms. Myrt for all the great recipes!

Grape-Nut Cookies

I love grapenuts cereal. I might be 1 of 5 that actually like them. I found the following recipe in my first Real Simple magazines (a Christmas present)! I of course had to try them. My only alteration in the recipe was to add chocolate chips. They turned out to be a twist on oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I think they turned out really well!

Grape-Nut Cookies

1/2 cup softened butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3 Tbs. honey

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup flour

1 cup grapenuts cereal

chocolate chips

Bake for 10-14 minutes at 350 degrees.

Peanut Brittle

We buy my grandma peanut brittle every year for Christmas. This year I got a little ambititous and decided to make homemade peanut brittle. I found this recipe, and although it took me 2 batches to get it right, it turned out pretty easy to make. We bought a tin and wrapped it up with a pretty ribbon. It was the perfect homemade gift!

Uh-Oh Chocolate Chip Cookies

Remember those Uh-Oh Oreos? Do they still make those? These are my Uh-Oh Chocolate Chip Cookies even those the white chips are actually white chocolate not vanilla chips. I found this recipe for Chocolate Caramel Cookies with Sea Salt, but didn't have the caramel so I decided to make my own cookie based off the recipe. They really are like a brownie disguised as a cookie. So good!

Uh-Oh Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 1/4 cup flour

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

5 Tbs. Butter (I use Crisco)

7 Tbs. dark cocoa

2/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup vanilla yogurt

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup white chocolate chips (or more according to taste)

Mix together  softened butter/crisco and cocoa. Then add sugars. Mixture will be crumbly. Add in yogurt and vanilla. Sift together flour, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture. Dough will be thick. Stir in white chocolate chips. Roll into balls and flattened slightly on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Enjoy!

My Thanksgiving Contributions

We had 2 Thanksgivings this year. Glen's family on Thursday and my family on Saturday. I didn't get any pictures of actual people though I did take some of my contributions. I find there are enough cameras that I didn't need to grab my point and shoot to rival the nice digital SLRs that all the relatives with kids have so you are stuck with pictures of food.

Pretzel Kisses

Key Lime Pie

Cream Cheese Pumpkin Pie



Molasses Spice Cookies

After having tried to new Fall recipes and them being utter fails, it was good to make a tried and true recipe ~thanks to my sister-in-law Hannah!

Lack of Recipes

I haven't posted any baking, cooking, or recipes in the last 2 weeks! What is wrong with me? Well I haven't been cooking as much lately. Maybe it's because we are super busy or maybe its because I am lazy. I did bake 2 things this past week which were both fails. One of them was a pumpkin gingerbread- not good. The other one was a mix- pumpkin scones- okay but I'll pass next time. It's been super disappointing. I do however plan to make Molasses Spice Cookies (recipe courtesy of my sister-in-law Hannah), and I know those will be amazing.

Chocolate Chip Pumkin Granola Bars

I really hadn't thought about making homemade granola bars before but we eat enough of them that I think it would be worth it to make them homemade. It makes sense though. You know what exactly goes into them and there's no preservatives. I found this recipe the other day and just substituted the cinnamon chips and nuts for chocolate chips. At first bite I wasn't so sure but as soon as I finished the first bar I loved them. The only change I would make it to try to attempt to make them thinnner and with that they would hopefully be a little less chewy. I am going to try to make a bigger batch next time (these didn't last too long), but I still haven't figured out how to wrap and store them individually without using a ton of plastic bags (which I don't want to do). If you like granola bars you should try these!



Pumpkin Bundt Cake

Remedy for a dreary day: this Pumpkin Bundt Cake

Plus whipped cream & a homemade pumpkin spice latte.

Man, this was good. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Baked Oatmeal

We always have a special Saturday breakfast. I decided that I wanted to try something different from the regular pancakes or biscuits this past weekend. So we made Baked Oatmeal. The only changes I made to this recipe was I added cinnamon on top and used apples instead of dried fruit and no nuts because I did not want to go to the hospital obviously. I mean, we had a football game to watch and win! Go Gamecocks...Anyways, this special Saturday breakfast turned into Sunday and Monday's breakfast too. Next time I think I might throw some cranberries in there too!

Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt

I love salty and sweet combination. I could easily eat an entire batch of chocolate covered pretzels, but I won't. I saw these Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt a few weeks back and put them on my list of things to make. I then proceeded to buy a piece of dark chocolate with sea salt at the World Market. You know the trick that stores do where they place things in baskets right at the counter. Well I caved and got a piece. Now that I had that taste, I had to make them this week.

Well these didn't exactly turn out the way I thought they would. I thought soft chewy center with a hard chocolate covering. It basically turned out to be a large piece of a semi-soft mix of dark and milk chocolate which isn't necesarily a bad thing. How ever they took quite a bit of time. If the consistency stays the same next time I make these I will definitely make the truffles a bit smaller. Upside though- its fancy looking, its got a fancy name, and who doesn't love chocolate especially when its paired with sea salt?

Twice Baked Potatos

For Sunday Lunch we served make-your-own salads with chicken and twice baked potatos. These were super easy, and you can assemble them the day before to cut down the preparation time. These are the slightly healthier version of the classic twice baked potato. This recipe is for a crowd. You can easily divide it by however many you will need.

Twice Baked Potatos

7 Baking Potatos

2 Single servings of Plain Greek Yogurt

2 Sticks of Butter Substitute (I use I can't believe its not Butter)

4 garlic cloves minced

2 cups of grated Cheddar Cheese

Salt and Pepper to taste

Wrap potatos in aluminum foil. Bake potatos at 450 degrees for 1 hour. Remove potatos from aluminum foil and let rest until cool enough to handle. Scoop out insides of potatos into a mixing bowl. Leave a small amount of potato so that potato skin shell stays intact. Add butter, greek yogurt, garlic, and a handful of cheese. Mix until smooth. Add mixture back into shells and top with the remainder of cheese. At this point you can cover these and stick them in the fridge until the next day or you can bake immediately. Bake potatos for 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees. Time will depend on if they were stored in refridgerator.

Okay these don't look great, but they taste great!

Mocha Cupcakes & Espresso Frosting

Last week I found this recipe for Mocha Cupcakes with Espresso Buttercream Frosting. I made them for my small group this week. I was really hoping that I could frost them like they did in the recipe, but I only have a small tip for mini cupcakes. Excuse me while I write "get decorating tips" on my to-do list. Okay, now that that's done. I would DEFINITELY make these again and probably will next week. Maybe next time I will make them in mini form. The frosting was a bit too sweet for me but my small group girls seemed to like them very much. I think mini form will solve my problem with them being a bit too sweet.

Chocolate Cobler

My friend Jessica came over again to bake. This was her time to come before school starts back. I hope you had fun! We made Chocolate Cobler and watched Juno. Man do I think that movie is funny! The cobler was good. It was very reminiscent of Chili's Molten lava cake. I just wish it would have had some sort of dark chocolate incorporated in there somewhere. Maybe next time...

My new favorite combo

We went to a game night on Saturday and made these. Mini funfetti cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I accidently added too much vanilla to the icing due to the fact that I did not want to get my measuring spoon dirty (weird- I know). They turned out awesome. I am also definitely a fan of making mini cupcakes. They are so much lighter and you can eat them in one bite, so less of a mess. The bad thing is you could easily eat 10 without missing a step. So take caution!

I only bake with Crisco

Last week Glen wanted some chocolate chip cookies so I said, "sure I have all the stuff to make them, but you have to clean up." Well I had almost all the stuff. I usually use Butter Flavored Crisco (sidenote: this is shortening/Tub O' Fat which is not healthy but makes the BEST cookies ever), and we were out. I decided that we could just use butter. That's what the recipe calls for, right? Wrong. The cookies were flat and gross looking. Sure they didn't tasted so aweful I wanted to throw up, but I didn't try to save any of them at the end of the night either. After the first batch, of which glen ate 2 cookies and threw away the rest, we decided to make a cookie cake type thing. It was fine. It did not have that cookie crisp though.

So on my last grocery store trip I definitely bought some more crisco and decided to make some more cookies, and they were delightful and all things are back to the way they should be...