Saltine Toffee Candy

This is one of those recipes that seems to be everywhere in the food blogosphere. And with good reason . . . because it's fan-freakin-tastic and ridiculously easy. Only right that we should include it here also.

I first saw this particular version on Peabody's blog where she said she preferred butter crackers but after a little bit more searching, it seems like the larger preference is saltines. And who am I to mess with popular opinion? Kristen and I first made this last Christmas and we were skeptical, at best. But, lo and behold, it was amazing. It was such a simple idea. Use saltines as a base for homemade toffee, melt and spread chocolate on the top, cool and break into pieces. The result is a wonderful "bark"-like candy that is an absolute winner!

This year I had some white chocolate chips laying around so we got the idea to experiment with the topping. On half, we repeated last years version, which was milk chocolate with sliced almonds. On the other half we used white chocolate with red and green sugar crystals to add color and in the middle we swirled the white and milk chocolates together. They were all amazing but we all decided that the milk chocolate and almond combo is still the best.

Saltine Toffee Candy
(Recipe adapted from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody)

1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup brown sugar
Enough crackers to make a layer on a cookie sheet
1 cup chocolate chips (or white chocolate chips)
Sliced almonds, sprinkles, toffee pieces, etc (for topping)

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. Line a cookie sheet with foil (very helpful lator on when you are trying to break the candy). Put a single layer of saltines on the cookie sheet, close together. Bring the butter and brown sugar to a boil in a saucepan and simmer it for about 5 minutes. Pour the brown sugar mixture over the crackers and bake for about 6-10 minutes at 350F.

Remove and immediately pour the chocolate chips over the crackers, evenly distributing them. The following are Peabody's instructions and I really think she has nailed doing this the easy way:

• "The recipe will tell you to spread immediately…I don’t. I let it sit for about 30 seconds. Then with the back of a spatula I move the chocolate chips just a little bit. I wait another 30 seconds and repeat. I start to slowly move the chocolate around being careful not to move the crackers. I let is sit for another 30 seconds and at this point it pretty much spreads like frosting."

At this point, top the candy with whatever you like. Like I mentioned above, we've tried different types of chocolate with colored sugar and nuts. I'm not a fan of mint so we obviously went another direction, but crushed candy canes would look very nice and festive for the holidays. Use your imagination! Cool the candy in the refrigerator until hard and then break into bite-sized pieces and serve!

Enjoy!
~Layne

PS: I hope everyone is having a wonderfully Merry Christmas today!!!

Chocolate/Peanut Butter & Cinnamon/Sugar Crescent Rolls

I found the recipe for these crescent rolls on For the Love of Cooking and thought they were a brilliant idea. It's one of those things that's so simple and obvious you think, why didn't I think of that? Well, I didn't think of it but I did take credit for it!

I brought these delicious crescent dessert rolls to Kristen and Justin's Housewarming party last weekend and they were a hit. And they paired wonderfully with all the other delicious food that Kristen and her family prepared for the party. They are great for an afternoon snack or a wonderful dessert or appetizer. Try them! They are too easy and too delicious to pass up!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crescent Rolls
(recipe adapted from For the Love of Cooking)

1 tube of crescent rolls
Peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
Chocolate chips

Preheat the oven according to the package directions. Place the unrolled and separated crescent rolls onto an foil-lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Spread a layer of peanut butter on each triangle and top with chocolate chips. Roll from the bottom of the triangle to the point, ending with the point on the top and center of the roll. Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve while hot.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crescent Rolls
(recipe adapted from For the Love of Cooking)

1 tube of crescent rolls
Cinnamon-sugar*

Preheat the oven according to the package directions. Place the unrolled and separated crescent rolls onto an foil-lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle triangles liberally with cinnamon sugar. Roll from the bottom of the triangle to the point, ending with the point on the top and center of the roll. Sprinkle additional more cinnamon-sugar to the top of the crescent rolls, to taste. Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve while hot.

Enjoy!
~Layne

*Make your own cinnamon-sugar by combining 1/4 cup granulated sugar with 4 tsp cinnamon.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love baking but I don't do much of it. It's a shame and I've been wanting to get into the habit of baking more. For a while I had the hankering to make some wonderful homemade, baked, sweet something. But what? I wanted it to have some semblance of healthfulness. Zucchini bread. Bran muffins. Oatmeal cookies. Something that wasn't all calories and fat and sugar and guilt.

When it comes to healthfulness my biggest challenge is my husband. It's not that he doesn't care about being healthy but to say veggies really aren't his thing would be the understatement of the year. I try to sneak any form of nutrition into what I cook for him but it's definitely difficult to say the least. Brad was pretty wary of the whole vegetables in dessert idea so I postponed the zucchini bread in favor of some oatmeal cookies. He had had some at a party a couple weeks prior and really liked them and I knew I could make something healthy and delicious with them. So I decided to find a recipe and play with it.

First, I wanted to eliminate most of the fat by replacing the 3/4 of the butter in the recipe with apple butter. You can also do this with apple sauce but while I'm not really a fan of applesauce, I love apple butter and had some in the house. The apple butter I used had less that half the calories and NO fat compared to the butter I was using. So I saved 540 calories and 96 grams of fat JUST by making this substitution. (This counts the whole batch of cookies, but still.) Also, because apple butter adds a lot more sweetness than butter would, I also cut out some of the sugar in the original recipe.

I also added some wheat germ to the mix. For those who don't already know, this is a great option to any baked recipe to add nutrition. I add wheat germ to pancakes, waffles, cookies and muffins. It adds nutrition without changing the flavor. One note of caution, though. When you are baking the ratio of dry ingredients to wet ingredients is important. Since it has a dry, powdery consistency, wheat germ may throw this ratio off some. To counteract this, if your mix seems too thick add more of a wet ingredient. For example, in my pancakes I add a splash more milk. In the case of these cookies, the dough was fine so I didn't need to add anything.

One last thing I do in almost all of my baked recipes is switch half of the flour needed from all-purpose to whole wheat. Again, by only switching out half the flour for whole wheat, you can maintain the flavor and texture while still dramatically increasing the nutrition.

So these cookies were absolutely the surprise of the season. I thought they would be good but since I was seriously tweaking the recipe and wasn't sure exactly what the outcome would be. To both of our surprise these were amazing! It must have been the apple butter because there was this depth of flavor that couldn't be explained by anything else. If it's at all possible, these cookies really taste like fall, not too sweet with a great mix of spices and a burst of chocolate every now and then. They didn't puff up the way most cookies do, I think because of the lack of "real" butter . They held the shape they had in their raw form and just got nice and golden. But it didn't really bother us. Really it just added to the rustic, homebaked look of them.
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Crepes of Wrath (originally from Quaker Oats)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
3/4 cup apple butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp toasted wheat germ
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups dry oatmeal
1 cup milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the flours, wheat germ, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. In large bowl, beat together the butter, apple butter and sugar until light and fluffy, at least 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla and beat well.
3. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat together until just moistened. Stir in your oats, then stir in your chocolate chips.
4. Drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto foil-lined cookie sheets.
5. Bake the cookies 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool for a bit on the cookie sheets before transferring elsewhere to cool. Makes approx. 3 dozen, depending on size of your cookies.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins

I got the idea for this particular recipe from Annie's Eat's. She claims that she doesn't understand the obsession people have with the peanut butter and chocolate combo. I developed this particular obsession in college and today, I'm hooked. It's absolute heaven. Don't tell anyone but I've been known to spread peanut butter on a graham cracker and top it with chocolate chips as a sweet snack. ::drool:: Anyway, that being said, she has quite a bit of chocolate-peanut butter recipes on her blog. So this is where I went on Saturday evening when I was looking for a dessert recipe to make with my new Kitchenaid stand mixer.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins
(adapted from Annie's Eat's)

1 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup brown sugar plus more for topping
3 tbsp. butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375°. Line a muffin pan with 6 paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter, peanut butter, eggs and milk until smooth. Add in the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips. Divide batter evenly between prepared muffin tins, filling each to the top. Optional: Sprinkle the top of each muffin with brown sugar. Bake for 17-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

This is a half-batch, so it made 6 muffins. The batter was a little bland so I added the vanilla and since I love a crunchy muffin-top, I also added the brown sugar on top which caramelized nicely in the oven. I would have to say that these weren't my favorite muffins ever. Definitely tasty but they were a bit heavy for my taste and the peanut butter flavor wasn't all there. Now for those of you not all that into PB, that may be a good thing. But for me, I was really looking for the big BANG! of the chocolate PB combo and it just wasn't there. I may tweak the recipe and give them another go. Again, they were definitely tasty, just some room for improvement.

~Layne