Candied Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies, Y'all!

I missed my stepfather's birthday this year. Yeah, I know - I'm the worst. But trust me, I have an excellent excuse. I had his birthday saved in my old phone on the calendar, but it got lost when my stepfather gave me a new phone for Christmas. So, if you think about it . . . it's really all his fault. To make up for it, I decided to make him a treat because he's almost sixty and can pretty much buy anything he actually wants.


You will need:
Cookie Dough:

• 2 1/4 cup flour
• 1 TSP baking soda
• 1 TSP salt
• 2 sticks of soft butter
• 1 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 TSP vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

 Candied Pecans:

• 1 cup pecans, whole or chopped
• 2 TBSP brown sugar
• 2 TBSP butter

Preheat your oven to 375.

Get a large bowl and mix up the white sugar, brown sugar, butter, and vanilla extract until it's creamy. Add the eggs in one at a time and make sure you mix them in all the way. Otherwise, you could get scrumptious chunks of cooked egg in your cookies.

In a small bowl, combine salt, flour, and baking soda. Spill some of the flour mixture into the sugar mixture and mix it real well. Continue adding the flour mixture a little bit at a time making sure it's incorporated completely it has become some tasty-delicious cookie dough.







Next add the chocolate chips and we can move on to the star of this cookie show!

THE CANDIED PECANS.

This is so serious y'all. Pecans are a big deal in the South, but they're just as tasty up here in the slowly-thawing North.

Get a small frying pan, preferably, set it on medium and start melting that butter. Drop in one pecan at a time until the butter starts sizzling, then dump in the rest of the nuts and brown sugar. Use a spatula to mix it all around in the pan and really get those pecans coated in the butter and sugar.

Let them simmer for 5-8 minutes on medium and then remove it from heat completely. I left mine on the stove and the sugar caramelized onto the bottom of the pan, womp, womp.

Stir the candied pecans into the cookie dough. Roll the cookie dough into about the size of a golf ball and set up nine on a cookie sheet. Make sure they're spread evenly apart, unless you like twin cookies. Bake them for 9-12 minutes. I made three pans worth of cookies, nine each which makes twenty-seven cookies all together.

I don't know if my stepfather likes them. I haven't heard from him since I gave him the cookies so I assume his mouth is too jammed full to speak.

Double & Double Cookies & Cream Cupcakes!!

That would be 2 DOUBLE Stuffed Oreos inside a Dark Chocolate cupcake. Double the Oreos. Double the Cream. Double the chocolate. Double the DELICIOUSNESS!!

This is perfect for when you want to make a fancier dessert for minimal effort and cost.

You will need:

• 1 box of Double Stuffed Oreos
• 1 box of Dark Chocolate Cake mix
• eggs
• vegetable oil
• water

I left the amount for eggs, vegetable oil, and water blank because different cake mixes have different instructions. So preheat your oven and gather your 'gredients. Start by mixing up the cake mix and preheating your oven. Set up your cupcake pan with all the little sheets. Fill up the cupcake cups 1/3-1/2 of the way full, and brace yourself, it's about to get complicated.

Just foolin'. This is easy. Take one Oreo and gently twist off one cookie part. Get another Oreo and stick to the cream side of the other cookie. Simple enough concept, ya? You should end up with something representing the photo. Otherwise, you need to go back to basics. Way back.

After you place the double stacked Oreos in the cupcake batter, push them a little in to stabilize them. A couple of mine that I didn't push in came out a little crooked. It was still kind of cool, the Oreo cream actually oozed out the top a little, YUM. Now pour some more cupcake batter over the Oreos, just enough to cover the top.


You might not have enough Oreos for all the cupcakes, but you can use the other part of the Oreo, the part you twisted off, to top off the rest of the cupcakes. Or buy 2 bags of Oreos and have a lot of left over cookies. I would never throw out left over cake batter.

Anyway, you don't want to bake them for as long as the instructions on the box. Keep checking on those cupcakes. I used Betty Crocker cake mix. Instead of baking them for the suggested 42 minutes, it wound up taking about 30 minutes. A good way to check to see if they're done is to take a tooth pick and stick it into the sides of the cupcake. If the toothpick has no crumbs or batter on it when you take it out, then the cupcake are probably done.

Once they're done, let them cool in the pan for about five minutes then enjoy!

Love,

Liz

Bo-Nanny Banana Bread

 It's pretty hard to keep banana bread around in my house. Either my friends visit and eat it, someone finds outs I made it and asks me to bring them some, or hell, I've eaten a whole loaf in less than 24 hours.

This is my Mamma's recipe which is my Nanny's recipe, but this time its all me. My Nanny likes hers plain, my Mamma likes chocolate chips in her banana bread, but I love walnuts . . . in everything. And lately, since my affair with Fried Bananagins, brown sugar is a new favorite ingredient. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do. And I THOROUGHLY do.

You will need:

• 1 3/4 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 1/4 tsps baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsps salt
• 1/3 cup butter (room temperature)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2-3 bananas)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (plus a handful for the finish!)
• 1 1/2 tbsp brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350.

In a small bowl, combine sifted flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix together butter and sugar until soft and fluffy in a medium sized bowl. Next add eggs, mix well. Alternately add flour mixture then bananas then walnuts to the butter and sugar. Mix thoroughly after each addition.

Sprinkle the top of the banana bread with walnuts and brown sugar.

Pour into a well- greased loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Before the last 10 minutes, I like to pull the pan out of the oven and put a little extra brown sugar on top.

Please, for your own sake, wait like 15 minutes before you cut into this piece of fantastic. Then, slather on a pad of butter and wait for the addiction to settle in.

 

Love,

Liz