Chocolate Chip Lava Cookies

I saw this recipe on Pinterest for chocolate chip lava cookies.  Once I saw the photo of the warm cookie smothered in vanilla ice cream...they had me.

Start with melting 1/2 cup of milk chocolate chips in a plastic bag in the microwave for 30 seconds, or until melted, set aside.  (I used a sandwich bag but after microwaving it didn't hold up so well, so use something sturdier, like a freezer bag)

Cream one stick of butter with 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar and 1/2 cup granulated sugar

After creaming the butter and sugars for 3-5 minutes in the electric mixer, add one egg and 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract...

swirls!

Add combined 1 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder to wet mixture

Add one cup of chocolate chips.  Then try not to eat half of the dough while you assemble the cookies - very important!

Using only half of the prepared dough, scoop 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons into your hands and flatten it out, and place in a greased muffin pan (makes 10-11 cookies)

 

Now, grab the plastic bag with the melted chocolate....  It's time.  

Snip of a corner of the bag with a scissor, and squeeze the chocolate in the middle of the dough.

Using the remaining dough, scoop and flatten out in your hands like you did for the first layer, and gently place over first layer and melted chocolate

Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  WHEN I make these again, I will bake them for a couple minutes less, just to leave the center more gooey.  I was concerned that the edges weren’t getting  browned, so I left it in for closer to 20 minutes. I would think 15 is probably perfect.

Cooling down

Oh look!  I've got all the dessert I didn't need to eat lined up for the week!

 

I microwave them for about 30 seconds to get them really warm and then scoop some vanilla ice cream on top.  It was like the cookie and ice cream were made for each other!  

I'm so cute, you'll have to eat me

yum yum yum

Now, my diet isn't so happy about these cookies being in the house, but I say screw it!  Live a little and eat some chocolate chip lava cookies once in a while :-)

New Camera

I got a new camera this weekend, and I am loving it!  I haven't had a nice camera in a long time, and with summer coming up there are lots of things I want to take pictures of and have some nice quality photos to look back on.  So I just went around the house to take a few test shots....

Hope you are all having a nice, relaxing weekend!

Goat Cheese With Honey and Pistachio

I love the combination of goat cheese and honey. It's salty and sweet and tart and delicious. It's so simple to make too! I usually just drizzle some honey over goat cheese on toasted bread, but this time I mixed it in with the cheese and I liked the consistency.  The goat cheese has a crumble-y texture at first, but when you mix in the honey, it becomes soft and spreadable.  My friend Ashley told me how she recently tried it with pistachios and that it went well with the cheese.  I decided that I would give it a try and bring it to our most recent book club meeting, where we talked about The Art of Racing in the Rain (great book).  So all you need to whip up this delicious appetizer are three ingredients: pistachio nuts, goat cheese, and honey.

shell some pistachios

break up some goat cheese and add to a bowl

Add a good amount of honey, I just eyeballed it.  Mix together and then add the pistachios.

Finished product.  I saved a few pistachios to put on top and drizzled some more honey.

French baguette and cinnamon crackers to spread the goat cheese on.

Spread it on bread or crackers, this is the simplest appetizer and such a favorite for me and my friends.

Toffee Latte Scones With Irish Cream Glaze

I saw this recipe for Toffee Latte Scones the other day, and I thought they sounded sooo good, I had to try making a batch this weekend.  I've never made scones before but it wasn't too involved and they turned out pretty great!

The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of toffee bits.  I couldn't find any so I just chopped up three Heath bars.  It was a little more than 1/2 cup, so I saved the extra to sprinkle on some ice cream for later.

Three Heath Bars

All chopped up

Next, melt 1/4 cup of vanilla ice cream

Melted vanilla ice cream

 Then, add 2 tablespoons of instant coffee into the melted ice cream

 Add two eggs into the melted vanilla ice cream and instant coffee mixture.

 

Next, mix 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon baking powder.

Then, cut 1/2 cup of butter (1/2 of a stick) into small cubes, and incorporate into the flour mixture.  I used a pastry blender, but you could use a fork.

 

 

It will look something like this:

 

 Add 1/2 cup of the chopped up toffee

 

Then add the liquids

 

 

 Mix with a fork and dough will come together

 

 Pat into 8-10 inch circle about 1 inch thick and cut into wedges

 

Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then 300 for another 10 minutes

While the scones were baking, I got creative and decided to make a glaze to drizzle on top of the scones for some extra sweetness.  I used one cup of powdered sugar and three tablespoons of Bailey's Irish Cream Coffee Creamer.

I let the scones cool before drizzling the glaze

Scones on a cooling rack

Everyone is glazed and happy

This little one has my name written all over it

I hope you all have a great week!

Two Ingredient Pumpkin Muffins

Continuing on with my obsession with Pinterest recipes, I decided to try out this latest recipe.  If you know me, then you know I absolutely love anything pumpkin flavor.  It doesn't have to be Fall for me to enjoy a pumpkin treat.  Even if you aren't as into pumpkins as I am, I think you will still like this recipe.  Its fairly healthy too, with my rough calculations, they should be about 185 calories each if you make 12 muffins, which isn't bad if you're having it for breakfast. 

This recipe couldn't be any easier, just one box of yellow cake mix and one 15oz can of pumpkin.


I have made a similar recipe before, preparing the yellow cake mix as directed on the box and adding one up of the canned pumpkin.  It's one of my favorite cupcake recipes, so I was curious how this would turn out without using any of the oil, eggs, etc.

Cake mix and canned pumpkin

Mixing

All the pumpkin incorporated into the cake mix

The batter was thicker than your average cupcake, and didn't smell overwhelmingly of pumpkin.

I always like to use an ice cream scooper to divide the batter evenly into muffin sized cups.

I tried out different sized muffins

Bake at 350 for about 20-25 minutes and voila!

Baked and ready to eat

Of course I couldn't resist one

The end result is a dense, moist muffin with a hint of pumpkin flavor.  Not too sweet either, just perfect, and it took little to no effort to bake these up.  I will surely be making these again!