Quickest Cookie Recipe

This week I have been swamped with assignments and tests and therefore needed to come up with something quick and easy. After browsing through a couple cookie recipe books I had, I then found the perfect one. This particular recipe comes from a cookie jar classics book, the recipe is titled 'friendship cookies', I'm not exactly sure why seeing as there is little to no effort that goes into these but that is besides the point. Back to the cookies... They require a simple 4 ingredients which are as follows:
One large egg
1/2 Cup of cooking oil
1 Box of cake mix
1/4 Cup of water

As for the cake mix, I used confetti cake (vanilla cake with rainbow bits). Basically all you do is combine all the ingredients together, mix and bake. It is best to bake at 350 degrees F for roughly 10-12 minutes. I dropped out large portions or the mix then once they were baked cut them into heart shapes and ate the side pieces. All in all, I highly suggest for everyone to try this recipe out as it is by far the easiest cookie recipe. Enjoy. <3

Banana Chocolate Chip

    This week I had a serious craving for banana bread but more specifically, banana bread with lots of chocolate chips in them. Therefore I decided to make a traditional banana bread mix, add chocolate chips and then bake into a muffin tray and top with chocolate frosting. Yum yum. To start off you will need to create a banana bread mixture, many online baking sites offer them but I have also posted one below in which I found online. The ingredients and directions are as follows:

Ingredients:
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup of melted butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tsp of baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 ½ cups of all purpose flour
1 cup of chocolate chips

Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  With a wooden spoon, mix butter into mashed bananas, then mix in sugar, egg, vanilla, baking soda and salt. Add in the flour and chocolate chips and pour mixture into individual muffin cups. Bake until toothpick comes out clean.

Once it has cooled down, top with your favourite chocolate frosting and enjoy!! For an added flavour, add in banana extract to the chocolate frosting. ENJOY!

Cereal Bars

     This week I decided to go on a bit of a health kick and try to make something a little healthier, although it does contain marshmallows I figured baby steps is the best way. This week I made cereal bars, they are basically rice crispy squares just with different cereals and dried fruit. For this you will need 1 bag of marshmallows, 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine and 6 cups of your favourite cereal. I personally used 3 cups of Banana Nut Cheerios and 3 cups of Presidents Choice Crunchy Cranberry Almond cereal. First you will need to take a large saucepan (large enough to fit all ingredients), begin to melt the butter/margarine in the saucepan then gradually add in the bag of marshmallows, use a spatula to pull the marshmallow away from the sides as well as make sure you're using a non stick saucepan! After the marshmallows have melted and now look like glue, add in the cereal as well as anything else you would like such as dried fruits, chocolate, nuts, etc. Then pour into a non stick pan, something like a greased casserole dish works well, then place into the fridge to cool. After it is cooled, you may add a chocolate drizzle over the top or just cut and serve as is. These cereal bars are best kept in an air tight container as well as may be frozen and stored away for another time. 

Peanut Butter Filled Cookies

     Now this has got to be the best of both worlds - Chocolate and peanut butter, how can it get much better than that. This was a not the easiest recipe to do, but I personally feel that it was definitely worth it. All of the ingredients required were every day items, in which I just found in the kitchen cupboards and did not have to make any special trips to the grocery store for items. The recipe calls for separating the wet and dry ingredients until the end, yet next time I make these I will combine everything as I go as I found that when combining at the end and using an electric mixer can be a real pain. I think more flour and dry ingredients ended up all over myself and the counter than stayed in the bowl. Once everything was mixed together, the batter was to be rolled and flattened into little balls, then the peanut butter filling was to be dropped in the middle. This was kind of an annoying step, as everything was sticking to my hands but after the first couple I started to get the hang of it. Overall, these cookies were quite yummy and I would suggest this recipe to anyone who loves peanut butter and chocolate! Check out the below recipe and steps and try it for yourself!
Ingredients:

All purpose flour - 1 1/2 Cups

Unsweetened cocoa powder - 1/2 Cup

Baking soda - 1/2 Tsp

Unsalted butter, softened - 1/2 Cup or 1 Stick

Sugar - 1/2 Cup

Brown sugar, packed - 1/2 Cup

Peanut butter, - 1/4 Cup

                       - 1/2 Cup for filling

Egg - 1 large

Vanilla extract - 1 Tsp

Powder sugar, sifted - 3/4 Cup

        Directions
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and line cookie sheets with parchment paper.       
-Combine flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda in a bowl and set aside.
-Cream butter using an electric mixer at medium speed for 1 minute. Gradually beat in granulated sugar, then brown sugar and finally ¼ cup peanut butter until everything is well combined.
-Add egg, vanilla extract and continue beating until well blended. 

-Using a spatula or wooden spoon, gently stir in the flour mixture. Shape dough into ¼-inch balls and place them on prepared cookie sheets. 

-For peanut butter filling, stir together powder sugar and ½ cup peanut butter until smooth. Shape mixture into ¾-inch balls.
-Flatten each chocolate dough ball and top with a peanut butter ball. Wrap chocolate dough over the peanut butter filling so that it completely covers the filling. Roll dough into balls, then slightly flatted them again, and sprinkle the top with some granulated sugar.

-Bake for about 8 minutes or until just set and surface is slightly cracked. Cool chocolate cookies on baking sheets for 1 minute before transferring them to wire racks to cool completely.

Source: http://www.grouprecipes.com/82963/peanut-butter-filled-chocolate-cookies.html

Two Bite Brownies

   After a long long week of studying for the first round of tests, I felt that something chocolaty and delicious was much needed. Therefore, I decided to bake some two bite brownies. While looking for a simple recipe I stumbled upon a good one through Google which lead me to a recipe done by Canadian Living. Being a busy student, I am usually pressed for time so the recipe provided is excellent as the total time, including both preparation and baking time was under 30 minutes. This recipe called for basic ingredients of flour, butter, sugar, chocolate chips and the like, all in which I purchased at NoFrills. After mixing all the required ingredients together and placing them in a mini cupcake pan to bake, I placed them in the oven for roughly 15 minutes to bake. When they were all done, it was time to let them cool and wait for the best part; icing them! Although this recipe used candy cane icing, I decided to take the easy route and purchase a basic whipped vanilla icing by Duncan Hines. This was a basic white icing to which I added some red food colouring to make it a pink colour. I decided to pipe the icing on and add sprinkles afterwards, seeing as everything both looks and tastes better with sprinkles.
     These two bite brownies definitely satisfied my post midterm chocolate fix, and it was a very simple and cheap recipe to follow. I would use this recipe again, and also look for other recipes posted by Canadian Living, as this one proved to be a success and Christmas baking is just around the corner. Canadian Living - Two Bite Brownies