Banana Split Shooters

I've been wanting to do something special for my mom for a little while now, and after I found this recipe I knew this was a perfect match for making her happy, bananas, chocolate and simplicity!

There isn't as much a recipe as there is a few simple instructions which you can follow after the photos!

I had to take my photos quick, they were melting fast!My mom enjoying hers. : )

I liked to get all of the ice cream out before eating the bottom half.Notice my sister, Leigh, sporting her Purdue shirt? And my sisters's boyfriend enjoying his shooter.

You will need:

Bananas

Chocolate for dipping

Sprinkles

Ice Cream

Whipped Cream

Cherries

So the steps are rather simple, cut bananas into one inch sections with the peel still on. With the peel on, hollow out some of the center for ice cream. I used a grape fruit spoon, but a small melon baller would be ideal. Take off the peel and dip bottoms into melted chocolate, then dip in sprinkles. To solidify the chocolate quickly you can freeze them for a few minutes on wax paper. Take the bananas and then scoop in a small portion of ice cream to fit the carved hole. Top with whipped cream and cherry and you are done!
Pardon me for not posting a printable recipe, these instructions are so simple I feel like its not needed! 

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Time is flying by!

Alas, I totally have been slacking again. Woops. I have been busy babysitting (yay!) and hanging out with some friends. The weather has been pretttyyy nice out (sorry I am like an old person constantly talking about the weather but it plays such a big part of my summer activities!) and I got to go to the pool with my friend Kelly the other day. Later that night we went and saw Bridesmaids along with our other friend Katie. That movie was hilarious! I am hoping to go see Super 8 tomorrow with my friend Danny, it got an 82 percent on Rotten Tomatoes so it must be pretty good! Tonight for dinner I made this delicious alfredo tortellini for the second time. Everyone really seems to like it and I appreciate the fact that we already have all of the ingredients. It is a really easy meal, great for college cooking! Here is how mine turned out,


  I like to add peas to mine and we use both tortellini and ravioli. 
Some other things I have been up to were stopping by for a visit to Lowes to see my friend Clay, who works in the garden section, and the bwaybway birdies that hatched this week! He has been looking out for the little fellers since he first started about a month ago, when they were first eggs. Apparently the mother bird keeps an eye out on them as she flys around and socializes with the other birds living it up at Lowes.   Aren't they so cute!? One of the other workers moved the grass when I took this shot and I am pretty sure they were hoping it was their mother showing up to give them a snack. 
I also made pancakes today. Chocolate chip pancakes of course! I felt like making them in cool shapes so I found our heart cookie cutter and a square cookie cutter and made delicious pancakes! Here is the most perfect square, I am rather proud of it.  Ahh yes, I know you are all just reveling in what an amazingly interesting life I live aren't you? : P If anyone ever want to join me on my fantastical adventures just let me know!

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Cookie Dough Truffles

I think this may be one of my favorite new recipes! They taste just as good as they sound, for all of those cookie dough fanatics out there, this is the recipe for you. I was fighting my family back while making the dough, I promised them, the end result would be so much better than just eating the dough, and I definitely did not lie! The recipe also isn't hard, it only takes some time due to have to chill the dough, but you can go do anything you want in that time, which in my case was working on sewing a dress. Oh! And its an egg free recipe so you won't get that stupid thing called salmonella that our pesky mothers always bother us about! Here is the recipe I have been ranting about:

Ingredients:
2 1/1 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
14 oz dark chocolate

HEY! Look at that! No oven involved. : )


    1. Combine butter and sugars in a large bowl.  2. Cream ingredients with electric mixer until light and fluffy.  3. Add in vanilla.  4. Add in milk.  5. Mix in flour, salt and baking soda.  6. Add your chocolate chips! Make sure you have the mini ones so you don't have to chop them up like I did!  7. Now cover with the devil that is plastic wrap.  8. Chill for an hour. Go craft or something.  9. Melt chocolate in a fondue pot or in the microwave. However you want really.  10. Make balls out of your dough and dip them in chocolate. Place chocolate covered balls back on tray and back in the freezer.    11. Keep chilled, my family prefers them nice and cold so ours stay in the freezer!
Here is the printable version of the recipe:
Cookie Dough Truffles Recipe
Enjoy your truffles! I ended up having so many which is nice because it makes me even more willing to share! These are seriously a bite of heaven. BEST THING EVER!

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So sorry! : )

This has not been the best past four days of blogging for me, which is probably apparent by the lack of blogging! I have had a fantastic end of the week and weekend but things could have gone a bit better with my planned blog posts, Thursday was supposed to be my first ever Tutorial Thursday post but due to Blogger being down for most of Thursday and my craft not working out the post ended up not happening! Alas, half of the project is still incomplete (I'm still working on it! I am waiting for the sun to start shining again so I can try my next effort at getting the craft to work out) so until I figure out how to tell all of you how to make it work, it won't be posted for a few more days. Here is a teaser photo of what the finished half of the project looks like! (I'm keeping the craft a surprise until I can post it)

Hrmm.. what could this craft be? Kaleigh knows!
Friday I just ran out of time to post a blog since I was working on trying to get my craft to work out, helping my mom with a new recipe (it was so yummy!) and maybe spending a few hours hanging out with my awesome friends at DJ's house. : ) Here is the pasta and chicken dish my mom tried out for the first time, Basil Chicken over Angel Hair, or in my case, over penne pasta. It was quite delicious! I highly suggest it to anyone looking for a yummy chicken dish.

Basil Chicken over Penne for dinner!
Saturday I had the opportunity to spend the day with my great friend Holly. We drove all over town to go garage sale hopping, I was looking for things to do crafts with and in the end I didn't find anything, but Holly got some great finds. It really was just awesome to hang out with Holly and get a chance to catch up with one another over shopping and our fun lunch downtown zville. Later Tyler came over and we hung out for a few hours playing my favorite video game Lego Star Wars and then we cooked Chicken Pad Thai for my family. I totally forgot to take photos while we were cooking and even forgot to take a picture of the finished project, but if you check out the recipe it looked pretty much like that. I switched up the recipe a bit and bought a pad thai sauce at the international store instead of making my own, but then I added soy sauce, lime juice, garlic and oyster sauce to taste. For a yummy crunch in the pad thai I added grated carrots as well. It was delicious!

Today was quite a disappointment when it came to my baking endeavors, especially after a week of awesome new recipes that turned out so great! It's okay though, I had fun baking the cupcakes at least. I had decided to try out baking Dark Chocolate Creme de Menthe Cupcakes forever ago because of how absolutely gorgeous (and scrumptious) they looked. Mine came out exactly the opposite. : ( I decided to use a box mix for the chocolate cupcakes instead of creating mine from scratch, and of course those came out perfectly. If only I had stopped there, but of course I wanted to try out the mint and chocolate frosting! Sadly the frosting turned to be a greasy mess, despite following the exact directions listed. I know it has to be an error on my part because the frosting just tastes like butter and mint. I am considering going back and scraping off the frosting that is on the cupcakes and adding more powdered sugar until it starts to taste right. If all else fails, at least I have chocolate cupcakes!

Baking the only good part of the recipe, the cupcakes!And our pets were having a lot of fun chasing one another and just being in the way in general. Our cat is named Gabriel and our dog's name is Chester! (Chester is a cockapoo)
Chester & GabeyDon't worry, they are just playing! They are awesome friends.

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Raspberry Lemonade Bars

This is my first official recipe for summer break! I was excited to try this one out and the recipe was really fun to make (more enjoyable than the Homemade Oreos, you can check that recipe out from last week). While it may sound complicated, it really wasn't and the only thing I was required to buy was the frozen raspberries! I highly suggest this recipe, it looks quite delicious, and I specially picked out this recipe to have for my mom's special mothers day meal tonight! 

for the crust:
9 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup of flour
pinch salt


for the filling:
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 egg whites
1 egg
2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 3 lemons or lemon juice)
2 tablespoons lemon zest (from 2 lemons)
2/3 cup flour
pinch of salt
1-2 cups of frozen raspberries, defrosted
1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 8×8″ square baking pan with a strip of parchment paper (I used wax paper and it turned out fine) that covers the bottom and hangs over the sides. (This is so after it cools, you can pull out the entire pan of bars and cut them easily.)

Tyler really loved the action shots with the flour and sugar!

2. Combine the butter, sugar, salt and flour with an electric mixer. Mine was still rather clumpy, but when I used a spatula and my hands it all squished together rather neatly. Flour your hands and press dough into 8×8″ square baking pan, I didn't want a crust so I didn't put any on the sides.  

3. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until slightly golden brown. While its baking, begin to prepare the filling.

4. Whisk sugar, egg whites, egg, lemon juice and zest, flour, and salt in a large bowl. My mom didn't want me buying three whole lemons (they have gotten pretty pricey!) so I used lemon juice instead of juicing three lemons. 

5. Pour raspberries into a sieve and press through to extract all the pulp and juices. 

6. Whisk into lemon mixture and pour into crust. 

7. Bake for 30-35 minutes until filling is completely set. Let cool completely. (I stuck mine in the refrigerator, my family likes them cold)







8. Using the overlapping edges of parchment paper, gently lift the dessert from the pan. Cut into 16 squares. Dust with confectioner’s sugar.


(And yes those are Christmas plates!)

And I wanted to share a printable version for all of my readers so here it is: 

Raspberry Lemonade Bars Recipe

I hope you all enjoy!

Special thanks to Tyler for helping me take all of the photos! He really helped out and now deserves a slice of the bars.

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Fondue Friday

Sup peeps!?

Tonight has been a hilarious night of reunion with the girls, which was very rewarding after a busy day of running errands with my mom. Sadly we were missing a few girls, but my friends Becky, Katie, Kelly, Erica, Heather and Holly were all able to attend for a night of dipping things in chocolate and catching up with one another. Oddly enough, I am the only one that doesn't attend IU (Boiler Up!) but because of their crazy schedules they hadn't had much time to see one another either. Here are some of the pictures of us, captured in all of our glory:

Ah, the hilarity of the twins, Holly and Heather are seen at the left, and Holly is in the right, attempting to hide her beautiful self. (Notice the pile of yummy rice crispy treats in front of her!)

Heather decided to help out Holly with the covering of her face, what a kind, sisterly act!: P

I just love the serious look of concentration on Becky's face while Katie looks like she is glaring at her.

Haha this was the only shot I got of someone actually using the fondue, Erika, like most of us, loved the chocolate covered pretzels! I felt pretty bad that Kelly couldn't have the fondue though. (She has an egg allergy)

So much win on Becky's face!

Then we decided to switch over to playing Dutch Blitz, an amazing card game I was taught last year at Gretna Glen (the church camp I worked at in Pennsylvania)! It is a seriously addictive game.

Holly, Heather and I all had somewhat an unfair advantage over Becky, the three of us had played quite a bit over spring break in Florida!

Heather celebrated a total score of 69 (yes we are all very mature) and Becky mourned her score of something not in the positive...

Well, it is late into the night and I am frustrated (only mildly) with the two photos above not being even (I edited them twice!) so I will forbid you farewell. Tomorrow we might all go see Thor! But first, let me leave you with the fondue recipe I used!

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