Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Since I did not feel like overloading the blog with so many entries in one day, I decided to wait until today to introduce quite possibly my new favorite dessert. I know that even thus far in my blogging, anyone who reads this will find that hard to believe, because I love all dessert. :) The bad thing about dessert in this "family" is that Josh does not like sweets (I know, he is WEIRD!)...he even HATES cake! I mean, seriously...who hates cake? That's completely un-American or something...but alas, when I make a dessert it is dangerous because he will not eat it and that means I have a whole entire dessert to myself. Not good. I try to give them away but truly, everyone always pulls that, "oh I'll take one" or "I'll take a small piece." REALLY?!? Take more!!!

Blah...even though I may get incredibly fat, I still love baking so here is my newest addition to my sweet-tooth catelog.

Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

Ingredients:

1 pkg cream cheese, softened (you only need like 4 oz of it so half of a normal brick works)

1/2 C peanut butter

1/2 C white sugar

1 egg

1 box brownie mix (approx 19 oz, whatever kind you want)

2 T water

1/2 C vegetable oil

2 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom and sides of 9x13 baking dish. (Glass works best)

2. In a small bowl, blend cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar and one egg. Beat until smooth. Set aside.

3. In a separate bowl, blend together brownie mix, water, oil and eggs. Stir 50 strokes or until all brownie mix is well incorporated. It is okay to have some lumps.

4. Spread about half of the brownie batter into the greased pan. Drop peanut butter mixture by spoonfuls over the top of the brownie mix. Take the remaining brownie batter and spoon that over your mounds of peanut butter.

My peanut butter blobs :)

5. After you have spooned the remaining brownie batter over the peanut butter, take a butter knife and run it through the pan, first vertically than horizontally. This will create the pretty marbled effect you're going for:

    

Pretty!

6. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Cool completely, cut into bars and store tightly covered in the refrigerator (because of the cream cheese.) Enjoy!

The finished product!

We really liked these brownies because I followed the tips of some other bakers on allrecipes.com. The recipe I included was the one I created out of the one on the website. You can use more cream cheese, but be sure to adjust the peanut butter and the sugar accordingly otherwise, you can apparently end up with some funky tasting brownies. Other bakers reccommended using crunchy peanut butter or throwing a handful of peanuts into the mix...the great thing about this recipe is that its versatile, you can do whatever you want! And they turn out so pretty.

Orange Chicken

Well, I have not gotten much more wedding stuff accomplished since I mailed out the save the dates. I really am planning on posting instructions on how to do them once I am certain most of our guests have them...so, in the meantime: I've been cookin!

I am absolutely infatuated with the website allrecipes.com. It is the most incredible collection of recipes out there...it is so well organized and easy to use that sometimes I will go on there, type in a couple ingredients that I want to work with and it will recommend specific recipes that I can create. Other times, I get random cravings and so I'll go on, look it up and it pulls up any and all recipes for said craving. The website also provides rankings by people who have cooked it, photos of their achievements and comments on what they did (if anything) to make the recipe better. It is quite possibly my favorite site on the internet.

The other night, Josh and I were craving Chinese so I logged on to check out recipes for orange chicken. This is the one I found and it was soooooooooo good. Like seriously, Josh took one bite and said, "we are NEVER ordering Chinese food again!" So without further adieu:

Orange Chicken

Ingredients:

Part 1. Sauce: 

1 1/2 Cups water
2 T orange juice  

1/4 C lemon juice

1/3 C rice vinegar (I didn't have any, so I just used plain white vinegar and it turned out great) 

2.5 T soy sauce

1 C brown sugar

1/2 t. minced garlic

1/2 t. minced ginger (Again, didn't have it so I just left it out)

2 T chopped green onion 

1/4 t. red pepper flakes

-------------------------

3 t. cornstarch

2 T warm water

Part 2. Chicken:

1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces

1 C all purpose flour

Salt and Pepper to taste

3 T olive oil

Directions:

1. Combine water, orange and lemon juices, vinegar and soy sauce in a sauce pan set over Med-High heat. Mix in brown sugar, garlic, ginger (if you're using it), onions and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool 10-15 minutes.

2. Place chicken pieces into a Ziploc bag. When sauce mixture has cooled, pour about a cup of it into the bag with the chicken. Reserve the remaining sauce and marinate the chicken at least an hour, or up to overnight. 

3. In a new Ziploc bag, mix the flour, salt and pepper. Add marinated chicken pieces, seal and shake the bag to coat. 

4. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over Med heat. Brown the chicken pieces on both sides. Drain on a plate lined with paper towels and cover with aluminum foil while you prepare the sauce.

5. Wipe excess olive oil out of the skillet and pour in the reserved sauce. Bring to a boil over Med-High heat. Mix cornstarch and water in a separate container and then add to the sauce, stirring constantly until it is dissolved. Lower heat to Med-Low, add chicken pieces and simmer 5 minutes until sauce is thick and chicken is coated.

***This recipe sounds messy, but it was super easy. We just served our orange chicken over steamed white rice and it was delicious, sweet and spicy and perfect! Try this recipe, you will not regret it!*****

Banana Pudding

One of the things I had planned to do with this blog besides talk about the wedding was talk a little about the life that Josh and I have. A big part of that life together is good food. Ever since I moved out on my own, I have discovered an absolute love of all things cooking. My favorite thing to make by far is any and all kinds of dessert. I always say I am a fat kid in a skinny kid's body and I really hope that I can stay that way because I.LOVE.FOOD.

So to jumpstart the recipe section of this blog, I reached back to my southern roots and decided to try my hand at an old family favorite: banana pudding with meringue.

Banana Pudding

1 Cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 egg yolks (separate and keep the whites in a small bowl for later)

1 T flour

1 1/2 cups milk

3-4 bananas, sliced

1 box vanilla wafers

Meringue

2 egg whites (kept from earlier)

3 1/2 T sugar

1. Preheat oven to 425

2. Line bottom of casserole dish with cookies. On top of the cookies, do a layer of bananas. Repeat layers until the dish is mostly full. 

(Here is my pretty pattern just starting)

3. In large saucepan, stir brown sugar and flour so there are no lumps. Mix in egg and egg yolks. Stir in milk while warming over Med-Low heat. Stir constantly until mixture thickens. (This takes a LONG time, so don't worry if it is not looking like pudding right away. I let it come to a slight boil while stirring and it thickened right up)

(My homemade pudding cooling just a little)

4. Take pudding off heat and let cool for a few minutes. Pour warm pudding over cookies and bananas. Set aside.

5. Whip egg whites on medium speed until they hold a soft peak. Sprinkle the sugar in while whipping until the egg whites til they hold a firm peak. Spread meringue on top of pudding. Use the back of a spoon to make small peaks in the meringue.

6. Bake 5-10 minutes until the meringue is golden brown. Serve pudding warm. 

(Here's the final product. Almost too pretty to eat...almost)

I was so proud of this dish. It turned out looking so pretty, and it was relatively easy. Because I was using a 9x13 pan, I decided to double the pudding and meringue part of the recipe, using the normal amount of cookies and bananas and it turned out perfect. YUM! :)