Kitchen Adventures 4.3

Normally, I am not one to experiment with recipes. As many people can attest, I rarely deviate from a recipe and it's specific directions unless I really don't like an ingredient. However, while walking home from work Wednesday and thinking about what to make for small group snack, I suddenly felt the urge to experiment. I wanted to make chocolate peanut butter brownies--I felt regular brownies were just not quite the order for the evening. I looked for several different recipes online before finally deciding to just make my own and see what happened. Fortunately, this experiment turned out well. I simply added some melted peanut butter to my brownie mixture and called it good, and it was a huge hit. Yay for experiments that turn out well!
The original brownie recipe is from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook

Cake Brownies (with peanut butter addition)

Ingredients:
3/4 c. butter
1 1/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 c. milk, plus additional for peanut butter mixture
1 c. chopped nuts (optional)
1/2 c. peanut butter

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan (or a 15x10x1 pan) and set aside. In a large microwaveable bowl, microwave butter on high for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or until melted. Stir in sugar and cocoa powder until combined. Add eggs and vanilla. Using a wooden spoon, beat mixture lightly just until combined.
2. In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Alternately add flour mixture and 1 c. milk to chocolate mixture, beating after each addition. Stir in nuts if desired.
3. Pour batter into prepared baking pan. *Addition: melt peanut butter with several T. of milk in small pan over medium-low heat just until creamy. Pour over brownie batter in pan and swirl with spoon.
4. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack 2 hours. Cut into bars.

Apologies for the dark picture, it's all I have.

Kitchen Adventures 2.7

Many of us have weekly activities we look forward to when a new week begins. I am fortunate to have several different sets of friends, who are most definitely different from each other. I love my girls night friends who meet at O'Connell's every week and play bingo and drink $2 Boulevards. There are girls I can tell about random things going on in my life or things I hear about on the news and whatnot. And with the inclusion of the boys at girls night (contradictory, I know, but it works) we always have rousing conversation going on somewhere at the table.
Another group I always look forward to seeing is my small group from church. We started meeting two years ago and through there are only three of the originals left, we have an awesome group that not only meets to discuss the Word and our study, but also to share in our lives socially. Usually, at least lately, the boys have outnumbered the girls, but last week was an exception. With no boys in attendance, we had a girls night. Of course we discussed out study, Lead Like Jesus (which I highly recommend), but we were also able to share about life situations that I'm pretty sure we would not have discussed had the boys been there. It was nice to just have that girl time studying together and also just fellowhihpping.
Unfortunately for the boys, they missed out on delicious snack. Of course, I am biased since I made it. :) But I must say, it is delicious! I'm still eating the fruits of my labor for breakfast and thoroughly enjoying it!
Since I had extra zucchini lying around from the farmer's market I trolled the Internet looking for some kind of zucchini dessert recipe. I already made chocolate zucchini cake and have made zucchini bread before, so I wanted to try something different. After doing a little searching, I came across this excellent recipe from cooks.com. It's a little different, but delicious! I highly recommend it!

Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Ingredients:
2 c. grated zucchini
4 c. flour
1/2 c. cocoa
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 1/2 c. oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 c. milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1 c. chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter 2 loaf pans. Grate zucchini
In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
In another bowl, combine zucchini, oil, eggs, milk, and vanilla.
Stir zucchini mixture into the flour mixture, just until blended. Mix in the chocolate chips. Pour batter into prepared pans.
Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean, about 1 hour 15 minutes.
Cool on rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely.

Here are some pics of the finished product.