Tag Archives: holiday

Cookie Explosion Frozen Yogurt

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It is starting to really feel like summer to me now…it’s supposed to get all the way up to 95 degrees around here on Sunday!! Craziness I tell you, craziness!

In my mind when it hits 90 that means its time for some ice cream. LOL who am I kidding? I eat ice cream in December. But it’s the end of May, Memorial Day weekend-in other words, it is bikini season ladies. (and gentlemen)

Supposedly this frozen yogurt stuff is healthy healthier than ice cream, so I decided to add some cookies and make it yummy yet somewhat healthy. This is a pretty basic vanilla frozen yogurt recipe that you can add whatever you like to it. Even fruit, however, I will have to turn my face on that one. Fruit is for breakfast. Not dessert, unless it is in the popsicle form. Then we can talk. Or apple pie.

Anwywho, this frozen yogurt is great for those of you who are gonna be melting this weekend with me! And for those of you who aren’t going to be melting, well, I recommend making this if you like yummy things.

Cookie Explosion Frozen Yogurt

1 2/3 cups milk (I used skim)

3/4 cup white sugar

4 cups vanilla or plain non-fat yogurt

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 Tablespoon vanilla extract

about 7 Oreos

about 7 Chips Ahoy Cookies

  1. In a medium bowl, whisk together milk and sugar until sugar is dissolved. Stir in the yogurt, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. Mix until thoroughly combined. Pour mixture into ice cream machine and prepare according to machine’s directions.
  2. Smash Oreos into small pieces and break Chips Ahoy cookies, by hand, into small pieces.
  3. When there are about 5 minutes left in the process in the ice cream machine, pour in cookie pieces and let mix for last 5 minutes. When done, place ice cream into air tight containers and place in freezer to set. After frozen yogurt has hardened, you may have to wait about 15 minutes for it to soften on the counter, I put mine in the microwave for about 25 seconds.

Random Fact of the Day: In 2008, 18,000 breast reductions were performed… on American men!

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Happy Mother’s Day! Plus a Chocolate Pound Cake

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Hey there! I know it’s Sunday and I normally don’t post on Sundays…but I also know that today is Mother’s Day. And I think that certainly calls for a blog post. I have a couple things to share with you all today. One is a recipe, of course! And the other is short little video.

I saw this ad about a month ago, and it really touched me. Literally made me cry. I know, I’m a baby..crying during a commercial. But hear me out. Just watch it, I promise you it will touch you too. Here is it. Mother’s Day Ad.

I hope all you mothers out there had an awesome mothers day and everybody wished their mom’s a happy mothers day, and for those of you who have mothers that have passed, I hope you have remembered all the good memories you had with them.

I feel truly blessed to have my mother in my life. She has taught me so much that nobody else ever could have. She has taught me that women will always be right. She has taught me which boys to avoid and which ones are worth a shot. She has taught me what is right and what is wrong. She has taught me how to cook. She has taught me how to bake. She has taught me who to trust and who will have my back at the end of the day. She has taught me how to tell when a pizza is truly good.

She has taught me that sometimes you have to get your “south-sider” out to get your point across (sorry for those of you who don’t know what I mean by “south-sider”, maybe I’ll explain later). She is the one who sat through countless hours of teaching me how to drive, including the days of nauseating backing-around-the-corner. She is the one who I look up to as a role model and hope to become a fraction of a mother she is. I love her to infinity and beyond, and there is nobody who will ever be able to replace that. Love you mom!

So to bounce off of that, I made a chocolate pound cake that is perfect for Mother’s Day. I know that mother’s day is practically over now, but it’s great for showing your mother, grandmother, or any other special person in your life that you really love them! This is a rich, chocolatey, delicious cake that is sure to put a smile on anyone’s face. Enjoy!

Chocolate Loaf Cake

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened

1 1/4 cups white sugar

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder (I used dark cocoa powder)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 (6-ounce) container nonfat vanilla/plain yogurt

1/3 cup water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan, set aside.
  2. In a bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
  3. In a separate bowl, whisk together yogurt, water, and vanilla extract.
  4. Cream together butter and sugar. Mix in eggs, one at a time.
  5. Add half the flour mixture to the creamed butter-sugar mixture. Mix in the yogurt mixture, then add in the rest of the flour mixture. Mix until just combined and pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
  6. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour. Cool in pan for 20 minutes, then turn onto wire rack to finish cooling process. Enjoy and store leftovers in airtight container or cake stand with lid.

Random Fact of the Day: A lion’s roar can be heard five miles away

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Layered Ice Cream Cake

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hello. meet this monster of a cake I made.

This is what happens when you ask for an ice cream cake from me

I get super excited. Then I debate on what flavor ice creams I should have in it.

I can’t decide on one.

I can’t decide on two.

I finally settle on three.

Then I end up with a small mountain. A small, beautiful, delicious mountain of yumminess. Personally, it’s my favorite type of mountain.

This cake was made in honor of my brother’s 23rd birthday. He requested an ice cream cake, and usually we just buy a Coldstone Creamery cake. But what fun is there in that? I decided that it was time we have our very own spectacular homemade ice cream cake. I have no regrets!

Layered Ice Cream Cake

2 round cakes, baked

  • I used just a regular boxed cake mix which worked out great, but if you have the time and have a great cake recipe, by all means..make it!

3 quarts of ice cream, softened (I liked using 3 different flavors, but if you would like to be uniform, I’m sure having consistent flavors would be delicious as well)

  • I used this recipe for my vanilla bean layer
  • I used this recipe for my cookies and cream layer (except I used Oreos instead of the Andes cookies)
  • I used this recipe for my mint chocolate chip layer

Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting  (you may see the recipe below)

Chocolate Ganache (recipe below)

Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting

1 (8 ounce) package of cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 T. unsweetened cocoa

1/2 cup plus 1/2 T. white sugar

1 1/2 t.  vanilla

2 cups heavy cream

  1. In your mixer, using the whisk attachment, whip up the cream cheese, sugar, cocoa, and vanilla. Mix until thoroughly combined. You might need to scrape down the sides of the bowl here and there.
  2. On low speed, add in the cream and mix until stiff peaks form. You will see the frosting thicken up and it will look so yummy! Frost cake as desired.

Chocolate Ganache

1 3/4 cups chocolate chips or 9 oz. chocolate, chopped (Of course, the better quality chocolate you use, the better ganache you will have)

1 cup heavy cream

  1. Place chocolate in a medium-large heat proof bowl
  2. In a heavy saucepan on medium-high heat, heat cream until boiling. It will increase in volume and climb up to the top of the pan, be sure to take it off the heat before it over flows. Once if it is boiling, you are good to go and may take it off the stove.
  3. Pour hot heavy cream over chocolate and stir. Keep stirring until completely mixed together and combined. Cool for a couple minutes and pour over cake.

HOW TO ASSEMBLE THE CAKE: It’s really quite simple!

***It is key to not that this cake was made over the course of a few days. If you try to make this in one day, I assure you that you will become extremely angry with yourself and the cake. The poor cake. So be sure to plan ahead when you make this and plan accordingly.

  1. Once you have baked your two round cakes, place them in the fridge or freezer. When cakes are fairly solid, cut them in half to make two thin layers. I found it to be much less messier by freezing them, but it did take a bit of muscles to cut them all the way through.
  2. Take your ice cream out of the freezer if you are using store bought and soften it up either on the counter for about 30 minutes, or in the microwave for about 45 seconds or until spreadable. If you are using homemade ice cream, you may take it right out of your ice cream maker when it is finished being made or if you have made it ahead and it is solid, you would do the same as you would do for the store bought. Once ice cream is soft and spreadable, line a round baking pan that is the same size you used for the cakes with saran wrap and spread the ice cream in nice smooth layer. Pop the cake tin filled with ice cream in the freezer for about 4 hours. Different ice creams tend to take different amounts of time, especially depending on whether you are using store-bought or homemade. Store bought freezers faster.
  3. Repeat step 2 for remaining ice cream flavors.
  4. Once ice cream layers are solid, take one of your cut pieces of a cake and place on the plate you plan on serving your cake with. Next, take one ice cream layer out of the freezer and pop it out of the pan and peel off the saran wrap and place on top of bottom cake layer. Top with next cut layer of cake. Add another layer of ice cream. Then layer of cake, and so on until you end with your final layer of cake. Freeze for about a half hour to have everything set up
  5. Make your whipped cream frosting (recipe above). Frost the cake once it has set up pretty well and is sticking all together pretty well. Pop back in the freeze once frosted for about another 30 minutes. While that is in the freezer, make your ganache.
  6. To make the ganache, follow the recipe above. (heat cream, and pour on top of chocolate-short hand version)
  7. Once ganache is made, take frosted cake out of the freezer and pour ganache over the top, allowing it to come down the sides of the cake. Try to pour the ganache in the center of the cake to ensure even amounts of ganache everywhere. Once again, pop the cake back in the freezer until ganache is solid, about another 30 minutes.
  8. Slice the cake up, serve and enjoy!!! :)

Random Fact of the Day: Pollsters say that 40 percent of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets

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SRC Post!-Brown Sugar Bars

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Hey all!! I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas or happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or whatever else you have been celebrating lately!

As most of you probably already know, I am in the Secret Recipe Club. If you do not know much about it, I recommend looking here! It’s a super fun way to discover new blogging buddies and get your own blog out there a little bit! I know I really have had a ton of fun with it so far, not only looking at the blogs I have been assigned, but also looking at the amazing list of the rest of the bloggers.

Anyways, the blog that I was assigned for this month was Sarah’s blog, called Fanatical Sharing of Recipes. Just after reading the first sentence in Sarah’s “about” page, I gained a huge amount of respect for her. She is a 23 year old mom to two and an army wife. Wow! I can not even imagine how difficult that must be, but hey at least shes got some pretty darn tasty recipes to deal with the lemons she’s been given in her life.

I finally decided to try her Brown Sugar Chewies. To be honest, I had mixed feelings going into this one. For those of you who have read my blog a little before, you have probably notice I’m more of a chocolate kind of gal.

However, these bars are totally amazing! No chocolate and I love them. I repeat: no chocolate… They kind of remind me of a pecan pie. But in bar form, without a crust. They’re just totally delicious and super easy. Give them a try and stop over by Sarah’s blog and say hi!

Brown Sugar Chewies

(from the wonderful Sarah)

1/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 cup chopped pecans
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting-if desired

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease an 8 x 8 pan.
  2. Melt butter in a small saucepan, but make sure it is big enough that you will be able to fit the rest of the ingredients in there.
  3. Once butter is melted, turn off the heat and add in the brown sugar and stir until it is smooth. Stir in egg. Mix in vanilla and pecans.
  4. Spread batter into prepared pan. The dough may seem hard to spread or it might not seem like enough to fit the pan, but don’t worry, it should be a fairly thin layer. Bake in preheated oven for 20-23 minutes.
  5. Let bars cool and dust with powdered sugar, if desired.



Have a Happy New Year everyone!!!

Random Fact of the Day:  There are 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 ways to shuffle a deck of cards!

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Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas!

I hope you all have a wonderful day today. Enjoy and appreciate your family no matter how much they may drive you crazy, you know you will always have them and they will always have you. Remember what is important today and enjoy your company, food, and the gift of your life that you have been given!

(from left : My brother-Jack, my mom, my doggy-Harry!!, my sister-Brooke, ME :) , my dad)