Swiss Swirls

It's the 28th...that means it's the day AFTER it was time to reveal our Daring Bakers challenge of the month (yes I am a day late...sorry folks)! The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

This was such a fun challenge, and perfect for us here in the Midwest with the humidity in the upper 90's and temps over 100!! We were to make a swiss cake roll from scratch, homemade ice cream, and a homemade hot fudge sauce. Having never made any of these on my own (with the exception of making ice cream one time last summer at my parents house) this challenge was exciting.

For my cake, hot fudge and chocolate ice cream I used the recipes that can be found HERE on the Daring Kitchen website. But for my second ice cream I went with plain old sweet cream ice cream - my FAVORITE. I'll include the recipe below, but it's SUPER easy. Just three things!! Here are some pictures I snapped of the cake making process and begining layering stages.

The batter

It ended up taking two full days for the challenge. One day to bake, cool and fill the cakes, along with making the ice creams, and the second day to assemble and make the hot fudge. It's not too hard to pull together, but there is a lot of waiting involved with all the different layers. This did get me into a little bit of a time crunch. The hot fudge layer took much longer than I expected to fully freeze up, so that is why I am posting a day later. I needed another few hours after adding the last layer of chocolate so it could harden back up to slice.

Adding the last layer of chocolate ice cream

all finished and ready to slice - the little one is eying his share
ready to eat
big kid gives a "thumbs up"

This was a big hit with my family, but then again, what's not to love about cake and ice cream!!!

Okay well that's it for this swiss swirliness. I think this would make a really fun birthday cake, and may just try it next year!

For the sweet cream ice cream you can find the recipe HERE. Enjoy - it's DELICIOUS!! Oh, and I used base #2 for my recipe. I was a big fan of the not having to cook it part!!

Some of the leftover ice cream after filling the first layer

I. will. post. today.

That is my mantra for today - I started this post back on Monday - it's now Friday.

Of course my original post was super cute, and I had a few clever nuggets in there, but now it's just too far gone to be very cute...although I may leave some of it here - we shall see.

I made some knock your socks off brownies last night for the hubby to take to work today. I am calling them S'm-oreo's brownies. It's an oreo brownie recipe I have kicked up about 10000 notches. In addition to oreo's, I used chocolate covered graham crackers, and marshmallow fluff - to-die-for. Get ready to drool folks...

I will include the recipe at the end in-case any of you need an insanely good brownie recipe!!

I've been baking a lot for many reasons, A#1 when I need to focus on other things I bake, B#2 it helps me use up some of the butter I need to get rid of, and C#3 its lots of fun to do with my little helpers. Before the brownies we made chocolate chip cookies. I have learned that when it comes to homemade cookie dough, I have no control. I also learned that after giving in and eating said cookie dough - you will walk around for a good while feeling not so hot because sometimes you CAN have too much of a good thing.

Tuesday the lady from the moving company came and surveyed the house to see how much stuff we did indeed have. Just one more step along in this crazy military moving life :). Any of you ladies (or guys too) have any good tips on ways to get your stuff ready for the packers?? A friend of mine gave me the idea to go through your kitchen/bathroom drawers, and put all those little things (pencils, notepads, hair stuff, etc.) into plastic zip-lock bags, that way when they get packed you don't end up with 27 pencils all individually wrapped, along with that stray gum wrapper.

We are now at the 3 week mark! I'm getting really excited about being somewhere new now. Of course it's always tough to say goodbye to those that I'm really close to, but I'm hoping to see some of them again...somewhere down the line! We don't have any other really big news around here...just the move and all that goes with it.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! I'll be back soon! :) But for now I leave you with this. Warning: if you're watching what you eat, and don't have superhuman willpower don't make these unless you can remove them from your house ASAP.

Sm'oreo Brownies
Adapted from Ina's Oreo Brownies

1 lb butter
1 lb bittersweet chocolate
6 oz unsweetened chocolate
7 large eggs
2 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp instant coffee
2.5 cups sugar
1 1/4 cup ap flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 pkg oreo cookies
1 pkg chocolate covered graham crackers
1 small jar marshmallow fluff

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Chop cookies and place in bowl with 1/4 c. flour - shake to distribute flour. Spray BIG cake pan with cooking spray.
2. Melt the butter and chocolates in a heavy saucepan until smooth, then let cool slightly
3. Mix together eggs, vanilla, coffee, and sugar
4. Blend in cooled chocolate mixture to egg mixture
5. Mix in remaining 1 c. flour, baking powder and salt. Gently stir in cookies.
6. Pour 1/2 of mixture into pan, then drop fluff by the spoonful onto batter, trying to distribute evenly. Pour the remaining batter on top.
7. Bake for 30 min. Do not over bake. Let cool completely at room temperature, cover, then stick in the fridge overnight to get one amazing brownie!

*this recipe is HUGE it makes 30 big brownies, or 40+ smaller ones. Great for events or a big crowd.

Use it or lose it...

That's what I'm calling our current moving phase. I've been going through our house, room by room, closet by closet deciding what stays and what really just needs to go. We've already dropped off numerous boxes at the Goodwill and I have the back of my car loaded up with more to go tomorrow. Not to mention multiple boxes of baby clothes to be sent to my sister-in-law for my cutie nephews. I am also trying to use up goods in our pantry that need to go, so I made some banana bread. I tried a new recipe, and the jury is still out because it's cooling, but it sank a little after coming out of the oven, so I'm not sure what to expect. If it's good, I'll post pictures and the recipe soon - if not we will just forget I made it and I'll post something else!!

The hubs and I have been working really hard getting the house ready to turn over to new tenants. We also started P90X last week which means that I've now been sore for a week straight. With all this hard work we decided it was time to put to use our couples massage gift certificate! Ahhhhh...that's that sound of my relaxed and well massaged muscles. Back in November two of my best friends were out here to celebrate our anniversary and they gave us a gift certificate for a couples massage. Well, months later we finally got around to using it and it was FABULOUS!!! It was an hour of pure wonderfulness - THANKS AMANDA AND NAT for the great gift!!! We are very lucky to have such wonderful friends and it was much needed!

After that we went to a nice dinner, walked around and did a little window shopping, shared ice cream, and then home to send the babysitter off, and watch a movie. It was a great way to spend the afternoon together. Date nights are a treat for us, so we really enjoy our time out together. I think I'm going to call our sitter and arrange another here soon before the big move.

The move is coming soon...very soon. 27 days to be exact!! Can't believe we are below 30 days now. I had a minor freak out this morning about all that we still needed to do, but was over it pretty quick after getting out my planner and going over my to-do list. We're in good shape. I hired a cleaning company to take care of the cleaning after the movers load up, the moving company is coming out this week to do our house estimate, and I'm just about done going through our stuff to find donations. Things are moving right along.

Okay folks well that's it for me. OH...thanks for all the well-wishes on my ankle. It's doing much better and I've even been able to go on a few runs. My pace is a little slower, and I can't go as long because my shoe starts to rub on the part that is cut, but overall I'm recovering very well!! So thank you. Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!!

Hugs.

The Peanut Gallery

Hello Folks...

Well as I write this post I am laid up on the couch with ice on my ankle. Why you might ask...well it seems that I am not strong enough to move large heavy objects (like TV's) and happened to drop the TV I was moving on my ankle. Thankfully it sort of just went down the side and not directly on top of my foot, but I do have a nasty gash and a little swelling. However...today is the 14th which means its posting day for Daring Cooks, and because I really enjoyed this challenge, I wanted to be sure to get it posted on time!

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

I had NO idea how fun, and super easy, it is to make your own nut butter. I chose to do peanut butter, but I have lots of recipes bookmarked for all sorts of butters. But because we are moving next month, I didn't want to go TOO crazy making stuff that we would then have to try and hurry to use up. Here are a few pictures of my peanuts and butter...forgive the poor quality, I used my phone to take these pictures because I didn't want to go up and get my camera...I know lazy, but sometimes that's just how I roll.

The recipe I made was delicious. I sort of used a combination of two different curry recipes that I had on hand. I only had about 1/2 the ingredients for each, so I did a combination and it turned out wonderful. AND the whole family loved it, which is always a plus. It's a chicken and vegetable curry and at the end I tossed it with some noodles (we didn't have any rice)...YUMMY!



I still have some of my peanut butter left and I've been using it in my oatmeal, on crackers, celery, really anything you can put peanut butter on, I've been using it. I think after the move, homemade nut butters will become more of a standard in this house! :)

Okay folks, if you are interested in the directions for making your very own nutty butter wonderfulness, you can check out the info HERE. I highly recommend giving it a try!!

This post is going to be short and sweet. I should probably take the ice off my foot and check on the swelling, so with that I'm off. I'll be back soon though - later gators.

Big Threes!!!!

Hello folks, how's it going??

It is a beautiful morning here, just one of those days that makes you want to get out there and do stuff. Which is good because later we have a picnic for the hubby's work that we are going to. This morning I have dedicated to getting things done. So far I've done my bible study, had breakfast, folded the last of my laundry, and loved on my kiddos. Now they are watching a show before breakfast, so I figured I would use this un-disturbed time to do some bloggin'. :)

How was everyone's Independence Day weekend?? What did you do to celebrate our country's independence?? We had a FABULOUS weekend. My mom and dad came up for one last visit before we move on to celebrate both the 4th and then our little munchkin's THIRD birthday!! I can't believe my "baby" is three. He is doing fabulous, and just such the little man now. It seems that overnight he went from my little guy, to full fledged "big kid" that no longer needs much help from Mama and Daddy. He's 100% potty trained (has been for about a month now) and into everything that big brother does. So here's a big birthday shout out to my little man - Happy Birthday Sweetie...Mama LOVES you bunches!!! Here he is with his Lightning McQueen cake that yours truly made. It's a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and Lightning McQueen of course. The recipe was wonderful and I'll post it at the end.

Three years ago...

My sweet boy

Here are some more pictures from our weekend. For the 4th we went to see fireworks, and the next night we did lots of fun fireworks here at the house. The boys had a blast, and really got into it this weekend.



The hubs and I even got a date night which was awesome. I dragged him to see Eclipse so I could get my vampire fix (I know...me and all the other little teenagers). It was much better than New Moon, but I really can't wait for the last one. That was my favorite of all the books...but waiting is something I will have to do because it's like 500 days until it comes out or something like that...hmmmm.

So, we are at 5 weeks until our moving day! I can't believe it's so close - CRAZINESS!! It's hard to believe that our time here is just about up. I'll be sad to leave, but am also really looking forward to our new adventure. I just wish I knew where we would be AFTER SOAC, but I'm going to have to be patient on that one (yet again just like above) because we still have awhile before we know anything that is "final". However, I'm not so much looking forward to the whole "going out to sea" bit again, but I'm sure I'll get into the swing of it again...sooner or later. :)

In-case you missed it on my FB, check out Matt's claim to fame. Okay maybe not "fame" but he's in a recruiting video for the Navy.



Hehe...

So, I think that is about it for our updates. We are still making the most of our summer. Lots of time at the pool and the parks, and playing with friends. Okay, well here is that recipe I promised. My mom found this recipe and brought it with her, it was the one my grandma used and she always made the BEST stuff so I was excited to try it. She didn't let me down, it was AWESOME! I'm a big fan of carrot cake, but I'm kind of picky about it. I don't like it to have a bunch of extra "stuff" in it, I just want the wonderful carrot-y cake-ness. For our cake I did omit the nuts, because both my hubby and daddy are not a fan of nuts in baked goods, so I left those out, but everything else I kept the same.

Grandma's Carrot Cake

Ingredients and directions

- 1 1/2 cups oil
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 eggs

Mix the above together. Combine the following separately then add to the above.

- 2 c. sifted flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 3 tsp cinnamon

Stir in the following:

- 3 c. shredded carrots
- 1/2 c. chopped pecans (optional)

Cook @ 350F for 30 min in (3) 8 inch cake pans. Let cool on rack then frost with cream cheese icing. * Note: this recipe makes three very thin layers, if you want two thicker layers you will need to increase the baking time.

Enjoy!!

Okay, well that's it for me folks. I really will try to be better about posting, but I can make no promises! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend - I know we plan to!!