Simple Ice Cream Dessert

On the 4th of July, we had a potluck at work and one of my wonderful coworkers brought this amazing little dessert. He had made it previously at a bon fire at his house, but I didn't get any of it. Now I realize how sad that was. It's amazing. Chocolate, caramel, ice cream bars?! Who could honestly ask for more? This is incredibly customizeable. Don't like butterfinger? Use a plain chocolate bar, a kit kat, snickers.. whatever your favorite is. Could be made sugar free as well with all sugar free ingredients.

It's quite simple to make, as well.
You will need

1/2 tub of cool whip
1-2 Butterfinger bars
6 ice cream sandwiches
2-4 tbsp caramel syrup
2-4 tbsp chocolate syrup

I used a 9x9 pan, but if you're serving a larger group you could definitely use a 9x13 pan.

Start by laying ice cream bars in pan. They should fill the whole pan, but I didn't have enough to do that.

Cover that up with the cool whip!

Drizzle some caramel on top

Drizzle some chocolate over that

Finally, crush up that butterfinger bar and sprinkle it all over the top

Freeze overnight or until the cool whip is completely frozen.

Enjoy at your next bbq or family get together!

Nutella and Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

I think I may need to change the title of my blog to Desserts in the Kitchen, or Things that will make you fat in the Kitchen. Seems to be all I'm making these days.
However, I think this is ok. Desserts are awesome, and this ice cream is spectacular.

First, this recipe is very simple. No ice cream maker is needed. Just a spoon and a hand mixer.

So first, here's what you need

First, whip up 2 cups of the whipping cream until it's stiff.

Then open the can of sweetened condensed milk and pour in your mixin's. For mine 1 cup of nutella and 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. You could do ANYTHING your heart desires, though.

Put in a Tupperware container and freeze for at least 6 hours.

 Enjoy!

Recipe

2 cups whipping cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup nutella
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Using an electric mixer, whip whipping cream on a high speed until stiff.
Pour sweetened condensed milk into a bowl and add nutella, melted butter and chocolate chips. Whisk until well blended. Fold in whipped cream.
Pour into freezer safe container and freeze for at least 6 hours.

Slutty Brownies

If you are on a New Year's diet, leave right now, if not, I hope you're hungry.

My bff Jenn came over and we made some things.
We made dinner, but we're too cool to post pictures of that, too.
Jenn is just the coooooolest. Man oh man, she rocks. Have you met her? Sucks to be you then, doesn't it.
(These are from here)

Anywhozille, these slutty brownies, we made them, because they looked good.

You need:
chocolate chip cookie batter
brownie mix
oreos
(whatever ingredients are needed for your chocolate chip cookies and brownies)
a friendship as stellar as ours

Step one: Preheat oven to 350. Put some wax paper in a baking sheet.
LIKE THIS:

Step two: Make the chocolate chip cookie dough, and brownie mix. (Bonus, if you have two people, like we did, you can do it at the SAME TIME!!)
See photographic evidence below:

 

Step three: Put  that cookie dough in that baking sheet, and start topping that baby with oreos.

(Now is not the time to eat this delicious treat...JENN)

Once done with the oreos, it should look exactly like this. If it looks different at all, you should probably just quit, because you can't arrange oreos.

Step four: Top this wonderful creation with your brownie mix.

Now, pop this bad boy in the oven and let him hang out in there for roughly a half hour.

Step final: Eat with ice cream, and watch a movie with your bff.

We couldn't wait to eat them, so they are a bit sloppy. After they sat for awhile they were solid. 

<3 Stef and Jenn

(Because thats basically what we're doing.)

**Please note this blog was typed by Jenn pretending to be Stef, but all baking steps are accurate. We love you.

Buttercream Frosting

It's nearly Christmas! My favorite time of the year.
It hasn't snowed yet, though, and it's really starting to weird me out. I honestly can't remember a Christmas without snow, and it's looking like that is going to happen.
Since there is no snow on the ground, and it's not even freezing cold, I'm not really sure I believe Christmas is only 6 days away.

I thought, to get myself in the Christmas spirit I would make some Christmas-y cupcakes for my awesome co-workers. They like when I bake, and I like when people tell me how awesome my treats are. ;-)

So I thought while showing off pictures of my creations, I'd throw in a recipe for the buttercream I always make. It's pretty stellar if I do say so myself.

Firstly, the picture I posted to Facebook entitled "My Saturday Night".

Looks fun, doesn't it?? I had an awful day at work, and working on these calmed me right down!

First I made some Christmas trees

Then I made a few santa's and added some swirled red and green.

Adorable!

So, to make buttercream.

2 sticks of butter
1 cup shortening
1 bag powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk (usually don't use all of it)
1 tsp vanilla or any other flavor you want to use
1 tsp salt

Cream together butter and shortening until mixed, add in powdered sugar a little at a time, cream until blended. Add in vanilla and salt. Slowly add milk until you get the desired consistency.

Voila. Simple as that.
Go bake something.

White Chocolate Raspberry Cake

Monday was Jon and my 2 year wedding anniversary! We spent that day going to olive garden and seeing Harry Potter at the theater. Also doing lame things like cleaning our house.

The day before, on Sunday, we had a little anniversary party with our friends and family! That was a lot of fun. We went a park in Appleton, so the little kids could play. Everyone brought awesome food. I think a good time was had by all.
Here, see some photos!
A baby named Averna! 

 Pirate Penny and her first mate Parker

 Penny and her favorite aunty

 Jon and Justin. They are silly.

 Sarah and I.

 Mama!

 Sarah and the baby!

 Seth and the rock'n baby.

 Jon <3

 Us. :)

So yeah.
For this party, I wanted to make a cake. An epic cake.
It was my first time making a cake from scratch, and I had a lovely assistant!

Ok, so, firstly, ingredients! SO MANY!

Sarah did a lot of the work, and there aren't many pictures of the process. Woops.

Bakin'!

There were 3 cakes to start with (we changed the recipe a bit to get the extra batter. The recipe below will only make 2 cakes).. but one wasn't all the way cooked, so we ate that one, and had a 2 layer cake for the party.

Justin's piece at the party!

This recipe was borrowed from This Blog.

• 3/4 cup soft butter
• 2 1/4 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup white chocolate chips, melted and cooled
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tea baking soda
• 1 cup buttermilk (don’t mix with dry stuff)

Cream together butter and sugar. Add in eggs one at a time, making sure to mix thoroughly after each one.  After the eggs are added, mix in the vanilla and the melted chocolate.
Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. 
Add flour mixture to butter mixture, alternately with buttermilk until well combined. Divide batter evenly between two well greased and floured 9″ round cake pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for 28-32 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes in pan before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the white chocolate buttercream frosting:
1 cup butter
1 cup shortening
6 oz white chocolate chips melted and cooled
2 cups powdered sugar.
1/8 cup milk

Cream together butter an shortening. Add in melted chocolate and powdered sugar, and slowly add milk until the desired consistency.

For the Raspberry filling

Mix 3/4 cup raspberry preserves and 1/2 cup frosting in a bowl.

Spread the filling on top of cooled cake layer. Place the other layer on top of the filling and spread the rest of the white chocolate frosting over the cake.

Enjoy!

Red Velvet Cheesecake

Remember that disaster of a no-bake thing I tried to make?
Well... not so much disaster as in, I thought it was awful, but other people ate it?
This will not be like that. It was beautiful. In color, in taste, in.. everything.
Did I mention I really love cheesecake?

Also, for the first time on Experiments in the Kitchen, I had a guest chef! Well, two of them! One of them was my favorite Jenn, and the other was her adorable little puppy dog!
We made cheesecake, and we made wraps and we watched Paul. Which is weird, because when we eat/make cheesecake, we watch Rent or color our hair.

But enough about that. I found this recipe from The Recipe Girl, after much googling for a good recipe. I had red velvet cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory once, but that was cake and cheesecake, I wanted only cheesecake.

SO! Ingredients!

There is only one bottle of red food coloring listed there. I actually used two. And it still wasn't as red as I would have liked.

And so Jenn made a crust out of 17 oreos, butter, and some more sugar. Because oreos don't have enough sugar.

While she did this, I made the cheesecake part

And someone took a picture of me cooking! It is very blurry, however.

And then it was baked, and frosted, and looked simply beautiful.

That picture does not do it justice. It was so awesome, you guys. It was the perfect blend of cheesecake and red velvet cake.

If you are feeling ambitious, and have 2 hours of free time, go ahead and try this one out!

CRUST:
17 oreo cookies, crushed finely
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 Tablespoon granulated white sugar
CHEESECAKE:
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
2 ounces red food coloring (two 1-ounce bottles)
FROSTING:
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup shortening
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk

Preheat the oven to  325
For the crust, crush up the cookies, and then mix in the butter and the sugar. Press into the bottom of a 10" springform pan. 

For the cheesecake:
Beat the cream cheese until nice and fluffy, and then add the rest of the ingredients. Mix with an electric mixer until well blended. Pour the batter over the crust. 
Bake for 10 minutes at 325 and then lower the temperature to 300 and bake an additional 75 minutes, or until the center is firm. Let it sit in the oven for an addition 30 minutes, and then cool completely. I put mine in the fridge for about 3 hours and it was perfect. 
For the frosting, mix the shortening and butter until fluffy and then add in milk, vanilla and powdered sugar. Beat until fluffy. Spread over completely cooled cheesecake. 




Now most people would be going off about some sort of water bath... and honestly, I didn't have a big enough pan to do all of that. My cheesecake did crack, but only a bit, and the frosting covered it up. 


So in the end, it was beautiful and delicious.


And poor Toby was all tuckered out from all the cooking. 

No Bake Cheesecake

I love cheesecake.
Just so you know.
Once upon a time, I got to go to the Cheesecake Factory. I had red velvet cheesecake. It was AMAZING.
So this weekend, we were coming to a friends house so they could beat me at some video games (really, it wasn't even a fair fight) and I thought, I should make a cheesecake!
but we didn't have much time, as we planned on going to a movie, and had to leave right after... and yeah. So I thought... no bake! It can chill while we're at the movie!

I set out finding a recipe. These shall be the ingredients

Yup.
I didn't have the 2 cups of whipping cream needed, so I googled, and the google God told me I could use 3/4 cup milk and 1/3 cup butter and it would do the same thing.

So I mixed up some crust
and it looked like this

Then, I melted some chocolate, and spread it on the crust, like this!

Then, the cheesecake mixture!

Finally more melted chocolate on top. Try not to fail like me.

Recipe:

• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips 

Also, if you don't have heavy cream: 3/4 cup milk and 1/3 cup butter. Mix it up. Equals 1 cup of heavy cream. 
Mix the graham crackers, the brown sugar, the cinnamon and butter until well mixed. Press into the bottom of a 10" springform pan.

Put it in the fridge while you create the cheesecake mixture. Take the 2 blocks of cream cheese and whip until creamy, add in the lemon and heavy whipping cream and mix well. Finally add in the sugar and mix well.
Finally, melt the chocolate chips in the microwave, or on the stove.
Pour the melted chocolate over the crust and put it back in the fridge for awhile. I left it in there for about 20 minutes, while I took a shower.
Pour the cheesecake mixture over the chocolate and crust, and throw it back in the fridge until it's ready to be eaten.

Voila!
This tasted pretty ok. The crust was superb, the cheesecake part... not so much. I don't know... it needs work.

Here is a picture, though! I pulled off the top and ate the crust.

This, my friends, is what we call an "Accident"

I set out to make a Harry Potter cake. It was going to be an epic, beautiful cake.
I was inspired for this cake by this other blog I stumbled upon, seen here: Awesome Harry Potter Cake

The cake seen there was gorgeous, but I had an idea to change it up a bit.

So off I went to Michael's. They had a vanilla cake mix I wanted to try (It was more expensive, and expensive = good, right?)
They also had the colors I needed to make the right colors for the Houses of Hogwarts. Which are, in case you have been living under a rock and do not know:

Gryffindor
Slytherin
Hufflepuff
Ravenclaw

So I did my best. They didn't have actual silver for Slytherin, so I bought a blue-ish color. 
 I also needed a 6inch cake pan. Michael's wanted to charge me $6.99! I said NOOO and went off to another discount store.. and then another.. and then another... and no one else sold them!


So then I came home, and got down to business.

Here are the ingredients! 

  Did you know, that one cake mix will not make 4 8" round cakes?
CRAZY, Neither did I!
So then I had to get creative.
I had an extra chocolate cake mix, so I thought, hey, I'll use that!

So the plan was, the bronze in ravenclaw, and the green in slytherin could be made with brown
Did you know that if you add green to brown, it looks like baby poop?
CRAZY, Neither did I!


So at this point, it was no longer a Harry Potter cake, and more a really colorful tasty cake.

Here are some final pictures

So yeah.
As my husband says, it's an acid trip in cake!

It was an adventure, though. An experiment for sure.

Here's a recipe, in case you feel like making this crazy concoction.

Cake:
Yellow cake mix, made how the box says
Chocolate cake mix, made how the box says
Food coloring, if you want to have fun colors (but srsly, avoid green and chocolate!)

Frosting:
1 cup shortening
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 16oz bag of powdered sugar
6oz milk
pinch of salt
1tsp of vanilla

For the frosting: cream together the butter and shortening. When nice and fluffy, mix in half the powdered sugar, salt and vanilla. Mix until blended, and then add the rest of the powdered sugar. Blend for about 4-5 minutes longer, until nice and fluffy.

Let the cakes cool completley before frosting
(really, this is important. Another lesson learned the floppy cake mess way)

Put down one layer, and frost between the different layered cakes, with the different frosting colors.
Let it set, and then frost the outside.
Voila! Giant colorful mess.


The consensus, however, was that it was fantastic.
And now, to make this post even better, Averna, who likes to poop on me.