Sunday, March 18, 2012

Knock You Naked Brownies

The other day was my coworker's 30th birthday and I decided that she needed a sweet treat, so I was looking at the Pioneer Woman's website and found "Knock You Naked Brownies".  The only was to describe them is "SINFUL".  I looked up the recipe, made a quick shopping list and stopped at the store on the way home from work, the recipe calls for a box of German Chocolate cake mix, do you think that my grocery store had it?  They had every flavor of chocolate cake EXCEPT the one I wanted, I keep telling Tom that I am not shopping there anymore because every time I look for something, they never have it or they used to have it, now they don't carry it any more.  The other grocery store that is close to my house is yucky and I try not to shop there, unless it's an emergency and in this case it was and they had the cake mix I was looking for.

Here are the ingredients:
It is really pretty simple, take the cake mix and add evaporated milk, melted butter and chopped pecans, mix is together.  It is a pretty thick batter, then divide it in half:
Place half the mixture in a well greased 8x8 baking pan and bake for about 10 minutes.  In the meantime melt the caramels with some evaporated milk in the top of a double boiler:
Then, pour that yummy, caramel goo on top of the baked brownie, top with some chocolate chips and put the other half of the brownie dough on top:
Bake this for about a 1/2 hour, let it cool completely.  I put it in the refridgerator overnight, dusted it with powdered sugar and this is what you get:

I left one of the brownies at home for Tom to try, he said he couldn't eat it that morning because he was afraid his clothes might fall off. 

Red Velvet Cupcakes

A couple of weeks ago we were having some really nice weather, I think it was close to 80 degree's so Tom and I decided to have a little backyard BBQ and there is nothing we like better than sitting out on the patio enjoying good food and good friends.  We kept the menu pretty simple, some chicken wings for an appetizer, macaroni salad, bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers and Tom put together some kabobs and for dessert I made red velvet cupcakes from my grandma's cookbook with cream cheese frosting.  Our friend Lee Bradford brought his two daughters over and they were more than happy to sample the frosting and the cupcakes (all before dinner).

Here the ingredients for the cupcakes:
Seems like some of the recipe's in grandma's cookbook always contain something that isn't expected and Nesquik was not what what I expected, but it gave the cupcakes a nice chocolate flavor.
So, all the ingredients got all mixed up together:
and then filled up the cupcake holders:
These little goodies went into the oven and I whipped up some cream cheese frosting.  After the cupcakes cooled, I put a little dollup of frosting on top and the rest is history!  I think Lee's daughter's ate about three each.



Here is a little sample of what Tom cooked up on his smoker:
These are whole jalapeno's, stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon
These are the chicken wings, with some sort of secret sauce he tossed together with everything that was in the refridgerator.
and these are the kabobs, they were DELICIOUS!

I think Tom is turning out to be a great photographer, especially a great food photographer!  One of Lee's daughters thought we were silly for taking pictures of our food.  Sometimes Tom and I will go back and look at the pictures and remember how good everything tasted.