Tag: dessert

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Well Hi! It’s been a hot second since I’ve written a blog post. Sorry I went MIA for a couple months. Life has been a tad hectic. Let me catch you up to speed.

 My husband and I moved out of our house temporarily so that he could do some major renovations. We are back in our house now and I have brand new kitchen! My husband did an awesome job! He painted our kitchen cabinets, we extended our counters, had granite counter tops installed, added some pretty back splash and got a new fridge. I have a lot more counter space now which has been a God sent. Meal prepping just got so much easier. Since we had to move out, I decided to take a break from blogging since I wasn’t doing too much cooking.

Before
After

While we were away, I started a new endeavor and launched my own YouTube channel! I hope you will check it out and subscribe! My channel is beauty and lifestyle focused. My video content includes makeup videos, travel vlogs and soon I will be posting some food videos. It’s been fun to throw myself into creating videos. It’s another creative outlet for me to share my interests with others and meet new people.

My husband and I are super busy at work and still working on getting settled back into our home. In the meantime, I’m so happy to have my kitchen back. I’m enjoying getting back into a routine of cooking and baking on a regular basis. Fall is in full swing and I’ve been fully embracing it with some fall inspired treats. Today’s recipe is a super soft and sweet Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie recipe that is sure to be a fall staple in your household.

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 Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
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Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings
dozen
Ingredients
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings
dozen
Ingredients
Votes: 1
Rating: 5
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Instructions
  1. In a large mixing bowl, add the softened butter, pumpkin puree, sugars, maple syrup, vanilla, 2 eggs and mix to combine with mixer on lowest speed.
  2. Add the oats, flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, salt, and mix on low-medium speed until combined.
  3. Add in the chocolate chips and mix on low to combine.
  4. Stick dough in refrigerator for 2 hours to firm up.
  5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease pan with butter.
  6. Scoop dough out in 1 tbsp servings and form into balls, placing them on the baking sheet approximately 2 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes.
  7. Remove baking sheet from oven and let cookies sit on baking sheet for at least 10 minutes. Transfer cookies to cooling rack or serve warm.
  8. Store cookies in an airtight container. They will keep for up to 1 week at room temperature or up to 6 months in the freezer.

Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting

Since Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, I thought it was time to break out the pumpkin. To be completely transparent, historically I’ve never been a fan of pumpkin. Pumpkin spice lattes are not my thing and I find pumpkin pie to be quite overrated. In the last 2 years, I’ve been trying to branch out and I have discovered that I do like pumpkin in cake forms. Pumpkin muffins and pumpkin bread have become one of go to recipes around this time of year.

Are you looking to change up your Thanksgiving dessert this year? If so, I have the perfect recipe for you! Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting are a cross between a muffin and a cupcake. The reason I can’t completely classify this as a cupcake is because the pumpkin cake is not overly sweet, so it eats more like a muffin. Maple syrup and cinnamon slightly sweeten this pumpkin muffin. Top this muffin with a rich and decadent cream cheese frosting and then this muffin is transformed into a crossbreed of muffin and cupcake. The frosting is super sweet, which is a nice compliment to the muffins since they are not overly sweet. Perfectly spiced pumpkin muffins topped with a sweet cream cheese frosting will make a perfect addition to your Thanksgiving table. Heck maybe don’t even wait until dinner and indulge in these bad boys for Thanksgiving breakfast. I won’t judge!

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 Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Frosting
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Prep Time 20
Cook Time 30
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Pumpkin Muffins
Cream Cheese Frosting
Prep Time 20
Cook Time 30
Servings
Ingredients
Pumpkin Muffins
Cream Cheese Frosting
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Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Place ½ cup of butter in a microwave safe bowl and microwave until completely melted. Let it cool while you mix together your dry ingredients.
  3. In a separate bowl mix together all your dry ingredients, 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour, a heaping ¼ cup of white sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp baking soda, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice and ½ tsp salt.
  4. In a stand mixer, combine your wet ingredients. Crack 2 large eggs into the mixing bowl, add 1 tsp of vanilla extract, 1 cup of pumpkin puree, ½ cup maple syrup and ½ cup of melted butter. Mix on low until combined.
  5. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, mixing on medium speed until thoroughly combined.
  6. Line a muffin tin with liners. Fill each muffin liner up ¾ of the way with the batter. Bake muffins for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees F. Remove the muffins from oven and place them on a cooling rack to cool.
  7. Finally, while the muffins are cooling make the frosting. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, combine ½ cup of softened butter (1 stick), 8 oz of softened cream cheese (1 block), 1 tsp of vanilla extract and 3 cups of powdered sugar on medium speed until smooth.
  8. Once the muffins have cooled, frost them and decorate as desired.
Recipe Notes

Muffins must be refrigerated if topped with cream cheese frosting.

October Birthdays Galore

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October is flying by! Whew! As I mentioned in my last post, October is always an exciting month because it’s a month of birthdays! Almost all of my family member’s birthdays are in October, including mine. It was a very eventful month, so I felt it was necessary to give a recap of the birthday festivities and share some photos of the amazing food we’ve indulged in over the last month. After all, I appreciate eating food just as much as I enjoy cooking it, if not more.

Jurassic Park themed cake by Sandra’s Cake Studio.

My husband celebrated his 30th birthday on Oct. 1 and we celebrated by throwing him a surprise birthday party in Baltimore! Back story, I’ve been asking Derek for months what he wanted for his birthday and he continued to tell me he wanted a surprise party. Who asks for their own surprise party? I think that is a little contradictory to the whole premise of it being a surprise. I continued to shut him down on his request for a surprise party, telling him it was too much work, too expensive and ridiculous that he would ask for his own surprise party. Little did he know that I was going to make his birthday wish come true and he was SO surprised!

Surprise!

All our family, friends and co-workers joined us for a fun night in Baltimore. The party theme was Jurassic Park (one of Derek’s favorite movies). We even had a beautiful Jurassic Park themed cake designed by Sandra’s Cake Studio. The cake was a strawberry cake, filled with strawberry butter cream with fondant accents. It looked and tasted amazing!

Derek’s 30th surprise birthday party.

On Oct. 4, I celebrated my 28th birthday. I unfortunately had to work, but luckily my mom drove out to my office and took me to a birthday lunch at The Grill at Harryman House, a local restaurant in Reistertown, MD. This is one of my favorite restaurants near my office. It’s super quaint, the servers are super friendly, and the food is delicious. I had a cobb salad, topped with blackened chicken that was perfectly seasoned. After work, Derek and I celebrated with dinner and a quiet, relaxing night at home.

Lunch at The Grill at Harryman House with my mom.

My brother Dylan’s birthday was Oct. 13 and his girlfriend Anna’s birthday was on Oct. 11. Finally, my mom’s birthday was Oct. 17. So to wrap up our birthday season, we had one last big birthday dinner towards the end of the month to celebrate all of our birthdays. We exchanged birthday presents, laughed a lot and topped the night off with some yummy desserts. It’s always so wonderful to celebrate birthdays with our family.

Our second annual October Birthdays Celebration.

Now that it is almost November, I am super pumped to post some fall inspired recipes I’ve been working on. Be on the lookout for two new recipes I will be sharing in the coming weeks, which include a fall inspired side dish and a pumpkin dessert that is perfect for Thanksgiving! And soon to come, Christmas treats galore with my annual Christmas cookie baking frenzy. Fall really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Easy Lemon Sheet Cake

Today I’m sharing a delicious recipe for an Easy Lemon Sheet Cake that is to die for. Before I get to that, I wanted to catch you up to speed on the rest of my bachelorette party.

For those of you who may have missed last week’s blog post about my struggle with epilepsy, I had a seizure while in Florida for my bachelorette party and was hospitalized. Although the situation was not ideal, I was still able to enjoy the weekend thanks to my bridesmaids and some very special cast members at the Walt Disney World Resort. I wanted to take some time to share my experiences at Walt Disney World and how they made my bachelorette weekend truly magical, and something that I will never forget.

Enjoying a beautiful night at the Magic Kingdom.

Being hauled off by ambulance and hospitalized for a day was obviously not part of our bachelorette party itinerary, so I was super bummed knowing that we were missing out on all the fun. When I had the seizure, I was at the pool at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort and one of the resort managers rushed to the scene to help. He provided my friends with his card and told them to contact him if we needed anything.

Goofing around with my Maid of Honor at Epcot’s 2018 Flower and Garden Festival.

Once I was discharged from the hospital, I really wasn’t sure if we should even use our park tickets. We had purchased two-day park hopper tickets and I wasn’t sure if it would be worth the money spent to use them when we were only going to be in the parks for partial days. One of my bridesmaids called the manager at the resort, explained our dilemma and he kindly offered to give myself and each of my bridesmaids two 1-day park hopper tickets, free of charge to use in the future. I was beyond thankful for the kind gesture because we were able to use the tickets we already purchased and enjoy the parks, without stressing about getting our money’s worth.

Lunch at The Garden Grill Restaurant in Epcot.

When I got back to the resort after being discharged from the hospital, the resort had also sent a complimentary wheel chair and a gift basket with bridal Mickey ears and four beautiful champagne glasses. People always ask me why I continue to travel back to the Disney Parks repeatedly, and this is exactly why. Despite the circumstances, Disney did their best to make me feel comfortable and make my weekend as special as possible. Even though we only got to spend a short amount of time in the parks, we still had a blast! We were even able to get a reservation for a character meal and the resort manager got us VIP access to a special viewing of the fireworks at Epcot. It was truly magical!

Complimentary VIP viewing of Illuminations Reflections of Earth fireworks at Epcot.

Now I’m back home and getting back into the regular grind, work, blogging, wedding planning and school. With all that has been going on, I’ve felt the need for some sweet treats to brighten up my spirits. When I’m feeling down, stressed or anxious I head to my kitchen to bake. For me, baking is so therapeutic. Now that spring is officially here, I felt compelled to bake something fruity and lemon cake sounded like the perfect spring time treat! And lemon things just make me happy! This lemon cake is great because it’s just the right amount of lemon and the flavor isn’t overbearing. I love this cake because it has such a complex flavor. It’s dense, but very moist with a slight lemon flavor and a buttery finish. This cake is pretty much perfect. So if you are having a rough day or just feeling a little down in the dumps, don’t fret! When life gives you lemons, you make lemon cake!

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 Easy Lemon Sheet Cake
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Prep Time 30 minutes
Passive Time 35 minutes
Servings
servings
Ingredients
Lemon Sheet Cake
Lemon Frosting
Prep Time 30 minutes
Passive Time 35 minutes
Servings
servings
Ingredients
Lemon Sheet Cake
Lemon Frosting
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Instructions
Lemon Sheet Cake
  1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 9x13 pan with butter.
  2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt, and whisk together.
  3. Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl in the microwave and set aside.
  4. Add the eggs, melted butter, sour cream and lemon juice to the flour mixture. Beat until smooth.
  5. Pour the mixture into the greased pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 35 minutes. Remove the cake and press a tooth pick or fork into the cake, ensuring that it comes out clean and that the cake is completely baked. Set the cake aside to cool, while you make the frosting.
Lemon Frosting
  1. In a stand mixer, beat 1 cup of softened butter on medium speed.
  2. Zest a lemon and measure out 1 tsp of lemon zest.
  3. Add the vanilla extract, lemon zest and lemon juice to the butter and beat on medium speed until combined.
  4. Finally, add in powdered sugar to the mixture, one cup at a time and mixing until thoroughly combined and the frosting is smooth. Frost the cake once it’s completely cool.

Cookies and Cream Brownies

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, and I have the perfect chocolate dessert for you to share with your special someone. Over the weekend, our friends Shelby and Matt had us over for dinner and I opted to bring dessert. Anything chocolate is always my go to. I must confess that I am a chocoholic.

My friend Shelby and her husband hosted us for dinner. She is also a fellow food blogger.

Our weekend was busy as usual, so I knew that I wouldn’t have time to bake anything from scratch. Instead, I opted to spruce up a boxed brownie mix and top them with the dreamiest cookies and cream frosting.  I love boxed brownie mixes because they are extremely versatile. You can very easily mix in a variety of ingredients into your brownies such as, chocolate chips, candies and you can also top your baked brownies with a gourmet frosting. To be honest, I have yet to find a homemade brownie recipe that I have liked more than the boxed mixes. Rich fudgy brownies, topped with a cookies and cream frosting are sure to satisfy your sweet tooth.

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 Cookies and Cream Brownies
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Prep Time 15 minutes
Passive Time 25 minutes
Servings
brownies
Ingredients
Brownies
Cookies and Cream Frosting
Prep Time 15 minutes
Passive Time 25 minutes
Servings
brownies
Ingredients
Brownies
Cookies and Cream Frosting
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Instructions
  1. Prepare the brownies as directed on the box. After baking, set the brownies aside to cool.
  2. In a stand mixer, combine 1 stick of butter, 1 tsp of vanilla, 1 lb of confectioners sugar and 4 tbsp of whole milk. Set the mixer speed to low and mix for approximately 2 minutes and then increase the speed to medium. Mix the ingredients until thoroughly combined and until the mixture resembles a frosting like consistency.
  3. Place 24 chocolate sandwich cookies into a gallon sized plastic bag and seal the bag. Crush the cookies on the counter, using your hands to break the cookies into small pieces.
  4. Dump the cookie crumbs into the stand mixer with the frosting. Set the mixer speed to low and mix until combined.
  5. Finally, spread the cookies and cream frosting on top of the brownies and if desired you can crumble a few extra cookies over top of the brownies.
Recipe Notes

If you feel like your frosting is too thick, feel free to add in an extra 1-2  tablespoons of milk.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This past week has been insane. Not only have I been extremely busy, but I’m also trying to knock this awful cold. I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick, all I want to do is to chill in front of the TV and take a nap. Unfortunately, that’s not a choice for me this week. It’s my last week of classes and I have to wrap up all of my school work to turn in before the end of the semester. So I am continuing to push through and keep reminding myself that this time next week, I will be on winter break.

But what do we do when we are feeling stressed? Stress less and cook more. I took a mental health break the other night and baked some of my favorite chocolate chip cookies. I would argue that I’m actually a better baker than cook. Baking is how I got my start in the kitchen. There is something so therapeutic about baking and for me it’s the perfect stress reliever. Also, there is something so comforting about a chocolate chip cookie. It’s so familiar, simple and so delicious.

This is my signature chocolate chip cookie recipe, a cross between an oatmeal raisin cookie and a traditional chocolate chip cookie. I add cinnamon and just a little bit of oats, to give it a flavor similar to that of an oatmeal raisin cookie. Another great thing about these cookies is that they are so easy to make. This recipe can be easily prepared on a weeknight, with very little effort. The end result, warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies that will make you forget all of your troubles.

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 Chocolate Chip Cookies
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Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings
cookies
Ingredients
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings
cookies
Ingredients
Votes: 0
Rating: 0
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Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or grease the cookie sheet with butter.
  2. Using a mixer, cream ½ cup of salted butter (1 stick), ¾ cup of brown sugar and ¾ cup of white sugar together.
  3. Add 2 eggs, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, ¾ tsp of baking soda, 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of salt and mix until combined.
  4. Add 2 cups of flour to the mixture, one at a time and mix in between so that flour doesn’t get all over the place.
  5. Lastly, add ¼ cup of quick oats and 1 bag (12 oz) of milk chocolate chips.
  6. Scoop the cookie dough by heaping tablespoons onto the cookie sheet and place in the oven. For a softer cookie, bake for 12 minutes and for a firmer cookie bake for 14 minutes. Remove from oven and place cookies on a wire rack to cool.