An army of peanut butter kisses.

Peanut Butter Kisses

1 (8oz) package of Hershey’s Kisses
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup white sugar for decoration

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375F. Remove wrappers from kisses.

2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in a large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup white sugar and brown sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

3. Shape dough into 1″ balls. Roll in sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet.

4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately place a chocolate piece into the center of each cookie. Cookie will crack around the edges. Cool on wire rack.

When I make them, I get about 45 cookies. But maybe you want to tell people that it makes a few less than that, so you can keep some just for you.

Some notes from the week…

• Did you see the giveaway Olive Manna and Hooray Design are doing together? It seems like such a lovely idea to team up like that, and the little cans of goodies are so sweet! You should check out the giveaway, and then stay for the blog, or something like that. They both have great blogs.

• If you like chickpeas at all, you need to give this recipe for Lemony Chickpea Stir-fry a try. Soon. It’s so very good, and easy. I made it on a last-minute whim this week, and I liked it so much I made it a second time. I served it with some brown rice, cooked in veggie broth. And while you are cooking, make a batch of these Ultimate Double Chocolate Cookies. You won’t regret it, although your waist might.

• Are you on Twitter? I am, and I was thinking this week that if you aren’t following me on Twitter, you might be missing out on some of the little updates that I don’t think merit a whole blog post, but are still awesome. Like when I tweeted about this fashion no-no. I’d love for you to be my Twitter friend. :)
• I really loved this post on Cicada Daydream, Anatomy of a Cost Effective Project.

What are your weekend plans? Are you relaxing, doing something fun? Going somewhere interesting? Whatever they are, I hope it’s a wonderful weekend!

Apple-Pie Crumb Cake Muffins

Oh my, these muffins are so good. Go make them right now. Well, print out the recipe. Then go make them! I found the recipe for this via a post on Liesl Made, but originally the recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance. The recipe for those of us who don’t own Vegan with a Vengeance can be found (with a slight modification of the addition of walnuts) at The Flying Vegan. (The recipe calls for 1 tsp of baking powder twice, just pretend one of those is baking soda.)

I used large honeycrisp apples in mine, and I actually only needed one. I don’t know if honeycrisp apples are proper baking apples, but the muffins came out so delicious it doesn’t matter. I made these muffins last night, and I may have to make more later today. Yum.

Cherry Bounce

Four pounds of cherries and some stained fingers later, I present to you, my bottle of Cherry Bounce (minus a few drinks). It’s spicy, strong, and smooth and I definitely want to make some more. I think more skilled bounce-makers than I could extract more juice from the cherries, but this was a learning experience, and I’m just happy it came out drinkable.

Cheers!

This recipe definitely calls for a cherry pitter, and I loved the one I got from Oxo. If you make this yourself, wear an apron. Cherries are very juicy and splatter when you pit them. I thought pitting the cherries would take forever, but I finished that part quite quickly. It was cooking the cherries until “very soft” that actually took the most time.  The best part of this? Once you’ve mixed everything together and bottled it, you can drink up right away. No waiting weeks or months for this recipe to reach peak flavor. Which is good, when patience isn’t your greatest virtue.

I used to live near a winery run by a Scandinavian couple. They ran a small cafe in the winery, and always served delicious, warm caraway rolls with their meals. After I moved away, I had to find a way to make those rolls myself and I ended up using this recipe from Taste of Home.

I know that putting cottage cheese in a bread recipe seems a little unusual, but trust me, you will be glad you did when you try this. The recipe makes 24 large rolls, but they freeze wonderfully, so don’t let that intimidate you. I made them to go along with corned beef, and they made great little sandwiches with the leftover corned beef the following day. Of course, you could probably eat with them with just about anything.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 zucchini, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1 16-ounce can diced tomatoes
2 cups vegetable stock or water
Salt, to taste
1/2 cup dried apricots
1/4 cup raisins
Zest of 1 lemon
2 1/2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, rinsed if canned
2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro or parsley
6 cups hot cooked couscous or rice

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until hot. Add the onion and carrot and cook, covered, for 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the zucchini, garlic, cinnamon, turmeric, salt, cayenne, tomatoes, stock or water, and salt to taste. Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 25 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, soak the apricots in hot water for 20 minutes, then drain and finely chop. Add the apricots, raisins, lemon zest, and chickpeas to the vegetable mixture and cook 5 minutes longer, or until hot and the flavors are blended. Stir in the cilantro or parsley and serve over couscous or rice.

Serves 4-6.

Me: What should I blog about tomorrow?
Mom: How about kitties?
Me: I think I’ll blog about a recipe. Should I do pork chops or blueberry pie?
Mom: Pork shops. Blueberries aren’t in season.
Me: I think I’ll do a cake recipe.

I know my mom just loves our little chats.

Friday is a good day to share a recipe, I think, because then I have time to actually make the recipe over the weekend. This way, everybody wins — you get a new recipe, and I get cake!

This particular cake is wonderful both for it’s light taste and it’s amazingly easy preparation. I throw this cake together when I’m craving baked goods, but haven’t bought special ingredients for things like brownies or other types of cake. This cake calls for cupboard staples. Plus, you make it from scratch, which sounds fancy and impressive, and means you don’t have to worry about what’s actually in that cake mix.

Enough talking, let’s make cake!

Vanilla Crazy Cake (I don’t know why it’s crazy. Crazy good, maybe.)
Ingredients
1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup vegetable oil
¾ cup milk
¼ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup semi-sweet real chocolate chips

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In 8-inch square baking pan combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
2. In a small bowl, with wire whisk, stir together egg and vanilla. Make 2 indentations in flour mixture; pour oil in one and egg mixture in other. Pour milk over flour mixture; mix well. Stir in pecans.
3. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
4. Sprinkle chocolate chips over warm cake. Let stand 2 minutes; slightly swirl melted chips to cover cake.

If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. (Thank you, Kurt Vonnegut.)

Pumpkin Spiced & Iced Cookies
Deep Dish Chicken Pot Pie (I couldn’t find non-whole turkeys to make this with)
Fancied-up Green Bean Casserole
Biscuits Supreme
Apple Pie with Crumb Topping and Cinnamon Black Walnut Ice Cream

In case you think I’m cheating, know that I’m still making all of that from scratch, even the ice cream. We’ll see how it turns out!

Pumpkin Spiced and Iced Cookies

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 can (15 oz) 100% Pure Pumpkin
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups (12 oz package) semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional, but very good)
Vanilla Glaze

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease baking sheets.
2. Combine flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Beat butter and sugar in large mixing bowl until creamy. Beat in pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla extract. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto prepared baking sheets.
3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Drizzle or spread with vanilla glaze.

Vanilla Glaze

Combine 1 cup powdered sugar with 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons milk and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract in a small bowl and mix well.