February 20, 2015 by gn0mel0ver

Brown Butter Butterscotch Monkey Bread

That’s a mouthful!

My kids love monkey bread. They love when I buy it at the local bakery. I knew they would get a kick out of this easy make-at-home recipe.

This was the first thing I ever made in the kitchen. My grandma and I would make it all of the time. Then we moved on to a children’s cookbook. We rarely made monkey bread after that. This recipe brings back such memories of nostalgia, as only the tantalizing scents of cinnamon and sugar together can evoke. Has there ever been a more perfect pairing?

This recipe is fantastic to bake with kids. They love cutting up the biscuits and shaking the dough in the sugar. It is a quick and easy treat. Perfect for those of us who need immediate gratification.

This recipe was adapted from The Pioneer Woman and the butterscotch pudding part was courtesy of my good friend, Kerri. She once made the stuff and I dreamed about it for weeks. The brown butter part is strictly from my gluttonous imagination.

Need:

Bundt Pan

Ingredients:

3 large cans of refrigerated biscuits (I use 2 regular and one buttermilk)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup salted butter (2 sticks)
1 3.4 oz. package of regular (not instant) butterscotch pudding

You can get crazy with this treat! Dare I say, if you monkey around with this recipe in the kitchen, the possibilities might be endless.

Groan.

Let me hang and scratch my embarrassed head.

On to the baking:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Generously grease bundt pan.

Cut biscuits into small pieces with a pizza cutter. I cut one can of biscuits into shapes of four, one can in shapes of six, one can in shapes of eight. I like a variety of sizes in my monkey bread. Let’s call them squirrel monkey, chimpanzee, and gorilla sizes. Because we can? We’re quite passed the point of should. We’re using two sticks of butter and over a cup of sugar here, peeps. Crazy names for biscuits are the least of our worries.

Combine the regular sugar and cinnamon. Add the brown sugar and mix. Place in a gallon sized bag. Or if you reach this step and realize you are completely out of gallon sized bags, call yourself a monkey’s uncle and mix the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Primitive times are these, my friend.

Add cut biscuits in the bag of sugar mixture and shake. If you added it to the bowl, please do not shake, just mix. Of course, you knew that. But if a ~~monkey~~ child is reading this, I want to be specific.

In a small saucepan on the lowest heat on your largest burner on your stovetop melt the butter. Stir every minute or so. When the foam starts to turn a caramel brown (usually about ten to twelve minutes) turn off the heat. Your nose will be able to tell you when the butter is brown because it will smell like the most glorious nutty caramel. The foam will start to bubble up in a gluttonous display of brown surrender. This means it is done. Remove from heat.

Now pour the sugar-coated biscuit dough and all of that glorious sugar mixture evenly into the bundt pan (I have a vintage yellow one from Etsy. You can find them there for around $15. It won’t make your monkey bread taste better but it will make you feel better).

Mix the pudding mix into the brown butter. Edited to add: I do this with a fork. Beat it for just thirty seconds or so like you would an egg. It does not have to dissolve all of the way. It will do that when baking. If there is any bigger bits, just put it on the money bread. It will bubble up in the oven and become one gooey mixture. Oh, take a moment, if you must. This is the part where I get teary eyed. Pour brown butter pudding mixture over the top of all of the biscuit dough. Try to do this as evenly as possible.

And scrape up all of the decadent brown bits at the bottom of the pan and put on top of the dessert.

Place in the oven and bake for 60 minutes. Cover the top with foil after it has been baking for twenty five minutes so that it does not get too crunchy and brown on top.

Remove from the oven. Allow to cool for 20 minutes. Turn over on serving plate. It is easiest to hold the hot pan with a cloth kitchen towel versus the bulk of oven mitts. Say a quick prayer to the monkey Gods. Offer up a banana sacrifice, if you must. This part is tricky. The caramel in the pan will be hot, be careful not to burn yourself. Gently pull up on the bundt pan. If there is any caramel mixture on the bottom, scrape it up and put it on the monkey bread.

Whoooo! Whoooo! Heeee! Heeee! Haaaa!

The monkey bread will pull apart in yummy gooeyiness.

Scratch your underarms and scream in triumph at the magnificent success. And if some of the monkey bread sticks to your pan just place it back on the dessert. Or if it completely falls apart (happens to the best of us, rearrange the pieces in two loaf pans. No one will be the wiser. Besides it will be gone before anyone, or any primate for that matter, would ever notice, anyway.

Enjoy! I don’t mean to brag, but my ~~brain~~ thighs are entirely made of this stuff.

December 11, 2014 by gn0mel0ver

The Easiest Salted Caramel Cookie Bars

Come here.

Closer.

There.

That should be close enough. I have a secret I want to share with you. It involves zero guilt and tons more time on your hands. The secret is this, “There ain’t no shame in the faking it game.”

I read a food blog I adore recently that condemned store bought pie crust. I love that blog. This ain’t that blog. I like homemade pie crust. I like homemade cookie dough. I like my house vacuumed frequently. I like to read after dinner. But we all know there simply isn’t enough time in the day for all of our “likes” and “wants.” Heck. There is barely enough time for the “needs.”

So let’s fake us some homemade cookie bars, shall we?

I won’t tell if you don’t.

I was so pleasantly surprised how well these cookie bars turned out. I do highly recommend using parchment paper, because the bars are too sticky to get out otherwise.

Ingredients:

2 packages of sugar cookie dough logs or 1 package of the preflattened sugar cookie dough (I prefer the preflattened kind made by Nestle. It ends up being cheaper, but the logs make a prettier cookie bar)
1/3 cup caramel sauce
1/3 cup toffee bits
Sea salt
Parchment paper

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place parchment paper in an 11 X 7 baking dish. Take a log of sugar cookie dough and press it into place over the parchment paper or lay one layer of your flat cookie dough and push it into the corners of the parchment paper (depending upon which premade sugar cookie dough you purchased). Put into the oven and bake for fifteen minutes.

Remove from oven. Microwave caramel for 25 seconds to soften and make it easier to pour. Measure it out. Pour over slightly cooked cookie dough. Sprinkle the toffee bits on top. Now sprinkle sea salt over top. Just give it a nice dusting.

I have a hand-cranked dispenser from Costco, so I turn it seven to ten times over the caramel.

Now break up your remaining cookie dough log over the top if you bought the logs or simply place the other cookie sheet over the top, if you bought the preflattened kind.

Put the whole thing back into the oven and bake for twenty five minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for one hour before cutting into bars. I lift the parchment paper with the cookie bar in place and then lay it on my counter before I cut this into bars with my pizza cutter.

Now eat this sinfully simple (or would it be simply sinful dessert?). Either way, it is good. It is quick. It is easy. This is my husband’s favorite cookie lately. It is equally good served warm with vanilla ice cream on top drizzled with caramel sauce.

Just bake it. (I am pretty sure Nike did not mean bake a million calories into a dessert when they made that slogan, but I will oblige them by running to the stove the moment these babies are done. That’s gotta burn a zillion calories, right?).

November 27, 2013 by gn0mel0ver

Cookie Butter Oatmeal Cookies

A tasty friendship
Cookie butter and oatmeal
Together at last

So, cookie butter in cookies? Oh, yes. Honestly, this cookie dough could be eaten by itself without the addition of chocolate. But if I am going to indulge, I want it to mean something. Let’s take this relationship to the next level, cookie butter. Let’s make some babies. I mean, um, cookies. Let’s make some cookies. No need to rush things. Now, just take off that lid…

This recipe makes approximately 40 cookies.

1/3 cup cookie butter
1 stick (8 Tbsp.) softened salted butter
1/2 tsp. vanilla
90 pieces of Clasen sea salt caramel melting chocolate (about 2/3 pound)*
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups brown sugar packed
2 eggs
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups oats

Preheat your oven to 360 degrees or 335 degrees convect bake.

In a mixer or with a handheld mixer in a bowl, cream together butter, shortening, and sugar. Add vanilla. Mix. Add cookie butter mix.

Add eggs one at a time into the batter and beat approximately thirty seconds each.

At this point I change attachments from the wire whisk to the paddle. If you are using a hand mixer, mix the following in by hand. Mix in salt, cinnamon, and baking soda.

Mix in flour.

Mix in oats.

With a small cookie dispenser, dispense cookies onto a cookie sheet. Press a melting chocolate into the center of the dollop to flatten cookie. Shape cookie back into a circle around chocolate. Bake 10-11 minutes until lightly brown.

Remove from oven. With a spatula, transfer cookies to a cooling rack. Repeat process until dough is used up.

Melt 50 melting chocolates in a small bowl in the microwave for thirty second intervals. Stir after every thirty seconds until completely melted. Place paper towel under cooling rack. Drizzle melted chocolate over cookies.

Let cookies cool and cover them. If you do not cover, cookies will harden over night. You can reverse the hardened process by placing a slice of fresh bread into the cookie container all day. Or reheat your cookies in the microwave for twenty seconds. But I would just cover them and save yourself a few steps.

And enjoy! Cookie butter you are so good to me. Hmmm, what would our babies ~~taste~~ look like?

* You could use Hershey’s Kisses for a chocolatey version, if you do not have access to Clasen Brand melting chocolates. You could also just mix in some chocolate chips or raisins and call it a day.

Gnome Lover

Stumbling through life while still having fun

salted

Brown Butter Butterscotch Monkey Bread