Baking in a Tornado: bars

Showing posts with label bars. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Love You Ma

If there's one thing a momma never gets tired of hearing, it's "I love you"s from their kids. At any time, any place, any age, instant warming of the heart.

You all know that my oldest isn't far from home but my youngest, PurDude, is in college 700 miles away. I'm grateful to be living in an age of cell phones (well, except last spring when we sent PurDude back to school with a brand new cell phone we'd barely started paying for, and are still paying for, FYI, which he immediately and unceremoniously dropped in the toilet).

I digress.

But the truth is, once I had sent him his old cell to reactivate, I could once again take comfort in knowing I can reach him at any time. And more important, that he can reach me. There have been times since he left, really heart wrenching times, when I was so grateful we could be in touch no matter where he was. Including in the hospital.

And texting. An amazing tool. No one has to worry about a convenient time to talk. Just shoot off a short text, get one back and abracadabra, you're in touch.

Except when you start to suspect you're not.

Back to the "I love you"s. I was getting a lot of them. In fact, they were suspiciously similar. Same exact wording. Same exact spelling. Same exact punctuation. Sometimes I got them almost the instant I sent my text.

Hmmm.

I know you can have incoming emails responded to automatically with a predetermined response. I'm starting to suspect you can do that with texts too. Lately I've been putting my hypothesis to the test. Collecting data. Analyzing. Hoping to be proven wrong, of course. Here they are. Randomly chosen texts between PurDude and I. A few from each month since he left for school.

August

My text: Miss you already.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

My text: Tried a new recipe today. Cinnamon Biscoff Gingerbread Squares. Don't you wish you were here to taste test?
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

Cinnamon Biscoff Gingerbread Squares

September

My text: Be careful at that concert in Chicago. Especially driving home with your friends late at night.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

My text: How are your classes going?
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

October

My text: Thank you for not breaking your leg again on my birthday this year, LOL.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

My text: Happy Halloween. Is your house having a party?
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

My text: Your brother says I'm ugly.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

My text: I miss you so much.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: Love you too, honey.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: Not your dad, though. He never much cared for you.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

November

My text: Don't bother coming home for Thanksgiving.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: I've left home.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: To join the circus.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: I'm walking the high wire.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: Naked.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: Had to clean out your savings account for moving expenses.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: And I'm in love.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.
Me: With the bearded woman.
PurDude: Ok, love you ma.

What do you think? I'm on to something here, aren't I?

{{sob}}

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Cinnamon Biscoff Gingerbread Squares

©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 stick butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
2 TBSP molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup cinnamon baking chips
12 Biscoff cookies

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan.
*Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar, molasses and egg until creamy.
*Mix in flour, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Set aside 1/2 cup.
*Press the rest of the dough into and barely up the sides of the prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven but leave oven on.
*Crush the Biscoff cookies.
*Place the sweetened condensed milk and the cinnamon chips in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for about 1 minute or until smooth when stirred. Mix in 3/4 cup of the cookie crumbs.
*Pour over the baked crust. Sprinkle with the remaining cookie crumbs. Dot the top with the reserved dough.
*Bake for 30 minutes. Cool completely before slicing.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Use Your Words: I'll Take That To Go

Today’s post is a monthly writing challenge. If you’re new here, this is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once. All of the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the recipient will take them. Until now.

Use Your Words | www.BakingInATornado.com | #MyGraphics

At the end of this post you’ll find links to the other blogs featuring this challenge. Check them all out, see what words they got and how they used them.
I’m using: omen ~ two ~ pickles and onions ~ on the rise

They were submitted by: The Bergham's Life Chronicles.

It’s the strangest thing. The minute I saw the words I’m using I got immediately hungry. Starving even. I don’t even like those giant McDonalds things, but all I could think of is how much I wanted two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, on a sesame seed bun. It’s an omen. Subliminal messaging is on the rise!

Well, that may not have been my whole post, but I think I will talk about fast food since we’re on the subject. Because getting my kids to eat fast food burgers was a win for this mom.

So many moms these days are so careful about what their kids eat. Non-GMO, organic, grass-fed, vegan, vegetarian . . . you name it, there’s a movement. And this is not a bad thing. I mean, have you seen the size of chicken breasts at the grocery stores? If there were chicken breasts this size back in the day there never would have been a nursery rhyme about that old woman who lived in a shoe. I mean seriously, chickens these days must have to wear bras. Double Ds at least. I don’t even want to know what they’re being fed. If these supersized breasts are an omen of the direction the food industry is taking, I can see why people are looking for other options.

But I didn’t have many options with my kids. I really did try to get them to eat healthy meals. I always gave them fresh fruits, vegetables, a variety of grains and proteins.

I was a complete failure.

My friend who writes at Searching for Sanity wrote a Use Your Words post about her finicky 4 year old last month. I think I got her beat:

My kids were such picky eaters. They ate chicken nuggets, pizza and lobster. That’s it. Well, that’s it for meals. Those boys never met a snack or dessert they didn’t like. I think they got that from me. In utero. My bad.

All good intentions went down the drain. College Boy, when offered healthier choices just stopped eating. We had to get him to a nutritionist who put him onto instant breakfasts and carrot cake just to get calories into him.

PurDude had a hyperactive gag reflex. Meaning if you forced him to try new foods you ended up wearing them. And I do not look good in carrot.

So fruit snacks started counting as fruits and cheetos were a side dish. Go ahead and judge, I can take it.

But of course I did keep working with them and little by little their lists of approved foods were on the rise.

My very first measure of success? When I could finally get them to eat a burger. Yes, a burger. In my world that was a success. And of course only a plain burger. Anything besides burger and bun was a disaster of epic proportions.

Which is how I became that mom at the fast food restaurant, yelling into the little box “I need 2 burgers. No special sauce, no lettuce, no cheese, no pickles and onions and while you’re at it, can you do a mom a favor and scrape the sesame seeds off the bun?”

You know what I got? Two crying kids. Every time. And a bag full of burgers with special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions on a, you guessed it, sesame seed bun. Every time.

But don’t worry, they stopped crying the minute they saw dessert:

Mint Chocolate Cheesecake Bars

Yeah, I was a really great mom. Where’s my crown?

Oh yeah, I hear they’re holding onto it for me up at Burger King.

Links to the other Use Your Words posts:

Spatulas on Parade

The Bergham's Life Chronicles

The Momisodes

Stacy Sews and Schools

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo

Eileen's Perpetually Busy

Battered Hope

Southern Belle Charm

Someone Else's Genius

Confessions of a part-time working mom
Searching for Sanity
Climaxed
Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

Mint Chocolate Cheesecake Bars

©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 stick butter, melted
1 ¾ cups flour
1 cup sugar
¼ cup baking cocoa

2 (8 oz) packages of cream cheese, softened
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1 egg yolk, room temperature
3/4 tsp mint extract
3/4 cup chopped Andes mints

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan.
*Mix butter, flour, sugar cocoa until well blended. Your mixture will be dry and crumbly.
*Measure and set aside ½ cup of the crust mixture. Press the remaining crust mixture firmly into the bottom of your prepared baking pan.
*Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool completely.
*Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
*Beat cream cheese and brown sugar. Beat in eggs, egg yolk and mint extract. Mix in chopped candy.
*Carefully evenly distribute over the cooled crust.
*Sprinkle with the other ½ cup of the crust mixture.
*Bake for approximately 40 minutes, just until the center has started to set.
*Cool completely. Store in the refrigerator.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Cookie Exchange

Today I’m hosting a cookie exchange here on the blog. It’s not your average cookie exchange. In fact, there’s good news and there’s bad news.

Good news: you don’t have to bake a bunch of cookies to attend.
Bad news: if you want to end up with a pile of cookies, you’re going to have to bake them yourself.
Good news: I’ve got 26 cookie and bar choices at this party and links to all of the recipes.
Bad news: due to the proximity restrictions, this exchange is going to have to be BYOB.
Good news: you don’t have to dress up to attend. In fact, you don’t even have to leave your couch.

So here they are, 20 cookies from the Baking In A Tornado archives. Hope you find some options you love.