Microwave White Sugar Caramel Corn with Butterscotch Chips and Peanuts

November 28, 2012 By

microwave white sugar caramel corn with butterscotch chips

Sticking with the “lazy baker” theme this week, here is another great, quick, crowd-pleasing recipe.

I have an excuse for my laziness. I graduate college in 3 weeks and I’m freaking out and extremely busy, but so excited!

However, I just can’t bring myself to have company over and not have some sort of treat to give them, so I’m just taking some shortcuts.  I seriously made this caramel corn in 30 minutes.  I was super excited!

My friend and  I almost ate the whole batch together in one night.  It’s really good.

microwave white sugar caramel corn with peanuts

microwave 30 minute caramel corn with white sugar

butterscotch caramel corn in festive leaf bowl

30 minute caramel corn with butterscotch chips and peanuts

white sugar caramel corn with peanuts and butterscotch chips

This delicious recipe is adapted from allrecipes.com.

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Microwave White Sugar Caramel Corn with Butterscotch Chips and Peanuts
Recipe type: Snack
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 

 

Ingredients
  • 4 quarts popped popcorn
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • ½ cup margarine
  • ¼ cup dark corn syrup
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • ½ cup peanuts
  • ½ cup butterscotch chips
  • ½ tsp baking soda

Instructions
  1. Place the popped popcorn into a large microwave-safe bowl (And one that will fit in the microwave!). Set aside.
  2. In a 2 quart casserole dish, or other heat-proof glass dish, combine the sugar, margarine, corn syrup, salt and vanilla. Heat for 3 minutes in the microwave, then take out and stir until well blended.
  3. Return to the microwave, and cook for 1½ minutes. Remove from microwave, and stir in the baking soda.
  4. Pour syrup over the popcorn in the bowl. Gently stir the popcorn mixture with a wooden spoon until the popcorn is fully coated.
  5. Place bowl into the microwave, and cook for 1 minute and 10 seconds.
  6. Remove, stir, and return it to the microwave.
  7. Cook for another 1 minute and 10 seconds.
  8. Dump the popcorn out onto waxed paper, and let cool until coating is set.
  9. Once cool, stir in the butterscotch chips and peanuts.
  10. Store in an airtight container.

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butterscotch peanut granulated sugar caramel corn made in microwave

Filed Under: Addicting Snack Mix, brittle, Butter, Butterscotch, Butterscotch Candy, Butterscotch Chips, Candy, Caramel, Caramel Corn, Caramel Snack Mix, Caramelized, Cheap, corn syrup recipes, Easy Recipes, Fall, No Bake, Popcorn, Salted Caramel, Sea Salt, Snack Mix, Snack Mix Gift, Snacks, Sweet and Salty White Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Snack Mix, Trail Mix Tagged With: ,



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Cherry Mash Cookies

March 6, 2012 By


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I had no intention of posting these cookies (hence the Instagram pictures) until they came out of the oven and tasted awesome.

I’ve been telling the people at my internship that I would be bringing in cookies since I started there…which was a month ago.  How can I call myself a baker if I don’t give people baked goods, right?

I walked into my friend’s kitchen (who was kind enough to let me use his instead of baking in the dorms, which is Hell) and that’s when the improv happened.

I thought, “Okay… cookies because they’re easy. ”  But I didn’t have chocolate chips.  I had a Snicker’s and some cherry chips.

You see where this is going?

Yep…Snicker’s + cherry chips = cherry mash.

If you’ve never had a cherry mash and you like chocolate and cherries, shame on you!  Just kidding, but you should go buy one, or a few.  They have them at the checkout line at most Wal Marts and they’re amazing.  It’s a chocolate cherry explosion in your mouth.

When my friend said, “Oh my gosh, these taste like cherry mash,” I was really proud of myself… and I also thanked her for giving me the perfect name for these cookies.  Really all I have to say about these is, if you like cherry mash, you’ll like these.

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Cherry Mash Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks, 8 ounces) unsalted butter, very soft
1 cup (7 1/2 ounces) packed brown sugar
3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 3/4 cups (11 5/8 ounces) All-Purpose Flour
1 1/2 cups cherry chips
1 (or 2) Snickers bars
Directions:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Place the very soft butter in a medium-large mixing bowl.
  3. Add the sugars, salt, vanilla, and stir well.
  4. Add the egg and stir until well blended. Add the baking soda and flour, mixing until blended. Stir in the chips and Snicker’s bar.
  5. Scoop rounded tablespoons of dough onto light-colored baking sheets. Flatten into disks, using gentle pressure from your fingers.
  6. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, until the bottoms and edges are lightly browned; the tops shouldn’t brown, they should still be slightly gooey.
  7.  Remove the cookies from the oven, let them rest on the sheet for 5 minutes, then slide them onto a rack to cool completely.

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Filed Under: Cherry, Chocolate Chip, Cookies, Snacks, Snickers



EatStrong {Veggie & Egg Quinoa}

April 22, 2011 By

 
I was fortunate enough to be able to sample EatStrong’s new Trail Mix and Energy Bar. 

The Energy Bar is basically a huge bar of peanut butter with a nice crunch to it and “chocolate chips” (organic cocoa) liberally incorporated throughout, but still only has the average 230 calories most energy .  I didn’t know what to expect when I opened it because the color is a bit off-putting… but the taste is so good!  And it kept me full for a few hours. 

The snack mix includes cashews, flax, sunflower seeds, walnuts, pistachios, almonds, and organic cocoa drops.  The bag has the perfect amount to satisfy and is full of fiber, vitamins, and minerals.  The chocolate drops were obviously my favorite, but the rest was good, too.  The snack mix is a little more calorie dense, but only by a little bit at 260.  It also kept me full for quite a while.

I was pretty impressed with the products and the simple ingredient list.  It’s convenient and delicious.  Try it out!!

I figured I’d keep with the healthy topic and give a healthy recipe today because I do actually try to eat well aside from all the baking I do. 
 



Veggie and Egg Quinoa (For one)

Ingredients 

1/4 cup quinoa
1/2 cup water
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 a medium sized onion
1 plum tomato
1 egg
Seasoned Salt to taste
Garlic Salt to taste

Directions

1.  Bring the water to a boil and add your quinoa.  Cook quinoa until the water has soaked up.
2.  Chop the veggies and heat in the microwave 1-2 minutes.
3.  Cook your egg however you want it.  I scrambled mine.
4.  Add all ingredients in a saucepan and saute for 2-5 minutes. 

Filed Under: EatStrong, Eggs, Energy Bar, Quinoa, Snack Mix, Snacks, Vegetables



Gooey Butter Bars

January 28, 2011 By

I’m taking a Public Relations class and I love it.  The people in it are awesome and so is my teacher.  Everyone gets along really well and it’s the class that I wake up on Tuesdays and Thursdays looking forward to.

We have to come up with a fundraiser for an organization, so last class we spent the period coming up with ideas. We were to see what people think of our ideas.  So far, this is what we have:

Movie Night
Adult Spelling Bee
Potty Protection Insurance
3 on 3 tourney
Bake Sale
Canned Food Drive
Improv Show
Tupperware Fundraiser
Talent Show
Cheesecake Calendar
Dance Off
School Carnival
Walk a thon
Wii Dance off
Clean Yards
Recycle Printer Cartridges/Cell Phones
Big Brothers/Big Sisters
Slow Pitch Softball
Orange Juice Pong
Pie Eating Contest
50/50 Raffle
Bachelor/Bachelorette
BBQ Contest
Board Game/ Card Game
Butler Auction
Karaoke Night
Trivia Night
Fun Night
Haunted House in April
Dodgeball Tournament 

I’m personally favoring the eating contest and bake sale.  I would really like to hear your guys’ input!  What do you think people would like?

If we’re going to have a bake sale, I figure that I need to be baking more… ya know, for practice.  So my goal is to bake more often.  (If that’s even possible.) Starting now, with these Gooey Butter Bars…


Have you guys ever had Gooey Butter Cake before?  I hadn’t, but I had always heard that it was really good.  I saw the recipe for these bars on Jessica’s blog and thought they looked really good, but I wasn’t really planning on making them.  But then I was brainstorming at work with my friends about what to bake to pass out at the store and my friend Roxie was explaining something she had tried at a restaurant before and it sounded just like this recipe.  I got really excited and made it and oh wow… they’re creamy on the inside and they’ve got sort of a caramelized top layer and a soft and chewy bottom crust.  I had 3, Kellen (who doesn’t like sweets, remember) had 2 and then I brought them to work and Roxie had 3, too.   Then, one of my other friends asked if he could take the rest home with him. Yeah, they’re pretty good.


I know I always tell you guys to make stuff, but… make these!!


P.S. I saw this healthy vegan fudge over at Chocolate Covered Katie and really wanted to try it, but I don’t have any coconut butter.. but then I saw that she’s giving coconut butter away.  Isn’t that crazy?? So I entered to win… send me good luck!! :)


P.P.S. I didn’t get a finished product picture. :(   They were eaten too quickly.

 Mix dry ingredients for crust.
 Add the wet ingredients.
 Have your helper press the crust into a pan. :)
 Mix the filling…
 …until creamy.
 Okay, so it’s really ugly… but the taste completely picks up what the looks lack.



Gooey Butter Bars (from scratch version)
Jessica- How Sweet Eats 

  • FOR THE CRUST:
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2-½ cups All-purpose Flour
  • 2 teaspoons Baking Powder
  • ½ teaspoons Salt
  • 1 stick Unsalted Butter, melted
  • 1 whole Egg
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • FOR THE FILLING:
  • 8 ounces, weight Cream Cheese, At Room Temperature
  • 2 whole Eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
  • 1 stick Unsalted Butter, melted
  • 3-¾ cups Confectioner’s Sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Prepare crust first. In a large mixing bowl, combine the crust ingredients with a wooden spoon until moist. Transfer to a 13″x9″ ungreased baking pan and spread evenly over the bottom of the pan. Set aside.
3.  Next, prepare the filling. In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs, vanilla, and melted butter, and continue to mix. Next, add the confectioner’s sugar one cup at a time until all sugar is mixed in. Pour filling over the crust, and spread evenly with a spatula.
4.  Bake gooey butter cake for 40-45 minutes until it is browned, but the center is still jiggles when the pan is shaken. Cool for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with additional confectioner’s sugar and serve.

Filed Under: Butter, Creamy, Gooey, Snacks



Honey Glazed Trail Mix

January 20, 2011 By

I’m very happy to inform you that I started a photography class last night.

I would like to think I can bake, but when it comes to photographing my baking…not so much.  So, I decided that a photography class would be a good first step.  It’s kind of hard to believe that a cake tastes delicious when you can clearly see that the cake does not look delicious, no matter how much I try to persuade you that it really does.  So please, photography teacher, help me!

My first assignment is to take a minimum twenty pictures using the rules of photography.  It’s due Tuesday.  I will be using my baked goods as one of my main subjects.  Bear with me!  There’s probably only so much you can do with a point and shoot camera.  Or maybe that’s just my excuse for sucking.  I hope the class helps because I just had to pay to be able to add any more pictures on here. 

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the trail mix I made, but I was excited and had to let you all know about it.  I guess I could tell you about the trail mix, though.  It’s delicious.  It’s a mixture of sweet and salty, which I love.  Every bite has a sweet, crunchy glaze wrapped around a salty piece of the mix.  So good, but warning:  it’s addictive.  I had to wrap it up in muffin cups and take it to work to pass out because I couldn’t stop eating it.

Also, I just realized I only took one picture of this recipe.  After I wrote the entire post about photography… Of course.

Honey Glazed Trail Mix
All Recipes
*You can add whatever you want, as you can see.  I added cheerios

  • 4 cups Rice or Corn Chex® cereal
  • 1 1/2 cups miniature pretzels
  • 1 cup pecan halves
  • 1/3 cup butter or margarine
  • 1/4 cup honey

Directions

  1. In a large mixing bowl, combine cereal, pretzels and pecans; set aside. Melt butter in a small saucepan; stir in honey and blend well. Pour over cereal mixture and stir to coat evenly. Spread in a jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 12 to 15 minutes or until mixture is slightly glazed, stirring occasionally. Remove from oven and cool slightly. Spread on waxed paper to cool completely.
Filed Under: Honey, Nuts, Snacks, Trail Mix