Browsing the archives for the chocolate chips tag.

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

Domestic

I know it’s Wednesday, but my Work in Progress is a pile of puffs, strikingly similar to the pile of puffs you’ve seen repeatedly this summer (I’ve knitted about 130 or so since we moved to LA). Sockdown starts on Saturday and there will be some furious knitting happening for about a year after that. Don’t ask me where Christmas knitting fits with furious sock knitting (unless everyone gets socks for Christmas). 😉

So instead I will give you this, the easiest, dirtiest (in a ‘this is defo not health food’ kind of way), laziest recipe I’ve ever made. It’s so lazy, I felt guilty making it. No really, I totally did.

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake via – I’m a Lazy Mom

1 box yellow or white cake mix (use Trader Joe’s mix or organic mix from Whole Foods to feel slightly less awful)
2 eggs beaten (Omega eggs, at least!)
5 tablespoons melted butter (I used vegan butter, which I know means NOTHING when applied to this recipe)
2 cups M&M’s or mini chocolate chips (I chopped up a big bar of dark chocolate for this).

You literally just mix it all up and pour it into a (greased) 9 x 13 inch pan and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. I feel like an asshole for even sharing this recipe. But it’s one of those awful, awful things that my kids love! There wasn’t any left for my husband when he got home!

Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
Lazy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
They are addicting because they have the texture of a cookie with the moistness of a cake and of course chocolate chip make everything tastier!
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Congo Bars

Domestic

These little treats are almost a brownie, almost cakey in texture but are chocolate chip cookie all the way in flavor. Which of course means my kids love them – brownie, cake and chocolate chip cookie all at once? Oh! That actually gives me an idea for later! Ahem. These Congo Bars take maaaybe 5 minutes to get in the oven, 7 if you have a toddler pulling at your skirt and like 20 if your toddler insists on helping. I do my best to let the kids help when they ask to because some of my favorite times with my parents and my grandparents were in the kitchen with a mound of flour on the floor and dough in my hair. Thanks guys!!

No small talk for you today, it’s Day 7 (of 17) of the 2012 Ravellenic Games and I’m only 0.13% through my first event, the Modular Relay (puffs for my blanket) and I’d really like to do more than one event. So whip up a batch of these, and get knitting! 🙂

Congo Bars – via Six Sisters Stuff (adapted from Bakerella

2 3/4 cup flour
2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter, softened
2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 c. chopped pecans (I made these for the kids & they weren’t feeling the nuts)

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and then set aside. Cream the butter and the sugars, then add one egg at a time, then the vanilla. Once that’s all incorporated, mix in the flour and then fold in the chocolate chips (and nuts if you’re using).
Pour the batter into a greased brownie pan (I spaced and left mine at a friend’s house so I made mine in a pie plate). Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes and voila!
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Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart

Healthy

Today, I’m linking up with Kate Says Stuff‘s Thankful Thursday, The How To Mommy‘s Tasty Thursdays, Obviously Marvelous‘ Thirsty Thursdays and Saved By Love Creations‘ Thrifty Thursday.

In the spirit of Thankful Thursdays, I am so very thankful to be here in Los Angeles. I’m thankful that all five of us are healthy, I’m thankful for my husband’s job and that they moved us here and not somewhere boring haha. Waking up to my husband saying ‘wanna go check out Hollywood?’ or our new friends saying ‘lets go peek at some sea urchins’ or our other new friends inviting us to cook in their Pottery Barn/Crate and Barrel-esque kitchen is pretty amazing, I’m not gonna lie. Also, when a bad day means we go swimming at the outdoor pool in our little apartment community instead of hitting the beach, there’s a lot to be thankful for.

Sometimes, I take on what looks like a simple vegan recipe and I’m trapped in my kitchen all day (not that I mind being trapped in there, really), and sometimes I roll up my sleeves to get into a new recipe and BAM, I’m done. This is one of those quickies I treasure (ha). The other amazing thing about this recipe, aside from how GOOD it is, is how inexpensive it is! I had all of these ingredients in my kitchen already! You likely do too, the only slight oddball in there is the flax, but even that is way more common that it used to be.

It’s equally good for breakfast as it is for dessert – chocolate chips and all!

Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart

Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart – via Oh, Ladycakes

1 cup banana puree
1/2 cup flax meal
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup almond milk
2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart
Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart
Mash up and measure your bananas, then mix the flax, coconut and almond milk.
Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart
This is where I cheated and used about 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Now add the banana puree, then the oats and the chocolate chips. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes and that’s that. It takes all of 5 minutes to pull together!
Vegan Chocolate Oatmeal Tart
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Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies

Healthy

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

I started adding chia seeds to my smoothies about a year ago, and when I started making pudding with almond milk and the kids complained it wasn’t ‘pudding-y enough’, I started crushing the chia seeds and blending them into the pudding because they have a weird ‘pudding-y’ quality about them and since then the kids happily eat the almond milk-based pudding. I honestly thought their usefulness ended there. I know, I know. They’re an ancient superfood May!, you say. I hear you, I know it. I’m not a fan of little seed sin my salad or on my oatmeal or where ever else you’re going to tell me to put them.

(I walked right into that, didn’t I?)

However, when I saw this recipe I had a huge DUH moment. Of course they’d work in cookies! For suspicious kids (and husbands and friends), they look pretty normal alongside chocolate chips! You know the chocolate dust at the bottom of the bag of chocolate chips? When they’re baked, they look just like that. There’s no rule that says I have to openly advertise all the ingredients in my kitchen, right? Right.

The original recipe yields a dozen big cookies. I made mine more like regular size cookies and got about two dozen. It was hard to tell with how fast the wee ones (and then later my girlfriends) ate them! They hardly hit the plate, it was pretty amazing. When I finally made some coffee and had one I was glad there were not many left because I easily could have polished off the tray myself. Easily.

Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies

Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies via Yummy Mummy Kitchen

1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tablespoons chia seeds
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies
Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies
In a medium bowl, mix the oats, baking powder, flour, chia seeds. Then with your electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together.
Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies
Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies
Now add to the butter mixture, the peanut butter, eggs and vanilla. Bit by bit add the oat mixture and mix till combined.
Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies
Fold in the chocolate chips, and bake at 350F for about 12 minutes.
Chia Seed Peanut Butter Cookies
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Chocolate Chip Muffins

Domestic

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

These muffins are a lunch box staple around here, (they are also a middle of the night snack and a running out the door breakfast). So I make these a lot. So much that it seems like the fam should be sick of them by now, but somehow they’re not. Somehow, I still hear requests for them almost daily. Truthfully, I can make them without looking at the recipe and even Wee One #2 gets in on the action now, being able to make these mostly herself!

They clock in at about 230 calories, so I encourage my children to have at them because they are built like supermodels. No lie. I, however, try not to eat quite as many as they do…

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Chocolate Chip Muffins via The All New Good Housekeeping Cook Book

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Muffins
Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In a smaller bowl, with a fork, beat the milk, melted butter, egg and vanilla until totally blended.
Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Muffins
Chocolate Chip Muffins
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2010

Crafty, Domestic

The past few months have been a flurry of activity, and while I wouldn’t have it any other way, a few more hours in the day would be helpful.

I made a really interesting cake this past weekend for a friend’s 30th and I have had a good start to Cake Year! First though, and mostly just to show off some photos, here are a few of the things I didn’t blog about this holiday season.

I made heaps and heaps of brownies during the holidays, as I’m sure you can imagine. These made in the donut pan seemed especially fun for the kids for some reason, and this apple pie with a handful of chocolate chips was just silly – and delicious!

This year, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day landed on the same day, so we had a fete to celebrate both! There were a whole lot of glittery New Year decorations and a whole lot of shiny heart decorations. The kids had a party that afternoon, and one of their activities was cookie decorating. I made standard Sugar Cookies and Cocoa Brownies and set out frosting, sprinkles, candies and broken up treats in recycled pudding cups for easy access!

For their school parties, the kids hit Google to find ideas for their class treats. Wee one #1 went with Chocolate Covered Jumbo Marshmallows. We put some red sprinkles on while the chocolate was still wet. Wee one #2 picked Cinnamon Heart Kisses and Hugs Cupcakes, which I think explains itself really. Both treats were really fun to make and the kids classes loved them. Before anyone thinks I’ve left someone out, wee one #3 isn’t in school yet and is too small for treats. 😉

There are some really fun gems left out, like attempting a Jamie Oliver appetizer, and my cinnamon hippo cookies, but these were the most fun of the last few months. I can’t recap too much because I want to jump back in and show you the 10 cakes I’ve made so far this year!

The husband machine, our three wee ones and myself did some Christmas road tripping. It took us to three different cities in two weeks and we had a blast. On the way home, with our little car packed to the roof with kids, gifts and gear, I got a text from my amazing friend Gill, asking if we could do the first Stitch n Bitch of the year that night, and that she really, really wanted to make Red Velvet cake with me. I pretty much never turn down an evening with my ladies, so as soon as we got home, I prepped the kitchen for fun, fed the kids and within minutes Gill was here with her beau Andrew, and my sister, Nikki. Usually there are two more good friends that spend Saturday nights with us, but one was out of town and one was hanging with someone who is usually out of town.

So, the Red Velvet cake, as you can see, looked like a winter birthday cake! The cream cheese frosting wasn’t too cream cheesy, as they often are, and the chopped pecans were a really nice touch! None of us had ever made this cake before, and we were all a little alarmed at how much food colouring it takes to give it that red hue! It was amazing, definitely one of my faves so far, The look of the two red layers with the contrast of the white frosting was so pretty.

Inspiration for the second cake of the year came while browsing Chow. The photo of the cake was amazing, but they put a crunchy almond crust on the top of the cake (prepared in the pan before the batter was poured in), and I opted for a few ground up chocolate chips on top after I had already iced it. I used the recipe as is otherwise, and it turned out so good.

This Double Lemon Cake was made because the husband machine asked me to make him a Lemon Meringue pie, and I had a little lemon filling leftover. The cake itself is a standard lemon cake, really you can just sub some lemon juice for a liquid in your favourite vanilla cake and add in some lemon zest as well. It’s two layers, with the lemon filling from the pie I made earlier and buttercream tinted yellow. 😉 If you love lemon, you’d love this.

The fourth cake was made for Miss Talea’s financee, who she never refers to by name on her blog, so I’ll hold back. I made him a Brown Sugar cake, though he is away at med school and couldn’t enjoy it himself. This recipe was found on Bell’alimento, and yes, I covered mine in whipped cream too. I made two square layers, one smaller than the other and sprinkled cinnamon on top!

Cakes #5 and #6 were made on the same day – because we had a few more people than usual that week – to celebrate Miss America. We all just love how campy and silly it is, and we really rolled with it. We all wore tiaras and drank champagne (ok, sparkling wine) and had a lovely evening. Cake #5 was a Chocolate Coconut (which just means I added a little sweetened shredded coconut to the batter and sprinkled some on top once it was cooled). Cake #6 was exciting for me, as I had never made one before – a Black Forest cake! My mother used to make these a lot when I was a kid, my father loves them. This was a cake doctor-style recipe, to be honest. All I did was mix up a devil’s food cake mix with a few eggs, some water and an entire can of cherry pie filling. Once it was baked and cooled, I put a little dollop of whipped cream on each of the wee flutes in the cake and put a maraschino cherry on top.

It’s hard to believe how genuinely excited I am over each of these cakes! Cake #7 was especially important because one of my closest friends, someone who has been coming out to my knitting nights for years, moved. Yup, Talea joined her fiancee somewhere that isn’t Toronto so they can live together as he finishes up med school. To celebrate all the joy and friendship and wine fueled nights we’ve all spent together, I made her a 10 Layer Smell You Later cake (inspired by the always amazing Bakerella) and invited only her very favourite people. It was a lovely night, but so so sad too. Moving on, the cake would have been more layers, but my husband machine was snacky and I had baked all the layers the night before. 😛 I assembled it with runny fudge as the glue that held it all together between all the layers. I coated the outside in it as well, but had to do as Bakerella suggested and make up some cocoa frosting and give it another layer.


Two weeks ago, as you know, was both Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. Last year, I made a Mandarin cake because I thought that the traditional citrus fruit had to be made into something, but it doesn’t. Just leaving out a bowl of any kind of citrus fruit is enough! So I didn’t make a cake for Chinese New Year, but I made up a serious Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake for Valentine’s Day. It was plain chocolate, in a heart shape, topped with a pint of strawberries and loads of both whipped cream and cocoa frosting. Amazing.

Even more amazing than that cake, Gill’s brother was on his way back from Thailand that day and even though he woke up on the other side of the planet and had a serious 12 hour jet lag to deal with, he came over to celebrate with us! Since he had been away for his birthday, I also whipped up a belated birthday cake – the one he picked weeks before – Chocolate and Peanut Butter!

And finally, to be totally up to date, this past weekend, I made my weirdest cake yet – by request. I made Tres Leches (or 3 milk cake, if you prefer). It’s Spanish and while most of their cakes are really moist, this one is over the top. It was for Andrew’s 30th birthday, the first of us 1980 babies to turn 30 this year. He requested it partly because he has a thing for moist cakes and this one promised to be the moistest, and partly because any time I ever serve this man cake, he always puts it in a bowl or mug and pours milk over it. Always.

This cake starts out as a plain vanilla cake, though I’m sure you could sub in whatever kind of plain cake you’d like. Once your cake has baked and cooled (mostly), move it to a larger pan then poke holes all over the top of it and pour this mixture over it; 1 can evaporated milk, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 cup whipping cream, 1/2 cup whole milk. You have to keep scooping up the mixture and pouring it over the cake for it to absorb it all. It’s nuts to see a cake soak up 3 cups of liquid in a few minutes.

You’ll notice there are actually four kinds of milk in this ‘three milk cake’. I actually looked into it more and traditionally the recipe has no whole milk in it, just whipping cream. The best part about this is two of us are lactose intolerant. Ha! I had a very small piece and then later in the night, I had another small piece. Andrew had several, so glad the birthday boy liked it. 😛

To go with the random theme of three, I also made three squash soup. Gill made her amazing pizza pinwheel bites and we all forgot about the soup. I will ask her about the recipe to post it one day.

Way more playing in the kitchen than knitting and sewing lately, as I’m sure you can tell, but I did manage to finish a very nice pair of socks, Marriage Lines, they were a late Christmas present to one of my dearest friends, Talea.


There’s your recap, stay tuned for Window Shopping Wednesday tomorrow!

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