Food Friday - Spring Sweet Treats

from Kris B.

What's that saying, “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” or something like that…That phrase seems to sum up where i have been this week. Tuesday I wrote about being “grown-up” but still being most comfortable in my Converse, not much different from forty years ago, and today it is my favorite ingredients for treats.  No matter how old I get, I will never outgrow my love of two childhood favorites - peanut butter and graham crackers.  And when you combine those two things with a little chocolate, the kid in me couldn’t be happier.

Neither of our recipes this week are diet friendly, but they sure do taste good!  What is Easter or Passover without a bit of a sweet treat?  And homemade candy sure is a lot better than those bags from the store!  Another plus to this week’s recipes is that they are simple, simple, simple!

As a church musician, this is the busiest week of services of the entire year.  Our choir rehearsed on Monday evening and then we have seven services to sing between Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon. Come Monday morning, Jesus may be risen, but church musicians and clergy are pretty much dead!  (I did miss singing last night’s service because we had plumbing issues at home, but that is a whole other story!)

Back to the graham crackers, peanut butter and chocolate…and a few more basic ingredients…

Other than melting some butter and chocolate chips in the microwave, this recipe requires no cooking.  I told you it was easy!  

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER SQUARES

INGREDIENTS

1 Cup Graham cracker crumbs

2 sticks melted butter

1 Cup chunky peanut butter

3 3/4 Cups powdered sugar

1 bag of chocolate chips

Combine the Graham crackers, peanut butter, melted butter and powdered sugar in a large bowl. 

Once mixed, use your hands to pat the mixture into a 9x13 baking dish.  Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave.  I did it in 45 second increments and I believe it took three rounds.  Watch the chocolate carefully though as all microwaves are a little different and you don’t want the chocolate to burn.  Once melted, use a spatula to spread the melted chocolate in a thin layer over the Graham cracker mixture.  

Place the pan in the refrigerator to set the chocolate.  Once set, remove from the refrigerator and allow to return to room temperature,  Cut into once inch squares.

The squares can also be frozen and saved if you are not up to eating the whole pan on Easter Sunday!

from Tracey G

With Easter approaching, candy - or some form of sweet treat, seemed like a good idea. But, as I was to be out of town, I needed something easy to do while Harry and I were visiting Grandma and Grandpa for the week ;-) My brain settled on Chocolate Covered Marshmallows on a stick, they seemed like a good choice on all counts, easy and yummy! I then had to think, how am I going to present them, that was a little more tricky than the actual coming up with the idea of what I wanted make, so a trip to Michael's was in order! :-) I had bought some wooden skewers to use for the sticks, but they weren't very pretty so I picked up some blue polka-dotted paper straws and some green-striped paper straws to slip over the wooden skewer. It wasn't until after I bought them that I wondered if they'd actually fit over the skewers, lol. Thank goodness they did! Then I found the pretty green ceramic mason jar with the word "Hope" on it which seemed very Easter-appropriate, spiritual or not, there's all kinds of hope going on at this time of year. :-) So, I had the jar, I then found some paper Easter grass to fill the jar, so that I could stick the marshmallows in and make a bouquet - presentation solved! And it was pretty too, would make a great way to give them as a gift, which in fact we did while we were there, with another container filled with the grass and our pretty little marshmallow bouquet arranged. ;-)

The actual "recipe" is easy as could be, ingredients were minimal to say the least, lol. You need 1 cup of chocolate chips, I tbsp vegetable shortening, marshmallows, sprinkles of choice and skewers. These could be done anytime, for any holiday by just varying the colors and whatnot. I used pretty much a whole regular-sized bag of regular-sized marshmallows and had plenty of chocolate to do them - there was only a few marshmallows missing due to the quality-control checking that Harry and I did. ;-)

The first thing I did, was get the marshmallows on the sticks, that was the more time-consuming (if it can be called that, lol) aspect of the project. 

Then I got my various sprinkles put into little bowls for easy dipping. I discovered that smaller sprinkles looked prettier than the larger ones, so I only did a few with the bigger sprinkles before I decided to just stick with the other two.

Now was time to get the chocolate melted. I combined 1 cup of chocolate chips in a measuring cup along with the 1 tbsp of vegetable shortening. I couldn't tell you how long I microwaved them until they were melted, as the microwave I used had a chocolate melting setting, lol, so I used that. But from what I'd read in the recipe/method I'd found, it's like 1 1/2 - 2 min on high stirring occasionally (about every 30 seconds to be safe) until melted. I did end up adding a bit more shortening as my chocolate mixture seemed to be a bit on the thick side, so I'd say I added another 1 tsp to 1/2 tbsp more. 

All that's left is to dip your marshmallows ;-) What I did was, dip one, shake off the excess, then hang on to it while I dipped another - that way it "set up" a little bit before dipping into the sprinkles. Then I set them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Once I got them all dipped, I then placed them in the refrigerator to set up all the way. After they were all set, I slipped on the paper straws and popped a few into the jar, the rest into a zip-top bag for storage, and I did keep them in the fridge as well.

Here again, is the "recipe" I used:

Chocolate Dipped Marshmallows

1 bag marshmallows

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1tbsp vegetable shortening

sprinkles of choice

wooden skewers

Skewer the marshmallows on the sticks. Combine the 1 tbsp of shortening with the 1 cup of chocolate chips; melt on high in the microwave about 1 1/2 - 2 minutes  until melted and can be stirred smooth. Then dip your marshmallows, shaking off excess. Dip into sprinkles of choice, place on wax paper. Once done with all the marshmallows refrigerate until firm.