bake: welcome to fall cake

Hop on over to scrumdilly-do! for the ridiculously easy three ingredient masterpiece.

red {velvet}, white, and blue

 It's been a short while since I baked something swoony so after putting on my thinking cap, I came up with this little bite of goodness just in time for your Fourth of July picnic. Enjoy!

Red Velvet Cake Mix and Coconut Milk Brownies {with marshmallows and more}

*one box red velvet cake mix

*1 egg

*1/2 cup coconut milk (unsweetened)

*1/4 cup oil

*1 teaspoon vanilla extract

*1/2 cup mini marshmallows

**whipping cream (optional)

**blue m&ms (optional)

Mix cake mix, egg, oil, milk, vanilla and marshmallows until blended. I used a Duncan Hines mix which proved to be a bit clumpy. Many of those clumps refused to come out but I made the most of it anyway.

 

Pour into lightly greased baking dish and bake at 350F for about 25 minutes. Remove from hot oven and allow to cool to set. Bars will be brownie-liscious and moist.

 

 

To serve, whip up a cup of whipping cream with NO sugar. The bars are sweet enough, I found that adding even a smidge of sugar made my bars taste salty. It could be the mix I used or not but the cream ads a super nice texture and cooling flavor to the sticky-sweet red velvet. To quickly whip up some cream, toss it onto a mason jar and attache the jar to your blender blade. This will whip it up lickety split for instant enjoyment. If you are serving this dessert out doors where it is HOT HOT HOT, use a handmixer to whip your cream until it is super solid, almost like butter. Blender-mixed cream melts pretty quick as it is.

Sprinkle with holiday color via sprinkles or candies or fruit.

Enjoy! These are super sweet and marshmallowy. They are great the second day at room temperature or chilled. I used a biscuit cutter to cut perfect squares. The loose pieces were tossed and layered into little jars for happy red velvet parfaits. 

*a word of delicate caution. Red Velvet mixes use a lot of red dye which does show up after the fact in a most surprising way. ahem.

cake mix peanut butter cookies

on thursday, it was weirdly overcast and cool. i say weirdly because we've had a mini heat wave going on and the forecast was for 82. when i stepped out to put a donation bag of clothes into Eleanore aka Henrietta Hippo, i felt quite chilled.

baking was in order. cookie baking. peanut butter cookie baking...with a cake mix as i was feeling too lazy to pull out measuring cups and such. 

*1 box white or yellow cake mix

*1 cup peanut butter

*2 eggs

*1/4 c milk

*chocolate chips (optional)

preheat oven to 350 F. mix up ingredients and add yer chips.

drop by the spoonful onto your cookie sheet (the dough will be super sticky). sprinkle with a smidge of sugar and press the tines of a fork into the tops to create that peanut butter cookie look. you do not have to flatten or smoosh, they bake just fine as a puff ball and do not spread much at all.

bake 10-12 minutes, wait a smidge to cool and enjoy with a cold glass of your favorite milk beverage.

**i think next time i will add more peanut butter, salted peanuts and milk chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet  and less of them at that.

be my valentine: red velvet shortbread bites

 I really wanted to make cake batter shortbread bits but I had no yellow cake mix in the pantry. I did have Red Velvet cake mix and since it is the month of lurve I thought why not? So I mixed up the dough and liberated my cookie press and got all cookie happy until I discovered the sad truth. Cake mixes have baking powder and such in them...my happily pressed cookies oozed into blobs and showed no hint at their pretty pressed selves. Back to the drawing board I went and I came up with these red velvet sandwich bites which were totally inspired by these photos from Heather of Sprinkle Bakes.

Ingredients:

*3/4 cups confectioners sugar

*1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, soft

*1 cup red velvet cake mix

*1/3 cup flour (more if your dough feels too sticky)

Mix all your ingredients together with a wooden spoon and chill until firm. When mixing ingredients, mix butter and sugar first then add 1/3 cup of flour until incorporated. Next, add the cake mix and then add more flour if the dough is too sticky. I popped my dough into the fridge overnight and let it come to room temperature before rolling.

Roll dough into small balls (smaller than a large marble) and place on cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.

 

 

 

Fill a small bowl with rainbow nonpareils and coat each cookie with the rainbow goodness. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10 minutes, the cookies will flatten out considerably.

Once cool, swipe a smidge of cream cheese frosting to the bottom of one cookie, placing another on top, sprinkle sides out. Enjoy!