Iced Mocha Latte’s

I have been a bad girl. I told you all that I would not abandon this blog after I had opened Sweet Addictions, and here it is, six months since my last post. Forgive me! It wasn’t my intention for it to be so long. This year has just FLOWN by! Anyone else think so? It’s been so busy busy BUSY!

To make up for my procrastination, I am posting somthing that is so delicious, and so easy, and so CHEAP, you’ll have no problem forgiving me for being so late. I just know it

What we have here is a Homemade Iced Mocha Latte !!  It is soooooooo yummy, any coffee lover will LURVE this! And get this, it breaks down to about $0.51  a cup! sure beats the $4.50 some “other” places charge!  To me it tastes like Starbuck’s mocha frappachinos that you buy in the glass bottle.

Also, you won’t believe how EASY they are! No special machines needed! and it takes no time at all.

Let’s get started!!

Whats needed:

1/2 cup instant coffee granules

1/2 cup boiling water

4 cups chocolate milk

2 cups cold water

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk

Ice

optional:

whipped cream

chocolate or caramel syrup

start by boilng 1/2 cup of water (microwave works best, cook for 1-2 min depending on your microwave). Mix in 1/2 cup of instant coffee granules until completely dissolved. Pour coffee into a large pitcher. Now pour in 4 cups of chocolate milk. I used the premade chocolate milk they sell at the grocery store. (You know, the brown jug of milk) (one half gallon will make two batches) but “homemade” chocolate milk should work fine too. Now pour in the coffee mixture, 2 cups of cold water, and one can of sweet condensed milk. Mix it all up and serve over ice! THATS IT!! Can ya believe it?!? One batch makes around 6 glasses or so, maybe more or less depending on the cups  

For an extra treat, add some whipped cream, and drizzle on your favorite syrup. We like caramel and chocolate.

And of course refrigerate any leftovers.

I don’t think we’ll ever spend money on that expensive stuff again with this recipe! Who wouldn’t benifit from saving a few bucks in the coffee fund these days??

ENJOY!

Cookie Cups

Tell me something. If someone offered you one of these. Would you turn it down? I sure wouldn’t! Hold on tight because your about to have an AHA! moment.  Guess what these are?? Cookie Cups! That’s it! plain and simple! Just the way I like it! Seriously, your not going to believe how simple! Check it out.

 

First your going to want to whip up a batch of your favorite cookie dough. I used  a nice traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe. I made sure to use Milk Chocolate chips instead of semi sweet because we are going to ice these later and I didn’t want them overly sweet, but you might and that’s ok too!

 

Now grease you a MINI Cupcake Pan. (oops I originally typed a “mini cupcake MAN”  , if you can find you one of those, go ahead and grease him up real good too   I always use Baker’s joy spray to grease my pans

 

now take a spoon full of cookie dough and drop it in the pan. spread it out so that the dough covers the bottom and the sides of each opening, leaving an open well in the middle.

 

 

Repeat the process until the entire pan is full. I only filled each opening about half way up the sides to allow for rising

 

Bake at 350 degree’s for about 10 min. or until the tops are brown

 

let them sit for a min before popping them out of the pan. While they cool, the middles will fall,. This is good! we want this. If some don’t fall, you can always give them a little poke.

 

When they are cool, pipe on some icing, and wallah! there you have it, iced cookie cups! ( I used my Chocolate buttercream icing on these)  I told you it was that easy!  You can come up will all kinds of delicious combinations! Next time I make these I’m going to try it with Cream cheese frosting. YUM!

 

Make these today!!

 

 

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Brownies & Blogging

Sorry it’s been a little while since my last post. I got pretty sick for a few weeks and was not able to eat solid foods, so cooking was the last thing on my mind!  I’m am doing better now, although it might have left me lactose intolerant (NOoOO!!)  But we’re waiting a few more days to test it again.

ANYWAY, I have some exciting news for the blog. Last week I was adopted! lol. I am participating in somthing called Adopt A Blogger, where a veteran food blogger adopts a newbie blogger and mentors them to help them improve their Blog. I’m so excited! My Mentor is Jo from “The Adventures of Kitchen Girl” If you’ve got a minute, pop over to her site. It’s very inspiring! I can’t wait to learn lots from her!

And now for the food! Did someone say brownies??

 Wilton has a new line that is focused around brownies. I bought Wilton’s brownie book, along with a few molds and cutters to play around with. Lately, the folks at the Hub’s office have been whining that I hadn’t sent them any goodies in awhile. So I figured this was a good opportunity to try my hand at some brownies. Now I confess, I went with boxed brownies this go round, BUT I did whip up some different frosting’s from scratch Next go round I will give it a try doing everything from scratch.

 

Fudge Brownies

 

So I started with a box of basic brownies (actually I made two boxes)  and put them in this mini loaf pan.

 

After baking, I popped them out and allowed them to cool completely

 

 

Then I iced them with a nice fudge icing. I LOVE icing on my brownies. Let me tell you this icing is Divine.  It was light chocolaty and not too sweet!  which is very important for a brownie. But this one was perfect. It sets ok, but I’m still on the lookout for a nice thick fudgy icing. One that I would be more comfortable decorating.  But as for taste, this one is awesome.

Here’s the recipe I used:

Baker’s Chocolate Frosting (recipe by Bakers’ Chocolate)

4 Squares of Bakers Unsweetened Chocolate

1 lb (or 4 cups) of confectioners sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick)  butter or margerine (softened)

2 tsp Vanilla

1/3 cup of millk

 

Microwave chocolate for 1 1/2 min, stirring every 30 seconds until melted. In a mixing bowl, Mix Chocolate, sugar, butter, and Vanilla. Gradually add milk while beating on low speed until well blended. If desired, thin icing with more milk one tsp at a time until desired consistancy.

 

 

Mint Grasshopper Brownies

 

I also ran across a box of mint brownies in the store and new insantly what I wanted to do with them. I saw these in the Wilton brownie book, so I combined the two ideas

I started with the box of  mint brownies, and made them in Wiltons mini square molds. The jury is still out on that mold, as they were difficult to remove them. The best way I have found is to freeze the brownies and then pop them out, but thats VERY time consuming if you only have one pan. Next time I make these I will just bake a pan and cut out the squares myself.

when they were cool I whipped up a batch of mint icing and spread on top.

That recipe is here:

Mint Filling (recipe by Wilton)

3 Tablespoons butter, softened

1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar

2 Tablespoons milk

1/4 tsp mint extract

green icing color

 

Beat butter, sugar, and milk with mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in mint flavoring and icing color. Spread over cooled brownies and chill until set

 

Super easy!

 

Then I drizzled them with chocolate (this chocolate happened to come with the box of brownies, but you could make your own)

For some of them I just stopped there

 

For the others I topped them with Chopped up Andes Candies to take that mint flavor to the extreme. You can find pre-chopped Andes in the store ( I got these at walmart) but for a greener look I suggest cutting some up yourself, as the pre-chopped ones look kind of dingy. I would prefer a greener prettier color, but it got the job done.

 

My oldest is a die hard mint fan and I think he almost passed out once or twice while eating some of these. Hmmmm these might make me some good bribes if I use them right

All in all very easy recipes, and at them end of the day, you get to eat BROWNIES!