Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today I'm excited to share a great chocolate chip cookie recipe! This is a rare occasion since Kate and I are not huge on baking. Several years ago, Shannan - a former co-worker of mine - shared an AMAZING recipe for chocolate chip cookies with me. She first wrote about the recipe on her blog Mommy Bits. I couldn't wait to try it out, and I'm so glad I did! They are truly sooooo easy to make and very versatile. They're always a crowd favorite.

Here is the basic recipe:
1 (18.25 oz) package moist yellow cake mix (make sure it's MOIST)
1/3 cup vegetable oil (canola will also work)
2 eggs
1.5 cups semisweet chocolate chips

After preheating the oven to 350 degrees and greasing your cookie sheets, mix together the cake mix, eggs, oil and lastly the chocolate chips. Drop teaspoons of dough onto your greased cookie sheets and let them bake for about 8-10 minutes. After taking them out of the oven, remove from the pan and put them on wire racks to cool. Next....ENJOY!!!!

They are so moist and delicious! And the best part is that you can mix up the flavor of the cake mix and the chips. You can do moist chocolate cake mix with peanut butter chips and/or Reese's pieces. You could do moist white cake mix with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. The possibilities are endless! Get creative!

~Kris

Just Call Me Martha!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! This year, all the single girls at my work decided to do a potluck lunch, and I was put in charge of dessert. I’ve been dabbling in baking recently, and they were all curious to try out one of my creations. I decided to go with red velvet cake pops.

According to some people, cake pops are the new cupcakes. They are super cute and are easily customizable for different parties, holidays and special occasions. Bakerella has a great website with lots of ideas and inspiration. I followed this recipe, and used red velvet cake with cream cheese icing. And, of course, I customized them with pink and red sprinkles that I found at Target.

Here they are! Tah dah!

Delicious, easy and cute! You can use different colored sprinkles or candy melts for different occasions.

Hope everyone has a great Valentine's Day!  

~Kris

inspiring kind Boutique Bakery

My friend Linda from work brought me in cupcakes for my birthday from inspiring kind Boutique Bakery, and all I could say was AMAZING!! These cupcakes were probably the best cupcakes I have ever had!  She frequents this bakery, so she was pretty familiar with what is good.  She brought in 4 to share (well, we all tried them all, then she “forced” me to take the rest home).  There was a pistachio flavor (which I wasn’t so sure about at first), Organic Banana, Lemon Drop, and a chocolate cupcake with what we think was strawberry frosting.   The Organic Banana had a buttercream frosting as well as the Lemon Drop and the Chocolate cupcake. We weren’t exactly sure about the frosting on the Pistachio cupcake, but we all thought it was a cream cheese frosting…but who cares! They were all fantastic!!   I don’t’ even like banana flavored things normally (hate banana laffy taffys, and does anyone really ever eat the candy banana Runt!??)   but the Organic Banana might have been my favorite! It was really moist and wasn’t too bananaie.  My two friends’ favorites were both the Pistachio!  This was such a treat during the work day, and I absolutely loved them, I even had some to take home for later!  Thanks to Linda J 

~Kate