These darling green tartlets are perfect for St. Patrick’s Day but they will soon be serving another purpose for me.

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Need a quick dessert? Do you have 10 minutes? If so, these are for you.  Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it’s a rich dessert, indeed. Plus this is perfect for the summer, when you don’t want to heat up the oven.

I can’t believe it’s been a full week since I’ve posted a recipe!  It wasn’t suppose to be that way, it’s been a rough week! I know that one of these brownies will make me feel much better.

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My baby girl was in Stonehenge yesterday. I don’t know why, but this photo that she posted on Facebook, made me want to make these cookie bars…

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… is Valentine’s Day!  Are you ready? Here’s a pretty, fun, and festive tart to make and present to your loved ones. It’s easy and comes together quickly, all you need to do is get yourself a heart-shaped tart pan. You’ll find them at kitchen stores such as Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, or locally at ABC Cake Decorating. Or, if you get on the stick today, you can even order it from Amazon at THIS LINK.

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There’s nothing like a little salt with your chocolate, the flavor combination is irresistible, no wonder peanut M&Ms are a snacking favorite. The pretzels can be difficult to make into crumbs for this crust, but not to worry, the mixer will do the finishing work for you. Be sure to use the pulse button of your food processor to coarsely chop the pretzels, otherwise you’ll just have a pile of fine crumbs. Then when you add them to the butter and powdered sugar in the mixer, and let it go to town, they’ll end up being the perfect consistency. Picture proof below!

Valentine’s Day is only 2 weeks away. This is a special little something you might like to consider making for the sweethearts in your life.

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I had a load of marshmallows left from last Friday night’s “S’Mores Party” TV shoot. It was just Dave, Marissa, Tram, and me around the fire-pit so not too many of the 60 homemade marshmallows were eaten! I don’t want them to go to waste, they are too good for that. So I’ve made fudge, which will in turn be given as hostess and Christmas gifts next month. It is possible to freeze fudge – it must be tightly and well wrapped, actually double wrapped is best, and then placed in an air-tight container before placing in the freezer.  When ready to defrost, place directly in the refrigerator (without opening or unwrapping) for 24 hours before eating or packaging for gifts.

Speaking of that TV shoot, it will air on Monday, November 29th, at 3:30 on Channel 12 Valley Dish. And speaking of holidays, I need to remind you that last year I posted a Complete Thanksgiving Planning Guide and Timeline. And since the big feast is only 9 days away, today would be the perfect day to check it out. I’ll keep putting up reminders for the next few days… be sure to get there soon!

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Before I get to today’s recipe I want to send out birthday wishes to a very special woman in my life. Happy Birthday to my mother-in-law, Pat Hopkins, in Rockton, Illinois. Happily, all four of us flew to Illinois last weekend and spent fun times with Mom at Katie and Eddie’s wedding. Happy Birthday, Mom, we’re looking forward to your visit in February. I love you! xoox

What in the world would posses a person to even think of making homemade marshmallows? What or who could make me consider doing it? Tram Mai, that’s who! Tram called a couple weeks ago and asked if I’d like to do a story for Valley Dish about a S’Mores Party. Sure, sounds fun – gourmet S’mores – a party – cool entertaining idea- I’m all in! Immediately I start thinking of all the wonderful alternatives to plain old milk chocolate squares and graham crackers. How to really “kick it up a notch”, as Emeril would say. The filling alternatives are the easy part, then I wonder how to do something different with the real star of the show – the marshmallow. OK, honestly, I have made homemade marshmallows once before; in a cooking class with my summer children’s series, years ago. But those were still plain vanilla marshmallows, I needed something more than that. So I did my usual research – meaning, I “google” it – and found a chocolate flavored marshmallow recipe. Cool! So the chocolate marshmallow recipe provided here is adapted from HERE. Then I went a step further and decided that we needed a third flavor, so I created up a raspberry version too. (that recipe is just below the chocolate version… so keep scrolling). Tomorrow I will post all the gourmet S’mores recipes I created and pictures from our shoot with the entire pretty spread. I’ll let you know when the clip will air on the Valley Dish so you can watch, I think it’s going to be pretty darn great!

Before you scroll down to the actual recipe, let me preface it by saying, “Please don’t be intimidated by the massive length of the recipe!” There are only 9 ingredients… and one is water; some of the others are non-intimidating salt, vanilla, sugar, etc. It’s just a bunch of really long descriptions, explanations, and directions, plus more than a dozen photos to help you visualize it all. The process itself is not hard! Really! Read through the whole thing and you’ll see what I mean. Because now that I’ve made and tasted and drooled over these homemade marshmallows, I am wondering what took me so long to make homemade marshmallows again. Seriously!

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This was Dave’s birthday cake. Since October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it seemed a pink cake was in order. As many of you know, I am a past chair of both our local American Cancer Society gala, The Jewel Ball and the Key To The Cure fashion show, benefitting breast cancer research, so pink is already my favorite color in October. Several things coincided to make me think pink for Dave’s cake. First, I found a gift pack of  those cute little Anthon Berg chocolate liqueur bottles at Costco and thought they would make perfect stocking stuffers and gift toppers in the coming months and also wondered how I could incorporate them into a recipe. Next, I saw my friend, Larry Fitzgerald’s, PSA about breast cancer and how real men wear pink (Click HERE to see). Finally, I remembered that I had blood orange juice in my freezer that I’d squeezed earlier in the year. So that is how the cake came to be and now you know that real men eat pink cake too!

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As usual, there are overripe bananas sitting on my counter. That indicates two problems, first that people ask for bananas and then don’t use them, Marissa and Dave, I’m talking to you! And secondly, now I must make banana-something, again!  OK, that’s not truly a problem, just a reality.

The real problem is that I didn’t follow my own advise while preparing to make this coffee cake. I neglected to set up my mise en place (the French phrase meaning “everything in place”) beforehand. So even though this is called blueberry-banana coffee cake… there are no blueberries in mine. We had them on the side. Dang it! Be sure to get out your blueberries, and everything else needed, before you begin.

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Sometimes a proud mom just has to brag about her children. Today is one of those days, so please bare with me. The picture below is from Connor’s 18th birthday (he is now 19  1/2 years old) and he had just blown out the candles from his favorite kind of cake, which would best be called “chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate!” I am posting this picture and the recipe for the cake, not because we celebrate half birthdays around here,  but because I want to tell you how proud I am of my son.

Connor will have a weekly comic strip in The Lumberjack, Northern Arizona University’s newspaper! So very cool! His older sister, Marissa, who recently graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Arizona, wrote for her newspaper, The Wildcat, and now Connor will be published too. Marissa is equally proud of her “little” brother, as you can see by yesterday’s post on her blog, as seen HERE.  Yes, she beat me to it, and that kinda makes me doubly proud of both of them. xoxo

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