Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites (No Bake!)

Sometimes it is just too hot to turn on the oven, so even a baker needs a few "no bake" recipes in her pocket. I made these with my father in mind. My whole life my dad and I have shared a mutual LOVE for peanut butter, add chocolate and there is NO resisting! And Oh My Goodness these are yummy! If you have a soft spot for peanut butter cups, you HAVE to make these...no excuses, they don't even require an oven.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites (No oven required)

2 1/4 Cups Creamy Peanut Butter (divided into 1 cup and 1 1/4 cup each)

3/4 Cup Butter (salted or unsalted) (1 1/2 sticks), Softened

2 Cups Powdered Sugar (divided into 1 cup each)

3 Cups Graham Cracker Crumbs (finely ground)

2 Cups Chocolate Chips (divided into 1 cup each)

1. Grease 13 x 9 baking pan with either butter, shortening or cooking spray

2. Beat 1 1/4 cups peanut butter and butter until creamy.




3. Slowly mix in 1 cup of powdered sugar. The mixture will begin to thicken. Once fully mixed, add remaining cup of powdered sugar, graham cracker crumbs and 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. The mixture will resemble cookie dough.

4. Press mixture into bottom of greased pan. Press down hard with spatula or hands until evenly pressed tightly into the pan.

5. Melt the remaining 1 1/2 cups of chocolate and 1 cup of peanut butter over LOW heat. (Seriously, use the LOWEST heat setting possible. Chocolate burns easily. If you are comfortable with a double boiler I would recommend melting the mixture this way.) Stir constantly.

6.  Pour and spread the chocolate over the peanut butter mixture. 

7. Place the pan in the refrigerator for at least an hour... 3 hours is best. Once firm, cut the bars into 1 inch cubes. 

8. Eat at least 4 pieces...okay this part is optional but I highly recommend it

Cranberry Orange Muffins

I've always said muffins are just cupcakes without the icing...but they are a GREAT excuse to eat dessert at breakfast time! For the last week I have been working on perfecting granola bars (more on those when I do actually figure it out) and I am a little granola-ed out so I decided to take a break and make a different breakfast treat, Cranberry Orange Muffins. I always have found it funny that people can like flavors of certain foods but not like that actual food. For example, I love orange flavored foods and desserts, but you will rarely ever see me actually eat an orange. We had these oranges on our counter for a while and instead of letting them only be decoration I decided to "eat" them.


I adapted this recipe from another blog (Glorious Treats). I found them to dry out a little quickly, so I would add 1/4 cup of sour cream to my next batch. I find that sour cream and/ or apple sauce to most of my breakfast bread recipes give it that little boost of moistness that allows them to keep for a few days. Happy Breakfast Baking!

Cranberry Orange Muffins

1 cup dried (sweetened) cranberries

1/3 cup fresh orange juice

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 Tablespoon fresh orange zest

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon orange extract

2 Tablespoons oil (vegetable, canola or olive)

1/4 cup Sour Cream or Apple Sauce

1/2 cup milk (any fat content)

1) Pull out and measure your ingredients, or at least the butter, it must be at room temperature.


2) Pre-heat oven to 375 F. Line muffin or cupcake tin with papers. 


3) Zest  a whole orange (makes about 1 tablespoon). Cut and squeeze the juice out of the orange to make about 1/3 cup of juice. If you do not have enough juice from the orange go ahead and add some prepared orange juice to get the full 1/3 cup. 

You can use the small side of a standard grater if you don't have a zester.

4) Pour the orange juice and cranberries into a small sauce pan over medium heat. Bring to a low boil and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Set aside.

5) Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
6) In another large bowl beat with a hand or stand mixer the butter, orange zest and sugar until fluffy.
7) Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each egg. Mix in vanilla extract, orange extract, oil and sour cream. 
8) Alternate mixing in the flour mixture and the milk (begin and end with flour).


9) Stir in cooked cranberries, careful not to over mix.


10) Pour batter into prepared muffin tins (about 3/4 full). 

Bake in heated oven for 18-20 minutes. Test by sticking a toothpick into the center to see if they are done (moist crumbs but not wet).

Yield: Roughly 12 standard Muffins.

Make them dessert....yum!

Mix powdered sugar with fresh squeezed orange juice to make a glaze (roughly 3 to 1 ratio). Keep adding powdered sugar a little at a time until the glaze is about the thickness of cinnamon roll glaze. Dip the tops of the muffins into the glaze and let dry.

Caramel Swirls

Cake #1... Salted Caramel Cake with Caramel Buttercream (with caramel filling). This cake was both successful and not so successful. Per Kevin's request I first made Salted Caramel Cupcakes for Easter this year and they were AWESOME. I decided to use the same recipe but double it and make a cake for my cousin's birthday. 

 Visually the cake came out just like I wanted, the flavor was there, but the sponge was DENSE. I have a couple of theories as to why this happened... First, somewhere in the doubling process I may have "over-did" an ingredient (FOLLOW THE RECIPE WHEN BAKING).  This is possible, but I am really confident this was not it. More likely it was the water bath that I cooked the sponge in. A little trick I have learned with box mix cakes... cook the cake in a water bath and the cake will not rise in the middle making it easier to decorate and eliminate the trimming process to achieve a flat sponge. This is the first time I tried baking a scratch cake with the water bath...and it was DENSE, almost like a pound cake. Half of the party liked it and the other half was very polite :) I think I am going to have to use the same recipe and try it without the water bath (so hope you all are hungry and ready to eat more cake!).

I always like to try new things when decorating and this time around the fun part was the caramel swirls. So easy too! I boiled sugar and water (2 to 1) until it turned into a caramel (deep amber color). As soon as the caramel colors, the secret is to immediately dip the pan into a water bath to stop the cooking so you don't end up with burnt sugar. I then drizzled the caramel on a greased parchment sheet with a spoon. This time I just did circular drizzles but with more practice I think I could do shapes.


All in all, this recipe is a keeper... definitely as a cupcake and I am determined to convert it to a fluffy cake recipe too!







Tip of the post: Parchment Paper Base. I picked this up a few months ago... instead of just oiling your pan (butter, canola etc) use a parchment paper base. First you butter the pan, then cut a piece of parchment to place in the bottom of the pan. MUST BE PARCHMENT... Wax paper will burn! Another technique is to dust the buttered pan with flour, but when you are baking a chocolate cake, or doing any sort of naked cake you will be stuck with flour residue on your sponge that will be visible. The parchment makes for EASY removal from the pan. Keep the parchment on the cake while it cools...it keeps the moisture in the cake before you decorate or moisten the sponge simple syrup if you so choose.

Hi I'm Lauren...and I love to bake sweets

Okay, I'll say this first... I LOVE to bake! It is truly something I think I could do every day. If butter wasn't so darn expensive and if I didn't have to work out twice as much I probably would! I am new to this whole blogging thing, but with my new found free time (between starting a new job, school and getting engaged haha) I thought I would give it a shot (at least it's a good excuse to bake right?)



First baking post, I kept it simple... Pretty Pink Vanilla Cupcakes (vanilla cupcake with vanilla butter cream...dash of red food dye to get the ballet pink color). I wanted to take a picture that made sense with my title (Sweets on Pointe... get it?) Ballet is my other passion in life, and while I will NOT be baking in my pointe shoes, I will most definitely be dancing around the kitchen to 90's music (yes, the 90's were awesome) while the mixer is going. And to complete the circle these cupcakes were consumed by none other than ballerinas (Thanks His Grace dancers for saving me a few extra calories!).

So here we go... Sweets on Pointe (and I'm sure sometimes on flat ;)  ). Off to bake a Salted Caramel Cake for my cousin's birthday!