Simplicity by Sabrina

When I was a sophomore in college, one of my best friends (Kim) gave me this recipe for cookie bars and it has changed my life! I don't think I ever get so many compliments on any other recipe compared to this one. This is also the recipe that I am pretty sure made Travis start liking me back in college when I actually made them for his roommate.


The funny thing is that this recipe is so easy! Even if you don't like baking, this recipe is very easy to pull out in not that much time--from start to finish it can be done in 30 minutes, including bake time! Now that is what I am talking about! We have used this recipe so many times when we think, "Oh, we should take something. We don't have that much time because we waited until the last minute...Let's whip out some cookie bars." Works. Every. Time.


If you want that cookie taste, but don't want to spoon out individual cookies and if you want a cross between blondies and still have chocolate in there, this recipe is for you! The other great thing about this recipe is that you probably have most of the ingredients in your house right now if you do any sort of baking on a regular basis. When we go to the store, we just pick up a cake mix and whip these up when we get home.

Tips and Tricks:

Since I have made this recipe close to probably 50 times, I have perfected the thickness and baking of these bars. For me, I like thicker bars, even though there won't be as many. So I use a 7x11 dish to bake these and they usually take 27 minutes in the oven. However, I have baked them in a 9x13 pan as well and they come out thinner and take less time in the oven (around 20 minutes). You can also use a 9x9 square cake pan to bake these and they will come out super thick, so they take around 30 minutes in the oven. I know that not everyone has a 7x11 glass pan, but they are perfect for these!


The batter should be pretty wet, like a cake or brownie batter. When pouring into the glass pan use the rubber spatula to spread to the edges to get more even baking.

You know they are done when they have a browning on the top and a fork comes out clean.

The first time that Travis made this recipe I think I ate an entire loaf myself! This stuff is good! I could probably eat this everyday of my life and not get tired of it. Because of the amount of sugar, it comes off pretty sweet, but the moistness (is that a word?) is balanced perfectly between the oil, zucchini, and carrots. We love to make a few loaves of this and take it on car trips to eat or plan to eat for breakfast when we camp.

I am always so impressed with Travis's ability to make up recipes. He usually likes to just throw things together and when it is amazing afterward, I ask, "How did you cook that?" And he will say, "Oh, I just added this and this together." I will ask for a recipe (I love a good recipe) and he will say, "Oh, I don't know exactly how much of everything I added, I just sort of did it." But, he has been kind enough to start writing down the things he is making so that I can recreate them.

I am definitely a recipe maker when it comes to cooking and baking. I like being able to recreate the same thing every time and be confident that it is good. On the one hand this is great because most things I attempt can be good when following the recipe, but on the other hand, if the recipe is bad, I don't catch it until it is too late because I don't have that intuition.

Travis is a recipe inventor. He loves to make up recipes and try new things. He takes recipes he has never made before and changes them as he is cooking and knows by looking at a recipe if it will be good or what he can do to make it better. This means that sometimes he makes AMAZING food! But, when he gets too adventurous he sometimes makes some interesting food...haha. So I guess there are some trade offs to our respective cooking styles.

Travis would only give this recipe 4 stars because he thinks he can improve it to be even better and to come out more consistent every time, but I think it is 5 stars! Like I said before, I could eat all three loaves by myself!


This recipe takes a little bit longer to make because you have to prep the zucchini and carrots. Two and a half cups of zucchini usually comes out to 2 medium-sized store bought zucchinis. For the carrots, I usually use 2 medium sized carrots and peel and dice them. I put 3 or 4 teaspoons of cinnamon and 5 or 6 teaspoons of vanilla extract because we usually love cinnamon and vanilla in all of the things, but you can choose what your preference is.


Tips and Tricks:

Use a mixer on the wet ingredients and add dry ingredients a half a cup at a time to get even mixture before adding zucchini and carrots.

When we use our mixer after adding zucchini and carrots, it really fills it up! So, use a rubber spatula to make sure everything is even throughout the batter before pouring into the bread pans.

When I say grease those pans, I really mean grease them! I use Crisco and just lather it on and put a little flour in to help the bread come out easy.


Be vigilant while baking! I usually start checking every five minutes after 55 minutes in the oven. Make sure a toothpick comes out completely clean before removing from the oven. I usually poke a few different spots because it has happened that I thought it was evenly cooked throughout only to cut later and see part of the top wasn't cooked all the way through!

Allow time to for breads to cool on their sides in the pans before trying to remove them.


Enjoy!

As part of our continuous Valentine's Day date, Travis planned the activity that we would do this year while I planned the dinner. We got to go out last night for dinner, which was great! We stayed out late and had fun together.

When I woke up this morning, this is what I saw...


Normally some wives might be mad at seeing the mess, but I was so happy because I knew what it meant--homemade bread!

Travis told me this week, "To you, the smell of bread is so romantic, so that is what I planned for our Valentine's Day date activity." My man knows me well. Haha.

Bread #1:
English muffins
He woke up early and made homemade English muffins and I have to say, they were PERFECT! They were on the griddle when I came into the kitchen, so I got to see him work his magic when he cooked them.



Travis and I were saying that when you see English muffins in the store, you assume that either a baking master or a machine made them and how can one even attempt to make them look as good at home? But, he definitely did it and they looked and tasted great. We made egg sandwiches and they were very good!


Bread #2:
Ciabatta bread
We have made this recipe before and it is mouth-watering good! Ciabatta bread is always a treat that I spring for when we have some extra grocery money, but since we have learned how to bake it, it is totally cheaper, but just more labor intensive. The starter has to be done the night before and it needs quite a bit of work to knead, but it is a great bread with a nice, oily taste.



Bread #3:
Homemade pizza
For lunch Travis planned on homemade pizza, but he pulled out all the stops. We tried a recipe with feta cheese, prosciutto, mozzarella cheese, sweet peppers, and parmesan. Travis also made the tomato sauce from scratch since we had some extra tomatoes, which was also a treat. Travis says it was the best pizza he has ever tasted. The crust turned out perfectly--not too crunchy and not too chewy.


Bread #4:
Homemade rolls
We have tried a few roll recipes and we have some favorites, but Travis decided to try one more for me and he did most of the work on this one since our baby girl needed some loving and attention this afternoon. It is a french roll that turned out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. We had it as an after dinner snack (because Travis also made a good Jambalaya crock pot dinner). He bought a Fontina cheese to eat with it (we have become lovers of expensive cheese whenever we can get it!) and it tasted really delicious!


I didn't think that I would marry someone who loves to cook and bake this much, but he sure did surprise me this Valentine's Day with some amazing bread!

I can't wait for Valentine's Day so we can finish the third part to our date and one of my favorite Valentine's Day traditions for us! Stay tuned for my last Valentine's Day post :)

I have always told myself that if I ever posted a recipe on a blog that I would ALWAYS post the recipe first because who really wants to scroll through your life story before reading the recipe you posted? Has anyone else ever noticed that recipe blogs have WAY too much commentary before you actually get to the recipe? Well, I decided to change things up, at least on this blog.


I don't know if my mother always baked sugar cookies around Valentine's Day, but I have memories of multiple years of her doing it, so I am calling it a tradition. The part I loved the most about it was she would bake what seemed like a hundred heart-shaped sugar cookies, frost them all pink, and write all of our names on them so you knew that you had cookies just for you. I remember watching her get out the cookie decorating supplies and spell our names onto the cookies. I was always particularly impressed with her ability to fit my long name on cookies. As you can see from my frosting abilities, I do not have cookie decorating gear (maybe one day...), but I am here to say that sometimes simple is best!

Since my mom is known as "Grammie" in our house, I decided to call it Grammie's Sugar Cookies. Also, for some reason my mom has not posted this recipe on her blog, so I decided to do it here.



I especially love this recipe because it is easy! I usually half the recipe because it makes a TON of cookies. I made mostly big hearts and I still got 2-3 dozen out of making just half of the above recipe. I also love that this recipe does not require you to chill the dough. Most sugar cookie recipes say that the validity of the recipe depends on you chilling the dough for at least 2 hours, and in some cases 24. Sometimes we just don't have time for that when we want sugar cookies now! This recipe is perfect for that, but if you need to chill the dough then this recipe works just as well for that too. I also like the vanilla flavor of this recipe and sometimes I double just the vanilla part so I can taste it more.


Sugar cookie tips:

If you want thicker, softer cookies then do not roll the dough to a quarter of an inch and instead try a half an inch. Likewise, if you want thinner, crunchier cookies then roll it out thinner.

If you are using all cookie cutters that are around the same size (like you are using a snowman and a star that are about the same size) then use only one shape when you are cutting it out each time. It helps save on space so you don't have to roll it out so many times.

Put all of the same shape and size on a cookie sheet to cook. The cookies will cook more evenly.

Use parchment paper and light colored baking sheet. Parchment paper makes it easy to remove from cookie sheet and light colored baking sheets prevent burning.

Be vigilant when cooking sugar cookies! The first batch might need 10 minutes, but most likely the second will need less time, especially if they are thinner. The best time to pull them out is when you can BARELY start to see a little brown around the edges.

If you are wanting to do multiple layers of frosting, make sure the first one dries completely--it is better to even wait overnight--before adding the second layer. This also makes it easier if you mess up and you can just scrape off the wet frosting while the dry frosting stays!

You don't need fancy cookie decorating equipment to write words. I only used a ziploc sandwich bag filled with frosting. You can definitely tell, but I think it is still worth doing.



Happy Valentine's Day!

Love,

The Williams Family

One of my good friends is having a baby in January and I wanted to throw her a shower, so I decided to just do it! Sometimes I doubt myself as a hostess because I am not as funny/interesting as I would like to be, but I had so much fun prepping for this that I thought I should do this more often!

In keeping with simplicity, I decided to go with the theme of Fall because who doesn't love Fall?!? Also, my house is decorated in fall colors right now, because of my Christmas tree all year round. Also, I LOVE fall treats and I had fun making all of them (with the help of dear hubby of course!)

So, here are the details:

Decorations:

I decided to try to combine some ideas I found on Pinterest, but to put a twist that would work for me and my budget.
I have always thought that decorating with colored paper to be budget-friendly, but also cute. I made the sign using this template. I printed on fall colored paper and used these letters.
Then it was simple cut and paste and use some string to display it.






For this little string ensemble, I simply bought fall colored onesies from WalMart to match my color scheme and used this pumpkin pattern. I used this pumpkin pattern throughout on the little pumpkin sign, the food signs, this clothing set, and I made a pumpkin strand too.
And here is my Christmas tree decorated for Fall! I loved how it turned out. It is one of my favorites yet. Coming soon is a blog post of my Christmas tree all year round!




Food:

I loved thinking of fall treats to have to go along with the theme. I ended up making:

• Pumpkin Cookies
• Applesauce Raisin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (a favorite family recipe!)
• Snickerdoodle Bread
• Zucchini Bread (my husband's amazing recipe!)

I had a friend bring some fruit and we had apple juice and water. The thing I loved about it is that it was simple, but all very sweet and good!




Gifts:
I have always seen diaper cakes, but never knew how the magic of making them worked, so I did some research on Pinterest and came up with my own way after reading others' ideas.
Here is how I did it:
Materials:
Diapers (I used newborn and size 1. I had a pack of 40 newborn and some leftover size 1 diapers from an already open package, so it came out to being about 24-28 of that size.)
Rubber bands
Toilet paper rolls (One for each diaper cake)
Ribbon (I used two rolls of 9 ft. ribbon for the three diaper cakes shown below)
Toppers (I got the cute pumpkin toppers from the dollar store).

Directions:
1. Start rolling diapers and once you have about 5 rolled, secure a rubber band around all of them. Continue to roll diapers and slide them into the rubber band. For the top layer I used about 7 diapers.
After all 7 diapers are in place, use another rubber band around all of the diapers for that "layer" to make sure they are secure.
Repeat for as many diaper cakes as you want.
2. Arrange the diapers so that the ends are tucked towards the middle and the whitest part is showing on the outside.
3. For the bottom layer, I started with about 5 diapers and secured a rubber band around all of them.  Continue rolling diapers and adding them into the rubber band. I used about 12-15 diapers for the bottom layer. Use additional rubber bands to secure the whole layer.
Repeat for as many diaper cakes as you want. Arrange diapers like the top layers so the ends are tucked towards the middle.
4. Use toilet paper roll to slide halfway over one diaper in the middle of the bottom layer. Then take a top layer and slide the remaining poking out toilet paper roll over a middle diaper. This connects the two layers without having to use tape or glue on the diapers.
It may need a little maneuvering to make the top layer sit just right on the bottom layer.
This was important for me because I didn't want it it to be hard or taxing to take apart.
If you would like to do additional layers, simply use a paper towel roll that is taller to connect more layers or you can use multiple toilet paper rolls between layers.
I wanted to have short diaper cakes and multiple ones to use for decorations all around the party.
5. Now that each cake has the top and bottom layer connected, use ribbon to cover the rubber bands. This is the fun part because you can be creative! You can use thin or thick ribbon and do different combinations!
6. Attach your toppers (if you have them). I attached the pumpkins with one piece of packaging tape. (That was the cheap option), however you can avoid using tape on the diapers by hot gluing your topper to a small dowel and sliding it down into the diaper cake.

And this is what you get! I am happy with how they turned out.


I also got the mother-to-be some thank you cards so that she had something ready to use to write to people.




Games:

We played a version of charades with baby and pregnancy terms.
Round 1: Everyone picks a word or phrase from the bowl and they can describe it. Once everyone has gone, put the words back into the bowl and use the same words for the next round.
Round 2: Only actions! However, players already know the words from round 1, so it is not quite so hard as charades.
Round 3: Use the same words again and have players only say ONE word to describe it.

We only did the first two rounds, but it is fun to do all three as well!
You can come up with your own pregnancy terms or you can use my list.