Laurie’s Valentine Party & Tablescape Thursday!

On Friday besides visiting Laurie’s Party head over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog where I’ve posted the recipe for this dessert that would be great for Valentine’s Day! Remember the recipe won’t be posted till Friday!

Now for some possibilities for a Valentine Day scape!

 

 

 

This was last years bar scape that Dear and I had our Valentine’s Day dinner at…

 

 

 

 

 

Another possibility without red…

 

 

 

Here are the two cutest Valentine’s in love that I know!! My parents who have been married for 66 years!

 

Hoping you have a Valentine’s Weekend filled with lots of love for all the people in your life.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Loaded Nestle Toll House Cookies!

Our Canadian Friends celebrated Canada Day on Wednesday and today our U.S. friends are celebrating the 4th of July, Independence Day! Happy 4th of July everyone.

 

Because they are an American Favorite I’m posting these Chocolate Chip Cookies with a loaded twist  in honor of the 4th of July on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog!  Click on over to the MGCC blog and check it out.

Today we’re having a nice crowd over to celebrate the 4th with us. The weather is hot for Washington and we’ll be working on keeping cool on the deck. Dear is barbecuing Tri-Tip for sandwiches and we’re having some great sides contributed by our guests! The best thing is having good friends enjoying each others company along with good food and drink! We hope all our U.S. friends have a great celebration.

Happy 4th of July!

God bless the U.S.A. and Canada!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Foodie Friday ~ Cherry Platz

It’s time to get your cooking on for Foodie Friday. Gollum at Designs by Gollum is our trusty hostess for this event. Oh I forgot the theme this week is cakes but this can qualify as a big sheet cake or we’ll call it coffee cake!

 

I decided to try Betty R.’s recipe for Cookie Sheet Cherry Platz for my treat for our Women’s Bible Study this Friday. To see the whole recipe and Betty’s pretty Platz click on over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog. Here are my collages from my prep and the results…

 

I should have followed Betty’s lead and used a can and a half of the filling. I felt mine was a little short.

 

This recipe makes a nice large cookie sheet of Platz to cut up and serve a crowd. I hope the ladies like it. It sure looks good enough to eat!

For more Foodies visit Gollum at Designs by Gollum.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Magic Bars ~

We were having a family get together on Saturday and I decided to try this recipe for Magic Bars that I saw on Trish’s blog and that she posted on the MGCC blog (Mennonite Girls Can Cook). I blew it right off the top cuz I only bought one package of Fig Newtons and 42 Fig Newtons means you need 2 packages! Hey did y’all know that Oreos come in a Golden Variety??

Magic Bars with a twist by ellen b.

45 Newton cookies/ Strawberry or Raspberry/ Trish and I used Fig (you’ll need 2 packages)
1 (14oz.) can of sweetened condensed milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup pecan pieces (walnuts would work, too)
8 Golden Oreos or regular ones if you can’t find the Golden broken up into pieces
1/4 cup shredded coconut (Lana and Steve B. you can omit the coconut!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment paper. Lay Newtons side by side in pan to fill bottom. (Here’s where I went wrong so I improvised and used the Golden Oreo’s to fill the rest of the pan. Yikes I hope they turn out ok… Pour condensed milk over the top of this layer.

Yep one package left me a little short…

Sorry to say as creative as this improvise was it did not work!!

Stir together chocolate chips, nuts, broken up pieces of Oreos, and coconut. Sprinkle over the Newtons and condensed milk.

 

Bake for 22-25 minutes. Let cool and then chill for a while. Cut into 24 bars.

The finished product out of the oven. The Fig Newton side cut well into squares but here’s the improvised side…

Thankfully there were enough bars to share from the Newton side…

 

These were easy and good when you follow the recipe and buy enough Fig Newtons. The Fig flavor was well received but I’m thinking I’ll try Raspberry next time. Enjoy…

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I posted on my blog from 2007-2015 hostage and replaced them with big black and grey boxes with threats. So discouraging…as I’m slowly trying to clean up thousands of posts!