Pumpkin Spice Truffles

I recently saw these in a friend's pictures on facebook, and had to have the recipe. They were actually quite easy. I modified what she said to do slightly.

What you need:

1 box spice cake, baked according to directions
1 jar cream cheese frosting
1 bottle of pumpkin spice creamer
3 packages of Baker's chocolate

What you do:

Break up the cake and put it all in a mixing bowl. Start the paddle mixing and slowly add about 1/3 of the creamer.

Now add about 1/3 of the frosting, keeping the mixer constantly going.

Add another 1/3 of the creamer.

And now another 1/3 of the frosting.

This got it to about the right consistency for me. Honestly, I was just figuring that out as I went. If you have made cake balls before, you will know when the consistency is right. If not - make sure it seems like a truffle's inside, rather than spongy and cakey.

Once mixed evenly, put in the freezer to chill for a bit. The colder the mix, the easier it is to form balls.

When you are ready to form the balls, line a cookie sheet with wax paper, and roll the mix into about 1" balls (or whatever looks right to you for truffles).

Pop them into the fridge to stay cool while you fill up the rest of your sheets (this made three full sheets for me).

To melt the chocolate, get a small pot with a bit of water boiling, and place a bowl slightly larger than the pot on top. Put the chocolate in the bowl and let it melt. This is the best way to melt chocolate without burning it. Trust me, I am speaking from experience.

Drop each ball in and roll it around until coated, then remove. I use a fork to do this part.

I sprinkled jimmies on top of them. Here is the finished product:

And the taste? If you have tried the pumpkin spice kisses Hershey's has, they taste like those dipped in chocolate. I still like the oreo truffles better, but these are pretty damn good as well.

Halloween Brownie Bites

Happy Halloween!

Okay, I know, I'm a bit early. But I love this holiday. Truthfully, I love all holidays. But Halloween especially. I always have, and not just because of the candy. I looked forward to dressing up every year. I don't get to dress up much anymore, since most adults I know don't like to. Boo to them! We will be having a few friends over this year, and I am still trying to decide if I will dress up or not. Only one other person wants to, so it would just be the two of us. We'll see.

For now, back to the point of this post - brownies! At Target a few weeks back, my mom and I stumbled upon Candy Corn Hershey Kisses, as well as Pumpkin Spice Hershey Kisses. I just had to buy them and try them out!

The pumpkin spice ones are amazing. I could each a whole bag in an hour. I am still trying to decide what to bake with those. The candy corn kisses are very sweet. They taste a lot like frosting. We aren't crazy about eating them plain, but I figured they would be great to bake with!

These were really easy to make. I just used a boxed brownie mix and mixed it per the directions. I used a mini muffin tray and filled each cup about 3/4 full. I also shaved a bit of time off the baking, and just kept an eye on them. I think they called for 49-55 minutes, and I only baked them for about 40. When they came out I pressed a kiss into the top of each. The kisses melted a bit, which I was hoping would happen. They are totally cute and taste great!

P.S. They are especially great for those who like the edge pieces of brownies best, since they are all harder on the edges. Yum!

Apple Cranberry Crisp

After apple picking last weekend, K and I baked up a crisp... or rather, 7 crisps. It's not as crazy as it sounds, we made 6 individual ones, and put the rest in a pie plate :-)

We found this recipe on food network's website (my main source for any kind of recipe - baking or cooking). It is actually Pear, Apple, and Cranberry Crisp. It calls for 4 pears and 6 apples, but we skipped the pears all together and just used 6 large apples instead. It was plenty!

Everything else we followed by the recipe. It was ah-may-zing. I definitely plan to make it for Thanksgiving this year!

As good as it was, it was incredibly sweet. It probably didn't help that the macouns we picked were wicked sweet to begin with. I think next time around, I will skip the sugar in the apple mixture. The topping I will keep the same, even though it is a lot of sugar. It has a great texture, so I don't want to change that.

Unfortunately I only have this crap quality picture because I only took one on my phone.

We had J&K and my parents over for dinner, so for dessert we each had our own personal crisp! I am not a fan of vanilla anything, so while everyone else enjoyed theirs with french vanilla ice cream, I had caramel ice cream with mine - yum! I definitely look forward to eating this again on Turkey Day :-)

My favorite thing about fall...

...well okay, I guess it's really tied for my favorite thing, with about eleventybillion other things. I've realized lately that fall truly is my favorite season, for so many reasons. But one of my many favorite things about fall is apple picking. J and I try to go every fall. This year K (FSIL) came along with us while my brother worked. We took the pups, and it was so much fun!

A tip, if you are planning on going in the northeast, is that because of all of the rain we had the macs are really behind this year. So wait another month. But we got macouns instead, and oh man are they good! J and I are not huge fans of macs because they are so soft. The macouns have the great taste of macs (even sweeter actually) but still have a nice crunch to them. I highly recommend trying them out.

After picking, K and I got to work making a totally yummalicious apple crisp. I'll do a separate entry about that later.

Oh and have I mentioned how Billy loves apples? The first year we had him, we took him and he kept trying to eat all of the apples on the ground under the trees! It was the cutest thing ever! This time he was too busy sniffing who knows what the whole time, but as soon as we got home he gladly ate the core from my apple I had just eaten :-)

Then...

And now :-)

Nothing new to report in TTC land.. I am putting on my happy face and waiting as patiently as I possibly can. I am pretty sure I o'd yesterday, so it looks like I'll have to wait to see if he is ready next cycle instead. ::sigh:: We'll see!