Book club is a hit at Courtney's new home!

Courtney hosts an entertaining book club at her new home.  It is always good to see everyone, catch up and eat good food.

Courtney made a delicious main dish:  Sweet Potato, Kale, and Sausage
http://pinchofyum.com/sweet-potato-kale-sausage-bake-white-cheese-sauce. 

This was followed by 2 great desserts.  Thanks to Courtney for the Healthy No Bake Snickerdoodle Bites:
http://thebigmansworld.com/2015/10/01/healthy-no-bake-snickerdoodle-bites/

And Lauren for the Pumpkin Brownies:
http://cookiesandcups.com/2-ingredient-pumpkin-brownies/

Happy Eating and Reading ;)

Delicious eats in Del Mar

I think the desserts took the prize this time around...oh wait or is that every time ;)

Zoe provided an amazing Strawberry Bread:

Strawberry Bread

Ingredients
1 ½ cups fresh strawberries, sliced
1 cup sugar
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup melted butter (1 stick)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350.  Lightly grease a standard loaf pan (8”x5” approx.)  Rinse, core and slice the strawberries, place in a small bowl and sprinkle with ½ cup sugar. In a large bowl, blend together the remaining sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  In a medium bowl, beat the eggs until foamy, then add the vanilla and melted butter.  Make sure the melted butter isn’t too hot- just barely melted.  Stir in the strawberries.  Combine the two mixtures, blending until the dry ingredients are moistened.  Pour into the pan and bake for 60 -70 min, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  

Lara made her now famous fudgy hot tamale brownies....YUM!

Her recipe was adapted from this one: http://www.somethingswanky.com/fudgey-chocolate-chunk-brownies/

**Lara says "Two things to note, I used a whole bag of dark chocolate chips, and also added a whole box of hot tamales candy!"

Lauren made delicious Raw Fig Bars:
http://www.thehealthymaven.com/2014/09/raw-fig-bars.html#_a5y_p=2339836

Bits's Delicious Brownies

BITS's DELICIOUS BROWNIES (shared by Megan Bitsoff)

Here are my very special ingredients:

Buy Betty Crocker brownie mix with chocolate icing.

Spoon some dollops of peanut butter into the brownie mix and marbalize by swirling it around with your knife.

Bake. Ice. Eat more than you should! ;)

Decadent Double Chip Brownies

Decadent Double Chip Brownies (shared by Zoe)

Perfect for chocolate lovers!

Ingredients:

¾ cup Hershey’s Cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

2/3 cup butter or margarine, melted

½ cup boiling water

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup Milk Chocolate chips

1 cup Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips (I leave these out, but peanut butter lovers will no doubt enjoy including these)

1. Heat over to 350 degrees F.  Grease 13x9x2 inch baking pan.
2. Stir together cocoa and baking soda in a large bowl; stir in 1/3 cup melted butter.
3. Add boiling water; stir until mixture thickens. 
4. Stir in sugar, eggs and remaining 1/3 cup melted butter, stir until smooth. 
5. Add flour, vanilla and salt; blend thoroughly
6. Stir in chocolate chips (and peanut butter chips if using.) 
7. Spread mixture in prepared pan.  Bake 35 minutes maximum or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.  Cool and cut into squares.  (I’ve found that 35 min is the ideal bake time, no more. The brownies come out crispy on top but deliciously gooey in the middle.)