secret recipe club: vanilla peach bars

for this, my last and final secret recipe club choice, i first chose this upside down peach cake from amanda at dancing veggies. amanda's blog is full of vegetarian recipes and i had never made a cake without eggs before. but i had a different, major problem. the last few cakes i've made, i've thought they were done, taken them out of the oven, just to cut into them later to find them gooey inside. this time, my cake wasn't even close to being done. and just like the other times, i didn't know until after i had turned it out, let it cool, and took out the first slice. what a bummer. the two inches around the outside edge were cooked & delicious. my advice to those of you want to make it: make sure it's really done. and if you aren't sure, bake it another five minutes. oh, and let it cool in the pan about 15 minutes before turning it out.

secret recipe club: 1 hour cinnamon swirl bread with honey butter

we are total carboholics in our house, especially the boys, who have never met a bread product they didn't like. bread, monkey bread, stuffed bread, bagels, croissants, biscuits, english muffins, buns, cornbread, pancakes, fried donuts, baked donuts, muffins, waffles and too many scones to count, they love them all, both sweet and savory. sometimes, we have to hide loaves of bread or packages of rolls out of our youngest's view, or else he won't eat his dinner. 

before the kids were born, i had time to putz around and make a yeasty loaf of bread. now, not so much. as soon as i saw this recipe promising fresh baked bread at home in an hour(!!!) from lori at lori's culinary creations, i was set. the one thing it needed: a heavy dose of cinnamon and sugar.

secret recipe club: peanut butter ice cream pie with homemade hot fudge

for this month's secret recipe club pick from cindy at hun...what's for dinner?, i started my search looking for two things: a great weeknight dinner and a new cookie. as a result, these bbq cola beef sandwiches almost made in into our rotation last week (i love using my slow cooker in the summer, and these sandwiches look perfect), along with these peanut butter, chocolate chip & pretzel bars until i just so happened to stumble upon these frozen peanut butter cups and the sandwiches and bars flew out the window! my initial thought was that the only thing these were missing was chocolate ice cream. i remedied that and made one of my favorite combos. 

secret recipe club: salted totally chocolate chocolate chip cookies

for this month's secret recipe club pick at my hobbie lobbie, i had a couple recipes picked out: baked fish in mushroom sauce [i'm always on the lookout for simple, delicious ways to prepare fish, and mushrooms are always a hit in this house], savory french toast [think baked french toast casserole with peppers, onions, and cheese], monster cookies [chocolate chips + peanut butter + oats + M&Ms] and these totally chocolate chocolate chip cookies [melted chocolate & cocoa in the batter with dark chocolate chips mixed in]. i woke up one saturday morning all ready to make the savory french toast, when i realized i was missing one - arguably the - key ingredient: bread. so i settled - if i can even call it settling, when so much chocolate is involved - on the totally chocolate chocolate chip cookies. the only change i made was to convert the ingredients from metric to US measurements using my kitchen scale & i added a sprinkle of sea salt to the top of half the cookies. i loved the salt, jason didn't care for it, but we all agreed the cookies are delicious.

my week in food

here's a summary of everything i made & we ate over the last week. enjoy!