Here are a few things Chuck Norris and these “brownies” have in common:

• You don’t find them, they find you.
• Both can kill you with a simple stare.
• Under their ‘beard’ lies another fist.
• They’re both rugged at first, but are sweet once you get to know them (or so they say).
• And so on and so forth…

In other words, make sure you’re wearing your big boy pants before digging in. On a more serious note, this dessert was born from my curiosity to play with opposites.

I wanted something that was chewy but crunchy, sweet but salty. After throwing a few ideas around and creating a few sketches, I decided on a brownie mixture that included caramel, extra chocolate, pretzels, and marshmallows.

» Finish reading Caramel Comatose Thunder Brownies Recipe at TheCookingDish.com. »

© Chris Mower for The Cooking Dish, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baking, Brownie Mix, Brownie Recipe, Caramel, Caramel Brownies, Chocolate, Chocolate Brownie, Comatose, Desserts, Food and Drink, Fudge Brownies, Homemade Caramel, Marshmallow, Pretzel, Snacks, Thunder

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The Christmas treats I’m sharing today are some of my favorites for many reasons:

• They are festive and come out of the oven dressed to party.
• They’re extremely easy to make.
• The masses love them. So do the non-masses.
• You can take them to work and your co-workers will love you.
• They make your house smell divine.
• They can tell the future, and so much more!

I should warn you though. They also have an identity crisis, and I’m afraid it confuses the children. After eating these, my kids have been known to say some pretty odd things. Check these doozies out.

» Finish reading Holiday Squares (Sunshine Bars) Recipe at TheCookingDish.com. »

© Chris Mower for The Cooking Dish, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Baking, Christmas Recipe, Christmas Seasons, Extra Nice, Family Favorites, Holiday, Holiday Square, List, Orange Juice, Oranges, Recipes, Squares, Sunshine, Sunshine Bars, Tasty Dessert

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Growing up my family spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. We’d take week long camping trips high up into the mountains where we’d spend time digging in the dirt, fishing, canoeing, laughing, swimming in the lake and river, riding horses, playing horse shoes, and just chillin’. Those are some of my favorite memories. And oh, the stories I could tell, like the one time when I accidentally seared my brother’s ear with a hot, flaming stick of death… but we won’t go into details. It really was an accident…

Let’s move on. My mom is an excellent cook, and that’s an understatement. We always looked forward to dinner in the mountains because we loved eating her cast iron dutch oven cooking. Some of my favorite dishes included chicken, potatoes, bacon, peach cobbler, donuts, and bread. My two favorites were peach cobbler and donuts. (The treats, of course!)

Just the other night, the hankerin’ to eat some of those donuts again sneaked into my appetite, so I set to it. Now, the best part of this donut recipe is that it’s effortless… seriously, it’s super fast, super delicious, and easy enough that the kids can help. Hard to beat that, and when the kids have fun, it makes it even more enjoyable. My daughter Maggie helps me make these for family night on occasion. If a camp fire isn’t readily available, you can still cook these on the stove top. As always, you can print this recipe out at the end of this post.

And just for the record I can never decide if I should spell donuts like I just did or like this: doughnuts. so I’m not very consistent throughout this post.

Enjoy, and try not to salivate on your keyboard.

» Finish reading How to Make Donuts in 15 minutes at TheCookingDish.com. »

© Chris Mower for The Cooking Dish, 2010. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bread, Quick Foods, Snacks

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And now that I’m in the middle of writing this post, I realize I don’t have much else to say about it. Give this recipe a try, it really is good (that’s supposed to be convincing, by the way). On another note, after taking a picture of this delicious pumpkin dessert I decided that I needed to buy some different dishes for taking pictures in the fall. I think sunflowers are a little out of season, ha ha.

» Finish reading How to Make Pumpkin-Swirl Cheesecake at TheCookingDish.com. »

© Chris Mower for The Cooking Dish, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cheesecake, Fall, Nuts, Pumpkin

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Well for those of you who are Girl Scout Cookie addicts like myself, your once-a-year wait is over. The other day while reading an article at BakingBites.com, I stumbled across a recipe to make homemade Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mints. A few days later around 9:00 p.m. I decided to make the thin mints. I should have read the entire recipe first because they take a while to make and I was up pretty late, but it was worth it. The cookies are a pretty darn good replication of the original Girl Scout Thin Mints.

» Finish reading How to Make Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies at TheCookingDish.com. »

© Chris Mower for The Cooking Dish, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chocolate, Cookies, Girl Scouts, Mint

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Alright! I’m finally posting my ninja birthday cake. For my birthday this year I was feeling a bit adventurous, wanting to deviate from the normal simple birthday cake and try something new and creative. I started searching the web for creative birthday cakes and came across a number of ‘mad hatter’ cakes (the kind that look lopsided as the cake ascends), but decided I didn’t have enough time to do that between my full-time job and only three days left before my birthday. Amidst this searching, the idea struck me to create a ninja cake. I drew out some ideas on a paper and finally decided on a simple double-layered chocolate cake with buttercream icing and marshmallow fondant. This was my first time working with fondant, and I found it rather enjoyable. I’ll share some lessons I learned when working with it a bit later.

Making the Marshmallow Fondant
I found an excellent Marshmallow Fondant recipe posted on Peggy Weaver’s Baking Corner. One of the reasons I chose this recipe is that it had detailed instructions and tips of how she makes the fondant work for her. So, here I am doing that fondant thang:
» Finish reading Ninja Birthday Cake with Fondant at TheCookingDish.com. »

© Chris Mower for The Cooking Dish, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cake, Fondant, Marshmallow

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