Chocolate Covered Banana Split Skewers

Birthdays in the office = treats! Needing to make a gluten free friendly recipe, I settled on banana split skewers.

Too Easy Peanut Butter M&M Bars

Quick share today - yummy peanut butter M&M bars. I made these for our recent Canton camping trip, and they were a total hit!

Mini Fruit Pizza Cups

One of my co-workers recently resigned to embark upon a new opportunity, so for a celebratory going away treat, I put on my Betty Crocker hat. Since my schedule was pretty full at the time with pre-vacation to-do's, I opted for a super simple (only 4 ingredients), delicious mini fruit pizza cup recipe.
 

Jeff’s Birthday and Sinful Chocolate Cake

In celebration of one year closer to 30, we enjoyed Jeff's birthday with an infamous Germenis cookout. On the menu: beer-can chicken, smoked pork loin, jalapeño snackers, homemade mac-n-cheese, caesar salad and sinful chocolate cake.

Jeff handled the meat on our beloved longhorn smoker. He outdid himself on the chicken and presented the pork perfectly.

Cream Cheese Marshmallow Puff Fruit Dip

When I was little my grandmother used to make cream cheese and marshmallow cream puff fruit dip, and I used to devour it. Now that I'm older, I still devour it. So when we had a fruit spread at work, I lathered my berries in what I thought was my favorite dip, but to my surprise, it was actually Jason's Deli yogurt dip (totally not the same, by the way). Even more to my surprise during the debacle, I learned that some of my co-workers had never even had the cream cheese fruit dip I spoke of. What??? Never??? Not acceptable on my watch.

To easily fix the scenario of deprived bellies and to sway my co-workers towards a cream cheese fruit dip obsession, I vowed to make the snack for a work meeting. So at 10:30 a.m. on a Monday morning, we chowed!

Pardon the fact that mine is pink. I really needed to dispose of the Einstein’s strawberry shmear in my fridge.

The Oster "My Blend" Personal Blender + Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie Recipe

I normally like a pretty simple breakfast, and amongst the simple breakfast things I like are smoothies. They're like a one stop shop for all the things yummy, healthy or not. Unfortunately, the reality is that I don't have the money to go out and buy smoothies every morning nor do I want to spend the time cleaning up a blender. No worries though because I found the perfect smoothie solution: the Oster "My Blend" Personal Blender. Yes, this technically IS a type of blender, but it is way niftier than that. Here's how it works:

1. Fill the bottle with smoothie ingredients.

Peanut Butter Banana S'mores a la Mode

What do you get when you cross a banana with Hershey's chocolate with marshmallows with peanut butter with vanilla ice cream with Graham crackers? You got it, a melt-in-your-mouth, too-good-for-the-tummy, gain a thousand calories, love-every-minute-of-it dessert. Inspired by a recent grilled banana s'mores pin and tempted by the leftover camping s'mores ingredients in my pantry, I turned on my inner Betty Crocker and whipped up my own spin on the classic s'mores.

Ingredients

• Banana(s)
• Peanut butter
• Hershey's chocolate or chocolate chips
• Marshmallows
• Graham crackers (crushed)
• Vanilla Ice cream 

Version 1

For my first effort, I made a dish that closely resembled the grilled banana s'mores I saw on Pinterest.

1. Set oven to broil
2. Set banana on an oven-safe dish (support as needed with foil)
3. Cut banana down the middle lengthwise (try to not break in half)

Jeff's Birthday and a Belly Full of Pie

Jeff's birthday was on January 2nd and I was feeling like Martha Stewart. Even though I asked him what kind of birthday cake he wanted, I really had already made up my mind that I was going to make my first ever apple pie. I figured if I paired it with vanilla bean ice cream then it would be a mega hit for Jeff.

Well rather than googling a sub-par pie recipe, I decided to look one up in one of Jeff's mom's Southern Living magazines. The first one I came to was a blackberry-apple pie. Sounded like a winner to me.

I was so antsy to start baking that as soon as Jeff's dad came back from HEB I began my attack. Thank goodness I did because it took me HOURS to make to make two pies. Holy heck, no wonder people buy dessert from the frozen section.

I first had to core, peel and slice about 24 pounds of apples. Luckily Leslie had a nifty Pampered Chef gadget to help (but that's an entirely different subject for an entirely different post).