PW's perfect iced coffee

Last summer, I had a strict morning routine. Get up, get ready for work, get the kids ready for their day, leave the house, stop at a coffee shop drive-thru for an iced coffee, and proceed to work.  I did this every day. Without fail. 

I am like the tides.  And I like my iced coffee, okay? Scratch that, I need my iced coffee. Daily.

However, that daily iced coffee routine was cutting into my summer fun (read: yard sales) budget in a big way, and I'm sure it wasn't helping my waistline either.  This summer, in order to have both my daily iced coffee and money for yard sale purchases, I decided to make my own iced coffee rather than dropping $5.00 at Dunkin' Donuts each morning.  Enter The Pioneer Woman's perfect iced coffee recipe. 

 I gave it a try, and I love love love it! It has saved my mornings and my budget.  All you need to make it is coffee grounds and water, and then whatever accompaniments you demand of your caffeine serving. I like half-and-half along with a splash of caramel flavor in my iced coffee. 

See?

After I took the above picture, I realized that some of the ingredients are hard to see.  So I rearranged everything on another countertop and took another picture:

You can see the ingredients and final product, but everything is blurry. When it comes to photography, I am certainly not The Pioneer Woman. Though it might help if I drank the iced coffee before I started snapping pictures in the morning.

Note to self: caffeine intake first, taking pictures second.

I am really happy with this iced coffee recipe. Not only does it taste exactly like what I used to buy at the drive-thru each morning, but it costs a LOT less.  Seriously, the savings is amazing! Last summer, I spent $20-25 each week just on iced coffee. This year, I spent just $20 on ingredients to make iced coffee all summer long. You do the math!

Really, math isn't my thing. You do it.

And give PW's perfect iced coffee recipe a try. You'll be glad you did!

Desserts for BUNCO

I play BUNCO once a month with a lovely, and sometimes rowdy, group of ladies. We each bring a dish and eat/gab for an hour or so before we start playing. It should come as no surprise to you that 90% of the time, I bring a dessert.

For April BUNCO, I made this amazing Cookie Dough Dip from Add a Pinch (her photo, not mine):

I don't have any photos of my version because every time I went to take a picture, I ended up eating some.  It was so rich and so, so good!  If you need a quick dessert to take to a potluck or summer outing, then this is it!  I served my cookie dip with plain animal crackers, chocolate animal crackers and graham crackers.  I liked it on graham crackers the best, but let's be clear: the cookie is just the delivery device for the dip. The dip is the star here!

Then, for May BUNCO, I made Pioneer Woman's Knock You Naked Brownies (again, her picture, not mine):

These brownies start with a boxed cake mix and turn into something so much more.  These brownies are so rich, so delicious, that they really do almost knock you naked. Even if it's because you eat so many that your clothes no longer fit and you have to run around naked and when you go to the store to buy new clothes you end up buying more ingredients to make more brownies.

In unrelated news, I'm trying to make muumuus the big fashion hit of this summer. Stay tuned. 

PW notes that this dough is really thick, and she mentions shaping a glob for the top layer of brownie with her hands.  My solution is much neater than that: flatten the glob between two sheets of waxed paper for less mess.

Finally, while PW's recipe calls for baking the bottom layer for eight minutes before adding the caramels and top brownie layer, I skipped that step and just baked the whole thing at once. It turned out just fine.

Give these two desserts a try--you'll be glad you did!

PW's Bananas Foster

Do you read The Pioneer Woman? Why am I even asking?...nearly everyone does. If you don't, you need to know that Ree (the Pioneer Woman) is very funny and one heck of a cook.  She has an entire section of her blog dedicated to recipes, and she recently posted her version of Bananas Foster.  

I had Bananas Foster in a restaurant once, loved it, and never had the opportunity to try it again. When I found the recipe on her site, I just had to make it in my own kitchen.  With butter, brown sugar, heavy cream, pecans, cinnamon, dark rum and bananas, you really just can't go wrong!  Setting the whole thing on fire is a tad nerve-racking, but a must.  And if I can do it without burning my house down, so can you! Just be careful!

Ree's recipe makes a great deal of sauce, so much that it can easily accommodate four bananas instead of her recommended two.  And, should you have leftover sauce (minus the bananas), know that it stores really well in the fridge for several days. 

Bananas Foster is absolutely amazing over vanilla ice cream.  In fact, this is my new favorite dessert...which is REALLY BIZARRE considering that there's no chocolate to be found here. 

If you're looking for a way to expand your dessert repertoire, or maybe you just want to set something on fire, give this recipe a try.  It's delicious!