The Adventures of a Frustrated Baker

Good morning!  Today, we are going to learn to make toffee...real toffee...with a candy thermometer and everything!  Now wait, before you all run and hide - I swear, this will be easy and delicious!  It is even more worth it because we are going to be using the best ingredient EVER - Girl Scout cookies...Samoas to be more precise! It is that time of year...you know the one.  The one where girls begin to knock on your doors asking you in that adorable voice if you'd like to buy some Girl Scout cookies.  I was one of those girls once and I remember just how great it felt to set goals and meet them; to gain confidence that I could get over my shyness and gather my courage to ask someone I didn't know to support Girl Scouts.  It is still one of my favorite times of year but now I am the one behind the girl on the door step watching her grow in confidence and salesmanship.  Plus I'm the cookie mom...I get to play with all the cookies!  Good thing...

For the last few days I have been debating on what to make today.  At first I planned on making some sort of fake out dinner or dessert, you know cause it is April Fool's Day...but I decided I didn't feel like going through all of the effort this year.  I wanted to make something quick and simple, I wanted something sweet and salty, I wanted something crunchy that you could eat with your hands.  That's it! Popcorn...but not just any popcorn.  I based this popcorn on a recipe on Picky Palate's site for Snicker Doodle Popcorn with White Chocolate Drizzle .  It looked delicious and was the perfect snack for our "Girl Party" today.  It was just us girls today at home and Tangled just came out on DVD...so we just had to watch it...and make some popcorn, apparently this makes it a party, or so my daughter says. Note the cream...I left mine out because I felt the white chocolate chips didn't need it with how thin the caramel sauce was....

The other day I had a craving for something oober chocolatey and began my search by going to a few of my favorite food blogs and searching for brownie recipes.  There were tons of yummy looking ones, but the all time best came from the  Big Red Kitchen .  I love this blog as there are so many yummy, quick recipes including her recipe for the following Knock You Naked brownies. Knock You Naked Brownies 1 devil's food cake mix 2/3 cup condensed milk 3/4 cup melted butter 14 ounce bag of caramels 1 cup chocolate chips 1 cup pecan pieces, or other type of nuts (optional) Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Mix together the cake mix, 1/3 cup of condensed milk and melted butter in a large mixing bowl.  The mixture will be on the thick side, in fact mine seemed super thick so I added another 1/4 cup melted butter.  Spread half of this mixture in the baking pan and place in the oven for 7 minutes. Nex...