Don’t lie. How many Cadbury Creme Eggs have you eaten in the past week? Well, in case you need one more but your stash has run out, try these.

P.S. I remembered to take pictures of these as we were leaving the house for the family gathering. Can you tell? 🙂

INGREDIENTS
Brownies
⅔ C flour
2 Tbls cocoa powder
½ tsp salt
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
½ C unsalted butter
½ C sugar
½ C light brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream Filling
¼ C light corn syrup
2 Tbls unsalted butter, room temperature
½ tsp vanilla extract
⅛ tsp salt
1 C powdered sugar
yellow food coloring

Glaze
3 oz milk chocolate, chopped
2 Tbls unsalted butter, cut into cubes
½ tsp shortening (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Brownies

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. Line the bottom and sides of an 8” x 8” pan with parchment paper.
3. Sift together flour, cocoa, and salt into a small bowl.
4. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat. Stir until completely melted and smooth. Immediately remove from heat.
5. Whisk in sugars and stir until dissolved. Let mixture cool for a few min.
6. Whisk in eggs and vanilla.
7. Sprinkle flour mixture over top and fold into chocolate mixture until just combined.
8. Pour into prepared pan.
9. Bake for 25-30 min or until toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
10. Transfer pan to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Creme Filling

1. Beat butter, corn syrup, vanilla, and salt on medium-high speed until smooth.
2. Slowly add powdered sugar, mixing until creamy.
3. Pour ¾ of the cream mixture on top of cooled brownies and spread into an evenly.
4. Add a few drops of yellow food coloring to remaining cream mixture and stir until evenly colored.
5. Drop spoonfuls of yellow cream on top of white layer, and then swirl gently with a spatula.
6. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until set.

Chocolate Glaze

1. Melt chocolate, butter, and shortening over low heat in a small saucepan and stir until smooth.
2. Pour over cream filling, carefully spreading into a thin, even layer.
3. Refrigerate and chill until set, at least 30 minutes.
4. Remove brownies from pan using the edges of the parchment paper to lift the entire block out of the pan. Using a large sharp knife, cut into 2-inch squares.

NOTES

Makes 16 brownies

Slightly adapted from Love & Olive Oil

Keep brownies refrigerated.

March 25

Our little guy’s second plane ride and he only made mama get up twice during the flight! Andy and I took our Babymoon to Austin for a whole week! It was fantastic. We probably planned too much and definitely ate too much but I joked that I’d gain all my pregnancy weight on the trip. We’ll see what the scale says upon return. We’ve been staying plenty active to help negate some of the indulging.

Baby Ruf has been doing some serious acrobatics this week. One night, Andy was fast asleep and I’m sitting up giggling in bed because I was watching my stomach move. I swear he was dancing or something. I finally woke Andy up because it was too much fun not to share.

Leg cramps. Charlie Horses. Whatever you call them. OUCH! I’ve been getting these almost every night. It could be from all the walking but I hope these don’t last.

Other than that, not much going on here. I’m feeling pretty good and my energy levels are hanging in there. Just happy to have had a real vacation where both of us could completely check out and just have fun. Scared to think about going back to work!

And look! The belly kind of grew (pardon the first day of vacation sleepy eyes and the white legs).

After a week of vacation and catching up, I’m back in the kitchen. Watch out!

Here’s a super delicious and easy recipe that’s great for a potluck. I’ve made this many times and it’s always a crowd-pleaser. It’s probably the most moist cake you’ve ever tasted. Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS
1 (18.25 oz) package white cake mix
1 (14 oz) can cream of coconut
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (16 oz) package frozen whipped topping, thawed
8 oz flaked coconut

DIRECTIONS

1. Prepare and bake cake according to directions.
2. Remove cake from oven. Keep the oven on.
3. While still hot, poke lots of holes all over the cake.
4. Mix cream of coconut and sweetened condensed milk together. Pour over the top of the hot cake.
5. While waiting for the cake to cool, spread coconut on baking sheet and cook for 5-7 min. Toss a few times while cooking. Watch VERY carefully as it will burn quickly.
6. Let cake cool completely then frost with the whipped topping and top with the toasted, flaked coconut.
7. Keep cake refrigerated.

NOTES
18 (or more) servings

Slightly adapted from Duncan Hines

March 18

Remember that bump that appeared last week? I think it’s now doubled. This should have been a hint. I went into the office one day this week and the reaction of a male coworker was “Whoa!” 

We also had our 24 week appointment. It was supposed to be the standard appointment plus the follow-up from the anatomy scan they couldn’t finish at 20 weeks. Unfortunately, the doc’s office messed up our appointment and didn’t have us scheduled for the ultrasound. When I asked the doctor about it, her response was “Well, we’d only be checking for things like cleft palette and things like that so, we wouldn’t be doing anything until after the birth anyway.” Yeah, sorry. We still care and would actually like to know things like that ahead of time so maybe we could talk to a doctor or a surgeon. Ugh…frustrating. We had to pretty much beg to see the little guy but it wasn’t the ultrasound tech so they couldn’t finish the anatomy scan. Either way, we got to see him and yep, it’s still a boy!

After the appointment we traveled into DC to see the cherry blossoms. The weather was perfect and the blossoms were stunning. I’ll have a blog and lots of pictures up soon.

The nursery is making progress, and thankfully I’m not feeling stressed about it. After my questions about finding some cheaper nursery furniture, a few ideas came up. A friend made a suggestion about a store I’d never heard about, we found a changing table and bookshelf on Craigslist, and Andy’s coworker was selling their crib. SCORE!!! Andy has a little work to do on the changing table and bookshelf, but overall it’s in great shape.

We bought something for the little guy’s room. Here’s a sneak peak.

Perfect for a Maryland boy! After finding this, the overall look of the nursery is going to change but just a bit. We’re now going with white furniture instead of a dark wood.

Now to decide the rest…

March 11

A VERY good week.

#1 We’ve got a REAL bump. It seemed to appear within a day…on Monday. Maybe it was the Mexican food and eating out for two days over the weekend, but it’s here!

#2 Andy got to feel the baby kicking! We were sitting in the office and I felt a pretty strong kick (it could be a punch but if the baby is punching that hard already, we’ve got problems). I told Andy to come over and put his hand on my belly and Baby Ruf started kicking again. Love it!

With the good, has to come the bad, right?

Pains. Working out has been a bit painful, but before you yell at me to stop, sitting hurts too. It’s just things stretching in there and making the bump.

Weight gain. Bummer. It had to happen sometime, but in the past two weeks, I’ve gained a few pounds. That puts me at a total of 9 and it’s not all baby. 😦 As long as I continue to eat well (with a few splurges, of course) and keep up my working out, nothing else I can do! Yes, I know I’m growing a baby, but seeing the scale go up is still never fun to see.

In preparation for our trip to Austin, I made these granola bars for some on-the-go snacks. I loved them AND so did Andy. They were the right combination of salty and sweet while adding a ton of healthy ingredients. I made just a few small tweaks to the recipe. Thanks Amanda for picking these. It was perfect timing.

On another note…as a participant in Project Pastry Queen, maybe I should have know this, but Rebecca Rather has closed her cafe!!!! I was going to surprise everyone with a post of all the things we tried but when I looked up the address, I was completely bummed. It closed in December. After living in Austin for two years, I never made it (it’s about an hour away) and I finally come back to visit and no bueno.

We still managed to eat our way through Austin. Oh boy, do I love the food here. I planned on gaining all my pregnancy weight in this one week (kidding). Two more days to go…I might make it. 🙂 I’ll be posting pics from the trip soon.

INGREDIENTS
¾ C firmly packed golden brown sugar
¾ C honey
⅓ C maple syrup
¼ C water
½ C (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
½ C peanut butter
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 C old-fashioned rolled oats
1 C unsalted almonds, slivered
1 C sweetened shredded coconut
1 C sweetened dried cranberries or golden raisins
½ C chocolate chips, roughly chopped (or use mini chocolate chips)
½ C unsalted sunflower seeds
2 Tbls sesame seeds
½ C golden flax seeds

DIRECTIONS

1. preheat the oven to 350.
2. Grease a 9” x 13” baking pan with non-stick spray.
3. Combine the brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, and water in a saucepan over medium-high heat.
4. When the mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat to simmer until it reaches soft-ball stage (234-240 degrees).
5. Stir in the butter, peanut butter, salt, and vanilla.
6. Spread the oatmeal on a large cookie sheet. Spread the almonds, coconut sunflower seeds and sesame seeds on a second cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 7-10 minutes, stirring once, until lightly browned. (I found the oatmeal needed a bit longer than the nuts/seeds.)
8. Combine the oats, almonds, coconut, cranberries or raisins, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and flax seeds in a large bowl.
9. Add the honey mixture and stir to combine. Cool for 30 min.
10. Add the chocolate chips. (They may melt just a tad.)
11. Press granola into greased pan. Cool for 30 min.
12. Cut bars to desired size.

NOTES
Makes – as many bars as you cut 😉

You can mix and match so many ingredients in this recipe. If you use any pre-salted nuts or seeds, cut back on the amount of salt in the ingredients list.

I found these to be a little on the sweet side and I don’t think it would hurt the recipe to cut back just a little on the sugar. Next time, I will try a ¼ C less brown sugar, ¼ C less honey and reduce the maple syrup to ¼ C.

Slightly adapted from Rebecca Rather’s Pastry Queen.

Just because it’s spring doesn’t mean you can’t still cook with pumpkin. I’ve been eyeing these nuggets of goodness for a while. Why did I wait so long?

Puffy little treats tossed in cinnamon and sugar. They were so tasty and addictive, I had to put most of these little buggers straight into the freezer before I ate them all.

Best of all? They can kind-of, sort-of be considered healthy. Ok, not really but they have pumpkin instead of added oil. And, they’re baked not fried. It’s the little things that make the difference, right?

Try ‘em. They’re a great little breakfast treat, AM snack, lunch dessert, afternoon snack…you get the point.

INGREDIENTS

Muffins
10 Tbls (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 C flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp ginger
⅓ C buttermilk
1 ¼ C pumpkin puree
¾ C brown sugar
2 eggs

Cinnamon Sugar Coating
¾ C sugar
2 ½ tsp cinnamon
¼ C (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spray mini muffin tins with nonstick spray.
3. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.
4. In large bowl or mixer,cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
6. Beat in eggs, one at a time.
7. With mixer on low, add flour mixture, pumpkin, and buttermilk until just combined.
8. Spoon into batter into muffin tins.
9. Bake for 10-12 min or until toothpick comes out clean.
10. While the muffins are baking, combine sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.
11. After the muffins cool for 5 minutes, remove muffins from tins and brush the entire muffin with the melted butter.
12. Toss to coat in the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

Notes
Makes 48 mini muffins.

Adapted from Food Librarian who adapted it from Everyday Food.

Disaster averted…kind of. My Pastry Queen cookbook has been missing since we moved. I put it in one of those I’ll put it here so I don’t lose it spots. I’ve been ranting and searching every box wondering where it might be.Turns out it was in the bag that also carried my olive oil containers that spilled ALL OVER my brother-in-laws truck (Sorry Steve!). Somehow, the book made it through almost unscathed. The paper cover is a bit slimy and the hardback cover now just smells really good. I have no idea how the pages avoided being ruined.

Since I haven’t cooked along with Project Pastry Queen in two weeks, I was anxious to get back to it. It was so good. So good, that I may actually put this into my regular mix of cakes. I was tempted to have it for breakfast today. I mean, it’s got cream cheese, right? If I were to bring this to a gathering, I would probably only make two layers or possibly cupcakes. The three layers were a bit daunting. It was incredibly moist and just darn good.

*Update – I forgot to link back to Project Pastry Queen and our lovely host, Emily from A Gilt Nutmeg. Pregnancy brain? Sure. Pregnancy is an excuse for everything, right?

INGREDIENTS
Carrot Cake
1 C macadamia nuts
3 C all purpose flour
3 C sugar
1 Tbls baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
1 ½ C sweetened flaked coconut (I used shredded)
4 large eggs
2 Tbls vanilla
1 ½ C vegetable oil
1 ½ C shredded peeled carrots
1 ½ C diced fresh or canned, drained crushed pineapple
½ C sweetened cream of coconut

Coconut-Cream Cheese Frosting
3 (8 oz) packages cream cheese, room temperature
1 ½ C powdered sugar (I added an extra cup to thicken the frosting.)
¼ C heavy whipping cream
¼ C sweetened cream of coconut
½ tsp of salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Spread the macadamia nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven for 7-9 min. Set aside to cool. Chop into smaller pieces if desired.
3. Place one oven rack ⅓ from the bottom of the oven and the second ⅔ from the bottom.
4. Line three 9″ cake pans with parchment paper rounds, grease with butter, and dust with flour (or spray with Baker’s Joy).
5. Stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, coconut and macadamia nuts in large bowl.
6. In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, oil, carrots, pineapple and cream of coconut.
7. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir until combined.
8. Pour the batter into the prepared pans.
9. Stagger the cake layers on the oven racks so no layer is directly over another. Set two layers on one rack and the third on the other..
10. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (mine required almost 10 additional minutes).
11. Cool the cakes in their pans on racks for 5 min, then invert them onto the racks and cool completely.
12. Using a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar on medium-high speed about 1 min.
13. Add the whipping cream, cream of coconut, and salt. Beat until combined.
14. Frost the cake being sure to add thick layers of frosting between each layer.

NOTES
12-14 servings

Very slightly adapted from Rebecca Rather’s The Pastry Queen.

I cooked three 9” layers but cut out 7” rounds after they were cooked. The cakes were so large and a bit fragile, I thought they would be easier to manage. The scraps were delicious!

The frosting was a bit thin to me so I ended up adding an extra cup of powdered sugar and also refrigerated the frosting an hour before frosting the cake.

March 4

Sorry if you follow the blog for recipes. I’m catching up with the pregnancy posts this week then I promise to stop spamming you (at least for now).

A lot has seemed to change this week. The bump is there…depending on time of day and usually after I eat. This picture was early in the morning so a bit smaller. Not much difference from the past few weeks though. 😦 Some day.

I can feel the baby moving so much now! I especially feel the baby in the mornings and I love it! The baby either LOVES or HATES riding in the car. Every time we ride in the car, the baby starts moving like crazy. In the past week, we’ve been in a moving van and borrowing friend’s trucks. The baby seems to go extra crazy then! An Eastern Shore boy in the making. 😉

I’m glad we moved this early in my pregnancy. It’s a lot of work and I can’t imagine what it would have been like without all of our friends and family helping out. Thanks friends! I still don’t know how we filled the space so well. Either I’m really good at organizing OR we are hoarders.

Now that we’re in the house, we need to start thinking about the nursery. We’ve already bought the paint color which we happened to find early on. We just had to wait to see if it was going to be a boy or a girl. Now, for the furniture.

This is our inspiration.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to find cheaper furniture? It’s so expensive and I’m not having as much luck on Craigslist as I’d hoped. I’m a big fan of Ikea but not the baby furniture. I’ll even find an old piece and fix it, but we kind of have an idea in our head and nothing seems to match it. We want dark wood and Andy says it’s too much work to re-stain it. He is the wood worker so I won’t question it. Plus, he knows the project will become mostly his.

Any suggestions?

February 26

I’ve been feeling a lot of movement now and I just love it! Andy can’t feel it yet but give it a few weeks and I bet he will. The baby is closing in on a pound and then by my next appointment at 24 weeks, he should be close to two pounds. Holy smokes!

Babycenter says this is what the little man looks like this week.

Nothing has really changed for me this week except I’ve been very sick. This feels like the worst cold I’ve ever had or maybe it’s just that I can’t take any good meds. Andy is sick with the same thing so we’re a hot mess. We’ve never caught the same bug but I’m guessing with my crap-tastic, pregnant immune system, I’m going to catch pretty much anything. Stay healthy ladies! It’s no joke.

With both of us being sick, we’re also trying to pack. Next weekend is our big move to Eastern Shore from the big city of Annapolis. We’re moving from a two-bedroom condo to a three-bedroom plus office house. We’ll also have an attic and a basement. Yay for space to spread out! Boo for leaving Annapolis. We’ll be closer to Andy’s family but farther from mine. 😦 Thankfully it’s only about an hour away. An added bonus…we’re renting Andy’s parent’s old house, so our little one will start his life in Andy’s childhood home.

We’re so very lucky to have this opportunity. I’m going to be working from home mostly full-time and Andy will now be just 25 miles each way from work instead of 50. I have to pop into the DC office (2 – 2.5 hour drive) a few times a month and of course travel to our events. I feel like we’ll have a life together instead of spending 4-5 hours total commuting each day. Not to mention what this will do for our gas bill! Woohoo! We were spending close to $500 each month on commuting and that doesn’t include the wear and tear on the cars, especially Andy’s.

Something I’m very excited about with the new house is it has a ton of natural light! Our condo is so dark and there’s about an hour of sunshine a day that makes it in. Not good for someone trying to become better at food photography.

No pics this week. Sorry! Between moving, feeling like crap, and boxes filling the house, let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood.