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By Amber, on August 8, 2010, at 9:59 pm These are an old favorite of mine (stolen from Quaker), from when I lived in NJ and used a hand-me-down hand mixer to satisfy my need for baked goods. They take no more than 15 minutes of prep time (10 if you’re in a hurry). I used to make them at least twice a month (it’s a miracle that I didn’t burn out the motor in the hand mixer) and a 9×13 pan never lasted long. A coworker in NJ called them ‘hobbit bars.’ They are so dense and delicious that they could potentially eliminate the need for chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, they’re that good — especially warm.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp milk
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 3/4 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 cups uncooked oats (any kind but I like old-fashioned)
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup nuts (optional — I never put these in!)
Heat oven to 375F. Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, milk, vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, salt; mix well. Add oats, chocolate chips, nuts.
Spread in ungreased 9×13 pan, bake 30-35 minutes (err on the side of under-done, or they may become too chewy).
Around here, we like to eat them for dessert, and then again for breakfast. It’s okay because they have oats in them!
By Amber, on August 5, 2010, at 10:00 pm If there is anything I love as much as cake, it’s doughnuts, which are breakfast cake. A good muffin is sort of like cake, too, so a cake-like muffin that tastes like breakfast cake is…well, I’ve lost that train of logic, but it sounds awesome, right? I think the King Arthur people actually tapped directly into my brain to come up with this recipe.
The fun part is dipping them in melted butter and cinnamon sugar. I made a 2:1 sugar to cinnamon blend, which was strong but really good. We also found that they went well with the last bit of leftover lime glaze that had been abandoned in the back of the fridge (yes, it kept that long! 10 seconds in the microwave and it was like new).
As always, I tested one as soon as they were done. It was so fluffy and delicious that I had to try another just to make sure the first wasn’t a fluke.
Nope, not a fluke. Give these a try for breakfast this weekend! A muffin is a perfectly legitimate, grown-up breakfast food — you can tell yourself that you’re not really eating doughnuts OR cake. Your secret is safe with me.
By Amber, on August 3, 2010, at 10:00 pm This one is for the cosmetic junkies.
I don’t think I have ever finished a lipstick. I have finished a few lip glosses and eyeshadows (and a blush! Twice! And I just found out that my color was discontinued more than a year ago; I think I have a couple years left in the current pan), but I’ll usually decide I’m over the color and toss it before I’ll finish it. The exception is anything above drugstore level. I know you’re supposed to toss things after a certain amount of time, but if I paid $14+ for it, I have a problem doing this, even long after the expiration decade has come and gone. (Mom, if the idea of my ancient makeup is making you make that sound, trust me — this post is not going to get any better from here. Proceed with caution.)
Case in point: my first MAC lipstick, from 1995. Still smells normal, looks normal, goes on smooth. My internal monologue goes something like this: Will I wear this color again? Nah. Wait, maybe! I’ll just hang on to it, then. As a result, this lipstick has been with me through seven dorm rooms, two apartments, and three houses. Check the old-style tube. The silver tube is probably close to ten years old and it’s now a permanent color in a normal, black tube. Just for reference, the last tube is the last lipstick I bought (probably also technically past its expiration by now):
So, eyeshadows. There are only a couple colors I use quickly enough to have replaced more than once. As you can see by the packaging, the color on the left isn’t one (the one on the right is in current packaging, which has been around forever):
One of the other brands I like as much is Urban Decay. How long have I had the one on the left? Long enough that the color has been discontinued, for one. I’m sure I bought it in college, if not high school. You’d never know how often I use it by the amount left in the pan. Hopefully this one will last until I die since they don’t make it anymore. Just kidding, Mom & Dad!
I do think the old pans were cuter, if slightly less practical.
The last really old thing I have is an Urban Decay lipstick. Definitely bought this one in college. I don’t have any of their new lipsticks, so I stole a picture from their website to compare. I think the old packaging was cooler on this, too.
This has been a lesson in why you shouldn’t share makeup. Thanks for coming; Lysol wipes are by the door.
By Amber, on August 1, 2010, at 10:00 pm I recently ran across this recipe on a friend’s blog and knew I had to try it! It assembles pretty quickly, and then you can set it aside to bake whenever you’re ready.
If you are like me and tend to keep a lot of baking basics (flour, butter, eggs, etc.) on hand, you’ll probably only need to buy graham crackers, marshmallow fluff, and chocolate. I went generic on the first two and bought Ghirardelli semi-sweet baking pastilles instead of Hershey bars. I actually bought two tubs of fluff (7 oz each) and needed only one, so I ended up with enough ingredients for two batches at a total of $7.40 plus the minimal value of the staples I had on hand. The bars were so good that we only got two nights out of an 8×8 pan, but that’s still pretty inexpensive.
 I really had to work to get half of the dough spread out across the entire pan. It wouldn’t hurt to double the dough if you like thick cookies — the end product was much thinner than I expected.
When I got to this point I realized why the original recipe calls for Hershey bars — spreading the fluff is a challenge! Remarkably, with a little care almost all of my chocolates stayed where I had pressed them gently into the dough, but next time I think I’ll flip the middle layers and just sprinkle semi-sweet or dark chips across the fluff.
 This is another reason it would be good to increase the dough recipe — unless you are a master dough-handler, you are just not going to make this pretty. It’s so soft that it’s very difficult to work with in pieces of any size, though you could try refrigerating it first if you’re more patient than I am. After I took that photo, I filled in the cracks a little more with what was left over, so when it came out of the oven it looked like this:
 It smells wonderful baking, and the consistency reminded me of s’mores Pop Tarts. I’m looking forward to trying a variation on this recipe with the leftover crackers, chocolate, and fluff. We microwaved our leftover pieces the second night, but first I took a bite of mine while it was still cold from the fridge, and I have to say it was pretty awesome that way, too.
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