A Success and A Failure

Let's start with the success. Last summer my uncle in Florida (who is amazing in the kitchen) made these delicious peanut energy bars. I've been craving them ever since and finally made some last night. The recipe is from the Eating Well website (a great magazine my uncle subscribes to), but we made a few changes. So here is our recipe, and the link above is to the original recipe.


Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup dry roasted salted peanuts
• 1/2 cup roasted sunflower seeds, or other chopped nuts
• 2 cups dried cranberries (or Craisins or whatever, but I love cranberries)
  
• 2 cups rolled or instant oats
• 2 cups Rice Krispies
• 1/2 cup creamy or crunchy natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Coat an 9-by-13-inch baking pan with cooking spray.
2. Combine peanuts, sunflower seeds (or other nuts), cranberries, oats, and Rice Krispies in a large bowl.
3. Combine peanut butter, brown sugar and honey in a large microwaveable bowl; microwave on High until bubbling, 1 to 2 minutes. Add vanilla and stir until blended. Pour the peanut butter mixture over the dry ingredients and stir until coated.
4. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Press down firmly. (It helps to coat your fingers with cooking spray.) Let stand for about 1 hour to harden. Cut into bars.

They crumble really easily; my uncle's stayed together pretty well, but mine keep falling apart. But this is really no big deal- I just put them in a bowl and eat them with a spoon. They are delicious and filling and good for you.

Side note- Yesterday I put them in the pan, and Ryan came over to investigate. He was like, "Why are your energy bars making noise????" We put our ears up close and realized it was the Rice Krispies. Fun.

So since I've been on a huge baking/cooking kick lately, I got ambitious and decided to make pumpkin bread for my cousin who goes to U of I and loves pumpkin stuff and has been super stressed lately. So I found this Martha Stewart recipe. Everything was going well; I put the bread in the oven for 50 minutes, called my aunt to get my cousin's address, and chatted with her the whole time the bread was baking. When I went to take it out, my aunt heard me say words she's never heard from me before because it looked like this:


I am so mad. All that time/effort wasted because of my own stupidity. It was not Martha's fault; somehow the temperature got set at almost 500 degrees. I have no idea how. Maybe I bumped it? Seriously, I'm not that retarded. And if you disagree, please don't comment.

See all those dishes in the background? I'm about halfway done. I need to go finish now. My plan is to have a spotless apartment by the end of the day. :)