Salted Caramel Butter Bars

A co-worker brought these in to work one day and I made him send me the recipe.  I will only be making these on a RARE occasion after seeing what goes into them. My heart stopped just looking at the recipe! But that didn't stop me from eating them. HA!

My bottom layer of dough was a bit overcooked and I'm not sure how to avoid that. I really cut back on the salt since I was using salted butter but I think I cut back too much to call them "salted". Overall, delicious and pretty simple to make!

http://cookiesandcups.com/dont-hate-me-because-im-butter-ful/

We get down on the 4th of July!

The 4th of July is probably my favorite holiday. Mainly because of the food and I like to call it my pre-birthday party. Normally we'd do some ribs but decided to try chicken, homemade coleslaw and semi-homemade baked beans.

Chicken:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/the-ultimate-barbecued-chicken-recipe/index.html

The brine really helped keep the chicken moist but I wasn't very impressed with the BBQ sauce.  We also didn't move these to the oven. Earl moved them to the cooler side of the grill and kept a close eye on them until they were done. Over all, good flavor but I'd prefer some KC Masterpiece sauce on them next time! 

Coleslaw:

http://www.food.com/recipe/kfc-coleslaw-copycat-coleslaw-156331

When I think of what coleslaw should taste like, I think KFC. This recipe will not disappoint you! 

Baked Beans:

http://recipes.bushbeans.com/recipe/150637/better-baked-beans.aspx

Earl asked me to find a way to make the Bush's Baked beans better and what would you know, they had a recipe on their site! They were much better and even had my FIL, who hates onions, go back for 2nd's knowing there were onions in them. Yup, they were good and not much extra work.

We finished off this amazing meal with a fresh peach cobbler. It was my first time making one and it turned out GREAT! I ran to the farmers market and bought some fresh peaches for this beauty. 

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/peach-cobbler-recipe/index.html

(Yes, I know we are all mad at Paula Deen but this recipe is on point.)

Had to serve it warm with some natural vanilla ice cream!! 

Spinkle Shower

Ok, this is only semi-food related but I'm so happy with how everything turned out, I had to share! I organized my first ever, Sprinkle Shower for a co-worker expecting baby #2. I made rice crispy treat pops, dipped in pink chocolate and topped with sprinkles. They turned about AMAZING and so did the whole party. Love when you have a vision of how it will look and you make it happen. And it could only happen with amazing co-workers helping! Mark was in charge of signage and the "Ready to Pop" sucker tags. Daos brought in the BEST cupcakes from Yummy cupcakes and to die for popcorn from Chicago. Nan brought in sugar sprinkled sugar cookies. Yes, it was a SUGAR fest.  We also had super cute heart shaped jelly beans from another Stephanie that I'm actually eating right now. Guess I didn't have enough sugar yesterday!
The table was decorated with bottles filled with sprinkles and flowers. I used Snapple bottles, labels removed and a ribbon covering the mouth of the bottle!
We did "Late Night Diapers" as our activity/game. Nadia brought in diapers and everyone wrote a little message to Alanna for those middle of the night diaper changes. When you're up for the 4th time, you need something to make you laugh.
I LOVE doing this kind of stuff.....need to find a way to make money doing this. :)

Chocolate Brownie Cookies

I hadn't baked in years but decided to give these a try. OMG! These are amazing!!! A few lucky co-workers were able to get a taste today and word spread fast.  I might have to make these again. :)

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/chocolate-brownie-cookies