TWD—The Tarte Noire That Wasn’t, But Plenty Else That Was

We’re right in the middle of a family reunion here and believe me it pains me to no end to have not been able to make this tart.  Chocolate ganache = DELICIOUS!  To serve slices of chocolate ganache in a sweet crust, most likely heavenly!  When you’re having a family reunion with over 70 people, this just was not the dessert to make.  I didn’t want to make 10 tarts so that everyone could have a slice. ;)  Since moving and getting settled, I’ve been making lots of quick goodies and freezing them.

I did make one of Dorie’s recipes from her book, Baking From My Home to Yours.  I was given a bag of Granny Smith apples, so I decided to make her Cran-Apple Crisp.  Although, I didn’t have any cranberries, so I used some chopped dried apricots and dried mixed berries.  No photos, but everyone loved the crisp!

I made Red, White & Blue pancakes for breakfast Monday morning.

I made the S'mores Bars that I posted last week.  Most of those were frozen and will probably be eaten tomorrow (today, Tuesday) or Wednesday.  I also made my favorite chocolate chip cookies (always a favorite).  I made a double batch of my favorite brownies, as well as 2 boxed mixes.  Two different oatmeal cookie recipes were made as well as some banana muffins.  I have made some Friendship Bread from some batter that was given to me by a friend in Kansas before we left. 

And today I made Texas Sheet Cake which was the biggest hit of the day.  I only snapped one quick picture of the whole cake in the pan.

To go along with that, I also made Sugar Cookie Bars (I used a recipe from Recipe Girl, but I’ve seen these EVERYWHERE on the internet.  And all the recipes are the same.) 

The recipe says to bake them (in a 13x18 sheet pan) and to only bake them for 10-15 minutes.  I’m still figuring out this new oven of mine and when I kept checking on the bars, they seemed doughy even after 15 minutes, so I kept baking them a few more minutes and checking them.  I decided they were done at 21 minutes.  But after cutting the bars, I think they are slightly dry, so they are probably baked a little too long.  These are super sugary and you can cut the bars into pretty small squares.  I think I cut 42 bars.

And finally, for now, I also made some fun cookies that I found at Jenny’s blog, Picky Palate.  They are Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookie Duo.

Make the super simple, flourless peanut butter cookie dough—which is just 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar and 1 egg.  The recipe makes great peanut butter cookies, but IS quite sweet.  The chocolate cookie dough is a great recipe.  I even played around with it (there was a lot more of the chocolate dough than the peanut butter, so after making lots of duos, I added some chopped Nutter Butter cookies to the dough, and I added some chopped Oreo Cookies to some more.

These are probably some cookies I’d make again sometime!

Again, sorry to not have made this week’s chosen Tarte Noire.  I’m interested to get a look at some of those tarts out there in TWD land.  If you’d like the recipe, you can get it from Dharmagirl at bliss: towards a delicious life. 

I’m WAY behind on sleep, lots more family reunion activities for the next few days.  It’s great to see family!  This reunion is Kevin’s side of the family.  Mid-July we have a reunion with my family in Idaho.   Blogging may be sparse.  I’ll be back though.  Again, I SO want to catch up on all the blog posts I’m behind on with all my favorite blogs and I apologize if I haven’t been by!