Lovin' From the Oven

See’s Candies Valentine’s Day Chocolate

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Look what I received in the mail the other day! A beautiful assortment of milk and dark chocolates from See’s Candies…

I can feel Valentine’s Day creeping up just around the corner.. Eek! Only 7 days left until Valentine’s Day! I’m not gonna lie– I’m a fan of this holiday. Sorry to the ones that aren’t a fan, but all the pink/red and hearts popping up in stores bring me such joy. I love all the heart shaped desserts, the cheesy cards, and the beautiful flowers. Desserts, as you may have guessed, are at the top of my list. I think that Valentine’s Day brings out the cutest desserts that you find all year. I love scrapbooking cards for this holiday, too. Let me know if you would like a Valentines Day card sent directly to you! I love sending and recieving snail mail. Leave a comment here or send me an email at kim@lovintheoven.com with your mailing address and I’d be more than happy to send you a homemade card. Who knows, maybe a homemade card will make your Valentine’s Day this year THAT much better. 🙂

I was contacted by See’s Candies last week to sample and review some of their chocolates, and they sent me a pound’s worth of chocolate! Lucky me! I was so excited to open the package (who am I kidding, I always love opening packages), and was delighted when I saw the bright red, heart-shaped box. I wasn’t expecting something so cute! After I finally got over the cuteness and opened the box, I soon found out that the contents were just as appealing.

I slowly tried one, two, three pieces and loved all of them. Like Tom Hanks says in Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” Usually with assortment boxes, I take a bite of each one (because I have no idea what’s inside of them) and throw out the ones I don’t like. In this case, I haven’t thrown out a single chocolate. This assortment had many with caramel, my favorite! The one pictures above is a milk chocolate with a caramel center. I am also a huge fan of the molasses chips from See’s– they’re especially addicting. If you haven’t gotten a gift for you significant other yet this Valentine’s Day, I’d totally go for the Valentine’s Day heart shaped chocolate gift boxes from See’s! The presentation, quality, and idea is impressive and it will be sure to leave an imprint in your lover’s heart. 🙂 Oops, there goes the cheesiness again. Sorry, I just can’t help it! I mean, who can ever turn away chocolate? It’s always sure to please.

Heath Bar Toffee Cookies

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As if 12 days of cookies wasn’t enough for me, I had to keep on baking some more before the new year. I try to bake candies into my baked goods a lot, particularly the candies that I adore (HERE‘s a list of all the baked goods containing candy). I’m a total sucker for Heath Bar/Skor bars, along with my boyfriend, so I knew that I had to incorporate them into a cookie somehow. The result? A definite keeper. I underbaked my cookies, as usual, to keep them on the softer side. I also upped the brown sugar amount. My boyfriend loved these cookies the best out of everything that I’ve baked for the holidays. DO NOT skip the step on chilling the dough, otherwise your cookies will come out flat and spread! No one likes flat cookies, so refrigerate them! Overnight, if you have to. If you do, they’ll come out nice and fluffy like the ones pictured. 🙂

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 3/4 cups chopped Heath Bar pieces (Four 1.4 ounce bars)
  • 1/2 bag of Heath toffee pieces
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1 Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside. In a separate bowl, combine Heath Bar pieces & tofee with chopped walnuts. Set aside.

2 Cream butter until fluffy. Add the sugar and continue to beat until light and fluffy (a couple minutes). Beat in eggs one at a time, and vanilla.

3 Alternatively mix in the Heath Bar mixture and the flour mixture, a third at a time, until well blended. Chill cookie dough for at least 45 minutes.

4 Preheat oven to 350°F. On cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or Silpat, spoon out the cookie dough in small 1-inch diameter balls. Place dough balls 3 inches away from each other on the cookie sheets.

5 Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are just starting to brown. Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes. Then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

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I hope everyone had a great holiday and are preparing for the new year! I just have to blog about my Christmas because I’m still so excited about it. First off, I got my boyfriend tickets to the Lakers/Celtics game for his xmas present. Premiere seats! It was one of the most amazing games to be at and I had such a blast. My boyfriend is a die hard lakers fan, so he was ecstatic that he go to go. Plus, the Lakers won!! Boston sucks! (no offense to any celtics lovers) :]

Getting ready to go in our matching lakers shirts. Him with his favorite: Gasol and me with mine: Fisher.
Our view of the game from our seats. (We got there really early.. hence the reason why so many seats are empty)

Ok so the real thing I wanted to show you was this:
You’re probably wondering, “What the heck is that space looking thing?” Well, I’ve been wanting this for years and my boyfriend gave it to me for Christmas (along with Kurt Halsey art and something else coming in the mail, idk what yet.) 🙂 If you open it up, it looks like this..
It’s a Cricut machine! I know, best boyfriend ever, right?!? It’s basically an electronic die cut machine for scrapbooking. I’m seriously the happiest girl on earth and I’ll probably be scrapbooking for the next couple of days… there may be a delay on updating my baking blog. Haha, but don’t worry.. I’ll be back soon enough!

Day 11: S’mores Cookie Bars

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Day 11 of my 12 Days of Cookies: Time for a little variation. Who says a cookie has to be round? These are probably on my list of top 3 things that I’ve EVER baked, believe it or not. They’re just that good. I mean, s’mores are delicious as is.. but baking them into a cookie bar? Absolutely genius. They are the best when warm, because everything inside it is still gooey and you really get the whole campfire feeling. You can microwave these for about 10-15 seconds prior to eating them so you melt the chocolate & warm the marshmallow. For those of you that don’t know what a s’more is, it’s basically a popular campfire treat that consists of a roasted marshmallow and a chunk of chocolate (usually Hershey’s) sandwiched between two pieces of graham cracker. The roasted marshmallow melts the chocolate when being sandwiched, and voila, you’ve got yourself one of the most delectable treats known to mankind. Seriously, I can’t even begin to tell you how good these are.

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Day 11: S’mores Cookie Bars

Yield: 16 bars

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 king-sized milk chocolate bars (e.g. Hershey’s)
  • 1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in egg and vanilla. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combined.
  3. Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Place chocolate bars over dough. 2 king-sized Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread chocolate with marshmallow creme or fluff. Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff (most easily achieved by flattening the dough into small shingles and laying them together).
  4. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars.
https://lovintheoven.com/day-11-smores-cookie-bars/

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