Lovin' From the Oven

Cake Batter Bars

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I apologize in advance to anyone out there currently on a diet or trying to lose those ten pounds. Look away while you still can! Hmm.. I probably should have written that before the pictures. I guess we’re all doomed. My bad.

My DB started his first day of law school today! I’m so proud of him. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few of his classmates and can honestly say that he couldn’t be surrounded by a better group of people (not to mention that I’ve found my guinea pigs to eat all the stuff I bake :). Hey, who said cookies don’t make friends? The way to anyone’s heart is through the stomach; that’s just common sense.

I baked these bars back when I was on a cake batter kick with the cake batter cookies and cake batter rice crispy treats. These were, hands down, the best out of the three. It was like having cake batter melt in your mouth. Is that even possible? Cause it is now. Slightly adapted from Fake Ginger.

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Cake Batter Bars

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cup funfetti cake mix
  • 3/4 cup AP flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 5 heaping tablespoons sprinkles of your choice (I used stars)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8 x 8 inch pan.
  2. Cream both sugars, butter, vanilla, egg, and egg yolk.
  3. Gradually mix in flour, cake mix, and baking soda until just mixed. Stir in sprinkles.
  4. Spread batter evenly into greased pan.
  5. Bake for 30-35 minutes until top is lightly browned and middle still jiggles slightly. Cool completely before cutting.
https://lovintheoven.com/cake-batter-bars/

Double Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

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I’m excited to report that I am not a horrible mess in the cooking department. I’ve officially been away from home for over a week, which means that I am forced to start learning how to cook and experiment on the stove rather than in the oven. My DB definitely has nothing up his sleeve in the cooking department, so it’s all on me. I mean, I can’t eat dessert for every meal. I might die of malnutrition. Maybe….maybe not. My point being– You can look forward to real food recipes coming soon.

I’ve loved having all this free time with my DB. We’ve been sleeping in for who knows how long, catching up on Fringe (the TV show… totally addicted, btw), spending hours in used bookstores, eating breakfast at 1PM, and running random errands to get things that we forgot to bring. As lovely as that schedule sounds, I’m ready to get back into an organized routine. To start, I’ll get into a more consistent blogging schedule. I’ve already started that on my other blog!

These cookies will help you bounce back into it. Soft, chewy, and chocolate-y, they’ll shock anyone back to life. I got this recipe from Itsby Bitsy Foodies.

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • ½ cup cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 2 cups oats
  • 2 cups chocolate chips
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cream butter and both sugars. Mix in the vanilla and eggs. 
  3. Stir in the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda until just incorporated into the batter.
  4. Gradually add in the oats and chocolate chips. 
  5. Drop the dough by tablespoons onto a baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes or until they are just set.

Zucchini Bread

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Zuchinni.. Zuchini… Zucchini.. ahhh, I definitely would have gotten kicked with that word at a spelling bee. Come to think of it, I’ve only been in a spelling bee once and it wasn’t on purpose. In second grade, I remember trying to spell “chimpanzee” wrong in the qualifying round on purpose so that I wouldn’t have to compete with kids outside of my classroom, but I spelled it right on accident. Imagine my surprise! You bet I spelled the first word wrong in the official competition so that I could sit down and get away from the audience. Hey, I was young. And scared. Being in front of people was so not my thing. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now.

Speaking of grade school… the first time I made zucchini bread was in my first grade classroom. We were given the ingredients in a ziploc bag and were told to mix it by shaking, pinching, doing whatever our heart desired to get it done. We gave back our ziploc bags to the teacher and she returned it as a mini loaf twenty minutes later. All I remember back then was pure heaven. Curious as to if I still loved it as much as I thought I did, I gave it a go in my kitchen.

Sure enough, the results were just as how I remembered it. Don’t worry, it doesn’t really taste like zucchini. My DB even ate a bite and he HATES vegetables!

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup apple sauce
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 4 cups grated zucchini
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts
  1. Butter two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
  2. Mix together the eggs, oil, apple sauce, vanilla, and both sugars in a large bowl.
  3. Add flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon into the mixture. 
  4. Gently stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
  5. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until toothpick omes out clean.
P.S. As of today, I’m officially a Berkley-an! Whoo hoo! I’m still working on putting together my apartment, but here’s a sneak peak at one of my cubbies on my Expedit bookself, courtesy of Easy Canvas Prints: 
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Remember my brownie roll out cookies? Well, I decided to choose one of the pictures from that shoot for my canvas because 1. my DB loves anything Star Wars (can’t you tell by his bobblehead?) and 2. the background matched my tiffany blue themed kitchen.

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The canvas was smooth, the perfect size, and even better than I expected. The colors seemed a bit darker than my actual photo, but it wasn’t a big deal. I loved the mirroring method on the sides of the canvas. If you want, you can make your own canvas print here. Enjoy!

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