Best. Brownies. EVER.

How I know these are the Best. Brownies. EVER...

1. They are so good that I have made them 3 times this month.
2. One of the times I made them, 4 of us ate an entire half pan in one evening.
3. The third time I made them, this is what the pan looked like after 20 minutes:

The original brownie recipe can be found here
(just make the brownies, not the rest)

and the original frosting recipe can be found here
(just make the frosting, not the rest)  

 

Pinned It, Made It: Nutella Cookies

I love Nutella, I really do. In fact, it's a little dangerous to have a jar in the house, because I will definitely eat it straight from the jar with a spoon. Then I look at the jar later and think "Where did all my Nutella go?" Hmmm...dangerous.

So when I found out World Nutella Day was on February 5, and I missed it, I went searching for something to bake to make up for missing it. What I found on Pinterest was this recipe for super easy, 4 ingredient Nutella cookies. {Find the original recipe here.}

*I also added 2 tiny splashes of milk to the dough at the end. It seemed really dry and I wasn't sure it would stick together when I put it on the cookie sheet.
**Because I added the milk, they needed a little more time in the oven, more like 10 minutes. Your call on adding the milk if you make them.

They were pretty tasty, and got good reviews from everyone who ate them, but I think I might stick to eating my Nutella straight from the jar, or if I'm feeling ambitious, on a bagel with a banana!

School Year Sweet Treats Club: February

It's time for the February edition of the Sweet Treats Club (check out the details of the club here).
Since they are my new favorite cookies, I decided to make the Fudgy Brownie Cookies from Pinterest. Yum! (Find them here). These are super tasty, super easy cookies to make. This time, I changed it up a little bit by baking them with whole wheat flour and adding chocolate and peanut butter chips instead of the chocolate chunks. (Delicious either way!) Then I packaged them up with a few chocolate chip cookies, added a sweet little heart note, and sent them off! Happy February!

Hidden Buddies

Growing up, we had a Valentine's tradition called Hidden Buddies. It was kind of like Secret Santa, but for Valentine's Day. We all would put our names in a bowl and pick somebody else in the family. Mom would fill up a drawer with chocolate hearts and other goodies and we would have to secretly give something to our "HB" everyday during the week leading up to Valentine's Day. At the end of the week, we would go to the dollar store and pick out something special for our HB. Then we would go out for lunch and have the big reveal!

My sister is bringing back the tradition for her own little family (check out her post about HB here), and she talked me into helping her make these cute cookie dough hearts the other night. They turned out to be the perfect little HB gift!

They were pretty easy to make, too. First we made up a batch of egg-less cookie dough (find the recipe here). From there, the steps were pretty simple.

1. Put the dough in the fridge for about 20 minutes, then roll little balls of cookie dough
2. Flatten them down a little.
3. Shape the bottom into a point.
4. Make a cut in the top.
5. Spread apart the top and round the edges a bit.
6. Add sprinkles.
7. Package them up for your Hidden Buddy!