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My new favorite pan with my forever favorite recipe

These granola bars were the best ones I’d ever made, thanks to my new pan.

Good morning!

It’s been a very long time since I did a blog post! An entire month! I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long between posts before, but it’s just been a very busy time here. We have had some work being done in the house since February, regular work, school and activities going on, and even a little computer virus thrown in there on my work computer for good measure.

Through it all, we’ve been plugging along and I even had the opportunity to finally try out a new pan that I’d received after my January virtual Pampered Chef party. It was my last tool that I had yet to open, and when I finally did, I fell in love. Again. Pampered Chef is just the best.

The new pan is their Brownie Pan, and it’s one I’d always thought about getting but never had. I’d heard that there were so many things you could do with it. With 12 spots, it creates 12 corner piece brownies, but it also can create anything you’d like portioned out into individual portions from Shepherd’s Pie, to muffins, to lasagna, to really anything at all. No matter what I’m making, I always love the corner pieces and even my mom will save them for me when she bakes, so this pan really appealed to me.

I loved the perfect portioning, and I loved that every piece was a corner piece.

For my first time I decided to try one of our favorite recipes I’ve been making as an after school snack for years: homemade granola bars. I had originally posted it here in 2012 but I hadn’t made them in a little while. I knew the kids would be excited and as soon as they walked in the door, they’d know what was on tap for snack. I chose to make the chocolate version, which always gets rave reviews.

The granola bars were even more of a hit than usual! They came out evenly portioned and evenly cooked, and by far were the best I’d ever made. They were also gluten free because I used gluten free oats. I promised that I’d make a double batch the next time, which is going to be sooner than later, for sure. Normally I like to make enough to have leftovers for lunchbag snacks, but these went so quickly, they didn’t seem to last very long at all.

You can order the pan here through my consultant Marcia’s website if you’d like to give it a try! I’d love to know if you already have the pan and if so, you can write your favorite thing to bake in it, other than brownies, in the comment section below.

Have a great week!

Tags: after school snacks, Brownie Pan, chocolate, craisins, gluten free, granola bars, Pampered Chef

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Categories After School Snacks, chocolate chips, Cooking with Kids, cranberries, dessert, gluten free, Kids, Recipes

Fun Friday: Crazy for Crust’s Homemade Brownie Mix

21 Aug

Today’s post is one that started out as something we were using for our cross country trip, but we’ve used since returning home also, and I plan to continue to use it at home, especially during the crazy school year weeks.

I had been looking for a pre-made brownie mix that I could duplicate to take along with us on our trip so that I would have an easy to make dessert on hand all the time. We were bringing five mugs with us so that we could make Nutella mug cakes, and I had the ingredients for that, but I didn’t want to have to have a lot of other ingredients on hand because our pantry was small. As I searched, I came across a homemade brownie mix that could be made up ahead of time, stored in an airtight (mouse tight and ant tight) container and only the wet ingredients would need to be added. I decided to make a double batch of the mix. I wasn’t sure we’d even use it, but I thought it would be good to have on hand. Our oven in the RV was tiny, so I brought a 9×9 square baking dish, as it was an option for the recipe as were 9×13 and loaf pan sizes.

The recipe I chose was from the Crazy for Crust website, and you can visit it here to take a look around. We made up our double batch of the mix before we left and put it in an easy to store container that would fit into our pantry. I made sure to print out the recipe which contained the details for adding in the wet ingredients as well as the dish size options and the bake times. I put the directions into an envelope with the flap cut off and taped it to the top of the container for future reference.

While we were on the trip, we decided to try out our oven. We’d gone many nights without dessert, and on other nights we’d had mug cakes, we’d had ice cream, but now I wanted to give baking a try, and we were really craving something good.

I found the recipe very easy to use, very quick to prep because we’d done the dry mix ahead of time, and as I mixed it all together, it looked thick and fudgy, just as a brownie mix should. We put everything in the pan, put it in the oven and I crossed my fingers.

A little over 20 minutes later, our brownies were done! They looked and smelled delicious, and we were thrilled that they tasted delicious also! Our first-ever baking experiment in our camper’s oven was a success, but more than that, I’d found a perfect brownie mix to keep on hand at home for future use. So often we need a last minute dessert and don’t have a mix on hand to throw together. I recently used this mix to make another couple of batches of brownies at home: a 9×13 and 9×9 batch at the same time, and there is still a little bit of dry mix left over!

I can’t wait to make another batch of this homemade brownie mix, and I can’t thank Crazy for Crust enough for sharing their recipe with us! I hope you’ll pay their site a visit so that you too can have the best homemade brownie mix ever. It’s a great, user-friendly recipe for kids and adults alike. You can see some amazing photos of their own freshly baked brownies while you’re there checking out the recipe!