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Seeing that Hurricane Sandy seems to have stolen Hallowe’en’s spotlight this year, I decided to make the hubster a lil care package for him & his co-workers. Something about a canceled office potluck on Monday? I think this cheered everyone up, even if only for a lil while.

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Aren’t they just so darned cute? Who could resist Pilsbury sugar cookies & Lindt chocolates?!

How was your Hallowe’en? Did you run out of candy OR do you have plenty of leftovers that you’re praying wont go to your straight to your hips, butt & thighs? ;). We had a whopping 9 kids total plus 1 parent. Im sure our rainy weather didn’t help. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go hide the leftover candy. Out of sight, out of mind right?

With the garden starting to produce bionic zucchini’s I figured it was time to get cracking on researching recipes on how to use up the bounty.  I do know that the hubster enjoys zucchini bread/cakes/muffins as he keeps requesting that I make them.  The one’s I’ve tried are not very sweet and well we all know, zucchini doesn’t really have its own distinct taste.

Figuring that I will have multiple opportunities to continue trying different recipes, I decided to combine two that I had found and tweaked it in my own lil way.  Thus the Chocolate-Orange Zucchini Cake recipe was born 🙂


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All of these lil things made for such a yummy cake!

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Ready for the oven.

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Removed & cooling.

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Ready to serve…oh wait!

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Cake looks a lot better now right? I don’t know why but the simplest lil thing adds so much flare don’t you think?  A lil powdered sugar definitely went a long way.

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Can you see some of the ingredients? Chocolate chips? Walnuts?
Mmmm….!

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Now tell me, which piece would you like?

😉

Hubby is currently doing some home reno work in our basement. As a result, everything has a fine layer of dust over it. Concrete dust to be specific. 😦 [jf youve ever experienced concrete dust you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about] We also forgot to put up a plastic tarp to cordon off the work area from the rest of our current living area. We also had invited a friend to come and visit/help.

So while trying to play hostess and still be a construction sidekick/assistant all while keeping an eye on dad in the super humid weather I felt frazzled as usual being pulled in too many directions at once.

I found comfort in the kitchen. Keeping busy cooking & creating somehow seems to calm me down. Odd I know. Or it could be due to the fact that everyone vacates the kitchen while you’re cooking to either get of your way (not really) OR out of fear that they’ll be out to work by being asked to chop, prep, clean or wash dishes. LOL Either way, I enjoyed the QT with myself.

What I made was another pitcher of homemade iced green tea (something I’ve been addicted to since the warm weather started back in March), prepped dinner so all we had to do was grill it and eat then baked dessert – round two of the brownie surprise!

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Brownies in the muffin tins ready to go into the oven. Top tray is the exact same as the bottom tray except I topped the ‘surprise’ with 1 extra spoon of batter.

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Here’s how they looked once baked. You can totally see the difference between the two styles.

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I think I prefer the covered style to add more dramatic effect. I had severed one to our friend after dinner and nuked it for about 15 seconds (since they were still warm) He loved the fact that there was a PB cup hidden in the centre.

His exact words: “You didn’t tell me there was PB in the middle!” – he LOVED them, so I sent him home with two more. Another satisfied customer.

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I love grilled veggies and the grilling tray that I had bought on clearance from the drug store a couple years ago has seen better years. Its supposed to be non stick etc but really…it was time to be replaced. I decided on a stainless steel “wok style” for the grill. Things will cook evenly now without burning. Things won’t fall off the tray and head below the grill grates. And the bonus – it was a snap to clean afterwards! Barely required scraping.

To sum up my crazy Sunday: there was great progress in work (the reno project), great company (friend visiting) all accompanied by great food! Thats how one should round up their weekend.

How was yours?

While both boys (dad & hubs) were working on the house yesterday afternoon, I decided to whip up a batch of brownies before dinner.

No special recipe, just my trusty Ghiardelli Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix (purchased from Costco). The only semi-fancy thing I did was bake them in muffin tins with a lil surprise in the middle. I hid mini caramel cups in the centre.

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As you can see,  some were cooled enough and came out with ease while some weren’t which were the ones that didn’t turn out as pretty.  I just couldn’t wait any longer!

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Let me tell you that these were SUPER tasty during my ‘taste testing’ 😉

Can’t wait to make these again with mini peanut butter cups.

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During the walk to the car park after lunching with my girlfriend at Burger Bar the other day, we were in awe at how many cute lil coffee shops & bakeries there were along the way tormenting us.

After passing three or more bakeries we gave in and stopped at Miss Cora’s Kitchen. It’s a cute lil bake shop/sandwich place that not only serves sinfully delicious treats but gluten free & vegan options as well. Quite impressive for such a lil shop if you ask me!

I’m totally going back to try one of their buttertarts which they were sold out.

Instead, I settled for a ginger-molasses cookie for myself and a peanut-peanut butter brownie bar for my husband.

They did not disappoint. 🙂

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(Visit their website: http://www.misscoraskitchen.com/)

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