Mom: The Chocolate Chip Raider

I never was much of a just chocolate person. Chocolate baked goods are a serious addiction, but just plain chocolate was never my thing. Until now. Something happened since I've had my third child. My days are eternally long and my brain is constantly exhausted from being interrupted and trying to remember what I was doing before. So in order to give myself little mini rewards to be able to keep going to the next task, or disaster, or whatever...I've become a raider of the chocolate chip bag. No worries, it's dark chocolate, dairy and soy-free. :) Happy mothering to any other pantry raiders out there! That's it. No deep lesson here, except trying to find the humor in my sometimes catastrophic situations. :)

Announcement: A New Blog!

I haven't blogged very consistently in a while because there has been too much on my mind and I haven't known how to even begin to put it into words. I get a little weird when it comes to categorizing things...if there is too much of everything all together, it just feels wrong. There's a place for everything, right? :) So my brain has been a mess of a lot of thoughts, but one of the biggest things on my mind lately is FOOD. Yep. It's pretty well-known, to anyone who knows me even a little, that I like food. Specially sweet food. Specially brownies. If you sit down for a nice chat with me over coffee and brownies, you pretty much become my instant friend. It's that easy! Lol. Seriously, though, a lot of change has been happening in our household concerning food...including, no more brownies. WHAAAT!!?? Well, that's only partially true, because I discovered how to make healthy brownies that are pretty good and the best part...I can eat as many as I want because they're healthy! :)

So, back to having a place for everything...I've decided to start a new blog where I can write all about our family's food journey and adventures. I will still have this blog for those wife/mom/spirituality ramblings, but I want to separate the food topic because it's a big thing for me right now that is taking a lot of energy, thought, planning, and re-learning and I figure there might be others who could benefit from my own learning in that area. So what's this big change and what's all this about healthy brownies?? I guess you'll just have to hop on over to www.mynewapron.blogspot.com and find out!

Brownie Pudding!

I never need chocolate. That's too simple. I need brownies! And some days, like today, I actually wake up in the morning with brownies on my mind. Sadly I forgot that I'm out of butter. However there is an amazing recipe called Brownie Pudding that doesn't call for butter or eggs! It's my savior when I don't have those key ingredients or a way to get to the store. Slightly similar to bread pudding...but all chocolate! And so easy...here you go:

Ingredients: 

1 cup flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

2 tbsp cooking oil

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups boiling water

Directions:

Grease an 8x8x2-inch baking pan and set aside. In a medium bowl stir the flour, sugar, 2 tablespoons cocoa powder and salt. Stir in the milk, oil and vanilla. Pour batter into prepared baking pan.

In a small bowl mix the brown sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa powder. Stir in the boiling water and slowly pour mixture over batter.

Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes. Cook on a wire rack for 45 minutes. Serve warm, pouring sauce from pan over the cake. Best served with vanilla ice-cream! (6-8 servings)