PARTY TIME!

 

GIRLS' NIGHT IN! Yes!!! I love a girls' night in! Lots of good peeps, amazing gossip and fantastic food! This weekend was girls' night in at my place, so I thought it would be a great time to try out some fan favourite Pinterest recipes as well as one new one (risky, I know!)

My friends are amazing! The group I had at my place last night are a mixed bag of friends from my life. One of them I've known for almost 25 years (GOOD LORD!), 3 of them I've known for 20 years and 2 of them I've known for 15 years. And best of all, we can all get together and create one group of girls who can be friendly, speak freely and by the end of the night we know each others' business (as well as everyone elses!!!!) One major thing we have in common is that we all love to eat (especially me). Good excuse for me to make a ton of food (of which I have an abundance of leftovers, you bi*&#es!!!)

Anyway, I went to the grocery store and bought some easy stuff (chips, fruit) but I thought I would make a couple of things that I love, too; two that are currently my go-to sweet recipes:  1) Homemade Twix Bars 2) Lemon cookies. I also have a love affair with salty dips, and saw one on Pinterest that piqued my interest, and thought I'd give it a try.

HOMEMADE TWIX BARS

The first time I saw these homemade Twix bars on Pinterest I died. My mother and I have been super big Twix fans from my earliest of memories. What could be better than making them yourself ?? These of course, aren't surrounded by chocolate, but rather Twix squares, per se. When I make these (and I make them often) I NEVER veer from this recipe. It's just perfect the way it is. It's a little bit time consuming, as each layer has to be prepared separately and then cooled, before the next layer can go on, but the wait is WORTH IT! The one stinky thing about it, is that it needs to be kept refrigerated, or the caramel layer shifts/melts, making it a silly mess to eat. Definitely not an outdoor picnic kinda treat, that's for sure.

My version of the Twix Square

LEMON CRINKLE COOKIES - Click HERE for the recipe

I love all things lemon, and saw this pin once and thought it looked good, but it wasn't one I needed to try right away. Then it started coming up a hundred times in my feed, each time someone would comment about how they made them and they were absolutely amazing...Now I was curious. When I clicked on the pin it took me straight to LDS Living (which is a website for Latter Day Saints). Now, I don't know much about their religion, but I do know this...

Mormons are hot (have you seen Jef from the Bachelorette????)



Yum!



and Mormons make one heck of a cookie!

Anyway, I tried my best to follow the recipe as closely as I could (it is an award winner, after all!) , but I sometimes don't read the entire recipe through before I start...and miss an important step...as I did in this case. When it told me to add all the dry ingredients together, I did...without realizing that I was supposed to save the confectioner's sugar until afterwards...so, in it went and out some came...Not all...Ooooopsies! Oh well. They turned out so good that my husband and I ate the entire sheet of cookies in one night (with a sugar brick in my stomach). My husband told me that he thought they may even be his favourite cookies of mine ever...which is HUGE, since he's been a staunch supporter of my double chocolate chip cookies (sorry ladies, this recipe is under secret protection) for a decade.  Now that I've been making these cookies for some time, I've, of course, modified the recipe a little bit. I DO NOT add lemon rind. It's just a personal preference of mine (I don't like finding hard nubs in my soft, chewy cookies unless they're chocolate chips...sorry). So, instead of putting the rind in, I replace it with more lemon juice. I usually use a whole lemon squeezed in this sucker. Again, I like lemon. I also add a tidbit more vanilla. As a general rule, I make my cookie dough more wet than normal, and I always underbake my cookies. Just a thing I do. I don't like cookies that are dry and crumbly. I prefer my cookies to be soft baked, so I find that if I make them a little wetter and undercook them only slightly, I always get them just right for me.

Now, because then end result of my icing sugar gaff was delicious, I tend to recreate it, by adding a 1/4 cup of icing sugar to the original recipe (mixed with the rest of the dry ingredients). Finally, my last modification is done only because I have a double oven. My stove has a split oven, so I find that when I bake things at the recommended temperature, they get overdone. So, I've learned to adjust the cooking temperature by about 15 degrees less, so that I get the right stuff. That's just my oven, though. Everyone's oven cooks a little differently, as I've learned thoughout my years of baking.

My version of the Lemon Cookie:

Before



After




















TEXAS TRASH (aka - Warm Bean Dip)

Here's the recipe that I'd never tried before. Could be a bust, right? Well, it wasn't. It was delicious. It was also great, because I was able to prepare it beforehand and pop it in the oven once the ladies arrived. In addition to being daring by making this without a trial first, I testing my luck by modifying the original recipe too...Playing with fire, I know! Anyway, I really didn't do anything other than switch the sour cream to greek yogurt (makes it healthy right? LOL!) I did, however, have an issue with the refried beans. I'd never used refried beans before, and was a little turned off, because the consistency and appearance was basically dog food as it sludged out of the can. This recipe was yummy, but it really needed to stay warm. As it cooled, the layer of cheese became almost too thick to scoop with nacho chips...I was using my chip like a knife to slice through it...Anyway, it tasted good, and that's all that matters!

Warm Bean Dip (Before being warm)...No photo of the during or after...but it looked good and tasted great.

The night was a blast, we stayed up late, talked a lot and ate a bunch (not enough!). And the best way to measure the success of the night was being asked for the recipes...So, here you go ladies! Enjoy! xoxo

Shout Outs:

Twix Bars: Sugar and Spice By Celeste. She's got lots of other yummy recipes to try out too! Have a look!

Lemon Crinkle Cookies: LDS Living.

Texas Trash/Warm Bean Dip: Life As A Lofthouse. Even more delicious food!