Splurge - Chocolate Chip & Raisin White Cake Mix Cookies

Okay this next post is defintely NOT HG, but I had to post it anyway. My great grandma used to make these cookies when I was a kid. They were these amazing, soft, chocolate chip and raisin cookies. A few weeks ago, I started craving them, and my mom informed me that they were made with cake mix! Cue a week and a half of searching the 'net for recipes, and coming to terms with the fact that I was about to make something full fat and sugar. The recipe that I used was, apparently, taken from the back on a Duncan Hines cake mix box back in the 70s. I did add about a cup of raisins since that's how my grandma made them. These are SO GOOD. They taste exactly like the ones my grandma used to make. I might try modifying the recipe later (e.g. applesauce for oil), but I wanted to just make it straight the first time so I could have these cookies again.

I just figured out the calorie total for each cookie, and it ended up being 196 for 1 large cookie. Not good, but not too horrible either.

Honey Chicken

This recipe was a disaster, when I tryed to make it. But mom stepped it and made it all okay. I've said it once, and I'll say it again...I am a baker, not a cook. :) I mixed two recipes together to make this chicken; HG's Sesame Chicken and BlogChef's Honey Chicken.

I followed HG's recipe to make the chicken - baking it in the oven - and BlogChef's to make the sauce. I completely failed making the sauce. Our garlic was all dried out, so I used garlic powder, which burned when I added it to the oil. It was bad. Luckily, Mom actually knows what she's doing in the kitchen, and made another - perfect - batch. According to her, she did tweak the recipe a little bit. She added a bit more rice wine vinegar and almost doubled the honey.

This chicken is soooo good. The Chinese buffet near my house shut down recently, and I was lameting the fact that I could no longer get their honey chicken. Thank god I found a suitable replacement!

We served the chicken with white rice, and steamed broccoli with stir fry sauce.

HG's Perfect Pumpkin Bread

Its been a while, but I'm back with Hungry Girl's pumpkin bread, which can be found on their website. I wanted to get rid of some of the canned pumpkin we had lying around, so I made this for my mom (pumpkin pie spice is sooo not my thing). I did add some walnuts and chocolate chips in addition to the raisins.

It came out looking nice, and my mom claims that its awesome! Yay!!