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During this whole stay at home social distancing thing we are dealing with I have realized how often we used to eat out as a family. Honestly, it was at least once a week and that doesn’t count the lunch dates to Chick-fil-a after kindergarten with my youngest!! (awww the good old days!)
Seriously though we are missing those family activities and we needed to do something to break up the new normal. There’s a little restaurant we love to visit when we drive up to northern Utah in the spring and summer and they have hands down the best dessert, pizookie!! We always joke that when the waitress sets it down you have to have your spoon ready because my kids will destroy that pizookie and any evidence it ever existed in about 2 mins flat!!
Since this is a family favorite of ours we decided it would be fun to have a little at home “date night” with the kids and make our very own pizookies!! Instead of making a huge one for us all to share I found these cute individual size mini cast iron pan from Bed Bath and Beyond so we could make one for each of us!
The first thing you want to do is make your favorite batch of chocolate chip cookie dough. This could even be made with a different kind of cookie dough for a change. Maybe throw in peanut butter chips or toffee candy pieces!!
Here is the recipe we love:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 heaping teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Directions
Place the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl; set aside.
Place the butter and sugar in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, just a few minutes. Add the eggs and beat until blended. Add the vanilla and beat until blended.
Turn the mixer off and add the flour mixture a scoop at a time. Turn the mixer on low speed until the flour is completely incorporated. Then turn the mixer to high speed for a few seconds to pull the dough together; it will be chunky. Add the chocolate chips and beat on high speed to thoroughly and quickly mix in the chips, just a few seconds.
When your dough is finished you will want to take a cookie scoop and place 4 scoops of dough, roughly 1.5 tbsp of dough into each mini cast iron pan. Then press down the dough and mold it to the the pan. These will bake a tiny bit longer then a batch of cookies but watch them so they don’t over cook!
Bake for about 12-15 minutes, you want them to still be slightly undercooked in the center. Finally put a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top while it’s still warm and enjoy!!
-Grey Birch Designs-
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With Mother’s Day coming up next month and the state of our current health crisis, this year will most definitely look a little different. Each year my kids go out with my husband and pick me out something they think I will love. The best part of the gift is that, whatever it is, they picked it out for me! Since that won’t really be possible this year they asked if they could do something around the house that would be special for me. Although I’m sure they were thinking something along the lines of making be breakfast in bed, I had a better idea: cleaning the WHOLE KITCHEN by themselves!!!!
Now I think this is genius since a clean kitchen always makes me happy and makes me feel productive. Even better, a clean kitchen that I didn’t have to clean! Thankfully for them it’s really not that big of a job. Last year we updated most of our appliances to these fingerprint resistant Samsung appliances. Our Refrigerator Dishwasher and Microwave are always fingerprint and smuge free so the kids don’t really even need to clean them!! Before we had these that was a big chore and it took a good amount of time to make our old stainless steel appliances shine.
The whole thing took my kids only 20 mins to do and they even wiped down the shiplap all around the island, something I never do!! After they finished, two of my kids said they liked cleaning the kitchen and would do it more often!! Talk about a Mother’s Day bonus!!
Now that I have a clean kitchen the kids and I are going to dirty it up again and bake our favorite Banana Bread Recipe It’s delicious but I make a just a few little changes to the ingredients:
+ Nonstick baking spray, for the pan or parchment paper
+ 8 tablespoons salted butter, softened but still a little cold
+ 1 cup packed light brown sugar
+ 2 large eggs, beaten
+ 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
+ 5 very ripe bananas, mashed
+ 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
+ 1 teaspoon baking soda
+ ½ teaspoon kosher salt
+ 1 cup chocolate chips (we tend to be generous with chocolate at out house)
+ granulated sugar (dusted on top before baking)
+ 8 tablespoons salted butter, softened but still a little cold
+ 1 cup packed light brown sugar
+ 2 large eggs, beaten
+ 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
+ 5 very ripe bananas, mashed
+ 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
+ 1 teaspoon baking soda
+ ½ teaspoon kosher salt
+ 1 cup chocolate chips (we tend to be generous with chocolate at out house)
+ granulated sugar (dusted on top before baking)
We love cooking together and this recipe is so easy my kids can practically make it by themselves. Plus, all the ingredients are staples in our house so there’s no need to go out and brave the supermarket!!
-Grey Birch Designs-
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Check out this banana bread recipe from the Magnolia Table Cookbook!
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Another great recipe from the Magnolia Table cookbook!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you won’t miss any of our videos!
-Grey Birch Designs-
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Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you won’t miss any of our videos!
-Grey Birch Designs-
