Tuesday Treats: Pumpkin Pie Bars

I swear I'll make something other than pumpkin recipes…sometime.  

Annie's Eats came through with another excellent recipe…Pumpkin Pie Bars.

Ingredients

For crust/topping

1 1/3 cup flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

12 Tbsp cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 cup oats

1/2 cup chopped pecans

For the filling

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree

1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tsp vanilla 

Butterscotch chips for topping

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line 9 X 13 pan with aluminum foil lightly grease.  

2.  Combine flour, sugar, brown sugar in mixing bowl.  Mix in butter (Annie's Eats mixed it with a pastry cutter, but I am way too lazy for that).  Mix in the oats and pecans.  

3.  Place one cup of mixture to side.  Add remaining mixture to prepared pan and press into bottom of pan for an even layer.  

4.  Bake crust in oven alone for 15 minutes.

5.  While crust is baking, prepare the filling by combining cream cheese, sugar, eggs, pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, and vanilla with mixer until well combined.

6.  Remove crust from oven.  

7.  Pour filling into pan over crust evenly.  

8.  Sprinkle with remaining crumbs.

9.  Sprinkle butterscotch chips over top.  

10.  Bake for 25 minutes.  

11.  Allow to cool completely.

12.  Slice and serve.

ENJOY!!!

Prepping For "Sandy"

As everyone is running around to the grocery store, liquor store, and Sam's Club, my main agenda for Hurricane Sandy prep is:  Wear Baxter Out!  Bax hates the rain and usually cuddles up next to me all day in the rain, but it makes it hard when he wants to run around all night, as he's full of energy.  

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous.  I took Baxter to Oregon Ridge Park to run around and play fetch with his ball…his all time favorite activity!  

After playing fetch for a while, we took a little hike through the woods.  

Some of my favorite days are hanging with my best bud.  I sure hope I wore him out enough, as the next couple days look a little rainy here!  

Hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Tuesday Treats: Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

These cookies were DE-LISH-IOUS!  Melt in your mouth!

My sweet tooth struck again this past week and I had minimal ingredients in the house.  I put in the ingredients I had in the website, allrecipes.com and boom, there I had a recipe I will be using again soon, I'm sure!

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/4 cup flour

1 cup oats

1 1/2 cup shredded coconut flakes

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Cream together butter and sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla until incorporated well.

3.  Add baking soda, baking powder, and salt to mixture and combine well.

4.  Add half of your flour and mix well, but until just combined (you apparently can end up with rock hard cookies if over mixing here).  Add second half and mix until just combined. 

5.  Stir in oats.

 6.  Stir in coconut flakes.

 7.  Make dough into balls and distribute evenly on baking sheet.

 8.  Bake for about 8 minutes, until edges are slightly browned.

 9.  Let cool on baking sheet for about 5 minutes.

(since I have no patience, this did not happen for me)

 10.  Allow to completely cool on wire rack.

(or, on paper towels….this is how my mom has always done it and therefore, this is how I do it in my kitchen…easy clean up!)

ENJOY!!!

GWA: Girls Weekend Away

What a weekend!  Four of us headed down to South Beach, Florida for a long weekend of fun and sun.  We started early at the airport and toasted with margaritas!

Once we landed and got to our super cute hotel, we headed out on an adventure for dinner.  After midnight, we decided we didn't care where we ate, as long as we could sit down and have a cocktail and a bite to eat.  We ended up at an outdoor sushi place, which was perfect.  After a couple cocktails, we were exhausted from our traveling and retired to our beds.

The next morning we got up and headed out to our hotels adorable little outdoor patio for brunch.

Started out with some bellinis and mimosas to get the party started.  Unfortunately, after our super yummy brunch, it started to rain.  We opted for what any girls would do in this situation and headed out to shop and enjoy a couple more drinks.  

Then, we came back to our hotel and moved to our next hotel for the weekend…The Shore Club…AMAZING!!!

Since it was still dreary out, we headed to lunch. 

And toasted with some butt kicking berry mojitos!  

The sun peaked through and we made our way to the beach.

For more cocktails…

We had a great time hopping around from the beach, pool and hot tub enjoying the day.  

After our fingers were pruney enough we decided to head in and get ready for the night.  And popped some bubbly while getting ready with some tunes!

The view from our room while getting ready.  Clouds parting way! :)

First stop…The Delano.  How come every time I've been here I can never get a good picture!? Its such a cute place with all white decor.  We had a great time here for a quick cocktail and a mini photo session that I will refrain from posting on here.  This, after all, is the PG version of our trip!

We headed to dinner at Red.  What a fun little place.  Food was amazing and we had some delicious wine (the waiter told us it was a $70 bottle, when in fact it was over $100, but still gave it to us for the price we were told…bonus!)  After dinner, we sat at the bar for another glass of bubbly.  

Then headed out to the clubs!

Told you, PG version.

Things got fun!  We had a great time, and retired around 3am…pretty late for this group, and I was impressed with myself for staying out that late after a long day!

The next morning, we headed out to brunch by the pool.  

And dragged ourselves to the beach…guzzling water for a good couple hours.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day.

After beaching it for a little while, we headed back to the pool, as we could finally tolerate the loud music again.  

After a nice lunch, we all felt we had gotten enough sun.

And headed to the shade to do some reading/napping.  Here is where our idea for book club was inspired.  We are now all reading Gone Girl.  Anyone read it yet?

After revamping ourselves, we headed out for a casual night of dinner and shopping.  I will share my latest purchases later this week…obsessed!  Here, may be the largest hat we had ever seen at Free People.  Who's head would this ever fit?!  

After many glasses of wine during our shopping and dinner, we had to use the ladies room.  Look at this sign outside…I couldn't help but laugh and wanted to share with you all!

We then headed to an amazing place called Juvia.  It is by far one of my favorite places now.  Its a huge outdoor rooftop bar overlooking the miami skyline.  Look how cool the bar top was.

Our view of the city.  My pics do this place absolutely no justice.

We then, headed to the convenient store to pick up some bottles of water for the morning for our flight home (we were done paying $70 for 5 bottles of water at the hotel).  Look what was in the store.  Good end to a long, fun, crazy girls weekend.  Can't wait to do it again.  But for now, this girl needs some sleep and detoxing!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!