Heaven in a Crock-Pot

Welcome guest Pam Hillman who tempted me when she shared this recipe. I now have the ingredients on hand. I can't wait!

Heaven in a Crock-Pot

by Pam Hillman

This is my second visit to the Yankee Belle Café and guess what I blogged about last time?

Yep, you guessed it.

Chocolate.

Oreo Cookie Balls to be exact.

Obviously, I have a thing for rich, dark, ooey, gooey chocolate! If you can’t resist a scrumptious looking concoction (preferably paired with vanilla bean ice cream) with dark chocolate oozing down the sides, check out my Yum Pinterest board. Or, goodness, just look at the menu bar right here in the Café! I never knew there were so many scrumptious-looking desserts. If they taste half as good as they look… In the words of the famous New York baker extraordinaire, Ruth Logan Herne, OH.MY.STARS!

I’m not really much of a cook, I just throw food in an iron skillet, a casserole dish, or the crock pot and let ‘er rip, but goodness, how can you mess up anything to do with chocolate? And this recipe, Heaven in a Crockpot, aka Crockpot Brownies, is so easy it’s unbelievable. It took longer to stage the pictures than it did to make this.

Really!

Look at this. Everything you need RIGHT here in the crockpot, ready to stir up into mouth-watering goodness oozing with chocolaty yumminess! Btw, this is plenty rich WITHOUT the extra chocolate chips. I bought them because I thought I’d seen that on the recipe. No need to add extra chocolate chips. Trust me.

Melt butter in microwave and then throw everything in the bowl, like this:

Stir, stir, stir! Unlike other brownie mixes, I don’t think it matters how much you stir. Lots or little. Just do it.

Dump/spoon/shovel into your crockpot. (Are we allowed to lick the spoon? Thought not…)

Turn crockpot on LOW and wait… This is honestly the HARDEST part. It’s supposed to cook 3 hours, and that’s about right for the crockpot I used. One lady on Pinterest commented that the center was still gooey and she felt like it needed to cook 5 hours, but the gooey part was like mega-thick chocolate syrup, not like dough, so it was perfect-O!

Heaven in a Crockpot is like one of those microwaved chocolate lava cakes multiplied by six… and even yummier!

Still waiting… One hour and thirty-three minutes and fifteen seconds into cooking time. Sigh…

The end result looks a lot like it does at the half-way mark, but the center is firmer. When you dip your spoon down into it, the center should be gooey, the brownie cake all around the edges of the crockpot. I took a knife and pried the brownie away from the edges of crockpot. When dipping, make sure you get some of the brownie AND the gooey center.

And….Tada! My masterpiece! I staged this with my cute little cut-crystal bowl and my white linens. I took a gazillion pictures before I took a SINGLE BITE! Now that’s dedication to the Yankee-Belle Café. I didn’t know I had that much willpower.

Oh, the recipe. Here she blows…

Heaven in a Crockpot

1 box Betty Crocker fudge brownie mix

½ cup butter, melted

4 eggs

1 pouch Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix

Mix it all together.

Cook about 3 hours IN A CROCKPOT on low.

Top with vanilla ice cream.

And enjoy!

PS. In spite of my best efforts, I couldn’t find any information about how this dessert holds up after being refrigerated or frozen. I suspect it’s because no one has ever had any LEFT. But, again, in the interest of taking one for the Yankee-Belle Café team, I wrestled the last little bit of heaven out of My Cowboy’s hands and refrigerated it. I’m happy to report that it’s just as good (cold or nuked 20 seconds) the next day as it was the first day.

BIO: Pam Hillman was born and raised on a dairy farm in Mississippi and spent her teenage years perched on the seat of a tractor raking hay. In those days, her daddy couldn’t afford two cab tractors with air conditioning and a radio, so Pam drove the Allis Chalmers 110. Even when her daddy asked her if she wanted to bale hay, she told him she didn’t mind raking. Raking hay doesn’t take much thought so Pam spent her time working on her tan and making up stories in her head. Now, that’s the kind of life every girl should dream of! Claiming Mariah is her second novel. www.pamhillman.com

Pam Hillman's Getcha Good "Kashi Go Lean" Breakfast!

 I discovered something interesting several months ago.

Every body is different.

Yes, two words.

Every. Body.

Every body does not require the exact same amount of fiber, protein, fats, and carbohydrates as the next body. The percentages recommended by the Food and Nutrition Board are just that: recommendations, not fact.

Long story short. I have not been getting enough fiber for years. But I didn't know. Do you know how hard it is to get enough fiber? Well, let me tell you, it's not easy! Maybe it's the meat, bread, and potatoes lifestyle I've lived most of my life. Once I figured this out, I decided to do something about it.

After a very scientific search with the assistance of Mr. Google and my local Wal Mart, I perfected the following yummy tasting, healthy breakfast combination.

F1 Kashi GoLean Breakfast

3/4 cup of Fiber One Original Bran Cereal - 90 calories / 21g fiber

.25 cup of Kashi GoLean Honey, Almond, Flax Granola Cereal - 50 calories / 2g fiber

1/10 cup of dried cranberries - 39 calories / 1g fiber

1 TBSP slivered almonds - 43 calories / 2 g fiber

1/2 cup 2% milk - 61 calories / 0 g fiber

2 packs of truvia or sweetener of your choice if desired

Total Calories: 283; Carbohydates: 69g; Fat: 9g; Sodium: 246g; Protein: 11g; Fiber: 26g

Sure, the Kashi cereal adds 50 calories for only 2gs of fiber, but have you ever had Honey Bunches of Oats w/almonds? That's one of my favorite cereals, In comparison, 1 cup of HBOO w/Almonds and 2% milk has almost the exact same amount of calories as my F1 GoLean concoction, but HBOO has less than 3g of fiber!

Throughout the rest of the day, I make a conscious effort to add in some fiber-rich foods in my diet. Chicken salad with craisens, raisens, or an apple, and pecans or almonds for lunch. And, I try to keep a Kellogg's FiberPlus bar in my purse. Those things pack a whopping 9g of fiber for 120 calories. Sure, the apple has about 5 grams of fiber for 100 calories, but it's not the easiest thing to keep in your purse, you know.

Last tip. Don't increase your fiber drastically overnight. Gradually do it and drink lots of water. Water and fiber go together like peanut butter and jelly. Just sayin'

So, what does a typical day without exercise look like for me? This is what I posted on My Fitness Pal on August 1, 2012

Coffee w/Sweetleaf English Toffee sweetener - 0 calories / 0 fiber

F1 GoLean Breakfast - 283 calories / 26g fiber

16 ounces of water before noon

Lunch: Tuna or chicken salad on Nature's Own 3x the fiber Wheat bread - 300 calories / 7g fiber

16 ounces of water with lunch

Dinner: Green salad with grilled chicken - 400 calories / 5g fiber

16 ounces of water with dinner

Snacks: Chobani Greek Yogurt - 160 calories / 0g fiber

Kellogg's Blueberry Special K bar - 90 calories / 3g fiber

16 ounces of water throughout the afternoon/evening. MORE if I exercise.

Total 1233 calories, and 41g of fiber. Even though I'm not really tracking carbs, protein, fat and sodium, I was almost right on target with carbs, a little over on the fat (salad dressing and mayo), and had plenty of protein and my sodium was under my target.

Speaking of exercise. If I burn 400 calories exercising, then I get to splurge and eat some of those calories back. So, I'd add something like peanut butter and nutella, or a Skinny Cow Truffle bar. Or even that piece of leftover ice cream cake in the deep freeze.

Which reminds me. I already ate the ice cream cake, so I'm off to get rid of those extra calories....

Bio:

Award-winning author Pam Hillman writes inspirational fiction set in the turbulent times of the American West and the Gilded Age. Her second book,Claiming Mariah, releases January 2013 from Tyndale House Publishers. Claiming Mariah won the American Christian Fiction Writer’s Genesis contest and the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Golden Heart contest. She lives in Mississippi with her husband and family. www.pamhillman.com

Simply Saturday Rutabaga Fries with Tyndale Author Pam Hillman

I was looking for a way to cook extra Rutabagas this morning, and here's the link I found:

Oven Baked Rutabaga Fries

And then this is what I did!

Thin 1/4" strips work best, and I made mine really spicy! I tossed the strips in a bowl with a bit of olive oil to coat them, then layered them on a cookie sheet and drenched them with...

Onion Powder: White and Green Onions with Parsley

Garlic powder

Paprika

Salt

Pepper

Tony Chachere's Original Creole Seasoning

Also used butter flavor spray to get the seasonings to stick.

I baked mine longer than 20 minutes so that they would be soft like fries. Well, I like soft fries! lol

PS. I just ate a couple with ketchup, and I could hardly tell the difference in a french fry. 

And...I bet they'd be good with cinnamon and sugar/truvia. Without the ketchup of course. 

Ah, why am I not surprised? Here's a recipe for Maple Cinnamon Roasted Rutabaga fries.