An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!
There are three very important things happening in this uberly (it’s a word. shut up.) delicious cake.
☝????Pound cake. Easy, Sara Lee, ALWAYS GOOD and always easy ???? pound cake.
✌???? Peanut butter. And I don’t mean peanut butter that’s been diluted with sugar or whipped cream or something. I mean PEANUT BUTTER. In all of it’s creamy glory. The way the Girl Scouts intended it to be.
✌????☝???? (why isn’t there an emjoi for three??) Chocolate. Duh.
Step number one: buy a Sara Lee pound cake out of the frozen section. I’m not even going to bother arguing with the make-it-from-scratch crowd here. Trust me. It’s just as good if not better than a homemade pound cake for this particular recipe.
I rest my case.
Step number two: smother it in creamy, creamy peanut butter.
Step number three: Freeze it. Really about 30 minutes ought to do the trick. We just don’t want it to melt when we pour the chocolate over it.
Are you ready for this step?
Canned frosting. Mmm-hm. I’m not even embarrassed. Homemade frosting has it’s place. Like on this cake. But half a can of melted Pillsbury Milk Chocolate frosting works like a dream for this recipe.
The chocolate chip cookie. My favorite dessert on the planet. No, really. It is. I know I claim a lot of bests and ultimates and, yes, even favorites. But in truth, nothing will ever beat out a chocolate chip cookie for me.
Especially the RIGHT kind of chocolate chip cookie.
Now, I don’t discriminate, mind you. I like them all. From Chips Ahoy to bakery cookies to my own homemade batches– I love chocolate chips cookies.
But the right chocolate chip cookie? It’s like winning the cookie jackpot. And it’s different for everyone. Maybe your kind of chocolate chip cookie is soft and pillowy. Or maybe you like them crunchy. Maybe you like big chunks of melty chocolate oozing out the sides. Or maybe you like lots of mini chocolate chips in every single bit. Maybe you need a salty, buttery flavor. Or possibly you care more about subtle vanilla undertones.
We’ve all got our priorities when it comes to chocolate chip cookies.
For me? I need thick, crispy edges. I like the center to still be just a little bit underdone. And I really prefer cookies a little bit on the thinner side. Not like crunchy thin or barely-there-thin, it’s just I feel like thick cookies almost always get a little tough once they’ve sat a day or two– and I really don’t like that. The thinner cookies stay chewy, because they have a lower flour to fat/sugar ratio.
That buttery/salty flavor is a MUST. In fact, the saltier the better for me when it comes to CCC!
And I can really go just about any way with chocolate (chips, mini chips, shavings, chunks, etc…) as long as it’s semi-sweet. I went through a brief love affair with milk chocolate chips, but I keep coming back to semi-sweet. Always. ????
These cookies have it all. At least for me, anyway. And I am completely smitten. ????
Those crispy, butter edges– be still my heart!
The flavor is spot on, the texture is fabulously chewy and perfectly underbaked in the center, and every bite is full of miniature chocolate chips. Seriously, these are the BEST chocolate chip cookies I’ve made in the chocolate chip cookie experiment.
If you like that buttery-crispy-chewy-underbaked-perfection sort of thing, that is. If you’re more of a thick and soft cookie person, check out these. They’re fabulous too.
This recipe hails from a really fabulous BuzzFeed article all about the ultimate chocolate chip cookies. If you haven’t seen it, be sure to check it out. It’s a great read (if, ahem, you know, you like to read about chocolate chip cookies… and some of us do)!
And if you don’t want to read about them, that’s fine too. But seriously, make these cookies!
My favorite baked oatmeal recipe topped with caramel coconut and melted chocolate. It’s like eating cookies for breakfast 🙂
You guys. This week. This week. Is it going to end? Please? Someone tell me it’s almost over. I’m not sure I’m going to survive any more of it.
It’s like I desperately need an “off” button or something. But when you’re a mom, you don’t really get one of those do you? Ha! You should. Or at least a mute button or something.
Sometimes I swear that would be enough– just to be able to turn off the noise. I think I could handle the rest of it, if I could just mute everything and plod along in blissful silence. So yeah. I’m thinking a mute button would suffice. And if I could order it on Amazon Prime, well, that would just be swell.
Ok, daydream over.
Back to reality.
Thank heavens I live in a reality that includes dessert for breakfast. Because if I don’t get a mute button, I think I should most certainly be allowed to have dessert for breakfast. amiright?!
This Samoas Baked Oatmeal is a revamp of a very old, archived recipe that I am super excited to share with you today!! The original recipe was for a single-serve, microwave version, and you can still find it here.
But I like this baked version much better! Today’s rendition is simply my favorite go-to baked oatmeal transformed into an indulgent version of Samoas Girl Scout Cookies. The plain oatmeal recipe already called for coconut, so it’s a pretty natural transition to add caramel and toasted coconut to the top! And of course a chocolate drizzle. Because #chocolategoals.
You can make the oatmeal base the night before and bake it in the morning if you want to save a little time. And be sure to toast the coconut ahead of time too. Then all you’ll have to do is mix in the caramel, and voila!
This banana bread is perfect for a special birthday breakfast or just a fun way to use up those old bananas! Incredibly moist, easy to make, and so much fun.
Hey hey, it’s 2017! So, tell me everything. Are you making New Year resolutions? Are you losing weight? Getting fit? Eating more dessert?
Wait. Just me? ????
Kidding. I actually started my 2017 health “resolutions” last week. After about December 27, I just felt like I couldn’t go another day without getting on track. And by “on track,” I mean Weight Watchers. Always. It’s my favorite go-to (see this post… and this one).
Speaking of Weight Watchers and zero point bananas….
Would you check out this Birthday Cake Banana Bread??
Because I’m sure this is exactly what Weight Watchers had in mind when they made bananas a point-free food ???? ???? ????.
This is my favorite cake mix banana bread recipe, and I think it is just fabulous. I’ve made Red Velvet Banana Bread and Brownie Banana Bread using this same recipe, and it’s just a super dependable delicious recipe. The bread is moist, full of flavor, and has an incredibly tender crumb.
Hang on a second.
Can we talk about my weird foodie vernacular here? Tender crumb.
Isn’t that the weirdest food terminology you’ve ever heard?? And once you know what it is, there really is no other phrase you can use in place of tender crumb for a food that has a tender crumb. The best way I can describe “tender crumb” is when the crumbs of a cake or bread are so moist that you can use the back of a fork to smush them and pick them up… does that make any sense to anyone but me?
And omg, I’ve said tender crumb so much now that it’s starting to look weird to me. ????
Soooooo…. to get back on topic: this banana bread.
It’s really just so much fun. It’s simple to make since it uses a cake mix (only 4 ingredients total!). Which also means that it has a wonderfully predictable cake-like flavor and fluffy texture. If you have any tired bananas just sitting around, may I suggest this Birthday Cake Banana Bread instead of a smoothie?
