baking extravaganza, aka, i need to go on a detox after this

wow, i crammed in as much baking for my last few days of break possible. so lets get right to it!

 these are called "food of the gods" but like pioneer woman, i feel the name is a bit odd. but they are drool worthy and melt in your mouth goodness (it helps that there are 3 sticks of butter in it...but don't let that stop you from trying this out). i wish i had more nuts in it, so i would recommend trying out pioneer woman's idea of adding chopped pecans. i've never used dates in my baking before but these were yummy. i wonder how dried figs would taste instead?

 the bars wrapped and boxed up for s2 and s3!

it was a tough decision trying to decide what to make for my birthday "cake" and the winner turned out to be a cookie rather than a cake. these are picky palate's s'mores stuffed chocolate chip cookies. these are delicious and so cute! i made my s'mores insert half the size of picky palate's, got lazy and only made 7 of them, but wish i had made all the dough into s'mores stuffed ones b/c the cookies actually tasted better with the s'more inside. but it was so cute! the stack of s'more with cookie dough on top and bottom reminded me of those weird sponge bob square pants candy shaped like burgers (which i haven't tried and am a little too freaked out to try...). and out of the oven the marshmallows just oozeddddd out of the cookie.

 oh, and did you notice, i finally got a silpat! love love love. although with waiting for the cookies to cool and such i still ended up using aluminum foil to bake the rest of the cookies so i wouldn't waste the heat of the oven. hopefully one day i'll have enough silpat to just bake away to my hearts content (how dangerous that day will be)

so in less than 2 hours i'll be 24. phew. this year is going by so fast. oh, i forgot to mention my family tried chick n' friends for my birthday (i was in the mood for super low key kind of birthday celebration). and yes, the vegetarian got fried chicken food for her birthday (but i had fried fish!) but i forgot to get a waffle! time for me to get some sleep now that spring break is ending, too bad i couldn't have another week of spring break. but it's probably better this way as i need to go on a bit of a fried food/baked goods detox.