Happy Holiday weekend!

My it has been a long time since I posted here - life has been busy and computer time sometimes falls to the wayside but I'm catching up and hope to start sharing more new recipe with you soon. I'm also excited to share what I make each week out of my CSA garden box and this past week we received our 2nd delivery but the first one that included actual produce. Minnesota had a very wet & late spring so all gardens are behind. Our first delivery was 2 farm raised broiler chickens and a herb planter and the above was our delivery this week.

Of course since this is a holiday weekend, we decided it was okay to take a break from our healthy eating and splurge a little with those fresh strawberries we received :)

chocolate and coconut...

Many years ago a neighbor, Adeline, known for her baking skills introduced me to macaroon bars. The recipe was like a brownie with a middle macaroon layer and I made them often when we were first married. Soon macaroon mix became obsolete and no longer available in our local stores and I just forgot about the recipe until my last hair appt. You see my hairdresser, Danielle, is the granddaughter of Adeline, the neighbor who shared the recipe with me. Her Aunt Deb (Adeline's daughter) owns the salon and while we were talking about her parents who have both been gone for twenty plus years, I reminisced about Adeline's cooking and her bar recipe. Deb remembered them as well and said if I still had the recipe she would love a copy. For my appt today I did one better - I brought them the recipe along with some freshly made bars.I searched and found the original recipe as written here.

Adeline's Macaroon Bars (circa 1976)
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
4 eggs
1/2 cup cocoa
2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup nuts (optional)

Filling:
1 pkg coconut macaroon mix
1/2 cup water

Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs, beating well. Add rest of ingredients. Spread 1/2 of this mixture in a greased 9 x 13 pan. Mix the macaroon mix with 1/2 cup water. Spread this over the brownie mixture. Then spread on the rest of the brownie mixture. Bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Since the packaged macaroon mix is no longer available I decided to try this bar recipe using my favorite recipe for Coconut Macaroons as the filling. Deb remembered her mom frosting the bars with the boiled 1 minute chocolate frosting but I used a chocolate ganache.

Coconut Macaroons
(Heart Healthy Living Magazine)

3 cups shredded coconut
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 egg white
Dash salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, combine coconut, condensed milk, vanilla and lemon juice. In a medium bowl, beat egg white and salt with an electric mixer until it holds soft peaks. Fold into the coconut mixture. Using a teaspoon, drop small mounds of the mixture, measuring about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, about 1 1/2 inches apart on the prepared sheet. with slightly wet fingertips, pinch the mounds to make them narrower and taller. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes, rotating the sheet from front to back after 10 minutes. When done, slide the parchment off the cookie sheet onto a wire rack. After 10 minutes, remove the macaroons from the parchment using a thin metal spatula, and place them directly on the rack to cool. Note: Because we love the chocolate topped macaroons from a MN bakery I dip these in chocolate as pictured instead of leaving them plain.

Because these cookies are a favorite I made a second batch of the coconut mixture and actually made the cookies. It was dark by the time they were done so I used a photo of them from a few years ago.

Macaroon Bars & Cookies
Marsha - Thumbs UP
Jeff - Thumbs UP

W-S chocolate ebelskivers...

We are really enjoying the ebelskiver pan that I got for Christmas. Sunday morning breakfast could have been a dessert with the chocolate ebelskivers filled with nutella. No recipe as this one is a mix, Williams-Sonoma Chocolate Ebelskiver Pancake Mix, that Jayme gave me with the pan.

Marsha - Thumbs UP
Jeff - Thumbs UP

National Chocolate Covered Anything Day...

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done. (Author Unknown)

Info from this mostly unknown holiday from the Holiday Insights website.
"When : Always December 16
Chocolaholics rejoice! Its a great day to indulge, binge, "pig out", and otherwise consume to excess, your favorite food....chocolate. We believe the timing of this day, during the holiday season, couldn't be better.

Today, we get to enjoy our beloved chocolate by covering something...just about anything... in a generous amount of chocolate. Pour, spread, or drizzle chocolate over cakes, cupcakes, pies, pancakes or waffles, nuts, raisins, even ants (yes, some people actually eat chocolate covered ants!). We will let you decide what is too extreme, and how much is too much, if any.

As chocoloaholics, we shouldn't need any added incentive to enjoy our chocolate. In the giving spirit of the holiday season, make sure to give or share some of your favorite chocolate covered treats today."

Please join me in celebrating this mostly unknown holiday by sharing some chocolate love in the MckLinky Blog Hop at the bottom of this post. I hope to find amongst the entries some new recipes for creating fun treats, new ideas for chocolate gifts and new virtual friends who share my love of blogging with lots of photos :) Most of all - I wish us all virtual sugar highs with the sights of good food with no calories! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Like most holidays this chocolate day snuck up on me faster than I realized and I am ill prepared for being the hostess. I had big ideas and lots of things planned but no time to pull them off during this busy season of holiday gatherings. I will add a couple more chocolate posts as time permits because I still have family favorite recipes to make and a bunch of good ideas to try from the CDKitchen website's suggestions for the holiday. Today, I present the goodies made by myself, my daughter, Jayme and my daughter-in-law, Tammy as we spent a day baking, dipping and covering all good things in chocolate.

I thought it would be fun to host a blogger chocolate celebration because I had the perfect chocolate dishes to use.
They offer great advice though with more healthy fruit pictured...
but holidays are a time to indugle!
Tammy brought this idea to our goodie making day, a family favorite on her side. Ritz crackers spread with peanut butter, topped with a second cracker and dipped in white and milk chocolate.
My son, Nathan, requested the chocolate covered sunflower kernels and chocolate covered cashews. Son-in-law, Scott, thought we needed chocolate covered peanuts as well!
Jayme requested cake balls and cake pops from Bakerella.com and she will be adding a linked entry on the pops from her own blog soon.
My choice on what to make were the chocolate and caramel covered pretzel rods from the blog My Kitchen Cafe. Click HERE to see the recipe and be awed at how perfect her's looked compared to mine :) But taste matters more to me than looks and these are SO GOOD!
Not all of our creations were covered with chocolate (more like topped) but they all involved chocolate somewhere in the recipe and it was a wonderful family bonding day :)
After a long weekend of fun away with family it was good to come home...
and try some chocolate wine.
I will be adding more links myself to the blog roll below but I am really looking forward to all the chocolate goodness shared by fellow bloggers...LET THE PARTY BEGIN!

Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. Forrest Gump in "Forrest Gump" (1994)




I could give up chocolate but I'm not a quitter.