Norm’s Bramble’versary has come and gone and I forgot to show you the ah-maz-ing treats that I made. I brought them to work and they lasted 2.2 seconds in the warehouse before they were devoured! Funny how a morning sugar rush correlated with a productive order day and crew. How curious. Anyway, I found this recipe from Love and Olive Oil, a super creative and yummy blog. If you get a chance to make these you’ll be a local hero in your kitchen, I promise.
Chocolate and Peanut Butter Pillows
Chocolate and Peanut Butter Pillows for Leah’s Last Day
If you have called Bramble Berry in the last year and a half, there’s a good chance you talked to our wonderful customer service team member, Leah. Recently, Leah spread her wings and flew from the Bramble Nest, and while we were sad to see her go we wanted to send her off right! At Bramble Berry, we have employees with many different dietary needs and in the spirit of Leah and her warm and open attitude, I wanted to be sure that I could include everyone with these treats. Using this recipe as a start, I modified it to be able to include those with both diary and gluten allergies.
Chocolate Cake in a Mug
Thanks to HowAboutOrange for finding these cool recipe on Haydee’s Chocolate Journal from the Traverse City Record. Phew, so this is now a fourth-hand shared recipe! TCR says:
Why is this a dangerous cake recipe? Because chocolate cake is now just 5 minutes away!
Dangerous Chocolate Cake-in-a-Mug
1 coffee mug (microwave-safe)
4 T. cake flour (plain, not self-rising)
4 T. sugar
2 T. cocoa
1 egg
3 T. milk
3 T. oil
Splash of vanilla
3 T. chocolate chips, optional
Add dry ingredients to the mug; mix well with a fork. Add egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in milk, oil, and vanilla, and mix well. Add chips, if using.
Put mug in the microwave, and cook for three minutes at 1,000 watts. Cake will rise over the top of the mug — do not be alarmed. When finished, carefully remove mug from microwave and allow to cool a little. Tip onto a small plate prior to serving, if desired. Yields one generous serving or two “more virtuous” servings
Amber’s Valentine Day Cookies
Amber in Customer Service and Marketing at Bramble Berry is very creative. She makes her own cards, binds books and can even sew. In addition to those talents, she has the patience of a kindergarten teacher when it comes to cookies and confectionery decorations.
Amber made all of the Brambleberrians Valentine’s Day Cookies, in their own adorable carrying case boxes.
Didn’t they turn out amazing? They looked as good as they tasted too!
Amber’s Chocolate Annivesary
Thank you Amber for being at Bramble Berry for two years. Amber does the Bramble Berry newsletters, the beautiful photos on the web site and sorts the info (at) brambleberry (dot) com email inbox. She’s a busy gal!
To celebrate her anniversary, I made chocolate from scratch last night.
Here is a huge chunk of cocoa butter, waiting to be melted. As you can see from its sad appearance, it needs some serious tempering.
Adding the powdered sugar was like adding flour to melted butter. It had a very similar consistency.
Cocoa Powder (and Vanilla Flavoring, double strength from Penzys) was integral to achieving the perfect taste.
After tempering for 15 minutes, I poured the entire yummy mixture into cups filled with either marshmallows or peanut butter cups.
The staff at Bramble Berry give this project a big Thumbs Up. There are barely any chocolates left!
The Martha Cookies
Frequent Soap Queen commenter, Shades Of Grey took on the challenge of making the adorable Martha Cookies (see post here).
I think she did a great job! She used no food coloring based dyes, which accounts for the difference in color between the Ms. Martha photo and hers. But the swirling and roll part of the cookie is remarkable! Great job!
If you’d like to read her full post, complete with tips that she learned from making the cookies, it can be found on the blog “Notes from the Homestead.” Click herefor the exact post.
Jelly Roll Sugar Cookies (thanks Martha!)
These cookies require the use of dental floss. If anyone actually tries to make them, please send photos. The jelly roll cookies look like the jelly roll soap that we just made on this blog!
Click here to get inspired by the full instructions from the divine Ms. Martha.