Chocolate Peanut Butter Baklava

We had a very non-traditional Thanksgiving this year. We ate zero turkey, no normal Thanksgiving sides and no pie. I actually did not mind it. I had some traditional Thanksgiving meals twice prior to Thanksgiving, so that was checked off for me and Charles did not seem to really care. Instead, we made reservations at a local "American" restaurant where I had a steak and Charles had salmon. It was very delicious and relaxing. No stress about cooking and no dishes to clean up afterward. Of course, it is a lot easier to eat out when not in the United States where everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. For Germans, it was just a normal Thursday. 

In lieu of pie, Charles requested one of his favorite desserts--chocolate peanut butter baklava. I found the recipe a few years ago on Pinterest. I do not make it very often. It's an easy recipe, but because of the phyllo dough it is a bit of a process to put together. But if you love baklava and the chocolate-peanut butter combination, then you will very much enjoy this one! 

As the recipe states, it is extremely helpful to have everything ready at your workstation before starting the phyllo dough process. I have made this recipe by myself, but it is 100% better if you have a buddy that helps out. The way we do it is I butter and layer the phyllo and Charles adds the peanut butter and chocolate chips. Plus it is just more fun to do it together. 

One piece of advice, do not make this while hungry. Because we had an old person dinner scheduled (our reservation was for 4:30pm) and I made this prior to that, I was pretty hungry while preparing this. I have a tendency to get a little grumpy when I am hungry and I snapped at Charles over who knows what when we were starting to make this. For the health of your relationship, avoid baking while hangry. 

Sorry no pictures. But trust me, it is yummy!

 

Thanksgiving dessert: Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars

For my second homemade dessert for Thanksgiving I wanted something with chocolate. Traditional Thanksgiving desserts do not normally contain chocolate (at least not the ones I always had growing up), but I love chocolate. I came across a recipe for Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars (Pinterest, of course). Tada!

Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
3 T unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 8oz bag pecan halves
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips (I think I just used more regular sized chocolate chips)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan or line with foil and then grease.
In a large bowl, use a pastry cutter or fork to cut the butter, sugar and flour together until crumbly. Press the crust into the pan and bake for 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine sweetened condensed milk and cocoa powder in a small bowl and set aside.
Once the crust has finished baking, remove from the oven and sprinkle with 2 cups chocolate chips and the pecans.
Pour the chocolate condensed milk mixture evenly over the top. Return the pan to the oven and bake for another 15 to 18 minutes.
Immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips (mini or regular).
Cool bars on a wire rack before cutting into bars. Store in an airtight container.  

Thanksgiving dessert: German Apple Cake

As I mentioned in my Thanksgiving entry, I made a couple desserts to accompany the sweet potato pie that came with our meal. Usually I make Caramel Apple Pecan Pie for this holiday, but I wanted to make something different. For our Oktoberfest party I made an apple cake that was AMAZING! I knew it would be a hit at Thanksgiving, too. Of course, I found the recipe on Pinterest. To see the original recipe, click here.

German Apple Cake

Ingredients
2 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cup white sugar
1 t vanilla
2 cups flour
2 t cinnamon
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
4 cups thinly peeled and sliced apples (Granny Smith are my favorite)

Frosting
1 8oz pkg cream cheese
3 T melted butter
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

*Since my husband does not like cream cheese, I just made regular vanilla frosting from the Betty Crocker Big Red cookbook

Directions
Preheat over to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 baking dish.
Add oil to eggs in mixer and beat until foamy. Add the sugar and vanilla; mix. Add the flour, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Mix together. Add apples by folding in with a spoon. The batter will be very thick. It seems like there are more apples than batter. This is normal.
Bake for 50 to 60 minutes.

Make frosting. If following recipe for cream cheese frosting, she said add a little milk if it's too thick.

Going back to giving thanks

Since I haven't written in a while I am going to play some catch-up, so forgive me if the next few entries cover events and information from several months ago.

Holidays... as a military family living hundreds of miles from family can be challenging. First you have to decide if you can afford to travel to them. Or you have to see if family wants to come to you. And as a married couple, you have to juggle whose family will get what holiday. Charles' family had originally talked about coming out for Christmas, but then decided on Thanksgiving. His youngest brother, Greg, had to work or be on call for Christmas which is what prompted the decision.

I love having guests! It gives me 1.) a chance to clean the house and 2). to show off my house. So we got the guest rooms all spruced up and cozy.

I'm sure we have all seen the little graphics on Pinterest where you can share your WiFi password. I finally had a good reason to make some for our guest rooms. I used a Beauty and the Beast theme.

We had a great weekend with family! We saw some of the local sights, ate at my favorite local Italian restaurant and played games.

They did a Turkey Trot. I'm glad I didn't participate because I would have been the slowest of the group.

Because I have never cooked a whole turkey and didn't want to attempt it, we ordered our Thanksgiving meal from a local BBQ restaurant. It came with roast turkey and all the fixin's. It was so delicious! I do like to bake and even though the meal came with a sweet potato pie, I had to make a couple extra desserts. I'll share those recipes in upcoming posts.

Our Thanksgiving table

Check out all this deliciousness

The Thoennes clan

Epic game of Risk

Turkey Trot

On Thanksgiving, I achieved a first for me. I completed an official 5k. If you know me, you know that I loath running. It has been a life long feeling. Charles has been hit by the running bug, so I thought we could do this together and make him really happy. We signed up for the Turkey Trot on base.

We got up bright and early Thanksgiving morning and headed over. The race was supposed to start at 8am which would have given us plenty of time to finish the race, get home and watch the whole parade. Come to find out after we arrive that the race didn't start until 8:30am.

We finished in 44 minutes and some odd seconds. We walked most of it (did I mention I hate running?). Charles was very encouraging, but I know he was feeling a little antsy to run. He was a trooper, though.

I don't know if I'll do another 5k, but I'm sure Charles will try to convince me.

Thanksgiving Prep

This year for Thanksgiving will just be Charles and me. Since we'll be visiting my parents for Christmas, we decided to lay low for Thanksgiving. I haven't made Thanksgiving dinner since our first married Thanksgiving back in 2008. That year I had VERY bad timing and nothing was done at the same time and we ended up eating a lot later than I wanted to. I'm hoping this year goes a lot smoother.

Here is the meal line-up:
Turkey--I'll probably just get a turkey breast. I don't want to deal with a whole turkey and end up with tons of leftovers.

Kentucky or Corn Spoon Bread--my co-worker made this for our work Thanksgiving Cook Out on Thursday. It was so delicious! I found a recipe for it on Pinterest that I am going to attempt.

Parmesan Walnut Broccoli--neither Charles nor myself like Green Bean Casserole. That is the only green veggie side we had at Thanksgiving when I was growing up. Charles thought we should do something with walnuts and broccoli. I found a recipe for a broccoli and walnut side on Pinterest, of course.

Sweet Potato Casserole--I don't like this, but it is a must-have side dish for Charles.

Stuffing--I'll probably get a mix from Earthfare instead of making it completely from scratch. It's not hard to make from scratch, but having a mix will give me one less thing to really worry about.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy--the potatoes will be made from scratch and I'll probably get a gravy mix to keep it easy.

Caramel Apple Pecan Pie--this is my all-time favorite kind of apple pie! It is sweet and yummy! I typically use Granny Smith apples exclusively. This year I'm going to do a mix of Granny Smith and Honeycrisp. My sister introduced us to Honeycrisp. It is a Minnesota-based apple and it really tasty. I think it will go well in my pie. I think we're going over to our friend's house for dessert on Thanksgiving, so I'm going to bring this with us. The wife is gluten-free, so I am going to get some brown rice flour to use in the apple/caramel mixture instead of regular flour so she can at least enjoy the filling. I'm going to stick with my typical pie crust from Immaculate Baking Co.

My Thanksgiving Lineup

This year's Thanksgiving is going to be a little different for us. Usually, we spend at least part of the day with family. Our first married Thanksgiving, I made the dinner and then we went over to my parents' house in the evening for pie. Our 2nd Thanksgiving was spent with my in-laws and last Thanksgiving we were at my parents' house again. This year, we are having Thanksgiving dinner with some friends.

Since we're having Thanksgiving with them, we get to split up food duties. Luckily I am no way involved with making a turkey. I've never made a whole turkey and the whole process is very intimidating to me. Here's what we're bringing: mashed potatoes and gravy, Caramel Apple Pie, Sweet Potato Casserole and Raspberry Cranberry Jello Salad.

I will post about the Caramel Apple Pie and the Raspberry Cranberry Jello salad later this week. Both are super delicious!