Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Shortbread Cookie Sandwiches

Ugh, it’s August and my TV is filled with back to school commercials, Target is packed with pencils and notebooks and kids are eating up every last bit of summer. Confession time; I LOVE school supplies- all of them. I could never have enough notebooks, pens and sticky pads. So when Walkers Shortbread decided to feature back-to-school snack ideas this month, I was pretty excited. What I am even more excited about was their line of mini shortbread cookies. Everything mini is better in my book.

I used Walker’s newest flavor, Mini Crunchy Oatmeal Cookie  to makes these Peanut Butter and Jelly Frosted Cookie Sandwiches. Nothing reminds me of back-to-school more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So I took some peanut butter and mixed in some butter and powered sugar to create a peanut butter frosting. Then I added some jelly and a few cookies and you have a quick after school snack that even a mom would enjoy.

What I love about this is you can create a peanut butter and jelly dip to dunk you cookies in too. Each mini bag of cookies comes with 28 cookies and there are four wonderful flavors. The mini bags come in Chocolate Chip Shortbread, Shortbread Fingers, Shortbread Rounds and the newest addition is Crunchy Oatmeal Cookies. I opened a bag of the oatmeal cookies and immediately popped a few in my mouth. The bag has a reseal tab, so you can sneak a few a time, close up the bag and no one will ever know.

No-Bake Mini Salted Caramel Ice Cream Brownies

I mentioned on Monday that I am on vacation at the lake for a week, and it is friggin’ hot! The area where I live is somewhat coastal, so it gets warm but not unbearable. The weather here is in the high 90s. I know everyone in inland California, Arizona, Texas and other part of the US are rolling their eyes right now, but seriously, I am not used to this and I don’t know how you deal with it! Thank god I can just jump in the lake at any given time during the day.  So there will be very little baking going on while I am on vacation. Grilling? Sure, all day long, but I am NOT turning on the oven. Therefore, desserts will be of the no-bake variety. I guess it helps that we can hop in the boat and cross the lake for some frozen mud pie!

How about these No-Bake Mini Salted Caramel Ice Cream Brownies? They couldn’t be easier to prepare. I used a container of store-bought brownies, some Haagen-Dazs Sea Salt Caramel Gelato and homemade whipped cream. These mini ice cream brownies are the perfect little snack. I usually feel less guilty when I eat things in smaller portions, until I eat 3 or 4 of them. Oops. Anyway, I am totally head over heels in LOVE with this Sea Salt Caramel Gelato ice cream. I am not usually a salted caramel type of person, but I could eat a pint of this ice cream about as fast as I could down a pint of Ben and Jerrys.

No-Bake Chocolate Shortbread Mousse Parfaits

I like to think that a majority of the recipes I post on this blog are relatively easy for you to make. We don’t all have the time to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a fancy dessert. I think you can still make fancy desserts while enjoying the rest of your day.

Last week I received another shipment of Walkers shortbread cookies. This time, my shipment contained chocolate shortbreads! I knew I wanted to create something different for this post. Since 2012, Walkers has partnered with The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals® (ASPCA). This year, Walkers will donate a minimum of $50,000 to the ASPCA through the sales of their Scottie Dog shortbread cookies. For more information about Walkers partnership with the ASPCA, visit their website.

In today’s recipe, I used their new Chocolate Scottie Dog Shortbread cookies, which use genuine Belgian chocolate, butter, flour, sugar and a pinch of salt. The recipe below will make four parfaits. To serve a larger crowd, use two boxes of Chocolate Scottie Dog Shortbread cookies and double the ganache recipe. Because it is difficult to half the ingredients for the mousse, you will end up with a lot of extra mousse. May I suggest diving into the leftovers head first?

Cake Batter Whipped Cream

There are a many things I love when it comes to dessert; homemade whipped cream is one of them. It’s so easy to make and often impresses my guests! At Christmas time, I made a Hot Chocolate Whipped Cream, which is my most pinned recipe on Pinterest. Now that winter is coming to an end, I figured it was time for a new whipped cream. I have been dreaming about Cake Batter Whipped Cream for weeks. I love cake batter, but most cake batter flavored desserts are too sweet or over flavored for me.

This Cake Batter Whipped Cream is perfect. It is a bit thicker than regular whipped cream, but it’s not overpowering or overly sweet. I dipped strawberries in it, put it on some cake and basically ate the entire batch myself. Seriously, my boyfriend didn’t even take a bite.

Easter Dirt Mousse Cups

One of the first desserts I recall making on my own was my grandmother’s “Dirt” recipe. Since it doesn’t require using an oven, it was easy for me to make when I was a little girl and it was a favorite of mine.

I wanted to take the classic Oreo and chocolate pudding recipe for dirt and make it a springtime treat. This is a simple dessert to put together than is a guaranteed crowd pleaser. I used Golden Oreos and vanilla pudding.