Rolo Cake Mix Cookies

I did some blog browsing recently and found Buns In My Oven, a super fun food blog with tasty treats that you will drool over!!

I am a lover of all things chocolate and caramel intermingled, so I decided to make her Rolo Cake Mix Cookies to get my chocolate fix for the evening.

These tickled my baking side because first and foremost-they were easy and only require 4 (yes FOUR) ingredients!

Rolo Cake Mix Cookies


1 box of Devil's Food Cake Mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
Rolo candies, unwrapped

Preheat oven to 350. Mix first 3 ingredients and make into little round golf-ball sized balls. Flatten cookies and add one rolo candy to each cookie, and wrap cookie dough around rolo to cover.

Bake for 9 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar. Eat, eat, eat until your chocolate fix has been "fixed".

*If my amateur photograph does not make your mouth water and make you stop what you are doing to make these cookies, go check out Buns in My Oven's website and hers will surely convince you.*

Just Peachy Muffins

So, as I was stumbling across my new favorite food site Tasty Kitchen, I ran across a picture of a beautiful fluffy muffin drizzled in confectioners sugar glaze, and I stopped in my tracks. What WERE these magnificent muffins, and how quickly can I make them??

The muffins were Peach and White Chocolate Chip Muffins by featured user MotherThyme, who has recently been posting about all things Peachy.

This is perfect timing, as every year I get 1-2 cases (yep you heard that right) of the most decadent, glorious peaches that have ever grown on this earth from McLeod Farms in the middle of the country in MacBee, South Carolina.

I am confident that these wonderful people growing these peaches in MacBee sprinkle sugar into the soil of their peach trees, and water their trees with sugar water. They may even inject the peaches with sugar while growing on the tree. There is NO other explanation for the perfect sweetness that these peaches contain. (Nor will I accept any other explanation.)

So, upon getting cases of peaches, they tend to ripen quickly, and I am always in need of great recipes to use them in.

Enter, stage right, MotherThyme's Peach and White Chocolate Chip Muffins:

The muffins are moist, with the slightest hint of cinnamon. The miniature chunks of white chocolate chips become the yin to the yang of the sweet, supple peaches. The glaze really becomes the "icing on the cake" (ok, I had to), adding a creamy drizzle of confectioners sugar to these already mouth-watering creations.

Stop by MotherThyme's website for the recipe, you won't be disappointed!!

Till the salmon sing in the street...

So there's been this poem on my mind today. It is a beautiful poem that makes me happy because it tries to explain how when you love someone, it can be a grand and silly feeling of extraordinary volumes...

Thank you W.H. Auden:

"As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky."

I imagine God feels that way about us. I imagine too, that he is capable of  extraordinary things like asking salmon to sing in the street, and could physically make China and Africa meet, but that would mean there would be an end to His never-ending-unfathomable-BIG-big love for us. God loves us past the impossible and the extraordinary things. His love does not end when miracles begin. And for that, I am grateful.

Oh for the love of Food!

So, thanks to the lovely Pioneer Woman, I stumbled across this new recipe website called Tasty Kitchen. It is an AMAZING site where you can browse delicous food and "Add Friends" and follow different food bloggers.

I found these tasty temptations today that I MUST try on Tasty Kitchen:

Tomato and Marscapone Pasta

Layered Greek Dip

Oh, and guess who else happens to be on this website? Me! You can find me here: DomesticDivaa

Stop by and say hi! Look through my recipe box, add me as your friend, and we can share an online hug.

(Oh, and thanks PW for being so amazing for letting me semi-copy you. Ifyouweretoeverreadthisbloginyourwholelife. ( ; )

Barbeque Chicken Pizza, Yes Please!

So, a few nights ago (ok this is a stretch, its been a few weeks), I made Pioneer Woman's (PW) Barbeque Chicken Pizza, and it was Ah-mazing.

I made some shortcuts to PW's fabulous recipe, and used store-bought pizza dough, a rotisserie chicken, and Guy Fieri's Kansas City-style BBQ sauce (which was deLISH):

BBQ Chicken Pizza:

Store Bought Pizza Dough

Rotisserie Chicken

BBQ sauce

1/2 Red Onion

Cilantro

Hot Cherry Peppers (for your hubby)

Sliced Provolone Cheese

1. Oil pan & stretch out pizza dough to fit your pan (This may seem impossible, but I trusted PW, and it CAN be done.) Drizzle more EVOO on pizza and a little salt.

2. Mix BBQ sauce into pulled rotisserie chicken meat.

3. Spread BBQ sauce onto pizza dough.

4. Cover in provolone cheese slices (I used almost a whole pack).

5. Add chicken, red onion slices, and red cherry peppers for your husband who only likes to eat spicy things.

6. Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes until cooked throughout.

7. Take it out of the oven, drool over the tasty smell, and add chopped cilantro to the top.

My McWonderful husband even gave it his seal of approval.

Printable Recipe

A Blueberry Breakfast

It's hot outside. 100 degrees hot. There's nothing fun about this kind of hot, except that its the perfect time of year for perfect blueberries. The kind that are ripe, sweet and delicious! So I turned the pages back in my Cinch! diet/recipe book and found this tasty way to start my (hot) day:

Blueberry Nutmeg Smoothie:

All you need is 1 cup frozen blueberries, dash or two of nutmeg, and 8oz of skim milk! And then you get this:

Yum!

*serve with 1/2 whole wheat english muffin with 1tbsp Almond Butter*

"In everything give thanks..." 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Memory Stones

Have you ever started a prayer journal? I did. 3 times. When I have something weighing on my heart and I feel like no other human being on earth can give me the right advice, and no matter how hard I seem to pray I still feel heavy-hearted, I write. It’s my way of handing it over to God.  And these particular heavy-hearted moments have happened to me 3 times, in the last 3 years.

2 weeks ago, I found out my sister is moving semi-cross-country. I opened my journal and wrote. And I turned back the pages to my 2 lonely other entries I had started the 2 years earlier. I had the best intentions. I would write every day, or every week, or at least every month, so that I could see the blessings on paper God has provided me. But time got away with me, God was good, and I skipped a lot of time between the heavy-hearted issues God apparently places in my life about once a year.

And I couldn’t help but notice some of my entries, some of the prayers that had gone “unanswered” for quite some time....

2009, “Dear Lord, please give us patience while we find a house.” We found and LOVE our new home, and managed to do it without pulling our or each other’s hair out.

2009 and 2010, “Dear Lord, please help my father find a job.” –My dad is currently working on a temporary assignment!

2009 and 2010, “Dear Lord, please help my brother-in-law’s company, and please provide provision for their family.”
–Wow. Sometimes God does not answer prayers quite like you think, hope, or could even dream.  God provided an amazing, can’t-say-no-to-this-opportunity to my Brother-in-law and his family. In Texas. 1,398 miles away. And it is sad. 1,398 miles of sad. But its also amazing. God is providing for this family, just as he promised, and I am excited for them, and excited for next year, to look back and laugh at the irony of God, and how he comes through for us in His crazy, God ordained ways.

In the book of Joshua, you may have seen this verse:

"Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day." Joshua 4:9 (NIV)

Joshua explained to the people following him that these stones would be there for years to come, so they could tell their children, and their children’s children of the miracle God had performed that day, and the blessings he poured out among his people.

This is why I want need to write in my prayer journal. So I have a living testament to the miracles and blessings God performs every day. So I don’t miss the PTL (Praise the Lord) moments that he places in my life every day. So I can look back at where I was, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, and laugh. Laugh at God’s irony, and laugh with Joy for the blessings in my life, and the goodness of God.