Knock You Naked Brownies

I didn't name these. Or invent them. Or do very much in making them. But I did eat one (but no, I did not get naked for these).
Seriously, though....my friends were making brownies Friday afternoon, and I thought I would join them because, well, brownies. And also friends. And, most importantly, one of them happens to be a really great baker...like an AMAZING baker. She was the one who found the recipe by The Pioneer Woman.
The recipe was altered, slightly, but tasted delicious anyway.

Ingredients:
Chocolate Cake Mix
Evaporated milk (2/3 cup and 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup of melted butter
30 Riesen caramels (unwrapped)

Recipe:
First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Then, mix together cake mix, 1/3 cup evaporated milk, and melted butter. Stir, stir, stir!
Divide the mixture in half and press half of it into a square baking pan (make sure to grease it pretty well). Be sure to make edges with the dough, so that when you add the caramel, it won't leak.
Next, bake it for about 8 to 10 minutes.
Then, melt the Riesen caramels with 1/2 cup evaporated milk (you're supposed t do this in a double boiler, but it worked just melting it in a pot over the stove). Stir constantly, in effort to avoid burning any of it.
Next, pour this sauce over the cooked brownie in the baking pan.
Then, take the second (unbaked) half of the brownie dough and shape it into a large square about the size of (or a little smaller than) the pan. Then, find a way to get this on top of the caramel and brownie in the pan, without causing the hot caramel to splash. Good luck!
Now, bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Allow it to cool to room temperature. Then cut it, cover it and refrigerate for several hours.
Then, finally, you're done. You have some delicious brownies. Like, seriously, amazing brownies. SOOOOO good. You'd be crazy not to try these.

What else would you be crazy not to try that my dear friend Sarah has shown me? Inbox Dollars. It's great for anyone who checks their e-mail everyday...like me. I just got an account and I totally recommend you to do the same. In fact, just for making an account, you'll get $5! (And for every dollar that you make, they will send me an additional 10 cents...just a little perk that I'll be getting from this). Check it out, if you want. If not, I won't be offended. But do try the brownies...that's a necessity.

Dorm Food

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Vegan Banana Bread

Last week I bought a pound of bananas that became bruised on my bike ride home (perhaps because I put several cans and a half gallon of milk on top of them in my bag...). I ate 2 of the bananas over the week, but eventually they were too ripe to eat (the fact that they were already bruised allowed them to ripen much faster). So, the area around my bed (under which I keep all of my food) smelled of bananas these past couple days. But we couldn't eat them. So it came down to two things: either we could waste the bananas and throw them in the trash like so many unfortunate vegetables from our fridge, or we could make banana bread. I think we made the proper choice.

Anna being vegan, we decided to make vegan banana bread from scratch. This actually meant that we used fewer ingredients, which is always a plus in dorm cooking. And it actually tasted much better than normal banana bread. So, I will share the recipe with you.

Since there are so many ingredients, I will share with you ahead of time what they were.

4 very ripened bananas

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups of flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup of walnuts

Cooking spray

2 bread pans

1 fork

1 spoon

1 knife

First, in a large bowl (or sauce pan, in our case, since we didn't have a mixing bowl), mash the 4 bananas. We did this using a fork, which worked pretty well. They should be mashed to the point that it looks creamy. Then, mix in the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Next, add the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Stir this well. This can be done with any spoon you happen to have.

Then, chop the walnuts into coarse pieces (into 1/2s and 1/3s). This can be done with a standard knife. Mix the nuts into the bowl. (If you are allergic to nuts or simply don't like them, you can of course skip this step.)

Now, pour the well blended batter into 2 greased bread pans. (As bread pans turn out to be quite expensive, we bought the disposable metal kind from the baking section for only a couple dollars, which worked just fine as a pan). If you are using walnuts, you can add some whole onto the top, to make a pretty design. However, they tend to crisp easily in the oven, so I do not recommend this.

Finally cook at 350 degrees (make sure to preheat the oven before you put the bread in) for anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour. We're not quite sure how much time it needs because we had ours in for an hour and the edges started to get quite crispy after 50 minutes, so we assume 45 minutes is probably a good time. Just keep checking on it every now and then.

Remove from the oven, and let cool. Then, you'll be ready to eat, enjoy, and clean up the wonderful mess (I recommend doing this as you wait for the bread to cook or as you wait for it to cool, as you'll have quite a bit of time to kill).

This recipe turned out really well. The inner part of the bread was super chewy and delightful. And the outer part of the bread was strong enough to keep intact. As it's not made with butter like the standard recipe, it does not taste buttery. Instead, you really get the natural flavors of the banana. It is a tad sweet, but it's banana bread, it's supposed to be sweet.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS RECIPE. It was honestly so good. And as it was baking, people from all over the dorm kept coming by to tell us how good it smelled (you could smell it everywhere on our floor...we became quite the popular girls). If you want to, you could double the recipe and make enough to share with the rest of the floor, which would make you super popular. But, we didn't have enough bananas (or foresight) to do that ourselves.

Dorm Food

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