Quick break from travel posts to share a food adventure from last weekend…

Back in 2012, my friend Kelley and I participated in our own personal baking marathon. The race course was located in Kelley’s kitchen. And while we’ve both run actual marathons, this one was way better because it involved eating food all day and no real exercise. (Fact: that year we made six recipes and five of them were desserts.)

Since then three full years have passed. We set a new baking marathon date: this past Saturday. After stretching and carbo-loading (maybe that was just me) we hit the ground running with our first of seven new recipes.

We start easy with BLT lettuce wraps and add avocado, because avocado makes everything better. These wraps are simple and tasty — just roll them up and enjoy the crunch.

We decide these qualify as healthy because there’s no carbs. Kelley and I both comment how you can really taste every ingredient without the bread — they may be messy to eat, but boy are they good.

Next we start our first dessert — brownie sandwiches with salted caramel buttercream. HOLY COW ARE THEY DELICIOUS. Beware that this yields way too much frosting (if there is such a thing) so perhaps halve that part of the recipe… or better yet, double the brownie cookies and use all of the frosting. As the recipe stands, it only makes about 10 sandwich cookies and trust me, you will want more than that.

Next we try our hand at these fluffy lemon bars. They’re supposed to be the consistency of brownies, but we (I) screw up the lemon juice ratio so they end up being more acidic which throws off the baking time. (Only part of the lemon juice is for the bars and the rest is for the lemon glaze, but I put ALL of it into the bars… so we improvise by doing a simple sugar glaze instead.) Honestly they end up tasting fine, but it’s not what we were going for. Next time I’ll get this one right.

Our next recipe is my absolute favorite of the day — chocolate peanut butter ooey gooey bars. It yields a huge batch and they keep well as I enjoy them for dessert the next several nights.

The base layer is a German chocolate cake mix with one egg and butter — it’s mostly dry and forms a crust. You can use regular chocolate cake mix but the German chocolate one has coconut which is a nice added flavor. The middle layer is a peanut butter cream cheese mix with chopped peanut butter cups and crushed Butterfingers. The top layer is a thin coating of melted chocolate chips. I sprinkle confectioners sugar over the whole thing.

Oh, and we make thin mint milkshakes. Is this a day of decadence or what?! The recipe I found is overly complicated and we realize the whole thing can be simplified — we chop up fresh mint and thin mint cookies, and add them to a blender with vanilla ice cream and a little milk. That’s it. SUPER simple and delicious.

Added mint and cookies for garnish… and don’t forget colorful smoothie straws:

Big props to Adele for waiting patiently while I photograph our milkshakes!

This next recipe is my new favorite thing — it’s called five minute magic green sauce and it makes a perfect dip or topping (we use tortilla chips to get this stuff into our mouths). The ingredients are avocado, parsley, cilantro, jalapeño, garlic, lime juice, water, olive oil, salt, and pistachios.

Our final dish of the night is honey lemon chicken with angel hair pasta. By now we’re pretty stuffed but this is a delightful dinner — it’s fairly easy to make with lots of flavor.

One more shot of the chefs… thank you Kelley for sharing your day (and kitchen) with me!

And for a quick look at our last baking marathon in 2012, here are the recipes that made the cut:

	Waikoloa Shortbread Cookies dipped in chocoate
	Birthday Cake Batter Popcorn
	S'mores Stuffed Brownies
	Bananas Foster Bread Pudding
	No Bake Peanut Butter Bars
	Chicken Palava (African Peanut Stew)

Bon appetit!