Recipe: Healthy Dessert Apple Nachos

I LOVE dessert. It's my favorite part of any meal! But when you're trying to eat healthy, it's not always eay to even have dessert, let alone enjoy it. So, here is one of my favorite easy desserts when I have the calories to spare.

Ingredients:
1 apple
2 Tbsp peanut butter
2 Tbsp mini chocolate chips

Steps:
1. Cut your apple into thin slices or rings and place on a plate.
2. Microwave your peanut butter until it is fully melted. This will make your peanut butter appear to go further and get an even coating on all of the apple slices. Pour the peanut butter in a drizzle all over the apples on your plate.
3. Sprinkle the mini chocolate chips evenly over your apples.
Serve and enjoy!

I know this is really simple, but I just love eating them!

Recipe: Breakfast Cookies

I recently tried a new recipe, changed it a little to make it a little more me, and I seriously love it. Bonus: My husband and son love these as well! Extra Bonus: They're pretty healthy for you! I was hesitant to call these cookies because they're more reminiscent of muffin tops, but we'll stick with the word cookies because those are more fun to eat! Right?

Ingredients:
1 cup whole-wheat flour
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup Hershey’s special dark cocoa
1 ½ Tbsp instant coffee
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp kosher salt
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 ripe banana, peeled, microwaved 30 seconds, then mashed
½ cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt
½ cup honey
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups blueberries
¾ cup mini semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:
1. Heat oven to 350 F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together flours, cocoa, coffee, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.

3. In another bowl, whisk together eggs, banana, yogurt, honey, oil, and vanilla until well combined (small lumps of banana are OK).

4. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture, gently stirring until just incorporated. Fold in blueberries and chocolate chips. Do not overmix.

5. Scoop balls of dough, about 1 ½ Tbsp each, onto prepared sheets, about 2 in apart. Flatten cookies slightly by pressing lightly with fingers or back of fork (to keep from sticking, use nonstick spray).

6. Bake until firm around the edges, 12 to 14 minutes. Let cool completely on sheet on wire rack.

Servings: 40
Calories: 73 (When I made these, I used a small scoop and ended up making 46, making them 63 calories a piece.)

I hope that you like these as much as my family does. I put two "cookies" in a snack bag and then put those into a bin. Now, we have an easy 146 calorie breakfast filled with fruit and chocolate that we can just grab in the morning with no extra prep.

It's Christmas! Day 21: Wrapping Christmas Presents PLUS Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

Ok, I have a confession to make. While I absolutely love Christmas and do consider myself pretty crafty, no matter how hard I try, I stink at wrapping presents. Like seriously, I try every year, but it’s just not that pretty. I don’t know what to tell you. So, I’ve decided to embrace the bad wrapping and have my son help me. That way, if anyone says anything, he wrapped them. Yeah, I know, I totally am throwing my son under the bus. Oh well.

Let’s get wrapping!

Phew! That was exhausting and felt like it took forever! But now it’s done. Want to see? Here are our presents, ready to be opened on Christmas morning!

Now that we're done wrapping presents, it's time to make some hot chocolate. But we're not going to make it for ourselves. Remember when we made our neighbors some gift baskets? Well, inside them, we placed some jars of hot cocoa mix, so today, we're going to show you what went into those.

First, we grabbed 4 16 oz glass jars.
We added our ingredients to each jar in even layers.
First is 1/3 cup of sugar.
Then, 1/3 cup of cocoa powder.
Next up is a layer of finely crushed candy canes (3 to be exact).
Then, 1/3 cup of mini chocolate chips.
Finally, we top our jar with 1/2 cup of mini marshmallows.

Tips:
- Add candy canes to a plastic bag and use a rolling pin to finely crush.

- Use a funnel to prevent spills and ensure even layers. Build a wide-mouth funnel by rolling paper into a cone and taping it in place.

Now that we're done filling our jars, we're going to screw on the lid, add a gift tag with instructions, and top it with a bow.

This is what our tags said:

Peppermint Hot Cocoa
You will need:
1 jar cocoa mix
6 cups milk

Steps:
1. Remove marshmallows from jar. Set aside.
2. Whisk cocoa mix and milk in pot set over medium heat until hot.
3. Pour into 4 mugs and top with marshmallows.

Don’t leave your wrapping until Christmas Eve. And make some homemade hot cocoa to share!

As always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas! Day 18: Make a neighbor gift basket PLUS Chocolate Snowball Cookies

It’s Christmas! is a 25 day blog and vlog segment that I’ll be doing this December to bring you crafts, reviews, and ideas to make your Christmas season even more fun this year (especially, with this pandemic thing we’re all trying to navigate).

Hopefully, my family can inspire yours to not let this crazy year ruin the holiday season for you.

The most important part about Christmas is giving. Whether you’re giving thanks, giving presents to your family, giving money to charity, giving toys to kids in need, or just giving a little Christmas cheer to other people, you’re truly embracing the true meaning of Christmas. In my house, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and talk about being kind and how God has given so much to us. However, whether you live in a religious household or not, giving is such an important lesson to learn.

So, while we do try to do multiple things to give back during the holiday season (like ringing bells for the salvation army or random acts of kindness), today we’re talking about making a gift basket for a couple neighbors. We want to spread some Christmas cheer and make our friends feel special.

There were a couple things we needed to consider.
Will people actually eat cookies if we make them? (You know, due to this whole Covid thing.)
How much do we want to spend?
Who do we want to make gift baskets for?

After we answered these questions, we got to putting our baskets together. We included some homemade chocolate cookies, homemade candy, a jar of homemade hot cocoa mix, some finger puppets, a couple crafts, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, stickers, and notebooks.

Here's how we made the cookies that we ended up including:

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups + 1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Steps:
1. Add flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt to medium bowl. Mix to combine. Set aside.
2. Add butter and 1 1/4 cups sugar to large bowl. Beat with electric mixer until light and fluffy.
3. Crack eggs into small bowl. Throw away shells and wash your hands.
4. Add eggs and vanilla to butter mixture. Mix until smooth and creamy.
5. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Mix until a soft dough forms.
6. Cover dough and refrigerate 1 hour.
7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
8. Scoop a level tablespoon of dough. Roll into a 1-inch ball. Repeat to use all cookie dough.
9. Add 1/3 cup sugar to one small bowl. Add powdered sugar to another small bowl.
10. Make snowballs! Dip each ball of dough in sugar, then dunk generously in powdered sugar to coat.
11. Set dough on baking sheets.
12. Bake 10 minutes. Cool 10 minutes. Serve.

I think they turned out pretty good! And they taste delicious!

Owen had a blast running up to their houses and putting our little gifts on their front porch!

So do something kind for someone else!

And as always, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas!

Hershey's Chocolate World and Hershey Park

On our 2 week road trip in early August, my son and I made a stop in Hershey, Pennsylvania to visit Hershey World.

Our Hotel: We decided it was too expensive for us to stay onsite, so we chose the Comfort Suites Hummelstown-Hershey at 320 Milroy Rd. It has free parking, free wifi, and free breakfast. What more could we ask for? The room seemed clean and the staff was friendly enough. Our breakfast was pretty standard (waffles, fruit, eggs, sausage, cereal, muffins, etc.).

We decided to head to Hershey’s Chocolate World before heading to Hershey Park. Well, little did I know that this was going to be the highlight of our time in Hershey. Seriously! It was amazing. Right away when you walk in, there are multiple photo opportunities. We were even lucky enough to bump into Miss Hershey Kiss herself! It was great. I love a good meet and greet. Then, we walked over to the Hershey Tour Ride. It’s like a mix between a slow amusement ride and a factory tour. Clearly, you’re not really in a factory, but you definitely get the idea about how chocolate is made.

We walked over to the ticket counter to add some fun to our time here. We chose to do the Build Your Own Chocolate Bar experience and the 4D Mystery Movie.

First was our Build Your Own Chocolate Bar experience. And while we still had to wait in a fairly long line even though we had tickets (everyone had tickets), it was still an awesome experience. It isn’t cheap, but I would definitely recommend doing this one! You start out by putting on a hairnet and an apron. It’s a really great look for absolutely everyone! (sarcasm) Then, when it’s your turn, you are led to a screen where you decide what you want in the chocolate bar you’re creating. I decided on a base of dark chocolate with pretzel bits, chocolate cookie bits, and butterscotch chips topped with sprinkles. (I just ate my chocolate bar recently and first off, it was huge and secondly, it was delicious!) Then, you wait in another line and when it’s your turn, they cue up your chocolate bar to be made. (I think they do it like this so that 1. You can watch your bar being made and 2. To keep families together.) Then, you walk along the line, watching the machines add all the pieces to your chocolate bar. It was fun to see it get filled with the items we chose, covered in milk chocolate, and then dashed with sprinkles. After that, you walk over to another set of screens where you design the wrapper. It’s so cool! You can put your name on the front, add stickers, change the background, and so much more!

Then, you wait for your chocolate bar to come out of the cooling rack. It is packaged, put into a Hershey tin, and then wrapped in the custom wrapping you designed. My son had the time of his life at this experience. Plus, when we walked out of the “factory”, Reese was there, so we were able to get a picture with him.

Owen’s Notes: “Chocolate Bar! I really really really liked making my own candy bar! It had a dark chocolate base with chocolate cookie bites, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and crisp rice and on top, there are sprinkles! I loved it. I loved making it.”

Then, we went to the 4D Mystery Movie. First, you stand in line. Then, you stand in a little room, waiting. Eventually, you do go into the theater. But let me tell you something, there really is no reason to get there early. It’s a theater so there aren’t really bad seats. And everyone that purchases a ticket will get in. Besides, there’s no reason to stand for a long time, especially with kids. The show itself was a fun, interactive mystery. I won’t spoil any of it for you. You’ll just have to experience it for yourself. Plus, it’s a great time to sit and relax if you’ve had a long day or know that your day is going to be exhausting like us.

The last thing I’ll say about this place is to continue looking over by the Build Your Own Chocolate Bar area for meet and greets. It rained on and off while we were at Hershey Park and we didn’t see a single character out so before we went to our car to leave for the day, we stopped back in Hershey’s Chocolate World to see if any characters were out and about. We were able to find Jolly Rancher. And where? By the Build Your Own Chocolate Bar area!

We eventually made our way over to Hershey Park. The forecast wasn’t looking so great so we tried to get in as many rides as possible before the rain came. I’m not a huge fan of walking around wet. It’s just not comfortable. Here’s how our day went:

Tilt-A-Whirl: This was the first ride we rode (mostly because it was right by the entrance, but also because it was a good way to ease into rides). I love a good classic ride.

Reese’s Cupfusion: We happened to get to this ride at a great time! At first, we didn’t want to go to this ride yet because the app said the wait was 2 hours long. But we decided to chance it anyway and wait. Well, not 15 minutes after we got in line, it started raining. And not just raining, it was pouring! Lucky for us, 90% of the ride line is covered! We didn’t get wet at all. And to top it off, even though the app said the wait was 2 hours, we really only waited about an hour. And the ride was so much fun! We really enjoy the shooting games where you try to collect as many points as possible so this was sure to be a winner for us. And it was.

Trailblazer: This was the only rollercoaster my son would ride so we clearly had to ride it three times!! It was a blast though. I’m a big fan of this coaster. It’s probably the most tame one in all of Hershey Park so if you have a child that is a little scared of coasters, start here for sure.

Kissing Tower: This was a nice little ride that takes you pretty high up in the air while rotating slowly, giving you great views. I recommend this ride as a nice break from everything else to just sit and see the views. Don’t forget to give your loved ones a little smooch when you get to the top!

Coal Cracker: We went on this ride twice. It was one of Owen’s favorites! It was just a fun little log flume ride with a nice drop at the end. We even got this awesome photo.

Tea Cups: It had just started lightly sprinkling when my son decided he wanted to be on this ride so he actually got to ride it all by himself! But he had a blast. It’s a small, little kid ride, and it’s tucked back in a corner, but it’s still cute.

Pirate: Our last ride was a good one. My son and I both really enjoy these types of rides. They’re the ones that swing back and forth and give your tummy that funny feeling as you drop back to the other side. We rode this one twice as well.

We did end up buying one of those refillable cups where you pay once and get free refills all day. (including ICEEs!)

Owen’s Notes: “I really liked this roller coaster called the Trail Blazer. It twisted around a bunch. We went on it three times. I also really liked this shooting game called Reese’s Cup Fusion. Hershey Park was the best place that we went on the trip!”

For the record: I am a large, plus-sized woman (size 24 pants) and I had no problem fitting on any of these rides. That being said, I did look up what others had said and didn’t even try to ride the ones that people said were tight fits.

We didn’t spend a long time at Hershey Park, mostly do to the rain, but the time we did spend, we had a lot of fun! I definitely recommend giving this place a visit!