Jill Can Cook: Chess Squares

I used to be one of those people that made pretty much every cookie/cake/brownie/dessert from box mixes. Those box mixes are so handy in a pinch and are great in that you really can't screw them up. I can't even say anything bad about them. My only problem with them now is that I have a few various dessert mixes hanging out in my pantry and I really want to start making desserts from scratch (or as close to scratch as I can). This begs the question: What to do with all those mixes?

 

I can't very well make 5 boxes of cake all at once. I don't even want to eat 5 cakes. Why did I even buy 5 cake boxes? I don't even eat 5 cakes a year! But, somehow, I have like 5 boxes of cake mix. I needed to find a recipe that would use up a cake mix but not bore me to death. I kept seeing this recipe for CHESS SQUARES all over Pinterest. It called for a box of cake mix for the ingredients. So, I thought I'd give it a shot.

 

Chess Squares

Ingredients:

 

I love it when there aren't a million ingredients.

 

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
• 4 cups (1 lb) powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 and spray a 9×13 dish with cooking spray.
2. Mix cake mix, melted butter and one egg to a soft dough. Press into the bottom of the pan.
3. Mix powdered sugar, softened cream cheese and remaining two eggs until smooth, about 1-2 mins. Pour on top of crust.
4. Bake at 300 for 40-50 minutes until top is golden brown.

 

I was pretty excited to try out this recipe. There weren't too many ingredients and I could use up an entire box of cake mix! Unfortunately, I wasn't so excited to take pictures, I guess, because I barely took any.

This is the bottom layer of the cake.

Whipping up the filling. It's coming together quite nicely.

The two layers right before I put it in the oven.

The finished product.

I was very excited to take this out of the oven and hack into it! My house smelled so good and sweet. When I first took this out of the oven, the top was a lot higher, but after it cooled, it fell about 2 inches!! I was worried that I did something, but thinking back to the pictures I saw on other blogs, I think it was supposed to do that.

I let it cool as long as I could and when I couldn't wait any longer, I cut out a little piece to have a taste. And I must say, this is probably the sweetest dessert I've ever had! It was almost like eating hot, buttery sugar.

So, I let my piece cool to room temp, hoping, maybe a temperature change might calm down the sugar. And.. No, that did not work. In fact, eating it at room temperature made it even more sugary!

It does look quite delicious though!

Joe got home from work and saw the pan in the fridge. He immediately got a piece out for himself. When asked if it was too sweet, he said it was perfect; not too sweet at all. He said he never had anything like that before and really liked it.

I think he just says things like to this me to make me feel like an alien. So, it's a split. I could barely eat one piece due to all the sugar while Joe ate the rest of it over the course of the week.

I'm giving this recipe a C. It gets high marks for being easy and not needing a lot of ingredients. I'm giving it low marks for giving me like 50 cavities. The only saving grace is that Joe liked it. So, please, if you love me, make this recipe, have a few bites, and then tell me if I have alien taste buds that are hypersensitive to sugar!! Thank you!!

DIY: Patterned Maxi Dress Into Cocktail Dress

I really lucked out when I found this dress for $0.25:

Even tying it up in the back wouldn't make me look good in it!

Granted, it's not a perfect fit or a perfect length, but it has loads of potential. I loved the black/red combo. I loved that it could be a dress that would work all year long. I couldn't wait to do some hacking!

First off: Those tie thingies!

Since I was taking the dress in, I knew I wouldn't need those tie thingies so off they went!

Then I got to pinning!

I turned the dress inside out and tried it on again. This dress didn't come with any buttons or zipper, so it would have to be lose enough to fit over my head. I figured I could take it in about 3 or so inches on each side and still be able to wear it.

Let's hope I didn't take it in too much!

I was pleasantly surprised when I tried the dress on to find out it was the perfect fit. Woo hoo!!

When I first purchased this dress, I thought I might like to keep the dress long, but now that it was more fitted, I didn't think it looked that good long. I'd shorten it, but not too much as I planned to wear it belted and didn't want it to end up too short!

I cut off about 6-7 inches. I didn't measure.

I used up another 2-3 inches making a new hem.

Then I sewed it up!

Whew! That was a lot of sewing and measuring! Good thing for me that the kiddos were having a little pretend tea party, so I had the TV blasting some much needed '80's music.

I went into my closet to grab some accessories and throw on a little makeup so I don't look like a zombie in my "after" photos. This is what I ended up with:

It was too sunny in my usual spot.

I'm loving refashioning these big, huge dresses lately. The reason: the ever flattering elbow length sleeve that I end up with! It seems like "short sleeves" means that the sleeve hangs off your shoulder an inch and a half. Where did the rest of the sleeve go? That's like the least flattering sleeve length for people like me that don't work out!

I love the brown boots with this because they don't overpower the dress.

Overall, I ended up with a dress that was just what I had in mind! Well, what I had in mind once I started working on it. I wish I had the ability to see a dress and know exactly what to do with it. Someday, I will, I think. I just have to keep on truckin'!

Jill Can Cook: Quinn's 4th Birthday Cake and Quinn Helped!

Four years ago, I gave birth to my little daughter, Quinn. Gosh, four years... Has it really been four whole, entire years? I don't feel like it's been that long.

Anyway, to commemorate this special occasion, I decided to make a cake for her. Over the last week or so, I've been checking out recipes as well as decorating ideas. I decided to go with a recipe off of this page and there are Lots of cake recipes there.

 

Vanilla Cake

Ingredients:

I didn't have it in me to make the frosting from scratch. Store bought, it is!

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

 Directions:

1. Cream together butter and sugar.
2. Beat eggs and add to mixture
3. Fold in flour/baking powder mix alternately with milk/vanilla mix.
4. Pour into greased pan.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a pre-heated 350 degree oven.

Getting ready to cream the butter and sugar.

I wouldn't normally have Quinn (or anyone) help make their own birthday cake, but Quinn really wanted to help out.

Quinn stirred the eggs so we could add them to the butter/sugar mixture.

Joe was busy doing his own thing, hanging out with Mitchell. He heard us having a great time in the kitchen and decided to come over and watch for a couple minutes.

The 3 mixes getting ready to be mixed together.

I put the batter in my two little loaf pans. Quinn spent the rest of the afternoon spooning sugar into a bowl.

While the cakes baked, I got the frosting stuff together.

After the cakes were nice and cool, I cut the tops off so they'd be flat and would stack together well.

This is where we took a break from making the cakes. There was fun to be had, so off we went!

We went to Chuck E. Cheese and played air hockey!

Quinn loved it in the huge tube  hanging from the ceiling.

And we played enough games to win 25 tickets! That got us a dorky kazoo.

Both Quinn and Mitchell loved it at Chuck E. Cheese's. Joe and I spent $5 on tokens and they lasted us about an hour. Granted, Quinn spent most of the time in the tube and Mitchell was happy enough just running around like the other kids there. Otherwise, we probably would've spent more.

After Chuck E. Cheese's, we went back home where there was a surprise waiting for Quinn:

In trying to be more eco-friendly, I wrapped her gift in her blanket! She loved unwrapping the blanket.

It's a "Kitty Surprise!!" And the kitty looks like our kitty, Sasha (-; Yeah, I planned that.

This toy is so cute. You get the Mom cat and she has anywhere from 3 to 5 little kittens in her belly. I guess it's only a 1 in 4 chance that your Mom cat has more than 3 kittens though. I hoped that we'd get the max, but we only got 3. Oh well, Quinn doesn't know any different, so she was ecstatic to find 3 surprise dolls.

She is so sick of smiling at this point!! Haha anyway, that's us with the kittens.

Ok, back to the cake!! I am by no means a professional or even an amateur cake decorator. I usually just slather the frosting on the cake and try to make sure it's somewhat even. That's it. I don't do "fancy." But, the kids are getting older and they deserve a little more than the least I can do. Besides, how hard could it be to make a swirly design?

The easy part: Putting the frosting in between my two layers. First, I blob it on...

... then I spread it out.. So, far so good.

I put the top layer on and hope I don't screw the rest of it up!

I put the frosting bag in a cup to supposedly make it less messy. It was still pretty messy regardless.

Voila!! My pink rosette design!

A close up.

Quinn was pretty impressed and very happy with her "pink rose" cake. Joe was also impressed that I was able to do anything beyond the basics. I liked how it turned out but I'm sure I used too big of frosting tip or something because I ended up using almost 2 packages of the pre-made frosting. Good thing I bought strawberry flavored frosting!

This cake did not photograph well.

Quinn couldn't wait to blow the candles out.

She did a really good job at it.

She even let Mitchell have a turn!

It looked pretty fancy once I cut into it!

Mitchell loved it!!

Quinn, Joe, and I loved it, too!

My kid is 4 years old. My other kid is going to be 2 years old soon, too! As much fun as it is to see them grow and learn, it's also kind of sad to leave the baby years behind. Quinn is 4 now. She's not a toddler. She's a little girl. A little girl who's going to start school soon! It's just so weird to think about. I mean, 5 years ago, I didn't have any kids yet. I wasn't pregnant yet. It was just Joe and I. And now we're a family!! I love it.

Happy birthday, Sweetheart!

Bonus Post: Mitchell Shopping!

My mom and I take the kids out shopping once or twice a week. Sometimes, Joe and I have errands to run on the weekends, too, making the amount of time my kids are in carts or strollers pretty high. Since they are used to being carted and strolled around, they actually seem to like it and don't complain to get out and walk.

But, sometimes, Mitchell gets tired or bored. He doesn't care where he is. He doesn't care what we're doing. If he wants to, he will find a way to take a nap. And he can sleep through anything.

I've been collecting pictures of him sleeping in stores over the winter. Here he is in all his glory! (He is going to be so embarrassed some day if he ever finds this blog!!!)

This just so happens to be the first time he sat like this in the cart. This was back in early October, so he was just about 18 months old when he figured this shopping position out. And, just to let you know, he was belted in when he managed this!

I took two pictures this particular day. This is on the way into the store.

This is on the way out.

This particular day, Mitchell woke up like 2 hours before his normal time, so it was no surprise that he fell asleep (hardcore!!) during our last stop of the day. In fact, he was so tired that he slept in the car there, the entire time we shopped, all the way back to my mom's and even a little more when we got to my mom's!

This is also a notable day because it was a huge sale day at this particular thrift store, so the place was packed. AT LEAST 25 other shoppers said to me, "I wish I could sleep like that" or "someone looks pooped" or something to that effect. I'm not even kidding you, some people even came up to me multiple times as we passed each other in the store to tell me they couldn't believe he was still sleeping!

He was awake when we got into the store...

I only know this picture is from Toys-R-Us around Christmas time because my niece was getting an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas and I was on the look out for the food mixes to go along with it. I only walked around the store for 15, maybe 20 minutes looking for the mixes, but during that time, Mitchell completely pooped out. Shopping for other kids is no fun for him, I guess!

Look at how big he's gotten since the last picture like this!

This picture was taken a few weeks back. No matter if he's buckled in, which he usually is and very tightly might I add, he still somehow manages to get into this position every so often.

Sleeping in the back of the cart with my mom's coat keeping him warm.

This picture was taken just the other day. Recently, Mitchell fell asleep on the way to the store and when I put him in the seat of the cart, he woke up. He ended up whining and crying so badly that we ended up leaving the store pretty quickly because he was just so sad. So, the other day, when he fell asleep on the way to the store, my mom talked me into laying him in the back of the cart so he could stay asleep.

My mom and I took our time. She pushed Quinn, who talked and sang the entire time, as usual. I pushed Mitchell, who slept so soundly and didn't move an inch that he got mistaken for a doll twice!! And, embarrassingly enough, the clerk got pretty mad at me for not emptying my cart, thinking I didn't have to pay for my doll. I was all like, "Dude, that's my baby. Like, I birthed that kid. I already pay for him. All the time." The clerk apologized for his mistake and even laughed at himself for being an idiot. The customers behind me also poked their faces in my cart to make sure Mitchell was real and I wasn't scamming (I'm guessing. They never said one way or the other).