Candy Bar Cookies

So that we are all on the same page, I am a college student. Since I currently live on campus, I have one of the meal plans. This particular plan give me 350 Blocks per semester. Each Block is $5. We are coming up on summer and the end of school and I still have 43 Blocks. I am on campus for a total of 4 more days. I need to spend $50 dollars a day on food for four days. 

Since I have so many blocks, there are a few things I can do. I can buy a lot of food (and I mean A LOT of food) or I can donate blocks to the local food bank. I will probably be donating a fair amount of blocks to the food bank, but I have the ability to indulge my baking needs with my excess blocks.

Unfortunately, most of what I can buy is already pre made. Because of this, I like to get creative. 

Cookie dough, the pre made tubes of it, are a common addiction of late night snackers, at least on this college campus. I prefer to make cookies from scratch but because of my Block situation I decided to get creative with pre made cookie dough and candy bars.

I call them Candy Bar Cookies. Simply chop up the candy bars, add them to the cookie dough, either on top or folded in the cookie dough. I did both since I wanted to be able to tell which cookie had each of the candy bar flavors.

I used four candy bars (Peanut Butter Cups, Kit Kats, 3 Musketeers, Snickers) and peppermint patties. I ended up using two tubes of pre made cookie dough since I had too many pieces of candy bars. The result was 38 candy bar cookies. The peppermint pattie pieces melted and turned into white goop and stuck to the parchment paper. However, personally, the peppermint pattie cookies were my favorite, the other flavors were more subtle.





Other Ways to Use Cookie Dough
Cookie Dough Bowls
Cookie Dough Egg Rolls
On Top of Pastries, Inside of Pies

 Candy Bar Dinner, the Ultimate Dinner to Recover from Finals Week

Applesauce

Applesauce has many great qualities besides being high in fiber and vitamin C. It can be used as substitutes in baking and used as a low calorie sweetener in cooking seeing as apples are naturally sweet because of the fructose in them . For a more extensive explanation on these information tid-bits visit Livestrong and [the nest].

As stated on [the nest], the healthiest version of applesauce is homemade. The best part about homemade applesauce is that you don't even need a recipe (but keep in mind proportions). In my case, I have only made applesauce twice, one was a blueberry vanilla applesauce and the other was a cinnamon vanilla applesauce. I followed a recipe for the blueberry vanilla applesauce and winged it for the cinnamon vanilla applesauce.

Where can you find this recipe? HERE!

Along with the blueberry vanilla, there is also a Peach Ginger Almond, a Spiced, and a Cranberry Clove.

As far as going without a recipe, I took note of what I had added before. I used cinnamon and vanilla along with lemon juice, water, honey and apples (of course!). The main reason I decided to make applesauce was because I had about ten apples in my fridge that I was never going to eat otherwise. If this is the case, another option is to make apple chips, a recipe can be found here (I make mine without the sugar, just cinnamon). The process is simply dehydrating the apples, so if you don't want your electricity bill to take a hit, I recommend making applesauce.

Speaking of which, my scratch made applesauce started with ten apples, eight green and two red. I peeled the apples (I recommend NOT doing this, it takes away the nutrients in the skin of the apple, especially the fiber). I then rough chopped the apples and put them in a medium stove pot. Since the apples I used were mainly green, they did not go brown as quickly as the red delicious. This is not a problem if you for go peeling the apples.

Back to the recipe. I added about 1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/3 cup honey, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla to the pot as well. Once all of the ingredients are in the pot, set the pot over medium heat and stir every few minutes. I added about 1/4 cup of water to the pot as well, this helps to break down the apples.

After about an hour on the stove, the apples had turned soft and some had become, for lack of a better word, mush. Some still looked like apple chunks but that's perfectly okay!

Now, since I live in a dorm and have a limited supply of cooking equipment, I used my Nutri-bullet to blend the apple mixture into what resembled baby food. If you desire chunky applesauce, leave as is, it will still be delicious!

I let the applesauce come to room temperature then put it in the fridge overnight to cool, but it's great hot, warm or cold.

Here are some other great ways to use apples:
Spiced Apple Ring Pancakes
Apple Nachos
Apple Rose
Apple (Ice Cream) Cups
Apple Pops

This involves apples and I love cats and so I present:

 A Cat Trying to Fit Into the Apple Bowl