Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies

With Easter comes a lot of leftover candy. One of my favorites? The Cadbury Creme Eggs. The originals. Not the caramel version. Not the mini version. The originals. I also love Cadbury because they don't feel the need to change their commercial to be all fancy. Who doesn't love other animals trying to pretend to be a bunny? NOBODY. That's who.

So what do you do when you have too much leftover candy and know that you'll either get sick from eating it all in one sitting, or let it sit on the counter for weeks until it's stale (there is never any normal in between with leftover candy...at least for me)? You use it for baking! It's been over a year since I discovered a recipe for brownies topped with Cadbury creme eggs, and I've been thinking about them ever since last Easter, so this year, I finally made them! 

Start with 3/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, and 1/4 tsp salt. Whisk together in a bowl and set aside. 

Then in your mixer, combine 3/4 cup light brown sugar, 3/4 cup sugar...

...with 1/2 a cup (or 1 stick) of melted butter (mmmm butter)...

...and 1 tablespoon vanilla. You'll mix this together for about three minutes on medium speed.

After everything is well combined, you'll add in two eggs, one a time. Make sure you use real eggs and not Cadbury eggs. It'll throw the whole recipe off. Mix those in for about 20 seconds after each addition.

Then you'll slowly mix in the dry ingredients until everything is just moistened. And then, because there won't be enough sugar as it is, fold in 1/2 a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Then you'll spread the batter into a lightly greased 8x8 inch pan, and bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

While those are baking, you'll want to cut your Cadbury eggs up! You can do however many you want, and I probably went a little overboard with it. The one nice things about the Cadbury's is that they have that nice seam down the middle, so they are super easy to cut.

When the 25 minutes are up, pull the pan out, push the egg halves into the brownies, and then bake for another 5 minutes so they set.

LOOK AT ALL THAT SUGAR. I'm not entirely sure how I didn't gain 50 pounds just by staring at these. The brownies ended up being super fudgy and delicious, and you certainly don't need more than a small section to satisfy your sweet tooth craving. The Cadbury filling was really interesting after baking and then cooling because it solidified. It did make it easier to shove in my mouth though. It looked like my coworkers enjoyed them because I brought home an empty pan at the end of the day!

Spring (and Summer?) Wreath

I took my winter wreath down about a month or so ago because the form was starting to sag way too much, plus, considering how warm it's been here lately, it just seemed wrong having it up even though I hadn't made one for the spring yet. So my wreath hanger just kind of stayed lonely on my door for awhile...until today!

I pinned this wreath on Pinterest awhile ago because I just loved the vintagey vibe to it, and every time I looked at it on my board, it just made me happy. I finally got around to buying my supplies, and with a three day weekend, I knew I had the couple hours to devote to making it. Since it's already well into spring, this may end up being my wreath for both spring and summer. We'll see if I decide to be super productive in a few months because my other wreath idea will be very time consuming.

I got it in my head awhile ago, that I definitely wanted to keep with the stripe fabric like my inspiration wreath, but there was just something in my head screaming "Seersucker!!" I was a bit worried that I would have this idea and not be able to find the fabric I really wanted. I saw it online at Jo-Ann's, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find it in the actual store. Luckily, I walked in, and found my way straight to it! I picked up a yard of the lime green seersucker, which ended up being more than plenty of fabric (it's about 42" wide, so a yard was plenty). I then went over to the felt fabric sheets and choose some colors for my flowers. It was a little difficult because I didn't want something too bright or too dark, or too not coordinating. I decided to get a dark brown for the leaves, a tan for one of the flowers, and then use some of my leftover white felt for two of the other flowers. Unfortunately, they didn't have the right size straw wreath form, so I found my 18" wreath at Michaels. Overall, the project probably cost me about $10 and took about 2 hours (but part of that might have been my constant distraction of watching Friday Night Lights).

You can do whatever size wreath you want, I just like mine to be a bit bigger for my door, and 18" turned out to be the perfect size.

For the felt sheets, you'll need 1 for the color of your leaves, two for one flower, and four for the other two flowers (or 2 per flower if you do three different colors). You'll also need pins for securing everything to the wreath.

You'll want to cut your fabric into three inch wide strips. I wouldn't cut all of the fabric at first, just cut about 6 or 7 strips and then after putting some on your wreath, cut more as needed. This way, you'll have uncut extra fabric for some other project you may want to use it for. 

Using the pins, pin the end of the fabric on the back of the wreath, at a slight angle, and then start wrapping around the wreath! Just remember to pin each end as you go, overlap it, and pull the fabric tight so it fits snugly to the form. 

Once that's completed, it's time for the felt flowers! You can either freehand everything if you're a master with scissors, or use templates. For my leaves, I decided to do freehand since they're pretty straight forward. I was able to get all six leaves from one felt sheet. If you want more leaves, you'll probably need an extra sheet.

I decided to make myself a template for the flowers because otherwise my perfectionist self would have had to run out for a lot more felt. (This was about my third attempt to get a template I liked, so it's a good thing I decided to do that!) You'll want two big petals, two medium, and two small per flower.

Then you'll fold each petal in half, and then in half again, and pin to the wreath! 

I pinned the two big petals next to each other, and then the medium ones on the other side, and the small ones in the middle. For the two white flowers, since they were on the edge, I made sure the big petals were on the outside edges of the flower cluster. And then I fluffed them so they looked nice and pretty! You can do the flowers with more or less petals or other sizes, it's really all your preference, this is just how I chose to do mine. Then I pinned two leaves under each flower and the wreath was completed!

It definitely brightens up my door!