It is now September. September! Can you believe that? I love spring. I adore summer. I am crazy about autumn! The only thing I don’t like about autumn is that at the end comes winter, and I could totally and completely do without winter.

Autumn conjures up so many warm and cozy feelings for me. Just a few of my favorite autumn things are:

• My birthday is in October, so it is no wonder I love this time of year!
• School supplies… nothing says Fall to me like a box of new crayons and freshly sharpened pencils. Of course, with school starting in early August now, this correlation will probably be extinct by the time my kids get to be my age.
• College football. I still love football this time of year. By January I am ready to kick football to the curb, but in the fall there is nothing like the spirit and excitement of college game day.
• Candles - I love the Yankee Candle fall scents. For some reason, I rarely burn candles in the summer, but in the fall, I have candles burning all day long.
• Visits to the pumpkin patch. This is probably my all time favorite family activity. We usually go out to Weston, Missouri to the Red Barn Farm. The trees are abundant with color, the pumpkin patch is full of pumpkins to choose from, the allergies are fired up… it is always a fun, memory filled day!
• Clothes that cover the pudge. I love for it to be cool enough to wear jeans and a light sweater, but warm enough that you don’t need to put on a heavy coat.
• The slight chill in the air. I love having the windows open and feeling the cool breeze come in.
• A light quilt and a good book. I love quilts that are well worn… the kind that seem to conform to your body in all the right spots. Give me a quilt and a good book, let me sit by the window or out on the deck, and I am in pure bliss.
• Fall flavors… pumpkin, baked apples, cinnamon and spice… Autumn is the best time of year for baking.

Today I was browsing through Yankee Candle and even though I just ate breakfast, I was starving by the time I left the store. I, being the foodie that I am, tend to navigate towards the food scented candles. Apple Pie, Oatmeal Cookies, Chai Tea… no wonder I was hungry. My belly thought it was going to be getting some great food, but instead it was nose that got all of the pleasure.

In an effort to give my tummy some pleasure, I came home and began flipping through my new “go to for desserts” cookbook, The Pampered Chef Delightful Desserts. A recipe that I had been flipping past, waiting for just the right occasion, jumped out at me as the perfect way to welcome Autumn. These apple bundles are all of the cozy things of Autumn all wrapped in a delicious dessert.

Make these and you won’t need a Yankee Candle to fill your house with the scents of Autumn. Sit down, savor the moment, and think about what you love about the beginning of this new and wonderful season. Care to share?

Apple Bundles from Pampered Chef Delightful Desserts

2 lg apples
1 pkg refrigerated breadstick dough — 11 oz
1 med orange
2 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
Preheat oven to 375F. Peal, core, and slice apples. Cut slices in half. Unroll dough; separate into 8 breadsticks. Cut each in half crosswise to make 16 strips. Place 3-4 apple slices at the end of each piece of dough; roll up. Arrange bundles in greased 7×11″ pan. Zest 1 t. orange rind, set aside. Juice orange. Pour orange juice into bottom of pan (but not over bundles). Brush bundles with butter. Mix zest, sugar and cinnamon; spoon over bundles. Bake 25-30 min. or until golden brown.

Are you ready to welcome Autumn with some yummy apple recipes? Check out these other recipes from food bloggers around the blogosphere:

• Homemade Apple Pizza from Tammy’s Recipes
• Apple Fritters from The Picky Apple
• Apple Chicken Stew from Taste Buds Are the Best Buds
• Teddie’s Apple Cake from The Wednesday Chef

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• Adopt-a-Blogger matches should be coming out within the week. We could still use a few more Veteran bloggers. If you are interested in mentoring a new blogger, contact me as soon as possible!
• I participated in Wordless Wednesday for the first time over on my family blog - Dishing It Up Family Style
• I am looking for a good blog designer who can work on a special project for me. I’ve contacted my go to designer, Jules from Everyday Mommy, but if she isn’t available I’d love to have some other people to check out. Know of anyone? Let me know!

When I turned 16, I was finally allowed to date. For a constantly boy crazy girl, I felt like sixteen would never come and when it did, I took full advantage of it! I dated some pretty nice guys, but one guy, who ended up becoming my boyfriend for a few years, taught me more about the dating lingo than anyone else. I first met Travis at the grocery store, of all places. Remember back in the day when the sackers at the store would carry out your groceries for you? Well, my mom and I went grocery shopping, Travis carried out our groceries, and as I watched him load the groceries into the trunk, I fell in love.

Living in the proximity of two small towns away from each other, it didn’t take long for the two of us to find out about each other. Travis first called me up to ask me out a short while after we met. We chatted for a long while on the phone the first time he called and he ended the call with “I was wondering if you would like to go get a Coke sometime.” Random, but of course I would! Next call to ask me out… “Would you like to go get a Coke?” Even if our date was dinner out, a movie, going over to his parents house to hang out, he would always ask me if I wanted to go get a Coke. Eventually, after we had been dating for awhile, I called him on it. “Why do you always ask me if I want to go get a Coke? Even if we aren’t going some place for a Coke, you ask me if I want to get a Coke?” He explained that it is just what guys say if they want to hang out with you. Ummmm, okay. Travis and I continued to get Cokes for 4 years after that.

Fast forward to life as I know it now. I’m an almost 35 year old mom of 3, living in the burbs, and surrounded by other women living very similar lives. A few years ago, I noticed a shift in things that took me back to my “Wanna get a Coke?” years. I would get calls on a regular basis from other moms asking me if I wanted to go get a coffee. I didn’t really like coffee back then, but the thought of hanging out with other adults during the witching hours with the kids really appealed to me. We would go out, kids in hand, and get “coffee”. Eventually, I realized that getting coffee was similar to getting a coke. It was just a way of one person asking another person if they wanted to get out of the house and get to know each other. Getting coffee, in the life of a suburban mom, is something I now look forward to on a regular basis. A chance to hang out with other women to share frustrations, joys, woes, ideas, etc. More sophisticated than “wanna get a coke”, going for coffee is the same thing, only all grown up.

Speaking of “all grown up”, were you an Oreo cookie fan? I still find myself craving those things dunked in a big glass of cold milk. I now tend to be a closet dunker as it doesn’t seem very acceptable for someone of my age to have a Oreo cookie mustache. If you want to enjoy a kiddo treat but in a grown up acceptable format, give this Cookies ‘n Cream Cake a try. Like your Oreos and milk, only all grown up.

Cookies ‘n Cream Cake from Pampered Chef Delightful Desserts

CAKE
12 crème-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, coarsely chopped
1 package white cake mix
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup sour cream
3 egg whites
2 Tbs vegetable oil

ICING
6 crème-filled chocolate sandwich cookies, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup sour cream
3 Tbs butter, softened

1 Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray fluted cake pan with nonstick cooking spray. For cake, coarsely chop cookies, set aside. Combine cake mix, water, sour cream, egg whites and oil; mix according to package directions.
2.  Pour half of the batter into pan. Sprinkle chopped cookies evenly over top of batter but not touching sides of pan. Spoon remaining batter over cookies.
3. Bake 50-55 minutes or until center of cake comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Loosen cake from sides and center tube of pan. Invert onto cooling rack; remove pan. Cool completely.
4. For icing, coarsely chop cookies; sest aside. Combine powdered sugar, sour cream and butter; beat until smooth. Ice top of cake allowing some to flow down the sides. Sprinkle top with cookies. Let stand until icing is set. Cut into slices. Store leftover cake, covered in refrigerator
Yields 16 servings.

Come out of the closet and get your Oreo fix. Here is what other food bloggers are doing with these yummy cookies!

• Oreo Cupcakes from Baking Bites
• Oreo Cheesecake from Happy Home Baking
• Oreo Truffles from The Savory Notebook
• Homemade Oreos from Love and Olive Oil

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• Have you had the chance to check out my Mom’s blog yet? She is amazing me each and every day with her stories! I am so proud of her!
• Remember to particpate in Menu Plan Monday. Head over to The Organizing Junkie for more information.
• Do you use Entrecard? I came across this site over the weekend and am intrigued. Let me know if you sign up!
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I’m feeling a bit of a wild hair tonight and am in the mood to get some things off my chest. I have some confessions to make… some may shock you, some, not so much. Sit back, grab a beverage, and let me share with you some of my deepest secrets.

• Let’s just get the mother of confessions out of the way here. I became Catholic in the Spring of 1998. During that time we had to make our first confession. My experience was not a pleasant one… face to face with the priest and people waiting to give their confessions just a few short feet away, most definitely within earshot. (Oh - and the people before more… juicy stuff, I tell ya’. It was like an episode of Days of Our Lives). I was not impressed and have yet to go back to confession.  If you have any knowledge of the Catholic faith, you will understand how unacceptable this is. Hopefully blogging confessions count?
• I love Little Debbie snack cakes. There… I said it (whew!). I crave them once a month (imagine that) and with their $1.19 price tag for an entire box, who can resist a Little Debbie? My favorite kinds are the Oatmeal Cream Pies, Swiss Cake Rolls and Nutty Bars.
• When I was middle school aged, my parents had a sheet of money hanging on the wall of our study. They got it at the United States Treasury when they visited Washington DC. I took it off the wall, cut it up, and used it to buy something. I’m not sure what I bought with it… probably some Little Debbie’s.
• I like to squeeze things. Give me a baby, a puppy, a hamster, a tomato and my first instinct is to squeeze it. This is an inherited trait, I’m sure, because my niece Crystal and I both do this. We laugh when we catch each other in these situations because you can see it in our faces…especially in our gritted teeth… that we have the urge to squeeze whatever we are holding.
• This confession may cause the in-law side of my family to disown me (even more then the not going to confession confession will)… I don’t love ice cream. I have sensitive teeth and hate being cold. Ice cream makes my teeth hurt and it makes me cold. It is a good thing I don’t love ice cream because my husband is an ice cream junkie, so there is always that temptation around. Luckily,  I can resist ice cream pretty easily. I do love milkshakes and… I probably shouldn’t say this outloud… but I could dump the pre-frozen cream/sugar/vanilla mixture into a cup and drink it without doing the whole ice cream freezer thing. I love ice cream “juice”.

One thing that probably does not need to be confessed because you have already figured this out if you are a reader of any length of time… I am not the most patient person. I am not a “stick the dough in the freezer and let it sit overnight” kind of girl. I can’t stand that. When I want something, I want it now. Today, when I made ice cream for my husband, I took it out of the ice cream maker after its designated time, added the fudge and salted caramel, then put it in the deep freeze to really firm up for what should have been a couple of strong hours. After about thirty minutes, I was tired of waiting and pulled it out. It looked fine at the moment, but things went south when I dipped some into a glass for my “food photo session”. Within minutes, the ice cream had lost its shape and looked like a big glass of “ice cream juice”. Melted or frozen solid, it all tastes the same, right?

Do you have time for one last confession? After the photo shoot, I licked the dripping ice cream off the side of the glass. Really, Miss/Mr Hoity Toity… don’t go telling me you wouldn’t do the same thing. Deny it and it could be confession time for all of us.

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream

BASIC VANILLA
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
2 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl
until light and fluffy.

Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time
then continue whisking until completely blended.

Pour in the cream, milk,
and vanilla and whisk to blend.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker
Freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

**I added chopped chocolate covered peanuts to my ice cream maker during the last 10 minutes of the cycle. When I removed the ice cream from the maker, I added some salted caramel (store bought ice cream caramel in a jar with sprinkled Kosher salt mixed in) and some hot fudge. **

Do you love homemade ice cream? Check out these other delicious recipes from food bloggers around the globe:

• Milk Ice Cream from Cook Almost Anything Once
• Coffee Ice Cream from Cookbook Catchall
• Passion Fruit Macadamia Nut Ice Cream from Andreas Recipes
• Simple Fried Ice Cream from Hot Off the Garlic Press

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• We only need a couple more Veteran Food Bloggers to adopt some of the newbies. Don’t let these new kids on the block be left out in the cold. Step on up and adopt a blogger today!
• The search for my daughter, Kelly’s, real mom has begun. Check out what’s going on in the family - Dishing it Up Family Style is HERE!
• Oh and I almost forgot! The winner of the set of Envirosax is comment number 21….. Psychgrad from Equal Opportunity Kitchen! Congrats and thanks to all who participated!

I am bound and determined to get it in gear this week. My goal is to get back on the Fly Lady bandwagon, gain control of my diet/exercise program, and to commit to menu planning again.

I used to participate in Menu Planning Monday over at the Organizing Junkie. There is something about putting your weekly menu plan out there for all to see that makes you a little more committed to sticking to it each week.  For your viewing pleasure, here is what is on the menu at the Dine & Dish household this week.

• Monday: Chicken Chilaquiles from Cooking Light (using leftover rotisserie chicken from Sunday)
• Tuesday: Steak with Golden Zucchini from Real Simple Magazine
• Wednesday: Spaghetti and Meatballs
• Thursday: Fajita Skillet from Simple & Delicious Magazine
• Friday: Homemade Pizza
• Saturday: Sausage and Pepper Calzones from Cooking Light Magazine
• Sunday: Beef & Veggie Stir Fry (lunch), Tilapia Piccata (dinner)

Earlier in the day yesterday, we had told the kids that in the evening we would light the outdoor fire pit and make S’Mores. It had been fairly cool all week, but of course last night it turned out to be sticky and warm, so my hubby felt like it was too warm to light the fire pit. I had a couple of disappointed kids when they heard the news that there would be no marshmallow roasting. When we came inside, I looked at all the S’mores ingredients laying out and suddenly remembered the cookbook I borrowed from my sisters house this summer. It was a Pampered Chef cookbook called Delightful Desserts. The recipe that I remembered was for oven S’mores, called S’mores Galore. I adapted the recipe to fit a 9×13 casserole dish and just played things a little by ear. As gooey as campfire s’mores with the same roasted flavor, this is one dessert that will turn disappointed tears into cheers.

S’Mores Galore from the Delightful Desserts Pampered Chef Cookbook

10 whole honey graham crackers — (about 5 x 2″), divided
6 bars milk chocolate — (1.55 ounces each), coarsley
chopped
1 package mini marshmallows — (16 ounces), divided
6 tablespoons butter or margarine — divided
3 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350º.
Arrange a single layer of graham crackers to completely cover bottom of bar
pan, breaking crackers to fit. Toast in oven 2 minutes. Remove pan to
cooling rack.
Coarsely break remaining graham crackers into large bowl. Set aside.
Combine 3 cups of marshmallows, 3 tablespoons of the butter and milk,
microwave on high 1 minute. Stir until smooth. Add half of the chopped
chocolate. Stir until chocolate is completely melted.
Spread marshmallow mixture evenly over graham crackers in pan.
Melt remaining 3 tablespoons of butter. Toss with remaining graham crackers.
Add remaining marshmallows and chopped chocolate. Toss lightly.
Spoon mixture evenly in pan.
Bake 8-10 minutes or until marshmallows are lightly browned. Cool 15
minutes. Cut into bars.
Serve warm or cool.

S’Mores are so popular! Check out what our fellow food bloggers do with some of the most simple S’Mores ingredients:

• S’Mores Cupcakes from Cupcake Bakeshop
• South of the Border S’Mores from Kids Cuisine
• S’More Pie from Smitten Kitchen
• S’Mores Pancakes from Baking Delights

A Little Bit of Housekeeping

My husband and I have an ongoing disagreement about hand me downs. When our children outgrow their undies, I do not believe they should be passed on… to a younger sibling, to Goodwill, to cousins.. to anyone. Yes, I know they are washed and clean but I just have issues with that kind of undergarment being passed on. His argument? It is what they did when they were growing up, and so that’s that. Why should it be any different with his kids?

Am I the only one who thinks that this kind of hand me down is a bit icky? Help me see the light or give me a good argument to go back and set my husband straight. And for those of you thinking, “Geez, don’t they have better things to argue about than this?”, we do.  Like which direction our trash can should face, or how far up in the garage I should pull the van in and my favorite… why do I get a Netflix subscription and then let the movie sit on our TV for 2 months. Lots of important arguing going on in the Doyle household, but this issue has been gnawing at me for some time now, so I just need to bring some closure to it

I do believe that hand me downs are great, but not of the undie variety. Some of the best recipes in our repertoire are hand me downs from others. One of my favorite wedding shower themes is where people share their family recipes with the bride. What a great way to start off your marriage, with a collection of favorite recipes from those you love.

My mother-in-law recently passed on the recipe for her fruit turnovers. She makes these often for breakfast when we are home (didn’t I marry into a great family? Pie as a breakfast food… genius!). What I love best about hand me down recipes is the verbage in the recipe. I’m going to share this recipe with you, exactly how she gave it to me. If you decided to make these and need some clarification, feel free to contact me and I’ll pass on to you my interpretation.

These turnovers are great for breakfast, dessert, or as a hand held picnic treat, which is why I am including them in the Waiter There’s Something In My Picnic Basket event over at The Passionate Cook.

Fruit Turnovers

2 cups flour
3/4 cup butter
Pinch of salt
10 tbs ice water (might need more)
Canned Pie Filling

Use pastry blender to blend flour with 1/4 cup butter (get crumbly) in a stainless steel bowl.
Add 10 tbs of ice water to make a plyable dough, use fork to keep mixing in until a dough ball forms.Add more water, a bit at a time if the dough ball doesn’t form right away.
Cover with damp, clean dish cloth. Chill about 15 minutes.
Remaining 1/2 cup of butter leave out until plyable and easy to work with.

Roll out the dough on lightly floured surface and then place the butter over the top of the dough - spread butter around surface of dough until thick
Pull up one corner of the dough and bring it over so corners meet (so butter to butter). Keep folding until butter starts to seem through. Keep doing this (roll, fold, fold, fold, roll, fold, fold, fold) until the butter is well incorporated into the dough. (Essentially, this is the way you knead the dough). It will be slimey.
Chill overnight in covered bowl (Kristen here - I’m an instant gratification girl and skipped this step with great results)

Roll out on flowered board, cut it into squares. Place fruit in center, fold over and seal your edges. Canned pie filling works best because it is soft and won’t bust through the dough. For apple, use one apple per turnover and a little bit of the gel. For other fruits, one small tablespoon of filling/fruit works well. Jam - use one heaping teaspoon full.
Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes. Once cool, feel free to use a powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, milk drizzle or glaze.

A Little Bit of Housekeeping

• If you haven’t already, make sure to sign up for the Dine & Dish Adopt-A-Blogger #2 event! Space is limited, so sign up today!
• The family is heading back to school and life on the home front is a bit crazy lately. Check out what the Dine & Dish kids are up to these days. Visit Dishing it up Family Style.
• Are you on Twitter? I had Firefox issues the other day, Twittered about it and had a reply and solution from Firefox instantly. Awesome! Follow me on Twitter by clicking here.
• Do you want to get the most recent Dine & Dish updates right in your email inbox? Click HERE.
• And finally, my favorite bit of news… my 75 year old mom has started a blog! I’m so excited for her to be capturing her memories from growing up and her perspective on life in the world today. Hope you will head over and visit her at On the Inside Looking Back.

Written for Paper Palate on The Well Fed Network

I will admit… I have been a little disenchanted with some of the latest issues of Food & Wine magazine. Usually, I am able to flip through the magazine and bookmark a good handful of recipes to add to my “I will make this someday list“. Lately, however, I have bookmarked less and less.

This is why I was pleasantly surprised when the 30th Anniversary Issue arrived in my mailbox and the number of recipes that piqued my interest more than made up for the lack of recipes I had bookmarked in recent months. This issue of Food & Wine magazine takes us back to what I consider to be classic Food & Wine style… recipes that are elegant and unique, yet not so overwhelmingly complicated that it turns novice cooks away.

Some of the recipes that caught my eye were Chunky Guacamole with Cumin, Watermelon Salad with Feta, Triple-Tomato Penne, Caramelized Black Pepper Chicken, Skillet Apple Charlotte, Chipotle Shrimp Tostadas, Stir Fried Five Spice Pork with Lettuce Cups, and my favorite… Molten Chocolate Cake with Caramel Filling.

Thank you Food & Wine for bringing classic back and sharing with us some of the trends of the past and the future.  I can only hope that one trend that falls into my mailbox each month is a Food & Wine magazine packed with great recipes that readers like me love.

Molten Chocolate Cake with Caramel Filling

ingredients

Wow - there are a lot of you out there! Food bloggers, that is. This fall Dine & Dish will be two years old. It is amazing to me to see how much this online community of bloggers has changed over the past two years. I bet for those of you who have been doing this a lot longer than I, that change is even more phenomenal to watch.

I feel like I used to have a good finger on the pulse of who all was blogging. I felt like I knew a lot of you through your blogs and was fairly involved in the community. Things changed, I got swamped with life and had to step back on my involvement for a bit. Now, when I go food blog hopping, I am amazed to find a number of food bloggers who have been doing this for awhile who I am not even aware of! Blink your eyes around these parts and things change like the wind.

Food Blogging events are creeping up everywhere. New ones, old ones… they are still going strong and involvement is more triumphant than ever. It is such a neat thing to watch.

Because of this continuing upswing trend in food blogging, I have decided to bring back, by popular request, the Adopt a Blogger event. I’m going to change things around some… some new rules which equals some new fun! I’ll be posting about this next week, so keep your eyes on Dine & Dish to get involved.

As a part of my goal to get re-immersed into the food blogging community, I am also submitting these delicious shortcakes as an entry to one of my favorite food blogging events. Sugar High Friday… an oldie but goodie! With the theme as “berries”, how could I resist? Head on over to Susan of Food Blogga’s blog to check out the other delicious berry entries.

I know you are probably sick of hearing about it, but I am so in love with this cookbook! The Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting recipe from Table Talk by Carol McManus is so easy and incredibly moist and delicious. I’m in love!

Make sure you enter to win the cookbook by commenting on the Dine & Dish Giveaway post right before this one (CLICK HERE).

Side note… I’m finally up with the current trends and am Twittering (User Name - DineandDish). Let me know if you Twitter too and I’ll make sure to follow along! (Is this even English that I am speaking… still sounds very foreign to me!)

Our stimulus check arrived in the mail yesterday…. exactly 10 minutes before our mini van decided it knew exactly what we should do with that money, and sputtered and died. Is that not Murphy’s Law or what? We bought our van new in 2003 and have not had to take it in to the shop for anything other than the routine maintenance required of vehicles. We get a hot little amount of cash in our hands and, POOF, $700 later that hot little amount of cash in our hands dwindles down to much, much less.

At first I was irritated… I mean really ticked off. Then, I took a breath and stepped back and thought a bit. I could go down the “why does this kind of stuff always happen to us?” road but instead decided to change my perspective. We are lucky that this happened to our van the day it happened because we knew as soon as we got the total repair bill that we would be able to pay it without dipping into any special funds (aka to me as our “ocean fund” and to my husband as our “oh shit” fund). The money that we needed was right there in our mailbox and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

So, my post today serves as nothing more than a reminder to shift your perspective before you react to things. Remember that there are always people out there who have it worse off and who still manage to wake up each day and smile. From their perspective, there are people in the world who have it far worse then them. It is all how you look at it.

I cannot think of any way at all to tie this into a recipe, but will tell you that if you do as I did and bake this bundt cake into 4 mini loaf pans instead of the bundt cake pan, you will have enough cake to go around and can share some with the people you love, are thankful for, or who need a new perspective on life. A kind act from you, like giving someone down on their luck a delicious chocolate loaf, can shift their perspective and help them to remember that they are pretty damn lucky… life really is good.

Decadent Double-Chocolate Bundt Cake (From March 2008 issue of Cooking Light Magazine)

Glaze:
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup chocolate-flavored liqueur
2 tablespoons butter

Cake:
1 1/2 teaspoons canola oil
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Cooking spray
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons butter, softened
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour (about 13 1/2 ounces)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups 1% low-fat milk
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate minichips
2 tablespoons powdered sugar

1. To prepare glaze, combine first 4 ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Cool completely.2. Preheat oven to 350°.

3. To prepare cake, drizzle oil into a 12-cup Bundt pan; coat pan thoroughly with a pastry brush. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons flour, shaking out excess. Coat prepared pan with cooking spray.

4. Place 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar and 6 tablespoons butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 5 minutes). Add eggs and egg whites, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.

5. Lightly spoon 3 cups flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine 3 cups flour and next 4 ingredients (through salt), stirring with a whisk. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix after each addition. Beat 2 minutes. Fold in chips. Spoon batter into prepared pan. Swirl batter using a knife.

6. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately pour glaze over cake. Cool cake in pan on a wire rack 30 minutes. Invert cake onto a serving plate; cool completely. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons powdered sugar.

So, you like Bundt Cakes? Check out these other great recipes from the food blogging community:

• Chocolate Orange Bundt Cake, from Joy the Baker
• Pumpkin Bundt Cake, from Whipped
• Luscious Lemon Bundt Cake, from Stephanie’s Kitchen
• Mint Chocolate Bundt Cake, from Foodaphilia

Yesterday afternoon, the two year old in my family had a meltdown… in the middle of the grocery store. Let me tell you, it was a lovely site. First, refusing to wear her shoes and then refusing to sit in the cart, my normally sweet and laid back daughter completely lost it. Running off, laying in the middle of the aisles and screaming at the top of her lungs, she really let everyone within a ten mile radius know that she was not happy. I would attempt to pick her up, and she would  scrunch up her legs, pushing me away, and would scream even louder. Three kids, lots of grocery store trips, and this was my very first time to experience such a show firsthand.

Most sane mom’s would pick up their child and leave the store with their groceries un-purchased. Me? Nope - I continued to let her make a scene simply because I had these luscious, juicy, aromatic peaches in my cart and I couldn’t bare to walk out of the store without them. Women, who apparently have never had children or who were as terribly annoyed as I was kept giving me dirty looks in the checkout lane. But, as stubborn as my two year old, I refused to leave without my peaches.

And I can honestly say… all the dirty looks, all the built up frustration, all the cussing at my husband for traveling for work this week which lead me to go to the store with my three kids in the first place… all of that was well worth it when I took my first juicy bite.

In fact, I may even brave the store with the temper tantrum thrower again tonight. This simple recipe (even though my whipped lemon cream had a meltdown of its own) is worth any embarrassment I may face.

Peaches with Lemon Cream, from Simple & Delicious August 2008

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

In a small mixing bowl, beat cream until it begins to thicken. Add the brown sugar, vanilla and lemon peel; beat until stiff peaks form. Cover and refrigerate until serving.
Brush cut sides of peaches with oil; place cut side down on grill rack. Grill, covered, over medium heat for 10-12 minutes or until peaches are tender and begin to caramelize.
Place peaches on dessert plates; fill with lemon cream mixture. Yield: 6 servings.