How to Dress Up a Brownie Mix

Brownies are an all time favorite treat and there are lot of recipes using brownie mix.

But did you know how easy it is to take a box of brownie mix and elevate it from simple to sensational, even without a recipe? Here are some of my favorite ideas for dressing up a boxed brownie mix that don't even require a recipe.

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1. Stir something extra into the batter.  Stir in 1 to 2 cups of something extra like chopped nuts, chocolate chips, chopped candy bars, coconut, or chopped cookies.  My favorite brownie additions include chopped Oreos, peanut butter cups, or peppermint patties.

How to Dress Up a Brownie Mix

2. Frost your brownies.  Either store bought or homemade frosting will work. Chocolate, cream cheese, coconut pecan, cream cheese, or peanut butter frosting all are delicious on brownies.  And chocolate ganache (chopped chocolate melted with warm cream) will give your brownies a shiny, fancy finish.

3. Add your favorite flavor or extract. Just a teaspoon or two of instant coffee powder, mint extract, or orange extract stirred into your brownie batter will add a custom touch to your brownie mix.

4.  Spice them up.  Give your brownies the flavor of Mexican chocolate by stirring a teaspoon of cinnamon and pinch of cayenne into the batter.

5. Add a swirl. Drop spoonfuls of raspberry jam, orange marmalade or cream cheese filling over the surface of the brownie batter once it's in the pan, and then swirl it around with the tip of a butter knife.

6. Add a topping.  This can be done either before or after your brownies are baked.  Chopped nuts, chocolate chips, and M&Ms can be added before baking.  Or give your brownies the taste of Smores by adding a layer of mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and chopped graham crackers once they are baked.  Just place the pan back under the broiler until melted and golden.

How to Dress Up a Brownie Mix

Martha McKinnon is an avid home cook and cooking instructor who loves sharing everything she has learned through her years in the kitchen with all who are interested. She loves helping to help make cooking and bakng easy and accessible for the busy home cook.

Her website, http://www.best-ever-cookie-collection.com is dedicated to publishing the best cookie recipes and her blog, http://www.simple-nourished-living.com explores easy recipes, tips, and hints.

A Few Ideas For Impressive Gourmet Pizzas

There are so many types of pizza and if you want to make a homemade pizza recipe to impress your friends or family, what about choosing a gourmet pizza recipe? You can use a readymade pizza crust and then a homemade pizza sauce recipe or make the crust, sauce and toppings yourself.

One idea for a gourmet pizza is to use a combination of different fish and seafood. You can use shrimp, crab, mussels, clams and more. Alternatively, you can stick to one or two types of seafood only and use ingredients, which go well with it, such as fresh pineapple chunks, capers and perhaps a homemade creamy or tomato-based pizza sauce.

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Another idea for an extra special gourmet pizza is to use top quality piece of steak. Thinly slice the steak and pan fry it with onions. Use this to top a pizza, adding mushrooms, bacon, and asparagus.

A Few Ideas For Impressive Gourmet Pizzas

If you prefer to use chicken, you can use a chicken marinade to infuse the chicken with flavor, before using it as a pizza topping. Marinades add a special flavor dimension to your meat or poultry, giving the pizza a true gourmet touch.

For an impressive vegetarian gourmet pizza, choose fresh vegetables like bell peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, broccoli and anything else that is colorful and crunchy. Add some flavorful cheese, perhaps goat's cheese or buffalo mozzarella, and a handful of chopped fresh herbs. Vegetarian pizzas can be just as tasty as meat or fish-based ones.

The Best Pizza Sauce Recipes for Gourmet Pizzas

Some pizza sauces are readymade and you can use hoisin sauce for a Chinese style pizza, teriyaki sauce for a Japanese style pizza, pesto if you are going to use tomatoes, mozzarella, and other Italian flavors, or taco sauce for a Mexican style pizza.

Alternatively, you can make your own gourmet sauces. Pesto is easy to make and this combination of basil, garlic, pine nuts, hard cheese, and olive oil is really flavorful. Alfredo sauce is used on pasta more often than pizza recipes but it does make a tasty sauce. This combination of butter, cream, garlic, and parmesan is perfect if you want to top your gourmet pizza with mushrooms, asparagus, ham, and other ingredients, which go nicely with it.

How to Make a Smoky BBQ Pizza Sauce

This delicious pizza sauce recipe is tangy, spicy, and sweet. It is a great pizza sauce to use if you are going to use meat on your pizza and other full-flavored toppings like onion, bell pepper, cheese, or chilies.

What you will need:

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons minced onions
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/8 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon prepared mustard
• 1 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/3 cup chili sauce
• 2 crushed cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter

How to make it:

Add all the ingredients to a pot and bring the mixture to a boil. Turn down the heat and let it simmer for five minutes, stirring a few times. This recipe makes about one and a half cups of pizza sauce.

A Few Ideas For Impressive Gourmet Pizzas

There are many different types of pizza to choose from, so whether you fancy something quick and easy or something gourmet and exciting, there is a pizza sauce recipe for every occasion and plenty of toppings to choose from as well.

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Vegetable Recipes Your Kids Will Beg For

Vegetables are a great way to provide the necessary vitamins and minerals to your family. However, how many times have you told your children to eat their vegetables? Probably a lot.

For some reason, children have an aversion to vegetables. They will cry and sit for hours before you finally give in and send them from the table.

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Vegetables do not always have to be the enemy. The key is to find a creative way to prepare them and your family will become vegetable lovers rather than vegetable haters!

Vegetable Recipes Your Kids Will Beg For

Do you remember when you were a child and your mother dropped a soggy green lump of cabbage on your plate. Did you want to eat it? Almost certainly not.

There are various ways to encourage your children to eat their vegetables. You might even need to trick them! Broccoli is an example of a vegetable, which is high in vitamin and mineral content, and there are plenty of ways to prepare it. Here are some tips:

Try it raw. Leave a plate of raw broccoli in bite-size pieces in the refrigerator for your children as a snack. Offer some salad dressing so they can dip it and this is often a hit. Leave the tips of the broccoli on the plate and encourage your child to eat them. You can even make a creative game of this. Grilled vegetable recipes are not the only way to serve healthy vegetables.

If all else fails, bribery often works. Tell your child that they will get a special treat if they finish their vegetables. Make sure you have a treat for them afterwards.

Use cheese. Cheese and broccoli go very well together. If you pour a cheese sauce over the broccoli, you are adding texture and changing the flavor. You might find your children eat the broccoli in cheese before whatever else you have served with it.

Lasagna is delicious with broccoli added. Smothering it in cheese can add to the flavor and disguise the broccoli. Children will be too busy enjoying the cheesy flavor to bother picking out the bits of broccoli. Vegetable pizza is another way of sneaking in broccoli. Nearly all kids love pizza so a healthy vegetable pizza recipe will produce something they associate with fun rather than veggies.

Chop it up - if all else fails, pre cook the broccoli and let it cool a little and put it in a food processor. Chop it up until it is not recognizable and add it to whatever dish you are cooking. Your children will not even know it is there.

Shakes - this might sound weird but it works. Make a milkshake with milk, ice cream, and chocolate syrup. Add some broccoli to the shake (make sure the kids aren't watching!) and blend it some more. As long as you use a chunky type of ice cream, your kids will not realize the broccoli is there and hopefully they will drink the shake too fast to notice any stray green bits!

Vegetables are high in essential nutrients, especially for growing kids, so it is great that there are so many ways to get them to eat their veggies!

Vegetable Recipes Your Kids Will Beg For

Believe vegetable pizza recipe have to be difficult then you need to have some fresh off the barbecue grill! While your at it why not have some of our barbecue grilled vegetable recipes.

You can often find me in the kitchen cooking it is a true love of mine and I love experimenting with new and wonderful taste. I like to share these with visitors to my wife's websites on cooking. Why not try one of their recipes like Baked Dijon Salmon just one of the recipes we like sharing with our four young sons.

A Pizza Lovers Dream - Making Pizza Crust "Crispy"

From time to time the one thing that home pizza makers want to accomplish when baking pizza is a nice crispy, crunchy pizza crust.

It's quite difficult for a pizza lover to resist the crispy texture of flavorful pizza crust layered with a blend of savory toppings.

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A common question asked by newbies and veteran home pizza makers alike, is simply this, "How can I make my pizza crust crispy"? Today is your lucky day because I'm going to give you a couple of ways to achieve crispier pizza crust.

A Pizza Lovers Dream - Making Pizza Crust "Crispy"

One of the most important aspects of making good pizza at home relates to oven temperatures. Oven temperatures vary when using typical home ovens. Though some home pizza makers have access to brick ovens or more elaborate forms of home ovens, many pizza lovers do not. These types of ovens are fantastic for pizza baking but the typical conventional oven found in most home kitchens require a slightly different approach.

Generally, typical conventional ovens do not compare, in terms of temperature generation with commercial ovens found in professional pizza parlors. Don't worry pizza lovers, there's still hope for home pizza makers.

Due to the "temperature factor", there are a number of things you must consider when preparing your pizza dough and baking your pizza pies at home, especially if you want a pie that's delightfully crispy, crunchy and irresistible.

The first consideration is water content when mixing the pizza dough. If you use olive oil as a fundamental ingredient for your pizza dough, consider using slightly less olive oil and replace this with a little more warm water. Adding a little more water to your mix of pizza dough will contribute to a crispier and flaky crust.

In addition, it's a good idea to roll your dough to a "paper thin" thickness. You can do this by "rolling out" your pizza dough directly onto the pizza peel. Of course before doing this, sprinkle cornmeal on the pizza peel to insure an easy transfer to the baking surface you plan to use.

Next, you'll want to use one of two techniques for baking your pizza to make sure your completed pizza boasts that delicious crispy pizza crust that we all crave. You'll want to choose a suitable "baking platform" or "baking surface".

Try one of the two techniques below for baking your pizza pies:

1- Use a "pizza stone"

or

2 - Use a "pizza screen"

If you decide to use a pizza stone, make sure you give the stone plenty of time to heat before transferring the pizza from the pizza peel to the stone. You'll want to follow the instructions provided with the pizza stone very accurately.

The transfer from pizza peel to pizza stone will be much easier if you lightly cover your pizza peel with cornmeal. This makes the transfer process from pizza peel to pizza stone a breeze.

When using a pizza stone, the goal is to have the ingredients of the pizza complete the cooking process about the same time the crust "completely" browns. Depending on your specific oven, temperatures, 425 to 450 should suffice. Of course you'll have to experiment with cooking times for your specific oven.

Be careful not to remove the pizza to early, as this is a common mistake. Allow plenty of time for the crust to brown, without burning the cheese. If need be, CAREFULLY take a peak underneath the pie to check your crust if you like. Remember, ovens are extremely hot!

The second way to achieve a nice crispy crust is to use a pizza screen. Though this can be a bit messy, this baking platform produces wonderful crispy pizza crust. The porous nature of a pizza screen allows heat to pass through the screen directly to the bottom of the pizza.

This helps with the moisture absorption process. Direct heat helps reduce the moisture content within the pizza dough and adds to the crispy nature and texture of pizza crust. Mmmm...I'm getting hungry just thinking about it...

Pizza screens are fairly cheap, and that's great because they get a bit "clogged" with toasted cheese and ingredients after several uses. Clean them thoroughly after each use to extend the life of your screen. Besides, you'll forget about the mess when you slide that first slice of crispy pizza into your mouth, I promise.

Try these techniques to improve your pizza making adventures and remember to save me a slice!

A Pizza Lovers Dream - Making Pizza Crust "Crispy"

William Lockhart is Founder of http://HomePizzaChef.com He is also a self-proclaimed pizza lover. HomePizzaChef.com delivers pizza recipes to subscribers email box. The slogan on the web site reads, "They'll Get Down On Their Knees And Beg You For Your Pizza Making Secrets".