Early Bird Shifts and Piña Colada Dessert Bars

Right now I am currently trying to get as much done as I possibly can while I still have energy and motivation. As you either know or are about to be told, I am a night owl.

The only problem with this is that I generally work from 4am-12pm so I have to wake up at 2 AM which is when I would normally be going to bed. I've been having a little trouble getting to bed early enough so by the time I get home I am absolutely exhausted and fall asleep wherever I land. Which means again that I don't get to sleep during the night and start the whole horrible cycle over again.

I'm determined to get on track so tonight I'm not going to eat, drink, or go on electronics after 8:30 pm. It's gonna suck, but I need to survive these early morning shifts.

Some good news though is that I have finally found an awesome dessert recipe that isn't cookies or bread!! I wanted to make a tropical dessert for my Grandmother as a thank you gift because she gave me a gift card to WinCo for $25. So with that money I made these great Piña Colada Dessert Bars.

You can find the original recipe here.

Some changes I made:

1. I only used half of the amount of rum it called for. I found this was plenty.
2. I think next time I'm going to double the crust amount. It felt a little too thin to me, especially since some of it is used to sprinkle on top.
3. I hate sliced almonds, they're creepy feeling. So I chopped them up instead.
4. If you don't want to use alcohol, you could just use rum extract or skip it all together I suppose.

They were a hit! I would definitely recommend trying them out.

At Night

This blog has basically gone completely off the rails. I don't post every Wednesday (no good excuse for this to be honest), and I hardly review anything (I'm too poor to try out new stuff at the moment).

Whatever! Guess I'll just wing it and hope for the best.

As I write this it is a little past 1:30 AM and I'm waiting for my second batch of peanut butter cookies to come out of the oven. Yep, my sleep schedule is as messed up as my ability to blog. You're shocked, I know. Being an "adult" is pretty great though. I used to lay in bed awake and wish that I could get out of bed and bake whenever and NOW I CAN!! There's just something really cool about baking

Also, this is only the second time I've used my new Ice Blue KitchenAid!! Shoutout to my mother for this graduation gift, you're the best EVER. So I guess I actually will be reviewing something!!

Ok. Bad news first. The bowl is kinda small (I should've anticipated this and gotten a bigger one so it's my fault), the attachments are kinda cheaply made in my opinion and I don't foresee them lasting long term very well, and even with just peanut butter cookie dough it seemed very hard on the machine. This is just a personal preference, but I wish the bowl itself had a handle, but to be honest it looks better without one.

Now for the good news: I love the color, it's cute. Not a useful or practical attribute, I know. But what can I say, I'm easy to please and gosh dang it does look cute on my counter. And as much as I complain, it gets the job done.

I don't even really like peanut butter cookies, but I didn't have any chocolate so this was the only option on short notice. My brain has been a little fried lately with stress, I've been reading A LOT of great stuff (it is definitely a brain workout), and it's finally cooling off outside enough to turn an oven on. Since baking is usually my favorite way of de-stressing, I couldn't resist. I get to make a mess, I make delicious (most of the time anyways) treats, and I get to be in control. It helps.

That's all for tonight!

Peanut Butter Cookies

Finally! A recipe that's not paleo! It's a very basic one too, and yummy. I hadn't made peanut butter cookies in a VERY long time, because who wants peanut butter cookies when you can have chocolate? But I thought it might be a nice change from the normal chocolate chip so I looked up the first recipe I found on Pinterest and voila! Here is the recipe I used.

I loved this recipe! Simple, basic, and they turned out perfect. Although I do have a confession to make. I had run out of vanilla extract so I had to use almond extract and it was a little strange. Even with that slight change, they were gone in less than 2 days! I will definitely be making these again (without the almond extract haha).

I tried baking one batch for 10 min., and one for 8 min., and I recommend only 8 minutes. Funny how 1 or 2 minutes can make or break a recipe!