Beautiful Life Made Easy: Chocolate Crackle and Reese Peanut Butter Cup cookies

I didn't sleep well at all last night. I was tossing and turning, mind running a mile a minute, stressed and overwhelmed by all of the upcoming things on my to-do list both here at home and at work. As I calmed my breathing and tried to stop my brain from working so hard I slowed down and finally let my eyes close.

    The thing about these kinds of nights is that it makes you wake up the next morning with a sense of urgency. I woke up, wrote a quick work email at 7:15am, finished up some school work in my jammies, then got out of bed and started on my list of things to do. Terry took Mya and walked to the market with Jeff and Oliver, and Jen came over and I worked away at the last of the details of the baby shower that I'm throwing next weekend. With my dining room table full of shower decorations, platters, glasses and ribbon, I began to relax and feel like I had things under control.

     I love throwing parties, showers and events. It`s an incredible amount of work, but I just love it. People always ask me how I do it...how I have time to make all of the details, decorations and food with a baby and a job etc etc. But the reality is that it really does take me a long time. I start early (literally months before the event), and I work away at it a little bit at a time. I'll spend one night when Mya is asleep and make a banner. Spend another night and make the little food cards. It literally takes me months to prepare...but I enjoy every moment of it. It's fun, it's exciting and I love taking the time to throw a party, event or shower for someone to let them know that I care. With my dining room table full of shower love, I began to feel the stress of everything else wash away and I started getting excited about the prospect of having our friends over to celebrate the excitement of new babies to come.

     One of the great things about life though is that it usually seems that when life feels overwhelming or stressful, something great is bound to pop up just around the corner (and if it doesn't, I usually make a point of planning something great). With a night like last night, it was so nice to know that we had plans to meet two sweet new little babies today. There`s nothing like sweet baby cuddles to make you forget about the to-do list of real life. Our friends Katie and Andrew, and Mark and Krista just had new babies and we were so excited to finally get the chance to meet them. So, the day before, I whipped up a couple of desserts to bring and we jumped in the car and made the long drive to see these sweet little girls.

    The two desserts that I made were Chocolate Crackle and Reese Peanut Butter Cup cookies. Both so incredibly delicious..and so incredibly easy to make.

   Here is how I made them:

Chocolate Crackle: I dare you to eat only one piece of these...honestly, they`re beyond addictive.

1) Grab some chocolate chips, half a pound of butter, a sleeve of saltine crackers and some brown sugar.

2) Lay parchment paper over a cookie sheet (make sure the cookie sheet has edges) and lay out a sleeve of saltine crackers.

3) Cut your block of butter in half and throw it in a pot, with a cup of brown sugar on medium heat. Stir constantly until the butter and sugar melt together and begin to boil. Once boiled, turn down heat and continue stirring for a couple more minutes.

4) Pour the sauce over your crackers and smooth out with a spatula. It should be really runny (make sure to fill in all the cracks).

5) Put in oven at 350 degrees for about 5minutes, until the caramel sauce starts to bubble.

6) Take out of oven and quickly pour hand fulls of chocolate chips over the caramel sauce and leave it for about 3minutes to melt.

7) Use a spatula to smooth chocolate over all of the crackers.

8) Put in fridge for a few hours. When hardened, pull out and break them all up into small pieces and enjoy!! Holy delicious.

And the other yummy recipe:

Reese Peanut Butter Cup cookies

1) Make up any of your favourite peanut butter/chocolate chip cookie recipes. If you're not really into baking, just buy one of those cookie mixes in the bags (they're just as delicious as the real deal and not as time consuming).

2) Cut up some peanut butter cups in quarters.

3) Use a table spoon and scoop out a ball of cookie dough. Roll into a ball, then flatten out with the palm of your hand. Place a piece of peanut butter cup in the middle.

4) Carefully wrap the sides of the cookie dough around the peanut butter cup.

5) Roll into a nice little ball, place on cookie sheet with parchment paper and put in oven at 350 for about 9mins (or whatever your specific cookie recipe calls for).