Christmas Desserts Blog Tour

Welcome to the blog tour for Christmas Desserts by Laura Powell!

Sweeten up your holidays with Christmas Desserts! With this delicious collection of 20 seasonal recipes, you’ll enjoy treats like Gingerbread Cheesecake Squares, Chewy Popcorn Balls, Eggnog Cookies, and more! Not only does this affordable, full-color pamphlet make the perfect gift for neighbors, coworkers, and friends, but these festively flavored recipes will soon become family favorites.

Laura Powell grew up in the Salt Lake Valley. She gained a passion for cooking from her mother and created her own recipe book as a young girl along with participating in a summer cooking program through the Deseret News. She began her blog, realmomkitchen.com, in April of 2008 as a way to showcase her passion for cooking. Since then realmomkitchen.com has turned into her own small business. Laura continues to reside in Utah with her husband and 3 children.

Review:

Christmas is a festive time of year often marked by lights and beautiful decorations. Another thing common during the holiday season? Delicious treats! This book contains some tantalizing recipes that will make for a tasty holiday. This collection of recipes would be a great gift for others or something to treat yourself with. 

I love Christmas, and I really love holiday baking. I was so excited to get this book, and I was not disappointed. There are so many great recipes in here, and I wanted to try them all. I love the fudge recipe. It's almost foolproof. I love that these are delicious, yet relatively easy to do. Almost anyone could tackle these and come out victorious. If you want some delicious holiday desserts, check this book out for sure.

Book provided for review.

One Dirty Bowl Blog Tour

Welcome to the blog tour for One Dirty Bowl: Fast Desserts, Faster Clean Up by Christina Dymock!

Quick desserts and even quicker clean up mean more time with your family and friends, and less time in the kitchen. With One Dirty Bowl, whip up show-stopping desserts like Hazelnut Puffs, Peanut Butter Truffle Bars, and White Chocolate and Strawberry Cupcakes, all while dirtying just one bowl. Grab your bowl and get ready to bake!

Find this book on Amazon!

About the author:

Christina Dymock graduated from the University of Utah with a B.S. in Public Relations. She has been published in Woman’s World Magazine and several Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and she is the author of 101 Things to do With Popcorn. She resides in Central Utah with her husband and four children. You can follow their cooking adventures at teachingyoungchefs.blogspot.com.

Author Blog:   http://christinadymock.wordpress.com/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/authorchristinadymock

Review:

Since this is a cookbook I took a slightly different approach from my usual review. It just so happened that I had a youth activity for church coming up, so I volunteered to take over the desserts. My husband was going to be out of town, and he usually does the dishes, so I needed some easy things to make. This book advertised just that! I tried out 3 recipes, and I'll rate them on ease of making, taste, and number of actual dirty bowls I made.

One more thing I should clarify is that while I am not going to burn the kitchen down, my baking skills would probably be considered competent at best. I can make meringue, but I could never like run a bakery or anything. I'm your average home baker essentially.

First up was Chocolate Graham Cracker Cookies:

Ease (1-10): 8

Here's the deal, I had to crush graham crackers. I really hate doing that. It's hard for me for some reason. I probably ended up with some bigger chunks that I needed because of that. Beyond that it was super simple.

Taste (1-10): 10

Oh wow, these are super tasty. I'm not even the biggest chocolate fan, but these were superb. Something about the graham crackers in there was almost like having pretzels or something. The cookie was the perfect combination of a little chewy and a little crunchy. I made these the night before I needed them, and I was really afraid I would eat them all. They were raved about at the church activity as well.

Number of Dirty Bowls: 2

I mean, I had to crush graham crackers, and I did it in a bowl. Don't ask, but it worked. So technically I had two bowls to clean.

Next I tried Over-the-Moon Brownies:

Ease: 9

The batter was easy to mix because my stand mixer did most the work. The batter is also no joke though. It is crazy thick.

Taste: 9

I did make one small change to this recipe. It calls for walnuts and I loathe nuts of all kinds, so I left it out so I would want to taste it. They were good though. The cream cheese makes them super rich. For me, I thought they were slightly cakey for brownies, but the people I brought them to loved them.

Number of Dirty Bowls: 1


Finally I made the Peach Vanilla Bundt Cake:

Ease: 8

So I kind of had to Google how to cut up and peel peaches. My excuse is that my absent husband usually takes care of that. It was slightly more difficult than I anticipated from watching videos, but I got it done. The rest was very simple.

Taste: 8

Mine came out not very sweet and kind of dry. The dryness may have been user error though. I only had one small cup of vanilla yogurt, so I just threw all of it in. It may not have been quite enough though. Personally I thought the taste was really good, but it was not a hit with the kids. One serving suggestion was whipped cream, and that or a glaze probably would have raised this to a 10.

Number of Dirty Bowls: 2

I put my cut up peaches in one, okay?

Overall I found this to be a great book. It delivered on tasty treats with very little mess. I was able to make 3 desserts over 2 days with one 4 year old under foot the entire time. I had very little left over, so they must have been really good. This book has some other interesting recipes I'll try out at another time, but if you want tasty treats with little clean up you should check this one out for sure.

Book provided for review.