Happy Valentines Day!!!

I have been MIA for several days now due to sickness running rampant through my house.  It started with #1 and a strange virus that kept her under the weather for about a week following a week where she had a cold.  Just as everything was dying down with her #2 came down with a cold-no big deal.  It was also around this time that husband had to leave for a week for a business trip, which is generally a rare occasion.  The night before he left I was just feeling run down and tired and when I woke up the next morning I was still feeling that was and had a headache.  My mother came to pick me and the girls up to go to her house for a few days.  My parents had not seen the children in about a month and any time husband is out of town is a great time for them as they have said several times they love our kids so much and have hinted at us they can do without.  Though, this is all a story for another day or at the very least a therapist.

Well over a week ago #1 had her Valentines party at school and I had volunteered to make treats for it.  I has actually signed up to make a surprise, the other options on the list were Jello, cookies, strawberries, and various paper items.  I, personally, always like to make a surprise because I like to do more than the bare minimum.     I didn't want to go too out of my way as I did that for Christmas and it didn't seem like any of the other parents did and I just didn't feel it was necessary.  After searching Pinterest for several days I finally decided on blondies!

My husband, believe it or not, is NOT a fan of chocolate, actually, he hates it!  And, of course, it's always a disappointment to him when he comes home and smells something yummy has been baking and finds out it's chocolate based.  These blondies are from scratch and super easy-you actually probably have all of the ingredients on hand right now.   The Valentine's Day twist to these was I added Valentine's M&Ms.  And, as I have admitted before I am not a scientist in the kitchen and do not generally make up the recipes I use and  I copied this to the tea from this blog http://www.bakedperfection.com/2009/02/brown-sugar-blondies-for-valentines-day.html

Also, I will note that I needed enough for her class of 16 as well as the two teachers so I doubled this recipe which worked out in my favor because I do not own a 1/8 tsp!

Ingredients:
1 Cup of Flour
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/8 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/3 Cup Butter
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 Tbs Vanilla
1 Cup M&Ms*

*though there is more than 2 cups in the entire bag I just used all of it, sans what #1 and I ate while we were making them.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13 baking dish.  I actually prefer to cover the dish in foil to minimize cleanup and I use Pam to grease it.

Beat melted butter and sugar until well blended.  Then, add eggs and vanilla.




I know you are supposed to pre-mix all dry ingredients and add them already combined to your wet mixture, but who has time for that and personally I think it ends up all the same.  So, now you add all of yoru dry ingredients however you would like as long as they all get in there and are mixed well.  Once everything is combined add half the bag of M&Ms mix and the batter is ready to be moved to the baking dish.

Here is where you would add the rest off the M&Ms but I had some red sanding sugar left from Christmas and thought why not add that on top to make them a bit more festive.  Plus, #1 thought it was fun!

 After the sanding sugar, add the rest of the M&Ms and push them down a little bit to make sure they stick to the batter.  Bake at 350 until they are set and a toothpick comes out clean, this was a little over 30 minutes for me.

And this is what you end up with.  After cooling in the pan for about 10 minutes I pulled them out with the foil and let the cool on the counter hoping this would help it happen a little faster.

Cut and Viola!  They were delicious!!!