Mini Brownie Treats

Continuing my experiments with my Taste of Home Easy Weeknight Dinners, I explored the dessert section to find inspiration for my birthday treat. Because I have more students this year than I have ever had before, I needed something small but delicious. These Mini Brownie Treats (pg. 306) are adorable and use very few ingredients. Another plus for these gems is that I didn't have to worry about trying to cut a pan of brownies evenly for 42 students!

The finished product cooling in the tin. 

The brownie bites use a brownie box mix. I added mini chocolate chips to the batter to add a little bit extra. 

My finished product with the book picture. 

I am a big fan of Hershey's hugs, so this was a great opportunity to get to sneak a couple as I baked. 


These were incredibly easy to make (Honestly, the most difficult part of the process was unwrapping all the hugs.), and my students loved them. 

BBQ Meat Loaf Minis

Last November, a friend and I went to a Taste of Home Cooking School event in Manawa, Wisconsin. I have been wanting to attend one of these for a while, so I was very excited to be able to go! I told myself that I wasn't going to buy any cookbooks at the event because I have so many the way it is... but this is me, and I should have known better. I ended up purchasing Taste of Home Easy Weeknight Dinners. I made a couple recipes during last school year, but I didn't use it as often as I could have. 

This school year, I resolved to bring more leftovers for lunch instead of cold sandwiches all the time. So I'm thinking I will make one or two recipes from Easy Weeknight Dinners each week, and I can then have lunch for the week. 

This week, I decided to try a recipe that is already portioned out -- BBQ Meat Loaf Minis (page 7). I am a huge fan of meat loaf and I was very intrigued by the use of barbecue sauce and cheese! The recipe basically has 4 ingredients: stuffing mix, ground meat, barbecue sauce and cheese. Water is added. I used Cornbread stuffing and honey barbecue sauce. 

The cheese isn't supposed to go in with the rest of the ingredients, but I couldn't resist adding more cheesy flavor to the mix. The meat loaf is baked in a muffin tin. At first it didn't seem like the amount of beef mixture was going to be enough for 12 "muffins," but the recipe made exactly 12 mini meat loafs.  I was pleased with the end result compared to the picture from the book. My mini loaves probably could have used more cheese on top to look more like the picture! I loved the barbecue flavor added to the beef mixture. The stuffing flavor was a little overpowering in the finished product. If I make this again, which I probably will put barbecue sauce in my meatloaf whether I use this exact recipe again or not, I will probably use more meat and add some extra spice.