Summer Lovin', Chocolate Lovin'

9 days… that's it. That's all that is left of summer break. In just 9 days our school year starts. Some school-related practices have already begun. Once school starts it seems life is just one huge flurry of nonstop activity until Christmas.

I'm not ready to let go of the slower paced, long, warm and sunny days of summer. I'm setting aside my baking projects until the first crisp days of fall and finding some no-bake SUMMER treats in my vintage cookbooks.



This week I made Royal Hot Chocolate Sauce from Hershey's Index Recipe Book, copywright 1934. It was pretty good but I think I cooked it a little too long as it got pretty hard and chewy the minute I poured it over the icecream. Oh well… next time I'll try cooking it a little less than the recipe says. I bought fat free ice cream thinking it would taste okay with a little hot fudge sauce poured on top. It was gross. So the good news… I did not devour the Hot Fudge Sundae shown in the picture. With chewy fudge sauce and the crappy ice cream, it just wasn't worth the calories.

Any way here's the recipe in case you want to try it. What I sampled from the spoon tasted pretty good. I think if you're careful not to overcook, this is probably a very good chocolate sauce. I'm definitely going to try the recipe again. (if you click on the image, then click "all sizes" in flickr, you should get a version that is large enough to be read easily)

And now… the awards!!!

My friend Heather of Merry Moon Designs has given me the Brilliant Weblog Award and Michelle of Faerie Dust Dreams gave me some awards a couple of weeks ago.

I 'd like to thank Blogger for hosting my blog,
my family for putting up with all of my baking endeavors,
my parents for instilling in me a love of baking and
allowing me to play in the kitchen as a child,
our family friend, Ron, for being a great taste tester…

Thank you! I am honestly very, very flattered. I've agreed to pass these awards along to seven other blogs. Well, you know me. I analyze my decisions very thoroughly and I've thought long and hard about who should get these awards next. There are just so many deserving blogs but many have already recieved other awards so here are the blogs I chose:

Creative Chaos
Madame Muffin
Obsessed with Cupcakes
Kitschen Pink
& 3 others to be named soon

I also wanted to let you know about a new flickr group I've started called Kids in the Kitchen. This is a place to share photos of things your kids have helped make and ideas for "kid friendly" baking projects.
Keep cool, and enjoy the rest of your summer!