I have actually been meaning to make and post about dump cake for some time now. I finally got around to making it yesterday, and naturally I waited long enough that Pioneer Woman posted about it a little while back. That’ll teach me to procrastinate. Yeah, right. Sure it will. LOL It doesn’t matter anyways… this dump cake was the first thing I’ve made in a really long time that I haven’t already posted about, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let that stop me from posting it now!

I invited Mom and Harold over for lunch yesterday because I was making Chili Mac, and I wanted their help eating it (and to send them home with most of the leftovers). I also wanted to make something for dessert. It had to be easy, and something I hadn’t posted about before. So dump cake it was.

Super simple, no mixing bowl required! You need a box of yellow cake mix, a can of cherry pie filling, a can of crushed pineapple, and anywhere between 1 and 2 sticks of margarine or butter depending on which recipe you follow.

In a 13×9 inch pan…

DUMP one can of cherry pie filling.

On top of that DUMP one can of crushed pineapple.

You can leave it in layers, or mix them up for good measure like I did.

On top of that, DUMP your package of dry cake mix. (Is the somewhat unappealing name of this dessert making sense yet? :)) To make it easy, I snipped off one corner of the bag and poured it on top that way. Then I used a fork to spread the mix a little more evenly.

Slice up your butter or margarine, however much you decided to use, and distribute it evenly on top. Then you get to slide it into the oven and bake it at 350 degrees for about an hour. You’re just waiting for the cake mix on top to become all golden brown.

Or you can be like me and accidentally cook it a little TOO long because you were stubbornly waiting for that one patch in the middle to be the same color as the rest of it. Ah well, we served it up still warm with some vanilla ice cream on top and it was delicious!

(This picture is a perfect example of why I wish my kitchen had better lighting!)

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get this post up. I made these a week ago, and have had the pictures uploaded for almost that long! This is a dessert that is very, very good. Go ahead and tell yourself that they’re good for you. Yeah, you might be lying to yourself, but trust me. It’s worth it. I made these for a family get together for the Fourth of July last year, and I barely managed to grab a tiny little piece before the whole pan was gone. Now whether that means my family is like piranhas or the dessert is good, I’ll leave up to you to decide.

First we take a picture of our ingredients. Then we take another picture because we realized we left out one of the most important ones.

Butter, sugar, brown sugar, 1 egg, vanilla extract, salt, baking soda, flour, oatmeal, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, milk, and peanut butter.

In a mixing bowl, put 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine.

Add 1/2 cup granulated sugar, and 1/2 cup brown sugar. I tried y’alls microwaving the brown sugar advice and it helped quite a bit. Maybe next time I’ll leave it in the microwave longer, but I was kind of chicken.

Cream these ingredients together. And admire my lovely smiley face! Complete coincidence, by the way. I didn’t even see the smiley there until I was uploading the pictures!

Add 1 egg.

Add 1/3 cup peanut butter.

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt and admire my adjustable measuring spoons from Pampered Chef that I may or may not have ordered when I purchased the gift certificate for the contest.

1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and mix all those ingredients together. You’ll have to guess what it looks like because I forgot to take a picture of that step.

Finally, STIR in 1 cup oatmeal

and 1 cup of flour.

Stirred all together, this is what I ended up with.

Grease a 9×13 pan.

Spread your cookie dough in the 9×13 pan. I had to give up and use my fingers to get it to spread evenly. And then I licked them.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes. Mine were probably in the oven for 22-23 minutes, and I wished I’d gotten them out a couple minutes earlier.

The baked cookie part. They were a bit crunchier than I’d have liked… next time, I’ll check them a little earlier.

While the cookie is fresh from the oven, and still very hot, pour on your chocolate chips. The recipe calls for 6oz, but there’s no such thing as too much chocolate so I probably used 3/4 of the bag.

When the chocolate chips have melted, use a knife or a spatula to spread the chocolate over the top of the cookie bar. Then it’s time to make the glaze!

In a small bowl, add 1/2 cup powdered sugar.

1/4 cup peanut butter

And 2-4 tablespoons of milk. Pay attention to that dash. That dash is very important. I made these for the first time when I was like 13… and I messed this part up. I was made fun of to no end and was traumatized for life. Maybe I should blame this incident for why I am 24 and just now learning how to cook. Anyways! Start with 2 tablespoons of milk. Mix it all up… only add more milk if your glaze is going to be too thick… if your glaze is runny, your family will make fun of you, and you won’t cook anything besides Hamburger Helper for 10 years. Trust me on this one.

But back to the glaze.

Stir it all together. This is with 2 tablespoons of milk. It felt a little thick, and I considered adding more. But then I remembered the incident above, and was too frightened to do so. It did end up being a little on the thick side when I tried to put it on, but I made it work.

Spread the glaze over your melted chocolate chips and enjoy!

Recipe
Peanut Butter Fingers

1/2 c. butter or margarine
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
Cream together.

1 egg
1/3 c. peanut butter
1/2 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/2 t. vanilla

Stir in 1c. oatmeal
1 c. flour
Spread in greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Spread on 6oz of chocolate chips.

Glaze:
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. peanut butter
2-4 T. milk
Pour on top of melted chips.

I know there will be some of you who will wonder why I find it necessary to make such a big deal out of chocolate chip cookies. Go ahead and wonder. The last time I made chocolate chip cookies was years ago and they didn’t turn out. Yeah! I know! Probably one of the simplest things there is to bake, and I just couldn’t pull it off! So when I decided to try again, it was not without some twinges of nerves and of course I had to chronicle the attempt.

Ingredients

I was wanting to cook something other than dinner out of a box, and I just so happened to have all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies on hand. Flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, vanilla extract, 2 eggs, butter/margarine, chocolate chips. I would have used real butter, but my margarine was already softened and my butter was in the freezer. And it was getting late enough in the evening that I didn’t want to wait on my butter.

In a small bowl, combine 2 1/4 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1 teaspoon salt. Picture taken without flash because if you try to take a picture of white ingredients in a white bowl, you just end up with a blinding white blob in the middle of the picture. Set this bowl aside.

In a large mixing bowl, put 1 cup (2 sticks) of softened butter or margarine. Softened is the key word. Do NOT melt it! Turns out, this may have been my mistake so many years ago when I attempted to make these cookies for the first time. Melted butter in chocolate chip cookies will leave you with wide, thin chocolate chip crunchies.

Add to this, 3/4 cup of granulated sugar.

Add 3/4 cup packed brown sugar. Hopefully your brown sugar will be soft. It was at this point that I discovered my brown sugar had dried out, and I had a heck of time carving out 3/4 cup, and an even bigger difficulty trying to get those chunks to break up and mix into my butter and sugar.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

Beat until creamy. If you had rock hard brown sugar like I did, this part might take a good amount of time while you make sure all those chunks get broken up. I was starting to fear that someone was going to bite into a cookie and find a quarter sized chunk of hard brown sugar.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating the mixture after each addition.

Next, you’re going to gradually beat in the flour mixture that you set aside earlier. Add it a little bit at a time, and beat it in.

Finally, you’ll dump in 2 cups (the whole 12 oz bag) of chocolate chips. Stir these in… you’ll want to switch to a spoon. I wouldn’t use the hand mixer for this unless you particularly like chocolate chips flung into your eyeball at high speed.

When it’s all mixed together, it’s time to drop spoonfuls onto cookie sheets. And eat a bite of cookie dough with my fingers. And wash my hands because I have a cold and I’m not making Chocolate Chip and Germ Cookies.

How large you drop them is entirely up to you. I took a picture of this particular pan of cookie dough because they were all small and fairly uniform. The first batch into the oven had some gargantuan cookies and some midgets. Slide them into an oven that’s been preheated to 375 degrees F.

Let them bake for 9-11 minutes, until they are golden brown. I like to take cookies out of the oven when they look like they could cook for another minute or two. They’ll continue to firm up a little bit on the pan, and I like my cookies on the softer side. After you remove them from the oven, let them sit on the pan for a couple minutes to cool.

The recipe calls for cooling the cookies completely on a wire rack, but unfortunately I don’t have one of those. So I make do with wax paper on the counter top. (And maybe put wire racks on my birthday wish-list. Never mind the fact that it’s not until August.)

My boss has eaten three of these cookies now, and people are surfacing from the depths of the building looking for some, so I’d say they turned out pretty well. Phew! The curse of the chocolate chip crunchies has been cured!

The Recipe
Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 375° F.

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.