pb cookies & Karthik's birthday pie

Yesterday, Rosie wanted to bake peanut butter cookies! We cheated and used a box mix :)

I missed Karthik's birthday, so I decided to make him Banberry pie! This recipe didn't ask for anything too difficult, and if you click here you can see that most of it required store-bought ingredients. And even though I wouldn't have used this recipe when I was in my "from scratch only" phase, I got inspired by Sandra Lee's show Semi-Homemade Cooking on Food Network. She uses store-bought ingredients to create her own recipes and it's legit. :)

Rosie making peanut butter cookies.

We put semi-sweet chocolate chips into them, too.

For the pie, I whipped store-bought vanilla pudding mix with cold milk.

We lined the bottom of a graham-cracker crust with bananas.

After pouring the pudding on top and letting it settle in the fridge for about an hour, we garnished the top with strawberries.

Then we added strawberry glaze.

I realized that store bought whipped cream is actually cheaper than heavy cream which I would always have to sugar and whip myself.

(He said he liked it! Successss!!) Happy 19th Karth!