Merry Christmas!

It was a great Christmas in the Blue Kitchen! We had the traditional ice cream and waffles for breakfast (I wait all year to have ice cream for breakfast) and then the traditional Christmas Lasagna for dinner. It was awesome. I hope all of your Christmases were filled with great food traditions and lots of goodies, of which I ate way too many.

"Glory be to God on high, blessed are all beneath the sky."

Cookie Cutters

We just discovered the best kids toy ever - metal cookie cutters. Ever since Jacob found my ice cream bucket full of them when I was making sugar cookies this past friday, that is all he has played with. He knows what all of them are (except the moose is a giraffe and the unknown animal with hooves and ears and a tail is a hippo, though I think it might actually be a donkey). Yesterday he stretched one out and I couldn't even tell what shape it was. I carefully reshaped it and it turns out it was the ACTUAL giraffe. I am amazed at how many hours he has spent playing with these things. He lines them all up in a standing position, then he lies them all down, then they go for walks, and yesterday the camel was jumping on the couch. Today the "Man" (gingerbread man wearing a santa hat) was playing in the fischer price barn with Fillmore (the bus from Cars) and the cow from his nativity set. As part of the gift from his sunday school teacher after their Christmas program on sunday he got two plastic cookie cutters. He gave them to Daniel because they are not as fun as the metal ones, apparently. This is actually okay by me, because I think the metal ones are a little too sharp for the baby to play with. I must remember to wash them before I make cookies again, especially since they were used with the playdough. Though I don't think I will be making sugar cookies again anytime soon, maybe even never. They were an epic failure. It was so epic I don't even want to talk about it. My sister makes great sugar cookies so maybe I will just hope she makes them every Christmas.

Hippo-Donkey & Moose-Giraffe

Roast Beast

So we had a family christmas thing this past weekend. We decided that we wanted to all get together for the holidays but actually trying to do that on Christmas is nearly impossible... especially for us. We decided that we would potluck the event and my sister assigned different parts of the meal so that we wouldn't end up with only dessert. I got to do the "Main Dish" which makes sense since I was hosting and I have an oven and everyone else had a one-and-a-half-hour commute to get here. I decided to make a beautiful roast beef in the oven with my new roasting pan. I've only ever made roast beef in the slow-cooker. Our beef supplier gave us a large enough roast to feed everyone and that would be perfect for slicing. Yum. It looked amazing. So on saturday I took out my "How To Cook Everything" cookbook (a pretty good cookbook but it has no pictures) and my "Betty Crocker Cookbook" (a standard for me) to figure out how to cook a roast. Now neither book had the cut I had (Inside Round) but other then Tenderloin they were all pretty much the same. Cook at 325 for 20-22 minutes per pound. Now my roast was 1.598kg, so more kitchen math and I decided 1.5 hours would be lots to cook this thing. I preheated the oven at 3:30pm. (Dinner at 5:30). At 4:30 I realized I had forgot to put the roast in. (Dinner at 6:00). We ate all the yummy appetizers brought by my family and we were stuffed. At six we took out the roast and Jeff cut into it. Not even close to being cooked. We turned up the oven to 400 and took a food break for the boys to open some gifts and visit. (Dinner at 7:00). Well, the roast did taste delicious. And there were some potatoes and gravy to eat with it, so it wasn't too weird. In conclusion, I don't know where I went wrong, but it all started with forgetting to put the darn thing in the oven.

Crinkle Conundrum

My Betty Crocker cookbook touts the following recipe as being low-fat.
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Chocolate Crinkles

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Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla

4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled

4 eggs

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup icing sugar

Directions:

Mix all ingredients (except icing sugar) in large bowl. Cover and refrigerate 3-4 hours.

Heat oven to 350. Lightly grease baking sheets.

Roll 1 inch balls of dough in icing sugar and place 2 inches apart on baking  sheet.

Bake 10 minutes, immediately remove from baking sheet to cool on wire rack.

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I've made them a couple of times, and they are very delicious. But then this week, with my "Cookie Countdown to Christmas" newsletter I got a recipe for chocolate crinkles... The picture looked exactly like these amazing cookies my friend Shannon used to make. I didn't know that was what a chocolate crinkle was supposed to look like!

Here is Jacob offering me a bite of his chocolate crinkle in September of 2009.
Note how the cookie is flat and light brown. 

Here is the picture that was e-mailed to me.
These look like Shannon's amazing cookies. I don't know what she calls them.

So I compared the recipe to Betty Crocker - IDENTICAL except that instead of 4 ounces of chocolate melted and cooled it uses 1 cup baking cocoa. I thought "hey, that actually makes these cookies easier" and decided to make up a batch last night for a christmas party tonight. I made the dough while the boys were napping (Yes, they were both napping, it was amazing), so that I could make them once the boys were in bed.  I used baking cocoa, refrigerated for four hours, did not grease my baking pans, and baked for 10 minutes. I got about 40 cookies, and they are so chocolatey, moist, and yummy.

Want one?

So my question is... why did they turn out so weird the previous times I made them?

For The Birds

So I thought I would try and get ahead today. Our next couple of weeks are starting to look busy... we are hosting several dinners, I want to do some Christmas baking, and various other little things... Like today Jeff is teaching confirmation and I like to send something along for the kids to eat. So I baked up a double batch of Low-Fat Brownies. My Aunt mentioned that there was a lot of sugar in this recipe so I cut out 1/2 cup of sugar. I also used the egg yolks because I didn't have quite enough applesauce, and thought I still needed some liquid ingredients. They turned out quite yummy. Then I decided to make bread. I need communion bread for tomorrow and sunday, and I wanted to serve home-made rolls (something new I've tried only once before) on saturday. Well, the first time I made these dinner rolls they didn't quite rise the way I wanted them too, but they still tasted really good. Today they rose beautifully! I thought these are going to be so perfect! I preheated the oven to 350 (I think) and set the timer for 20 minutes (I think). I always set the timer because I tend to get distracted by the boys. Suddenly I smell something burning. There is 5 minutes left on the oven timer but I yank the bread out. The bottoms of both communion loaves and all my buns are burnt. AAarrrRRGGggHHhH!!!! Now I am grumpy. The tops taste good, but they are totally unservable. So I didn't really get ahead, and I have no motivation to start again right now. Perhaps the birds would like a nice treat.

mmmmuffins

Yesterday Jacob wanted a muffin and there were none in the house. So today, while Daniel was napping,  we made some. I had a craving for these delicious cheese muffins my mom used to make, but every recipe in my three main cookbooks was bran-cheddar. They are probably good, but I don't have any bran cereal in my house. Then I found a recipe that didn't have bran, but it had yogurt. We don't eat yogurt. So what do I do? I invent. And this is what happened:

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Apple Cheddar Muffins

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Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup marble cheese, grated  

1/2 cup applesauce

2 small apples, not peeled, grated

1/4 cup margarine, melted

2 eggs, beaten

Directions:

COMBINE flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, and salt. Stir in cheese. Blend together apples, applesauce, butter and eggs in separate bowl.

ADD liquid to dry ingredients. Stir only until moistened. Spoon into 12 large greased muffin cups.

BAKE at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. 

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Kitchen Math: When 2x2=3

So yesterday was Pizza Friday. Every friday in our house is Pizza Friday. It is everyone's favourite food. If you come over for dinner on a friday, we will feed you pizza.
Anyways... I needed to make dough. I brought up the recipe on the computer and proceeded to double it. Fairly simple math. Partway through I think... "Gee, I don't remember ever needing 1 tablespoon of salt for this recipe." I check my math. One-and-a-half teaspoons times two definitely makes three. And there are three teaspoons in a tablespoon.... wait a minute... "Why am I doubling this recipe?!?!" What you need to know is that the recipe as-is makes two thin crust pizzas. We only eat one so I freeze half the dough and then I only need to make pizza dough every other week. So here I am doubling a recipe that I've never doubled before, and now it will make four thin crust pizzas. Well, I wonder if dough is supposed to be in the freezer for a month, and what if over Christmas we don't have a pizza friday... will the dough get wasted? My solution - divide the dough into three pizzas. It will all hopefully get used this month and we will have slightly thicker crust. But then I had another idea! Instead of having thicker crust, I would roll the dough out into a larger circle and make stuffed crust. It was so yummy!
Math is fun. And delicious.

An Ultimate Experiment

And I thought my chocolate chip cookie recipe was tasty! I think this one just might be better. I signed up for a "Cookie Countdown to Christmas" e-mail newsletter that started December 1st. And this was the first recipe. I made them fancy by dipping them halfway into melted chocolate chips and sprinkling with sprinkles. But I did taste one beforehand and this might have to be my new standby.

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Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Recipe By: allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/4  cups brown sugar, packed

2 tbsp milk

1 tbsp vanilla

1 egg

1 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine butter, brown sugar and milk. Beat in egg. Add flour, salt and baking soda. Mix until just blended. Add chocolate chips.

Bake 8-10 minutes on ungreased cookie sheets.

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Anyways, I don't plan to make every cookie on this countdown. But the picture looked yummy, and earlier today Jeff came upstairs and asked if there was any cookies or snacks to eat. I said Krumkake and instead he had a sucker left-over from halloween. So I was feeling like being a nice wife and made him cookies.

Also... no one except my Mom has joined my New Year Challenge. So I challenge YOU to commit to trying a couple of recipes with me this year. I have a great one lined up for January that I saw on TV a long time ago.

In conclusion, I couldn't wait to offer Jacob one of these cookies at snack time, because I knew he would love them... hope you do too!

Cookie Please...

Taking a first bite...

Discovering the sprinkles...

Pondering how life is like a cookie...

Licking chocolate off his hands...

Offering Mama a bite...

Totally satisfied.

Something New?

I am thinking of trying something new, for the new year.... I know I am a little early, but thought maybe I would see if any of you out there want to try this with me.
So it turns out I suck at updating the so-called "Recipe of the Week." I am considering switching it to a Recipe of the Month. I would post something up that I have not made before but really always wanted to try. I will then plan to make it sometime before the month is over. And I thought that maybe some of you might want to try it out with me. We could see who succeeds and who fails, and maybe find some great new ideas in the kitchen.
Anyone up for a 2011 challenge?

Productive and Loud

So I had a productive day in the kitchen today! I made 3 jars of carrot baby food, 2 ice cube trays of peas baby food, 3 jars of saskatoon jam, and saskatoon muffins. I needed to get the baby veggies made today because I am almost out of all baby food, and I have to wait to make more fruit until we do groceries on friday, and I didn't want to be stuck making everything then. Daniel is a lucky baby though because all those veggies are local and delicious! Today he tried the peas for the first time and I was impressed that he liked them!
As for the loud part, I had to use the blender quite a bit, and both boys hate the sound of it. I don't know if it hurts their ears but they were both crying. Jacob kept telling me to put the blender away. Poor things.
I am impressed with myself though because I forgot that I was wearing my nice white shirt and somehow I did not get a single carrot, pea, or saskatoon stain on it! Hurray!
Anyways, here is my muffin recipe, it is awesome with blueberries too. Once again it is my own edit from a trusted cookbook. Enjoy.

Blueberry Muffins

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Yield: 12 large muffins

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup blueberries

Directions:

In large bowl combine first three ingredients. Make a well in center.

In another bowl cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Mix in milk and vanilla.

Pour into well and stir to moisten.

Fold blueberries into batter.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. 

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Neglect...

So it may appear that I have been neglecting my blog a little bit... however, I haven't really had a need to bake anything lately for a few reasons: A neighbour dropped off a big container of amazingly delicious cookies on my doorstep one morning... we brought home almost a whole chocolate cake leftover from a church potluck... we went to the farmers' market and treated ourselves to a strawberry rhubarb pie... and we've been snacking on suckers left-over from halloween. As for our meals, they have been fairly standard... pizza, fajitas, and BLTs are a few of our standbys. Though I did make lasagna, which I LOVE, but I don't use a recipe. Though I do recommend adding a can of diced tomatoes to your sauce, it made a tremendously delicious difference the first time I tried it and now I always keep some in my pantry.
I plan to make a cheesecake with my Mom's recipe this week, so stay tuned because it might just become a post!

FIRE!!!! x2

Well, not really, but we did have two kitchen adventures this week that were not so great. First, Jeff turned on the wrong burner, on which I had left a margarine container filled with baby feeding paraphernalia. Toxic plastic smoke soon filled our main floor. We opened windows and doors and I took the boys on the porch. Amazingly, the plastic cleaned off our ceramic top oven super easily, and the only real damage done was that one bottle had to be thrown out. A couple days later, I had 3 burners going on the oven. I was trying to open a package of instant mashed potatoes (so sad, I know, but this weeks "Recipe of the Week" is so much quicker to make with them), and it kind of exploded everywhere. Well, all of a sudden our house was filled with burnt potato smoke, it stank, and the flakes were all turned into little flaming embers. I turned off all the burners, to cool them down and clean up, and dinner was delayed by half an hour because I had to re-boil the water for the pasta.
Jeff and I have made a pact not to set the house on fire again. Ever.

Daniel's Baptism Cupcake-Cake

So I had recently made this cupcake recipe and I couldn't remember how many it made or even what size they were. I just knew that I needed 35 for this cake (since I made it for Jacob's baptism too, but this time it turned out better) and I thought I had small liners so I made the recipe as is. Well, it didn't make enough so I whipped up another batch, promising Jacob one when they were done. Turns out I had medium liners, so maybe that was my problem. It also meant that I needed a bigger tray than last time. Well, between two batches I got 36 cupcakes, lucky for me since Jacob now remembers when I promise him something. Anyways... I put them in the fridge to cool, and made up a batch of icing. Now I realized I already wrote about this day once, so I won't say anything more, other than HERE is the final product. I thought it turned out pretty good!

Only 15 cupcakes got eaten at the potluck lunch (there were LOTS of amazing dessert choices, I didn't even have one!) and I really didn't want our family to eat the remaining cupcakes. So the next day I sent them all with Jeff to his confirmation class. He told his students that I didn't want him to bring any back, so 7 kids ate 20 cupcakes. I hope they don't tell their moms.

Happy 100!

Today is a day to celebrate as I now have exactly 100 recipes in my computer database! I have made most of these recipes but sometimes if I see one I want to make in something other than allrecipes or one of my cookbooks, I will add it in. If I make something from a cookbook and it is good I put the recipe on the computer. If I try something after I have added it in and it is no good, I delete it. The program I use is MacGourmet. I really like it! My recipes are all organized into categories and there is this neat (and totally useful) function called "Chef View" that makes the recipe huge so I can see it across the kitchen. I add pictures of Jacob eating my food to the correct recipes. My favourite feature is that once you type in an ingredient it remembers... so if you have already used vanilla in ANY recipe, when you add a new recipe you just have to type in the V and it brings it up. I am having problems figuring out how to temporarily half or double a recipe, but I am not too great at computers. I also can never remember how I got the recipe onto Blogger, so it always looks different. To celebrate, I wish I could either give you the first recipe I put in, but I don't know what it was, or the 100th, but it is kind of boring. So here is a cake recipe instead:

Buttery Snack Cake with Broiled Topping

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Recipe By: Betty Crocker's Cookbook

Summary: 

So delicious!!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup milk

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Topping

1 cup coconut flakes

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup butter, softened

2 tbsp milk

Directions:

Heat oven to 350.

Grease 9x9 pan.

Beat first group of ingredients with electric mixer, about 3 minutes. Pour into pan.

Bake 35 minutes.

Make coconut topping.

Set oven to broil.

Spread topping on warm cake and broil 1 1/2 minutes.

Cool 15 minutes.

With Regards to the Meatballs...

(see this week's Recipe of the Week)

I do make my own meatballs. After 6 years of somewhat okay but edible meatballs I finally found a great recipe, and with a little of my own creativity in the kitchen, I invented "Amazing Meatballs" (that is what they are called in my recipe database). Some dishes I use them in are meatball subs, sweet & sour meatballs, polynesian meatballs,  and creamy rice and meatball casserole. I think perhaps that these will be my own secret recipe... just request them next time you visit!

Clean Floors

Today I got a lot done in the kitchen. Cupcakes for a cupcake-cake for Daniel's baptism.... icing for the cupcakes... chocolate chip cake because I made too much icing and wanted to put it on something rather than eat it with a spoon... communion bread... lunch was sandwiches and dinner was leftover spaghetti... and I just finished cleaning the floor. I love clean floors.

Baking Bread

I have discovered over the last couple years the joy of making my own bread. I will readily admit that I do use a breadmachine to do most of the work, but I still find it fulfilling. The bread is usually delicious (sometimes I must mess up the recipe) and I know exactly what goes into it. How much sugar and salt is in a 2$ loaf of white bread at the grocery store? I don't know, but I know that my bread only has 2 tbsp sugar (sometimes I substitute 1 tbsp honey for the sugar) and 1 tsp of salt, and that makes me feel good. I also sub some of the white flour with whole wheat. Plus whenever a loaf comes out of the oven, I can have a hot fresh slice (perhaps with my own raspberry jam!).

Recipe of the Week

I want to share some of the yummy things this family eats, but not everything has a story.
So my plan is to post a new recipe every tuesday of something we ate during the previous week.
Please remind me if I forget.
Just click on the link near the top of the page.

Z is for Zucchini

Ever since my zucchini brownies, Jeff is wary of anything I make... "are there veggies in it?" he asks. I wanted to use some of my frozen shredded zucchini so I made chocolate chip muffins that are clearly zucchini based. No tricks this time. But they are yummy. I have a great zucchini loaf recipe, but with a little tweaking it made a yummy muffin recipe.

I also made rice krispie squares (the recipe is on the box) for a kids' group at church. Jacob helped me, and discovered that marshmallows are delicious. He didn't really want to try one at first. He picked all the sticky leftovers out of the bowl and licked the spoon and then asked for more. When I was busy later on, he got his stool and helped himself to a very large piece right from the pan. It is fun to make stuff with him, and I think he likes it because I usually let him taste as we go along.

Speaking of marshmallows.... today Jacob cut his toe, and to make him feel better while I cleaned and bandaged it (at the kitchen table) he wanted a marshmallow. Usually in this type of scenario I ask if a chocolate chip would make him feel better and it works, but not today. I hope I don't have to start stocking marshmallows in my pantry now!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins

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Ingredients:

3 eggs

3/4 cup cooking oil

1 cup sugar

2 cups zucchini, grated

2 tsp vanilla

3 cups flour

1 1/2  tsp baking powder

1 1/2  tsp baking soda

1/2  tsp salt

1 1/2  tsp cinnamon

1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

-Beat eggs until frothy. Add oil and sugar. Add zucchini and vanilla.

-Combine next five ingredients in separate bowl. 

-Stir all together to moisten. Add chocolate chips.

-Pour into lined muffin pan.

-Bake 25-30 minutes at 350.

-Makes about 20 large muffins.

Non-Kitchen Adventure

So I had a crazy adventure yesterday, in my living room. But I had to share this story, and technically I had to walk through the kitchen to get a flashlight so maybe it belongs on this blog. You have to guess what this picture is of before you read on:

What the heck?!?

If you guessed Lightning McQueen and Mater stuck way inside my piano, you are right!

And Jacob was determined that Fillmore the Bus should also go inside the piano. At first I didn't know what had happened, or where Jacob's cars went, but when we played the keys that the cars were sitting on we could hear them moving around. I was worried that wasn't good for the piano so I quickly put a stop to that. The cars were rescued successfully, and I hope it doesn't happen again.

And now back into the kitchen... Daniel LOVES rice cereal and is getting good at being messy, so here is a picture of my little cutie:

More Please!

And also Jacob drew a beautiful picture, he said it was bees when I asked him. Oh, and I drew the heart, in case you were wondering.

Bees!

Solid Food!

So I decided to start Daniel on some solid food. Mmmm baby rice cereal... He seemed to like it and did really well! And I don't even have any messy first food pictures to show you because he was super neat and swallowed everything. His face only got a little messy when he moved and I poked him in the nose with the spoon! Jacob found the whole process fascinating- he is always wanting to share his food with Daniel and we have to say that Daniel can't eat crackers or toast or strawberries because he has no teeth! Anyways, Jacob wanted to try the rice cereal, so I let him - the look on his face was priceless because that stuff is pretty gross. Why can't "they" make baby foods that aren't either icky tasting or totally tasteless? Poor baby, he would much prefer  whipped cream or pizza sauce.

And Be Thankful.

There is an abundance of food in my fridge, freezer, and pantry. I have a wonderful husband and two wonderful little boys. We are healthy, happy, and hopeful. For everything that God has blessed me with, I am so thankful. 

Previously, I talked about possibly making applesauce. Well, someone else from church gave me another bag of apples, so I figured it was a sign. After the peeling (which was annoying because I have misplaced my good peeler, even though it is bright green) it pretty much made itself. I ended up with five jars. Jacob's first "real people" food was applesauce and he loved it. We went through a jar a week. So I am going to do some math and see if it is cheaper for me to make it for Daniel when he gets to that point.

So we had our first thanksgiving already. We were going to have chicken, I found a new recipe I wanted to try out, but we spent enough at Superstore to get a free turkey the other week, so it was decided we would have a typical thanksgiving feast. I've never cooked a turkey before, so I decide to read the instructions. "Reach into the cavity and remove the heart, neck, and giblets." Oh my goodness, I would PAY someone 100$ to do this for me. Thankfully my mother-in-law did it for free. She showed me how she makes stuffing and gravy, and I made simple peas, carrots, mashed potatoes, and cornbread to go with it. It was so good.

In my effort not to waste food, I made stock from the carcass yesterday. My house smelled so delicious! I realized I don't own a stock pot but I do own a giant slow-cooker, so for 10 hours that broth simmered nicely. I ended up with 12 cups, which are all nicely waiting in my freezer to be turned into something delicious.

AND because I had nothing sweet in my house (I only bake one thing at a time now) I tried a new brownie recipe. They are low-fat, I used my own applesauce, and Jacob ate the leftover egg yolks for lunch. I did add some chocolate chips that aren't in the original recipe though. I have had bad luck with brownies. They take too long, never turn out just right, and use way too many ingredients. This recipe cures all that, and more:

Low-Fat Brownies

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Recipe By: Epicure Selections

Ingredients:

1/2 cup baking cocoa

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp soft margarine

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 egg whites

1/2 cup apple sauce

1 tsp vanilla

chocolate chips, if desired

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Spray 8x8 pan.

Mix all ingredients.

Bake 35 minutes.

Now I just have to make a couple of turkey pies with the rest of the leftovers.

(Colossians 3:15b - in case you were wondering)

I Don't Just Bake Sweets

It seems I mostly blog about desserts... but I did try two new supper recipes in the last few days. Sunday I made home-made corn chowder and yesterday I made honey-garlic chicken legs. I won't post either recipe though, because neither was GREAT. They weren't terrible either though. I am not a huge soup fan so I thought maybe if I made it, I would like it better... I didn't. It wasn't the soup's fault. I even wished for the soup to turn out great because I had a funny title planned for the blog I would write about my delicious soup. The chicken tasted good and smelled fabulous, but it wrecked my black pan. I even lined my pan with tinfoil but the sauce got under somehow and I can't get it clean. I guess I just have a lot better luck experimenting with desserts and snacks than with "real" meal food. Tonight we are having sloppy joes - they will turn out great because I just have to add water and tomato paste.

I Can't Believe He's Two!!!

It was Jacob's second birthday this weekend... and that means CAKE! He is really into trains right now so I made him a "Choo Choo" cake. He ate the gummi bear passengers and the chocolate wheels first and then he ate my gummis and chocolates, and then he didn't want any cake. Oh well, we still had a fun evening!

Blow!

Cake!

So for playgroup this week I thought I would experiment on the kids... I have this recipe for allergen-free cupcakes. No milk. No eggs. No butter. No nuts. Sounds interesting for when you have nothing in your cupboard... and they actually turned out really great! They are very moist and chocolatey and delicious. Though I did make vanilla icing to put on top and used butter in that! Also, I think I have finally figured out how to put my recipes on these posts without them somehow looking completely different everytime. I'm not very good at computers. Anyways.... I took 19 cupcakes to playgroup (the recipe made 21 for some reason, and one needed to be taste-tested before I iced them and one needed to be tested after I iced them) and between 5 adults and 9 kids (though Daniel didn't eat one) only 1 was left. I saved it for Jeff.

Allergen-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

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Recipe By: Martha Stewart Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus 1 tbsp

1 tbsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Sift dry ingredients together.

Mix liquids together until well blended. Add flour mixture and mix until very smooth.

(Batter will be very thin)

Line muffin pan and fill each 3/4 full.

Bake 20-25 minutes rotating once.

Cool completely.

Dust with cocoa powder and/or icing sugar just before serving.

Move Over Reese...

Now here is a yummy treat!  No oven needed, just a microwave, and you can make your very own "Reese's Pieces."  Jacob kept saying "Mmmmmm.... Mmmmmmm" the whole time he ate one, it was cute. Then he asked for another. Seeing as how not healthy these are, I gave him a peach instead. I also forgot to follow the instructions to cut after chilling for five minutes, so the chocolate kind of broke apart a bit. I got busy shredding a gigantic zucchini that was given to me. I don't have a food processor so I hand grated it and it took about half an hour. So the chocolate was good and set by that point. After cutting and being annoyed with myself I remembered that if I had just let it come to room temperature it would have cut easily. Oh well, they still taste good. Keep chilled!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

2 ½ cups graham crumbs

1 cup peanut butter (I use creamy)

1 cup butter, melted (I use hard margarine)

2 ¾ cups icing sugar

2 cups chocolate chips, semi-sweet

Mix all ingredients (except chocolate) in medium bowl.
Press into 9x13 pan.
Melt chocolate chips (with 1 tbsp of margarine and peanut butter if desired)
Spread melted chocolate over crust. Chill 5 minutes and cut into bars before chocolate is completely set. Chill to set chocolate before serving.


PS. I grated 16 cups of zucchini, in case you wanted to know.

That's a Wrap!

Someone from church gave us a whole bunch of apples. I contemplated making applesauce, which seems easy enough, except that I don't have an apple peeler/corer  and they are very small apples. I don't really know when I would find the time to peel two grocery bags of tiny apples. So I made an apple crisp. Yum. What next? Apple turnovers are good, but every recipe I found said to use a package of pre-made pastry dough. I didn't have that in my fridge. So maybe I could try apple pie? But I only had a 1/2 cup of hard margarine. No shortening or butter. Also, I don't have a proper pie plate. But what do I find then??? A recipe for something called a Wrapper Pie: no pie plate required!!! I was missing half the things needed to make it, but I figured I could make something up. Voila! The "Mini WrApple Pie" is born! This was the most perfect looking one of the bunch:

Perfect!

So delicious hot or cold (I tried it both ways, now I just need to try it with ice cream!). Jeff rated them an 8/10, but the one he ate wasn't as pretty looking.

I still have about 4 cups of sliced apples left, so I stuck them in the freezer. I found an interesting recipe for Apple Brownies that maybe I will try, or I will just make these again.

Mini WrApple Pies

Ingredients

• CRUST
• 2 ½ cups flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ cup canola oil
• ¾ cup milk
• FILLING
• ⅓ cup brown sugar
• ⅙ cup flour
• ½ tbsp butter
• 2 cups apples, diced small

Method

Roll out dough to 1/4" and use 4" circle cookie cutter to make 12 circles.

Roll each individual circle out quite thin.

Make a pile in the center of each circle with the filling.

Carefully fold dough over making 5 pleats.

Put a couple of slivers of butter on top of apples.

Sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Makes a dozen.

Too Busy To Bake?

Not with this recipe!!! A good friend told me I had to make my chocolate chip cookies just so that I could post the recipe on my blog. They are delicious and so fast! In order to save time, I don't really make cookies... I stick all the dough in one pan and cut them into about 48 cookie-bars once cooled. (You can make these as regular cookies, just watch the bake time... about 10-12 minutes)
So I baked these up a couple of days ago, and we already had to hide them in the cupboard because we ate about half of them in one day.

Busy Mama's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• ¾ cup sugar
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• 1 cup hard margarine, softened
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Method

Heat oven to 375.

Beat sugars, butter, vanilla and egg together.
Stir in flour, baking soda and salt.
(Dough will be stiff)
Add chocolate chips.

Press dough into ungreased pan 13x9x2.
Bake 20 minutes until golden brown.
Cool in pan.

Goodbye Ugly!

Our kitchen had THESE ugly tiles for our backsplash. To me they look like bathroom tiles from the 80's.

Tulips!?!

So today Jeff and I (though I must confess mostly Jeff) painted over these tiles with a nice shade of pale gray.  The boys were really good and it was finished in one morning.

So now my kitchen is a little less blue, but a lot less ugly.

Table For 12

So we had some of our closest friends over for dinner last night, and with all of the kids there were 12 of us! It's a good thing that two of them are too small for real food because our table really only seats 10. We get together with these friends once a month alternating between three houses and I love it when it is my month to host! This time I made two giant dishes of pasta and focaccia bread. It was delicious! All the kids were wearing full-bodied-bibs because pasta gets everywhere, which also makes it more fun.

Red and White Tortellini

Ingredients

• Tomato Sauce
• 1 tbsp butter
• ¼ cup onion chopped
• ¼ tsp garlic powder
• 1 can tomato sauce, 14 oz
• 
  
• Mushroom Sauce
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cups mushrooms, sliced
• ¼ cup green onions sliced
• 2 tbsp flour
• 2 cups milk
• ⅔ cup parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 
  
• 1 ½ cups mozzarella, grated
• parmesan cheese
• 1 pkg tortellini

Method

To Make Tomato Sauce:
Melt butter and saute onions with garlic. Add can of sauce.

MEANWHILE cook tortellini.

To Make Mushroom Sauce:
Melt butter and saute mushrooms and green onion. Sprinkle with flour and slowly stir in milk. Heat and stir until thickened. Add parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper.

Mix mushroom sauce with tortellini.

To Serve:
Spread tomato sauce in bottom of large casserole dish. Spoon tortellini in mushroom sauce on top. Sprinkle with mozza and parmesan. Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Live Life One Cupcake At A Time

It's almost my birthday and the first card I got had this line written on the front.
I think it suits me.

Blogging 'Bout Brownies

Obviously I have decided to start a blog. And since I spend at least half of my waking hours in my kitchen, my blog shall be based there. I will probably even make most of my posts from the kitchen!
So why the name? If you haven't seen my kitchen or have forgotten... it is blue. Barely blue walls and ceiling, blue countertops, blue backsplash, blue door, and even a blue high chair.
My plan is to let you in on some of my adventures that take place in the kitchen. We eat, cook, and play in there so I should have lots of good stories. For instance, this week I tried a new recipe: Zucchini Brownies! Jeff and Jacob have been thoroughly enjoying my "cake" but I haven't mentioned that there are vegetables in them! Trying to eat healthy when you have a sweet tooth is kind of hard, but I cut back the sugar and the chocolate chips in the icing by half and it still tastes really great!  I found it strange that there were no eggs in the recipe, so I wasn't expecting it to turn out. I sort of assumed I had copied it down wrong. Jeff got this recipe from a parishioner and I don't know who it was. But if you have some zucchini lying around and don't like it (which I don't), try this recipe.

Zucchini Brownies Ingredients 2 cups zucchini, grated 2 cups flour 1 ½ cups sugar 1 tsp salt ½ cup oil 1 ½ tsp baking soda ⅓ cup cocoa powder 2 tsp vanilla Icing 4 tbsp butter 4 tbsp milk 1 cup sugar 2 cups chocolate chips, white or reg Method Mix all ingredients and bake at 350 in greased 9x13 pan for 30 minutes. When done, make icing. Bring milk, butter, and sugar to a boil. Add chocolate chips and stir until melted. Pour over warm brownies.