Peppermint Oreo Truffles

A couple of my coworkers make these delicious truffles so I decided to give them a shot.  I'm not sure if I made them the same way they do but they are so good!!

Ingredients 

1 pkg regular Oreos

1 block cream cheese

1 tsp peppermint extract

1 pkg almond bark (chocolate or vanilla)

A few candy canes crushed

First chop up the Oreos in the food processor until they are finely crushed.

Then mix well with cream cheese and peppermint extract.

Roll this mixture into 1 inch balls and place in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

Melt almond bark according to package instructions.

Coat each ball with chocolate then place on a parchment lined baking sheet.  

Sprinkle with candy cane pieces. 

Refrigerate until serving.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!  We are spending the weekend at the lake again this year.  I thought I would share a simple red, white & blue trifle recipe.  This is more of a matter of assembling than cooking for sure.

What you need:

1 angel food cake

1 large package instant vanilla pudding (and ingredients to prepare - 3 C milk) 

1 pkg strawberries

1 pkg blueberries

1 container cool whip

First cut up angel food cake into 1-2 inch squares. I used a store bought cake for simplicity sake but you could make your own.  You could also substitute a pound cake here.  Place cake cubes in the bottom of your trifle bowl until you have a decent sized layer.

Next half strawberries and layer over angel food cake.  

Next layer in prepared instant vanilla pudding.

Top with a layer of blueberries.

Add the final layer of cool whip.

Finish by sprinkling a few strawberries and blueberries on top.

The trifle is best if made the night before so as to allow time for it to really meld together. 

Enjoy!!

Aunt Florence's Poundcake

Yesterday I made my Great Aunt Florence's poundcake for my father-in-law's birthday.  Everyone in my family talks about this recipe but I never remember eating it.  It was definitely good, especially the crust part.  I served it with fresh strawberries and homemade whipped cream

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter 

3 C sugar

3 C flour

1 C heavy whipping cream

6 eggs

1 tsp vanilla 

Add 2 sticks of butter in mixer and mix until creamy.

Add in sugar and mix until well blended.

Add eggs one at a time while continuing to mix.

Add vanilla and mix.

Add flour and cream in alternating portions (1 cup flour, 1/2 C cream, etc).

When well mixed transfer into a buttered and floured tube pan or angel food pan and bake at 325 degrees for approximately 1 hour, 15 min.

If you want to make homemade whipped cream just add about 1.5 C cream to mixed with a couple spoonfuls sugar and a dash of vanilla and mix on highest speed until consistency is that of whipped cream.  It's way better than the canned stuff. 

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1 1/4 C vegetable oil

2 C sugar

2 C flour

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon 

1// tsp salt

3 C match stick carrots (or shredded)

Icing

1 stick butter, softened

8 oz cream cheese, softened 

4 C powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Mix all ingredients - eggs through salt - together in mixer until well mixed.

Add carrots and stir together until well mixed.

Place in a 9x13 pan or two 9in round pans.

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

To make icing, mix all ingredients together with mixer.

Spread over cake when cool, if using round cake spread between layers as well.

Pies for Pi Day

I like to make pie so I thought I would repost some recipes here for Pi Day!    

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Oreo Pie

Pecan Pie

 

Peanut Butter Pie

 

Strawberry Pie

Aunt Florence's Plain Cookies for Decorating

This is my great aunt Florence's recipe for sugar cookies.  The copy of the recipe that I have actually calls them Aunt Florence's Plain Cookies for Decorating.  I have always thought that was funny and so I like to call them that for fun.  These cookies are delicious and taste different than any other sugar cookies I've ever had.  I think it's the nutmeg.  I made a batch of dough up last night then rolled them out, cut them, baked and decorated them today.  This takes quite some time and is definitely not a quick little baking project.  However, they are really good and I hadn't made them in close to two years.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 C sugar

1 C crisco

3 T milk

5 C flour

1 T baking powder

1 tsp nutmeg

First mix together eggs, sugar and crisco until smooth.  Have you ever used the Crisco bars instead of the big tub?  I did it for the first time last night and it was soooo much cleaner.  I hate dipping into that big ol' tub of Crisco.  1 stick = 1 Cup which was perfect for this recipe.

Add milk and mix.

Add half of the flour, baking powder and nutmeg and mix well.

Slowly add the rest of the flour and mix together.  This dough is super thick and so is almost impossible to make without an electric mixer.  

Roll dough into a ball and chill.  I refrigerated it over night.

Roll out dough and cut into desired shapes.

Bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes.

 These cookies are intended to be decorated (hence the name) and you can do so however you choose.

I mix confectioner's sugar, a little milk and a little vanilla or almond extract plus food coloring to the desired consistency and often add sprinkles.  I am not great in the decorating category so my cookies always get decorated with solid colors.  You can only see Christmas trees in the picture but I also did snowmen, snowflakes, candy canes and gingerbread houses.

Peanut Butter Pie

This is a few week's late but we celebrated Thanksgiving in Richmond at our friends Austen & Carrie's house.  My contributions to the meal were sweet potato casserole, pecan pie and this peanut butter pie.  I apologize for the horrible, blurry cell phone, paper plate picture BUT I forgot to take a picture of the whole pie and I last second thought to snap this before I ate it.  I originally found this recipe on Mix & Match Mama and only made one major change which was the crust.

 

Ingredients

1 prepared oreo pie crust

1 C peanut butter

1 C powdered sugar

12 oz Cool Whip

Cream peanut butter, powdered sugar, and cool whip together in mixer.

Spread peanut butter mixture into prepared pie crust.

Refrigerate until serving.

This pie was so easy and everyone really liked it.  It is super rich though so a small sliver is about all you can eat at once.  I think the only thing I would do differently next time is shave some chocolate pieces on top to make it even prettier.

 

Thanksgiving Favorites

I thought I would go back through the archives and share some of my favorite Thanksgiving appropriate dishes.  There are several side dishes and also my gramma's pecan pie recipe listed below with links to the original recipe posts.  I hope you try some and enjoy!

Pecan Pie

Sweet Potato Casserole

Macaroni & Cheese

Oven Roasted Butternut Squash

Loaded Mashed Potatoes

 

Dutch Oven Cherry Cobbler

We celebrated Father's Day last night and I made cherry cobbler for dessert. This recipe is so very easy and good!

Ingredients

4 cans cherry pie filling

1 box white or yellow cake mix

1/2 C brown sugar

Cinnamon 

1 stick butter

Dump cherry pie filling into a Dutch oven 

Top with dry cake mix.

Sprinkle brown sugar over cake mix.

Sprinkle cinnamon over top.

Cut stick of butter into 1 T slices and lay over the top.

Cook covered at 375 degrees for 45-60 minutes.  It is finished when the cake mix is a nice golden brown color.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

This can also be cooked over a camp fire.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

We got rhubarb again in our CSA portion last week and I wanted to make something different since I have made strawberry rhubarb pie the last 3 times.  I happened to see this recipe on Skinny Taste and it looked simple enough so I gave it a shot.

Ingredients   1 lb strawberries, quartered 1 lb rhubarb, sliced 1/2 orange 1 T corn starch 1/4 C honey 1 C quick oats 1/2 C wheat flour 1/2 C brown sugar 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/4 C butter melted   Place strawberries and rhubarb in an oven safe dish.  I used an 8x8 square pan.     Squeeze juice of half an orange over pan and add orange zest.     Add honey and corn starch  Stir together for filling portion of crisp.     For the topping - mix oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and melted butter together in a bowl.     Top strawberry rhubarb mixture with oat mixture.     Bake on 375 for 40 minutes, until top is golden brown.
 

Elvis' Favorite Cake

After college I lived with my friend Rhonda for 5 years.  Rhonda loves Elvis! To the extent that we had several life sized Elvis cutouts on the wall and she liked to celebrate his birthday.  I learned a lot of facts about Elvis during that time.  For no particular reason, she deemed Pineapple Upside Down Cake to be Elvis's favorite cake and also his favorite shot.  In no way is this factual.  I asked her the other day why she chose this cake and she said she just picked something.  I would say it was much more likely to involve peanut butter than pineapples.  But, that being said ever since then every time I see Pineapple Upside Down Cakes, I always think "Elvis' favorite cake".
You may have seen on Friday I posted a picture of mini pineapple upside down cakes.  Instead of making those, I made this shortcut version of Pineapple Upside Down Cake.  I call it short cut because I used a cake mix box as the base rather than making the whole thing from scratch.   Recipe compliments of Betty Crocker

Ingredients

1 box Betty Crocker yellow cake mix

3 eggs

1/2 C vegetable oil

1 20 oz can pineapple rings, juice reserved

Handful of marischino cherries

1/4 C butter

1 C brown sugar

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt butter in 9x13 dish.

Top with brown sugar.

Place pineapple rings on brown sugar butter mixture.

Place a cherry in the center of each pineapple ring.

Mix cake mix according to package instructions using pineapple juice in place of water.  For me I had about 3/4 C of pineapple juice and so I supplemented with 1/4 C of water to reach the 1 C water that was called for.  Also 3 eggs & vegetable oil.  Stir together.

Spread cake mix over pineapples.

Bake approximately 45 minutes.

Upon removing the cake from the oven use knife to separate cake from side of dish.

Flip over onto a serving tray or in my case, baking sheet.  Leave pan on top for a few minutes so all the pineapple/brown sugar goodness can drip all down the cake.

Red Velvet M & M Brownies

Earlier this we made Mix & Match Mama's Red Velvet M&M Brownies.  These were really quick to make and only require 4 ingredients, 3 of which we had on hand!

Ingredients

1 box red velvet cake mix

2 eggs

1/3 C vegetable oil

1 C M&Ms

Mix all ingredients together. This will make a thick batter. Spread in a greased 9x13 pan. Bake for 14-15 minutes at 350 degrees.  After baking you may want to press some extra M&Ms into the brownies for decoration. A quick & simple Valentines Day treat!

Most Popular Recipes of 2013

I thought I would recap some of the most popular recipes on the blog for 2013.   These are the top recipes by page views and pins on pinterest.   Far & away this was the most popular post...   Beef & Broccoli  

  Followed by my Crockpot Buffalo Chicken  

  Pesto  

  Pizza Rolls  

  Pumpkin Dip  

  Baked Ziti  

Pasta Primavera   

      NOW FOR SOME OF OUR FAVORITE DISCOVERIES OF THE YEAR... Strawberry Rhubarb Pie  

   Grilled Pizzas  

Shrimp & Grits

 Oven Roasted Butternut Squash  

Fudge!

This is the simplest recipe in the world for fudge...2 or 3 ingredients.  I forgot to take a picture but I promise it's good.   Ingredients 18 oz chocolate chips (can also use peanut butter, butterscotch or a combo) 1 can sweetened condensed milk Optional: 1 C pecan or walnut pieces   Place chocolate chips and condensed milk in glass bowl. Microwave 5 minutes or so and stir together til well mixed. If using nuts, add now. Pour into a sprayed pan. Cool in fridge, cut into pieces and serve!   I made this twice this week. I did a milk chocolate and pecan variety and a chocolate peanut butter type.  I love the chocolate peanut butter variety.  

Pretzel Candies

Y'all these are so good and really simple! It only takes 3 ingredients & about 10 minutes to make.

Ingredients
Mini pretzels
Hershey kisses - any type (these are candy cane)
M&Ms

Heat oven to 175 degrees.
Place a hershey kiss on top of each pretzel.
Cook for 3 minutes or so.
Press M&M into top of each kiss.
Cool in refrigerator.

Heath Bars

My friends Megan & Ryanne posted this recipe on their blog Home Grown Hand-Me-Down last year. It's a simple holiday cookie/candy idea and it is really good...just don't think about all the butter!

Ingredients

Saltine crackers

2 sticks butter

1 C sugar

1 large bag chocolate chips 

Line baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Line with saltine crackers.

In small pot melt butter.

Add sugar and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Cook a few minutes until it starts to turn white & frothy.

Pour mixture over crackers and spread evenly.

Bake on 350 for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and spread chocolate chips over top. Continue smearing around until totally melted.

Refrigerate until solid (or place in freezer) then cut to pieces and serve.

Pecan Pie

Some day I'll meal plan again, maybe next week, maybe 2014.  Ha!  In the meantime I am going to share recipes for the things I contributed to our Thanksgiving meal.  This is a family recipe that came from my gramma although I am not sure if it is actually her recipe.  I myself do not like pecan pie but I wanted to try out the recipe and I thought when better to do so than Thanksgiving.  It was a really easy recipe and my mom said it was good.  Ha!

    Ingredients 1 9in pastry pie crust, homemade or otherwise 3 eggs 1/2  C brown sugar 1/4 tsp salt 1 C light corn syrup 1/2 tsp vanilla  1 C pecans, broken in pieces   Mix all ingredients in bowl. Pour in pie crust. Bake 10 minutes at 450 degrees. Then bake additional 30 minutes at 350 degrees.   ENJOY!    

Oven Roasted Butternut Squash - A Simple Seasonal Side!

We have had a butternut squash sitting on our counter for quite some time.  It was from our CSA at least a month ago.  In efforts to use the groceries we have at home I decided to make it today as a side for the pork tenderloin that was in the freezer too.  This is a very, very easy recipe with only 5 ingredients and would be an easy addition to any meal.  This could also easily make an appearance at your Thanksgiving dinner.   Ingredients: butternut squash 1/2 stick butter Salt  Pepper Chili Powder   Cut butternut squash into a small dice and place in a glass bowl.  If you have never cut a butternut squash, cut off the top, the bottom and then all the outside then slice in half.  Scoop out all the seeds, cut into long sticks and then into a smaller dice.  

    Melt butter and pour over squash.  Mix together to be sure butter is evenly coating all squash.

Add fresh ground salt, pepper & several shakes of chili powder.  Stir and re-season.  Make sure all ingredients are evenly mixed.  

Spread on baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

One squash is soft, increase oven temperature to 425 and cook another 5-7 minutes to crisp/brown it up a little.