Every year we get together with my family for a Halloween movie night. We eat fun snacks and watch our favorite Halloween movies (things like Hocus Pocus and Disney’s Icabod Crane…good stuff!). This year I wanted to bring something really yummy to snack on, so when I saw this recipe for “Goblin Grub” on Our Best Bites, I immediately printed it off and bought all the stuff to make it. Turns out, this was one awesome snack! Everybody loved it and it got gobbled up pretty quickly! The recipe makes a TON, so if you aren’t expecting a small army of guests, I’d suggest making only half. You could do like Our Best Bites did, and make cute little gift baggies for everyone, or you could just serve it in a big bowl and let everyone go wild. Either way, this is some fantastic Halloween party food!
Goblin Grub (Chewy Chex Cereal Mix)
-Our Best Bites
6 1/2 c. Rice Chex
4 1/2 c. Golden Grahams
1 c. sliced almonds (I used peanuts)
2 c. coconut
3/4 c. (1 1/2 sticks) real butter
1 c. sugar
1 c. light Karo syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
In a VERY LARGE bowl, combine cereal, almonds, and coconut. Set aside.
In a large saucepan, combine butter, Karo syrup, and sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and cook for three minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. While the mixture is still hot, pour over the cereal mixture. and stir well so the candy mixture coats the cereal.
If you have leftovers, it stores nicely in a ziploc bag.
I know -I’ve been a terrible TWD member lately. I haven’t participated in weeks…bad, I know. And I’ve missed it a lot, too – it seems like every week, something got in the way of me baking that week’s recipe. My students’ All-State Choir auditions have been going on for the past few weeks and that’s been distracting, not to mention my hubby starting a new job…not that I’m complaining or making excuses, even – I just felt I should at least let you know where I’ve been as far as TWD goes. But now I’m back, and that’s all that matters! And what a recipe to welcome me back on the wagon! Dorie’s Sweet Potato Biscuits…mmm, MMM!!
These were DE-licious. They start out the way all normal biscuits start out; but then you add in mashed sweet potatoes (canned, even!) and a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon and you’ve got a slightly sweet, spicy, flaky biscuit that will knock your socks off! I made a little maple compound butter (just a fancy way of saying “butter with stuff mixed in” – saying it that way makes me feel important…) to spread on these bad boys and WOW – we seriously gobbled them all up. They couldn’t have turned out better, in my opinion. A lot of other TWD bakers said they were having issues with the biscuits baking up totally flat like cookies – I guess the biscuit gods were smiling down on me because mine seemed to rise perfectly. Thanks to Erin of Prudence Pennywise (seriously love her blog!) for choosing these wonderful biscuits! Go now and check out her blog – you’ll absolutely love her! Get the recipe for these babies while you’re there – make ’em for Saturday breakfast this weekend!
Ok, ok, I know it has nothing to do with food…but I just thought I’d let Izzy show off her Halloween PJ’s! We really get in the Halloween spirit around here, so I thought I’d go ahead and start spreading Halloween warm fuzzies! 😉 Get ready for some fun Halloween-y treats coming soon!!
A few months before our wedding (golly, that was over three years ago!!) my sister gave me a very special cookbook. She worked really hard collecting her favorite recipes, gathering pictures and getting everything organized and put together in a cute little book. I happened to think this was the coolest present ever since I had no idea how to cook, really- and had hardly any recipes of my own. But thanks to my big sister, I now had a nifty book full of tried-and-true recipes that were simple and no-fail. To this day, out of all the volumes of cookbooks I own (and trust me, there are quite a few!), I still turn to my homemade collection of Lindsay’s recipes whenever I need a good, comforting meal. Some of my favorites include Fiesta Soup, Chicken Parmesan and the recipe I’m posting today – Cheesy Chicken Chowder.
This one can’t be beat- it’s as simple as can be, yet totally delicious. Perfect for these cold evenings we’ve been having lately (love it!), and it makes enough for you to get at least two meals out of it. I love the chunks of potatoes and chicken, with the richness and creaminess that feels like it should be way more fattening than it really is (the most fattening part is the cheese melted in it)! This is one of those soups that always gets made every year as soon as the weather gets cooler – it’s comforting, filling and down-right delicious!
Cheesy Chicken Chowder
4 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups diced potatoes
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced carrots
1/2 cup diced onions
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 cups milk
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper
8 oz Velveeta cheese, cubed (1 loaf)
2 cups chopped cooked chicken
Combine the broth and the vegetables in a large sauce pan. Cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.
Melt the butter in a Dutch oven over low heat. Add the flour, whisking until smooth. Cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Gradually stir in the milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and bubbly. Gradually stir in the vegetable mixture, soy sauce, cheese and chicken. Cook until the cheese melts and the soup is thoroughly heated.
Silly title, I know – but chances are, most of you can probably relate to the relationship I have with canned pumpkin. When it’s the end of summer and still sweltering hot outside, I find myself walking down the ‘Baking/Spices’ aisle of the grocery store, just to get a glimpse of the empty spot on the shelf where the Libby’s canned pumpkin would normally be. Just to check and see if they have any yet…we all know it’s not really the calendar that tells us when Fall gets here – it’s the good people of Libby’s who decide when Fall begins. The day I see the cans of pumpkin puree on the shelves of the grocery store is the first day of Fall, as far as I’m concerned. And recently I discovered just how precious my canned pumpkin is to me…as you all know, it’s been near impossible to find it lately. None of my stores had any. What a tragedy. Autumn with no canned pumpkin??! I think not! However, just recently, the pumpkin-shortage nightmare was ended and Libby’s was on the shelves once again. Needless to say, I grabbed as many cans as I could carry! For a week or so now, I’ve been thinking of ways to use my beloved canned pumpkin…pancakes? Cookies? Bread? Possibly, but not just yet. Pumpkin blondies? Yes, please! Blondies filled with pumpkin, spices and full of white chocolate chips…perfect! (*For those of you who aren’t familiar with blondies – they’re just like brownies, but minus the chocolate)
If you’ve got a can or two just sitting around in the back of your pantry, crack one open and re-discover the goodness and joy to be found in baking with canned pumpkin!
Pumpkin Blondies
–Annie’s Eats
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. pumpkin pie spice (I doubled this)
1 tsp. baking soda
¾ tsp. salt
16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1¼ cups granulated sugar (or brown sugar)
1 large egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup white chocolate chips
½ cup chopped, toasted nuts (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Line a 9×13-inch baking dish with foil. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt. Stir together and set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined. Mix in the pumpkin puree. With the mixer on low speed add the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated. Fold in the white chocolate chips (and nuts, if using) with a rubber spatula.
Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Bake until the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs, about 35-40 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely before cutting.
To serve, lift the cake from the pan using the foil and transfer to a cutting board. Peel off foil and using a sharp knife, cut into 24 squares.
When I was little, I used to loooove a certain brand of store-bought cookies; they had all kinds of yummy flavors, but my favorite was their molasses cookies. I loved them because they were really chewy and sugary (chewy cookies were a big deal!). Nowadays, I like them for a few other reasons as well – I love the spices and the rich flavor the molasses adds. I haven’t had those cookies in a few years, and actually hadn’t really thought about them in a long time, until I found a great sounding recipe for ginger molasses cookies a few days ago. I stumbled on a fellow musician’s food blog- Gimme Some Oven (how cute is that?!) and found these cookies and knew I had to make them – after a few days of really chilly, crisp Fall weather, these spicy cookies sounded like perfection.
My cookies actually came out looking and tasting almost exactly like the ones I used to love so much as a kid – I was really pleased with how they turned out. Perfectly chewy and soft, with lots of warm spices. These were great and hubby and I have really enjoyed gobbling them up!
Chewy Ginger Molasses Cookies
-Gimme Some Oven
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup molasses
2 eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp. soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. salt
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, soda, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and salt. Set aside.
With an electric mixer, beat together butter and sugar until combined. Add in the eggs and molasses, and beat until combined. Then slowly add in the dry ingredient mixture until combined.
Roll the dough into small balls (about 1″ in diameter). Fill a small bowl with sugar, and roll each ball in the sugar until it is completely coated. Place on cookie sheet, and bake for about 8-10 minutes. Once they are done, remove from the oven and let cool for a minute or two. Then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Yep, today is my Sweetie Pie’s birthday! I won’t mention exactly how old he is, but I will say he’s getting pretty close to 30! 🙂 Birthdays aren’t really a huge deal for him – he doesn’t ever want anything fancy or extravagant – just simple and low-key. Usually we stay home and I make him a nice dinner, or we go out to his favorite restaurant….nothing big; just the two of us having a great evening together. But no matter what he chooses to do, year after year, one thing always remains the same – a big ‘ol birthday cake! Two years ago, he had a chocolate cake covered with Hershey Kisses (his favorite candy), last year, a Chocolate Overdose cake filled with chocolate mousse and topped with chocolate ganache, and this year, since Oreos are pretty much his favorite food on the planet…a Chocolate Oreo Cake. Yum.
I got this recipe from Katie over at Good Things Catered; it looked so amazingly perfect, I knew I had to make this for hubby’s birthday. It uses Hershey’s Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe, which I have now decided is my favorite chocolate cake and frosting (seriously, this frosting is the BEST!), and it’s filled with a light cookies & cream filling, then topped with lots of Oreo cookies…see? Perfect for my husband, the Oreo addict. Needless to say, he absolutely loved it (I presented it to him a couple of days early)! Of all the birthday cakes I’ve made for him, I’d have to say, this one is probably the one I’m the most proud of, considering cakes are definitely not one of my strong suits. So happy birthday, sweetie – and here’s to many more!!
Chocolate Oreo Cake
-Good Things Catered
For cake:
2 c. sugar
1-3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. Hershey’s Cocoa
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 c. milk (I used buttermilk)
1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 c. boiling water
10-15 oreos twisted to separate cookies and reveal cream center
More oreos for decorating
For icing:
1/2 c. (1 stick) butter, melted
2/3 c. Hershey’s Cocoa
3 c. powdered sugar
1/3 c. milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
For filling:
1/3 c. whipping cream
2 tsp powdered sugar
small dash vanilla extract
1/8 c. oreo cookie crumbs, made from reserved oreo sides
Directions:
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare two 9-inch round baking pans, lining with parchment.
-On one layer of cake, place cookie halves that have been separated into the bottom of one pan, cream side up.
-Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl.
-Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed of mixer 2 minutes.
-Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin).
-Pour batter very carefully into prepared pans.
-Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.
-Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans and place onto wire racks.
-Remove parchment and cool completely.
-Meanwhile, make frosting: stir melted butter into cocoa.
-Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency.
-Add small amount additional milk, if needed.
-Stir in vanilla.
(About 2 cups frosting.)
-Meanwhile, make filling: In the bowl of an electric mixer, whip the cream, sugar and vanilla until stiff.
-Gently fold in the cookie crumbs.
-Scoop the mixture into a piping bag (or gallon sized ziploc bag).
-When cake is completely cooled, make icing dam around the top edge of the layer of cake that has oreos baked into it.
-Fill icing dam with a layer of cream filling.
-Place other cake layer on top, and frost with chocolate frosting.
-Place oreo halves around bottom edge and top of cake.
-Serve or store in refrigerator.
We really like making pizza at home – it seems to taste so much better when you can put exactly what you want on it, exactly how you want it. Normally we like fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, lots of cheese (duh!), and sometimes black olives and green olives. Mmmm… But recently I saw this pizza on a fellow foodie’s blog-Taste of Home Cooking– and although it’s not something I’d normally make, it looked totally and completely delicious (in an odd, intriguing sort of way..).
(Please forgive my dark pictures – it’s getting to be that time of year where my pictures start to suck thanks to lack of sunlight…).
Buffalo Chicken Pizza – I know, it sounds really weird and maybe a little bit gross, but trust me…it’s gooood. I totally loved the combination of flavors – the spicy, tangy buffalo chicken with the sharpness of the blue cheese and a little hint of onion flavor from the scallions. I was so glad we gave this pizza a chance; it was really tasty and perfect Friday night/movie watching food! Do yourself a favor and at least give it a try…you’ll probably be really pleasantly surprised!
Buffalo Chicken Pizza
-seen on Taste of Home Cooking
Pizza dough
1lb chicken breasts, cut into small cubes*
1/2 cup Frank’s hot sauce
1 tablespoon butter
2-3 scallions, chopped on a bias
Blue cheese crumbles
Mozzarella cheese, shredded
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Put the Frank’s and butter in a small saucepan. Add the chicken and heat over medium until the chicken is cooked through, about 5 minutes.
Roll out the dough and place on a pizza pan or sheet pan. Top with a little mozzarella cheese. Add the blue cheese, spread into a thin layer. Scatter a few scallions on top. Using a slotted spoon add the chicken, being careful not to put on too much of the Frank’s (it will get soggy/greasy). Add just a few dashes of the Frank’s here and there on the pizza, then top with more mozzarella cheese and the remaining scallions.
Bake the pizza for 20-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and cheese is bubbly.
*I chose to boil my chicken first, shred it, then toss it with the melted butter/Frank’s mixture.
I totally would’ve posted this 5 days ago (when it actually was our anniversary), but a few unexpected things have happened this week and I haven’t had a chance to even get to my computer! Anyway, our 3 year anniversary was this past Wednesday – sometimes I can’t get over that we’ve been married 3 years. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that we were on our honeymoon! On top of having our anniversary to celebrate, my hubby just accepted a new job (yay!), so we decided to go out for a fancy dinner a couple of days early, then on our actual anniversary have a nice quiet dinner at home. I was trying to think of something different that we haven’t had at home a lot, and jambalaya kept coming to mind. Since we both looooove Cajun food, I decided jambalaya would perfect (with a glass or two of champagne, of course!)!
And oh my gosh, it was SO good! I kinda-sorta followed a recipe, but mostly just threw stuff in. We absolutely loved it- I’ll definitely be making this over and over again. We had a wonderful, relaxing evening and this was a perfect meal to go with it! Who knows, maybe 50 years from now I’ll be serving this same jambalaya to my sweet hubby for our anniversary dinner!
Jambalaya
-(very loosely) adapted from Allrecipes.com
1 pound smoked sausage, sliced (I like to use turkey sausage)
1/2 pound peeled, deveined shrimp
2 bell peppers, diced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (14.5 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes
3 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Cajun seasoning to taste
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
2 cups white rice
In a medium pot, bring 2 cups of the chicken broth to a boil and cook the rice as directed. In a large pot over medium heat, cook bell pepper, onion and garlic in the oil until onion is translucent.
Stir in tomatoes, pepper sauce, cayenne, Worcestershire, Cajun seasoning and bay leaves; reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.
Stir the shrimp and sausage into the spiced vegetables. Continue to simmer until flavor is as spicy as you like, adding the leftover chicken broth as needed to thin. Add the cooked rice and continue to cook for 10 minutes more.
*You may not need the entire amount of leftover chicken broth – just use as much as you need to get the jambalaya the consistency you want.
Believe it or not, I’m not a huge fan of meatballs in my spaghetti. Something about them bothers me, but I can’t really explain what it is. After a few weeks of wanting to try Ina Garten’s marinara recipe, I decided to make some for dinner. Then I thought I might as well throw some meatballs in the mix too, just to see if I could come up with a recipe I liked. Of course (no surprise whatsoever) Ina’s marinara was totally delicious – I love that she uses red wine! It’s a little tangy and really hearty and thick. I decided to just wing it on the meatballs – I mixed ground beef with fresh bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, an egg and salt and pepper. Very simple and straight forward. And since I hate standing over a skillet turning splattering meatballs every 2 minutes, I just threw them in the oven for about 25 minutes and they came out perfectly!
Hubby and I really enjoyed our spaghetti and meatballs! Since the sauce is so robust and full of flavor, I didn’t spice the meatballs up too much – I just let the sauce take care of it. I’ll most definitely be using this marinara recipe again and again…it’ll most likely be my stand-by marinara in the future! This was a really (really!) yummy dinner – I’m glad I finally found a meatball that I’d actually want to put in my spaghetti!
Meatballs
1 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (3 slices white bread ground up in the food processor)
1 egg
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients until combined. Roll meat into 1 1/2-2 inch balls and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 25-30 minutes until browned and cooked throughout.
Marinara Sauce
-Ina Garten
1 tablespoon good olive oil
1 cup chopped yellow onion (1 onion)
1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 cup good red wine, such as Chianti
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes, or plum tomatoes in puree, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Heat the olive oil in a large (12-inch) skillet. Add the onion and saute over medium heat until translucent, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute. Add the wine and cook on high heat, scraping up all the brown bits in the pan, until almost all the liquid evaporates, about 3 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, parsley, salt, and pepper. Cover, and simmer on the lowest heat for 15 minutes.
*I also added about a tablespoon of brown sugar to add a little sweetness
