My very creative sister came up with this cute Halloween snack to bring to her daughter’s Kindergarten party.    It is very easy and was a big hit with the kids.  All you need is a package of plastic spiders from the dollar store, some clear plastic cups, and some orange colored jello.  Make the jello as usual and put the spider in so it looks like it is climbing out of the jello before it chills in the refrigerator.Now you have a cute and festive snack that cost almost nothing and took no time to do.

Kids can be so funny… there were a few kids in the class that said they thought the spider went potty in the jello.  Random thoughts of some five and six year old kids!  Gotta love it!

and here it is……

Doesn't this look amazingly awesome?!!

If you love chocolate, this is for YOU!  It is very rich, but oh so mmm mmm good.  I’ve had people ask me if I bought it from the store (I think it’s because of the bundt pan look).  I’ve taken it to a few people’s houses for dessert when they have invited us over to dinner.  It’s not that expensive to make and it’s so delicious.

I got this from all recipes dot com from here.

Here is what you need:

Buy this stuff at the store and you will be in for an awesome treat!!!

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package devil’s food cake mix
• 1 (5.9 ounce) package instant chocolate pudding mix
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

This is a bundt pan

Here are the directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
• In a large bowl, mix together the cake and pudding mixes, sour cream, oil, beaten eggs and water. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour batter into a well greased 12 cup bundt pan.
• Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until top is springy to the touch and a wooden toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool cake thoroughly in pan at least an hour and a half before inverting onto a plate.

The next important step is to take wax paper and cut it into 4 pieces to put on your platter. This is important for the drizzling step (which you’ll see and understand why in a minute).

I used four pieces of wax paper so that you can easily pull them away.

Once your cake is cooled, turn it over on your platter.  This is my cake after it cooled:

My pretty cake right after it cooled.

The next step is the drizzling!

• Put your chocolate icing (about half of the container) in a zipper bag and push it to one of the bottom corners.
• Microwave it for about 10-15 seconds.
• Cut a really SMALL opening in the bottom corner where you put the icing (remember you can always cut more).
• Drizzle away!

Make sure you cut a VERY small amount.

He is starting to drizzle the cake.

He is just going back and forth and left to right.

Drizzling all most finished. Notice he went back and forth all over the cake.

Pull away your wax paper and….. wahhhlaaaaa!  You’re done!  Doesn’t it look amazing?

Do it, go to store, pick up ingredients, make it, eat it, then run a couple of miles!!

So I love chili… that is really all there is to it for me.  It is getting cold out, especially since that crazy October snow storm, which means I have had chili on my mind!  Unfortunately, my hubby just doesn’t share my enthusiasm for it.

I have been trying to find a recipe that Danny can get excited about to so that when he comes in after work and smells the chili cooking he doesn’t immediately scrunch up his face and say “Chili huh” in his obviously not so thrilled way.I decided that I should try adding different things to it that might make the chili a little more manly… I mean it did work with my spaghetti (he was very happy after I started serving it with huge chunks of sausage).  So I added bacon.  Bacon is so wonderful…  I am pretty sure you could add it to just about anything and it would be great! 

It was great!  It is still chili, but now it’s chili with bacon!  Definitely a manly step up.  I think next time I will also work in the Bacon Salt as an ingredient as well.

I like mine loaded with extra monterey jack cheese and sour cream

White Chicken Chili
1lb Great Northern Beans
2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast, cooked and cubed
1 package of bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 medium onions
2 cans green chilies (4oz each)
4 garlic cloves minced
6 cups chicken broth (I like to use fat free)
2 Tb ground cumin
2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
3 cups shredded monterey Jack Cheese

***Drain and rinse beans.  Add all ingredients including cheese to a crock pot and cook on low for several hours.  Serve with sour cream, shredded monterey jack cheese, and tortilla chips.  Cilantro makes a great garnish also.

Variation:  I sometimes like to dice up some tomatoes and use it as a topping with the cheese, chips, and cilantro.  Yummy!

Don't forget the chips! They are great crumbled over the chili or dipped!

Don’t you just want to take a bite?!?!?!?!

Doesn’t this look so yummy?  My husband always says that you eat with your eyes.

I made this because we had some friends over for Halloween that have two girls that are the same age as ours.  It was our after trick-or-treating dessert!  Yummmmm.  The cool part about this dessert is that Ella really did help me make it!  I got the idea from pillsbury dot com which came from pinterest.

Here is what you need:

cookie dough, chocolate chips, reese pieces, peanut butter, white icing, candy corn and round pizza pan

• Heat oven to 350°F.
• Line 12-inch pizza pan with foil; grease foil with shortening. Break cookie dough into 2-inch pieces; arrange evenly in pan. With floured fingers, press to form crust.
• Bake 16 to 18 minutes or until deep golden brown. (I only baked 14 minutes)

The edges should be a little golden brown.

• Cool completely, about 30 minutes.
• Use foil to lift crust from pan. Carefully remove foil from crust; place crust on serving platter or tray (I didn’t have a serving tray big enough so I left it in the pan).
• Spread peanut butter over crust. Sprinkle with chocolate candies and peanuts.

It doesn’t have to be smoothed perfect because there will be toppings all over it.

Here is Ella sprinkling the toppings on the cake

• In small microwavable bowl, microwave frosting uncovered on High 10 to 15 seconds or until thin enough to drizzle. Transfer to small resealable food-storage plastic bag. Cut small hole in 1 corner of bag; drizzle over cookie pizza.

You’re done!!  It’s so easy, so yum and oh so fun!

She’s proud of her work!

Can’t resist, huh?

I made my husband take the leftovers to work the next day and they were all gone before lunch!

You guys are going to love this!  In preparation for a movie night, I started making some chewy caramel popcorn from a recipe I have used a few times before.  It’s a simple recipe, but I was multi-tasking as mom’s tend to always be doing.  I mean really, since I have had kids have I ever been able to just do one task without simultaneously doing or thinking about several other things at once?!?!?!

Anyway, as I was making this yummy caramel to pour over the popcorn I didn’t quite have my head in the game.  I poured the sauce over the popcorn and started mixing, turned around and saw my key ingredient sitting on the counter unopened.  Dang!  It was too late to add it since it was supposed to be cooked in the saucepan before being poured over the popcorn. I am very happy to report that the popcorn was awesome anyway!  It was way different than the original recipe, but I loved it.  The caramel sauce didn’t quite cover all the popcorn leaving the salty butter portion exposed while still having the sweet caramel on some of it.   I am telling you, it is the perfect combination of sweet and salty!  So dang good that it didn’t last 10 minutes at my house between me and the kids.

Sweet, yet salty! Soft, yet crunchy! So so perfect!

I definitely plan to keep this recipe in the popcorn rotation!  It is too good not to!  Here is what I did…

Sweet and Salty Caramel Popcorn
Accidentally adapted from the-girl-who-ate-everything.com located here. 
1 bag of extra butter microwave popcorn
2.5 Tb of Butter
1/3 cup of light brown sugar
1/3 cup of light corn syrup

***Pop popcorn as usual.  Put the popcorn in a bowl, but make sure you remove all the unpopped kernels first.  Melt the butter in a small saucepan with the sugar and corn syrup.  Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook for a 2 to 3 more minutes. Stir with a spatula constantly.  The longer you cook the caramel, the harder it becomes.  I like mine semi-crunchy without being too hard so 3 minutes was perfect for me.  Pour the caramel over the popcorn and mix well.  Delicious!

When I asked my hubby what memories makes him think of family, in particular his mom, he told me he remembers how his house smelled of yummy food cooking when he came home from basketball practice or from a friends house.  For some reason, the smell of delicious food baking gives us that warm comfort feeling of home.

The best cooking in my family comes from my Grandma.  My siblings and I (there are seven of us kids) would cheer when we found out we were going to visit grandma because she is the super hero of cooking.  Now that we are all grown (the youngest of us is now 20 years old) we have been begging for all the memorable meals we remember having at Grandma’s.

We must have finally put enough pressure on her because she finally put together her own cook book of her most trusted and go-to recipes she has used over the years.  It is family recipe book now that she gave each of us grand kids for Christmas.

My sisters and I always laugh because sometimes recipes in my grandma’s book have strange instructions we feel are unnecessary, but every time we choose not to follow them to the exact detail the recipe is off just a bit.  Trust me… Grandma knows best when it comes to cooking and baking!

So this Cinnamon Rolls recipe can be found in this oh-so-coveted book of recipes.  I am told it is not an original recipe of my Grandma’s, but one she got from someone who got it from someone else, who may have gotten it somewhere else.  My mom has been baking them for years now and has taught me all the tricks!  Mom’s best advice:  It’s all about how much flour you add.  If you add too much the rolls will be too dense and stiff.  The key is to add just barely enough (the lease amount of flour you can get away with without the dough being too sticky to work with), so that you rolls will be soft, chewy, and fluffly.

By the way, this recipe makes 4 to 5 trays of cinnamon rolls (48 or so rolls) so if you don’t have a big crowd to feed (with seven kids and all the friends coming in and out we always did!) I would strongly recommend cutting this recipe in half.

Cinnamon Rolls
Makes 48+ rolls

• 1/2 Cup sugar
•  2 T yeast
• 2 C warm water (not too hot or you will ruin your yeast)
  ***let this mixture stand 5 minutes until it looks a little frothy from the yeast

•  2 Cups scalded milk (or 2/3 Cup powdered milk with 2 cups warm water) -my mom prefers to use powdered milk, although I have never been sure if that was a Mormon thing (recycling her food storage) or a baking thing, either way I have been trained to use the powdered milk.
• 1/3 Cup oil
• 1 1/2 T salt
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup quick oats
• 9ish Cups flour
  ***Mix in all ingredients but the flour.  Using your dough hook, add one cup of flour at a time, mixing well (on the lowest speed) between each cup.  Once you get up to 5 cups or so, pay very careful attention while you add your flour.  You want to add enough so that the dough is soft, but not sticky.  It is a good sign that you are close to the desired flour amount when you see that the dough is all staying together and no dough is left on the sides or bottom of the bowl.  Knead dough in mixer with dough hook for about 7 minutes (yes my mom and grandma use to always do the kneading by hand, but even they agree that it just isn’t necessary to do it that way anymore).

Here is the soft, but not stick dough ready to start rising

Step 1:  After you have your dough ready, put about a tablespoon of oil on it and softly spread it across the surface of your dough.  Try to get it on the sides and bottom of the dough as much as possible.  Put a clean cloth over the top and let it rise until it is about double the size (30 – 45 minutes).  If it is a cold day or you are in a hurry you can use my quick rise method.  I put my oven on the warm setting until it is preheated, then turn it off and put the rolls in the oven where is it perfectly warm for them to rise.

This is what it looks like after it is done rising when you use the smaller sized kitchen aid bowl

Step 2:  Divide dough into four equal pieces.  Spread a little oil across your rolling surface. Using one piece at a time, roll dough into a rectangle.  Generously spread melted butter (I like to use a cooking brush to “paint” it on) over entire area.  Cover with cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Almost ready to start rolling!

Step 3:  Roll dough lengthwise into one long roll. Be careful not to have any gaps in your roll or they may fall apart later.  Cut rolls horizontaly about 1 1/2 to 2 inches in thickness (using a pizza cutter makes nice, clean cuts).  Place the rolls on a greased pan or use parchment paper about 2 inches apart.

Be generous with your butter and cinnamon/sugar

Rolls placed about 2 inches a part on baking sheet, getting ready to rise again

Step 4:  Cover rolls with a clean cloth and let the rolls rise until double again (30 – 45 min) or use the my quick rise method again.

When they are done rising they should be nice and plump and touching as you see here

Step 4:  Cook on 350 for about 12 minutes

All done and ready to frost! My mom would tell you to let them cool before frosting, but I must admit I never follow that advice and can't wait to eat one warm from the oven with the frosting melting off it!

Frosting
Dont skimp on the frosting… I like to add extra to mine.  🙂
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 t. salt
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 t. vanilla
1/3 cup margarine
***Mix all ingredients together.  I often do a taste test here and sometimes add a little more butter or sugar until it I think its perfect.  🙂

Variations:  Add raisins or walnuts for an extra touch!  My mom recently made them using strawberry jelly instead of the cinnamon/sugar mixture… they were awesome!

I love, love, love the walnuts variation!!!!

These are best when stored in an air tight container and just like the directions on a Cinnabon box, heat them up in the microwave for 10 – 15 seconds  before eating!  Perfection!!!!

I love crepes!  Growing up crepes were always a unique passion my Dad and I shared…  I say unique because when you are one of seven children in your family having something that is just yours is REALLY hard to come by.  Crepes have always been a traditional food for me… My Dad is the crepe expert and always makes them on Christmas morning and other special occasions.  He makes them so much that he never uses a recipe anymore, but he did tell me he got his original recipe from the Lion House Cook Book.  The Lion House is a famous restaurant in down town Salt Lake City, Utah.  The building itself as been around since 1856 and the restaurant’s reputation is for serving good home cooked meals with fresh baked breads, rolls, and pies being their featured items.

If I didn't prefer them filled with the sweet goodness of sugar, homemade whip cream, and pie filling I might be able to eat them more often!

Crepes are awesome because they can be served so many different ways.   They are no longer just a dessert or a breakfast food.  This past weekend I went to a little cafe owned by a couple from Paris while I was visiting the West Palm Beach area.  I am telling you these crepes were the most amazing things I have ever eaten!  I think the secret to great French crepes is the sauce.  The feature sauce at this little cafe was bechamel sauce.  It doesn’t really matter what you put in your crepe as long as you have bechamel sauce in it!  Not kidding!  You can have spinach, bacon, chicken, mushrooms… it doesn’t really matter, just mix it up with bechamel sauce and you are set!

Basic Crepes
From the Lion House Cook Book
3 eggs
1/2 Cup milk
1/2 Cup water
3 Tablespoon butter melted
3/4 Cup flour
1/2 teaspon salt

***Combine all ingredients and mix in a blender or with a high powered mixer for a minute or two. Refrigerate for 1 hour (we have never refrigerated ours and they always turn out perfect).  Poor 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of batter into a round skillet pan.  The batter should be very thin.  Cook for just a couple minutes on each side.

Here the crepe has been flipped once and is cooking in an 8-inch skillet pan

Bechamel Sauce
From www.frenchcookingfordummies.com
4 Tablespoons butter
4 Tablespoons flour
2 Cups milk
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, grated
Salt and pepper

***Melt butter in a small sauce pan over low heat, but do not let it brown.  Add the flour and mix until completely combined.  Stir continuously for the next 4 to 5 minutes so that it does not brown at all.  Pour a little milk at a time while mixing, allowing the sauce to thicken as you go.  Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Aren't they amazingly beautiful?!

So, when you’re going to someone’s house for a BBQ and you want to bring a side, this is it!!!!  Not only do people love deviled eggs, you will get extra bonus points for making them look incredibly awesome and taste better than any before.  Always remember, people eat with their eyes.

Ingredients

This is what you need for awesome deviled eggs!

• dozen eggs (I always make a couple extra in case they somehow get messed up)
• 4 tablespoons mayo
• 1 tablespoon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• bacon (approximately 5 strips)
• 1 teaspoon of splenda or sugar (optional)

• crinkle cutter (this is another one of my favorite kitchen gadgets)
• white deviled egg plate
• large ziplock baggie

Directions

• Get a large pot and fill with hot water.  Put eggs in pot with lid and bring to a boil.  Once it is brought to a boil, keep it at a low boil for 12 minutes.
• Remove from pan and place in large bowl of ice water for five minutes.

Make sure it has a lot of ice in it. This keeps the eggs from continuing to cook.

• Leave in ice water for approximately 5 minutes
• Crack eggs and take off the shells
• Cut egg in half with crinkle cutter

Isn't this a beauty?! Notice the inside is all yellow and not green or brown. It is perfect when you follow my boiling instructions!

• Take all of the hardened yolks out of the eggs and put them in your large bag.
• Press on yolks with hand until the lumps are all gone.

This is the hard yolk of eggs in bag and crumbled all together.

• Add your mayo, mustard, salt (or bacon salt if you have it), pepper, vinegar and sugar
• Mix all together well
• Add more mayo if necessary
• Cut the corner off the bag (start really small and keep cutting if you need)

This is about how much should be cut off the tip.

• Fill each egg with mix and make a circular motion so your eggs look like these:

The piping makes a big difference!

• Chop up your bacon and sprinkle on top and wahlaaaaa, you’re done!

So, I never really paid attention to detail until I had a very detailed oriented husband.  It truly does make a difference!  Take the extra steps and everyone will be amazed!

I think everyone on the planet loves bacon, especially men (so make them this and they will LOVE you)!  Ever since I first read the story of the guys who created bacon salt a few years ago, I’ve been wanting.  Infused salts are nothing new, but the idea of easily infusing bacon flavor into almost anything seemed beyond amazing.  Bacon flavoring is not used often in grilling because it isn’t something people typically grill, so bacon salt would provide the perfect opportunity to add a kiss of bacon flavor to grilled steak, chicken, pork, and seafood.

Bacon + Salt = Bacon Salt

In concept, this should all be much, much more simple.  If you take some really crispy bacon and pulverize it, and add it to a bunch of salt, you get salt that tastes just like bacon.  In experimenting, we also added some black pepper into this to round it as a seasoning that could stand solidly on its own.

It's simple: Bacon, Salt, Pepper

We ground up the bacon using my favorite kitchen gadget again, the Magic Bullet, and further used it to mix in the salt and pepper thoroughly.  However, you don’t have to use the Magic Bullet to do this (although it is the best thing ever).  You could accomplish this with a food processor, a mini-food processor, a Morter and Pestle, or blender. A nice benefit to the Magic Bullet is that it has a sealable lid and also a ‘shaker’ lid so you can “shake it like a salt shaker”!

Here is the recipe:

Recipe: Homemade Bacon Salt

Ingredients

• 6 Slices of Extra Crispy Bacon – almost blackened
• 1/2 Cup Salt
• 3 Tbsp Ground Black Pepper (optional)

Instructions

1. Place the 6 slices of bacon into a grinding tool (Magic Bullet, Blender, Food Processor, etc)
2. Process until there are no large chunks
3. Add in the salt and process/mix until well blended
4. Mix in the black pepper
5. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator when not in use

Preparation time: 5 minute(s)

The bacon ready to be ground up

The finished product

Shake it like a salt shaker!

A Few Tips for Success

There are a few things that can help you make this really perfect:

1. You should use really, really cripy bacon.  In fact, it should just be turning black.
2. Cook the bacon in the oven, low and slow.  For us, 40 minutes at 325 rendered most of the fat out.  For this purpose, you don’t want fat in the bacon.
3. Use good quality salt.  When recipes require very few ingredients, you should really use the best you can get your hands on. So… skip the table salt.

What Do I Do With This?

Your options for this are really limitless.  Anywhere you would normally use salt, you can instead use your bacon salt!  Some delicious ideas to get you salivating include:

• Almost every grilled piece of meat.  A nice steak would only be made better with some bacon flavor.
• A fun topping for corn on the cob (or any other steamed vegetable)
• Sprinkled over a caprese salad (tomato, mozzarella, and basil)
• A nice alternative topping to deviled eggs (instead of paprika)
• A secret ingredient in guacamole

OK, times up.  Go make bacon salt.  Like right now.

My last baby food post was for vegetables.  You really can’t get any easier than veggies, but of course your precious needs fruits too!  So, here’s a step-by-step guide to making fruit.

What you need to get started

• saucepan
• apples (or fruit of choice)
• magic bullet or other blender or food processor
• large ziplock freezer bag
• ice tray

saucepan, apples (or fruit of choice), magic bullet or other blender or food processor, large ziplock freezer bag, and ice tray

Directions

• Peel and core as many apples (or other fruit) as you would like to use (don’t mind my coring job, my corer is awful)
• Cut up the apples a little more
• Throw them in the saucepan with water just covering the apples
• boil until soft (it took mine about 8 minutes)
• Put apples in magic bullet (I saved some out and will tell you why in a minute)
• Take some of the water from the sauce pan and put it in with apples in your blender
• Blend away (add water if they are too thick)
• Pour into ice cube tray
• Freeze and then pour into a ziplock bag with name and date on it

Here are my apples boiling. They smell SO good!

If you read my veggie post, I described a little bit of my love for the magic bullet. It seriously makes it so perfect.

I didn't quite fill up the ice cube tray because I saved some of the apples. Read below!

They always say “variety is the spice of life”.  So, I got ideas from walking down the baby aisle and seeing all of the different mixes they used.  We had some bananas so I took the rest of the apples and a banana and threw them in the bullet.  Wahlaaaaaa again, now we have apple-banana food too!

It's as easy as this!

Next, I might try some blueberry apples or some banana berry.  Yummm!  Be creative and have fun!!