Peach Crisp

This was a super easy one! We had bought some peaches at the farmer's market, but they were a little tart, so I decided to make them into a crisp, and it was SOO good!! I got this recipe from About.com

 

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 pounds fresh peaches, peeled, pitted
• 1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup soft butter

Preparation:

Butter an 8-inch square baking dish. Preheat oven to 375°.
Slice peeled, pitted peaches into the prepared baking dish. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon into a medium bowl. Cut butter into flour mixture with pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle crumbs evenly over peaches in baking dish. Bake at 375° for 45 to 50 minutes, until topping is golden brown and peaches are tender. Serve peach crisp warm with cream or whipped topping.

*I made this the next week with cherries instead of peaches, and that was good too!

Yummy Pumpkin Muffins

Pumpkin muffins are usually a fall thing, but when Eric told me last night that his office was having a potluck today and he volunteered to bring muffins, it didn't leave us with many options. The recipe calls for pumpkin pie spice, but I was afraid that would make it taste too Thanksgivingy, so I did vanilla instead. The recipe called for 1 cup of pumpkin puree, but the blog I got it from said they accidentally used the whole can and it was fine, so that's what we did.

I got it from http://muffintop.wordpress.com/, who got the recipe from Gourmet magazine.

INGREDIENTS:
1.5 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 15oz can solid-pack pumpkin

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla
1.25 cups plus 1 Tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

Equipment: 12 foil or paper muffin liners; a muffin pan with 12 (1/2-cup) muffin cups

DIRECTIONS:
Put oven rack in middle positiona nd preheat oven toe 350F. Put liners in muffin cups.
Whisk together flour and baking powder in a small bowl.
Whisk together pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, 1.25 cups sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined.
Stir together cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in another bowl.
Divide batter among muffin cups (each should be about 3/4 full).
Bake until puffed and golden brown and a wooden pick or skewer inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and cool to warm or room temperature.

*We made mini muffins and baked them for 14 minutes.

I love pumpkin muffins, and they weren't too Thanksgivingy at all. They were moist and pumpkiny and not too sweet. I think we may have to make a batch for ourselves now! Mini chocolate chips might not hurt it either...

The best chocolate chip cookies

These are the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made! It makes a smaller batch than on the Nestle bag but it is easily doubled (or tripled!) My dad was borrowing my camera for the week, and by the time I got it back, all the cookies were gone, so I'll just have to make them again to get a good picture!

1 1/2 plus 2 tbsp flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/3 cup vegetable shortening

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Beat sugars, butter, and shortening until creamy. Slowly mix in egg and vanilla, without stirring too much. 

Mix flour, baking soda, and salt, and stir into the bowl until mixed. Add chocolate chips.

Put walnut-sized balls of dough onto a greased sheet (the recipe said ungreased but I never trust it) and bake for 12 minutes.

This made about 24 cookies, but Eric did eat a lot of the dough while I was making them so it might make up to 30.

4th of July Trifle!

I volunteered to bring something to Uncle Rick and Aunt Laura's 4th of July party, and they said I could bring a dessert. I wanted something different and possibly red white and blue, and came up with this!

1 angel food cake, cubed

2 small boxes cheesecake flavored pudding

strawberries and blueberries (put about 40 blueberries aside)

Chop strawberries and put them in a bowl with some sugar to soften. Make the pudding as directed on the box.

Fill the bottom of a trifle bowl with angel food cake. Put half of the strawberries on top, then all of the blueberries. Then half of the pudding, the rest of the cake, strawberries, and pudding, then decorate the top with blueberries.  It got rave reviews at the party!

double chocolate banana oatmeal cookies

I totally made this recipe up, and will be serving it to the kids I teach at Pioneer Club at church tonight for the November birthdays. It was easy to prepare and soo good (not to mention somewhat healthier than many cookies as there is no oil or butter)

1 package of chocolate cake mix
1 large egg
1/2 cup of water
1 mashed banana
1 cup of oatmeal
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine cake mix, egg, and water. Beat until well blended. Stir in mashed banana, oatmeal, and chips until well mixed.

Drop by teaspoon about 1 inch apart onto greased cooke sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes.














Other mix in ideas:

Instead of banana, you could use peanut butter for chocolate peanut butter cookies

Instead of oatmeal, you could do crushed graham cracker, and do mini marshmallows instead of chocolate chips for s'more cookies

Worlds most amazing smoothie

We finally got around to buying a stick blender, the Cuisinart CSB-76 Smartstick! So far we've only made smoothies and spaghetti sauce but it is the best way of getting vegetables into things that don't usually have vegetables. We bought a bunch of kale, and blended some into the spaghetti sauce.

Then today, I made a super smoothie. I started by washing a handful of kale and trimming off the stems. Then I put in some frozen peaches, pineapple, grapes, and blueberries, and some mandarin oranges from a jar. I splashed in some Bolthouse Farms C-Boost and some Pom Wonderful pomegranate mango juice for liquid, and then added a spoonful of wheat germ and a spoonful of flax seed meal.

Blended it up and you can't even taste the kale (it showed up pretty green in the picture but you actually can't see it unless you look realllly hard)

One thing we discovered on Sunday though is that you shouldn't eat a smoothie with blueberries in it on your way to somewhere or else you'll be scraping blueberry skin off your teeth in the church parking lot

This is definitely something to keep in mind for everyone, but kids in particular will love this. Its sweet but has no added sugar, (actually mine did because I used mandarin oranges but we ate all the other fruit in the house so I had to cheat) and you could even use low fat yogurt or vanilla frozen yogurt to make it more milkshake-like. It took maybe 5 minutes from getting out all the ingredients, washing and trimming the kale, and getting it all blended.

Plus you get all kinds of good stuff, kale is one of the most nutritious vegetables, plus it has a decent amount of calcium, and blueberries and grapes are so high in antioxidants, wheat germ is a good source of folic acid, and flaxseed meal has fiber and omega-3 fats!

Beat that, ice cream!

Give us a break, we're newlyweds

My parents sometimes tell a story about when they were first married and they would fry pieces of dough for dessert.

We were getting a few things at Meijer the other night and it was a gloomy rainy evening, and as we were going past the s'mores display, we decided to see if our electric stove would roast a marshmallow. It was very fitting for the kind of evening it was. We went home, put on pajamas, roasted marshmallows and played games until bed time.

I think it was one of those newlywed nights we'll always remember, and tell our kids someday.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

These are the best peanut butter cookies EVER! Aunt Karen gave me this recipe years ago, and I've been famous for them ever since.

1 cup peanut butter (creamy or crunchy will work)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Put egg in the bowl and whisk with a fork until frothy. Add sugar and mix well. Add vanilla and peanut butter. Make sure its thoroughly mixed!

Make small balls (big ones don't work as well) on a cookie sheet, then flatten slightly with a fork. Bake 10-12 minutes.

World's Best Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 beaten eggs

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (I used 1 cup and it was soo good)

3-4 mashed ripe bananas

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Prepare a 9x5x3" loaf pan with grease and flour

Preheat oven to 350°

Cream butter & sugar

Add everything else in order as listed above

Sprinkle chocolate chips on top

Bake @ 350° for 50-60 minutes

Coco-Kahlua Float

Put a scoop of ice cream in the bottom of a tall drinking glass.

Add
1 shot glass kahlua
1 shot glass coconut rum
Cover the ice cream with chocolate syrup
fill to the top with milk.