Thursday, December 31, 2020

Cream Cheese Cookies

I usually make cream cheese cookies using a cake mix. However, not this time.


 With some research on how to best use up some cream cheese on hand, I had created these cream cheese cookies.

 1 3/4 cup flour

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1/2 cup soften butter

6 ounce cream cheese (it is what I had on hand. Haven't tried it with the full 8 ounce block) 

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine dry ingredients, set aside. Cream butter, cream cheese, and sugar. Add egg and vanilla. Add in the dry ingredients. Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes. Form into 1 inch balls and coat in sugar. Place on baking sheet and press down slightly. Bake 8-10 minutes until set. Only the bottoms should be golden brown.





Sunday, December 27, 2020

Tasty Eats and Fruit Cake Recipe

I thought I would end the year with a Tasty Eats post and share all the yummy goodness from the past couple of weeks.

First up is a Cinnabon holiday rolled pancake mug set we got for Christmas. It not only includes mugs, but stuff to make rolled pancakes, the frosting/filling and hot cocoa mix (for 2) you will need an egg (which I initially forgot to add in), oil and milk for the pancakes and butter and cream cheese for the filling. Overall it was very tasty and don't be surprised to see a rolled pancake post in the future.





 



Next I have a bunch of candy. I make a bunch of candy just before Christmas to share with immediate family and my husband's co-workers. I have a blog post about it to include the recipe for the peanut clusters on my newest blog here.

toffee squares

peanut clusters

flourless peanut butter cookies

divinity

fudge


This is a cup of coffee with instant hot chocolate added, Cool Whip, chocolate syrup, and sprinkles. 


Next is fruit cake. I have never made fruit cake and a recipe had come the recipe from an email sent by our church. The original recipe had figs in it. we could not find figs at the time so figs was replaced by dates. I know fruit cake gets a bad rap, but this was really tasty.


So here is the fruit cake recipe:
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1 cup chopped raisins
1 cup chopped figs...or dates
2 cups flour
3 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon honey

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
Grease and flour 9 1/2 in round pan (Bundt pan)
Coat the chopped fruit and almonds in a little bit of flour. Set aside.
Blend in butter, sugar, spices, and salt.
Beat egg yolks and add to butter mixture.
Sift flour and baking powder, add to butter mixture along with water and honey.
add in the fruits and almonds
Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry.
Fold in the egg whites into the batter
Bake for 50-60 minutes.

Not sure how long the cake is suppose to set before you invert it out of a pan. I did it after a few minutes. It still stuck a little in the pan for me, even greasing and flouring the pan. But it wasn't too bad.
I also feel you can get creative with the dried fruit and maybe even add some coconut. I still have raisins and dates left, so I think I will be making it again soon.

Finally I have sour cream cookies. It was the last day at work before an extended holiday break and I received some candy canes. One of them broke so I found a sour cream cookie recipe and added broken candy candy. I was not the traditional peppermint flavor but I think it was strawberry. It was tasty if you like fake strawberry flavor candy cane.


This is likely the last post of the year, so Happy New Year and hopefully in 2021 we will start seeing things go back to normal. I still think we will be dealing with the pandemic for a while yet, so stay safe.

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Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Poppy Seed Muffins

 The reasoning for making poppy seed muffins involves coming across two full containers of poppy seeds. How come I have so many poppy seeds? Likely that we have bought poppy seeds for a recipe, then needed poppy seed again in the future and forgot there was another container. So now the mission was to use up some of the poppy seeds. After searching Pinterest I had come across this recipe.


It is a Classic Poppy Seed Bread Recipe by Julie Blanner. I followed the recipe found on the blog post. The only addition I made is that I added some lemon zest from a lemon. I used the juice from the lemon to make the glaze. Instead of making it into a loaf pan, I made it into a large muffing tins that I recently bought from Michaels because he need large muffin tins to make..... 

.....these bacon, egg, sausage, and cheese cups.  The breakfast cups were tasty, however my husband was not satisfied because the bacon was to form a cup and it shrunk too much and it was just a disk on the bottom.  Everyone enjoyed both the poppy seed muffins and the breakfast cups.

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Monday, December 14, 2020

Birthday Cake Bars

 I mentioned in my last blog post that I was going to make Birthday Cake Bars with my grandson. Here is the result:


The recipe for the bar is found here at the Food Network site:

Look for the Birthday Cake bars, which will direct you to make the Sugar Cookie bars. I made the vanilla frosting by combining 1 1/2 tablespoons of soft butter, 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla and just enough milk to get it to the frosting consistency, about 1-2 tablespoons. Of course he wanted blue frosting, so I added blue food coloring.


Here is the cake before it was frosted. My grandson is 7 and enjoyed to process of making these bars to include reading the recipe for these bars. There are still going to be more bars coming. He wants to make the M&M version next.


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Friday, December 11, 2020

Triple Decker Brownie

One day I was in the mood to make brownies. I usually have grandchildren over every Sunday and one of the activities we do is make cookies. My grandson was on board with brownies. So off to find a brownie recipe. I have a Food Network magazine from September 2015 that has a 50 bar recipes in it and I knew there would be a brownie recipe. At this point my grandson is looking over the 50 different recipes and we decide on the triple decker bars. I had all the ingredients to make them. Triple Decker Bars



What it is is a bottom layer of brownie dough, a layer of chocolate sandwich cookies (Oreos) , topped with a blondie recipe. What I did was follow the recipe in the magazine and cut the brownie and blondie recipe in half. I wanted to make it in the oblong pan shown below. In the long run it turned out a little thick.


Eventually my grandson got overzealous and really shoved the cookies into the brownie mixture.  I wished I had used a different pan, because I thought it was too thick. I ended up failing in baking it. I ended up overcooking the outside just so that the inside was raw. If I make this again I would still cut the recipe in half and use 9 inch square pan.


So to make these bars you can find the recipe along with 49 other bar recipes here. I know next time was are going to make the birthday cake bar because my grandson has a birthday next week.  I might also the gluten free peanut butter chocolate bars. My husband's boss can't eat gluten and I thought it would be a nice thought to make these bars.

Or you can make your favorite brownie recipe and blondie recipe and have a layer of Oreo's in the middle. 

 

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Wednesday, December 09, 2020

Mexican Mac and Cheese

I was looking through my older blog posts, and I came across  Mexican Mac Bake from June2011. What it is an amped up blue box  mac and cheese. I has ground beef, salsa, sour cream, onion, and cheese. 



I am always a fan of macaroni and cheese and knew I had to make this again. My husband had originally made this and this time I made it. Here is the original recipe as it appeared in 2011:

1 pound ground beef
6 ounce jar of salsa
1/4 cup sour cream
2 Boxes macaroni and cheese (1/2 cup milk and butter to prepare the macaroni and cheese)
8 ounces of taco cheese
1 yellow onion
1/4 cup bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Brown ground beef and onion, drain well. Prepare the macaroni and cheese as instructed on the box. Mix beef with sour cream and salsa. Mix the macaroni and cheese with the beef mixture. Place into large (9 x 13) casserole dish, spreading out evenly. Top with taco cheese and bread crumbs. Bake 20 minutes is until cheese is melted.


I pretty much followed the same recipe, except I had regular cheddar cheese instead of taco flavored cheese. I added about 1 tablespoon of taco seasoning to the ground beef.  

After making this recipe up again, it turned out to be a hit. Will it be 9 years before I make this again? I might make it again without the blue boxes of mac and cheese and use elbow noodles and the melty cheese in the yellow box.


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