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Fun Halloween Recipes!

October 12, 2011 By 4 Comments

I love Halloween!  It’s just a good, old-fashioned fun kids holiday and I always look forward to it.  I wanted to share with you some of my favorite recipes that I’ve come across lately.  I can’t wait to try these!

Saucy Spider with Hair Leg Breadsticks!

Isn’t this ADORABLE?!  It’s a pizza dough bread bowl with pizza sauce for dipping.  It would be really simple to put together, especially if you use pre-made dough (although home made pizza dough is very easy).  Visit Woman’s Day for the recipe.

Pumpkin Rice Krispies Treats

How cute are these!?  My friend Cat used her Wilton ice cream bowl pan to shape these spooky little treats.  My kids LOVE rice krispie treats (don’t they all?!).  I might need to go find this pan so I can make my own.  Visit Food Family Finds for the recipe!

Halloween Tombstone Cupcakes

 Julie has been busy over on her blog , The Little Kitchen, because she has three new Halloween treats and they all look so good!  I do believe my favorite has to be these adorable Tombstone Cupcakes.  They are so much fun and look like they would be really easy to whip up.

Mini Halloween Pumpkin Cakes

Busy Mommy, Emily created these pretty little pumpkin cakes using a mini-bundt pan.  Such a simple recipe created something very dramatic and fun for your next Fall party.

Scary Spider Cake

This is my very own Scary Spider Cake that I made for a Halloween party in 2008!  It was a hit and all the kids were so impressed and I thought I was the bomb for making it.  Well, it seems it’s quite a popular cake and Dee over at Two of a Kind Working on a Full House has her own version that quite frankly, puts mine to shame!

What is on your list for Halloween baking?  Do you have any fun treats that you are making?  If so, please share!  I love to be inspired by others creativity (since I am totally uncreative).

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Recipe: Cauliflower-Cheddar Soup

October 12, 2011 By 4 Comments

I love Fall.  I love everything about Halloween and Thanksgiving and then knowing that Christmas is right around the corner makes me giggle.  I love when the weather gets cool (of course, it’s all relative being in Southern California!) and I can start making belly warming recipes for my family.

This past week, I was shopping with my mom and we were at Kohl’s.  They had a collection of Holiday books by the register that were selling for only $5.00 (proceeds going to the Kohl’s Cares children charity…total win-win), one of the books was the Good Housekeeping “A Very Merry Christmas Cookbook.”

A holiday cookbook for five bucks…how could we resist!?

There are so many delicious looking recipes in this cookbook that I can’t wait to try.  There is sections for appetizers, main dishes, special deserts and even beverages.

This is totally not a sponsored cookbook review either, I just am really truly excited to try some of these recipes.

One item that caught both mine and my mom’s eye was the Cauliflower-cheddar soup.  It seemed really simple to make and had us both drooling in the car on the way home.  We both decided that we would stop at the grocery store for cauliflower so we could both make it.

It’s also important to note that me and my mom live next door to each other.  And we both bought ingredients to make soup.  Yeeeah…we had a lot of soup!

Anyhow….

This soup was SO GOOD!  And SO EASY!

My mom made it Friday night and then I made my version Saturday night.  We ended up having a good old-fashioned soup cook-off (I won).  Here is the recipe so you can go out and make your own:

Cauliflower-Cheddar Soup

(adapted from Good Housekeeping’s “A Very Merry Christmas” cookbook)

Ingredients:

  • 2 tbs butter
  • 1 medium onion, finely chopped
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1 head cauliflower (appox 2.5 lbs) cut into 1 inch pieces
  • 1 tsp dijon mustard (I used dry mustard)
  • 3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese (original recipe called for 2 cups…but it wasn’t cheesy enough for me)

Preparation:

In large saucepan or dutch oven, melt butter over medium heat.  Add your onion and cook until golden (about 10 minutes).  Stir in the flour and salt and mix well.  Gradually stir in the milk, broth (I used 2 cubes chicken bouillon to 14.5 oz water since I didn’t have a can of stock on hand) and water.  Add your cauliflower pieces and bring to a boil over high heat.  Once boiling, reduce heat and cover.  Simmer over medium-low heat for 15 minutes or until cauliflower is tender.

The original recipe states to now put the hot, cooked cauliflower in batches into a blender to smooth.  My mom did this on her batch and 1st it was a PIA and 2nd, it left the cauliflower “piecey.”  We were not in love with the results (even though it tasted great, it had a weird texture).   So I took my hand-held immersion blender to my Dutch oven and whirled it around for a few minutes.  I didn’t want to completely puree it since we like the larger chunks of cauliflower to come through.  So I just eye-balled it…it was probably about 3-5 minutes of blending.  It was PERFECT!

After the cauliflower has been pureed, add your shredded cheese and dried mustard.  Remove from heat and stir until cheese has melted.

Garnish soup with shredded cheese and/or crackers. Enjoy!

 

We have since made this same recipe using broccoli and it turned out amazingly good, too.  Only the cheese and broccoli kind of clumped together and we aren’t sure what caused that.  Sure tasted good though!

 

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Star Wars Birthday Cake

October 4, 2011 By 11 Comments

This Star Wars Death Star cake was a lot harder to execute than I had anticipated.

I had SUCH a difficult time making the fondant.  I think it might have been the rainy weather.  It was too dry, then it was too sticky.  Then I added some Crisco and it was a globby mess.  I started it over THREE times before I was able to get the cake covered.  I also spelled “birthday” wrong but luckily was able to fix it.

I made the Death Star out of rice crispy treats and then tried “painting” the details on with black gel food coloring.  I wouldn’t recommend you try it.  The food coloring doesn’t dry (very quickly) and anytime we handled the Death Star we got black color all over our hands…and shirt…and pants…and table….

It may not be THE coolest cake in the world…but my seven year old and all of his friends thought it was pretty awesome.

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Chocolate Pie Recipe by Amanda

September 29, 2011 By 4 Comments

Like Rhea, I love to cook. OK, so she bakes. Potato, potahto. I bake too, but I MUST have a recipe, and none of that fancy fondant stuff she does. I must prefer to cook where I can add a dash of this, a hand full of that, and it all turns out OK. Other aspects of my day are so measured out that I like that I can let go in the kitchen. That’s why today, I’m going to give you one of my favorite, easy dessert recipes. There’s no baking, no letting it set in the fridge, nada. Just mix, pour, top, and eat. This pie is so easy, I can make three of them in 20 minutes for pot lucks.

Chocolate Pie

Ingredients:
1 premade Oreo pie crust
8oz. cream cheese**
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 container whipped topping
1 small pkg instant chocolate pudding

Directions:
1. Soften cream cheese.
2. Beat in sugar and vanilla. Scrape bowl and mix well.
3. Slowly beat in milk.
4. Slowly add in pudding mix. (This is important or you’ll have pudding mix all over. I speak from experience.)
5. Pour into crust.
6. Top with whipped topping.
7. Eat! No need to let this one set. It’s all ready to go.

*You can top this with chopped nuts, sprinkles, or whatever else your heart desires to add texture, or add a visual look you like.
**Using full fat cream cheese makes a denser pie, while using fat free makes a lighter one. I usually opt for the 1/3 fat cream cheese.

Did you like Amanda’s recipe? You can also find her talking about food, Army life, and raising two boys on the autism spectrum atConfessions From HousholdSix. If you prefer random ramblings, you can find Amanda on Twitter @householdsix and sometimes she remembers to post to her blog’s Facebook page.

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Back to School Recipe: Pizza Sticks

August 28, 2011 By 7 Comments

The kids are going back to school tomorrow.  No more homeschool for me (is your company hiring?  I need a job).  I made the difficult decision to send the kids off to school instead of keeping them home.  They are very excited about it!  And, I have to admit, I am a little excited about it, too.  So much so, that I’ve been busy this week planning out fun little lunches for them to take to school.

I came across a suggestion to make Pizza Sticks that could easily be made in advance, frozen and tossed into a lunch box with a container of pizza sauce for dipping.  My boys are big fans of pizza so I decided today to try them out.

They are SO good!

I just went searching for a basic and simple pizza dough recipe.  Then once it was risen, I added in some chopped pepperoni and shredded Parmesan.  I think this would be really good with some mozzarella or cheddar tossed in as well!

The dough was really sticky when I was trying to roll it into sticks.  They ended up being big ole fat sticks.  I need to remember to buy some cornmeal.

They baked up nice and golden brown in about 20 minutes.  The house smelled SO good!

I then took a pair of scissors and cut the sticks into pieces instead of logs and let them cool.  I plan on putting them in a tupperware with a side of pizza sauce for dipping.  FUN!

Lunchbox Pizza Sticks

(modified from AllRecipes)

  • 1 pkg active dry yeast
  • 1 cup warm water
  • 2 cups flour (I used all-purpose)
  • 2 Tbs olive oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp white sugar
  • 1/2 Tbs Italian (or pizza) seasoning
  • 1/2 cup chopped pepperoni
  • 1/2 cup shredded parmesan

In a mixing bowl dissolve the packet of yeast in the warm water.  Let set about 10 minutes (until creamy looking).  Add flour, olive oil, salt, sugar and Italian seasoning and mix on low speed of a mixer (or by hand) until well mixed.  You don’t need a dough hook here.

Cover bowl with a towel and let the dough rise till about double, approximately 30-45 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Once dough is risen, add pepperoni and paremesan and mix lightly with your fingers or a spoon.  Dough will be sticky.  Turn out onto a well floured surface and form into sticks.

Now, I was thinking that next time, I might just form the dough into a rectangle and bake whole.  Once baked, I can then cut into strips/sticks.   But this time, I formed four, long sticks (length of cookie sheet) and baked on a floured (or cornmealed) surface for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

Once, cool, cut into desired size pieces and freeze.  Sticks can be put into the lunch box frozen in the morning and will be thawed by lunch.  Serve with pizza sauce.

 

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