Easter Egg Hunt Fare

Today we had our 2nd Annual Easter Egg Hunt and I'm proud to say it was a huge success! Part of that is probably in thanks to the food of course! Here's what we ate:

Candy, of course!

Clockwise from bottom left: Veggies and Cheese from a guest, Grapes from a guest, Annie's Organic Bunny Snack Mix (3 boxes!), Marinated Olives, Mee Maw's Deviled Eggs, and Nana's Deviled Eggs.

Carrot and Ranch Dip Shooters, Assorted Cheeses (from Costco), Grapes and Strawberries. We also had Hebrew National Hot Dogs with all the condiments, Beer & Wine, Lemonade, Sweet Tea, and plenty of Juice Boxes for the kiddos.

Homemade Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (both recipes from my Betty Crocker Cookbook). The frosting and jellybeans on top are supposed to look like Bird's Nests :)

And perhaps the biggest hit: Carrot Cake Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting. (I purchased the royal frosting carrots for the top.) Recipe Below because it was requested a lot!

Carrot Cupcakes with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing
from Allrecipes.com
(makes 12 cupcakes)

2 oz white chocolate
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 C unsalted butter, softened
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 t orange extract
4 C powdered sugar
2 T heavy cream

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/8 C white sugar
1/3 C brown sugar
1/2 C vegetable oil
1 t vanilla extract
2 C shredded carrots
1/2 C crushed pineapple
1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 1/4 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t ground ginger
1 C chopped walnuts 

Preheat oven to 350. Line or lightly grease 12 muffin cups. 

For Icing
In small saucepan, melt white chocolate over low heat (or you can carefully melt it in the microwave). Stir until smooth, and allow to cool to room temperature. In a bowl, beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Mix in white chocolate, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and orange extract. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Mix in heavy cream. 


For Cake
Beat together the eggs, white sugar, and brown sugar in a bowl, and mix in the oil and vanilla. Fold in carrots and pineapple. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Mix flour mixture into the carrot mixture until evenly moist. Fold in 1/2 cup walnuts. Transfer to the prepared muffin cups. Bake 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool completely on wire racks before topping with the icing and sprinkling with remaining walnuts.

Valentine's Day Fare

Well, the girls ate very well and very festively today! Here's what they had:

Breakfast: Whole Wheat Heart-shaped Pancakes with Strawberry Jam Filling, Strawberry Smoothies.

Heart-shaped Sugar Cookies with Raspberry Buttercream Frosting

Lunch: Fruit salad, Green Salad, and Pizza with Heart-shaped Salami

Raspberry Lemonade with cute straws :)

Dessert: The kids decorated their own cookies with lots and lots of candy

Dinner: The girls dined "Lady and The Tramp" style. Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Homemade Meatballs. That's Amore :)

Chocolate Half Birthday Cake with Naturally Purple Frosting

Today was Cora's half birthday and to celebrate we had the usual half birthday cake. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted a few days ago she said "Chocolate Cake with Purple Icing." I immediately thought, "How can I make purple icing without food coloring?" Well, it didn't take too much searching to figure it out and now I have a technique I can use for every occasion. I LOVED the color of this cake and Cora did too. And even better, it tasted FANTASTIC! This will be my new go-to chocolate cake recipe and I'll be playing with icing colors for years to come :)

Chocolate Cake
from Betty Crocker's Cookbook, Bridal Edition

2 1/4 C flour
1 2/3 C sugar
3/4 C butter, softened
2/3 C baking cocoa
1 1/4 C water
1 1/4 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t vanilla
1/4 t baking powder
2 large eggs

Heat oven to 350. Grease bottom and sides of rectangular pan, 13x9x2 inches, 2 round pans, 9x1.5 inches, or 3 round pans, 8x1.5 inches, with shortening. Lightly flour (I used baking cocoa instead of flour).
Beat all ingredients with electric mixture on low speed for 30 seconds, scraping bowl constantly. Beat on high speed for 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into pan(s).
Bake rectangle 40 to 45 minutes, rounds 30 to 35 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool rectangle in pan on wire rack. Cool rounds 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour.
*To make the half birthday cake I baked two 9-inch round cakes, cut each in half from the top to make four halves, and stacked them with frosting between the layers.

Naturally Purple Buttercream Frosting

Begin by placing about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of frozen blueberries in a pan on the stove. Cook over low heat until blueberries burst and release their juices. Smash and strain thru a sieve to obtain blueberry juice. (you can add the blueberry pulp to some yogurt for a snack if you'd like!) Cool completely.
Next, make a double batch of Vanilla Buttercream Frosting, adding only 2 tablespoons of milk. Replace the remainder of the milk with your reserved blueberry juice until you reach the desired color of frosting. If your frosting gets too thin add more powdered sugar. Then frost and enjoy! The blueberries give the frosting a gorgeous purple color and a only a very slight hint of fruity flavor.

Super Bowl Grub

 

 On the menu:

Shredded Beef Soft Tacos with all the fixings

Homemade Guacamole & Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa with chips

Cilantro Lime Rice

Uncle Steve's Buffalo Chicken Dip with chips, carrots, and celery sticks

And our neighbors made these AWESOME homemade cream puffs that they topped with strawberries, melted chocolate, powdered sugar, and whipped cream. So good!

Leyna's 4th Birthday Party Fare

You can read all about Leyna's "Pixies and Pirates" party here but I just wanted to also post the party menu here. Each food was based on the special "talent" of one of the fairies who star in the Tinker Bell movies. Everything turned out SO cute and tasty :)

Pirate plates for the boys and Tinker Bell plates for the girls. Found the colorful utensils at the dollar store!

Tinker Bell's Wands. Pretzel sticks with Colby Jack stars on top. I used a mini cookie cutter from Pampered Chef for the stars.

Silvermist's Dew Drop Drinks. Silvermist is a Water Fairy.

Iridessa's Rainbow Fruit Salad. Iridessa is a Light Fairy. This rainbow is made up of Red Delicious apples, Mandarin oranges, thawed frozen mango, green grapes, blueberries, and red grapes.

Rosetta's PB&J Flowers. Rosetta is a Garden Fairy. I cut whole wheat bread with a large flower cookie cutter, and then I cut an additional flower out of the middle of half of the flowers using the mini flower cookie cutter from Pampered Chef. I spread peanut butter on the whole flower, topped it with the double-cut flower, and filled the center with strawberry jam. Does that make any sense at all?

Fawn's Bird's Nests. Fawn is an Animal Fairy. These were probably the biggest hit of the food portion of the party. The morning of I put frozen meatballs and a jar of spaghetti sauce in the slow cooker and set it on low so they would warm up by party time. I pressed store-bought pizza dough into muffin tins and baked them until they were light brown. I cooked spaghetti noodles and tossed them with a bit of olive oil. I assembled the dough cups, noodles, and meatballs as shown and then topped them with Wilton candy eyeballs  and cut carrot triangles for the beaks. CUTE!

Vidia's Fiery Jalapeno Bites. Vidia is a wind fairy and she's the feistiest, grumpiest fairy there is. We have bags of these homemade poppers in our freezer so we popped them in the oven and served them up for adults only.

And finally the cake. This thing was a nightmare from the cake, to the icing, and almost the fondant but it turned out alright in the end. I made our usual birthday cake and buttercream icing recipes, which you can find here. I found Wilton fondant that was already colored and used that for the flowers and the number 4 (which was the most important part of the cake to Leyna). At the bottom I wrapped some Tinker Bell ribbon. Not too shabby!

3rd Annual Football Kickoff Cook-off: Wings

Today was exactly what the title says. We've been doing this every year for Andy's birthday and the beginning of football season. The past two years we did sliders and this year we did wings. Wow were they good. 13 kinds of wings and unfortunately I didn't quite get pictures of all of them.
Here were the winners:
1st place: Wang Thangs by Uncle Andy & Aunt Kim
2nd place: Mango Buffalo Wings with Cilantro Lime Dipping Sauce by ME!
3rd place: Chicken Cordon Bleu Your Mind by Uncle Steve

Amber's yummy spinach dip with crackers

Andy's wings - REALLY good

Uncle Andy and Aunt Kim's wings - they won first place by a mile with 27 points.

My wings. These won second place with 12 points.

Uncle Doug & "Deesa's" wings. Such a cool presentation.

Uncle Steve's Cordon Bleu Your Mind bites. These came in 3rd place with 9 points.

Football Rice Krispie Treats. To be honest these tasted good but were a pain in the butt and I'll never make them again. In fact, I gave up after making 12 and made the giant football pictured below out of the rest of the ingredients :)

This rubber chicken served as our alarm every time a new batch of wings was up and ready for tasting. It was quite a hit :)

Complimentary digestive aids

The winners and their prizes. They got to take home the rubber chicken and an awesome certificate! :)

Back to School Feast

Well, it's more like First Day of School Feast but it's going to be a tradition so I'll just start calling it that now! Tomorrow is Leyna's first day of school so this evening we wanted to set up a little something to make her feel extra special and confident. The girls got dressed up, I set the table extra special, and I made some of Leyna's favorite foods. Slow cooker lasagna (recipe below), salad with ranch (Leyna had 2 helpings!), and a special surprise dessert - S'mores! Leyna really enjoyed her feast and says she wants to do it again ASAP :)

Slow Cooker Lasagna

Ingredients
1 jar of your favorite pasta sauce
1 box lasagna noodles (it seems to work fine with either the boil kind or the oven ready kind)
1 15-oz container ricotta cheese
1 bag baby spinach
1 C grated Parmesan cheese
16 oz mozzarella cheese (I actually used a shredded mexican blend this time and it was good)


Directions

Use a 4 quart slow cooker. Put about 1/4 cup of sauce into the bottom and spread it around. Add a layer of uncooked lasagna noodles (you'll have to break them to make a layer). Smear ricotta cheese onto the noodles. Add a handful or two of baby spinach and top with a sprinkling of Parmesan and shredded cheeses. Repeat layers until you've run out of ingredients.
Cover and cook on low for 5-6 hours, or on high for 3-4. You'll know it's done when the top layer begins to brown and the cheese is melted and bubbly. Test a noodle to make sure it's cooked all the way.
Enjoy!!! I found myself sneaking a few bites of cold lasagna straight from the crock before I went to bed :)

Cora's Birthday Party Food

Today we had Cora's birthday party - beach style. I think the food was a big success so I'm going to share the recipes here for everyone else to try, and so I can find them next time I need them!

First off, my favorite part - the "CAKE." Cora is not a huge cake fan but she loves dirt pudding so with a beach theme I thought it would be a perfect match. Our friend and neighbor Allie makes the absolute best dirt pudding and was nice enough to let me have her recipe. I doubled it so it would fill this huge bucket and then I topped it with crushed Nilla wafers and chocolate shells. We managed to devour all but about 3 or 4 servings. YUM!

Dirt Pudding
Ingredients
1 package Oreos
1 stick of butter - softened
8 oz cream cheese - softened
1 C powdered sugar
2 4-serving boxes of Instant Vanilla Pudding
3 1/2 C milk
12 oz Cool Whip
1 t vanilla

Directions
Crush Oreos in a food processor and set aside.
In a stand mixer combine butter, cream cheese, and powdered sugar and blend until well combined. Add boxes of pudding, milk, cool whip, and vanilla and combine until smooth (I switched from the paddle attachment to the whisk attachment for this part).
Now you're ready to assemble. All you have to do is alternate layers of the cookie mixture and pudding mixture in the container of you choice and enjoy!

In addition to the cake we also had 53 of these adorable little Flip Flop Milano Cookies. I got the idea here. I used the Milk Chocolate Milano cookies, either strawberry or lemon icing, flower shaped sprinkles, and assorted fruit Twizzlers. I have to say that cutting the Twizzlers was a huge pain, but I got it down to a science after a bit and using kitchen scissors was definitely the way to go.

For the main meal we had:

These Octopus Hot Dogs
Slow Cooker Carolina BBQ
Baked Shells & cheese (see below for our go-to recipe - passed down from Nana)
Chips with Pioneer Woman's Restaurant Style Salsa
Chick-fil-A Coleslaw
Watermelon
and we washed everything down with Pee Paw's Famous Lemonade. It was a big hit!

Baked Macaroni & Cheese
Ingredients
1 package (16 oz) macaroni (shells, elbow - be creative!)
1/2 C butter
1/2 C flour
salt & ground black pepper to taste
5 C milk (I use 2-3 cups Half and Half and the rest 1% milk)
4 C (16 oz) shredded cheddar - USE GOOD CHEESE! I use half sharp cheddar (NOT WalMart brand) and half 4-Cheese Cheddar blend from Kraft

Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cook pasta according to package directions. In a large saucepan over medium heat melt the butter. Whisk in flour, salt, and pepper and cook for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Gradually whisk in milk/half and half mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens and mixture begins to boil. Add cheese, switching to a wooden spoon to stir, and stir until melted. Dump cooked pasta into a greased 3-quart casserole dish. Pour cheese sauce over top and stir to mix. Bake 30 minutes until bubbly. Makes 8-10 servings. Definitely make 2 pans for party - it goes fast!