Blue Ribbon Winner

This Frozen Apple and Peanut Butter Cloud Pie may be my favorite dessert ever. The recipe comes from the cookbook, Apple Pie Perfect, by Ken Haedrich. When I tasted it, I knew it was a prize winner. I entered it into the county fair and, as you can see, it won first place! It's absolutely delicious. As I said, it was rainy, snowy, and 41 degrees today so it was a perfect day to spend in the kitchen. You will love this recipe!

Ingredients:
1 large graham cracker crust

Apple Layer:
2 tbs. unsalted butter
3 firm-textured cooking apples (such as golden delicious), peeled, cored, and sliced
1/4 c. granulated sugar
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tbs. confectioners' sugar

Peanut Butter Cloud Layer:
1 c. heavy whipping cream
1- 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1 c. smooth peanut butter
3/4 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. firmly packed light brown sugar
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large egg whites
1/2 c. finely chopped salted dry-roasted peanuts

Directions:
1) Set crust aside.
2) To prepare the apple layer, melt the butter in a large saute pan. Stir in the apples and granulated sugar and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until almost tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and confectioners' sugar and cook, stirring, for 1 minute longer. Remove from the heat, scrape the apples onto a plate, and let cool thoroughly.
3) When the apples have cooled, spoon them into the crust. Use a slotted spoon and reserve the remaining juice. Put the pie shell into freezer. After 20 minutes, pour remaining juice into shell.
4) To make the peanut butter cloud layer, use an electric mixer to whip the heavy cream until it holds semi-firm peaks. Cover and refrigerate.
5)Using the mixer, beat the cream cheese and peanut butter together until smooth. Gradually beat in the sugars, then the vanilla. Mixture will be lumpy. Add the whipped cream to the peanut butter mixture, slowly blending them together with the mixer until smooth.
6)Clean and dry the beaters. Using a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until they hold stiff peaks. Fold the whites into the peanut butter mixture with a rubber spatula until evenly blended. Scrape the mixture over the apples and smooth with spoon. Sprinkle the chopped nuts over the pie. Loosely cover with aluminum foil and place in freezer for at least 5 hours, until firm. Remove from freezer about 15 minutes prior to slicing.

For an extra flavor, swirl chocolate sauce over top of pie to serve.

This cookbook has over 100 additionally delicious recipes!

Spring Break, Day 1

Today was the first official day of Spring Break and the high was 41 degrees. Blah!! The girls have chosen several recipes from Jessi's Cookbook, Better Homes and Gardens New Junior Cookbook, to make this week. Since it was so cold today and raining and snowing, Eskimo Cicles were an obvious choice. They were easy for the girls to make and actually very tasty! We look forward to trying different flavors and making these in the hot days of summer!

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups cubed, seeded watermelon

1/2 c fresh or frozen raspberries, thawed

1/4 c. sugar

1 tbs lemon juice

Directions:

1) Put the melon, raspberries, sugar, and lemon juice in the blender. Cover blender with lid and blend on high speed until smooth.

2) Pour blended fruit mixture into the cups (We used 3 oz. dixie cups) or pop molds. Put cups in baking pan. Cover each cup or mold with foil. Use knife to make a small hole in center of foil. Slide wooden popcicle stick or lollipop stick through the hole into the fruit mixture in cup.

3) Put baking pan in the freezer. Freeze several hours or overnight until pops are firm. Remove from freezer. Remove foil and tear paper cups away.

Makes 9- 3 oz. pops

Hip Hip Hurray!!

Congratulations to Ryan for recently graduating from ITT Tech with a Bachelor's Degree. It was a long road and a great job!

Me and my sissy at Ryan's graduation!

And us all....

Slow Cooker Heaven

Another slow cooker success, if I say so myself. If you want to be worshipped by your family and your co-workers (it's a potluck winner) and you want time to post to your blogs, this is the recipe for you. Everytime we have potluck at work, my co-workers request this dish. It's easy and delicious.

Ingredients:

5 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves 1 tsp. ground black pepper

1-9x9 inch pan cornbread, cooled and crumbled

2 tsp. dried sage

8 slices day-old bread, torn into small pieces

2-14.5 oz cans chicken broth

4 eggs, beaten

2-10.75 oz cans condensed cream of chicken

1 tsp. salt soup

2 tbs margarine

Directions:

1) Place chicken in a pot with water to cover, and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil 20 minutes, or until cooked through. Cool, and cut into pieces. ( or use leftover chicken from another meal)

2) In a slow cooker, stir together chicken, cornbread, bread, eggs, salt, pepper, sage, chicken broth, and chicken soup. Stir until well blended. Dot with margarine.

3) Cover and cook on low for 3 to 4 hours. Remove lid and fluff with fork. Let rest 15 minutes before serving.

This recipe was adapted from http://www.allrecipes.com/, submitted by Mindy McCoy.

Chef Jessi

This weekend I learned that I didn't know very much about making cookies, especially sugar cookies. Saturday, I told Jessi that we would bake. She loves to cook and bake. She watches the Food Network as much as Jenna watches the Disney Channel. As a matter of fact, they often disagree about which channel to watch. So, she picked Sugar Cookies because she got a cookie decorating kit for Christmas and wanted to use it. (That thing was about as complicated as the sugar cookies were for me). Anyway, I found a recipe in my book that I printed from http://www.recipes.com/, submitted by Jill Saunders. I hoped the name, "The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies" said it all. All of the reviews were positive and no one suggested any changes to the recipe so in we dove. I set everything up while Jessi read the ingredients and the directions. We had trouble from the beginning. The recipe calls for 5 cups of flour and I ended up only adding about 2.5 cups because I don't think I could've added much more. The dough had to be refrigerated overnight because it was very soft. After one roll the following day, we had to let the dough set up again in the refrigerator. It seemed to soften very quickly. The dough was also very sticky and we needed to use a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to everything. The cookies tasted great and I may try the 5 cups next time because great sugar cookies are now one of my next challenges! I'm going to post the recipe as written because I have a feeling it was the baker and not the recipe! So...Jessi really did all of the work. She read the directions, rolled out the dough, cut out the cookies, mixed the food coloring and icing, and decorated them.Of course, the cleanup was left to me!


Jessi's work station and the mess!

We finished after about 3 hours on Sunday and had about 4 dozen cookies that did taste great.


Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. butter, softened 5 c. all-purpose flour
2 c. white sugar 2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs 1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:
1) In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour. ( I recommend overnight).
2) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3) Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Taco Chicken Nuggets

You know I am always looking for great dinners that are quick and easy for a weeknight meal. I found this recipe on http://www.recipezaar.com/ submitted by Junebug. This one was a winner. The taco seasoning and picante sauce added great flavor and the chicken was very moist.

Ingredients:

1 c. breadcrumbs

1 pkg. taco seasoning

1 egg

2 tbs. melted butter

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into nuggets

picante sauce

Directions:

1) Heat oven to 375 degrees

2) Mix breadcrumbs, taco seasoning, and butter

3) Dip nuggets into egg, then into crumb mixture, coating evenly

4) Place on an ungreased cookie sheet ( I used a baking stone) and bake 15-20 minutes, until

chicken is done and coating is crisp.

5) Serve with picante sauce

Bread!!

I was so excited to finally try this recipe for Susan's Farmhouse White Sandwich Bread. I have a bread machine, but I really wanted to make it completely from scratch, especially my first time. It was actually fairly easy, even the girls were able to help me with it, which they absolutely loved. The bread was a bit denser than the bread that I buy from the grocery store, but the taste was much better. And it gave me much more satisfaction to enjoy my homemade bread. I'm only going to link to the original recipe from A Year In Bread, because the recipe is so long. I'm sure that you'll enjoy visiting their site and all of their other great recipes.