I love okra.  Just love it!  Growing up we always had it fried, but I try to look for a little healthier options without ditching the taste.  Last summer we bought a lot of okra and I threw it in a pan with tomatoes and other goodies.  Today I tried something new!  I layered it on a pan, threw on some spices and tada! Okra!  It was so good that the kids ate every last one of them!  I’m talking gobbled it up.  Guess I’ll have to make an even bigger batch natch time!  You snooze, you lose with 4 hungry kids and a hungry husband.

On to the recipe.

A year ago my son was diagnosed with a soy allergy. Little did we know how much of our world would change for the better. I started making everything from scratch, which has been a wonderful learning experience, but one area we struggled with was chocolate. I’m happy to say after finding a recipe on Pinterest to make my own chocolate, I have one very happy (almost) 6 year old boy! Warms my heart! It tastes really good, too! Here’s his first taste!

Recipe modified from about 4 different recipes on Pinterest to suit our needs and what we had on hand.

Homemade Chocolate Chunks:

• 1/2 Cup Cocoa
• 1 Cup Butter
• 1/2 Cup sugar

Combine Cocoa, Sugar, and Butter in a double boiler, stirring well when melted.  Pour onto a pan lined with wax paper.  Freeze overnight and break into chunks.  Store in the fridge.

Easy Peasy!

My grandfather recently moved to the area and he absolutely LOVES Butter Pecan Cookies.  With my son’s allergy, store bought cookies are out of the picture.  I don’t mind baking, in fact, I love baking!  I looked around and found a couple recipes that looked intriguing but nothing that sounded perfect.  I mixed and matched and came up with my own recipe.  I might add that my kitchen smells absolutely wonderful right now!

The only problem?  Between the 4 kids (and okay I may have had a couple myself), we are going to have to make Grandpa his own batch!  They were THAT popular!  Hopefully there is one or two left for hubby to try when he gets home.

Ready to make your own?  Here goes:

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups pecans

Every year during strawberry season, the kids and I love making strawberry pies.  They are so simple and incredibly delicious.  Even better, you don’t have to heat up the house to make this!  All you need is a few simple ingredients:

• 1 Graham Cracker Pie Crust
• 1 small box of Strawberry Jello
• 1 Carton of Strawberries
• Whipped Cream

Wash and slice the strawberries and arrange in the graham cracker pie crust.

Make the jello according to instructions on the box and pour while still hot over the strawberries.  You want to come close to the top of the graham cracker crust, but not over.  Pour remaining jello into a airtight container and store in the fridge for a later snack.

Move the pie to the fridge and allow to cool an hour or two while the jello sets.

Serve with whipped cream and enjoy!

So I have had some carrots sitting in my fridge from a Bountiful Basket from a few weeks ago.  For Easter I decided to make a carrot cake from scratch.  No boxed mixes here due to my son’s allergy.  And since I’m using carrots, it’s going to be healthy right?

I went on over to All Recipes on the hunt for a recipe.  I ended up using this recipe only with a few tweaks.  Below is the recipe with my changes.  It actually turned out FABULOUS!  Best carrot cake ever and really wasn’t hard to do at all.  So moist, it was just incredible.  Everyone loved it and my father in law even had seconds.  I highly recommend giving this cake a whirl.

Carrot Cake:
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup raisins

Icing:
1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:
1 cup chopped pecans

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9×13 inch pan.
• In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in raisins. Pour into prepared pan.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool.
• To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy.  Frost the cooled cake.  Top with chopped pecans.

Many bread machines come with a jam cycle now!  With the beautiful strawberries that we received from our Bountiful Basket, the kids were begging to try making strawberry jam!  After seeing how simple the recipe was, we decided to give it a try!

I will be making this using my Zojirushi Bread Machine. I got it from Amazon during the Gold Box Deal sale and I LOVE it!  It makes a nice rectangle loaf instead of the tall ones the other machines make.  Of course it also has a jam cycle and that’s what we will be using today.

For starters, the recipe only requires 3 ingredients.  See what I mean?  Super simple!  Here goes:

• 2 Cups of Crushed Strawberries
• 3/4 Cup Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice

That’s it!  Look how beautiful these strawberries were before we started squashing. Mmmm…

Since I have a nice strong boy to help out, he did the squashing.  He loved it.  Strawberry bits were flying everywhere!  If you look closely, you can see my bananas that are turning brown.  I will have to do something about that tomorrow.  I see yummy banana bread in my future!

Looking good!

Then we just added in the other ingredients and put it in the bread machine on the jam cycle.  When it’s done, put in it a container after it cools and store in the fridge.  It will thicken as it cools.

Mmmm…. it’s so perfect over vanilla icecream!  Words can’t describe how delicious this is!

My original plan was to make these yesterday with the kids so I could have the post up early this morning.  We pulled everything out, started gathering the ingredients and realized we didn’t have eggs!  Normally a quick run to the store would have gotten us back on track, but my husband’s car was in the shop so he had my van.  He brought us some eggs home last night and we made the cookies today, so I apologize for the late posting.

This recipe, I pulled out of my Good Housekeeping The Great Christmas Cookie Swap Cookbook.  Even though it’s not Christmas, it has a great sugar cookie recipe that turns out great every time.

Cookie Ingredients:

• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups butter (4 sticks), softened
• 3 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

First up, beat the butter and sugar until blended and then add in the eggs and vanilla.  This is where having a good, strong boy comes in handy!

Next in a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt until blended.  Slowly add this to the butter/sugar/vanilla/egg mixture.

When it is well blended, you may have to get your hands in and shape it into a ball.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight preferably (or at least for several hours!)

When you’re ready to start cutting, roll the dough out on a well floured surface until it’s about 1/4 inch thick.  I rolled ours out in sections so I didn’t have all of the dough used at once.

Using a cookie cutter, cut out your cookies and place on cookie sheet sprayed with Pam.  Preheat oven to 350 and bake about 12 minutes.

 When they are done, transfer them to a cooling rack and start working on your icing!

Buttercream Icing:

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup butter softened
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 tablespoons milk (or to desired consistancy)

Mix all of these together with a spoon and add in desired food coloring.  I chose pink!

 When the cookies have cooled, spread or pipe the frosting onto them.  I like using a sturdy ziplock baggie with a hole in it for the frosting tip.  One of these days I’ll actually go get decorating bags!

 Decorate as you see fit and add sprinkles for the fun of it!  Eat and enjoy!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Okay who DOESN’T love fresh, homemade fried chicken?  It is a favorite around this house!  Fried chicken doesn’t have to be hard.  In fact, it can be super simple and very tasty!  This week’s Tasty Tuesday is going to show you how incredible easy it is to make fried chicken!

Ingredients:

• Boneless, skinless chicken breasts – enough for your family
• All purpose flour
• Buttermilk
• Salt
• Canola Oil

First step – Cut boneless, skinless chicken breasts into strips or nugget size pieces.  This is some of the chicken that I received from Zaycon Foods.

Next, soak the chicken in buttermilk for at least an hour.  Plain milk will work in a pinch, but buttermilk is best.

When the chicken has been soaked for at least an hour, go ahead and heat up a skillet of oil  Place about 2 inches of oil in the skillet and heat on medium for a few minutes until the oil is ready.

Coat the chicken with all purpose flour (no seasonings and nothing else added) and gently place into the hot oil.

Cook until browned, gently turning halfway through.

Place cooked chicken on a plate lined with paper towels and lightly salt while they are still hot.

 Mmmmm…. these are so yummy!  Words doesn’t even begin to describe it!  I know you’ll love them too!  Give it a try and see what you think!

Huge thanks to my friend Janet for sharing her recipe with me.

One of my favorite things to make when it starts to get cold is Muddy Buddy Mix!  If you haven’t tried it, you’ll want to give it a whirl!  It’s easy to do and you may already have the ingredients on hand.

Ingredients:

9 cups Chex Cereal
1 cup  chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Add the chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter together in a microwave safe dish.  Microwave for 1 minute, stir, and again for 30 seconds.  Stir.  Add in the vanilla and stir again!

Pour over your chex cereal and gently stir to coat.

Add in the Powdered sugar.

Put a lid on the bowl and hand it to a kid to shake until their little heart is content!

Then enjoy!  Make sure you store it in the fridge.  Give it a good shake every 30 minutes or so while it chills to make sure the pieces don’t clump together.  Although it’s so yummy, it may not make it to the fridge!

What’s your favorite thing to do with Chex?

Yes, I know it’s not really Tuesday.  However, I was really sick on Tuesday and whenever I’m sick, it seems like that day is just erased from memory.  So for my sake, let’s pretend it’s Tuesday.  For Tasty Tuesday this week, we’re going to make an Apple Ring Cake!  We went to the apple orchard this past weekend and had a blast picking fresh apples from the trees.

Some apples were too high up so we had to use double the effort….

Even the baby thought they were great to gnaw on….

Nevertheless, we left there with an enormous bag of apples.  It was fun to pick, but now what should I do with all of these apples?

I dug up my recipe books and nothing sounded perfect.  Then I remembered a recipe that a friend of mine had sent me a while back.  Of course, I had to do my own tweaking to the recipe, so here goes:

Ingredients:

• 5 Apples
• 3 Sticks Butter
• Sugar
• Vanilla
• 2 Large Eggs
• 2/3 Cup Sour Cream
• 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Melt 2 sticks of butter in a 9 inch cast iron skillet over medium heat.

While it’s melting, whip out your apple corer/slicer/peeler.  Core, slice, and peel your apples.

Once the butter is melted, stir in 3/4 cup sugar to the pan and stir.  Place rings of 4 apples into the sugary butter, overlaying as necessary.  Save 1 peeled/cored/sliced apple for later.

Let the apple rings cook while you make the cake.

Mix 1 stick of softened butter, 2/3 cup sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla together with a hand mixer.  Add in the 2 eggs and sour cream.  When it’s well mixed, add in your flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.  Mix well until dough is formed.  Chop the remaining apple into small pieces and add to the mixture.

When your apples are nice and tender in the pan, remove from heat and gently cover them with your dough mixture.  Place your cast iron skillet right into the oven.

Bake for 25 minutes or until cake is golden brown.

Allow the cake to cool for 5-10 minutes and then flip it over onto a sheet pan or other solid dish.  Best served with homemade ice cream 🙂

Sorry for the bad pic – I messed it up a little when I flipped it.  This cake was so good it didn’t even last 24 hours in our house.  Hubby is already demanding another!  The kids loved it and I can’t wait to make it again.