Tag Archives: Food

Pumpkin Spice Muffin Tops

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These are one of my favorite “cookies” to make. First of all, they are warm tasting and soft. The spices make you feel all homey and there’s no hard crunch to contend with to break that mood. Secondly, they are practically guilt free since they’re made with applesauce and pumpkin. Really, they’re like eating a piece of fruit. Ok, not quite. Since all of the ingredients are soft, you can stir them up with just a solid wooden spoon, no need to dirty an electric mixer. Fourthly (is that a word?) they are muffin tops, without the fancy muffin top pan. How awesome is that? And finally, they are just amazingly delicious. Like portable pumpkin bread. Mmmmmm.  I love love love them. Continue reading →

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Sorta Sopapilla

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Sopapilla [soh-pi-PEE-yuh] is a traditional Mexican dessert. It’s a crisp, puffy, deep-fried pastry often served with honey or syrup. For our family fiesta tonight, I’m making our totally non-authentic version of this amazing treat. My mom has been making these for years and we all absolutely love them. Instead of using an actual sweet dough, we use basic flour tortillas cut into wedges. They take a dunk in hot oil, get a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar and then are served up with strawberry jam, honey and fresh whipped cream. (insert satisfied sigh) Sooooooooo delicious. Continue reading →

Amazing Gluten Free, Dairy Free Peanut Butter Cookies

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I do not know how my sweet sister Jessica manages to love life with all her food restrictions. She has type 1 diabetes, which makes sugar something she has to watch carefully. She also has Celiac Disease, which rules out pretty much all breads, grains & baked goods. Recently she discovered that she’s allergic to dairy – her one luxury left. No more cheese, butter, yogurt etc. Ugh. Poor poor Jessie. She handles it all like a total trooper though – she’s really just an amazing person. If I had to deal with all the food issues she does, I would probably crawl into a closet and just sob quietly to myself for hours on end. Especially the cheese. Take all the other stuff away, but don’t take cheese. Or butter. Yeah, I don’t want to live without butter either.

Many gluten-free cookie recipes have strange combos of rice flour & xanthan gum in place of all-purpose flour. Those flours run around $8 for a 2 pound bag, which is just crazy prohibitive to me. This is the first recipe I’ve seen that doesn’t have crazy flours or butter/milk – which makes them both Jessica friendly and easy on my wallet! Oh joy! Continue reading →

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes & Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

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Oh how I love love love these cupcakes. The spices, the pumpkin, the cream cheese frosting. It all combines for an absolutely perfect taste explosion. All individually packaged up in a convenient wrapper. Does anyone else think unwrapped cupcake holders look like tutus? No? Just me? Anyway. These are my favorite fall cupcakes – and while it may be spring technically according to the calendar, you’d never know it to look outside at my house. A chilly 48° with misty rain and wind. You know what I mean by misty rain right? The kind of rain that doesn’t really look like it’s coming down. Like it’s really just sprinkling. Yet somehow you are DRENCHED after walking the 14 steps between the front door and your vehicle. Misty rain. It’s the most deceptive of all the rain types. Trust me. I’m from Seattle. I know my rain.  Today’s weather had fall written all over it, so I figured I’d make the most of it with my favorite cold weather cupcakes. It’ll probably be the last time I get to before it’s all sunshine-y and spring like outside. (sigh) I know. That’s totally wishful thinking. Oh well. Continue reading →

Blueberry Cake

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This simple, delicious cake is perfect for breakfast, a tea party or a midnight snack. I highly recommend the latter. Worked perfectly for me tonight. All but the one piece I ate is going into work with my hubby tomorrow. It’s delicious with fresh or frozen blueberries and comes together in a snap! This batter is nice and thick, so your blueberries won’t sink to the bottom. No need to toss with flour, sugar or anything else as some recipes require. No fuss, just right. Continue reading →

Baked Chicken Nuggets

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My kids love “Old MacDonalds” chicken nuggets. Truth be told, so do I. It was generally cheeseburger Happy Meals for me as a kid because 5 kids times the extra money to splurge for the nugget meal for each of us made McDonald’s not such a great deal for my parents. I never lost that childhood desire for the nuggets. Somehow they just seemed so much more grown up. So much cooler. Guess that marketing money McDonald’s forks out really pays off huh? For many reasons, a trip to the golden arches is not in the family plans right now – but I hate to deprive my sweet children their most favorite lunch. These nuggets totally made me a superstar to my kids for the day…or at least for a few minutes. They were practically dancing at the table in their excitement as I took the tray of lightly browned nuggets out of the oven. Served up with some apple slices and a few of the last homemade Cheese Its, we had a perfectly wonderful departure from our typical peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. No begging or pleading to finish lunch required! Continue reading →

Peeps

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It’s Peeps season! Spring is here, the sun is partially out, Easter is just around the corner & the cherry trees are blooming. Which, incidentally means my poor hubby’s allergies have kicked in. Poor guy. Every grocery store has boxes and boxes of Peeps lining their featured shelves. Yellow! Pink! Purple! Bunnies & chicks…there they are with their little mournful brown eyes. Begging, seeming to plead with me “eat me, eat me!”. I found out in a recent meeting that my pastor at church LOVES Peeps. Who knew!? Somehow I figured he was too intellectually and spiritually deep a person to enjoy what is essentially puffed up sugar. Topped with more sugar. But what am I saying? Peeps are one of my favorite treats on the planet, and I’m practically a genius and I totally dig Jesus. So maybe Peeps are just the sweet of choice for those who are truly mentally gifted. Or maybe Bible reading stimulates the sugar receptors in our brains? Yeah. That must be it. :) Continue reading →

Homemade Cheese-Its

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I couldn’t sleep last night so I found myself pursuing baking blogs at two o’clock in the morning. I know, I have a sickness. I can’t help it. When I found Smitten Kitchen, I was hooked instantly. As I was browsing her recipes, I found this one for homemade goldfish crackers. She’s much healthier than I am, and uses part wheat flour in hers – but I figure anything homemade is WAY better than my kids are going to get eating that GIANT box from Costco, even if I do use white flour and throw in a bit more salt. The dough for these comes together in about a minute flat, and with only 5 ingredients, I’ll bet you have everything you need to make them already. I used a little moon cookie cutter and also cut some into squares as I don’t have the budget to purchase a little fishy shape…oh how I wish I did. The moons are pretty stinkin cute anyway. I haven’t been able to stop eating these since they came out of the oven.
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Oh Almond Joy!

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Anything that’s recreating a candy bar at home I have to try. Finding this recipe was no exception. I found this recipe on a blog, who took the recipe from another blog. Both these blogger ladies seemed to have no trouble with it. But I did. Maybe it’s because I used sweetened coconut and the recipe called for unsweetened. I had a bag hanging around that I wanted to use. Plus, several of the comments on the other blog were about the difficulty finding unsweetened coconut. Apparently you have to go to a gourmet organic type store for it…which I’m not going to do.  So, I thought I’d just try the sweetened kind. After a couple of trial and error things, I think I figured out my issues and will be able to make them perfectly the next time. The candies are delicious – I just had a some things not go great with this first batch. I really dislike talking about baking that doesn’t go well, but I don’t want any of you to make these thinking I did it perfectly with no trouble, have the same issues and think it’s just you. I hate when that happens to me. And I love you guys, I couldn’t do it to you! Continue reading →

Bakery Sugar Cookies

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Sugar cookies are a basic versatile recipe to have in your back pocket. I’ve never really liked making the rolled/frosted kind, probably because they are very time intensive with all the rolling and cutting. Then you have to wait for the frosting to set up before you can take them anywhere. The frosting always gets all messed up anyway. I dunno, it’s just never seemed worth the hassle to me. Probably as my kids get older I’ll do more of that kind of cookie, because I know rugrats love frosting their own cookies. Actually, I might try this recipe again soon and keep half the batch plain and let my kiddos put frosting on top, instead of rolling them in sugar. They’d probably really enjoy that. Anyway, back to these cookies. I would consider this a perfect drop sugar cookie recipe. You don’t have to refrigerate the dough, they come out of the oven looking like you bought them off the rack of a bakery, and they are absolutely delicious. Enjoy! Continue reading →