S'Mores Trifle

Another Christmas has come and gone. It was a fun first Christmas for Peyton with lots of Christmas parties and events. While I did do a bit of cooking, I didn't document most of it. We were busy and Peyton really likes to wake up from a nap right when I'm in the middle of cooking something, so the clean-up and photo at the end get rushed...or forgotten. I did manage to snap a couple of photos of this prepared. It was a huge hit!

Usually I bake for the holidays, but this year I looked for really simple recipes. I made some easy gingerbread fudge and cookie dough fudge (completely forgot to take photos), my cheesy potatoes, a creamy corn side dish, this, and a mint lush desert for different parties. We had two stops on Christmas Eve, two stops on Christmas day, and then two more parties over the weekend. We were busy, busy, busy, but we enjoyed every moment!

If you make the brownies and pudding ahead of time this recipes comes together very quickly. The trickiest part (if you can even call it tricky) is "toasting" the marshmallows. Like I said, if you prepare each layer ahead of time, this comes together in a matter of minutes. I recommend having you brownies made, pudding made, graham crackers crushed, and mix the whipped topping and marshmallow cream before hand. Then it's just some layering and toasting and you're done.

S'Mores Trifle
from Mom Endeavors

1 box brownie mix, prepared according to package
2 small boxes instant chocolate pudding, prepared the quick way
1 package from a box of graham crackers, crushed
1 container whipped topping
1 small container marshmallow cream (Fluff if you're from New England!)
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 Hershey bar

1. In a trifle dish, place half of the brownies, cut into chunks. Top with half the pudding then top with half the graham crackers.
2. Combine the whipped topping and marshmallow cream. It may be a little chunky and that's okay. Spread on top of the graham cracker layer.
3. Repeat with remaining brownies, pudding, graham crackers and marshmallow.
4. Place the mini marshmallows on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Set your oven to broil and place them in the oven. Leave the door slightly open and don't go anywhere. They take maybe 30 seconds to "toast". Remove and let cool briefly.
5. Top trifle with broken Hershey bar pieces, toasted marshmallows, more graham crackers if desired.
6. Chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.

Mashed Potato Bread

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We enjoyed our, as we usually do, by doing our usual two dinners with each side of the family. It was also Peyton's first major holiday. I think she was just as tuckered out as we were by the end of the night. I love looking up recipe for leftover holiday foods. I found this one on Thanksgiving night. The irony of it all is (is this irony? I feel like I always use that term wrong) we didn't have any leftovers this year. Well, there were leftovers but we didn't take any home, other than ham. The amount of ham my husband eats weekly is reaching a sickening level.... Anyways, since we didn't have any leftovers, I made mashed potatoes last night with our steak tips, so I saved a cup for this.

When I saw this recipe I almost skipped over it. "Real bread" intimidates me. I like my wet breads. You know like banana breads. Recipes that don't require yeast, kneading, rising, punching, flouring everything, etc. I like the "add all of this to a bowl, mix it, and bake it" breads. They make a batter, not a dough, and it's easy-peasy. While this recipe does require yeast, kneading, rising, punching and all that jazzy bread stuff it's still easy. It's also quick, it's not hours of rising, just a half hour.

As I was making this bread I was staring at the disaster that was my counter top. Dan always makes fun of me for being a messy cook. I'm like a toddler you give a marker to. Of course it will end up on their body, the walls, the dog, up their nose....
That's me with flour...and most of my baking ingredients. It's on my hands, in my hair, on my face, some falls on the dogs, it's on the outside of any container near it. I'm a messy baker/cook. If you're gonna get in the kitchen, make it worth it. That's what I say.

That sprinkling of flour used to knead the dough extends far past the edges of my cutting mat....

This recipe was so easy and another one that you will probably have everything you need to make it already in your pantry. I always have potato flakes for mashed potatoes and to thicken soups, so even if we didn't have any leftover from a meal I can whip some up in about 10 minutes. The bread came out fluffy, soft, and tasting of garlic mashed potatoes. I always add minced garlic and garlic powder to our mashed potatoes. The taste of mashed potatoes isn't super strong, but it's there, and it's wonderful. I need to finish this post so I can go eat some more...

The last thing I need to mention is that I found this recipe on Tasty, which runs quick videos of recipes on Facebook and includes the recipe in the comment section. Go check it out if you're on Facebook because they're recipes are always fun and pretty quick.

Mashed Potato Bread
from Tasty

1 cup mashed potatoes
1 cup milk
3 tbsp. butter, softened
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. yeast
1 tsp. salt
4 cups flour
1/2 cup water

1. Add all ingredients, except flour and water, to a bowl and mix well. Slowly add the flour and water, alternating. Mix until dough starts forming a ball. It will still be a bit sticky, but you can sprinkle more flour on it when you knead it.
2. Lightly flour your surface and knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle some more flour on if it's too sticky.
3. Place dough in a bowl and lightly cover. Let sit for a half hour to rise.
4. Halfway through letting the dough sit and rise, preheat your oven to 350.
5. Grease a 9x5 bread pan. Punch down the dough and form into a rectangle. Place into the bread pan.
6. Bake 45 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack. Slice and enjoy!

Nutella Caramel Coffee

Today was Peyton's two-month checkup and she had 3 shots and a liquid vaccine. Talk about a tough morning. Peyton is the most mellow baby, doesn't fuss much, but today she shrieked through most of her appointment. That was before the vaccines. After, she cried all of two minutes. It a gloomy looking morning and I was excited to make this fancy coffee when I saw the recipe yesterday. Right before we went to the doctor, a friend invited me to meet her for coffee, so I decided to have Starbucks over making my coffee drink. My Caramel Brule Latte was delicious, but not delicious enough that is satisfied me and let me put this recipe on hold. As I prepped some ingredients for tonight's dinner, I couldn't stop thinking of making this coffee. I was motivated because it was a gloomy day (it was sleeting when I left Starbucks....), but I had all the ingredients! If you regularly read my blog, you know how excited I get when I find a recipe that requires what is already contained in my pantry.

It's the little things in life...

I love flavored coffees. I'll drink a plain old coffee if the coffee is really good. I haven't found anything to compare to the coffee we had in Costa Rica. The coffee we brought home came close, but I could drink the coffee we had when we were there black. I'm a milk and sugar or flavored creamer girl. I like my coffee sweet. Not Dunkin Donuts sweet however. When I order coffee now,  get Pumpkin Spice (yes!) with half the amount of pumpkin and skim milk. Have you had their pumpkin coffee....it's disgustingly sweet if you get the full amount, which I learned is 3 pumps. So I get 1 and a half pump and no added sugar. It's perfect. When pumpkin isn't in season, I'll get another flavor with skim milk and 1 sugar.

Fancy coffee drinks are great when I can afford them. However, (and why did I never think of this before?) I have everything I need for this coffee at home all the time. Well, okay not exactly. I only have Nutella from a recent recipe I made, it's not a household staple. The whipped cream and caramel sauce is however, because ever since I became pregnant I have been an ice cream sundae fiend. Seriously. Almost every night, still (this is where the ashamed emoticon would be if this were my phone), I have a bowl of ice cream with strawberries, marshmallow, caramel and whipped cream. Yeah, I'm really concerned with losing that baby weight...

Back to coffee. I used hazelnut coffee because why not? I buy flavored coffee variety packs on Amazon. We just received a shipment of 80 coffees for our Keurig, so I can have a different type each day. I will definitely be playing around with more coffee drinks in my last month of maternity leave freedom. Why did I not discover this sooner??? You can use hazelnut, plain, or any flavor you'd like. If you use a Keurig, I use the smallest ounce button (6 oz on mine) twice to make the 12 oz of coffee. This gives you two drinks worth, so if you just want one, I'd choose the middle or largest ounce setting ( 8 and 10 oz. on mine).

This is so simple. If you want to make it even quicker, say in the morning before work, you can even heat the milk and Nutella together in the microwave and stir together and then stir it into your coffee. For the fully blended effect, I used my bullet blender and heated my milk and Nutella on the stove top.

Brew some coffee. I used some Hawaiian Hazelnut from my selection.

Gather your milk, Nutella and caramel sauce.

Brew some coffee. While it's brewing, heat some milk and Nutella together and mix.

Then, add your milk mix and coffee to a blender if you choose and add a big squirt of caramel.



See that delicious caramel at the bottom??

Then pour back into a coffee mug and top with whipped cream and a caramel drizzle.

Starbucks baristas have nothing on me!

Enjoy it while your baby and two dogs sleep and you watch the gloomy day from the warmth of your home. And while you tackle a new baking project (to be revealed soon!).

Nutella Caramel Coffee
adapted from Around My Family Table

12 oz. brewed coffee
1/2 cup milk (any kind)
2 tbsp. Nutella
Caramel sauce
Whipped cream

1. Brew some coffee.
2. In a small saucepan heat the milk until scalding, but not boiling. Whisk in the Nutella.
3. Add the coffee and milk mixture to a blender and add some caramel sauce. Blend.
4. Pour into a coffee mug and top with whipped cream and caramel sauce.

Snickerdoodle Bars

I have been dying to get back into baking lately, a task that is not easy to do with a baby. I've been able to find a few quick recipes lately to make, but I need to save my bigger baking projects for when Dan can be home so someone can focus on Peyton. I was able to make these in about 15 minutes, with Peyton being awake, so that is quite the accomplishment. I thought she had fallen asleep for a nap but about a minute into making these, she was wide awake. Luckily she's mellow and enjoys letting me bake...I hope....

These are quick, easy, and don't require any fancy ingredients, except maybe the cream of tartar. I always have some, but almost never use it. I use it so rarely, that the bottle I had, expired 3 years ago. So I had to buy a whole new bottle and cream of tartar is not cheap! I was amazed that it was 5.99 for the tiny little container or 7.99 for a larger one. The price of spices and things is insane these days. This recipe whips up in minutes, bakes pretty quickly, and then you just have to wait for them to cool.

They came out perfectly moist, soft, and chewy. It's like the perfect snickerdoodle cookie, but even better. I would reduce the cinnamon-sugar topping. The original recipe stated that it sinks into the batter during cooking, so having more is better, but I had a lot of spaces where it was just piled on, so when I cut them up and tilted them, a whole bunch just poured off. I would try maybe half the amount. You can always add more if you find that's not enough, but when I ate a square I was practically inhaling the topping. Maybe try pressing it into the batter a bit before baking. Either way, these are ridiculously good!

Snickerdoodle Bars
from Averie Cooks

1/2 cup butter melted, and slightly cooled
1 egg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/4 tsp. salt (optional) (I didn't use any)

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1.5 tsp. ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line an 8x8 baking dish with foil and grease.
2. Whisk the butter, egg, sugars and vanilla together until well combined.
3. Add the flour and cream of tartar (and salt if using), and stir to mix until just combined.
4. Spread into the baking dish and smooth the top of the batter.
5. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle over the batter.
6. Bake for 24 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool, cut and eat!

Bacon & Corn Chowder

The most repeated recipe from this blog is my Shrimp & Corn Chowder. Getting Dan to eat any kind of soup doesn't happen often, but this one is requested by him quite frequently. I always change that recipe up just a little each time I make it, and I always try to make it thicker. I love a nice hearty corn chowder, and while that one is stocked with veggies and shrimp and topped with bacon, it's ever quite the "chowder" consistency I want.

So, I decided to try a whole new recipe. I found this one, that looked simple. It's much less time consuming than my go-to recipe. There's no peeling or hard boiling of potatoes, less time sautéing veggies, and a much shorter ingredient list. I changed it up a little bit to make it to my liking. It has a saltier taste due to the bacon being cooked right in the chowder, and I sautéed my onions in bacon grease. I used a mix of sweet yellow and white corn. When I make this again, I would use cream instead of half and half, and maybe play around with the types of cheese to add. I think using cream would help thicken it without using as much potato flakes as I did, and I probably wouldn't sauté my onion in the bacon grease, I would just sauté them in the butter. I also would use the bacon as a topping, not have it cook in the chowder. I like corn chowder on the sweeter side, and this was saltier from the bacon. Upon standing, this thickened up quite a bit, so I'm sure I could have used even less potato flakes than I had and it would have been great. Overall, this is a great recipe that I would use again, perhaps instead of my other recipe, but I would add in the shrimp. It's one to play around with until it's just right.

The recipe below is how I made it last night. Play around with it to make it your own. Dan added shredded rotisserie chicken to his. The only reason I didn't add shrimp was because we ate shrimp the night before for dinner.

Bacon & Corn Chowder
adapted from Twelve O Eight

6-8 slices of bacon, chopped
1 small onion, diced
2 tbsp. butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. black pepper
4 tbsp. flour
4 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup half & half
1 to 1.5 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese (to your liking).
4 cans whole kernel corn, drained
pinch of nutmeg
1/4 to 1/2 cup dried potato flakes

1. In a stockpot over medium-high heat, cook bacon until crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and let drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Drain all but 1 tbsp. of bacon grease and return to heat.
2. Add the butter to the grease and add the onions. Sauté until clear and then add the garlic, pepper, and flour and cook, stirring, until flour is absorbed.
3. Add the chicken stock and stir, bringing it to a slow boil.
4. Add the bacon, corn, half & half, cheese, and nutmeg and again bring to a slow boil stirring occasionally. Lower heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes.
5. If you want it thicker, add the potato flakes, a few spoonfuls at a time, and mix in. You may want to wait a few minutes in between as it does continue to thicken up.

Peanut Butter Nutella Rolls

I love dessert recipes that are cheap, quick, and easy. Cheap is for the obvious reason of not spending tons of money on something, but quick and easy is for being able to whip something up in those moments where you need some sort of sweets, but aren't going to bake a cake or full batch of cupcakes. I have a ton of pictures of this process. That being said, they're all in terrible lighting so I apologize. I'd like to start with my workspace.

The workspace is a little crammed due to the counter space next to the sink and oven being taken over by the bottle-drying station, and the rest of my counter being taken over by gnomes.

Yes, gnomes.

There's a long back story as to why Dan collects gnomes, starting with some high school pranks. I won't get into it, but since then people give him gnomes as joke gifts and now we have about 15 or so in our mudroom and on the lawn. As he cleaned out the mudroom today we washed the dust and cobwebs (ughhhhh) off of some of them and they were left to dry on the counter. That's just a small section of what we have.

Anyways, back to these rolls. When I went shopping today I did need to grab some Nutella. It's not something we often have in the house. As I was grabbing it, I almost bought this instead.

Umm...since when has this been in existence??? You could make these rolls with this. Or with their chocolate cheesecake spread. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or cheesecake filling and fruit. Or...

The possibilities are endless!

My cream cheese icing was thicker than I would have liked and I used vanilla bean paste, so it's a darker color as well. It still tastes good, but it wasn't that gooey, melty icing I wanted. I thought it would melt when I swirled t on the rolls fresh out of the oven, but it stayed pretty thick. Either way, these are delicious. It's a nice balance of sweet and buttery from the biscuit dough. Next time, I will try a different fun flavor and probably make a standard icing/glaze of powdered sugar and milk.

Peanut Butter Nutella Rolls
adapted from Inspired by Charm

1 can biscuit dough (like Pillsbury)
Peanut butter
Nutella
Flour and powdered sugar for sprinkling
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1.5 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease 8 muffin tin cups.
2. Lightly flour and sugar your work surface. Roll out your biscuits until they are about double in size.
3. Spread a spoonful of peanut butter and a spoonful of Nutella on the dough. Roll up and cut into thirds.
4. Place the 3 pieces cut side up, into a muffin cup. Repeat with each biscuit.
5. Bake for 15 minutes.
6. While baking, mix together the cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth. Spread over rolls fresh out of the oven.

Now for the sub-par photos.

 

 



French Onion Pork Chops

It's been a while since we have had a home-cooked meal in this house. Between busy schedules and baby duty, it can be hard to get time in the kitchen. Luckily today Dan didn't have hockey, so he was able to sort of help with the baby (I say sort of because he cleaned out entire garage, mud room, and storage room in the basement). Luckily, Peyton was pretty chill all night so I could dinner and dessert. Yes...there is dessert...

Pork chops are something I thoroughly enjoy when they are cooked right. I cook them right about 70% of the time. The other 30% is when they come out a little tough and dry. Pork chops are also a very affordable meat option for dinner. I can't get over how expensive chicken has become, and steak is reserved for special occasions in this house. This recipe was incredibly easy to make, since all I needed was the pork chops. I already had the onion soup mix, bread crumbs, and eggs. The original recipe calls for Ritz cracker crumbs, but rather than buying a box of crackers that will never get eaten, I chose to use some Italian bread crumbs with it. Easy and delicious. I served them with some mashed potatoes and cheesy broccoli. When I say served, I mean made myself a plate. Dan has yet to eat dinner even though it was ready 2 hours ago...the man never stops...

These were cooked pretty well, not as juicy as I would have liked. The onion soup gives a great flavor and the coating doesn't get too soggy when it's cooked like some other breading recipes do.

French Onion Pork Chops
adapted from Food.com

4 boneless pork chops
1 packet onion soup mix
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp. butter melted

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease a baking dish.
2. Combine the onion mix and breadcrumbs in a shallow dish. Place the beaten eggs in another shallow dish.
3. Dip the pork chops in the egg, coating both sides, then dredge through the crumb mix, coating both sides. Place in the baking dish. Repeat with remaining pork chops.
4. Drizzle with melted butter and bake for 45-50 minutes.