A Snowy Day = Hot Chocolate... Cake

They are calling for 2-4" of snow here tonight.  It was 60 degrees yesterday!  I am hoping for a good snow.  My two boys LOVE to be outside every day, but they have a BlAsT when it snows!  I get excited, too!  I hate missing school, because we will inevitably have to make up any days we miss, but it's just a lot of fun to have a day to play in the snow!  So... it is barely even snowing here... the tiniest flakes have been falling for 2 hours and my deck looks like I sprinkled an itty-bitty amount of salt out my back window.  Practically nothing at this point, but I've got my fingers crossed.  While I wait and hope for the snow to fall and pile up, I decided that it's a perfect time to bake something.

Freezing cold days are perfect for hot chocolate.  But, I want something rich and more satisfying that a drink.  My mom's Hot Chocolate Cake is the perfect thing on this cold winter day.  (Plus it is super easy and it includes a frosting that you can pour - yes pour - onto the cake while it is still hot!)  Here's the recipe:

Ingredients You'll Need for the Cake:
2 cups sugar
2 cups self-rising flour
1 stick butter/margarine
1/2 cup Crisco
2 Tbsp. cocoa
1 cup water
1/2 cup buttermilk  (I never have buttermilk, so I put 1/2 Tbsp. vinegar into a 1/2 c. milk & let it sit about 5 minutes)
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
dash of cinnamon

Here's What You'll Do:
1. Mix flour & sugar in large bowl thoroughly (use a bowl that can stand heat).
2. Place butter, Crisco, cocoa, & water into a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring frequently.
3. Pour hot mixture over flour/sugar mixture and stir to mix well.
4. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.
5. Pour into a 9x13" pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

*When there are about 5 minutes left in baking time for the cake, start making the frosting.

Ingredients You'll Need for the Frosting:
1 stick butter/margarine
6 Tbsp. milk
4 Tbsp. cocoa
1 box powdered sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1 tsp. vanilla

Here's How to Make the Frosting:
1.  Bring butter, milk and cocoa to a boil in a saucepan.
2.  Remove from heat.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Mix well.
3.  Pour over cake after it's finished baking.

You will probably want need to wait about 10 minutes before you cut yourself a slice.  It will be very challenging to wait 10 minutes, if you are a chocolate/sweets lover like myself.  If you don't wait, the frosting will likely slide off.  Waiting allows some of that frosting to soak into the cake.  YUM!

Hope you enjoy this cake.  It's one that my Mom made and passed along the recipe.  My Mom's the best cook and baker I know, so to have some of her "easier" recipes that are no-fail and always yummy is really a wonderful blessing!  I hope you enjoy it as much as my family does!!!

Apples Again!

September just seems like the month when I crave apples.  I love sweet apples - I'm a Gala, Red Delicious, or Golden Delicious fan!  I am not wild about Granny Smiths, because they are so tart, but my hubby would choose them over any other kind of apple. I guess that is what makes apples such a great fruit - there are so many different varieties and they all have slightly different tastes.  I just finished off a large quantity of Gala apples and this past weekend, I moved onto some big ole Golden Delicious - YUM!  I thought they would be perfect to bake with, so I found a Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars recipe from a cute blog: The Girl Who Ate Everything.  I am pretty sure it's her take on a Paula Deen recipe.  I decided that it would be perfect to make for our church's Homecoming Sunday celebration.
I love my church!  I go to New Mt. Tabor United Methodist Church.  It's a small church and I have attended this church since I was born (other than a few years when we were at college or lived out of town - then we attended other churches).  It's that quintessential small-town, country church, where everyone is your neighbor.  People who truly pray for you when they say "I'll pray for you" and people who love your children as if they were their own.  People who give you food from their garden or fresh baked goods from their oven, just because they care about you.  People who find a need in the community and then give everything they've got to fulfill that need.  I know some people say that church isn't about the people in it - it's about the Holy Spirit.  I agree.  But, isn't it awesome to go to a church where the Holy Spirit is alive and working in us PLUS you're surrounded by caring, friendly people?!  Sorry... I got off on a tangent!  I can't help praising God for my church family, once I start thinking of them.

Back to the apple recipe... I knew it'd be perfect for our Sunday lunch, after our Homecoming service today.  The only problem was that I'd never actually made or tasted this dessert.  Oh well, I could tell by the ingredients list that it would have to be yummy.

Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars
Here's what you'll need:
Crust --
2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 sticks (1 c.) butter, softened

Cheesecake Layer --
3 pks. (8 oz. each) cream cheese (I used 2 low-fat packs, and 1 regular pack)
3/4 c. sugar + 2 Tbsp sugar (keep these 2 amounts divided up - you'll use the 2 Tbsp for the next layer)
3 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Apple Layer --
3 large apples peeled, cored, and finely chopped
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Streusel Topping --
1 c. packed brown sugar
1 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. quick cooking oats
1 stick (1/2 c.) butter, softened
Caramel sauce or ice cream topping (Save this for after baking and you can use as little or as much as you'd like - I used about 1/2-2/3 cup.

Here's what you'll do to make it:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In medium bowl, combine ingredients for the crust, using a pastry blender or two forks to cut the butter into small bits, while mixing it well with the other ingredients.  Press evenly into a 9x13" dish that has been sprayed with non-stick spray, or lined with foil. Bake 15 minutes until browned.
3. In another, large bowl, beat cream cheese with 3/4 cup of sugar until smooth, with an electric mixer. Add eggs, one at a time and beat well after each addition.  Add in vanilla and mix well once more.  Pour over warm crust.
4. In a small bowl, combine apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg for the apple layer.  Add to this mixture the remaining 2 Tbsp. of sugar.  Mix well, then spread evenly over the cheesecake layer.
5. Finally, combine the ingredients for the streusel topping in a separate bowl, except the caramel sauce.  Mix until crumbly.  Sprinkle over the top of the apple layer.  This covered almost the whole dish for me and when it baked, it spread out some, so the entire top was covered.
6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes, then drizzle with caramel sauce.
7.  Chill for 3-4 hours or overnight.
*I highly recommend running a knife around the edges before trying to serve this dessert, as the crust layer tended to stick in the corners, especially.

Yumm-O!  If you're a cheesecake fan and an apple fan, then this dish is for you.  This was one of my hubby's favorites.  He loves apple pies or apple jack pies and he loves cheesecake, so he has already requested that I make this one again soon.   Hope you enjoy!

I'm baaaack... with apples on my mind!

It's been a while, friends!  I thought that I would have more time during our summer break to do more posts on this blog, but we had a busy summer with baseball season lasting until mid-July, two nieces born this summer, a couple of summer teacher workshops and meetings to attend here and there, and a whole lot of "areas" in my house that desperately needed to be cleaned up and out before August arrived.  Anyway, summer came & went and then those hectic first few weeks have school have just passed by and I am **almost** settled back into a routine.

Last weekend, my boys had their first football games and the weather was great - just a hint of coolness in the air!  It made me very hopeful that Fall would arrive and stay for a while.  (I LOVE summer, but I am ready for a change.  Besides, our summer here was filled with rainy days this year!)  So, to celebrate the almost-arrival of Autumn, I made a delicious Fresh Apple Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze.  It was heavenly.  Surprisingly, my I-do-not-like-pound-cake husband has eaten quite a few slices this week and I am pretty sure that last Sunday his slice of cake was his dinner (I take Sunday dinners off!).  I've had a few friends ask for the recipe, so I thought it would be perfect to share here.  I got the recipe from our local newspaper a few years ago.  I still have the clipping, but it doesn't name a source or an author in the part I have saved.  Whoever came up with this recipe has my thanks.  It's a great Fall-Kickoff dessert recipe!

Fresh Apple Pound Cake:

3 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 c. sugar
3 lg. eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/4 c. pecans, chopped medium-fine
2 c. apples, peeled, cored, & chopped finely (I used about 3 big apples)

1. Sift flour, soda, & salt into bowl.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat oil, sugar, eggs, & vanilla at medium speed for 3-4 minutes.  Gradually add in flour mixture and beat until smooth.
3.  Fold in pecans and apples.  Pour batter into a greased & floured bundt pan.
4.  Bake at 325 degrees F for about 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until done (see if a knife comes out clean).  Cool 20 minutes.

Caramel Glaze:

1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. brown sugar
2 tsp. milk

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan, over low heat.  Once melted, whisk in brown sugar and milk.  Whisk until well-blended and has a texture similar to caramel sauce.  Drizzle over cake, once it has cooled for about 20-30 minutes.  *I drizzle 1/2 of this sauce over the cake after about 20 minutes of cooling.  Then I drizzle the remainder over it after it has cooled completely, so that some will stay on top, after some has already soaked into the cake. Yum!

Today, I woke up to temps in the upper 50s!  That means it'll be time to get NC Mountain apples any day now!  This recipe would be perfect for using up some of those delicious apples, straight from the orchard!  Hope you enjoy!

Squash it!

In my last post, I told you that there would be some squash recipes coming soon.  Well, here we are.  I've been teaching a class this week at the local community college, so I've neglected my garden until today.  Here is my squash harvest:

Well, this is actually minus the three squash I used to go with dinner tonight.  These all came from 4 squash plant in our garden!  There are about 10 additional squash out there that will be ready in another 24-48 hours too!  And, what is up with those conjoined squash???  Oh well...

I love squash.  Whenever I think of summer, I think of squash (and tomatoes, and corn, and okra...).  When I was a kid, my dad's schedule seemed super busy in the summer - I am sure it was super-busy during other seasons too, but I guess when I was out of school, I noticed just how busy he was.  He would get up to milk cows, hours before the sun rose, come in and try to sleep an hour (with my 3 sisters and I running around the house), and then return back to plant, fertilize, spray, or harvest the crops.  Plus, he had to go back to tend to the cows during the day, then milk the cows again mid-afternoon each day.  I remember he would come home to eat lunch, or we'd all eat lunch over at my Memaw's house, and there always seemed to be some fried squash available.  I always wanted the fried squash that had almost gotten burned - I liked them crispy.  :)

As an adult, when I fry squash, I am always taken back to those lunches around the table during summer time, when my Daddy would come home to eat.  Lunch was usually a hot dog, a bologna sandwich, or left overs, along with sides of whatever was available from the garden - and that almost always included squash!  I try to utilize the squash that we harvest from our garden.  I hate to see them go to waste, so now with plenty of squash coming out of our garden, most of our dinners include a side of squash!  I have to change it up, so that no one gets sick of squash.  Here is one variation on a squash side dish.  It's healthy too!

Steamed Squash & Onions

Here's What You'll Need:
3-4 squash, sliced (cut off both ends, then slice about 1/2" thick slices)
1/2 onion, cut into thin wedges
salt/pepper and Nature's Seasoning
1 Tbsp. butter (optional)
Non-stick spray
Foil

Here's What You'll Do:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Tear off a large sheet of aluminum foil (large enough to hold squash slices on one half of the sheet). Spray the foil with non-stick spray.
3. Place squash slices and onion onto one half of the foil.  Season with salt & paper and Nature's Seasoning.  Cut up the Tbsp. of butter and put dabs of the butter around on top of the squash & onions.

4.  Fold foil over and roll up the edges, so it forms a sealed packet.

5. Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes.
6. Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes.  Carefully open up the packet (the steam that will come out will be very hot!) and serve.

Quick & simple & yummy too.  Clean up just involves throwing away the foil!
Now I'll move on to figure out how to use the remaining 24 squash that came out of the garden tonight.  Maybe I'll take some over to my Mom & Dad's house, and fry them up tomorrow for lunch.  I bet I can even find stuff to make a bologna sandwich to go with them!
Happy Summer Y'all!!

Lettuce Celebrate Summer!

Summer is here!  Okay, well not officially - that doesn't happen until like June 21st, but I am a teacher and I have finished up my final teacher workdays, so MY summer has started and I am very thrilled!  Not that I wanted to leave my 58 precious fifth graders - it was a wonderful year and I loved each day, but everyone needs a mental break every once in a while.  (Just between you and me, I will be WAITING on July 5th to get here, because that is when big box stores begin putting out school supplies and by then, I will be very ready to start gearing back up for a new school year.)

My husband and I planted our little garden in late April.  Everything is coming right along, but the only thing that is ready and available to eat in our garden is the lettuce.  Boy do I have a lot of lettuce.  If you are afraid of gardening, or only have a small space (or a small window box even), then you should definitely plant some lettuce or spinach.  Both of these grow very easily, do not require deep soil, and replenish themselves, as you pick off leaves for your salads or sandwiches.  They grow quickly too!

With an abundance of lettuce growing in our garden, I decided to try to find something to prepare that would use up some of it.  I am also keeping in mind that my husband is trying to eat healthy and tries to avoid a lot of carbs (breads, rice, potatoes, etc.) in the evenings.  Plus, it's been like 93 degrees here or hotter the last few days and with that heat, we just want something light for dinner.  I found a great recipe here and of course, I modified it.  Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps are what's for dinner for our family tonight.

Here's What You Will Need:
Lettuce Leaves (depending on size - anywhere from 6-12 leaves)
2-3 Large chicken breasts
1 stalk celery
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
1/4-1/2 cup Buffalo Wing Sauce (I like Frank's)
1/2 packet ranch dressing mix
1/4 cup sour cream

Here's What You'll Do:
1. In a crockpot, place chicken (mine were frozen), broth, celery, & onion.  Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours.
2. Remove chicken and 1/2 c. broth. (Discard remaining broth.) Shred chicken with forks (it will literally fall apart when you begin picking at it with a fork).
3. Put chicken, ranch mix, sour cream, wing sauce back into crockpot, mix well and heat through (on high, about 20-30 minutes).
4.  Once heated through (and cooled slightly), place a spoonful onto a lettuce leaf.  You can wrap it up and eat it like it is, or you can choose to add some toppings before you wrap it all up.  We added shredded carrots and cheese.  I added crumbled bacon to mine, as well (I highly recommend this, even though it lessens the healthy factor to a degree).

These were very yummy!  I served them with some watermelon and carrots with ranch dressing (my kids' favorite healthy snack).  It was a great, light supper - and pretty healthy too!  The lettuce tasted so good, maybe just because I know it came straight out of my garden!  I am sure I'll be using a lot of that lettuce in salads and on tomato sandwiches in the very near future.

My garden is growing well - very soon we'll have yellow summer squash and I've got lots of recipes for squash, so be on the look-out for those very soon!  Cucumbers and tomatoes are not far behind either.  I can't wait!!!

Mtn. Dew + Cake = One Happy Girl!

It's Memorial Day weekend and I want to start this post by saying THANK YOU to all of the men and women and their families who have sacrificed to provide freedom and liberty for me and my family.  I am proud to know many military families and I am proud to be a granddaughter of a WWII Veteran.  God bless each of you and watch over those who are currently serving in the armed forces!

My baby sister is in town, the weather is perfect, we're playing baseball games all weekend, so we decided to do a little cook-out at my parents' tonight.  I have really been thinking about a pound cake in the back of my mind for a few weeks now.  I haven't made one because my husband is not a fan of pound cake.  Just ask him... of course he has a story to go with it. :)  If I make a pound cake, I have to find people to help me eat it.  Otherwise I eat it all or throw half of a cake away.  So today, after baseball practice, football signups, and a baseball game, I decided that I am going to make that pound cake!

My sister Jenny has made a Sun-Drop Pound Cake before and it was so good!  I do not keep any "yellow" soft drinks in the house -- I'm a Pepsi-Max or Diet Cherry Pepsi kind-of gal, so I knew that Sun-Drop wasn't an option.  However, I found two Mtn. Dews in the basement fridge, from a family gathering a few weeks back.  I decided that Mtn. Dew would suffice.  I found a good recipe for a Sun-Drop Pound Cake here,  but I had to make a few adjustments.  Lemon flavoring?!??  Who really keeps that on hand... well, not me - I've got vanilla, rum, and almond extracts, but not lemon.  So, I modified things...  It turned out to be AMAZING - very light and moist!  My hubby hasn't gotten home yet, but I think even HE will like this version of pound cake.

Here's What You'll Need:
2 sticks of butter (soft/room temperature)
1/2 cup of Crisco (+extra to grease the cake pan)
3 cups of sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 tsp. lemon juice
3 cups (minus 3 Tbsp) of all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Mtn. Dew

Here's What You'll Do:
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan, then set it aside.
2. Mix the butter, Crisco, and sugar together well, until creamy, using a mixer.
3. Add the eggs one at a time.  Let it mix well in between each addition.
4. Add the vanilla, lemon zest & juice and mix well.
5. Add the flour and Mtn. Dew  - alternate flour, Mtn. Dew, flour, Mtn. Dew, etc., mixing well after each addition.
6. Pour the cake batter into the greased/floured pan and bake for 1 hour -1 hour & 15 minutes.  I check mine starting at 50 minutes and go from there.  When a butter knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, then it's ready!
7.  Make Mtn. Dew Drizzle to ice the cake and drizzle it onto the warm cake, after it has cooled about 10-15 minutes.

Here's the Drizzle Recipe:
1. Mix 2 cups of confectioner's sugar (10x sugar), 2 Tbs. softened butter, and 3-4 Tbsp. Mtn. Dew, using mixer. Add more Mtn. Dew if the "drizzle" is too thick. Don't add too much, because if it drips down the sides of the cake too much, it will all just be around the bottom of the cake.  You want it to adhere to the cake somewhat.

Bacon Goes Good With Everything!

I used to be a vegetarian.  Seriously!  I became a vegetarian on January 1st, 1997.  I wanted to see how long I could go without meat.  I didn't really LOVE meat beforehand anyway.  I typically only ate chicken & pork.  (What girl is raised on a farm and does not appreciate a good hamburger or steak?  This girl, that's who!)  I know it's weird for most people to comprehend.  I lasted over 6 years.  It all ended when I was pregnant with my first child.  It was a teacher workday and some of my colleagues and I were in training all day.  When we got a lunch break, we headed out to eat.  This was when I lived in Durham and I taught at a school on the other side of the city, so I just tagged along with my coworkers to a nearby BBQ joint.  No big deal - I can order a salad or some veggies at practically any restaurant.  But, when I walked in, I was overwhelmed by the most delicious smell of BBQ pork!  I knew right then and there that I had to have a BBQ sandwich.  For the remaining months of my pregnancy, I craved BBQ.  Now I will eat chicken in addition to pork and some seafood.  It took a while after my first BBQ craving to give bacon another try.  I forgot what I was missing out on!  What is it about bacon that makes it so darn tasty???  We make cheesy, bacon potatoes on the grill, bacon/egg/cheese sandwiches for breakfast, and grilled cheese & bacon sandwiches for supper some nights.  Bacon just goes good with almost everything... my sister's sister-in-law recently made a bacon-maple-buttercream cake.  It looked divine, but I am not so sure about bacon dessert yet.  Who knows, though.  I will have to give a try one day in the near future!

With bacon on the brain, I thought that tonight would be a good night to fix one of our family's favorites.  I have my sister Laura to thank for this one!  She found the recipe and passed it on to me.  My husband fell in love (with the bacon and chicken), and I agree that it's a phenomenal treat!!  It's usually prepared to serve as an appetizer, but we love them so much, that I sometimes just make this entree for our main dish at dinner.  It's a modified Paula Deen reicpe and you can find her recipe on the Food Network website here.  Here's my version:

Here's what you'll need:
12-15 chicken tenderloins (uncooked)
3/4 c. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 1b. pack of bacon slices (uncooked)

Here's what you'll do:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line cookie sheet/jelly roll pan with foil & spray with non-stick spray.
2. Combine the brown sugar, chili powder, and garlic powder and mix well in a medium.
3. Cut bacon slices in half.  Roll one of the half-slices of bacon around a chicken tenderloin.  Then roll that in the brown sugar/chili/garlic mixture.  Place on foil-lined pan.  Repeat this step with remaining chicken tenders/bacon.
4.  Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until bacon is slightly crispy and the chicken is cooked through.

*I know that I need to get better quality photos, but I was in such a hurry so I could eat this chicken tender, that I totally did not care what the photo looked like! :)

These are sweet, yet savory at the same time.  TOTALLY delicious.  If you want to serve it as an appetizer, just cut each chicken tender into 1" portions and slice the bacon in thirds, instead of halves. Wrap one piece of chicken with one of the thirds of bacon slices, then roll in the mixture and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  ENJOY!