Angel Cookies

Here are the cookies I made for my niece’s first birthday party. They are sweet and yummy…and pink! Perfect for a little girl’s party, aren’t they? They are almost like a sugar cookie but a little richer because of the brown sugar added. They don’t need to be frosted but it adds a festive touch for a special occasion. I made these with a purple butter cream last year for my sister in laws bridal shower. They are always a hit!

Angel Cookies

Ingredients:

½ cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup shortening
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda

Cream sugars, butter, and shortening. Stir in egg and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients and stir into creamed mixture. Roll into 1 inch balls and roll the balls in white sugar. Flatten each ball with the bottom of a glass. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until lightly browned.

If you are frosting the cookies and don’t want them to be too sweet, don’t roll the dough balls in sugar before baking.

Butter Cream Frosting

Ingredients:

½ cup butter, softened
4 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 ½ tsp. vanilla
5 to 6 Tbsp milk

Cream butter until fluffy then beat in sugar and vanilla. Add enough milk to make it the consistency you like. Add food coloring, a little at a time, if you wish to color the frosting. Spread a thin layer on cookies.

Berry Muffins

Don’t you love hot muffins fresh out of the oven? So do I! They are so warm and inviting, invoking feelings of comfort and happiness. Ok, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but really, they are very nice to eat.

My husband had friend coming from out of town this morning to visit just for the day. He was to arrive in the morning and honestly, I didn’t have anything planned. I didn’t know what we were going to be doing or where we were going. All of a sudden I remembered my recent post, Housewife Hospitality, and thought “What am I doing?! How can I not have at least something small to offer him?” Yeesh. What kind of hospitality is that? So it was about half an hour before he was due to arrive when I decided to whip up a batch of muffins. I didn’t want to make banana muffins again and I conveniently had just frozen some blueberries so decided to make some berry muffins. Here is the recipe.

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1-1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries or raspberries
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sour cream
½ cup oil
1 tsp vanilla

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gently toss berries in dry ingredients to coat. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, sour cream, oil and vanilla. Add dry ingredients to wet and stir just until moist.
Fill greased muffin cups about 2/3 full and bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean.

These were so easy and were hot out of the oven just in time for his arrival.
Now, I have to say, when I make muffins for us to snack on or to send with my husband to work, I always make healthy substitutions. When I am making treats for guests or special occasions, I will often make the recipe as is, even if it does not seem as healthy. It’s a treat, right? If I were to make the above recipe healthier, I would replace one cup of white flour with one of whole wheat flour, replace the oil with unsweetened applesauce, and use plain, whole milk yogurt in place of sour cream. Actually, I did use yogurt this morning because I didn’t have sour cream.

Since this was a treat, I even added a streusel topping to the muffins. To do this I combined 3 tablespoons flour, 3 tablespoons oatmeal, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon, and then cut in 2 tablespoons cold butter until crumbly. I sprinkled these on the muffins before baking and it was just perfectly delicious.

So there you have it! You can easily be hospitable on the fly, and for me, baking is always fun. As I mentioned above, I used blueberries that I had recently frozen. If you are interested in freezing your own berries, check out an article I wrote for the website The Untrained Housewife called How to Freeze Berries.

Bread Machine Recipes

There is nothing like the aroma of fresh bread wafting through the house to stir up feelings of home and comfort. I love fresh bread. I used to work in a bread bakery and every morning enjoyed some hot and fresh out of the oven. It was amazing. I’m all about a hand rolled and kneaded loaf of bread but I see nothing wrong with dumping ingredients in a bread machine and walking away, only to return four hours later to a steaming hot loaf of delicious, wholesome bread. Oh delight! I often use our bread maker to add something special to our dinner meal. Even better, I will use the timer function so we get the pleasure of waking in the morning to the smell of bread baking. Can’t beat that!
Here are the two main recipes I use. The seven grain bread is the one I use most often but occasionally I will treat us to a loaf of white.

Seven Grain Bread

Follow your manufacturer’s instructions as to which order to place the ingredients in the pan. The order I put here is the order I do it in mine.

1 2/3 cup lukewarm water
3 Tbsp skim milk powder
2 Tbsp applesauce
2 Tbsp honey
2 tsp salt
2 ½ cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
¾ cup 7 grain mix
1 ½ tsp yeast

I actually put a little extra whole wheat flour in the mix. I use 2 cups of white and 1 ½ cups whole wheat. I tried to put more than that but found the loaf was too dense and didn’t raise well at all.

White Bread

Again, follow your manufacturer's directions.

1 ½ cups lukewarm water
2 Tbsp skim milk powder
1 ½ tsp salt
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp applesauce
3 ¾ cup white flour
1 tsp yeast

Herb Bread

Remember the spaghetti dinner I was making for guests last weekend? I decided to make an herb bread to go with it. It was delicious! It still simply involved putting ingredients in the bread machine and forgetting about it. If you are interested, click here to get to the recipe.

Housewife Hospitality

I’ve only had the pleasure of being a housewife/stay at home mom for nine months now. One thing I love about it is that I’m available. I am conveniently at home and able to accomplish so many things that I couldn’t do when I was working full time.
Previously, when we had company coming from out of town, I did the best I could to get the house ready and make nice food. Working eight hours a day outside the home definitely hindered that, however.

This weekend we have friends coming to visit and I am so excited! While our home is ever so humble, (they have to sleep on a mattress in the baby’s room while baby bunks in with us), I have had fun washing bedding, making their bed, cleaning bathrooms and getting things ready. I thought I would share with you the plans I have for food this weekend (since that seems to be what this blog is all about, now isn’t it?)

I need to prepare two breakfasts, maybe a lunch or two, snacks, treats and only one dinner since we have the pleasure of going out for one of our meals.
I decided we will have a classic bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast one morning and the second morning fresh banana muffins and strawberry orange Julius drinks.
I am going to make spaghetti, Caesar salad, and fresh bread for dinner. For lunches we have fresh buns and bread and deli meat, fruit, vegetables, cheese and crackers. To snack on I’m going to make a big bowl of my homemade salsa (you remember that one, right?!) with tortilla chips. For treats, last night I whipped up a batch of Mars Bar Squares to keep in the fridge and for dessert after dinner tonight I am making a pecan caramel ice cream dessert.

How good does that sound? I am having so much fun planning and preparing everything. It is so nice to be home all day able to do this kind of thing. I’ve been carrying the baby around in my backpack carrier as I get things done. Poor thing is teething and cranky but I still can’t complain, I’m so happy to be home with her!

I want to share some of the recipes I’m making with you. To start, I’ll share one of my favorite treats: Mars Bar Squares. I’m sorry; they are not at all healthy for you! They are very yummy and I’m sure over the years my mom has been asked for this recipe 100 times! Enjoy!

Mars Bar Squares

Ingredients

½ cup butter
4 Mars Bar Squares, chopped
3 cups Rice Krispies cereal
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
¼ cup butter

Melt ½ cup butter and Mars bars in the microwave. Stir in Rice Krispies and pat into a 9x9 inch baking pan. Melt chocolate chips and ¼ cup butter. Spread over Rice Krispies base. Refrigerate until set. Cut into squares.

How easy was that?

I’ll also share my recipe for banana muffins.

Combine in bowl:

1 ½ cups flour
¾ cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

Beat together:

1 egg
1 ½ cups mashed banana
½ cup melted butter

Add wet to dry ingredients and stir until moistened. Add ¾ cup chopped nuts if you desire. Fill muffin tins (greased or lined) ¾ full. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes until the tops spring back when lightly touched.

These are so delicious. To make them healthier, I replace half the white flour with whole wheat flour. You can replace the butter with unsweetened applesauce also.

I am serving these with some orange Julius type drinks. I don’t have measurements but here is the basic idea. I put a can of frozen orange juice concentrate in the blender with some ice cubes, milk, vanilla, chopped strawberries, and powdered sugar. They are cool and creamy and really yummy at breakfast. They are also good without strawberries for a plain orange flavor or even better with sweet raspberries.

Soon, I am going to post two of the recipes for fresh bread that I make in my bread maker.

Have a great weekend!

Cilantro Chicken

Here is a yummy recipe my mother in law told me about recently. I have a bunch of cilantro at the moment so it was perfect to use some of that up. It was super easy and so delicious, even the baby loved it! I am going to rein myself in this time and try to write this as a more formal recipe. As per my usual method, I pretty much threw this together but these measurements might help a bit.

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts (I use boneless, skinless but any kind you like could work)
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 small yellow pepper, diced
½ cup frozen corn
½ cup frozen peas
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
2 cups rice (I used a mix of brown and white)
2 ½ cups chicken broth
1 ½ tablespoons chicken bouillon
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper, to taste

Sautee onions and garlic in 1 Tbsp olive oil. Add chicken breasts to pan and brown. Season with salt and pepper. Pour a small amount of the chicken broth into the pan to get all the flavor bits off the bottom. Pour everything into a large casserole dish. Add all vegetables, cilantro, rice, remaining chicken broth, bouillon and butter. Season with more salt and pepper if you like. Bake at 400 for about and hour or until chicken is cooked and rice is tender.

Wow, look at that… I took what was in my head and turned it into a recipe!
This was seriously yummy. But I have to be honest and tell you, I forgot to put the corn and peas in. I meant to and I think the dish would have been even better with them. I think the forgetfulness had something to do with the fact that my 9 month old just learned to crawl yesterday and was opening kitchen drawers and throwing dish towels all over the floor while I was cooking. What’s a mom to do?
Let me know what you think of this recipe (and don’t forget all of the veggies!)

Baby Bottom Beeswax Balm

Say that one 5 times fast!

This is a recipe my sister in law gave me for a natural diaper balm that is fine to use with cloth diapers. My niece has very sensitive skin and has gone through some pretty severe diaper rash. Apparently, this balm is great for her delicate skin.

1.5 ounces beeswax, grated (approximately ¾ cup)
1 cup olive oil

Herbs (optional)
3 Tablespoons or 2 teabags of chamomile
3 Tablespoons comfry
8 drops calendula oil
Or any other herbs that promote healing and smell nice

Directions:

Heat the olive oil, add the herbs (if using) and steep for a few minutes. If using loose herbs, strain loose bits out with a cheesecloth. Add grated beeswax and stir until melted. Pour into the containers you will use at the change table or in the diaper bag. Store any extra in a glass jar which can be kept in the fridge. When you are ready to refill, warm the balm in the microwave until melted and carefully pour into containers.

To use, scrape with the back of your thumb nail until you have about a thumb nail worth fluffed up. Use liberally to keep that bottom baby soft!

Pork Burrito's and Fresh Salsa

Speaking of burritos…
I thought I would share our family’s burrito recipe. It is extremely easy to put together as long as you have a little time in the afternoon to let it simmer. You can make this with pork, chicken, or beef. We usually use pork chops or a small pork roast but I have done it with some tough cuts of beef also.
Place your meat of choice in a pot and pour in enough salsa (the store bought variety) to cover all the meat. Add a small amount of water to bring the liquid to about an inch over the meat. Cover the pot; bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally, until the meat is falling apart when you press a spoon into it. Towards the end of the cooking time, I add a handful or two of brown rice, and usually add some more water. Once the rice is done, I shred the meat with two forks and it’s finished! The flavor is so good and what can be easier than that?

I like to serve it on whole wheat tortillas (white for my husband!) with sautéed peppers and onions, corn, shredded cheese, lettuce, sour cream, and fresh salsa. What…you don’t make your own salsa? Well, let me encourage you to try! It’s amazingly easy, healthy, and yummy!

Fresh Salsa

4 medium sized tomatoes
½ a medium sized onion
1 Tbsp fresh, chopped cilantro
2 Tbsp lime juice
Salt, to taste

Chop the tomatoes into 1 inch pieces and finely chop the onion. Combine in a bowl with the cilantro, lime juice, and salt. Refrigerate for an hour or longer before serving to let the flavor develop.

Sometimes, if I find it isn’t quite flavorful enough, I will add a spoonful or two of store bought salsa to give it a kick. I may add more cilantro, lime juice, or salt if necessary. You could also add finely chopped fresh jalapeno’s if you want a bit of spice. You can totally make it your own.

How easy was that? It is so refreshing. It tastes just like the salsa we ate at every meal at a resort in Mexico. I recommend eating it with tortilla chips while sitting outside on a summer day. Doesn’t that sound fantastic?