Lazy Man’s Fudge

Lazy Man’s Fudge

Lets ask ourselves, who loves fudge? ME ME ME ME!

Who likes to make fudge? ::sound of crickets::

It is really to complicated to make fudge, I’m sorry, but if you have the gift of making fudge, someone needs to make you a king or queen. To get the exact temperature of the sugar to make the chocolate the right mixture… good grief, its just all frustrating.

Try this recipe, it tastes just like fudge, yet only three ingredients, no one gets burned, and life is good!

1 bag of mini marshamallows

1 bag of chocolate chip cookies (no semi sweet, they do not melt!!)

1 bag of butterscotch chips

 

THAT’S IT!!!!!

In a soup pot melt the chocolate chips, after melting these throw in the bag of butterscotch chips, after these have melted throw in the mini marshmallows. Before the marshmallows completely melt put the mix in a pan that has been coated with non-stick spray.  Flatten with a good spatula. Throw the mess in the fridge. Cool over night and you have some great tasting fudge that took zero time.

Pocket Apple Pies - Egg, Dairy, Gluten FREE

This recipe is pretty dang easy and you can make it with all the stuff hanging out in your cupboard.

This is a recipe for pocket Apple Pie.

To me apple pie is a staple of all countries, but its leaky, a mess and hard to handle if you have left overs. This recipies make small pocket sized apple pies that use your standard apple recipe but you cup small apple pies out.

To make the filling:

Use your favorite apple, don’t stick to the granny apples, branch out and try a new flavor. I like the gala ones… they are the ones that are normally on sale in my area.  If you have an apple slicer use that to cut up 4 apples then shave off the peel. To me it was easier to shave off the peel after I used the apple slicer. 

Place your sliced apples in a medium sized bowl and add 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ ts ground nutmeg, 2 tablespoons of vegetable spread in with your apple mess. Fling all this mess together then stick it in the fridge so your apples don’t darken.  This mixture can stay in your fridge for a few weeks before going bad.

For the pie shell, I wouldn’t buy the ones that are already made, they seem pretty dry to me. I made mine with 2 cups of gluten free flour, 1 tsp salt, ¾ cups of shortening and 4 tbs of water. Fling this mess into your blender.  If the mix is very wet after you mix it, wrap it in wax paper and put it in a ziplock bag and store in your fridge for a few days… the liquid will seep out and then you’ll be able to work with it. 

To roll out the dough use your roll pin or a cup. Place the wax paper on your counter and dust with flour.. make sure to get your hands, rolling pin or cup good and dusted as well so nothing sticks to you, your table, rolling pin, or anything else that may be floating around. Roll the dough to about an 1/8 or ¼ inch thickness.  If you have the nifty pastry cutter from The Pantry Chef (I do and I love it) use this to make your pie circles, if you don’t have one of these, use your cup to cut out your circles.  You should be able to make about 12 mini pies with this.  Once you run out of circles to make on pie crust, roll up your dough again and repeat until you have run out of dough.  Make sure to divide your pie crust into two, one for your bottoms and one for your tops. You will need to slice holes into the tops so the pies do not burst while cooking and mess up your seal.

Lay out your cookie pan and remember to spray with Pam or equivalent so the pies don’t stick to the pan.  Lay your bottom crust on the cookie sheet and put 1 to 2 tbs of filling onto the bottom crust. Lay the pie crust tops on top and pinch together the tops and bottoms to ensure there is a good seal all the way around. You can pinch, fold, or whatever you want, just make sure it is completely sealed or you will leak all over the place and end up having to clean your oven after the debacle.  You can brush the mini pies with vegetable spread to have a nice brown top if you wish, I didn’t and it was just fine.

Bake the pies at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes. You may need to keep an eye on the first round to ensure you have a good seal.  These can be eaten right after cooling or stuck in the fridge for a good snack during lunch. These keep for a good while and are even great after you freeze them.

Reindeer on a Stick! Egg, Dairy and Gluten FREE

Reindeer on a Stick!

Ok, I totally borrowed this from stumble but tweaked it a little. This is an easy recipe that you can make any little guy out of. It's almost good for your diet as well!

Lay out wax paper on your cookie sheet

Put a row of mini pretzels about 4 inches apart (the recipe from stumble stated two pretzels but that is really too much for a little kids mouth). You should be able to lie 7 in a row, 2 rows per cookie sheet.

Melt your bag of chocolate chips in a slow melter,  double broiler, or microwave the chips to melt it. If you melt it the microwave make sure to flip your bag every 30 seconds so it doesn't burn.

SEMI SWEET CHIPS DO NOT MELT - DO NOT USE THESE (painful experience that just frustrates you and you just end up wanting to eat the chips instead of dealing with the issue)

Prepare the jumbo marshmallows by using lollipop sticks or cut the tips off of the wooden sticks for kabobs (that's what we did).  Stick the lollipop or kabob sticks in the middle of the marshmallow.  Dip your marshmallow stick in the chocolate and rotate.  Tap the stick on the pan to get the excess chocolate off.  Place the stick on the pretzel... repeat until you run out of room.  

Once your pan is full stick it in the fridge for 10 minutes. While your waiting for your chocolate to cool you can prepare your icing for the eyes.  The stumble recipe indicated you could make the white portion of the eyes and then the black part of the eye, but really what kid pays attention to the color of the eye before eating it? I just used the icing I had left over for previous projects. 

I made icing with 1 cup powdered sugar, ¼ cup shortening, 1 tbs of corn syrup, 1 tbs vanilla, and a smidge of water to thin the icing out. Add food coloring for whatever color eyes you want.

When you pull the reindeer out, make a small dot or letter U for eyes.  Put a dot on the front for the nose.  You can use candy for the nose and the icing will hold it on tight.  A hint to make the nose stay where you want... make sure to put your reindeer on a cooling rack so gravity will help you.  I used sixlets and smarties for the reindeer noses.. pretty cute and a huge hit with the kiddos. Took a very small amount of time to make! 

A new twist on a old favorite - Chocolate Chip Cookies. Egg, Dairy and Gluten FREE

A new twist on a old favorite

So today I was going through all my stuff in my pantry trying to figure out something to make.  I try to do a lot of cooking in the winter, it's a cheap way to keep the house warm.  I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies and Liz wanted to help. Between her eating most of the chocolate chips and me realizing I had more powdered sugar than regular sugar our endeavor turned out pretty well.  We substituted the regular sugar for powdered sugar and found that the cookies hold their shape better than with the regular sugar. They look much more presentable. I was very amazed with how they turned out. Sometimes my oven has a temper of a 15 year old hormonal teenage girl.

We heated the oven at 375 and cooked for 11 minutes.

1 cup vegetable spread (cheap version of country crock does not contain dairy)
3/4 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cups of packed brown sugar (if your cooking with Andy, remember to swat his hand away from the brown sugar or you wont have enough sugar left for the cookies)
cream together with your blender or get the kid hyped up on chocolate chips and let them stir
Add in Egg substitute (5 tbs of water, 5 tbs of oil, 3 tbs of baking powder - stir until its done fizzing)
Follow with1 tsp of vanilla

Mix together
2 1/4 cups of flower
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Slowly add to above mix then throw in what you have left of 2 bags of chocolate chips that the kid or husband hasn't eaten.

Cook for 11 minutes.. cool for a few minutes... get a glass of lactose milk and enjoy!

Spider and Bling Bling Cupcakes – dairy free, egg free and gluten free

Spider and Bling Bling Cupcakes – dairy free, egg free and gluten free

My daughter had her Halloween party at preschool last week and I signed up for cookies. Simple, easy enough, until she saw me making treats for the Trunk or Treat for our church.  Scratch making easy cookies and throw in Pinkalicious cupcakes… with a twist and Spider cupcakes for the boys.   

I used a simple white cake mix I found on allrecipes.com for the cake piece, but I needed to add flare to it! For the Bling Bling Cupcakes, I added rose food coloring to the cake mix. For the Spider Cupcakes, I added leaf green food coloring.

Simple White Cake

1 cup confectioners sugar

½ cup of vegetable spread

 Egg substitute: in a small bowl mix 5 tbs of water, 5 tbs of oil, 3 tbs of baking powder. Mix this together until it stops fizzing.

2 tsp vanilla

1 ½ cups gluten free flour (sift before mixing into the mess) (we use Bob’s red mill gluten free flour – it’s much easier than trying to create from three different forms of flour)

1 ¾ tsp baking powder

½ cup of coconut milk

Cook at 350 degrees. This mix can be used for a 9x9 at 30-40 mins or cupcakes at 20-25 mins.

Cream together sugar and butter, follow up with your egg substitute (slowly pour this in), follow up with vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder and add into the mixture. Once all of the mixture is well blended, pour in the milk. The milk will smooth out the mixture. Once everything has done the salsa in the mixing bowl and looks like a normal cake mix, throw in the extra flare with some food coloring.

While the cupcakes cooled, I made icing with 1 cup powdered sugar, ¼ cup shortening, 1 tbs of corn syrup, 1 tbs vanilla, and a smidge of water to thin the icing out. 

Creating the Spider Cupcakes

I used the brown icing I had made for the nativity scene but added orange to it. This made a rusty orange color I would use to create a rose for the green Spider cupcakes. 

Make black icing for the spider web and spider.  To make the spider web all you need to do is make an X on the top of the rose and go in circles until you reach the outside of the cupcake.  To make the spider all you need to do is make two circles with your icing.  If you have time you can use liquorices for legs or just pipe out the legs with black icing.

Creating the Bling Bling Cupcakes

Use the same icing recipe listed above, just use rose food coloring, or whatever color your princess wants.  I also had purple color mist that I sprayed on one side of the cake and closed it off by using a ton of pink sugar sprinkles, which gives the cupcake its Bling Bling.

Nativity Scene - - - Gingerbread Style!

Christmas is right around the corner. I know we haven’t had Halloween yet! Halloween is a short few weeks away… ok, short for me because Andy works two jobs, is the youth director (when the kids show) Lizzy has playdates lined up every Saturday, we have Disney on Ice the 22^nd, Trunk or Treat the 29^th, Halloween the 31^st, Thanksgiving shortly after at my in-laws, a Christmas play to get ready for, finish Christmas shopping for Andy and Lizzy. Lizzys would have been done a while ago if she would have quit finding what I had purchased for her… Is this what the holidays have become though? One task after another? And look at the world right now. Up-rise against Christianity in our backyards and abroad.  Life is hectic at the small level and the large level.

What I want to do is to bring it down a notch. St Michaels is having a Gingerbread house contest, and I’m going to enter it.  Thanks to Jenny Crosby who loaning me her “He was one of us” by Rien Poortvliet, which has beautiful art that really depicts the nativity scene, not the commercialized one you always see. I was shocked to see that it is similar to what I have flown over on numerous occasions to get to Forward Operating Bases in Iraq.  Not much has changed over there I suppose. Yes, I know the nativity scene is in Bethlehem, but it seems the architecture hasn’t changed much. Anyway I digress… I want to use this picture to make my gingerbread house.  I will be posting my “progress” in hope to get some of your inputs. Maybe you have an idea of what the roof should be made of? How to make the donkey? Etc.

 

Garbage Pail Pumpkins

In honor of Halloween I have come up with the Garbage Pail Pumpkins.  For those of you from my generation the Garbage pail kids will ring familiar. I didn’t want the typical pretty pumpkins, I wanted texture and fun… so I came up with this little guy.  They are fun and easy to make, and best of all, egg free, dairy free, and gluten free!!! Even I can eat this guy without getting a headache. These are even fun for the kids to make. 

Once you have the whole mix together, you’ll want to stick a pretzel rod in the middle, wrap the orange ball into wax paper and stick it in the freezer or fridge for a few hours.  Once the mass is firm you’ll gently pull away the wax paper and use frosting to decorate.  I made my frosting from scratch so I could flavor it with cocoa.

Frankenpumpkin, Typical Pumpkin, Happy Pumpkin

What you will need:

4 cups of corn cereal, 1 bag of dairy / egg free marshmallows, orange food dye, 3 tbs of country crock (off brand, I use food lion because it doesn’t have dairy, country crock actually has dairy in it).

Melt the off brand of country crock, add the bag of marshmallows’ when the cc has melted, stir in the orange food dye while the marshmallows are melting, once your marshmallows are smooth you can add in the corn cereal. Mix well. Once everything is orange, move your mix to wax paper, round the mix in the wax paper into a ball then stick the pretzel stick in the middle. You’ll want to tie the wax paper around the stick so it stays in a ball form.  This mix will make 3 nice sized oranges.

Once you are ready to decorate your pumpkin, take the wax paper off carefully (you will only want to take one pumpkin out at a time), I used the edge of a knife to slowly remove the paper. 

To make your own icing, use 1 cup powdered sugar, ¼ cup shortening, 1 tbs of corn syrup, 1 tbs vanilla, and two tbs cocoa and black food dye. Mix for five minutes.