Holiday Food Archives - Page 3 of 6

Pumpkin Better Than Disneyland Pie

November 21, 2016 by Danielle

This week is Thanksgiving, and I haven’t even thought twice about what recipes I’m going to be changing or adding to the menu! Guess I better get on the ball, huh? Whatever other things I make besides turkey and gravy, though, I’m sure this Pumpkin Pudding Pie (aka: pumpkin better than Disneyland pie) will be on the list. It’s super delicious, creamy and full of smooth pumpkin flavor. A definite winner for Thanksgiving dessert! (originally shared May 2013)

Pumpkin Pudding Pie / AKA: Pumpkin Better Than Disneyland Pie / The Perfect Thanksgiving or Holiday Dessert!

To be honest, I’d almost rather this than normal pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving! If you’re wondering about the name….we try to use extremely kid-friendly words and names, and avoid any words that we don’t want to have to explain to our little ones just yet. So in our home, instead of what most people use when ‘better than….’ we use Disneyland. That’s one of our absolute favorite things, so if something’s better than Disneyland, you know it has to be fantastic! (at the moment, I’m wishing I were at Disneyland, though!)

Ingredients

1 cup Flour
1/2 cup Butter
1/2 cup plus 1/4 cup Walnuts or Pecans, chopped
8 oz. Cream cheese
1 cup Powdered sugar
3 cups Whipped topping, divided
2 1/2 cups Milk
2 pkgs. Vanilla instant pudding mix, 5 1/4 oz. size (Thank you Ann for pointing this out!)
2 cups Pumpkin, canned
2 tsp. Pumpkin spice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the flour, butter and 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans together. Press into a sprayed 8×8 cake pan. Bake for 15 minutes, then remove and allow to cool.
Blend cream cheese and powdered sugar, then add 1 cup of the whipped topping. Spread over cooled crust.
Mix milk, pudding mix, canned pumpkin, pumpkin spice and 1 cup whipped topping until smooth. Spread over the cream cheese layer. Top with remaining 1 cup of whipped topping and 1/4 cup walnuts or pecans.
Chill for 3 hours or until set.

Notes: Instead of just spraying the pan, I lined it with aluminum foil so I could remove it and keep the edges nice. We tried this both refrigerated and frozen, but all of us preferred the creamy refrigerated version.

What Thanksgiving dessert will YOU be making?

Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bread

November 21, 2016 by Nikki Cole

It’s fall and you know what that means? Yes pumpkin everything! I love pumpkin but not till recently had I ever tried making bread and especially never thought to make pumpkin bread with cream cheese. I now have a new favorite pumpkin recipe of Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bread that is a complete melt in your mouth fall favorite recipe that makes a perfect dessert or even a nice breakfast.

Cream Cheese Pumpkin Bread is incredible bread that will be perfect for any dinner, dessert, or even a quick grab and go breakfast, and it is pretty simple to make. With the recipe it only makes one loaf but I hate putting a partial can of pumpkin in the fridge, well I bought the big can that was 29 ounces, anyways so I ended up tripling the recipe, made three loafs but kept the bread mix in three separate bowls so it was easy to split into the bread pans. If you are good at measuring things out you can triple it in one bowl, make just a single loaf, whatever fits your needs.

Bread – Ingredients

1 egg
1 cup pumpkin puree
½ cup packed brown sugar
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup coconut oil, melted
¼ cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda

Cream Cheese Filling – Ingredients

1 egg
4 ounces softened cream cheese
¼ cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons flour

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a bread loaf pan with non-stick spray and then dust it with flour, the flour makes it a lot easier to get the bread out of the pan.
For the bread, mix the first 10 ingredients well in a large bowl.
Add in the flour, baking powder, and baking soda, gently stir in just until combined; don’t overmix.
Pour about 2/3 of the batter into the prepared pan spreading it smooth and pushing it into the corners. Set aside.
For the cream cheese filling put all ingredients into a mixer and cream until nice and fluffy, usually about five minutes.
Evenly pour the cream cheese filling mixture over the bread, be careful not to push the filling into the pumpkin mixture but getting it to all the edges.
Top the cream cheese layer with the remaining pumpkin batter, smoothing the top without pushing it into the cream cheese layer and again still covering the cream cheese getting the pumpkin mix to all edges.
Bake for about 50 minutes or until the bread slightly starts to pull away from the edges.
Allow the bread to slightly cool in the pan, then gently run a spatula along the edges and turn over onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Enjoy!

Autumn Splendor Centerpiece plus Cookie Recipe

November 20, 2016 by Nikki Cole

Want a fun and exciting centerpiece for your thanksgiving dinner? One that not only looks great but doubles as a dessert too? Well this Autumn Splendor Centerpiece is sure to impress your guests and it doesn’t cost you an arm and leg to make it.

Autumn Splendor Centerpiece is easy to make and can be changed easily if you need or want. All you need is a simple sugar cookie recipe with frosting, a stick wreath easily found at a craft store, fake pumpkin, candle (whatever color), and some little decorations to go around the top which can be left out if you want.

First get your fake pumpkin and cut a hole in the top large enough to fit your candle. I just used a steak knife which seemed to work great but it did make a little bit of a mess with Styrofoam all over. Place your candle in the whole.

Next if you want you can get little decorations to go around the ring of the pumpkin and candle or you can leave it blank. I found some cool little beads I guess you could call them and pinned them to the pumpkin. Just walk around a craft store and you can find some fun things like maybe leafs, jewels, feathers, anything you would like to dress up your centerpiece.

On your stick wreath (horrible name I know but I don’t really know the technical name for it), place a sheet of cellophane to help support the cookies a little better and so people don’t get any weird sticks in their cookies. Make it a little bigger than the wreath because when you place the pumpkin on it it will come in a little bit. Place decorated pumpkin in the center of the wreath on top of the cellophane.

Make sugar cookies and decorate them. My sugar cookie recipe and frosting is just basic – nothing too fancy, recipes below, and I also didn’t spend hours decorating mine because the only people that saw it was my little nephews and nieces. Feel free to get creative and design however you want. Plain leaves look great on this wreath and doesn’t take forever to decorate. You can get as creative as you want or as simple as you want with the Autumn Splendor Centerpiece.

I cut my cookies into different leafs, acorns, squirrels, turkeys, apples, and a few flowers. Then I just put simple frosting on them in colors of red, yellow, orange, brown. I then froze them and an hour before we sat down pulled them out, placed them around the wreath, not too far out on the wreath so they didn’t fall off but did a few layers and placed in the center of the table. It looked great without all the hard work and I had a great centerpiece and dessert tray.

Sugar cookie and frosting recipes

Cookies – Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon almond extract
1 egg
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour

Cookies – Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in the extracts and egg.
Mix in baking powder and flour until combined.
Roll out onto a floured surface until about ¼ inch thick and cut into shapes with cookie cutters.
Place on greased cookie sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes. Let completely cool before frosting.

Frosting – Ingredients

2 cups shortening
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
8 cups powdered sugar
1/8 cup milk
Food coloring

Frosting – Directions

Cream all ingredients except powdered sugar.
Slowly add in powdered sugar.
Can add more or less milk for different consistencies if needed.
Separate into bowls and add food coloring.

Tried & True Recipes: Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

October 31, 2016 by Danielle

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a Tried & True Recipe, so let’s give this Pumpkin Banana Chocolate Chip Bread a try! Super easy to make, delicious and super moist.

As with all of our tried & true recipes, we’re just sharing our experience using another fabulous blogger’s recipe. To get the recipe and instructions, head to the post at Running to the Kitchen. We love her many fantastic recipes, from tasty desserts to yummy dinners. When I saw this one, I just HAD to give it a try – and of course it was every bit as delicious as I’d hoped!

The only twist I’d maybe do to her recipe is to add some Pumpkin Spice to it – for a little bit more pumpkin goodness. But that’s just me…we’re major fans of all things pumpkin, so want us much of the flavor as we can get!

I did make one loaf without chocolate chips, since hubby isn’t a chocolate fan (I know, crazy, right?!) and he agreed that everything from the texture, to the flavor combos was perfect – just needs a bit of pumpkin spice.

This is a tried and true recipe that definitely passed our test! Head over to Running to the Kitchen for this pumpkin banana chocolate chip bread recipe – or check out all her other amazing creations on her home page!

Other Tried & True Recipes

Mix Up a Moment with Funfetti® Halloween Treats

September 26, 2016 by Danielle

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of The J.M. Smucker Company. All opinions and text are mine alone. #MixUpAMoment

Who else gets super excited for fall? We sure do! While we love summer and do plenty of family activities, something about fall brings out the quality time together even more. Maybe it’s the cooler weather. Maybe it’s that the kids are in school so we appreciate the time we do spend together more. Or perhaps it’s because the upcoming holidays bring out my own inner-kid, so we like to go all out with the fun! While getting ready for Halloween, we had a blast enjoying these delicious Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Halloween Treats – and now YOU can ‘Mix Up a Moment’ with those you love, too!

The most important thing about having a true moment together, and making great memories, is to actually FOCUS on the moment. Don’t be running from the kids to the computer to check emails. Try to have this JUST be with your family or friends, because – as I’m quickly learning – these moments pass so quickly!

Sometimes you can’t plan for family time, it just happens in between everything else. Luckily, it’s super easy to stock up on Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Halloween Baking Mixes and Frosting the next time you’re at Walmart, so you’re prepared anytime you get a chance to ‘Mix up a Moment’! The festive Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Halloween Cake Mix and the Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Halloween Vanilla Flavored Frosting are waiting for you in that center Bake Center area – you know, where they put the holiday goodies – so you can easily grab them.

Don’t forget other fun frosting or decorations, found in the Bake Aisle. Eyeballs are my family’s personal favorite Halloween treat decoration! We can always count on Walmart to have what we need, and it’s never difficult to find our favorite things, plus these are super easy on the budget – like I said, stock up so you’re ready at any time this holiday season!

I grabbed a few Pillsbury™ Frosting colors for our own Halloween fun, knowing my kids like different things. I sure was right – their cupcakes were as different as each of their spunky personalities! Normally we have a quick snack after school, then go right into homework, so I wanted to surprise them with some family Halloween festivities when they got home! I had everything ready for them, so we just whipped up the cupcakes, then sat to enjoy decorating time. That’s one of the great things about Pillsbury™ Baking Mixes and Frosting – it doesn’t take a ton of time, so you can fit in quality time even when you don’t have ‘quantity time.’

I knew this would be PERFECT to get us in the right mood for this Halloween holiday, and I wasn’t disappointed! We had so much fun together, the kids and I, creating our own cupcake monsters.

We even poured some of the Pillsbury™ Funfetti® Halloween Cake Mix batter into a doughnut pan, making neat little doughnut-shaped cupcakes!

My boys were shocked that their cupcakes had ‘sprinkles’ inside – the orange and black funfetti made it even more festive and fun! These were the exact thing we wanted for our Halloween celebrations.

After we were all done, we had to show off our unique creations – and check out how happy they all were! Baking is definitely something our family’s always enjoyed doing together, and we’ve had many adventures in the kitchen that we’ll never forget!

Some other creative topping ideas would be candy corn for teeth, make ‘hair’ with frosting and a decorating tip, or cut out some fondant sheets for neat details – like maybe a Frankenstein scar!

How will YOU ‘mix up a moment‘ for your Halloween festivities?

Candy Corn Mickey Mouse Cookies

September 6, 2016 by Danielle

I loved visiting Disneyland during Halloween-time last year! Super festive with the decor, yummy treats and the characters in costumes themselves added to an amazing atmosphere of fun. Now you can bring some Disney into your Halloween with these delicious Candy Corn Mickey Mouse Cookies! Yummy sugar cookies that are easy to make, and even easier to decorate! It’s part of this month’s Craft Lightning, so you know they’re not only fun, but QUICK, too!

Contains affiliate links that support this blog at no extra cost to you. See our disclosure for more info.

As part of Craft Lightning, this takes only 15 minutes of ACTIVE time – that doesn’t include fridge time, baking, or drying time for the icing. The basic ‘craft’ of this tutorial is the fun icing decoration part!

Ingredients – Cookies

5 cups All-purpose Flour
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Salt
1 1/2 cups Unsalted Butter, softened
2 cups Granulated Sugar
4 Eggs

Ingredients – Royal Icing

2 Egg Whites
1 cup Powdered Sugar
1/2 tsp. Cream of Tartar
Orange & golden yellow gel food coloring

Cookie Cutter: Mickey Mouse Head

Directions – Cookies

Cream the soft butter with the sugar until the combination is smooth (not grainy) to the touch in a mixing bowl. Add all 4 eggs at one time. Continue to mix. Add the vanilla. Continue mixing. Sift the four, baking powder, and salt together. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. Continue mixing to make sure all ingredients are thoroughly blended.
Make the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling wrap completely covering the entire dough ball. Put in the refrigerator for about 6 hours or overnight.
Check to see if the dough is firm. If so, preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Pull the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and sit it out to soften up a bit. Put flour out on the wood cutting board, rub flour on the rolling pin, and work some flour into the batter (if needed).
Roll the dough out on the cutting board and, using the mickey head cookie cutter, begin to cut out your cookies. Line the cookie sheet with parchment paper. Using a metal spatula, move the cut cookies to the parchment lined cookie sheet.
Bake at 325 degrees for 8 minutes. Check to see if the cookies are thoroughly baked. Take the cookies off of the cookie sheet and put on a wire rack to cool completely. (About 10 minutes).

Directions – Icing

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl mixing on medium speed for 4 minutes. (except your food coloring) If icing is not stiff enough add 1/4 C powder sugar. When the icing is ready….
Divide the icing equally into 3 bowls. The first bowl of icing add several drops of yellow gel food coloring. Stir to mix. The second of icing add several drops of orange gel food coloring. Stir to mix. In the third bowl, keep this bowl of icing white. Spoon each color of icing into individual frosting bags with a #5 tips. Twist the open end of the bag to push the icing to the tip.
Following the picture of the Candy Corn Mickey, visually divide the cookie into 3 parts. Outline the top of the cookie in white icing. Starting with the middle of the ears and straight across the head and continue to outline around the ears and head. Allow briefly for the white icing to dry. Outline the middle section of Candy Corn Mickey in orange icing. Starting with the lower half of the ears and half of the face.
Outline the lower part of the Mickey’s head in the yellow royal icing. Allow for all of the outlining to dry. Fill in where the cookie has been outlined in white( the top part of Mickey’s head) with the white thinner icing.* Allow to dry for about 30 seconds. *Squeeze the half of the white of the icing into a bowl then add 1 tsp of water to this and mix it in. Leave the rest of the icing in the frosting bag for later use on the cookies. Fill in where the cookie has been outlined in orange ( the middle part of Mickey’s head) with the orange thinner icing.* Allow to dry for about 30 seconds. *Squeeze the half of the orange of the icing into a bowl then add 1 tsp of water to this and mix it in. Leave the rest of the icing in the frosting bag for later use on the cookies. Fill in where the cookie has been outlined in yellow ( the bottom part of Mickey’s head) with the yellow thinner icing. *Squeeze the half of the yellow of the icing into a bowl then add 1 tsp of water to this and mix it in. Leave the rest of the icing in the frosting bag for later use on the cookies.
Allow the cookies to dry for 5-10 hours and ENJOY!

Go check out the other Spooktacular Halloween crafts with this months Craft Lightning here:

Other Disney fun…

The BEST Ever Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies

July 27, 2016 by Danielle

It’s been a long while since I’ve made this cookie recipe, I’d almost forgotten how incredibly delicious they were. I decided to whip up a batch and Oh. My. Gosh! They’re just like the name hubby calls them: sugar crack! Not that they’re bad or anything like that, but they’re so tasty it’s hard to resist eating more. I swear, these are the BEST Ever Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies – try them for yourself and see!

If you’ve been following the blog for a long while, you may recall when I shared these back in 2013. I re-read that post and laughed, because we were still in our tiny apartment and I had yet to find my packed rolling pin, so made this without – not easy! Luckily I’ve long since found my rolling pin, so these were a breeze to put together. And yes, I’ve already eaten quite a few, and am resisting the urge to eat more. At least not for a little bit 😉

Ingredients

1 cup Butter, softened
2 cups Sugar
3 Eggs
1 cup Sour cream
2 tsp. Vanilla
2 tsp. Baking soda
2 tsp. Baking powder
6 1/2 cups Flour
1/4 tsp. Salt
For the filling:
- 1/2 stick Butter, softened (4 tbsp)
- 1 cup Brown sugar and 2 tbsp. Cinnamon mixed

Directions

Cream the sugar and butter. Mix in the eggs, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder and salt. A little at a time, add in the flour until well-combined.
Divide the dough into two separate parts, flatten into an oval, wrap with plastic wrap (lightly floured to prevent sticking), and place in the refrigerator for 3 hours.
When done, preheat oven to 350 Degrees F. Spray or line a few baking sheets, set aside.
Take out one oval at a time (so it doesn’t warm up too much as you work with the first). Cut each oval into thirds – so you have 6 separate pieces. Roll out to about 1/8 inch thickness, and about 12 inches long by 5 inches wide.
Spread each with some butter, then brown sugar and cinnamon mixture. Roll tightly into a log (from the long end) then slice into 1/2″ pieces and place on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes, checking when it’s close so you don’t overcook them.
Allow to cool about 5 minutes then remove to a cooling rack.

Note: makes about 4 dozen cookies

The great thing about this sugar cookie recipe is that they taste great warm or cold, with frosting or without!

If you do want the frosting: whip 8 oz. softened cream with 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 4 tbsp. milk and 2 tsp. vanilla extract. Store in the fridge.

Okay, so I’ve eaten 2 more while writing this – I have no self control when it comes to these amazing and tasty snacks! Luckily they’re pretty small so it’s okay, right?

More Cookie Recipes You May Like…

Pumpkin Pudding Cookies

April 20, 2016 by Danielle

My hubby is a HUGE fan of pumpkin recipes, and since the rest of us really like it, too, we often make different things using pumpkin. When he found a bag of pumpkin chips in the baking aisle, he immediately nabbed them and insisted we make Pumpkin Pudding Cookies! Since we couldn’t decide which variation would be best, we tried it THREE different ways – and it’s super easy for you to mix it up, too.

If you’ve never had pudding cookies before, you’re missing out because they’re so moist and delicious – plus quick to make! I also love how easy it is to use different kinds of pudding mixes to alter the flavoring – like we did with one of the variations of the pumpkin cookies.

I’m going to give you the general Pumpkin Pudding Cookie recipe, then share the two other variations we tried in case you also want to mix it up a bit. Hubby prefers either the all pumpkin ones, or the chocolate chip mixed. I prefer either the mostly chocolate ones or the chocolate chip mixed. Of course, because – chocolate! Either way, you can’t really go wrong with these!

Note: each recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies

Ingredients

1 1/2 sticks Butter, softened
3/4 cup Light Brown Sugar, packed
1/4 cup Granulated Sugar
1 Small Package INSTANT Vanilla Pudding (3.4 oz)
2 Eggs
2 tsp. Vanilla
2 1/4 cups All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tbsp. Pumpkin Syrup flavoring
1-2 cups Pumpkin Baking Chips (found in baking aisle, near chocolate chips – might be seasonal)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F. Spray or line two baking sheets, set aside.
Combine all of your ingredients in a mixer and mix well. Scoop in 1″ balls onto the cookie sheets, softly pressing each ball down to flatten slightly.
Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until lightning brown on the edges. Don’t overbake!
Enjoy warm or cooled

Variations

for the chocolate chip mixed ones, just do half pumpkin chips and half regular chocolate chips
for the mostly chocolate ones, use chocolate pudding mix instead of vanilla

Other Easy Cookie Recipes

Honey Lime Fruit Salad

March 25, 2016 by Angela Paris

Honey Lime Fruit Salad is the perfect dish for an elegant brunch, or a lazy Sunday morning. It comes together in just minutes with a few simple ingredients.

As the signs of Springtime grow all around us, I look forward to eating more fresh seasonal fruits. It’s also the start of a season of weddings, and baby showers and, in our family, birthdays. This Honey Lime Fruit Salad is a delicious dish to serve at your next gathering. Everyone loves, fruit, right? Serve it wine glasses for an elegant mother’s day or bridal shower brunch. For Easter, layer it into a beautiful trifle dish where you can see all the gorgeous colors. When it comes to brunch, I like to keep it simple and easy!

There’s something about honey and lime that I love together so much. It’s just so zesty and fresh, and oh-so-very delicious! I like using local honey, which is said to help with season allergies.

Make Honey Lime Fruit Salad with just a few quick ingredients – here’s how:

Print Recipe

Honey Lime Fruit Salad

Ingredients

1 cup blackberries
2 large oranges segments removed
2 cups strawberries hulled and halved
2 cups cantaloupe cubes
1 cup blueberries
juice of 2 limes
zest of 1 lime
3 tablespoons honey

Instructions

In a large bowl, toss together the fruit.
Add the lime juice and zest. Drizzle in the honey.
Toss to coat.
Serve immediately, or store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

This happened to be the assortment of fruit I had on hand at the time, but this fruit salad is equally delicious with a variety of fruits. Add raspberries, honeydew or whatever your favorites are to customize it to your taste.

So while this is great for gatherings, you don’t need a special occasion to make this Honey Lime Fruit Salad – it’s good any time! And it’s kid-friendly, too. I pack a little of this in my daughter’s lunchbox to have at snack time. Whenever you enjoy it, you’ll love the honey and lime flavors together!

Here are a few more of my favorite brunch recipes:

Mini Zucchini Bread with Lemon Icing

Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Egg Muffins

For more Easter inspiration, follow my Pinterest board:

Follow Juggling Act Mama – Ang Paris’s board Easter on Pinterest.

Easter Cupcakes

March 18, 2016 by Nikki Cole

Easter is here! And what makes Easter so fun? Decorations! Easter decorations are so pretty and get me so excited for spring with all the fun colors especially after gloomy winters. So here are some really fun and impressive Easter Cupcakes to wow guests or just to enjoy yourself!

So I live where from about November to almost the end of March we have snow, freezing weather, and gloomy outdoors, so when Easter hits I get super excited to bake anything because of the bright, fun, spring colors I get to use for the Holiday. These Easter Cupcakes turned out so cute and everyone was impressed. The marshmallow flower was actually pretty simple which I was a little surprised about and it looks amazing! I also did a few mini cupcakes as well just to have some bite size snacks. And yes I did a homemade cupcake mix but any box cupcake mix works just as well.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, melted
1 ¼ cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 TBLS vanilla extract
¾ cup buttermilk (or combine ¾ cup milk and 1 teaspoon white vinegar and let sit for 5 minutes)
½ cup sprinkles

Frosting

1 cup butter, softened (not melted but not rock hard)
¼ teaspoon salt
5 cups powdered sugar
1 TBLS vanilla
1-2 TBLS heavy whipping cream (can use milk)

Decorations

Mini marshmallows, plain
Mini marshmallows, fruit flavored
Sprinkles
Peeps
Chicks
M&m’s

Directions

Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line cupcake tins with liners.
In a separate bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
Cream together melted butter and sugar in a mixer.
Add eggs and vanilla and mix until nice and creamy.
Slowly add flour mixture and buttermilk alternating between the two.
Stir in sprinkles.
Pour batter into prepared liners about 2/3 the way full.
Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Let cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

Cream butter and powdered sugar together.
Add in vanilla and salt
Slowly add in the whipping cream (or milk) until consistency is creamy and easy to spread but not runny.

Chick cupcakes

The cupcakes with the chick peeps just frost the cupcake either by doing a flower tip design with a piping tip or just frosting it normal. Place the chick in the middles and place miniature fruit flavored marshmallows around.

Bunny cupcakes

Bunny cupcakes leave a little space in the middle of the cupcake without frosting, place the bunny there and then I piped flowers around the base of the bunny just to stabilize it more so it wasn’t falling over. Place fruit flavored marshmallows around.

Marshmallow cupcakes

Fruit marshmallow cupcakes, frost and scatter marshmallows around.

Flower cupcakes

Colored flowered cupcakes. Take your plain mini marshmallows, about 10-14, and cut them diagonally and then place in a plastic bag. Take whatever color of sanding sugar and pour some into the bag, (you don’t need a lot so start with a little and you can always add more), shake! The sugar should stick to the sticky side and give you a pedal looking marshmallow. Starting with a frosted cupcake on the outer edge put a ring or marshmallows sprinkle side up. Then working from the outer edge in keep making circles until you reach the middle.

Other ideas

M&M’s, sprinkles, cadberry eggs, jelly beans, or even plain frosting can look really fun, with Easter Cupcakes it’s hard to not have fun colorful treats so use your imagination or wonder up and down the candy aisle at any store and I’m sure you’ll see something fun.

Shamrock Shake

February 27, 2016 by Chellie Schmitz

Celebrate St. Patricks Day with a delicious Shamrock Shake!

Shamrock Shake

It’s that time of year again. Time for green food, green beer (for some) and green shakes! I read somewhere that the McDonalds Shamrock Shake has 57 ingredients! What?! It’s a shake, that seems like a lot! (that seems like a lot for any recipe) Don’t get me wrong, I love McDonalds just as much as the next person. I’m not really a fan of any fast food, but occasionally, it happens. Sometimes convenience wins. And nothing against their Shamrock Shake, it tastes great. But this one only has a few ingredients, and personally, I always vote for home made.

We’re not Irish, however, we are a family that loves to celebrate! St. Patricks day is the perfect excuse for a vanilla-y, minty, chocalate-y treat! YUM! Plus, bonus… It’s so easy to make!! Just five ingredients if you count the garnish, the shake itself just three. Oh I love easy!

Since my kids were quite young, we’ve made it a tradition to have a shamrock shake on St. Patricks day. They always look forward to it. I’m a believer in ‘everything in moderation’, so while this isn’t healthy, per se, it is a treat that is simple, easy and festive.

One thing I like to do when we are having treats, is make sure we make up the healthy in another area. So we’ll make sure we have plenty of nutrition in our dinner or lunch that day. Shepherd’s Pie is one of our favorite Irish-type meals. I love it because it’s all-inclusive. You got your meat and veggies and starch all in one dish. And, you can make it ahead of time and cook it when you’re ready. Serve it with some fruit and dinner. is. done.

And don’t think this recipe is just for the kids… grown ups will love it too!

Print Recipe

Shamrock Shake

Ingredients

2 cups vanilla ice cream
1/2 tsp mint extract
4-5 drops green food coloring
whipped cream optional
chocolate sauce optional

Instructions

Place all ingredients into a blender.
Blend until smooth.
Pour into glasses and top with whipped cream and chocolate sauce if desired.

Do you have any St. Patricks Day traditions? What are your favorite Irish meals?

If dessert in a cup speaks your language, check out these too!

Mocha Nut Steamer

Peppermint Mocha Steamer

Presidents Day Dessert

February 15, 2016 by Chellie Schmitz

This Presidents Day Dessert is easy, healthy, and scrumptious!

Presidents Day Dessert

Celebrate Presidents day with an easy and healthy dessert! What?! Celebrate Presidents day? Who does that? Well, the government does for one. Often, government employees are off, and if you’re kids are as excited about getting the mail as mine, they’ll tell you there’s no mail that day. Technically, it is a National holiday. Many schools are closed that day.

3 Reasons to celebrate

But why celebrate? Whether your kids are home with you, or in school during the day, life is filled with teachable moments. As far as schooling goes, we homeschool, AND we public school. I never thought I’d be doing both, but that’s another topic. When we wrestled with what was best for each child, my heart didn’t want to send them away all day. But, what I realized is just because they’re not with me all day doesn’t mean I’m not involved in their lives. So we make the most of each moment we have. And we love learning! So why not learn about Presidents day?

When my kids were younger, and I was trying to make it through Michigan winters (cold, gray, dreary, mundane, did I mention cold?), I would look for opportunities to celebrate, which would make those dreary days more exciting. For example, we celebrated ground hogs day for a couple of years. My now older children, still ask me “what are we doing for groundhogs day?”

Lastly, it’s an excuse to eat dessert!! Haha! But you can feel good about this presidents day dessert, because it’s good for you. Greek yogurt, anti-oxidant berries, and no sugar added makes this the perfect treat. So let’s recap:

Celebrate Presidents Day because~

It’s a teachable moment
It makes an ordinary day extraordinary
It’s a good excuse for dessert

Not sure what to say about Presidents Day? Here’s some resources made for kids:

A brief overview on how it started
A little more in depth history
Activity pages
Crafts
Coloring pages and crafts

Parfaits are super easy to make! All you do is choose your ingredients and layer them in a jar or dish of your choice. In the recipe I’ve put approximate measurements to make 1 parfait. You really just want to layer the yogurt and the fruit, so when you’re making this, just do what looks best to you. It could vary depending on the size jar or dish you are using. In our family, the kids love getting their own jar to eat out of. I don’t know why, but they think that is awesome. You can make these up ahead of time and store them in the fridge. This would also make a great breakfast or snack!

Happy Presidents Day! Go make today extraordinary!

Print Recipe

Presidents Day Dessert

Ingredients

1 6 oz container coconut yogurt
2 Tbs fresh blueberries plus more for garnish
1 Tbs fresh raspberries plus more for garnish
1 tsp unsweetened shredded coconut

Instructions

Start with a layer (about a tablespoon or 2) of yogurt on the bottom of a mason jar or other serving container.
Place 1 Tbs blueberries on top.
Layer more yogurt.
Place 1 Tbs raspberries.
Layer more yogurt.
Place 1 tbs blueberries on top.
Finish with a dollop of yogurt, fresh berries and a sprinkle of coconut.
Serve immediately, or store in the refrigerator until ready to eat.

Looking for more easy recipes? Try these:

Mango Parfaits
mango_yogurt_parfait-7

Breakfast Banana Split
healthy_banana_split-3breakfastpin

Triple Berry Smoothie
triple_berry_spinach_smoothiepin-2