Drunken Donuts Bread Pudding

A lot of you have asked about the bread pudding recipe using donuts that I made, your wish is my command!

I stumbled upon this Donut Bread Pudding recipe by Paula Deen (you know it's bound to be good if Paula makes it)

I made a few tweaks though, below is my version of the recipe:

Drunken Donuts Bread Pudding

Ingredients

• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can fruit cocktail, with their juice
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 (9-ounce) box raisins
• Pinch salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• About 16 glazed donuts, cut into cubes
• Butter Rum Sauce, recipe follows

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the first 6 ingredients. Add the donut cubes and toss until they have absorbed as much of the liquid as possible. Pour the mixture into a 13"x9" casserole dish and bake for 1 hour. Serve with Butter Rum Sauce.

Butter Rum Sauce:

• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 (1-pound) box confectioners' sugar
• dark rum, to taste (I used Appleton Special Rum, about 1/4 cup)

In a saucepan, melt the butter and gradually stir in the confectioners' sugar. Add rum and heat until bubbly. Pour over Drunken Donut Bread Pudding

 

Lazy girl dog treats

You know what screams LOOK AT ME, I'M LITTLE MISS DOMESTICATED?
Homemade dog treats.
C'mon, your first thought is who has time to do that.

Me. That's who!

A few weekends ago my mom and I decided we were tired of buying the ridiculously priced dog treats from the store & took it upon ourselves to make our own. The thing is, they're super simple. We even got all cutesy and used a heart shaped cookie cutter since it was lovey-dovey February

Lazy Girl Dog Treats

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Combine oil, peanut butter and water. Add flour, one cup at a time, forming a dough. Knead dough into firm ball and roll to 1/4 inch thickness. (We used mom's Kitchenaid, with the dough hook)

Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes, or simply cut into squares/rectangles. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. Makes 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

[recipe based on this one]

These got the tail-wag of approval from Russell, Spencer, Bella, Abby and Darby (hey, we like to share!)

Spread the Love

I was feeling a little festive Sunday night and decided to whip up a Valentine's treats to give out.

Cinnamon Honey Butter 

(this is the actual name, I think "heaven in your mouth" is a legit alternative though. If you are familiar with the Texas Roadhouse butter, this tastes JUST like it, if not better!)

Ingredients
5 sticks butter, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup honey
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions
Combine all ingredients in your mixer. Blend on medium until butter becomes whipped. Enjoy!

(This filled up 5 16oz Ball canning jars - the recipe can easily be doubled or cut in half too)

[modified from this recipe]

Going Green

I've decided to go green. No, not green as in recycling... green as in my breakfast!

I have read on a few blogs about the Green Monster, but being the queen of doubt, I had little faith that these were GOOD and you couldn't taste the spinach. However, after many a midday headache from not eating breakfast I figured what have I got to lose, and ventured out to Wally World to pick up a blender. Afterall, if the smoothies were a bust atleast I could use it for mudslides!

I started out with a hodgepodge of ingredients I had in my fridge:

Spinach, peach greek yogurt, peach mango coconut water, and a banana. I put about 2 handfuls of spinach in the blender, added the banana on top, then the container of yogurt and then poured the coconut water on top. My hesitation was running at an all time high right about then. I threw some ice on top and set the bad boy to high.

About 2 minutes later the green monster had evolved. I stuck my finger in for a taste, searching for the slightest hint of the leafy green flavor. Much to my surprise, no luck. I took a few more tastes before pouring it into a glass. It tasted just like a peach banana mango tropical smoothie.

And now, I've made one every morning since!

Curious to see just HOW healthy it really is, I plugged all the ingredients in to an app on my phone and came up with this:

(Updated: Someone inquired about the calorie count, I'm not exactly sure though. All of those ingredients made enough for nearly 2 smoothies, with a total calorie count of 345. So somewhere around half of that per serving? It would depend on your ingredients though)

Not too shabby for a breakfast smoothie, huh?! I'm a believer now. I went green.

Have you?? I am curious to try some of the other recipes/combinations I have seen... if you have a favorite please share!

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

As a self proclaimed dessert diva I took it upon myself to whip up a few things for our family's Thanksgiving dinner.

I decided to mix it up a bit and make red velvet whoopie pies instead of my usual red velvet cookies. Don't worry, they were welcomed with open arms (open mouths??)




Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Preheat oven to 400*
Combine 1 box Red Velvet Cake mix, 3 eggs, 1/2c. oil, 1/2c. water, 1/2c. flour in mixer.
Mix for ~2min.
Spoon onto cookie sheet covered in parchment paper
Bake for 8-10min

Cream Cheese Filling
3 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Sift confectioner' sugar into a medium bowl; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth. Add cream cheese and beat until well combined. Add confectioners' sugar and vanilla, beat just until smooth.

Transfer filling to a disposable pastry bag and snip the end. (i just use a large ziploc bag) When cookies have cooled completely, pipe a large dollop of filling on the flat side of half of the cookies. Sandwich with remaining cookies, pressing down slightly so that the filling spreads to the edge of the cookies.

Refrigerate cookies at least 30 minutes before serving and up to 3 days.

Enjoy!

Pretzel Hugs

I landed another tailgate hit this past weekend... inspired by Pinterest (yet again) I decided to whip up this recipe, and let me tell you - they got rave reviews!

Source: cookiesandcups.com via Chelsea on Pinterest

Pretty simple to make too! Just get the "Pounder" bag of Snaps pretzels, and a few bags of Hershey's Hugs...

Lay out your parchment paper on cookie sheets, and line your pretzels up.

Then comes the worst part... unwrapping all the Hugs!

Once you tackle that mountain of a task, place one Hug on each pretzel (yes, this is tedious, but they're SO tasty I promise it is worth it!)

Once that's done pop 'em in the oven (one sheet at a time) at 300degrees for about 2 minutes (they will JUST start to get glossy and soft, don't let them melt too much... you'll have a big mess!).

As soon as you pull em out, place a pretzel on top of each one!

The original recipe suggests putting them in the fridge to cool them down quickly, however I didn't have room so I just left them out. I'd say within an hour or so they were cooled!

The hardest part is lining up all the pretzels and unwrapping the chocolates... but once you get past that it's easy breezy! You get all the taste of white chocolate covered pretzels without the hassle of actually having to cover pretzels in white chocolate.

Peanut butter bleh

Ooh our Colts. In an effort to numb the pain of what was sure to be a blow out game, we drank.
We drank tequila-soaked cherries, and two different flavors of jello shots and even killed a bottle of Cherry Pucker Vodka.

Much to our surprise, the game wasn't THAT painful. We only lost by 3!

However, what was disappointing was the dessert that I had such high hopes for. After last weeks cheesecake stuffed strawberries were such a hit, I tried to follow it up with another blowout.

Enter the peanut butter cheeseball.

Source: the-girl-who-ate-everything.com via Chelsea on Pinterest

Looks awfully tasty, doesn't it? But meh... it was sorta boring in my opinion. It wasn't gross by any means, just not very exciting. Have you tried making this? It's been floating around Pinterest for a little while now

Hey, I guess you can't win em all?!

Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

We have tailgated with the same big group of people for the past like 8 years at every home Colts game... we've all become some sort of fine-tuned machine, full of competitive cornhole, great company and delicious food.

The thing is, when you tailgate together for that long - you go past the 'bag of chips and salsa' tailgating, we actually have a menu for the tailgating season and everyone brings a complimentary side dish / appetizer or dessert if it's not your week to make the main menu item.

Since this Sunday was a 1 o'clock game, we did the traditional biscuits & gravy, with tater tot casserole, bacon, bloody mary's and all sorts of other breakfast goodies, and I brought along some Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries inspired by this recipe. They were a huge hit, and the bitesized desserts proved to be the perfect tailgating sweets.

 Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

Ingredients

3 containers of strawberries

1 brick cream cheese, softened

3-4 heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 graham cracker square, crushed up

Directions

1. Cut the tops off the strawberries, then using a small paring knife cut a cone shape out of the middle of the strawberries (I used the white part as a guide). Do this with all of the strawberries and set aside.

2. Crush up your graham cracker crumbs into a small bowl and set aside.

3.  In a mixing bowl combine the cream cheese, vanilla and powdered sugar (to taste), mix until creamy.

4. Scoop cheesecake mixture into a ziploc baggie, and snip the corner off. Pipe the filling into the strawberries, then dip them in the crushed up graham crackers.

5. Refrigerate until you're ready to enjoy them!

I expected these to be sort-of time consuming considering how you have to cut every strawberry but they really didn't take too long. And they were definitely worth it! All of them got eaten up yesterday!

Girlfriend Cookies

I'd like to think I've pretty much perfected my chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I joke that not a week has gone by where I haven't made baked goods since moving into my house back in January, and it's true - aside from a few weeks where my butt was plopped on a beach!

These are my Girlfriend Cookies. You know, the kind of chocolate chip cookies that if any guy eats them he is guaranteed to make some sort of remark about how he wishes you were his girlfriend (or maybe even wife).  They are my most favorite cookies to make. Not only because I know the recipe by heart, but also because they are just so darn tasty!


Girlfriend Cookies


Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 (3.5 ounce) box instant vanilla pudding mix* (This is the magic ingredient that makes your cookies soft & chewy)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F).

In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugars (and then if you're me, proceed to eat about 3 tablespoons full. That's my favorite thing ever!!)

Mix in your box of vanilla pudding, your eggs and your vanilla.

Combine flour & baking soda in a separate bowl. Gently mix that mixture into the sugar/butter concoction.

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets & bake 10-12 minutes (I usually pull them out right around 9 because my oven bakes hot)

Let them cool, and then enjoy! I like them best in the morning at breakfast... honest! I usually eat 2 or 3 every morning with my coffee!

Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake

Back in the spring I was aimlessly strolling through Target (actually, it was the same day my genius tablecloth turned curtain idea struck) and a teal bundt pan hopped into my cart. Honest, I don't know how it happened. I am convinced all things teal are just drawn to me and somehow make sure that I purchase them. It's some crazy intergalactic magnetic force. (hey - bundt pans are metal... work with me!)

Anyways.... said bundt pan sat all cute in my hutch for a few months, then it became a candy dish (super cute one, by the way) for a few months after that... until all the candy got eaten and then it just sat there on the table with a few stray Fun Size Twix's and I decided it was time to actually make it work for it's keep!


And thus the Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake was born.

 (Doesn't it look so yummy on my Fiesta Pizza Tray?!)

Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake

Ingredients

• 1 cup sour cream
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup white sugar

 

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Lightly grease one 10 inch bundt pan.
2. Cream 1 1/2 cups white sugar together with eggs until well blended. Add sour cream and butter or margarine and beat well. Add flour, baking soda, and baking powder and mix well. Stir in vanilla and the chopped nuts.
3. Mix the remaining 1/4 cup of white sugar with the cinnamon.
4. Pour half of the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle generously with the cinnamon sugar mixture. Cover with remaining cake batter.
5. Bake at 400 degrees F for 8 minutes. Lower heat to 350 degrees F  and bake for an additional 40 minutes.  

I also made a glaze to go over the top once cooled, using 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons milk & 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

I will now proceed to consume nearly all of it this week, because, you know... what else would be a better idea when I'll be spending all next week in a bikini!?

  

Irish Car Bomb cupcakes

Seeing as I work in the industry, I always find it fun to make boozy baked goods. Last night, in the spirit of the Irish, I made Irish Car Bomb cupcakes!

I used a recipe from Mixing Bowl (recipe is below) and to be honest, I wasn't real thrilled with it. Maybe it was me and my flighty measuring, but the icing recipe is way off, I had to do some serious altering to make it look like an icing rather than soup!

Regardless, I tried one, and even though they aren't the prettiest cupcakes I've made they sure are tasty (and are true to their Irish Car Bomb flavor!)

I brought in a dozen or so to work, we'll see how these liquor connoisseurs rate them!

IRISH CAR BOMB CUPCAKES

Ingredients:

FOR THE CUPCAKES:
1 cup Guinness
1 stick, plus 1 tbs unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups dark brown sugar
3/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking soda

FOR THE FROSTING:
1 stick of unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups confectioners' sugar
Bailey's Irish Cream
Jameson Irish Whiskey - I used Tullamore Dew!

Directions:

FOR THE CUPCAKES:
1. Preheat the oven to 350; line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
2. Combine the Guinness and the butter, chopped into 1-inch chunks, in a large sauce pan, and heat to melt the butter.
3. Remove from heat, and whisk in the cocoa and sugar.
4. In a bowl, whisk the sour cream and the eggs and vanilla, then add to the beer mixture.
5. Sift together the flour and baking soda, and fold in the batter.
6. Pour into muffin molds and bake or 25 minutes, or until inserted cake tester comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes, remove from muffin tin, and cool completely on a rack.

FOR THE FROSTING:
1. Put the stick of room-temperature butter in a large mixing bowl and bet at medium-to-high speed for a few minutes.
2. Add a few short glugs of Bailey's and a tiny bit of Tullamore Dew, and mix at low speed.
3. Gradually spoon confectioners' sugar into the bowl, mixing on low speed.

*I had to use a stick and a half of butter, and much more sugar in order to make enough to cover all the cupcakes and thicken it up!

 

Enjoy!

Dipstick (a few favorite recipes)

Shortly after getting all moved in my favorite Las Vegan was in town and I had the girls over for a little MJ Dancing and scrabble action.

Seeing as how my mom is the queen of party hosting and finger foods, I spent a good hour perusing the grocery store collecting goodies for the perfect assortment of dips for our ladies night

I decided to go with my Fruit Dip, Pizza Dip and Mediterranean Dip.

After stocking up on cream cheese at the I headed home to start preparing. These are three of my go-to dips... easy and quick to prepare and are a tad different, so if you take them to a get together you probably won't end up having 3 of the same thing! I figured I would share my recipes, with the big games coming up who doesn't want something new to serve?!

Fruit Dip (my mom's recipe)

1 brick cream cheese, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

Combine all ingredients in the mixer and then serve. It's great with bananas, apples, strawberries, grapes, whatever! It's so amazingly delicious.... don't be surprised if your guests whip out a spoon and just start eating it straight (not that I've ever done that or anything...) Tip: Place your cut up apple slices in a large Ziploc baggie and pour in a can of Sprite... obviously drain before serving. The citrus will help prevent your apples from browning

Mediterranean Dip

1 brick cream cheese, softened

2 tbsp milk

1 container of hummus

1/2 cucumber

2 roma tomatoes

~3/4 container feta cheese

black olives (optional)

bag of pita chips (we like Stacy's Pita Chips)

Combine the cream cheese & milk (I recommend using a mixer... otherwise it's hard to get it mixed completely and will be chunky). Spread along the bottom of serving dish (you can use a pie plate, an oval serving dish, an 8x8pan, a dinner plate - doesn't matter!). The next layer is the hummus - spread this evenly above the cream cheese layer. Now add diced up cucumber and tomatoes. Lastly, sprinkle feta across the top.

This is addictive, and I'd like to think it's relatively healthy hah! You can substitute flavored hummus (roasted red pepper, etc), but I prefer the regular.

Both of these recipes can be prepared ahead of time, covered in foil and left in the fridge until later.  I don't have the pizza dip recipe in front of me, so that'll have to wait until another day!

In the Kitchen : Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yesterday once I finally drug my butt out of bed I was craving some chocolate chip cookies bad! I have been 4 different kinds of frustrated with my good ol' recipe (from the bag of Nestle Chocolate Chips) so I decided to stray and find a new one.

After reading through approximately 27 of the 348 chocolate chip cookies recipes on AllRecipes I settled on one with two boxes of pudding (everybody knows adding pudding to cookies makes them super fluffy and moist - right? If not, now you do!)
They are delicious. Here's the recipe if any of you are looking for an incredibly yummy chocolate chip cookie! (Be warned, this recipe makes a TON of cookies - like well over 100!)

Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
(recipe found here)

Ingredients

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups chopped walnuts (optional- I left these out)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Sift together the flour and baking soda, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the two boxes of instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

Enjoy!

In The Kitchen: Week 1: Chicken Pot Pie Casserole

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to become a better cook, or maybe you could call it "learning to cook" but I took every Home Ec class offered in high school! I know all of the basics, and I enjoy cooking, I just never had to do it much. So with the new year I decided I was going to cook one meal a week (I might even get ambitious and do more, we'll see!)

I'm not trying to get all Julie & Julia on you, I just thought it would be fun to share what I tackle and of course I'm always open to helpful hints and new recipes!

Last night I made Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. It took about 20min to cook the chicken breast and prepare the ingredients, and had to bake in the over for roughly 50 minutes. It served 4 people with a little bit of leftovers for lunch today!

Ingredients

Filling:

   -4 chicken breasts, cooked & cut up

   -1/4 c. chicken broth

   -1 (12oz) can cream of chicken soup

   -1 (12oz) can cream of mushroom soup

   -1 bag frozen vegetables (I only had individual bags on hand so I used about 1/3 bag of green beans, broccoli & peas)

   -1small onion

   -2 medium sized potatoes (I cooked these in the microwave & cut them up before adding them)

Crust:

   -1 stick butter, melted

   -1 1/4 c. Bisquick

   -1c. milk

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix all of the "filling" ingredients together and pour into a 9"x13" greased pan. In a seperate bowl mix "crust" ingredients, pour over chicken mixture and bake for 45-60 minutes.

(Recipe modified from Big Oven).

We LOVED this, it was the perfect comfort food for a freezing cold Indy night like last night! The only recommendation I have is perhaps adding more biscuit mixture to the top, which I plan on doing next time!