I had this drink last week at TGIFridays. It was so good, I had to make it myself. I love cotton candy anyway but I like the way it adds some sweetness to the drink. Plus, it’s just fun to pour a drink over cotton candy. 🙂
Pink Punk Cosmo
Ingredients
Directions
Shake vodka and juices in a shaker with ice. Pour over cotton candy into a martini glass.
This recipe is the result of a lot of experimenting and taste tests!
French Vanilla Cupcakes
Ingredients
Directions
1. Set oven rack in middle position. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour milk, eggs, and extracts into a small bowl and mix with fork until blended.
3. Mix cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of electric mixer at slow speed. Add butter; continue beating at slow speed until mixture resembles moist crumbs.
4. Add the milk mixture to crumbs and beat at medium speed (or high speed if using handheld mixer). Add pudding and mix.
5. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full. (I used an ice cream scoop to keep them even.) Bake until thin skewer or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 15-17 minutes.
What a fun way to eat macaroni and cheese.
This was a very basic recipe that originally didn’t call for any seasoning other than a little salt added to the bread crumbs. You can basically make mac and cheese the way you normally do, but bake it in a greased muffin tin for a different and fun presentation. It’s also a neat way to control portions and serving sizes. 🙂
Modified from: All Recipes
Remember these??
Candy Dots
Ingredients
Directions
Cut white paper into twelve 2 by 11 strips. Using an electric mixer, beat the confectioners sugar and egg white until smooth, about 5 minutes. Divide the icing into 2 bowls. Stir the yellow food coloring into one batch and the blue food coloring into the other. Cover the blue icing with plastic wrap.
Arrange the paper strips side by side on a work surface. Scrape the yellow icing into a small, resealable plastic bag and snip off a tiny corner. Pipe out the icing onto the paper in dots, about 1/3 inch apart. When a quarter of the yellow icing remains, add the same amount of blue icing, stirring with a toothpick. Pipe green dots onto the paper strips. Transfer the rest of the blue icing to another plastic bag and continue piping dots. Let the dots sit at room temperature until hardened, 12 hours or overnight.
This is a Rachael Ray recipe that I adapted based on what I had in my kitchen. I didn’t get a good picture of them but they turned out well!
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Put ground beef into a big bowl. Put seasoning blend into a food processor. Pulse the processor blades to finely chop the vegetables into very small pieces then add them to the meat bowl. Add egg, beaten with milk, bread crumbs and grill seasoning to the bowl. Next, mix together the barbecue sauce, pizza sauce and the Worcestershire sauce. Pour half the sauce mixture into the bowl with the meatloaf mix. Mix the meatloaf together with your hands. Wash up. Brush a 12-muffin tin (1/2-cup each) with vegetable oil or extra-virgin olive oil. Use an ice cream scoop to help you fill meat into a each tin. Top each meat loaf with a spoonful of extra sauce. Bake about 20 minutes. Cut open 1 muffin to test that the middle is cooked through.
Modifed from Food Network
Another salmon recipe! 🙂 This was really good with wild rice pilaf.
Lime Marinated Broiled Salmon
Ingredients
Directions
Place first 5 ingredients in a blender; process until smooth. Pour into a large zip-top plastic bag. Add salmon, and seal and marinate in refrigerator 1 hour, turning bag occasionally.
Preheat broiler.
Remove salmon from bag, discarding marinade. Place salmon on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray; broil 8 minutes. Turn, and broil an additional 4 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Serve with lime wedges.
From: Cooking Light
In the past few months, I’ve made a lot of cut out sugar cookies (see pics below). This is the recipe that I settled on after making a few variations of the original recipe. I am in love with this recipe. 🙂
Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Directions
Cream butter. Add sugars. Blend in egg, almond extract, vanilla, salt and flour. Chill dough until firm. Roll to ¼” thickness on well-floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters. Place on greased cookie sheets. Bake at 375° for 8-10 min. Cookies should not brown. Frost and decorate when cool.
Royal Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the sheen has disappeared and the icing has a matte appearance (about 7-10 minutes). Transfer the contents of the mixing bowl to an air-tight container. This will be the stiffest consistency of the icing, and at this point it is still too stiff to use for decorating. Add water a very small amount at a time and stir by hand until fully incorporated. Continue until the icing has reached a consistency appropriate for piping. (Remember, if you are having any difficulty piping, it is still too thick. Add a little more liquid and try again.) Using a pastry bag, pipe around the edges of each cookie. Let stand so the icing will set. Make sure to keep the leftover icing covered at all times when not in use so that it does not begin to harden.
Once all the cookies have been edged, transfer some of the remaining icing to a separate air-tight container. Thin out by incorporating a small amount of water at a time, until the icing drips off the spoon easily when lifted and then smooths in with that still in the bowl. If you go too far and the icing is too thin, add more sifted powdered sugar to thicken it again. Once the icing has reached the desired consistency, transfer it to a squeeze bottle (or a plastic bag with a hole in one corner), and flood the area surrounded by the piping on each cookie. If it does not completely spread to the edges, use a toothpick to help it along. *Allow to set.
Use the remaining thicker icing for piping decoration as desired. Gel icing color is best as it does not add a significant amount of liquid. Liquid food coloring can be used as well – add powdered sugar as needed to compensate for any thinning that occurs.
Here are a few pics of my recent cookie designs…
A super easy sandwich that kids can help make and love to eat!
Ham and Cheese Crescent Roll Ups
Ingredients
Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Separate dough into 8 triangles. Place one slice of ham on each triangle; place 2 strips of cheese down the center of ham. Roll up each crescent. ( Typically, you start rolling from the wide end of the triangle but I started from the tip because it was easier to add a little more ham without worrying about making sure it all “fit” as I rolled them.) Place rolls on an ungreased cookie sheet. (I accidentally greased mine but they turned out fine. 🙂 ) Bake 15 to 19 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.
From: Pillsbury
I bought some buttermilk this week and planned to make my regular buttermilk pie. Then, completely by accident, I came across this recipe and had to try them. A new twist to Scott’s favorite pie. 🙂
Buttermilk Pie Bars
Crust
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
Filling
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
2 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
2 cups buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350F.
Lightly grease a 9×13-inch baking pan (or used the Baker’s Edge).
Begin by making the crust. In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter, until smooth and fluffy. Working at a low speed, gradually beat in flour and salt until mixture is crumbly. Pour mixture into prepared pan and press into an even layer.
Bake for 15-17 minutes, until it just begins to turn golden brown.
While the crust bakes, prepare the filling.
In a large bowl, or the bowl of a food processor, combine all filling ingredients and whisk (or pulse) until mixture is well combined and very smooth.
When crust is done, pour the filling into the hot crust and return to oven.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until filling is just set. Cool bars on a wire rack. Chill before slicing.
Serves 16
From: baking bites
A few years ago, I modified a strawberry cupcakes recipe that started with white cake mix. They were really good! But then I lost the recipe. Recently, my friend Kim found it but in the meantime we’d decided to do a comparison of several recipes and decide which one we liked best. This recipe is different from most strawberry cake or cupcakes in that it truly tastes like fresh strawberries. It’s basically a really moist yellow cake with fresh strawberries folded into the batter. I pulsed the strawberries in the food processor a few times (instead of chopping them) and was happy with the results. I did not top them with strawberry frosting. I used my regular buttercream and just added a little pink coloring to it. I actually planned to add a small amount of pureed strawberries to it and a few slices on top but I ran out of strawberries. This was okay though because I don’t usually care for frosting that is the same flavor as the cake unless it’s vanilla on vanilla. 🙂
Stay tuned for the next recipe test!
Strawberry Cupcakes
Yield: about 18 cupcakes
Ingredients:
2 ½ cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup unsalted butter
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk
¼ cup oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups chopped strawberries
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.
Sift flour, salt and baking soda into a medium bowl. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time until combined. Add buttermilk, oil and vanilla and beat until combined. Add flour mixture and stir until just combined. Fold in chopped strawberries. Fill cupcake wells ¾ full with batter. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.
From: Annie’s Eats
