Tag Archives: kitchen

Pistachio cake in roaster oven

Posted on 06/25/2013 | 8 comments

Have you ever needed to bake something and you went and turned on your oven only to find that it would not work? Not a good thing, this happened to me recently and I didn’t want to waste the cake mix I had mixed up. I knew I had a roaster oven but had never baked in it before, so I thought I would give it a try. Do you know it worked exactly like an oven would?

After looking up the manual online, I realized that they even recommend baking baked goods inside of it. What a great thing to know especially with the summer being so hot and not wanting to heat up the house. Give it a try sometime. Or remember that you can use it, if your oven ever fails.

This is a great tasting cake that we love to make up. Keep it stored in the refrigerator and it will stay moist for a long time.

Place the following in your mixer bowl

1 pkg white cake mix
3 eggs
1 pkg instant pistachio pudding
1 c oil
1 c ginger ale

Mix on low 1 min. Then beat med- high for 2 min.

Pour into a greased 9×13 pan.

If you have a “regular oven” you can bake it at 350 for 30 minutes. But we are going to use the roaster oven.

I would keep the rack inside of it, so that your pan isn’t sitting directly on the roaster oven. Let the heat circulate a little.

Place the cake pan inside the roaster and place the lid on it. Be careful not to lift the lid except when near the time it should be done, otherwise all your heat is lost quickly and it will affect your baking items.

After the 30 minutes it looks like this.

After it has cooled completely mix up the following:

2 pkg instant pistachio pudding mix
2 c milk
1- 8 oz cool whip

Beat on medium until well mixed. Spread on cake. Refrigerate until set.

8 Comments

Posted in desserts, In my kitchen

Tagged cake, desserts, kitchen, roaster oven

Iced coffee drink similar to Starbucks frappuccinos

Posted on 06/24/2013 | 5 comments

I love coffee. I love buying the Starbucks coffee drinks in the stores, but they get costly. My husband is so wonderful to bless me with a “real” Starbucks Frappuccino almost every weekend. But being a frugal girl who likes to make her own things, I figured there had to be a way to make this coffee drink. There is.

After many recipes, tried and true, nothing comes close to the taste that this makes. I love it and will choose this homemade drink over a real Starbucks store Frappuccino anyday.

Try it, definitely worth your time to make it, I promise tastes just like the jar Frapps.

First choose your choice of coffee. Since I wanted mine to taste like Starbucks that is the coffee brand I chose. You choose your favorite. I like the Espresso roast, as I drink these for an extra kick of energy half way through my day.

Pour the coffee grounds into a large plastic container. My container size is 6 quarts.

Then fill your container with about 1 1/2 gallons of water.

Carefully stir the mixture so that your coffee grounds get covered. Nice and muddy looking Cover your container and let it sit for about 10 hours or overnight This is what you will have after that time…..the same muddy looking messNow we need to strain out the coffee grounds from the liquid. Line a smalll mesh sieve with paper towels. Pour the liquid through the sieve straining out the grounds.
After you are all done straining out the grounds, you are left with your coffee base. I keep this in my refrigerator and it lasts me about a month until I need to make some more. Time to make a nice size glass for me and hubby. Fill your jars or cups with about this much coffee base. Then you add sugar. Yes I know it is bad for you. We use the raw sugar for everything else in our home, but it does not dissolve in cold coffee, thus the need for granulated sugar For the size jar I make I add at least 6-8 Tablespoons of sugar, sounds like a lot, go check how much sugar is in a jar of this stuff. If you do not add enough sugar, the taste is ruined, don’t jip yourself go for it and then scale back later on. Add some milk, I use the fat free version, you can use whatever you have. You need to add about 3 times the amount of milk as coffee base. Add some ice cubes and give it a good stir.

Yum delicious!

5 Comments

Posted in drinks, In my kitchen

Tagged coffee, drink, frappuccino, kitchen

Homemade bread sticks — cinnamon and garlic parmesan

Posted on 06/14/2013 | 5 comments

These bread sticks are super easy to make and are so delicious!

Take a portion of your bread dough

Roll out ,wipe melted butter on , and sprinkle cinnamon and raw sugar on top.

Cut into bread stick shapes.

Place on pans

Bake 400 for 15 minutes.

Stir together powdered sugar and little bit of water and drizzle over top of warm cinnamon sticks.

Place in covered container, between sheets of wax paper.

You can also do garlic parmesan ones.

Take a portion of your bread dough

Roll out your bread dough and spread melted butter on. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and granulated garlic

Cut into bread sticks and place on pans

Bake 400 for 15-20 minutes

Place in covered container.

Great with ranch dip.

5 Comments

Posted in breads, In my kitchen

Tagged bread sticks, breads, kitchen

Easiest and most versatile whole wheat bread dough recipe

Posted on 06/14/2013 | Comments Off

We make this recipe as its easy and versatile. We can make loaves of bread, rolls, pizza dough, or bread sticks from this recipe. I don’t have a heavy duty mixer or bread machine, so this has been the easiest recipe I’ve ever made for minimal amount of work.

3 c hot water
6 T oil
2 T honey
1 1/2 T yeast
8 c white whole wheat flour
2 1/4 t salt

First use hot tap water and pour into your bowl. The water should be pretty hot, not scalding as it will kill your yeast but enough so that it activates it.

Sprinkle the yeast over the water

Add the honey to your yeast and water

Whisk it to combine the ingredients

Let sit for about 5 minutes until bubbly

Add your oil, we use coconut oil–have to melt it then add, but you can use canola oil as well

Next add your salt

Then add your flour, not all at once or you will have a mess

Just add a cup at a time, you can either whisk by hand

and continue to keep whisking until your whisker gets clogged

or you can use a hand mixer and do a cup at a time until your beaters get clogged. Beat for at least 3 minutes. The longer you beat, the better the elasticity of your dough.

Either way it will all turn out the same in the end. At the point where you have to start doing it by hand, I like to knead it directly in the bowl, to avoid making a mess on my counter tops. Knead for about 2-3 minutes. Don’t know how to knead bread dough? Check this out.

Then grease another bowl and put your dough into it, turning once and let sit till double in size. You can keep punching it down until you are ready to make something out of it.

Form it into pizza dough, bread, rolls, calzones, or bread sticks. Very easy and versatile.

Here is a picture tutorial to teach you how to form a loaf of bread.

Bake 350 for 30 min.

Comments Off on Easiest and most versatile whole wheat bread dough recipe

Posted in breads, In my kitchen

Tagged bread, kitchen

Popover recipe a blast from the past

Posted on 06/13/2013 | 1 comment

Little Women has to be one of my all time favorite classic books. Besides the fact that I was named after two of the characters Amy and Jo, the nostalgia of the movie is something I seek after. I love seeing all the girls crowded around their Marmee, enjoying her telling them a story and seeing women dressed in the feminine ways that God intended for us. Its a time period that has been somehow lost in our society.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is where the girls come running down the stairs to a kitchen for their Christmas breakfast. The smells are tantalizing and the girls are longing after all the wonderful foods that they have gone so long without due to the war.

Amy speaks up and says “Oh Marmee, popovers, they are simply divine!” After that my children and I decided to look up popovers and how to make them. We have tried various recipes over the years and tweaked them a bit and have come up with the following easy recipe, which we love.

These taste amazing plain, with butter, or a dab of homemade strawberry jam. We don’t have an official popover pan but just use our muffin tins and they turn out fine every time. Make sure to grease your pans thoroughly so that it does not stick.

2 eggs, room temperature
2/3 cup of milk
2 T butter melted
2/3 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon of salt

This recipe makes 6 popovers, we usually quadruple this for 24 popovers.

Preheat oven 425 degrees

crack your room temperature eggs into a bowl

add your milk

then your flour–we use white whole wheat flour

and your salt

we don’t own a microwave–another post on that later, so our butter has been melting in the oven while adding the other ingredients, so that goes in last