Waffles, Peanut Butter Style

We had waffles this morning.  Mina told me thats what she wanted and luckily, I have a waffle iron, I hardly use so waffles it was.

 

Basic waffle recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 cups milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

PREP:

1. Preheat waffle iron. Beat eggs in large bowl with hand beater until fluffy. Beat in flour, milk, vegetable oil, sugar, baking powder, salt and vanilla, just until smooth.
2. Spray preheated waffle iron with non-stick cooking spray. Pour mix onto hot waffle iron. Cook until golden brown. Most waffles irons way some kind of buzzer of light that tells you they are done.

Serve hot.

I topped the girl's with Nature's Organics Peanut Butter, and Maple Syrup. They were yummy and easy. The kiddos love em and they look more glamorous than they really are. 

In addition, I added some chopped pecans to mine. Super good.

Cheers* Happy Waffles

Festive Caramel Apples

I made these caramel apples for a Valentine's party that my girlfriend Lori ( http://nomoresweatpants.blogspot.com/ ) had for our kiddos. A few other friends were there with their little ones and the kids had a blast!!

I was going to make cookies, but I knew the kids were going to be on sugar over load anyways. I also figured that the adults would like these. I mean who doesn't like a good caramel apple??

They remind me of being little at the county fair. Aww the memories.

Add a little holiday sprinkles and you are good to go!!

To make these: I bought some Granny Smith apples. These taste the best I think.

I bought a package of Branch's Caramel, the sticks were included.

I washed and dried the apples, inserted the sticks and began to melt my caramels.

I put 2 tablespoons of water in a medium sauce pan and added in my caramels. This is on medium-low heat. Constantly stirring, to prevent burning. Once it was all melted I turned the heat off but kept the pan on the burner. One at a time, I covered the apples, and placed them on greased parchment paper. When on the paper, I sprinkled them with Valentine's sprinkles. CUTE.
Once they were all covered, I put them in the refrigerator on let them harden.

Thats it, they are really easy. And soo yummy. Enjoy *Cheers

Valentine's Cut-Out Cookies & Blue Ribbon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Happy Late Valentine's Day everyone. Hope it was lovely for you. A time of love, memories, and sugar commas.

There's been a lot of sweets in this house lately. It's time for a cleanse. No more sugar for a LONG while. Geeze.

For my daughter's class's Valentine's Day party, I made heart cut out sugar cookies. They turned out so yummy. I absolutely love this cookie recipe.

Roll-Out Cookies:

1 cup unsalted butter, softened,  2 3/4 cups all purpose flour, 1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar,  2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons Clear Vanilla Extract , 1 egg

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a mixing bowl, cream butter w/ sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix flour, baking powder and salt; add to butter mixture 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Knead in a small amount of icing color, if desired.

Do not chill dough.

On floured surface, roll dough into balls. At this point I use as much or little dough I need for the cookie cutter to cut out the shapes. Dip cookie cutter into flour before each use.
Bake cookies on ungreased cookie sheet 6-7 minutes or until cookies are lightly browned.

Short of time, I used store bought cream cheese icing, dyed dark pink, with red food coloring.


 

Blue Ribbon Chocolate Chip Cookies

My mother in law bought me this cookie book for Christmas. The Ultimate Shortcut Cookie Book  by Camilla V. Saulsbury (Winner of the Food Network's Ultimate Recipe Showdown Best Cookie Recipe).

I finally used it for the first time yesterday. The book's basis is that each recipe starts with either refrigerated cookie dough, cake mix, brownie mix, or ready to eat cereal. Pretty cool if you are short on time. Plus the cookies I made were crazy good. My shortcut was a box of yellow cake mix.

If you really want the recipe, send me a message and I'll get it to you.  :-)



Once again, I forgot to take a picture of my final product. I really need to step up my game. :-)

So why the sam hill did I make cookies, again after a sugary "holiday" like Valentines?

Oh I have a good story for you. My daughter's class makes a big deal of the 100th day of school. Each child had to bring a project of some sort. Be it 100 rocks, seeds, pennies, 100 stickers on a post board, whatever, in 10 groups of 10. This gets the kindergarteners to count to 100. Pretty exciting.

Well, my little miss told her teacher "my mom's going to make 100 cookies for my project" Oh yeah ???

I was blind sided when her teacher called on Friday night and asked me if I was still going to do that. I guess I am, I said. Well, instead of going at it alone, I brought another parent on bored. So she made 50, I made 50 and the girls presented their project together. TEAMWORK!!! Wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. And they were tasty.

Cut-Out Cookies




Blue-Ribbon Chocolate Chip Cookies