Kids in the Kitchen

Pepperoni Bites

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This recipe was so easy to make! My 9 year old daughter actually made these one afternoon for everyone to have as a snack!  Delicious! We like deli pepperoni better than the ones you can get pre-packaged, but you can use whatever you want.  Enjoy!
 
1 cup AP Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 cup Milk
1 egg
1 cup Cheddar Cheese, shredded
1-1/2 cup pepperoni, diced
Pam
Marina sauce
 
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Into a big mixing bowl add the flour, baking powder and stir. Next add the milk and the egg and blend well with mixer. Then add the cheese and the pepperoni and blend well. Spray the mini muffin tin well and then spoon in the mixture. Be sure not to over fill the mini muffin tin cups.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 25- 30 minutes, or until they are golden brown.  This makes approximately 2 dozen pepperoni bites. 
 
 
 
 
 
adapted from a Goose Berry Patch recipe. 

 

Raspberry Cheese Dip

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When I first saw this dish and asked what was in it, I was expecting…well…gross.  It just sounded nasty to me.  And then I tasted it.  Heaven!   This recipe is one of the most-requested recipes among my own collection of favorites and I have gotten several people addicted to it!  My oldest son, who is pickier than anyone else I know, loves this dip.  It gets eaten up in no time whenever I make it.

Ingredients:
4 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup mayo
2 green onions, chopped
12 ounces raspberry preserves
Ritz crackers

1.  Combine cheese, mayo, and onions in mixing bowl.  Fold together until well blended and spread in a shallow dish (pie plate works well).
2.  Spread raspberry preserves across the top of the cheese mixture.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Serve with Ritz crackers.

Source:  fellow Maven (and sister!) Amy

Homemade Fruit & Cream Instant Oatmeal

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For several years now I have been saying that I wanted to make my own instant oatmeal packets. Years now.  And finally, thanks to our dear friend PINTEREST, I have found a recipe that I like and have tried it and have fulfilled a dream!  Yay me!  There are many variations to the basic recipe, but I chose the fruit and cream version.  I have a lot of fruit in my food storage that I want to use and this is a perfect way to do that.  I used peach this time, but next time I am trying mango.  Yeah, that fruit.

Ingredients:
3 cups quick-cooking oats
Salt
Small (snack-size) zip baggies
Non Dairy Creamer (I used the non-fat and it is delicious!)
Sugar
Dried or dehydrated fruit

1.  Put 1 cup oats in a food processor and process until powdery.  Set aside in a small bowl.
2.  Put the following in each baggie:  1/4 cup un-powdered oats, 2 T. powdered oats, 1/8 t. salt,
     1 T. creamer, 1 T. Sugar, 2 T. fruit.

3.  Store baggies in an air-tight container.
4.  To serve:  Empty packet into a bowl and add 3/4 cup boiling water.  Stir and let stand for
     2 minutes.  For thicker oatmeal, use less water–for thinner, use more water.


Source: Kaylin Cherry via Pinterest 

Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

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I was thinking of giving you a recipe for a diet soup that I love, but then I thought that everyone should know how to make a delicious homemade pot pie for those days that you need a little comfort food! The diet soup can wait for another day!

I make these in batches of 4 and freeze them, and then I have something quick to pull out of the oven for dinner on a busy day. My kids LOVE these! People ask me how many one will feed, and here is my answer: It will feed me 7-8 servings, but it will feed my son Curtis, who is 16, only 2 servings. It would definitely feed 4 really hungry normal people who are not teenage boys.  (smile).

Homemade Chicken Pot Pies

Ingredients:

4 frozen pie shells (or you can make homemade crust)
4 cups cooked, diced chicken
1 large can cream of chicken soup (or 2 small cans – about 20 oz)
1 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups baby carrots cut into slices
1 cup frozen peas
1/4 cup (or more) diced onions
4 cups potatoes, diced 
1 can of corn (or some frozen corn)
2 chicken bouillon cubes (or 1 if you like less salt)
2 boxes of roll out top crust (This will give you 4 top crusts) I recommend Pillsbury brand – or you can make homemade
1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp of Poultry Seasoning (or  a little Thyme, Oregano and Sage)
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Put the diced potatoes, carrots and onions in a pot. Cover with water. Add the bouillon cube and some salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are done…but not mushy and falling apart.

2. In a small bowl, add 1/2 cup flour to 1/2 cup of water and mix with a fork until smooth. Pour this slowly into boiling pot of vegetables while stirring briskly. This will thicken the water that the vegetables are cooking in. Turn off heat and let it cool down a bit.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth with a hand mixer. Add in the cream of chicken soup and poultry seasoning. Mix until well blended. Add the chicken, corn, peas, and the cooked potato/carrot/onion mixture. Mix all ingredients together until well blended.

4. Add this delicious mixture to the pie shells, dividing mixture evenly between the 4 pie shells.

5. Roll out your crust onto the counter. (Cut a heart in the center for a vent hole if you would like – it’s so cute!) Place the crust on top of the pie. Fold under the extra crust as neatly as possible around the edges. Then pinch the edge of the crust to seal. If you have no idea how to to that, look up a tutorial. It is so hard to explain in words. But it is easy to do, and everyone has their own way of making their crust edge pretty. 

6. If you did not cut a heart into the center of the crust, cut a few vent holes into the top crust. Just take a knife and make a few small cuts.

7. At this point, I put a square of wax paper on top of the pie, then cover with foil and put in the freezer. I suppose you could skip the wax paper if you don’t have any.

8. If you want to bake one right away, bake it at 375 degrees for 30 – 45 minutes, depending on how dark you like your crust.

9. When baking from frozen, bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THESE CHICKEN POT PIES!

Notes: 
1. Kids love to help make these! And they love eating them too!

2. These are perfect to have on hand when you need to take someone a dinner, or when you forgot to plan dinner for your own family.

3. We made these for a fund raiser at church to help earn money for girls camp. We sold LOTS of them and people liked them very much!

Source: Adapted from my friend Becky Robinson, Rock Hill, SC.



Emergency Brownie!

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Have you ever had an overwhelming craving for a brownie but didn’t want the temptation of a whole pan of them?  Yes?  Then you have to try this microwave mug brownie.  Recipes for these are popping up on blogs all over the place.  This particular recipe is one of my 14-year-old son’s stand-by recipes.  He tells me that it’s gooey-er than a regular baked brownie but that it still hits the spot.  I can always tell when he’s been in the kitchen from the tell-tale brownie dregs in the mug on the counter.

If this particular mug brownie recipe doesn’t tickle your fancy you are sure to find a plethora of them online.  It took some trial and error before we found the ones that appealed to us the most.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
pinch salt
2 Tbsp. canola oil
2 Tbsp. milk

1.  In a microwaveable mug (or glass canning jar), stir the dry ingredients together.  Try to get out all the lumps.  Add the milk and oil and stir until well-combined.
2.  Microwave on HIGH for one minute.  After that, microwave for 10-15 seconds at a time until it springs back a bit but still has some gooey-ness on top.  My son says it typically won’t look done when it really is, and it easily burns if you cook it too long.  It took him a while to get the right time in our microwave…this time it took one minute and thirty seconds.

We love our brownies drizzled with a little warmed up peanut butter and a little ice cream or whipped topping.

Source:  Babble’s Family Kitchen

Snow Cream

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 This my friends, is snow cream.  I can’t tell you how much of a delicacy this is in the south. Whenever it begins to snow, which isn’t too often in the south, you wait and hope it snows for a couple of hours. Because you can’t collect the “first snow”! (I don’t know why, some older people have always said it wasn’t clean.  -smile-)  But, after its been snowing for a while you place really big bowls outside to collect the snow while it falls.  Then you bring it in and add the yummy stuff to it to make it into snow cream!  It is soo good!  We will actually take the risk of driving through terrible weather to get the ingredients needed to make this, because we love this stuff so much.  Everybody has a different recipe. Some people add eggs. (yuck) But, I tend to go with simple recipes and it doesn’t get any simpler than this.  If it snows this winter where you live, give this a try. I promise it will make you like the snowy weather much more!

Ingredients:
Lots of Snow, (about 16-20 cups per bowl = 36-40 cups of snow for 2 cans of condensed milk)
Condensed Milk, 2-4 cans
Vanilla flavoring, 1/8 – 1/4 cup ( for 36 cups of snow.) 

   You begin this with a lot of snow!  A lot of snow! The picture below is the beginnings of our second batch.  The biggest tupperware bowls we owned were needed for this.  LOL!  This picture actually shows you there wasn’t enough collected  in the bowls to use both cans of condensed milk.  The bowls have to be packed full and heaping! 
  

Then add one whole can of condensed milk and about 1/4 cup of vanilla. (I know that sounds like a lot, but trust me.)  Then stir and mash.  Stir and mash.  You are going for a creamy texture.  Add snow as you go. You will use both bowls of snow.   The bowls are equivalent to a big stock pot. The biggest one in your set. 
Add the other can of condensed milk. But not the whole thing.  Then add a Tbsp or two of the vanilla flavoring.  Stir and mash. It takes a little while to mash out the snow balls in the mixture and get it all creamy. When it looks like the picture below you are finished.  Enjoy! – and put it in the freezer to keep until its all eaten.  😉

 
Yummy, yummy!
 
 
recipe by Niki Lewis
 

Sugary Peanut Butter Kisses

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These are so yummy.  The kids enjoyed mixing the colors into the sugar, and then rolling the cookies in the different colored sugars.  So, this is a very kid friendly recipe and so good to eat!
 
Coloring sugar:
1-2 drops Wilton Gel Food Colors
1/2 c – 3/4 c Granulated sugar
 
Pour sugar into a ziploc bag and squeeze one drop of gel color into the sugar. Seal the bag and start squishing the color into the sugar unto all the sugar is colored.  You can darken the color  by adding more drops of the gel. You can lighten the color by adding more sugar.
 
 
Cookie Ingredients:
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c. real butter, softened
1/2 c. peanut butter
2 TBSP. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1- 3/4 c. self-rising flour
Hershey kisses, about 30 or more pieces, with the foil off
 
Preheat your oven to 375%. Cream together the white sugar, brown sugar and butter. Really give a few minutes to get nice and creamy. Scrape down the sides of your bowl and add the following peanut butter, milk, vanilla and egg. Mix well and scrape down the sides of your bowl. Whisk the flour and then scoop up the right amount needed.  Slowly add in the flour and continue to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl.
 
Pour colored sugars onto paper plates. With a cookie scoop drop 1″ balls of the dough into the different colors of sugar and roll around. Place the cookies about 2″ apart on the cookie pan. Bake for 10 minutes for a soft chewy cookie, and 12 minutes for crunchy cookie.  (The cookie will flatten a bit as it bakes.)
 
Take cookies out of the oven and immediately press the hershey kiss into the cookie slightly! Move cookies to a rack to cool.  It takes a while for them to cool down because the hershey kiss melts a bit and then solidifies again.  So, give them time.  Then enjoy!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Red Hot Apple Cider

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Image by FreeDigitalPhotos.net/imagerymajestic

Oh my!  It’s my day to post and I totally spaced it!  Husband is out of town on business and I have been cleaning and decorating and just playing, because I can be up late and not wake anyone up.  Looks like I could have remembered to blog a recipe, doesn’t it?  So if you need a little warming up this afernoon/evening, then I have gotten this post up JUST FOR YOU!  We had dinner with some friends one night during the Christmas season and Trini served hot cider that was so yummy.  I asked her for the recipe and she just laughed.  When you see the ingredients you might laugh, as well, but once you taste it you will be like, oh my gosh.



Image by flickr.com/begautrea


Ingredients:
Apple Cider or Apple Juice
Red Hots candies

1.  Pour desired amount of apple cider or juice in a stove top teapot or in a saucepan.
2.  Pour desired amount of Red Hots into pot/pan, according to how spicy you want your cider.
3.  Heat to desired temperature.
4.  Pour into mug or cup and enjoy….you may want to put a cinnamon stick in for garnish.

Here’s another fun hot drink tip:  Another friend, Adrianna, puts cinnamon sticks in her water when she is heating it for instant hot chocolate.  Kind of a quick way to sort of have Mexican Hot Chocolate.  Yummmm…also good when making instant oatmeal.

Source:  Trini Marquez, El Paso, Texas

Chocolate Chip Pancakes

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These are so tasty that my kids ask for them *almost* every morning! (It couldn’t have anything to do with the chocolate…) The syrup that comes with this recipe is so easy, and SO DELICIOUS! Definitely  one of my favorites!

Pancake Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose Flour
1/4 Cup White Sugar
2 Tbsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
2 Eggs
1.5 Cups Milk
1/4 Cup Vegetable Oil (We use Canola.)
1/2 Cup MINI-Chocolate Chips

1. Sift all the dry ingredients together in a Medium-Large Bowl.
2. Combine the wet ingredients together and the add them into the flour mixture.
3. Stir in the Chocolate Chips*.
4. Pour onto a lightly greased hot griddle. Flip over when bubbles form on top; cook until second side is golden brown.

CINNAMON HONEY SYRUP:

Ingredients:
1 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup (1 stick) Margarine or Butter
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon

1. Combine all the ingredients into a 2 cup microwave-safe bowl. (I use my Pyrex Measuring Cup.)
2. Microwave, uncovered, on high until the butter is melted, stirring occasionally until the syrup is hot.

Milk Art

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The other day while I was browsing through Pinterest searching for a project to do, I ran across a little fun art activity that looked interesting.  Since it only takes 3 common household “ingredients” I decided to hop up from the computer right then and give it a try.  It’s easy, quick, and fun to watch.  Take pictures to preserve your beautiful art!

“Ingredients”
milk (2% or higher was recommended)
liquid food coloring
dish soap

1.  Take a plate and pour in some milk.   You don’t need much; just enough so you can’t see the plate underneath.
2.  Drop 2-3 drops of each color food coloring in the center of the plate.  Place the colors near each other.
3.  Pour 1 drop of dish soap in the very center and watch the magic!

Source:  Flutter Flutter

The food coloring will continue to move around slowly.  When it’s done (or your kids are ready to do it again) rinse the plate in the sink and go again!  You can also take a toothpick and swirl it around on the plate for more action.

Have fun!