More Easter recipes...

Yummy carrot cake

Yummy spinach salad

That post where I ramble about pretty much nothing...

A few years ago, I saw a picture of S'mores cupcakes in a blog (it was Sarah's blog NaptimeMusings) and it had a link to the recipe. At some point I decided they looked yummy, and I made some myself. They turned out pretty good I thought, but Jeff doesn't remember eating them. Well the other day Jeff and I were watching some show on TV, yes it's a miracle we agreed on a show, and it showed some S'mores cupcakes, but no recipe. He mentioned that he'd like to try something like that, so I went on a hunt for the recipe. After going through pages and pages of the blog where I thought I'd seen it, I finally got smart and googled the name of the blog and what I wanted to find. It brought up the post immediately. I wish I'd thought to do that sooner, I'm always spending forever looking through blogs and pages for things I remember seeing but can't quite remember where or when it was. So the point of this whole long post is, I found it. And I want to save the link to the S'mores cupcakes. I was thinking I might make them for Jeff's birthday, but I think he really wants a chocolate cake with custard filling and white icing on top, which is what I usually make for him. Anyway.

Menu plan Monday: July 26th 2010

It's Monday again, which means it's time for Menu Plan Monday, hosted by Laura over at orgjunkie.com. I think I mentioned before that my menus lately are from savingdinner.com. If you're familiar with The Flylady, then you've probably heard of Leeanne at Saving Dinner. Anyway it's really simple to use, I signed up for 3 months worth of menus. The way it works is once a week I get a link for the new menus. Then I just log in and pick out which menu I want (some of the menus available are regular , heart healthy, low carb, etc.) for the week. It's got a shopping list as well which is organized by section of the grocery store.

Monday: Crock Cooker Lemon Chicken, Salad, brown rice
Tuesday: Chicken Ratatouille Pasta, Salad
Wednesday: Leftovers/Fend for yourself night
Thursday: Turkey Broccoli Salad,
Friday: Tomato-Herb Scallops
Saturday: Turkey burgers
Sunday: Grilled Creole Pork Chops, sweet potatoes, salad

I wanted to share today's recipe with you, it's one we haven't tried before, we'll see how it turns out.

Crock Cooker Lemon Chicken

INGREDIENTS:
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
6 (6-oz.) boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1/4 cup low sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 1/2 cups low fat sour cream
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
COOKING INSTRUCTIONS:
In a small bowl or cup, combine oregano, seasoned salt and black pepper; rub over chicken then place in a slow cooker. In a small bowl, combine chicken broth, lemon juice and garlic; pour over chicken. Cover and cook on LOW for 4 to 6 hours or until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken from slow cooker and keep warm. Add a little of the cooking liquid to the sour cream, then add sour cream and parsley to slow cooker; cover and cook for 15 minutes or until heated through. Serve sauce with chicken.
NUTRITION per serving: 214 Calories; 3g Fat; 41g Protein; 4g Carbohydrate; trace Dietary Fiber; 103mg Cholesterol; 261mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain (Starch); 5 1/2 Lean Meat. Points: 5
SERVING SUGGESTION: Steamed red skin potatoes and steamed green beans.

More recipes and bread update

Remember the bread recipes I posted back here? Well so far I've only made the pumpkin one, but it was really yummy! No raisins, but I put in milk chocolate chips and walnuts and it was pretty good.

I also tried out a shortbread recipe that I found in Sunset Magazine. It turned out pretty well too. The biggest problem was getting it out of the pan.

Here's the recipe.

Shortbread

Makes 16 cookies
Time 1 1/4 hours
2 cups flour
1 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp coarse sugar

1.Preheat over to 325. Mix flour, butter, granulated sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer on low speed until just blended. Increase speed to medium and mix until dough is no longer crumbly and just comes together. (This took a really long time. I kept thinking that I did something wrong, but eventually it all became one glob of dough.)
2. Press dough evenly into a 9 inch round cake pan. Sprinkle with course sugar.
3. Bake until golden brown, 30-40 minutes. (35 for me) Cut still-warm shortbread with a fork, tines down into 16 wedge shape pieces with shaggy edges. Cool completely, then invert pan onto a work surface and carefully separate cookies.

Make ahead up to 5 days. Store airtight up to 1 week.

We used colored course sugar, the kids thought it was great.

Yummy!

I found this on evanovich.com (a website for an author I like) but things don't stay up on their website for long. Amelia loves peanut butter, so I thought we'd make these once we have a kitchen again. :-) We'll probably cut down the sugar some though, use some whole wheat flour and skip the chocolate because Amelia doesn't really like chocolate. Anyway.

Sinfully Sweet Sixteen Cookies
Peanut Butter Cookies - half dipped in milk chocolate

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
2 + 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 + 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 bag Resse's chips (They are where you find the choc. chips)
1 bag milk chocolate (the kind for making candy)

Mix the first 5 ingredients together in one bowl. In another bowl mix the next 4 ingredients and combine. Then add Resse's chips to the mix.

Shape dough into 3/4 inch balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 7 min. until they just start to turn light brown.

Let cool.

Melt milk chocolate in a double boiler or the microwave.

Dip the cool cookies half way into the melted chocolate and place on wax paper to cool (the chocolate will harden).

Then store in a air tight container.