Recipe #64 - Easy Pretzel Turtles

We have some friends coming over to play games tonight, so I starting thinking about what sort of dessert I could serve.  Of course, by that I mean that I looked to see what recipes I had left in that section of the cookbook.  I haven't hardly touched my other recipes over the last couple of months.  I needed something that a bunch of kids would like and that wouldn't be hard to eat while playing games.

I settled on the Easy Pretzel Turtles on page 255 or online here.

True to their name, they are easy!  Start by lining a cookie sheet with wax paper or parchment paper.  Line it with pretzels.

Then you unwrap the Rolos and place them on the pretzels.

I used my girls to help me with this.  You'll notice which Rolos I placed and which ones they placed.  Holy randomness, Batman.

(I doubled this recipe.  So I bought two "classic" sized bags of Rolos and we only had 4 left from what you see on the tray.  That's a lot of treats!)

Then they go in the oven for 3-4 minutes until they are glossy and melted but still holding their shape.

Then you press whatever toppings you want into the Rolo.  I did nuts and M&M's.

Now be sure that at least one of your Rolo's doesn't get placed in the center of your pretzel.  Then you'll have to taste it to make sure that its okay.  After all, you can't serve it.

I piped some melted white chocolate over half of them.

WARNING!  These have been cooling for 12 hours now and they are still not set up yet.  Give yourself plenty of time to let these cool before you need them.  You can totally eat them while they're soft, but they are harder to serve or give as a gift.

Update:  After 24 hours these were still not set.  Then I got the brilliant idea to put them in the fridge.  Seriously took 5 minutes to set.  Why oh why did I not think about that before?!

Recipe #63 - Sopapillas

The first time that I remember trying sopapillas was as a kid at a Mexican restaurant in Denver.  The three things I remember about this place were the sopapillas, cliff divers and a man walking around in a gorilla outfit.  I thought it was a the coolest restaurant ever.  As an adult, we traveled to Denver and I really wanted to take my son (who was 2 or 3 years old) to that same restaurant.  Thanks to Google, we found the restaurant known for cliff diving and a gorilla.  Well...at least the sopapillas were as good I remembered them.  The rest was pretty lame from an adult point of view.  I guess some memories are just better left as is.

Now you get to make memories of your own.  Try this sopapilla recipe on page 68, and its not online.  (Seriously, go buy this cookbook if you don't have it.)

In a large bowl, you mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and shortening.  (In hindsight, I would probably do this with a pastry mixer/chopper thingie.  Yes, that's the technical term for it.)

 Then mix in the warm water until smooth.

I had to sort of knead mine to get it to smooth out,  Even then it wasn't super smooth.  I was a little nervous about it and tripled checked that I had read the instructions correctly.  Appeared to be okay so I pressed on.

Then you cover the dough with a towel and let it sit for 30-40 minutes.  Next roll out the dough until its about 1/4 inch thick.

Cut it into 3-inch squares.  Yeah, mind aren't perfect.  Oh well!

Next heat your oil to 375 degrees.

You fry each square until golden brown.  Keep on eye on these babies because it happens fast.  I flipped them halfway through using a slotted spoon.

Let them drain for a minute on paper towels. 

Serve with the toppings of your choice.  We used honey butter, regular honey, powdered sugar, and cinnamon sugar.  We just let the kids pick what they wanted on them.  My favorite was spreading honey butter all over the outside and then sprinkling it with cinnamon sugar.  Dangerous!

The kids made a mess but gobbled them up.  Check out the powdered sugar poofing through the air when she would breathe on her sopapilla.  Love it!

 The older girls all ended up with total powdered sugar faces.

 
Two thumbs up from the "lateover" crew.  (We don't do sleepovers at our house.  We do lateovers instead.)  Molly even gave it a bonus "foot up" as well, she said.

Recipe #62 - Cinnamon Bun Caramel Corn

Since I teach youth theater, sometimes I get the most random songs stuck in my head for months at a time.  Lately its been Christmas music.  It started in September when we began rehearsing for our December show.  You know that crazy lady had Target who is absentmindedly humming "Nuttin' for Christmas" while shopping for back to school supplies with 3 naughty kids?  That's me. 

So when I made this recipe, it didn't surprise me that that I started humming Christmas tunes.  But then it dawned on me, this popcorn tastes like a little Christmas package for my tongue.  Cinnamon and caramel together?  Christmas.  A DELICIOUS Christmas.  In my belly.

You can find this recipe on page 257 or online using this link.

Start by popping some popcorn.  You can break out your air popper or use a natural-style microwave popcorn.  Or you can try my magical trick.  You need these three items.

A lunch sack, masking tape, and popcorn.  Put a 1/4 cup popcorn in the bag.  Fold over the top slightly and tape it shut.

Lay it down in your microwave and pop it for as long as it typically takes your microwave to pop a standard bag of microwave popcorn.  And wallah!  Air popped popcorn without needing to dig the popper out of the bottom of your pantry and dust it before using it.

You'll need to do this twice for this recipe to get the amount of popcorn you need.  You can even reuse the bag and tape.  Just refill the popcorn.

Make sure that the unpopped kernels get removed and put all the popcorn in a large bowl.

 Add the "roughly" chopped pecans.

In a separate bowl, you mix together the cinnamon and brown sugar.  (This is sort of when the Christmas songs will begin to enter your brain.  Just warning you.)

Then you slice up a stick of butter and put it on top of the brown sugar mix.

Then you'll feel your jeans getting a little snugger (Is that a word?  If so, its a weird one and I just used it.  Then I repeated it in my head several times to decide if it was a real word.  Then I left it in my sentence and moved on.) as you add the corn syrup to your butter and brown sugar.

Then you pop this in the microwave to get it all melted.  Next you add the baking soda and vanilla to finalize the caramel.

Quickly pour it over the popcorn and pecans.

Stir until its all mixed up.

Then pour it into a foil-lined jelly roll pan and bake it for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.  This is the point where you catch up on the last half of The X Factor.  Oh...maybe that was just me.  I think you can ignore those instructions.

After 30 minutes, pour the popcorn out onto some wax paper or parchment paper and drizzle with the melted white chocolate.

So...while I was doing this, I saw a blob of white chocolate on the back of my hand and I, of course, licked it off.  Except that it wasn't white chocolate.  It was liquid hand soap.  Yeah, not my finest cooking moment. 

Once the chocolate hardens you just break this stuff up and inhale it.  I made it with the intention of giving some of it away.  Not sure it will last long enough.  Merry Christmas!

Recipe #58 - Sugar Cookies

Confession...I was not very excited to try this recipe.  I have a sugar cookie recipe that I just love.  My sister gave it to me many moons ago, and its the only one I ever use.  It makes big, fat, puffy sugar cookies that I adore.  The fact that the picture in the cookbook shows a flat (although pretty) sugar cookie turned me off to the recipe.  I like the flat crispy ones just fine, but my heart (and fat pants) like the soft fluffy ones more.

What I didn't know is that this recipe states that it will make both kinds.  What?!  That's fantastic.  I could totally make puffy ones if I wanted to, and I did!

You can find this recipe on page 208 of the cookbook or online here.

Start by creaming your sugar and butter.

Then add your egg and extract.  You can use either vanilla or almond extract.  I used almond and I think it made all the difference in these cookies.  But if you're worried about allergies, you have the option to use the vanilla too.

Next you add in your dry ingredients.

Now here comes the coolest part!!  I don't know if you guys have seen this done before, but I thought it was freakin' brilliant!  Instead of letting the entire bowl of bowl chill for an hour or so, they have you roll the dough out between 2 pieces of parchment paper first. 

Why is this brilliant?

1.  It makes it so the dough only has to chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.
2.  You don't have to scrub flour/dough off your counter after doing the cookies.
3.  The dough doesn't ever stick to your rolling pin.

Has anyone ever tried this before?!  I'll never do it the other way again.  This was just too easy.

When the dough comes out of the fridge, you just peel back the top sheet and start cutting out your shapes.

I was taking these cookies to a friend's house to watch the BYU vs. Utah State football game.  She's a HUGE Utah State fan, so I thought my BYU cookies were a perfect dessert to share.  I'm thoughtful that way.

Then you're ready to bake.  These cookies do puff up a little, so you need to give them some room on the cookie sheet to do that (not as much as I did though).

They were ready in 9 minutes.

And it wasn't until right now, while I'm blogging this, that I realized that I never took a picture of the final, frosted cookie.  Oops.  I was in a hurry to get to my friend's house and must have forgotten.

Well, even the Aggie fans gobbled these up.  They may or may not have broke them up into several pieces first though.  One particulary loyal teenager, crushed her cookie up in a bowl (symbollic of crushing the cougars...which they did not do after all) and ate the cookie with a fork.  Guess it all goes down the same, right? 

Will I switch my recipe?  Hmm, the jury is still out on that one.  My recipe does puff up a little more, but it also requires me to have sour cream on hand.  So I typically have to plan ahead when I make my recipe, but I would have all these ingredients regularly.  I guess time will tell, but they are tasty enough to make them again, for sure! 

Recipe #53 - Pumpkin Pie Milkshake

Pumpkin flavored treats are my very favorite thing about the fall.  In fact, when I was pregnant with my son many moons ago, the one thing that I craved more than anything else was pumpkin donuts.  At the time, I couldn't find them anywhere in Utah.  So my cute mother had a family-friend ship them overnight to me from Indiana (where I grew up and we knew where to find pumpkin donuts).  That, my friends, is how much I love pumpkin stuff.  Pretty sure I ate the full dozen donuts too...um, might have shared one with my hubby,

Needless to say, I was thrilled to try the Pumpkin Pie Milkshake recipe found on page 244 or online here.  I did double it though, so I could bring myself to share with the family.

This is another fast and easy recipe.  You put everything but the graham crackers into the blender.

Blend until smooth.

Crush up some graham crackers.

Pour the shake into a glass and top with the graham crackers.

It actually reminded me of the pumpkin shakes at Arctic Circle, but they are smooth enough to use a straw to drink.  No spoon required.

My family inhaled these.  I had planned to take a picture of them drinking them, but they were gone before I knew it.  If you like pumpkin, even if you don't like pumpkin pie, you need to try these.  And invite me over when you make them.  I'll verify that they recipe tastes correct...

Recipe #40 - Chunky Monkey Banana Cream Pie

I have a very simple outlook on life -- everything will be okay as long as you have chocolate and peanut butter.  Right?  If you're a chocolate/peanut butter fan, this recipe is a fantastic twist on banana cream pie, and you need to try it.

It's call Chunky Monkey and it is found on page 225 of the cookbook.  Click here to find the variation listed at the bottom of this page with the Banana Cream Pie recipe.

First, you combine your pudding mix (I used chocolate), water and sweetened condensed milk.

After it is mixed well, you put in the fridge to chill while you move to the next step -- whipping the cream.

You fold the whipped cream into the pudding mixture and return it to the fridge.

Next you slice the bananas and layer them on the bottom of the crust.  Since I made this pie at the same time as the Banana Cream Pie I posted yesterday, I made the same mistake on my banana layer.  (See post here.)  Make your banana layer look like this:

Not like this:

Notice above that I used a chocolate crust for this pie.

Then you pour the chilled mixture over your bananas.

I gave my daughter the beaters to lick.  She liked the whipped cream so much, both beaters went in the mouth immediately.  She couldn't get it in fast enough.

After that, you whip up some more cream, but this time you sweeten it with powdered sugar.

It gets spread it over the top of the pie.

 

This pie can be served with honey roasted peanuts on top of you like.

I made both this pie and the original Banana Cream Pie version for an extended family dinner.  The Chunky Monkey was the favorite for sure.  However, all those people were related to me...so, take that for what its worth.  But make no mistake about it, this pie is tasty!