Homemade Donuts

These homemade donuts are simple, and delicious!!

This was an activity my daughter did with her friends.  Then I also made a batch with my family.  Here's the recipe, you'll see how easy they really are!

To make the doughnuts you need refrigerated biscuit dough and hot oil for frying. 

First you need to flatten the biscuit dough.

Then cut out the donut holes.  I used the cap to the oil bottle and it worked perfectly.  Make sure to save the middles to make scrumptious donut holes!!

Heat the oil on the stove.

When your oil is hot enough then put your donuts in and let them cook.  You can generally tell when the oil is hot by flicking a few drops of water on the oil.  If the oil is hot, it will instantly start to spit and sizzle when the water touches it.  If the oil doesn't react, then it's not hot enough yet.

Also, be careful that the heat for the oil is not too hot or your donuts will cook too fast on the outside but still be doughy in the middle.

Half way through frying, make sure to flip the donuts to cook both sides evenly.

When done your done frying your donuts, place them on a paper towel or a cooking cooling rack to let the excess oil drip off.

Then you can coat the donuts with glaze frosting (see recipe below) or sugar and cinnamon.

GLAZE
3 cups Powdered Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 cup Cold Water Or Milk

Mix ingredients together. The glaze will be runny, but will harden a little as it dries.

These donuts make a lovely family treat for breakfast or dinner!!

Fruit Pizza

Tonight we made individual fruit pizzas for our snack, and they were a hit!  They are fun because everyone can make their own just the way they like it.  

Here's what you do. First, cut up some fruit that you want to use as your toppings.  I used fresh bananas, strawberries, and kiwi but pineapple, mandarin oranges, or other berries would also make great toppings.

Then as the base I used snickerdoodle cookies (mmmm...my favorite cookie).  Spread cream cheese onto your cookie as the "sauce" for your pizza.  I found some whipped cream cheese at the store that was very easy to spread onto the cookie. However, I recommend adding a little powdered sugar to the cream cheese before you spread it to sweeten it just a little. 

Then add your fruit toppings and EAT!

These fruit pizzas are delish, sweet, and easy cooking activity for everyone--even the young ones!  Plus, after eating the fruit, these pizzas don't leave you feeling guilty afterwards, another bonus. :)

Cinnamon Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

With my kids I have decided to do a monthly learning theme.  This month has been cooking.  They have practiced measuring, mixing, pouring, etc.  That means that there will be quite a few recipe posts coming up because I'd really love to share the fun recipes that we've tried.  We made both dinner dishes and yummy treat--it's been so fun!!

We recently tried two new pumpkin cookie recipes we have made with that were both divinely delicious!

The first recipe was cinammon pumpkin oatmeal cookies which was in the Idaho Falls newspaper. Since I don't have the link to that article, I'd like to share it with you here.

Cinnamon Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups quick oats
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup raisens
3/4 cup cinnamon chips

Baking Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a cookie sheet with shortening.

Mix the oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl.  Set aside.

In the bowl of mixer cream brown sugar, and butter together.  Add the eggs and beat.  Add the pumpkin and beat.

Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture.  Beat until combined.  Add raisens and cinnamon chips and beat in.  Do not beat more than necessary.

Drop dough in rounded mounds about 1 1/4 inches in diameter onto the greased baking sheet.  Bake 10-12 min.  Or until the cookies brown on the edges.  The centers will be soft.  Remove and cool on a rack.

The second recipe was pumpkin snickerdoodles, which I saw on Pinterest from this from.  These snickerdoodles just a add a subtle pumpkin flavor and a few more spices that coat the cookie on the outside, and they are fabulous!

Both of these cookie recipe are perfect for fall and winter, and I'm sure they would make great neighbor gifts for the season!

{10 Days of Halloween} Witchy Witch Hat Cookies

I needed a treat for my Cub Scout pack meeting and these little witchy witch hat cookies were perfect. They are cute and super easy to make.

All you need is:
2 packages of Keebler Fudge Stripes Dark Chocolate cookies (their NEW)
1 package of Hershey kisses
1 package of M&M's

1 can of frosting (I used blue for Cub Scouts but orange for Halloween would be cute)

(Makes 64 cookies.)

I simply used a knife to spread some frosting on the Keebler cookies. Then I topped it with a Hershey kiss and and upside-down M&M to look like a W for "witch." If you use a baggie or cake decorating tips to place the frosting, it would make the cookies look prettier. But because I was short on time (and I knew the boys wouldn't even notice), I decided to keep it simple.

That's it! It's an easy Halloween treat to be enjoyed by all!

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Day three of

Healthy Fruity Ice Cream

I LOVE ice cream!  So listen to how great this is....milk free, yummy, healthy, with-no-added-sugar ice cream!  Plus it is SUPER EASY to make.  You don't get better then that, right?! 

There is a machine out there called Yonana's and it uses frozen bananas to get the creamy ice cream texture instead of milk.  Then you add other fruits as desired.

So I thought...why buy one more machine to clutter my house just for this one yummy snack?  So I tried it in my ordinary blender and it worked perfectly! :)

So what you need is frozen bananas because they are the key ingredient to give a thick creamy delicious flavor.  Just take a ripe banana and peel off the skin.  Then cut banana into chunks and freeze.  Next you'll also want to freeze the other fruits you will be adding to your ice cream, like mango's, strawberries, pineapple, etc. (I tried a mango-strawberry blend, and it was delish!)

To make the ice cream, simply put 1 frozen banana and other frozen fruit into your blender and blend until creamy.  I defrosted my fruit first for about 30 minutes in the microwave to make it a little easier to blend and less icy.

And...that's it!  Looks just like ice cream, it tastes creamy just like ice cream, but you know that it's so healthy for you!  Amazing!  This is a great family treat and a good alternative rather than just making smoothies all the time.

Have a happy and safe Labor Day!

Dirt Cup Dessert

We are still celebrating earth week here at our house.  To help us celebrate I planned a special dessert for our dinner tonight. 

We don't have dessert very often at our house. So when we do, its a BIG deal!

To set the mood for dinner, I had the kids help me decorate the table.  A few simple decorations can really make a HUGE difference in the atmosphere in your home or at dinner time.  Pretty soon everyone is happy and excited because things are different and therefore more "special."  All I did to set the mood was display a couple packs of flowers I bought for our garden and then added some gummy worms (that's where the helpers came in handy). The gummy worms were not just for decoration, however, they were part of our dessert later.

For dessert we made dirt cups with worms (sounds yummy, right!).  There are lots of variations on this dessert out there, but here is how I did it.  I used chocolate ice cream for the bottom layer then crushed cookies and sprinkled them on top to look like dirt on the ground. We used Oreo cookies but you can choose any kind of cookie, really.  Then we added a few more gummy worms to look like they were digging in the "dirt." 

To make it more fun for everyone, I had some help crushing the cookies.  Before dinner started, I gave everyone a small baggie with cookies.  I recommend using ziplock bags, but sandwich bags would work too if you're not too messy.  I gave everyone about 3 cookies.  Then while we waited for everyone to gather around the dinner table, we crushed our own bag of cookies.  We just set our crushed cookies aside until dinner was finished.

When we finished our meal, I scooped the ice cream and everyone added their cookies on top and grabbed some gummy worms. (The gummy worms were already cleverly placed on the table, remember?)  Then our dessert was ready to eat. Yum! I must say, that was some of the best dirt I've ever had! :)

Afterwards we had time to go out in the garden and plant the flowers I bought.  I love marigolds, they look so perky in my yard!