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!

Butternut Tomato Soup

Soup is one of my favorite dinners during the fall and winter months. I came across a new soup recipe here at Deals to Meals and wanted to share because it turned out so yummy! It's creamy butternut tomato soup.

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash, cut in half & seeds removed
1 onion, cut into large pieces
Drizzle of olive oil or butter
2 1/2-3 c. chicken broth
1 can evaporated milk
1/2 pint whipping cream or half & half
3 cans diced tomatoes (or fresh)
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
2 t. salt, to taste
2 T. brown sugar
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 t. basil
2 t. Italian seasoning
2 1/2-3 t. chicken bouillon or chicken base
1 t. black pepper

Cut the squash in half and place on a cookie sheet. Cut the onions as well and place them on a cookie sheet. Drizzle the onion and squash with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook in the oven at 400 degrees for 25-35 minutes, or until the squash is soft and tender. My squash took approximately 45 minutes to soften. Remove the pan from the oven and let cool for a few minutes until room temperature.

Place the onions in a food processor and pulse until smooth, and then place in a large soup pot. Turn the heat to medium heat and saute onions in a littler more olive oil. While this is coming to heat, spoon out the insides of the squash and place in the soup pan.

Continue to cook for awhile until the onions are even more soft and then add the seasonings, garlic, chicken bouillon and the chicken broth. Continue to simmer for a few minutes and then add the canned tomatoes.

Let the soup simmer until it is warmed through and the squash has broken down nicely. If you like a really smooth soup you can use a hand wand to blend the soup or add ladles full of soup into your food processor and blend the soup until smooth.

Once the soup is simmering you can add the evaporated milk and whipping cream. Season the soup to your desired liking (more kick, add cayenne pepper, more sweetness add more brown sugar, more salt, etc.)

Serve this soup with grilled cheese sandwiches or warm bread out of the oven. Enjoy!

{10 Days of Halloween} Jack-O-Lantern Pancakes

Tonight we had breakfast for dinner.  My family likes having breakfast for dinner, but I also had a new pancake recipe that I wanted to try. But we couldn't just have ordinary pancakes...they were Halloween-style, of course! We made ourselves some jack-o-lantern pancakes.

Here's the pancake recipe--it turned out really yummy!

Pancakes

2 eggs
2 ½ C flour
½ C sugar
1 T baking powder
1 tsp salt
½ C oil
2 C milk

Simply combine the ingredients in a bowl and mix together.

After we made the batter, we added some food coloring to make the batter orange like a pumpkin. (I used about five drops of red and yellow food coloring for mine.) Then cook the pancakes like normal.

When the pancakes are ready, the fun part is letting your kids decorate their own jack-o-lantern pancakes anyway they want!

I set out a few bowls of toppings for decorating, like raisins, chocolate chips, bananas, and peaches. You can use any fruit or toppings that you like (i.e. sprinkles, nuts, whipped cream, etc.).

This was a fun way to engage my kids during dinner and make it fun to eat too!

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Day seven 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!

Lemonade In A Bag

Adding a little variety to your dinnertime meal doesn't need to be difficult.


This idea is very simple and delicious! Here's what you'll need:

Lemonade Supplies
lemons
sugar
water
ziplock bags

Place a lemon and ziplock bag on everyone's plate before dinner.  Also set out some sugar and water on the dinner table.

Cut your lemon in fourths and place 1/4 in the ziplock bag.  Seal the bag and squish the lemon until you get all the juice out.  This is the fun part, you're kids will love it--even those that are more sensitive to textures because they are able to participate and feel the textures without getting messy.

When you have squeezed out all the juice from the lemon slice, add the same amount of water as you have lemon juice and add sugar to taste.  You can either add a straw and sip your lemonade straight from the bag or pour your lemonade into a cup.  Either way the lemonade is fresh and delicious and is perfect for any summer or fall dinner.

What a great refreshing summer treat! 

Slushies

Slushies...

They are perfect for the hot summer days we've been having!!

To make these simply scrumptious summer treats, you'll need the following:

Ingredients 

Kool Aid

Sugar

Ice cubes

Water

Blender

 Add a Kool Aid packet and 1 Cup of sugar to a quart jar.  Fill the quart jar with water and stir.  (You don't need the full amount of water shown on the Kool Aid instructions because there'll be additional liquid from the ice cubes.)  

Then add the Kool Aid liquid to the blender, add a tray of ice cubes, and blend to your desired slushie consistency.  And, voila!  Your slushies are ready to pour and enjoy!  It's really that easy!

This is one of my favorite treats to make with my husband once the kids have gone to bed.  Slushies and games makes a quick and easy date night. ;)

Campfire Chocolate Orange Muffins

Last week was National Park Week (to coincide with earth day/week), which meant free entrance to many national parks! {Checkout the U.S. National Park Service website to mark other free entrance days on your calendar.} So my family planned a little trip to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Parks near Moab, Utah. We had a blast! 

We stayed in a little cabin for 2 nights, which was easier than worrying about sleeping in a tent with our 10 month old baby. During our stay we tried a new camping recipe:  

Campfire Chocolate Orange Muffins. 

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy and yummy this campfire treat was, and we'll definitely be doing it again!

I found this recipe idea from this blog post. It provides a great tutorial, but I'd like to share my version here as well. First, here is everything that you'll need.

Ingredients:

Jiffy chocolate muffin mix

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

oranges

Other supplies:

knife

spoon

mixing bowl

measuring cup

aluminum foil

campfire/coals

{Step 1} Cut the top off the orange and set aside. Save the tops, you'll need them again later.

{Step 2} Remove the insides of the orange leaving only the orange rind. I used a spoon to dig out the orange and placed the leftovers on a paper plate. The orange was very easy to remove, just a little messy because I didn't squeeze the juice out first. We ate the orange bits with our breakfast so they weren't wasted.

{Step 3} - Mix the Jiffy chocolate muffins following the directions on the box. I chose Jiffy because it was the smallest muffin mix at the store. I only planned to make 3 oranges and I didn't want to have lots of leftover batter go to waste.

{Step 4} Spoon the muffin batter into the empty orange rinds. Fill oranges 1/2 - 3/4 with muffin batter. I filled our oranges too full, so the muffin spilled out over the edge when it cooked. But the aluminum foil kept it from getting too messy or spilling onto the coals.

{Step 5} Replace the top on the orange and rap the entire orange in aluminum foil.

{Step 6} Cook the oranges. Follow the directions from the muffin mix for cooking time.  We used charcoals and placed the oranges directly on them. We turned the oranges upside-down halfway through their cook time to make sure the muffins cooked all the way through. We also improvised and placed an aluminum pan on top of the oranges as a makeshift dome while they were cooking.

{Step 7} Unwrap oranges and eat when the muffin is cooked! Our muffins baked for 10-20 minutes. That's a broad estimate because I wasn't watching the clock too closely. 

When our muffins were done, I served them with some chocolate snack puddings so they wouldn't be as dry. Personally, I don't like eating dry cake/muffins and I didn't want to deal with frosting. Plus the snack puddings were easy because they didn't have to be refrigerated and they were already 1 person serving sizes. The combination was super chocolatey with a hint of orange. Yum!

This is a quick campfire recipe that you can enjoy while camping or in your backyard fire pit!

Talking Pizza

It's one of the best times when everyone is helping to prepare dinner together (plus, it makes less work for you).  It's also one of the best times to talk with your kids.

When your preparing a meal together with your kids, they naturally start communicating with you about the task at hand (what step comes next, what else needs to be done, etc.) or asking questions.  It feels good as parent to have your children, no matter what age, look to you for help and guidance or to simply open up and communicate!  That's why I'm excited to post about "talking" pizza.

Pizza is definitely one of our family favs.  Whenever my kids ask what we're having for dinner and I say, "pizza," I always get a big smile.  (Kinda makes you feel like mom of the year, sweet!)  Although it's quick and easy to pick up a pizza on your way home from work, it's more fun to have homemade pizza.  Homemade pizza is yummy, affordable, and you can add as toppings as you want!

*Pizza also is a great party food.  So, if you want to create a fun "party" atmosphere for your family or even just you and your husband, pizza is perfect!  Pizza is fun to have at the dinner table or while watching a family movie together.

Here is the pizza dough recipe that we used (from Boche):

Pizza Dough

3 cups hot tap water

1 TBS. Saf yeast

 2 TBS. honey

1 TBS salt

6-8 cups flour

1 TBS dough enhancer

Put water, honey, and 3 cups of flour in a mixing bowl.  Mix until paste consistency.  Add yeast and salt.    Add flour 1 cup at a time until the dough pulls away from sides of the bowl.  We used whole wheat flour and kneaded it for 10 min.  If you are using white flour knead for 5 min. (depending on mixer it may vary).  Add the dough enhancer the last 2 minutes of kneading.  Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Roll crust, add toppings, and bake for 7 minutes (or until crust is light brown and cheese is melted). In my oven, it took me approx. 12 minutes to cook a large pizza.

*Note: This recipe makes A LOT of dough, so you might want to half the recipe.  Or you can save half in the fridge for bread sticks or rolls to go with tomorrow's dinner. 

We opted to use the Hunt's tomato sauce  and mozzarella cheese.  Then we added lots of veggies and pepperoni to top off our pizza.

Our favorite drink to have with pizza is root beer, and homemade is the BEST! Here is the root beer recipe that we use:

Root Beer

 6 cups white sugar

3 1/3 gallons of cold water
1 (2 ounce) bottle of root beer extract
4 pds. Dry ice

Enjoy your own family "talking" pizza. Bon appetite!

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!