Lingerie Shower Cupcakes

Just a quick post with pictures of some cupcakes I made for a lingerie shower. I thought they turned out pretty cute!

Christmas cheer!

Hey all you skinny chefs out there!! I have been cooking like crazy (actually baking) lately, but I have done a terrible job of taking pictures and sharing it all with you. I'm so sorry!! Sunday night we were the dessert house in a progressive dinner for our Life group at church. I made a chocoholic/chocolate lover's cake with chocolate covered strawberries and banana pudding. (Two separate things, cake and pudding). Yum-O!!! (Sorry, Rachael Ray, I'm stealing your phrase!) Today I made an Apricot Almond bread from a Pampered Chef cookbook that I've had forever, although it was my first time to make this particular recipe. I love the white chocolate apricot bread from Market Street's bakery, and this tastes VERY similar! Looks pretty too!

Next on my list of goodies, because it has become a holiday favorite (oh who am I kidding, it's a year round favorite!) are cake balls!!! I actually had a Skinny Chef blog request for the recipe so I'm going to share the original link where I found the cake balls. If you have never checked out Bakerella, you are missing out!!! Great stuff on her website!! Who doesn't love things on a stick?? So, check out Bakerella and you won't be disappointed in the red velvet cake balls!! I'll make some soon and share some pics...until then, happy baking!

Cooking up a storm!!!

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and honestly it was not all I hoped it would be...culinary speaking. But in the midst of my unmet expectations for my time in the kitchen, God taught me a great lesson about enjoying time spent with my family...especially on the holidays!! It's not about me getting to cook all that I want to. And honestly, I've done plenty of cooking lately! This post will include LOTS of pictures and a recipe or two. First off:

Banana Bread!!!

This recipe is super easy and doesn't require anything more than just dumping and mixing. And the end result is sooooo good! I think I got this recipe from my mom at some point. I've had it for so long and the recipe card is proof that I've made it about 1,000 times. I'm not sure where she got it from, but trust me it's fantastic!

6 large bananas (the really ripe, almost black ones work best!)

2 tsp. baking soda

1 cup buttermilk (did you know you can add 1 Tbsp. vinegar to 1 cup of milk and substitute for buttermilk? you can!!)

4 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 cup oil

5 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp cinnamon

2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup pecans

Bake at 325 degrees for 1-1 1/2 hours (make sure a toothpick comes out clean from the middle)

Makes 2 large loafs. (Or you can make smaller loafs and some mini ones too, just because they're cute!)

I'm sure there is a proper way to add things in a certain order, but I've always just dumped it in and mixed as I go and it always turns out great! Enjoy!!

Next up we have Italian Cream Cake!! Today was my Mom's birthday and I wanted to cook dinner for her and all of our family. I planned an Italian theme menu: lasagna, salad, bread, and of course the Italian cream cake for dessert. The lasagna turned out good. It was my first time to ever make it. I get these ideas and as it's all baking away in the oven I start to doubt my decision to make something brand new when people are coming over for dinner! Luckily, it all turned out great. I got the Hearty Autumn salad recipe from a blog I follow by Lisa Young. You can check it out here. Here's what mine looked like.

I didn't really have a recipe for the lasagna. I researched a bunch of different recipes around the internet and finally decided to come up with my own. It was yummy and I'm looking forward to having the leftovers tomorrow for lunch!

Ok, on to the cake!! This was just the second time I've made this cake, but it is so delicious and it's easy to make!! I should make it more often...or maybe that would keep the skinny chef inside of me disguised for a very LONG time! So here's the recipe (from Southern Living Christmas Cookbook) and some pictures of the process!

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1/2 cup shortening

2 cups sugar

5 large eggs, separated

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups flour

1 teasoon baking soda

1 cup buttermilk (here's that vinegar trick again!)

1 cup flaked coconut

Nutty Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 cup chopped pecans (toasted)

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese (softened)

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 (16-ounce) package powdered sugar, sifted

Beat butter and shortening in a large mixing bowl at medium speed until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating well. Add egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Add vanilla, beat until blended.

Combine flour and baking soda. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat at low speed until blended after each addition. Stir in coconut.

Beat egg white until stiff peaks form, and fold into batter. Pour into 3 greased and floured 9-inch round cake pans. Bake at 350 for 23 to 25 minutes. Cool layers in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Remove from pans and cool layers completely on wire racks. Spread frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake. Yield: 1 3-layer cake.

I know this one has a lot of details and seems like a lot of work, but it's not too bad, and I promise it's worth it! Super moist, super yummy! Happy eating, friends!

Ingredients.... Don't forget to flour the pans! I hope this turns out good!

Putting it all together.... ....and voila!!

Pumpkin Waffles

I wanted to share a yummy looking recipe I came across! Who doesn't love pumpkin this time of year?? I have been collecting some new pumpkin recipes and I plan on having a huge pumpking baking day soon. Here is a recipe from my cousin, Stacie's blog for pumpkin waffles!! How yummy does that sound? She even took cute pictures to go with it, so thanks Stacie for making something yummy! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Funny Thanksgiving Food Memory

As Thanksgiving is quickly approaching and I am planning menus and making shopping lists, I remembered a very funny Thanksgiving cooking story that I just had to share! The first Thanksgiving we were married, we planned on going to my sister-in-law's house for the big, traditional meal. This was my first holiday with Alan's family and I so desperately wanted to fit in! I offered to bring something and my mother-in-law just told me not to worry about it. She wanted me to just enjoy the day and go watch football with the guys. What this really meant was, "we don't think you can hang in the kitchen, so just show up and we'll take care of the rest." I really wanted to help out and kept insisting that they let me bring something. I would have been happy to just bring a bag of ice, but I was not going to show up empty handed! I finally talked them into letting me bring the rolls.

I was so excited because I had an amazing recipe for rolls that my friend (and blog follower!) Jennifer Watson gave me. Her rolls are DIVINE!!! I love them, and I knew this was my shot to impress the in-laws and carve out my place in the kitchen for all future holidays! Now this was very early in my cooking career and I had never made any kind of homemade bread before. But, I had a recipe so how hard could it be??? Two days before Thanksgiving I did a practice run. I was fairly confident in the process and since I had no idea what I was doing I had nothing to compare it to. I thought I was 25 minutes from pulling out some fantastic rolls from the oven! The timer went off and you can imagine my disappointment when I pulled out a tray of rock hard dough balls. I instantly panicked! This would not suffice for the BIG day! I called my mom and asked her if she had any advice for me and my endeavor. She gave me all kinds of tips. "Set the egg out for a while and let it get to room temperature." "Don't get the water too hot or you'll kill the yeast." She had some good pointers I thought. At least she had made a few batches of rolls in her life, so I kept practicing. Seven failed bathces later I was totally freaked out! I was so far into my quest for the perfect Jennifer Watson dinner roll, that I couldn't see a way out. The timer was ticking and the big dinner was soon upon us, so I made one final batch and convinced myself that they were ok. Why couldn't I hear the nagging voice in my head, "go buy 4 dozen rolls at Texas Roadhouse and put an end to this madness, you idiot!!!" I prayed, I begged, I pleaded with God to work a miracle on that bread while it baked in the oven. As I pulled them out of the oven, the really weren't terrible, so I wrapped them up and we headed to the sister-in-law's house.

I nervously brought my little basket of rolls and placed them in the line up right between the green bean casserole and the pies. "It's just a basket of rolls. There are 15 side dishes here and 8 pies. Who's gonna even notice whether they're great or not??" All these thoughts raced through my head and I just did all I could to smile and fit in to my new family. Everyone went through the line, we were all sitting, the meal was half way over and I was feeling a bit of relief about the whole ordeal. Why was I so freaked out over something so stupid? All of a sudden, two seats down from me, on the other side of my husband, there was a banging sound on the table. Alan's dad proceeded to hit his roll on the table and ask "What is this supposed to be? A biscuit?" followed by a little more banging. No one answered him. They all just pretended to not hear even though no one else was talking at the time. They all just felt so sorry for me. I wanted to stand up and scream "It's me!! I brought those hard biscuit things!" Welcome to the family!! I wanted to crawl under the table and just die right there. It was a horrifying moment. Thankfully he dropped his line of questioning and dove into the sweet potatoes.

So the past 3 years of family holidays I have sort of been confined to dish duty and filling glasses with ice and beverages. Last year I actually managed to convince my mother-in-law to let me chop some veggies. I chopped celery and onions for about 2 hours. I realize it will probably take me at least 12 more years before they ever trust me to bring an actual part of the meal. It's a miracle this incident did not scar me for life. I can't believe I ever stepped back into the kitchen at all!! I can tell you that my friend Jennifer let me come over one time and watch her make her famous rolls and I can now make them. They are still never as good as hers, but they are pretty good. There is a method to it and I was so far off it was no wonder I kept coming up with brick biscuits. And no, I will not be sharing the recipe. Partly because I have been sworn to secrecy and partly because I could not ever let anyone else endure the humiliation that might possibly come with attempting to make these rolls!!

What are your holiday food memories?

Thanksgiving Menu and a few recipes!

I am so excited that the holidays are upon us!!! My family will be traveling to the Dallas area to spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws. I am looking forward to see everyone but honestly I am most excited about the food and more specifically the cooking!! My mother-in-law is working Thanksgiving day so we will celebrate with the traditional feast on Friday. On Turkey Day we are going to Alan's dad's house. He lives on a little farm south of Fort Worth. We always love visiting his house because the girls get to ride horses and run and play and enjoy the open fields. It's a lot of fun. Since I will be the only "woman" at the house that day, I am taking over all food and cooking duties!! Since the day will consist of relaxing, watching football, and riding horses, I wanted make easy, comforting foods that we can enjoy all day long. So here's the menu:

Chili (it's my dad's recipe, and it's fantastic!)

Cornbread

Jalapeno Poppers

Chips and Guacamole

Pumpkin Squares (got this new recipe from my cousin, Angie!)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Apple Cider

Hot Chocolate

On Friday, we will have the traditional Thanksgiving meal with all of Alan's family including my new sister-in-law! Alan's oldest brother, Steven is getting married TODAY!! It is just a ceremony at the Justice of the Peace in Plano, but on the Saturday following Thanksgiving we are having a family barbecue and reception for them. It is going to be three days full of food, family, and fun!

I have one more "project" planned for Thanksgiving. Any guesses??? You're right, cupcakes!!! At Friday's dinner there will be 13 kids there!! We are going to decorate cupcakes and I have two really cute ideas. One is a Turkey that I found in Hello Cupcake! The other idea is to do a Cornucopia with little "fruit" and acorns in it. I think it will turn out cute and give the kids something to do for a while. I PROMISE to take pictures and I'll post them after Thanksgiving!!

In the hustle and bustle of this busy season, as much as I love the food and festivities, I try to stay focused on what really matters, spending time with my family. I am so blessed not just with a great husband and kids, but my entire extended family is a blessing to my life. I am truly rich because of all of them. I am so thankful to be a part of such a wonderful family! Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Chili recipe:

2 pounds ground beef

1 pound ground sausage

2 packages Williams Chili Seasoning (according to my dad, this is the best, so I always use it)

2 cans tomato sauce

2 cans diced tomatoes

2 cans black beans (drained)

2 cans pinto beans (drained)

1/2 cup brown sugar

Brown the ground beef and sausage. Combine all ingredients except brown sugar in a large stock pot. Simmer and add brown sugar about 5-10 minutes before serving. Tastes great with cornbread or with Fritos and cheese (my personal favorite!). Enjoy!!

Batch Cooking

Well, I've done it again!! This past weekend, me and my friend Missy batch cooked. Every time I talk about it people ask what on earth batch cooking is! Well, it's two days of planning, shopping, cutting, prepping, boiling, cooking, cutting, sealing, laughing, pouring, measuring, stirring, laughing, eating fun!!! Ok, I'll be more specific. Here's a run down of what we do or at least what we did this weekend. I'm sorry I don't have pictures to go with this post. I really meant to take them, but when you're in the middle of a 23 hour cooking marathon, you kind of forget to snap a few pictures here and there.

Day 1: We started out at Starbucks, notebooks in hand, and chose the recipes we wanted to do. We have compiled about 40 recipes, so we go through them and pick out the ones we want to do. This time we picked out about 32 recipes!! That may not sound like a lot, but we do each recipe X 4. Two for her family and two mine. We go through each recipe and make our shopping list. We try to stay organized (dairy, canned, frozen, baking, spices, etc.) so that shopping will go smoothly. As soon as we had our list together we headed to Sam's!! We always start at Sam's because we buy so much in bulk and definitely get the best deals there. For example, we needed 156 chicken breasts for our recipes, so we needed 13 bags of chicken breasts. Not to mention the 20 something pounds of ground beef, 4 roasts, 4 briskets, and 6 pounds of stew meat! Two huge cart fulls and 700something dollars later, we headed to Wal-Mart! We found pretty much everything else we needed at Wally World. One last stop at Market Street for lunch and two miscellaneous items we couldn't get at the other stores and then back to Missy's for cooking!!

Missy and I have come up with a pretty good system even though this was only our second time to cook together! We've both batch cooked with other people before so we've learned a lot of things that work and a lot of things that don't. Missy is the prep master!! She goes through the recipes and figures out how many chicken breasts need to be cooked, how many pounds of meat need to be browned, what veggies need to be chopped. I start putting together the "raw" recipes. Raw recipes are ones that don't require the protein to be cooked. These meals just require assembly. So Day 1 is always packed! Planning, shopping, prepping, raw recipes, and 13 hours later we were done.

Day 2: Assembly day!!! All of the prep work that Missy did the day before now gets put into the remaining recipes. We just each pick different ones and start putting them together until it's all done. Now let me just say that we are what I would call "extreme" batch cookers!! Before cooking with Missy I had only made about 20 recipes at a time and that wasn't doubling them, just 20 meals for my family. Missy has such an amazingly organized system, that with just a little bit more time that I was putting in before I am coming home with triple the amount of recipes! My freezer is packed with 66 meals!! The great thing about that is I don't have to cook for a few months!!! If you don't have the freezer space for 66 meals, you can cook on a much smaller scale, and it is still so worth it. Batch cooking makes my life SOOOO much easier! It is two packed days, but it is so worth it.

If you are interested in more info about it, or have any questions, let me know! I love sharing information with other moms and wives or even single ladies that just want to make their lives a little easier, and batch cooking does that for me!!! Again, sorry there are no pictures! I promise to post some pictures of some of the meals as we eat them. I will also share some recipes. I have batch cooking notebooks available for $5 is you want one. They have about 35 recipes in them along with some really great tips sheets and helpful information. Hope you feel inspired to get in the kitchen and start cooking!!!

More Cupcakes!!!

Today is my sweet Molly Kate's birthday! I made cupcakes for her party tonight and they turned out pretty cute! I really like making cupcakes that are all a little unique. I like lots of variety. Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing, vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, strawberry cupcakes with chocolate and cream cheese icing. To celebrate my sweet girl I decorated with her initials primarily. I also used "1" and castle cupcake toppers to go with our princess theme!

Happy birthday sweet baby girl!

On a different note, let's talk about steak!!! Sunday night we cooked out steaks to enjoy the last of this really beautiful weather and to enjoy while watching the Cowboys game. I've come up with a really good "rub" for steaks, so I thought I'd share.

Of course, it helps to start with some really good ribeye steaks!

Fun Stuff!

As much as I love cooking, I think I love baking about 1,000 times more! I'm a bit of a sugar addict. So, this week, I had two "sweet" projects to do. The first was a very simple party favor I volunteered to make for a Teacher's Luncheon at Taylor's school. I've seen these little spoons before and figured they would be super easy to make, and they were! I melted some chocolate bark and just dipped the plastic spoons in it. I laid them all out on wax paper and once they had hardened I drizzled them with white chocolate bark. Easy peasy!! The part about this project that I liked the most were my new Make and Mold decorating bottles! I love stuff like this that makes these little baking projects more fun. I had to make 80 of them, but it didn't take that long at all! I wrapped them invidually in Make and Mold treat bags and voila! Cute favors! Sorry I forgot to take a final picture once they were all done.

My second project this week involved my favorite thing ever.....cupcakes!! On Wednesday morning, my sister Kelsey went in for an ultrasound to find out if she is having a boy or a girl. I thought it would be super fun to make little baby cupcakes. This idea inspiration came from an awesome book Hello, Cupcake!

I combined the baby shower cupcakes with the slumber party ones and came up with these! I think they turned out pretty cute!

And that's right, it's another girl!!! This makes granddaughter #6 for my parents and grandson #0!!! Yes, we just seem to keep churning out the girls, but hey, we love pink!! Ok, back to the cupcakes. I just used a simple box cake mix and store bought frosting in a can(because they taste really good and leave me more time for decorating). The babies faces are Mini Nilla Wafers, the blankets are different candies I just rolled out and molded, and that's pretty much it!! Cute, huh??

Praline Chicken

It seems that the recipe for praline chicken is in high demand! I got this recipe from this awesome new cookbook my mom gave me. It's the Southern Living Christmas Cookbook. My mom got it at TJMaxx, but today a friend told me that they have them at Dillard's at the make-up counters for only $10, and some of the proceeds go to Ronald McDonald House! I also got the recipe for Italian Cream Cake from this cookbook. I want to make literally every recipe in here! They all sound so amazing!

So here's the Praline Chicken recipe (I did slightly modify the seasonings from the cookbook, I will let you know where):

2 teaspoons Creole seasoning (I used salt, pepper, and garlic powder, because the Creole seasoning is too spicy for my kids)

6 skinned and boned chicken breasts

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1/3 cup maple syrup

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 cup chopped pecans, toasted

Sprinkle seasoning on both sides of chicken. Cook chicken in butter and oil in a skillet over medium heat 5 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken, reserving drippings in skillet. Place chicken on a serving platter; keep warm.

Add syrup and sugar to drippings in skillet; bring to a boil. Stir in pecans; cook 1 minute or until heated. Spoon mixture over chicken. Yield: 6 servings.

Super easy and super yummy!! Here is the picture from the cookbook. Normally I will try and post actual pictures to prove that I am in fact making these meals! I just started the blog after I thought to take a picture of this dish!!

(Sorry the pics aren't great, but I'm not writing a photography blog here!)

Try it out and let me know what you think!!

Skinny Chef Kickoff!!

Well, here it is. A blog totally dedicated to my love of cooking, baking...ok, let's just get down to it...my love of food!!! I love all things food. Food shows, cooking food, baking food, buying food, eating food...my love affair with food has been a long one. Not always a healthy one, but maybe we'll get to more of that at another time. Let's kick this thing off right!

Ok, first let me explain the title. I am many things but skinny and a chef are not on the list. But I like to think that somewhere deep inside is a skinny little hot mama waiting to come out. Her only hindrance is, you guessed it, food!!! I am so far from being a chef, it kind of makes me chuckle to even use that word. Ask my husband when we first married! I was FAR from even being a decent cook. I think my couch potato-ness led to a dear relationship with Food Network. It all started with Rachel Ray. The appeal of cooking a meal in 30 minutes was definitely for me!! Although I've never actually been able to cook a meal from one of her cookbooks in less than an hour (not to mention the aimless wandering in the store looking for obscure ingredients. What the heck are pignoli nuts anyways?) Now I love watching cooking competition shows. I've learned so much about cooking from watching these shows. They've given me a little more confidence to step out of the box and try some new things. Last night I received a huge compliment from my hubby. He said "you know, you've really become a great cook!" This from the man who grew up with a momma that can cook anything and everything tastes amazing! Another reason I am not in the chef category, not even close to it, is I don't really make up new recipes on my own. On the rare occassion that I'm feeling super adventurous (and pretty confident that it will turn out half way decent) I will just go for it and be creative, but mostly I cook/bake things that I find in a cookbook or online. Some of my recent favorites include:
-Italian Cream Cake
-Bread Pudding
-Prailine Chicken
-Papas con Chile (just like Abuelo's!)
-Anything from bakerella.com (gotta love anything that you can put on a stick)
-my dad's chili recipe
-Banana bread
and the list goes on and on...... (can you see why I'm not skinny?)

If you want recipes for any of these let me know, I'll share!

So I'm going to give this blog a try. I will include pictures and recipes of things I make and I'll let you know how successful (or unsuccessful) the dishes are. Trust me, I'm my own worst critic. I will not let you waste your time on a bad dish. If it's not good, or not worth the time it takes to make it, I'll let you know. You can also send me any recipes you think I should try. I'm up for anything! My family is used to being the guinea pigs by now. I've made some pretty intersting (aka, nasty) meals over the past 4 1/2 years. Happy reading (and eating)!