Recipes Archives | Page 11 of 17 |

Soda Cracker Toffee | Recipe

December 23, 2009 By Laura 11 Comments

This recipe is one that came to mind, in a memory from years ago. I had no idea what it was called though, so I googled the ingredients to figure it out.
I guess it’s called Soda Cracker Toffee.

Which brings to mind a pressing question for me: Does ANYONE actually say ‘soda crackers’ anymore? I can’t imagine. So if you don’t mind, while I share this recipe, I’m just going to refer to this type of crackers as ‘saltines’. After all, I’m just a kid.

But before I get to that, I wanted to share the memories that this treat brought to mind. I remember the first time I ever tried it. I was working as a teller in a bank. (Do I hear people snickering? lol. Yes, I realize, for anyone who knows me at all, it is comical that I ever worked in a bank. But I did. For like 3 or 4 years! You may wonder how I pulled that off. Well, that’s easy. I was a struggling artist at the time, living at home with my parents. A very, very good friend of my family’s (still today), was the president of the district of that bank, or something like that. He encouraged me to apply for a job at that bank. As much as I questioned him that they would ever hire me, he assured me all would be fine. ; ) I worked there for 2 years, and even was successfully transferred to the south shore when I got married. Until I couldn’t take it anymore…being like, and dressing like, someone I was so NOT. So then I quit, and became a married, struggling artist, in my first own home.

But in that last year, there was a girl that worked at my branch for a few months. There are 3 things I remember about her:

1) She was very bubbly, and always smiling.

2) She once turned to me after I said something or other, (I swear, I forget what..) and said, “You know, you are soooooo…..ABRASIVE!” Michael and I have laughed about that for YEARS since. Well, except I always forget the word she used, and he reminds me. And THEN we laugh again. But anyway, it’s not the truth. She was very sensitive, and just didn’t get my humor.

3) One day she brought in this recipe.
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Now…..if you have a sweet tooth, THIS recipe is for YOU. It’s junk food, at it’s best. So I hear. I’m not really into stuff this sweet, but I know others who are LOVING it. ; )

It is SOOOO Easy to make. And only 4 ingredients.

Participating Ingredients: a sleeve of SALTINES, 1 cup of light brown sugar, a 12 oz bag of chocolate chips, & 1 cup of butter. (2 sticks. Holy…)

Spread a whole sleeve of the crackers as a single layer, on a 10×15 jelly roll pan, or, if you don’t have one of those (like us), we used a 17 1/4 x 11 x 1 inch cookie sheet, which should be covered with tin foil first.

I took this photo just for fun. (So take a break. ; )

In a saucepan, melt down the 2 sticks of butter and 1 cup of brown sugar.

This would be a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Bring to a boil, and while stirring frequently, boil for 4-5 minutes.

When the time is up, I saw lots of ‘pockets’ of butter or brown sugar, so I used the back of the spoon to press them out against the side of the pan, and mix some more, until it looked truly combined. Took a minute is all.

So then you have warm toffee, and it should look more like this.

Pour as evenly as you can over all of the crackers. You need to work some quickly because the toffee will start setting if it cools too much. Once it is all poured, quickly spread it out more evenly over the crackers.

Once it is spread out, put it in your pre-heated oven and bake for 5 minutes.

Remove pan from oven, and then turn off the oven.

Quickly spread the entire bag of chocolate chips all over the toffee-covered Saltines.

Then put the pan back in the oven for 4-5 minutes, which should still be pretty hot.

(In my attempt to see if the chips were indeed melt-y enough, I grabbed the spatula off the counter, which got caught on a pair of kitchen scissors, sending them flying INTO the oven, and falling to the bottom.
Metal tongs were necessary to remove the scissors, which were now on fire. But you can skip that whole step! : )

When the chips look melt-y enough, remove the pan from the oven again, and spread the chocolate more evenly over the cracker base.

Now place the pan in your refrigerator, to speed up the process of chilling and setting the chocolate.

When it is set, remove from fridge.

And cut into 1 inch squares with a pizza cutter. (You can actually do this yourself!! Michael just did it for me, because I’m weak, and have a life-long broken finger.) (I know what you are thinking by now….Yes, I am accident-prone.)

You can store it all in an air-tight container.

This treat is really a nice little gift, or a sweet addition to your own Christmas or New years festive celebration!

Enjoy!!

(And don’t forget to brush your teeth after! Seriously.)

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Waldorf Salad | Recipe

December 6, 2009 By Laura 2 Comments

You may or may not have heard of Waldorf Salad. My mother made it all of the time growing up, and I always thought it was a rather odd concoction. But I loved it! So did my brothers and sister, as much as I recall. And now, my kids love it too. Big hit. So simple. No measuring really needed. No cooking!
*Update: One of my kiddo’s food allergies expanded from just peanuts, to tree nuts too. So we can’t make this at home anymore.
But you can! And you really should.

Participating ingredients: apples, walnuts, raisins, mayonnaise.

How much you use of any of it, is a preference, and all in consideration of how much you are making, and so how many apples you use. We used 4 apples and fed 7+ (Some had seconds.)

So chop up some walnuts. (We were lucky to finally find walnuts not possibly contaminated by peanuts processed in the same manufacturing facility.)

We have this handy chopper. Can’t say it chops very consistently sized pieces though. It’s literally hit or miss every time. It turns as it chops, but still. We usually don’t care though, whether some pieces are bigger than others.

Peel the apples, core and slice them. Surely you all have the handy device above, to get the 2 latter tasks done in 1 shot.

Cut up the apples into bite sized pieces.

Put apples into a big bowl, add chopped walnuts, and add a handful or so of raisins too.

Adding some chopped celery is another great option.

Add a plop of mayonnaise, one plop at a time, and mix, until it is the desired amount you want.

It’s a sweet, delicious side-dish, chilled or not.

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Paula’s Rolls | Recipe

November 25, 2009 By Laura 1 Comment

This wonderful (and I mean wonderful!) dinner roll recipe was sent in by our friend Paula, from A Catholic Harvest. She’s a great gal. I adore her for so many reasons, but to sum it up, she’s a mixed bag. I love people who are full of wonderful qualities, but also full of surprises. For instance, recently I learned that she’s a ‘closet head-banger’. Inside this sweet, funny, supportive and faithful girl, is an inner rock-n-roll chick!! It’s true! Who knew?!

So speaking of rolls…lol….I love this recipe she sent us. I have a few recipes sent in that I’ll be making, now that I have more time to cook and bake. But here is one for now. She sent it, we made it, we photo’d it, and now we’re bloggin’ it!! I wanted to be sure I posted it at least by today, because really, these are perfect Thanksgiving Day rolls to have on your table! And chances are, you already have all of the ingredients you need, to make some last minute. (But please don’t hold us to that. lol) Regardless, these are truly wonderful ANYTIME rolls. So here we go.

Participating Ingredients:

***1/2 c shortening (or unsalted butter)
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp salt
4-1/2 tsp yeast
5+ c flour
2 eggs
stick of butter (not shown)
*** Since the sharing of this post, we have revised our family’s diet, for a healthier lifestyle.
Therefore, we substitute the shortening now for unsalted butter. We believe it’s a better choice.

NOTE: If you have a kitchen mixer, you are welcome to do this part using that. But did not have one at this time, so we mixed the dough by hand.
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In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and shortening, mixing up and cutting up with pastry cutter.

Now, the next step in the directions is to beat 2 eggs in a measuring cup , and then fill the cup to the 2 cup mark with hot water. However, we did not have a 2 cup measuring cup, we only had a 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup. So, we measured out the eggs, dumped them in a small bowl, and added the remaining needed hot water, to collectively make 2 cups of eggs and hot water. I sure hope you followed that.

So here are our two measured, beaten eggs.

Adding the remaining measurement of how water.

Beat together.

Pour hot water, over dry ingredients in big bowl, and mix together. Slowly add 3 more cups of flour. Once all of the flour is in, and as you mix, you may realize that the mixture is really very wet, and is not really going to form a dough mixture at any point. This means you need to add even more flour, little by little, until it becomes more dough-like.

Once all combined well, cover the dough bowl, and let rise in a warm oven until doubled. (Paula uses 170 because it’s the lowest setting on her oven. Ours is 150, and that worked too.)

On a floured surface that you can cut on, knead the dough.

Flatten the dough out with your hands, or with a rolling pin, into a large pizza shape. Then cut with a pizza cutter into 16 triangle shaped slices, like seen above.

Roll each piece from the wide end of a slice, to the point. They’ll look like crescent rolls.

Place in greased pan (Paula uses Pam spray), allowing enough space for rolls to double in size again. Paula says you can use 2 9×13 pans and put 8 on each as we did, or she also has a large pan she thinks is about 11×20.

Cover and let rise in a warm oven again, about 20-30 minutes. When doubled, remove from oven, and heat oven to 375. Bake in 375 oven for 20-30 minutes, depending on how dark you want them.

Immediately rub on, or brush, with 1 stick of melted butter. ( Paula says, “Yes, 1 whole stick!”).

Do these look savory, or what?!!

Paula states at the end of the recipe, “YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!” And indeed, we were not!!

We loved them so much, that we’ll be making them again and again. In fact, I am making more today. However, since we don’t normally eat all white bread, I am going to try this time making them with about 1/3 wheat flour, and see how those come out. I can keep you posted!

We hope you’ll find this recipe a new favorite in your home. Paula also sent a recipe for Indian Fry Bread, which we have plans to make in the next few days. I’ve got a list of recipes we’ll be sharing, actually. Meanwhile, if YOU have a recipe you’d like to see featured on our blog, please use the e-mail button in the sidebar on the right, and send it along! If it remotely appeals to us, we may just Make it-Photo it-Eat it & Blog it! And we’ll link to your blog too, if you’d like!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have rolls to make. And Taco Soup!

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Political Cookies

November 22, 2009 By Laura 3 Comments

We have a de-LICIOUS roll recipe coming right up, submitted by a regular and loved blog reader, Paula. But first, we just wanted to share with you some of our oldest daughter, {A}’s, creative cookies she made last week. (She is an ambitious baker these days, if you don’t know.)

{A} has a very strong interest in the Kennedy Family, and has as of late, been studying their family history in great depth. That’s not to say she is a fan of all of them. ; ) But, she does like who Robert F. Kennedy was. So much so, that she made sugar cookies for his birthday on Friday, November 20th. She thought it was a great excuse to practice her piping skills.

There were many duplicates of these cookies above, so this is just a sample of each design. She even had more detailed pre-sketches on paper, but realized they would be really hard to pipe. I think they came out really cute though. I also think it’s cute that she made these. lol

On a side note, I just wanted to mention that we’ll be doing a little renovation on the Home Page (just a little one). So if you notice things are out of sorts at any point, that’s why. : )

And that, I believe, was my shortest post, ever. I deserve a cookie, don’t you think?

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Hallowtide: Part 1 – Halloween (All Hallows Eve or All Saints’ Eve)

November 14, 2009 By Laura 7 Comments

This is Part I of a 2-Part series of posts about the triduum of Hallowtide, and how we celebrate it:
1. Halloween (All Saints’ Eve), 2. All Saints’ Day and 3. All Souls’ Day.

Essentially, over the course of these 3 days, we, the Catholic/Western Christians, remember our dead. We say prayers for the souls in Purgatory, we celebrate the lives of the saints, and we remember that Christ conquered death, with His own death on the cross, ultimately offering us life thereafter. In that light, death is not something to be so afraid of. But rather a point in time in which we cross over, to hopeful and glorious new life, with Christ. And during this time of specific opportunity known as Hallowtide, we remember and pray for the souls currently at that crossover.

Hallowtide is always a festive 3 day event in our family. We love this time of year, and very much enjoy our traditions, which I suppose differs a little bit from the vast majority. I think we have a nice balance though. We have fun with ‘Halloween’ and the silliness/just-for-fun that comes with that, while also giving attention to the historic Catholic roots of ‘Halloween’, and how it all began. Thus, our more extended focus on the 3 days of Hallowtide.

Just to note: One Halloween tradition we do not participate in is Trick-or-Treating. We don’t feel there is anything wrong with anybody doing that traditional activity on Halloween of course, but we personally don’t for a few reasons: The most important being {S}’s severe peanut allergy. There is just no way to make it 100% safe, and it’s sure not worth the risk to his life for us, one bit. Secondly, we hardly eat candy. And lastly, we don’t have a great neighborhood for that anyway> Not only do we not have sidewalks, but we only know our immediate neighbors, who do not have kids, and they don’t get any trick-or-treaters (nor do we) because we live on a dead-end with 1 street light. (That’s scary, alright. LOL.) So years ago, we began the tradition of our own little party, which the kids enjoy planning and participating in more than I could ever tell you. (I think the photos over the years speak volumes!). Needless to say, we haven’t bothered with costumes in recent years either. But we do have a tradition of designing fun Halloween shirts that Daddy makes! (It’s just vinyl cut out and applied, and we peel off later. )

This year however, started out our festivities with a break from our own tradition, by accepting the thoughtful invitation to some friends for a pre-party, party! These friends REALLY love Halloween, and the hostess is uber-creative!! We enjoyed a few hours with our good and long-time friends (3 generations 0f them), as well as some new friends. We all had a blast, and then we came home and partied some more!

Here are the kids showing off their Halloween shirt this year, and ready for a long night of partying!

Sorry about the glare on {O}’s shirt there. And yes, {J} does still have a right hand. lol (I just noticed that. lol)
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{A} got extra -creative with her shirt idea-front and back!
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The kids and some of their friends on the very popular trampoline. (No one was hurt in this jumping jamboree, despite the number of kids. They were pretty careful of each other. Perhaps because of my 93 reminders.)
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Our little wild-man, {S}, taking advantage of no other kids in the trampoline.
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We brought this cake we made to the party too, with the spider inspired from {A}’s shirt design. Our hosts were overly-impressed, but we loved them for it. lol. It’s chocolate cake, with butter cream frosting. (I know some of you cake-lovers were seriously wondering! ; )
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When we got home, we kicked off our own party. We started with some more eating.
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Just some simple picking food, with a little creepy thrown in!
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Earlier in the day, {A} had made these ‘Cleopatra Centipedes”, out of breadstick dough, red licorice and black piping. Reason being, we come across the occasional ‘Cleopatra’ downstairs in our house, and they are indeed creepy and scary! They freak us all out. Yes, even Michael. Don’t let him tell you otherwise.
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These look rather harmless though, don’t they? lol
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The small feast in progress. After this photo, I had a little too. But really, I picked a lot at the pre-party party. I was pretty all set.
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After dinner, the kids played ‘Donuts on a String‘. Michael had originally thought of bobbing for apples, but I said to him, “Umm…the kids hardly have any front teeth right now!” He was like “Oh yeah.” (That would be a long game, huh? lol). My friend suggested Donuts on a String instead, and it was a hit! Of course, those are our home-made donuts we pulled out of the freezer and defrosted.

(Now here comes something rare….photos of ME in a post….I set up camera for {A}.)

Now I was doing ok at first, but I can tell you….I’m not the partier my kids are!! I was fading FAST!
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I tried to fake it and put on my best-having fun face for awhile, but really….

Is it bedtime, yet? I’m a lousy faker at anything. I was so giddy and T I R E D, and thinking mostly about my bed relatively soon into our own party.
But I hung on for my kiddos, who had an absolute blast, until we went to bed very late!

Hope your Halloween was ‘all that and a bag of…..candy?’ : ) Want to see more of our Hallowtide?
You can check out Part II, All Saint’s Day and All Souls Day, HERE.

BOO! to you….and yours.

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BOO! to you….and yours.

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