pumpkin cranberry nut muffins

Yummy note: I am always looking for those versatile recipes that are good morning, noon, or night... This muffin recipe fits it quite well. It is not only great for breakfast, but it is also a nice flavorful treat for a snack or dessert even. This recipe also hit my other top qualifier of easy to eat on the go. Muffins, bread, scones, you know, those little things that you can grab and run out the door with in the morning and snack on later when you don't have time to eat it at home. This muffin has a nice fall flavor of pumpkin and other spices, combined with the dried cranberries and nuts, it makes for a nice combination. I think this would make a perfect little housewarming goodie to bring to your Thanksgiving holiday parties for your host as a nice thank you!

Pumpkin Cranberry Nut Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup canned pumpkin (not the pumpkin pie filling kind, just the pureed canned pumpkin)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs or 1/2 cup egg beaters substitute
1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped pecans, if desired
decorating or coarse sugar, if desired



Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare your muffin pan with either 12 paper cup liners or grease muffin pan. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. Next, stir in the canned pumpkin, oil, eggs, cranberries, and pecans until just moistened. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups.


A nice tip is to use a large cookie scoop or an ice cream scooper worked great for keeping the muffin batter evenly distributed. Plus it makes for easy cleanup and less batter spills :-)

Sprinkle the optional decorating sugar or coarse sugar over the muffin batter before baking to make a nice finished look. Bake muffins 20-25 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove baked muffins from pan to cooling rack and enjoy.

Cheese and Fruit Danish

Yummy note: I originally had this variation of a cheese danish the other day at work. A coworker's wife made this treat and it was just so good, I insisted on the recipe. It was originally made to it a 9x13 pan, but I wanted to scale back the recipe a little bit, since I was inspired to try something a bit different with the recipe. I wanted to add a fruit filling into the cheese portion. I really liked the plain cheese danish, but not knowing how well the fruit filling would hold up to the rest of the danish, I thought I'd better only half the recipe just in case. I had some family over, and I wanted to make sure we had something to eat for breakfast.. haha.. just in case I needed to use the other half of the ingredients to make a pan of the plain cheese danish. So you can either add in the fruit if you wish in your recipe or follow it straight for a plain cream cheese danish. Either way, it is pretty crispy, flaky and outright yummy to eat for breakfast or snack.

Cheese and Fruit Danish

Ingredients:

2 packages of cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla

2/3 cup of sugar for filling

1 egg separated

lemon

2 packages of crescent rolls (the crescent sheets work well for this, too!)

1/3 cup of sugar for topping

optional: about 1/4 cup jelly or jam for fruit filling

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375. Mix the following ingredients together: 2 packages of cream cheese, 2/3 cup of sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, juice of 1/2 lemon, and the egg yolk. Note: save the egg white for

the top. Unroll 1 package of crescent rolls in a 9X13 pan. Spread the cheese filling over the crescent rolls. Next, if you want, spread on the fruit filling. Then, unroll the 2nd package of crescent rolls over the top of that. To finish it off, brush the egg white over the top and sprinkle generously with the 1/3 sugar.

Bake for about 25-35 minutes at 375. Note: I think the fruit filling in the cream cheese mixture takes a little bit longer when baking, so please adjust accordingly and watch for it to get nice and puffy, flaky and a golden brown or poke it with a tester to see if it is done.

fruit juice knox blox

Yummy note: I had received a super cute butterfly and bug silicon mold pan for my birthday this year from a friend and I really wanted to try it out on something. Instead of trying the standard baked treat in it, I wanted to experiment with it differently. So we decided to make some wiggly jigglers, aka fruit juice knox blox. I think it worked pretty good, my only thing I need some advice on is perfecting the removal technique a little better. I think potentially I need to lightly spray cooking oil or something on the mold before or maybe let them sit in a warm water bath a bit before removing them?? any ideas? Other than that my kiddo loved them, and well, so did I. :) Using the fruit juice with the knox blox for this gives you a nice fruity flavor without having to have jello on hand, plus it is a little cheaper to make this way, too.

Fruit Juice Knox Blox

Ingredients:
4 envelopes Knox Unflavored Gelatine
1 cup cold fruit juice
3 cups fruit juice, heated to boiling
2 tablespoons sugar or honey, optional
Note: this is the same recipe you'll usually find on the back or inside of your Knox gelatine box.

Directions:
Open the packets of Knox unflavored gelatin and sprinkle the gelatin over the 1 cup of cold fruit juice in a bowl. Let gelatin stand for 1 minute or so to start absorbing the juice. Next, add your boiling juice to the gelatin bowl and stir together until gelatin is completely dissolved. This make take several minutes. Next stir in the sugar or honey if you want.

At this point pour your mixture in a pan or mold that you'd like to use. If using a pan, you can use either a 9x13 pan for a thinner jiggler or use a 9x9 pan for a thicker jiggler. Refrigerate gelatin until firm. Depending on your pan size, it might be about 3 hours or so until set. Next cut and serve jigglers or unmold your creepy crawly jigglers!

All the ingredients you'll need - 4 cups of juice and Knox gelatine

Letting the gelatin sit for a minute or so in the fruit juice starts making a gel like substance in your bowl.

Mold I used for my jigglers, but feel free to use whatever you wish!

3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

Yummy note:

Yes, you read it right, this recipe is a 3 ingredient peanut butter cookie. No flour or butter, shocking, right? I was very skeptical of this recipe at first, then I tried it, and liked it. Really it does work well and it tastes pretty good, or else I wouldn't be sharing it here! :) This recipe is great for beginner bakers too as there are not many ingredients to be scared of and most likely you already have these ingredients in your kitchen without having to do a separate shopping trip just to find that one ingredient you don't have for the recipe. These flourless 3 ingredient cookies are more of a dense cookie, rather than a big puffy type of cookie, but it is tasty. Super nice to have on hand when you are in a pinch and need to throw something together super fast to take somewhere. My additional add-in to these cookies is that I usually like it jazz it up a little bit by adding a handful or so of chocolate chips or candy in the cookies, or add it to the top of the cookies when done baking.

3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup peanut butter (chunky or creamy)

1 egg

1 cup white sugar

*Can add in chocolate chips or candy pieces if you'd like

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together. Drop by teaspoonful on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for anywhere between 6-8 minutes, depending on the size of cookies you make and if you want them more softer/chewy vs a harder cookie. Makes about 1 dozen or so cookies.

crockpot applesauce

Yummy note: This fall, we ended up going apple picking a couple of times cause it was so fun. We went to some orchards in Michigan and Illinois. We got some delicious honeycrisp, gala, red delicious, and or course, who can forget the macintosh apples. I think we got a few other miscellaneous kinds too that the kids happened to pick up from a random tree or two from the orchards, too! So what to do with all those apples, well we made our share of apple crisp, apple pie, and now it's time to make one of my favorites with the leftover apples, applesauce! This is a pretty simple and easy recipe, really you just set the crockpot and forget about it for awhile to make some flavorful homemade applesauce! I like to double this recipe often to fill my crockpot full, so that I have a small package or so to put in my freezer for later.

Crockpot Applesauce

Ingredients:
4 medium apples, (the cooking variety of apples work best) peeled and cut into pieces
1/4 cup water to 1/2 cup water (may want to add more water later in the cooking process if you want a smoother or thinner applesauce)
1/4 cup brown sugar or 3-4 tbps granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
*if you don't have these spices on hand, I've also substituted those b using the pumpkin pie spices, that has a combination of several nice spices to use.

Directions:
Peel, core, and cut apples into fourths or smaller pieces if you'd like. Stir all ingredients (apples, water, sugar, and spices) above in a large crockpot. Cover and set slow cooker to 1 hour and 30 minutes on high. At this point, stir the apples and check on their consistency. At this point, if you think you need more water, add it in, or else you can wait more towards the end if you desire. After stirring apples and breaking them up a bit with a fork or masher, continue cooking them on high for another 30 minutes to an hour, depending on what type of apples you used. Depending on the apple variety, some cook up faster and softer than others, so be sure to keep that in mind. After apples have cooked for about 2 hours, mash and stir until consistency of the applesauce you like. I kept some of the applesauce on the chunkier side, while another batch, I pureed more in a blender to make it really smooth. Enjoy!!

caramel mix

Yummy note:
So this recipe is one of those snack mixes that can be thrown together quick and easy, as it doesn't have a lot of prep time. The real investment in it is the baking time. Every fall, I really see this snack mix in and around a lot of places. I think just about every pumpkin or apple orchard farm, I've been to, has this mix for sale for a little too much money than I'd like to spend. Really it doesn't cost that much to make a whole batch of these sweet and salty treats! Plus, you can then add whatever type of additional add-ins you'd like to the puffed corn for an additional treat ;)
















Ingredients:

1 (8 oz.) bag "Old Dutch Puff Corn Curls" or Cheetos makes a buttered puffs version too
1/2 pound butter (can use margarine, but doesn't taste as good :)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon baking soda

Additional add-ins: may also add in regular popcorn, cereal, pretzels, or other nuts to this mix. Note, if you do add in a great amount of add-ins, you might want to make more caramel mixture to cover your treats well.


Directions:

Place butter sugar and corn syrup in a 2-quart saucepan and cook together for about 2 minutes.















Bring to a slight bubble/boil. Next, add 1 teaspoon baking soda to mixture. This will cause mixture to foam, so using that bigger saucepan is helpful.















Place corn curls/puffs in large roaster pan. Pour caramel mixture over corn curls and stir until mixed.















Place in 250 degree oven for 45 minutes. Stir at least every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and pour on wax paper and break apart. Enjoy!!

mojo de ajo (aka delicious garlic olive oil)

Yummy note:
I was watching Mexico-One Plate at a Time show by Rick Bayless the other day and he was making this golden-colored garlic infused olive oil and it looked so easy to make and versatile, I had to try and make it. Surprisingly it was very simple to make, I just needed some time to bake it. It definitely made my kitchen smell garlicky and delicious. This garlic olive oil, Bayless called Mojo de Ajo, was worth the time to make ahead of time, as it has helped me save some time in a few other dishes later on when I've used the mojo de ajo. It has helped me get a meal thrown together very quickly, such as using it in place of anywhere it suggests using olive oil or a marinade. I've added it to pasta, chicken, breadsticks, and I'm sure you could use it in a few more of your favorite dishes too. It really gives you an added nice roasted garlic flavor without spending the time in the meal you are trying to get thrown together quickly.

Mojo de Ajo

Ingredients:

4 heads garlic (about 1 3/4 cups), peeled
2 cups extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup fresh lime juice

Directions:
Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Prepare and peel garlic (can be done by smashing the garlic against side of a knife to release the clove from the skin lightly). Stir together the garlic, olive oil, and salt in an 8x8-inch baking pan. Place into oven and bake for about 45 minutes, or until the garlic is soft and light brown. Next, add the lime juice and stir. Put back into the oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes to continue baking. Next, remove mixture from oven, and mash the garlic into pieces, until broken apart. Pour the mixture into a covered storage container and refrigerate it until ready to use. The mojo will last for up to three months when refrigerated. This makes about 2-3 cups of mojo de ajo. Note, original recipe here: http://www.rickbayless.com/recipe/view?recipeID=244