Donuts and Hot/Cold Chocolate

The weather has been chilly here lately and for some reason when it gets chilly out I am always craving sweets. (Okay, I crave sweets all the time, but more so when the weather is chilly. ) What is a better treat than Nutella hot or cold chocolate and donuts??

Let's start off with the Nutella hot chocolate first, shall we?

This is  pretty simple to make and sooo good. I got the recipe from Pinterest, but who ever came up with this must have taken it down because there is an error code when you click on the picture.  I have made this twice now- once hot and then cold.  It's Florida and you can't expect it to stay chilly for long and who wants to drink hot chocolate when it is hot out?

Here is what you will need for 1 serving:

• Nutella (2 spoon fulls)
•  a little over 1 cup of milk

First:

  Put the milk on the stove and turn the burner up to medium heat.

The first time I made it I put the Nutella and milk in the pot first and then put it on the burner, but the second time I added the Nutella to milk that was starting to get warm and discovered it blended together faster. 

Next: Add the scoops of Nutella. I did 2 spoon fulls for 1 cup of milk. So if you were to make to  2 servings of this you would use 2 cups of milk and 4 spoon fulls of Nutella.

 Then: Stir the Nutella and milk until they are blended and there are no lumpy bits.

When it starts to look frothy, take a whisk and stir through it. This is just to ensure that it is nice and smooth.
* I didn't do this the first time and when I was drinking my hot chocolate a Nutella lump kept floating to the top when I would take a sip. (Very Annoying!)*
At this point you may want to taste a bit. I did this and found it was a little to rich for my liking at added a smidge more milk.

Now:

 If you want to serve this hot, get out your favorite hot chocolate mugs and pour some in to each cup and enjoy!

If you want to serve this cold, take this off the burner and let cool for a bit. Then fill a cup almost to the top with ice and pour the mixture over the ice and enjoy!!

I am thinking this would also be good with whip cream vodka, but I haven't tried it.

On to the donuts!!!

Don't get me wrong, I have always been a fan of donuts, but when it came to a somewhat quick breakfast donuts were not my item of choice. I would usually prefer a bagel, toast, or a Poptart, but for some reason this school year I have been craving donuts!  Sometimes on Fridays, on my way to work, I will go a a little bit out of my way to pick myself up a donut at Publix.   This morning I was craving donuts, but was really not in the mood to get dressed and drive to the store to pick up some. I knew I didn't have any refrigerator biscuits that I could just pop open and fry up. So if I wasn't willing to go to the store and I REALLY wanted donuts they were getting made from scratch! So my desire to stay in my jammies won and I made the donuts from scratch. It really wasn't all that hard,  I had all the ingredients so I saved myself the trip and the money. :)

 Here is what you will need:

• 2 1/4 cup of Bisquick
• 2/3 cup of milk 
• Vegetable oil
•  cinnamon
• sugar
• water

Now here's how it is done:

Put the Bisquick and milk into a bowl and mix until it forms a soft dough. 

Then sprinkle out some Bisquick on a surface and lay your freshly made dough on it and kneed it about 10 times.

Then add some vegetable oil to a pan and put it on medium- medium-high heat. You want enough oil in the pan that about half the donut is submerged in oil.  

 While the oil is warming up, roll the dough out until it is about 1/2 inch thick.

 Next: Using a round cookie cutter or something round (top of  a glass) cut the dough in to circles. I was in the mood for some big donuts and, believe it or not, I don't have a round cookie cutter. I doubt I would have had one as big as I wanted anyway. So, I used a the top of a martini glass to cut out my donuts.

I just cut out as many circles as I could make with the dough I had rolled out. Then, I sat the circles off to the side, balled the dough back up again and rolled it out again until I couldn't make any more circles. The dough I had left over I rolled in to little balls and used as donut holes.

The donuts with the center cut out and  holes on the right!

 To cut out the center of my circles I used a water bottle cap.

 Once all the dough is all shaped and ready to fry I add them to  the pan of vegetable oil.

Once the donut looks like it is golden brown on the side in the oil, flip the donut over to brown the other side. About 1-2 minutes on each side- depending on the temperature of the oil.

While the donuts are frying up, on a plate, mix some cinnamon and sugar together. 

 Once done, place the donut on a plate covered with a paper towel so it will absorb some of the oil. 

Then stick the donut in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Move a round a bit and coat both sides. 

You can also make a sugar syrup-glaze, but be sure to watch it so that it doesn't cook too long and cause the sugar to burn. 

 I usually make the sugar glaze after I am done with the donuts so that I can keep an eye on it. 

Here's the how-to for a sugar glaze:

Put about 1 tbsp of sugar in a pot with 1 cup of water over low heat.  Stir until the sugar is dissolved. I then turn my heat up and let it start to bubble and begins to look syrupy.  Then I take it off the heat.  Using a spoon, I drizzle it over the donuts. I let the donuts rest a bit and soak up the sugar syrup.

Eat, Drink, and be Merry!!

A Happy Hubby

They always say the a way to a man's heart is through his stomach. When it comes to my hubby that couldn't be more true. Recently, I spread my cooking wings and gave my hand a try at cooking some of food that my husband considers comfort food. Being from the Philippians Chicken Adobo is a staple food. According to him,his family would eat Chicken Adobo once a week. Lucky for him, besides the fact that I like to make him happy, I also LOVE chicken Adobo.  So after looking on the internet I found a pretty simple recipe that I thought I would try out. I didn't make a lot of it, in case it was a bust and didn't taste anything like his or my expectations. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, it was awesome and hubby was eating of my plate! I have made this once or twice since the first time I made it because it was so good and incredibly easy. Trust me this is a dish anyone would love!

Here is what you will need:

•   Chicken wingettes as many as you want to eat (or any meat pieces. I also used pieces of pork, but hubby says his family uses any pieces of meat they have handy. Adobo just refers to the sauce and way it is cooked.)
• 1 whole garlic chopped
• 1 tsp of black pepper
•  4-5 whole black pepper corns
• 3-4 bay leaves
• 1 cup of vinegar (white distilled)
• 1 cup of soy sauce ( my in-laws say Kikkonman is the best brand)
• 1 cup of Sprite
• 1 lemon cut in fours
• oil for sauteing 

   Now the steps to deliciousness:
Heat oil in a pot and chop garlic. Add chopped garlic to pot and saute/cook until lightly brown.

  Meanwhile, clean chicken, pat dry and rub with a lemon.

  Place chicken in the pot and cook 5-7 minutes until tenderized.
  Then add vinegar, soy sauce, black pepper, black pepper corns, and bay leaves to the pot and let simmer
  for about  25-30 minutes.
                

    After 25- 30 minutes add the Sprite and simmer for 5 more minutes. ( This is to take some of the bitterness out of dish).

  Mabuting pagkain (good eating in Tagalog)! Serve over rice and enjoy!

*recipe adapted from here

Favorite Food Fridays

Who doesn't love Friday? It is one of my favorite days of the week. At school, I usually try and stack as many fun projects for the kids to do on Fridays and it's also the start of the weekend! I read somewhere that it is a good idea to plan fun things for yourself in the middle of the week so you have something to look forward to. I try to do that, but it doesn't always work. Hubby and I aim for date nights on Tuesdays and in school I have "dessert" day on Monday- a day where students can read dessert items of their choice (items that are too easy for them like picture books, Guinness Book of World Record books, comic books, magazines, or the newspapers) and kids munch on something special during snack. But I still LOVE to put something fun to look forward to on Friday. I think about what's for dinner before I get out of bed in the morning. I love food and for this Friday I decided to try out a recipe I had in my mind for one of my favorite foods- Calzones! This recipe can be made with any toppings that you desire. For this recipe I made a Philly Cheesesteak Calzone for the hubby, and  veggie version for me. A few weeks ago I made this recipe using buffalo chicken. The ingredients and steps for the buffalo chicken calzone can be found  here, or at the bottom of this page, but I did not follow her instructions for cooking it as many people on the blog complained about the inside not cooking all the way through and the outside being burnt. I used the instructions on the pizza dough bag for baking temp and time. So here's the details to make your own calzone (details... get it?)

So here it what you will need:

• 1 store bought pizza crust dough
• 1 garlic clove minced
• "toppings" of your choice 
• Philly CheeseSteak Calzone
• 1 onion chopped (as little or as much as you like)
• 1 green pepper sliced (as little or as much as you like)
• sliced mushrooms (add as many or as little as you like)
• 1/2 clove of minced garlic
• steak strips 
•  provolone and mozzarella (I only used mozzarella because I ran out of provolone)
• Salt and Pepper to taste

• For Veggie Calzone
• Ricotta cheese ( I used 4 oz for half  of the pizza crust)
• a handful and a pinch of mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 tsp of oregano
• 1/2 tsp of basil
• 1/4 tsp of parsley
• chopped onion (as much as you like)
• sliced green pepper (as much as you like)
• sliced mushroom( as much as you like)
• 1/2 clove of minced garlic

 The veggie would also be good as a plain cheese calzone with the seasoning and no veggies. You could also use the cheese mixture and add cooked sausage or burger or pepperoni or ham.

 Directions: Clean, chop, and slice green peppers, mushrooms, and onions. Meanwhile, in a skillet heat olive oil. 

Once veggies are chopped and oil is warm add the garlic and veggies to skillet. Once veggies start to appear tender add the precooked steak strips. (If using raw steak strips add the steak strips first then add the garlic and veggies). Season with salt and pepper.

Skillet on back burner is for veggie calzone, skillet on front burner is for Philly Cheesesteak calzone

While veggies are sauteing, flour a surface and the pizza dough and roll the dough out into a giant circle or oval.

Size of dough after rolled out. 

After dough is rolled to desire size, use a knife or pizza cutter and slice in half. Do this if you are making two different types of calzones. Otherwise, there is no need to slice it in half. You can make one big calzone and cut it to share after baking which is what I did when I made the buffalo chicken calzone.

The dough sliced

At this point the veggies and meats that have been sauteing should be done. Take them off the burn to cool a bit. This will make the rolling process easier later one.

While veggies are cooling mix the ricotta, mozzarella, and seasonings together for a veggie or pizza style calzone.

Cheese "sauce" after

Next sprinkle the dough with the cheese mixture; or if making the Philly Cheesesteak calzone lay the provolone cheese in a layered pattern on the dough and then sprinkle with some mozzarella.

Left side is phillycheese steak. Right side veggie

 Then add "toppings".
After topping have been added roll calzone vertically to the other end and then press the edges shut so that the filling will stay inside once it starts to bake.

Rolling the Calzone

Then place calzones on greased baking sheet and bake according to pizza crust dough directions. In this case it was 350 degrees for 18-25 minutes. I needed to cook mine for about 22 minutes.

Doll rolled, pinched at the edges, and in the oven.

 Your calzone will be ready when the crust is  lightly brown and when you stick a knife in the middle it does not come out doughy.

The finished project!!!

Don't forget if you are making a veggie, cheese, or pizza type you may want marinara dipping sauce ( just marinara spaghetti sauce) on the side.








The buffalo chicken calzone by finding a new life through food blog:

2 boneless chicken breasts1 tsp. olive oil1 pizza dough (I used store bought and let it sit out for about 20 minutes)8 oz. of shredded mozzarella cheese (I used part skim)3 oz. of shredded cheddar cheese1/2 cup of Franks Wing Sauce1/3 cup of ranch or blue cheese dressing
Cut chicken into cubes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Heat teaspoon of olive oil in skillet and add chicken when hot.  Cook chicken completely and then add 1/4 cup of wing sauce.  Stir to coat chicken and let simmer for a minute or two.  Take chicken off heat and let cool.
Roll dough the same why I stated above.
add ranch dressing or blue cheese dressing (depending on your preference!) and remaining 1/4 cup of wing sauce.  Spread across the dough.  Add chicken and then top with mozzarella and cheddar cheese.  You can also add a bit more of the wing sauce on top of the cheese if you want it to be a little bit spicier.
Roll dough and bake as stated above.

When Life Hands you Lemons make.... Lemon Chicken?

Mondays are tough for anyone; It's the first day back to work after a nice relaxing weekend. But, for me  I spread myself pretty thin on Mondays. Monday is, generally, my late night to work in my classroom preparing anything I may need for the week and now I head off to church at 6:30. So the thought of cooking a nutritious meal just isn't even feasible. That's why I have decided to make Mondays slow cooker nights. It is easy to throw it all in the pot before I leave for work and have a great meal when I get home.  Whenever the hubs and I are looking for a quick meal we head to the local grocery store and pick up a rotisserie chicken from the deli section. He always asks for a lemon pepper chicken, but I like a little more kick to my chicken and he usually goes along with my whines and demands and agrees to getting the mojo chicken.  Ahhh I digress, back to the slowcooker Mondays.  So this Monday I decided, being the great wife I am, I would find a recipe for lemon rotisserie chicken for the slowcooker. After searching the internet, I came to the conclusion there was no recipe for lemon rotisserie chicken any where to be found therefore, I needed to come up with my own recipe. I had committed to my idea of slowcooker lemon chicken and I was sticking to it! I did have another recipe for a slowcooker chicken and thought I will use this guide my way.   If I do say so myself, the chicken was awesome! I  don't really like lemon chicken (but I don't hate it either), but I would make this again in a heartbeat. When I took it out of the slowcooker it was cooked to just the right temperature- it was juicy and just fell right off the bone (so needless to say there is no beautiful display picture).  I truly recommend this chicken recipe as it was pretty easy and makes a great meal or two depending how many you are feeding.  So here's the dish:

You will need: 

• 1 broiler/fryer chicken
• 1/2 tsp of oregano
• 1/2 tsp of basil
• 1/4 tsp of parsley
• 2 sprigs of rosemary and one peeled/plucked sprig
•  1 minced garlic clove
• red pepper flakes to taste (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste (like my cute salt and pepper shakers of me and the hubs, a gift from my sister-in-law?)
• 3 lemons

Directions:

 First clean chicken and remove the insides. Then dry chicken and place inside slowcooker.  

Next, in small bowl combine oregano, basil, parsley, peeled/plucked rosemary sprig, minced garlic, a shake of the red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and the juice from one lemon. Stir until it makes a sort of paste substance.

The paste mixture in the small bowl.

 Next, scoop some of the paste and rub it on the inside of the chicken.

  Then, rub the remainder of the paste on the outside of the chicken.

The inside and outside of the chicken coated in paste.

 Once the chicken is coated inside and out, using the second lemon, squeeze lemon juice over the chicken.

 *Tip: roll with slight pressure the lemon on the counter before cutting or squeezing this makes it easier to get the lemon juice out.*

 Next, place the two rosemary springs in the slowcooker (I broke my sprigs in half so the rosemary was spread out more in the slowcooker). Then clean and slice the last lemon and place the slices in the slowcooker.

Finally, put the lid on it and cook on low for 8 hours!

Ready to top with the lid!

What it looks like in the slowcooker after 8 hours.

Like I said, it  cooked  to just the right temperature -fall off the bone- so this was the prettiest picture I could get of the finished product.

 

First Post, First day of Fall...

 It's that time of year again. My favorite time- the kick off to the holiday season. I know it is a little early to start thinking about the holidays, but I love all things fall/ winter and  the holidays that go with the seasons. A couple of years ago I started meeting with my mom on the first day of fall and doing something "fallish" The first year my mom cooked a fall-inspired meal and then last year I cooked a fall-inspired meal. After my recent wedding and all the fun my mom and I had with the crafting involved I thought it would be fun to change up the annual first day of fall gathering and create something. I decided this year would have a theme "welcome in the fall with a fall inspired welcome wreath". Anyone who knows me knows all events I do have to have food! So, even though my first day of fall gathering was supposed to inspire and kick off a season of crafting I had to have some "fallish"dishes as well.  It was a crazy week in my household- the hubby started a new job, work, and I started to teaching a religion class at church on Monday nights so, unfortunately. the usually planning I put into things sort of took the back burner. Friday rolled around before I even knew it and I hadn't even thought about what I was going to make to eat.  I decided on something I already had the ingredients for. The main portion of lunch would be slowcooker potato soup and then I would just pick up some pumpkin bread mix at the store add some buttercream icing and a salted Carmel drizzle. Unfortunately, it is a little too early into the fall season and my local grocery store did not have pumpkin bread mix on the shelf. So while standing in the middle of the sweets aisle at the grocery store 45 minutes until kick-off I did the only thing I could think of.... I phoned mom and told her we needed sweets. Lucky for me, she had just popped some cookies into the oven.  Okay, enough with the back story! In the end mom arrived and we started the crafting extravaganza the best way I know how- with food!! The main dish, like I said before, was creamy  slow cooker potato soup. I had found a recipe from this blog to make the soup but, realized after I started I didn't have all the ingredients like I thought I did. Ooops! So, I had to come up with my own recipe.

Now, since this was my first post. I didn't think about adding pictures of all the steps on how to make this just a picture of  the final product. The soup was SUPER easy to make, uses zero milk and/or cream, but was super creamy and delicious. I created a little dressing bar for where my mom, hubby, and myself could put as little or as many toppings (bacon and cheese) as we wanted on our soup. 

 Here is the recipe in case you want to try:

You will need:

•  4-6 potatoes cleans and cubed (you can leave the skin on)
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 yellow onion chopped
• 32 ounces of chicken broth
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 8oz of cream cheese 
• chopped bacon for topping
• shredded cheddar cheese for topping
• sour cream for topping (didn't do this, but bet it would be good)

Place the potatoes on the bottom of the slow cooker. Then add the minced garlic, onion, chicken broth, salt, pepper, and water and cook on high for 4 hours.  After the 4 hours tear the cream cheese into chunks and use an immersion hand blender to puree the potatoes and blend the cream cheese to make the soup thick. If you don't have a hand blender you can use a regular blender by scooping the soup in the slow cooker out and putting it in the blender adding the cream cheese and blending until the soup is thick. After this it is ready to top with you choice of topping and then eat!  *Disclaimer- I am not a fan of cream cheese, at all, so I was a little hesitant to add this to my soup, but I did any way.I thought it was such a big pot of soup and such a little amount of cream cheese. You couldn't taste the cream cheese at all once it was blended together.*

 Mom created cookies from this blog that were just as easy to make as my soup. You could defiantly say our focus was truly on the crafting. She was slightly disappointed with how the cookies turned out but, I thought they were delicious. It was like a bite-size piece of cake! According to mom all she did was use spice cake mix, a can of pumpkin and decorating sugar.  She placed the spice cake mix into cookie form on a baking sheet and sprinkled with decorating sugar and baked for 10 minutes. They were nice and soft (like a little piece of cake), but she would have preferred them more crunchier. After she took them out of the oven she added a Hershey's pumpkin spice flavor kiss in the middle. She did warn that these melt easy so they didn't all keep their shape.

 After we were full of soup and sweets our focus could really be on our wreaths. ( I  was still focused on those delicious cookies as well.) I had spent a couple weeks preparing for this. I searched the web looking for inspiration and "pinned" several ideas. I finally decided on a wreath with fall berries and fall-color felt flowers. 

This is my finished wreath.

This was pretty easy and a lot of fun to make! It was  great for a first project to get me inspired to craft more (and my first wreath project).

Here are the steps on making the wreath.

The supplies you will need: a wreath $4.99 from Joann's, felt squares $.34 from Joann's and a two strings of fall berries (mom had these, but I would estimate they are around $5 at Joann's but I have seen them at dollar stores) and a hot glue gun. The Wreath is about $12 to make and looks so much more expensive than that!! Mom was using leaves and covering a letter "M"

Cut felt square into smaller square.

Felt square cut smaller.

Cut the corners with scissors to round them.

The square once the corners are round.

Cut the square into a spiral  shape. Start narrow and get bigger as you reach the center.

Roll the spiral. Be sure to keep the bottom flat.

The bottom when you are almost finished rolling the spiral.

Put some hot glue in the center.

Press the small circle shape at the end of spiral on top of the hot glue. ( Be careful not to burn your fingers it really hurts!)

The final product.

Ready to assemble! I had about nine different sized flowers. The smaller the square- the smaller the flower. The larger the square- the larger the flower.  Combining colors on a spiral or rolling two spiral together on top of each other will give you two-tone flowers.

 First, I placed and then hot-glued the felt flowers to the wreath.

Next, I placed the berries on top of the wreath and then wrapped floral wire around the wreath  to attach the string of berries.

The final product on the front door!

All in all, it turned out to be a fun day (and I have to say I was pretty proud of my wreath).

Remember, all things worth remembering are in the details.