CREAM FILLED CUPCAKES

One of Joel's requests for his birthday is almost always cream-filled cupcakes. I stumbled across this recipe years ago and have made them often.  It turns a yummy cupcake into something WOW!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I've always made chocolate cupcakes at Joel's request, but I imagine you can fill any of your favorite flavors. You might try substituting mint flavor for the vanilla in chocolate cupcakes. Or maybe some tongue-tempting lemon in lemon cupcakes...or? Let me know if  you try this recipe in some interesting combinations. I always love to hear what you think!

Cupcake cream filling

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup milk
2/3 cup Crisco
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbl. Water
1 tsp. vanilla (or flavor of your choice)
2 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Combine all but powdered sugar on low in mixer. Add powdered sugar gradually. Mix on high for 7 (seven) minutes. Using a decorator's tube, fill 24 cooled cupcakes squirting the filling from the top down. Frost with your choice of frosting.

YUMMY!

PEACH COBBLER

Hot, bubbling cobbler!

What can go wrong with a cobbler if you follow the recipe exactly? And you know how I always follow a recipe exactly - not! But I really tried this time. (And the results were amazing!)

Delicious home canned peaches! (But you can use store bought peaches if you don't have these.)

This summer, Dayna and I put up fresh peaches that we purchased from Angie Viebrock and The Farm Wife's Table. Let me tell you, they were worth canning and savoring, even though I wanted to eat the whole bushel at once. These peaches had such great flavor! 

Side story: Angie brought these to my house (special delivery) and I put the box on the stairs as Angie was leaving. I stepped outside to tell her goodbye and when I returned to my house, Tara was eating peaches right out of the box! I told you they were hard to resist! Of course we washed all the peaches and we peeled them as we canned them so there are no doggy germs in this cobbler. 

This was an easy recipe!

OK, back to the recipe! Step one was melting a stick of butter in a 9 x 13 pan in the oven at 350 degrees. As I melted that, I mixed up the other ingredients. I poured the flour mixture into the pan then dumped in my canned peaches with the syrup. 

This recipe seemed too easy and the concoction in the pan seemed a little bit soupy. But I had 40 minutes to wait, and time did tell!

The house was filled with the mouth-watering scent of peaces as it was baking!

And the resulting cobbler was beautiful! Yes, smell was an indicator of the level of deliciousness of this hot, bubbly, mouthwatering concoction!!

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a fork full of peaches is even better!

The real test came at dinner when we tasted it! Don't you wish you could have been here for this?

What if....?

Since I relented and let Joel get Tara, I have been wondering about this.  If you read this blog, I am curious to know your thoughts.Let me know what you think.

What if we treated our spouses more like a pampered pet?

Would we:

• go on more long walks and play more games
• scratch your back and brush your hair just so I could lay my hands on you
• feed you only healthy treats and give you only the best food - not that store brand stuff
• snuggle you several times a day and say sweet things when I walked by
• take your picture and tell you how cute you are
• entertain you and play games with you to make sure you are not bored
• admire you when you are napping, even your funny flaws like your snaggletooth
• take you on visits and to lots of interesting places where we could romp around together
• bring home new toys for us to play together
• find delight in all the silly things you do
• pull you onto my lap several times a day
• tell people how fun you are to be with and brag about your exploits
• ruffle your hair with a towel and dry your back after your bath
• clean up all your messes and even the hairs on the floor without complaint
• notice if you were getting too hot or too cold or if you were getting thirsty so I could get you fresh drinks
• not grouse at you when I'm grumpy about something else
• gently lead you where I need/want to go and let you take the lead and follow you when it's important to you
• chatter on happily even though you are not listening to a word that is being said
• stop in the middle of chores to play for a moment because you are staring at me longingly
• love to have you jump on my lap and snuggle when I sit on the couch
• not get irritated if you followed me around all day, got in my way, was curious to know what I was doing and what I was going to do next
• nurture and love you without expecting anything but love in return

Here's to being happily married and treated like a pampered pet!
Merry Christmas!
Hope you also have a happy and healthy New Year!

Cranberries and apples!

I'm feeling thankful for so many things; prayerful for everything else! 

One thankful thing is cran-apple! That's why I was so happy to find my favorite Jonathan apples in the store at the same time there are cranberries! I made the best cranapple sauce and even froze several quarts so I could enjoy it all winter. 

Cranapple sauce! 

Here's how I did it: cook the cranberries as directed on the package except only use 1/2 cup sugar. The Johnathan apples are naturally sweet already; I prefer my sauce sweet-tangy (just like me). 

Freshly washed and cooked. The pop as they boil.

Wash and slice enough apples to fill your pressure cooker 1/3 full. (If you don't have a pressure cooker, it will take more water and more time to boil the apples until they are fully cooked.)

No need to peel since only the fruit pulp comes through the sieve.

Add 1/2 cup water and bring the sealed cooker up to pressure. Turn down the heat and allow it to pressure cook for 5 minutes. The best part about a pressure cooker is that it cooks so quickly, hence retaining the nutritional value of the apples. Next, I cooled the cooker by running cold water over the top. Then I used my old food sieve from Grandma's kitchen (one of my favorite inheritances) to press the apples and make the sauce. I don't have to peel or core apples because I use the sieve. 

Only the skins and seeds remain; all the fruit pulp is extruded.

Next I used my Betty Crocker Cookbook (so I could follow a recipe "exactly") and added spices as if I were making apple pie. Then I stirred in the cooked cranberries and, voilà, cran-apple sauce!

Yes, I know this is the same picture twice, but doesn't it look tasty?

This is delicious and a beautiful shade of red too! Just think of the vitamins and antioxidants in here! It practically makes you healthy just to read about it!

It's the holiday season and this would be an excellent side dish for your Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner! Let me know if you try this. Or, invite me over to taste your cooking! 

Peace, blessings, and thankfulness to you!

When the cat is away, the mouse will play!

Since Joel was in Dallas, and he hasn't had time to do what I needed/wanted to get done, I put on my big girl pants and did it!

 I have been wanting the outdoor furniture sanded and refinished for the whole summer! We have just been playing too much! I had one last blast of summertime weather here yesterday so… I got busy on that honey-do list!

I have been inspired by a couple of ladies lately.  Bridget, who is a blacksmith  (wow!) and Erika who tackles every job around the house and does it magnificently! So, why can't I attempt a few chores that don't require a vacuum or a mixer? 

I gathered the necessary equipment: a sander, (the. playful mouse)

sandpaper, the color–matches Olympic stain, (thank you Lowe's) the applicator, and yes rubber gloves.

So here is the before and after. What do you think? 

Would you like to come over and sit in the Adirondack chair to roast a marshmallow and have Smore's with me? Afterwords we could sit on the bench swing and watch the sunset!

HAPPY FALL, Y'ALL!

Delicious acorns as seen on the interwebs. I only made mine with chocolate kisses.

The calendar says it's autumn, but the days feel more like summer! Regardless of temperatures, the plants' photosynthesis is making things change around here. On our daily walks, Tara and I step over the smattering of acorns that litter the trail. She chases random acorns; I often kick them ahead or scrunch them under my feet. But, eat one of those? I don't think so! I don't feel that squirrely and Tara likes the crunch but not the taste! 

I stumbled across someone's Pinterest post about how to make edible acorns. So, being me, I follow the recipe EXACTLY - not!

Nestle peanut butter and milk chocolate morsels

To make my acorns, I used Nestle peanut butter  and milk chocolate morsels from which I had to pick out from this bag just the peanut butter ones because I couldn't find a bag of just peanut butter morsels.

 I used Hershey Kisses and...

An open bag soon becomes an empty bag!

...miniature Nabisco vanilla wafers. "Nobody can eat just one" little mini Nilla wafer; they are as addictive as Lay's potato chips! (No, don't use potato chips to make these acorns, I was just using Lay's catch phrase!) 

I need Tech Support to figure out how to make this photo sit up straight!
You'd think this was Tara not doing what I tell her to do!

I didn't use Royal Icing since I only wanted a smidge of icing not the large quantity the recipe would make! So I stirred up a little bit of powdered sugar and milk to act as the glue.

The rest was a matter of peeling Hershey's kisses without eating all of them, dipping said kisses in the bit of icing, attaching the two together and letting them dry. Then I picked out the peanut butter morsels, dipped them in icing and stuck them to the other side of the mini nilla wafer. Then voila - acorns! 

If you want some of these for your next fun treat, I would be happy to make some and send them to you. As usual, that would require a small fee to cover shipping and handling. Or, you can drop by and we can make some of these because I served the ones pictured here at the last P.E.O. meeting and they have been devoured!

(If you are still reading, please note that I didn't post the picture of just the mini wafer with a peanut butter morsel attached because that looked more like a snack to serve at a baby shower! You'll have to make some of these to see for yourself exactly what I mean!)

Happy fall, y'all!

HOT PEPPER RELISH

We have been so fortunate to have such a relatively cool several days in a row. So, I took advantage of the cool weather to make some hot pepper jam.

Does this photo make you want to taste some pepper jam too? All you need is a jar of my hot pepper jam, some crackers, and maybe cream cheese if you prefer. Maybe you should come visit me? I have all that here! Or, you can make some for yourself!

TASTING!

The peppers were purchased from The Farm Wife's Table; the conditions haven't been right for my garden to produce peppers.  But Angie has the best produce! 

Bells and jalapenos

After removing all the seeds, I used my food processor for the chopping. Of course, I carefully measured, mixed and followed the cooking directions on the insert in the Sure Jell box. The results were tasty! And of course, as always, I followed the recipe exactly...except I did add some green food coloring.

Chopping

I wore rubber gloves when handling the peppers and making this jam. I always wear rubber gloves when I am canning. It helps prevent burns. But I tossed those gloves in the trash when I was finished because I couldn't wash off the hot pepper!