Coffee Cake Muffins

These are fun because you have to try your hardest not to engulf all the tops of all the muffins that no one ate. It's quite the challenge because the butter/sugar mixture caramelizes and leave this crunchy, salty-sweet crust on top of the muffins, it's delicious.


2 eggs


2 cups Heart Healthy Bisquick mix

1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tablespoon maple syrup
1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 tbs butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

Beat eggs slightly in medium bowl; stir in remaining ingredients except brown sugar and butter until moistened.

Divide batter among muffin cups in a regular sized muffin pan

Mix or beat brown sugar and butter until crumbly, sprinkle crumbles over the muffin batter.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes at 400 degrees until tops are golden brown.

Halloween Portraits - Alice

Oh.My.Goodness. This kid is cute, but you put a horse costume on her and it's just so much cute that I can barely take it. Haley's halloween photos will come soon but we're still working on her costume.

The Cake Slice Bakers

Have you heard of this? It's a group of bloggers who bake their way through cookbooks, one cake at a time. Kind of like in that movie, Julia & Julia. Anyway, it's usually closed to new members but right now they've got an open enrollment type of thing so I went ahead and joined. I'm really excited to be a cake slice baker!

If you are interested in joining then email Katie at appleandspice@hotmail.co.uk  and tell her your name, blog name, and blog URL with "cake slice member" as the subject line.

Cheesy, Creamy Potatoes

Lately I've been kind of obsessed with little tiny potatoes roasted in their skin. I eat them because I love the popping sensation they have when I first bite into them, breaking the skin. They're so delicious that I've been making them a few nights a week, which is fine with me but lately the family has been politely and delicately (I get offending if they don't like my cooking) asking me for different potatoes. Haley said the other day "Mom, I don't mean to be rude, I really don't, so please don't get offended, but can you please make mashed potatoes or something?". Then Nick said the other day "Baby, I really love those potatoes you make, I really do. But, maybe we should try something different; so we don't get tired of them".  They are so sweet, trying to spare my feelings. Anyway, I reluctantly made these creamy, cheesy potatoes the other day. They're good, very good, but let's face it, they're not my favorite, wonderful roasted potatoes, which one of these days I will have a recipe here for those.

1 lbs potatoes - diced
6 tbs butter
1/2 cup flour
2 cups milk
4 oz Colby jack cheese
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground mustard

First off you have to make a roux. Doesn't that just sound complicated and fancy? Yes? OK good, that's why I said it. But don't worry, it's really easy. It's just butter, flour, and milk.

Melt 6 tbs butter in a medium saucepan on medium heat. Then whisk in 1/2 cup of flour. Whisk it until it's all mixed in very nicely. Then you need to SLOWLY add the milk, 1/2 cup at a time, whisking it in. DO NOT add more milk until it's nice and creamy. Be patient, take your time. You must never rush a roux!

Once all milk has been incorporated turn the heat to low and add 1/2 the cheese and the seasoning. Toss it with the potatoes, top with remaing cheese, and bake at 375 degrees for about 30-45 minutes, until the potatoes are fork tender.

Marble Sheet Cake

I have a little secret to share, I've never made a cake from scratch until now. I've always used a box because for some reason making a cake scared me, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I've tried and failed too many times to count. But I realized I was failing because I was rushing. If a recipe called for softened butter I would either ignore that and put in hard butter, or melt it in the microwave (big mistake), among other time savers (or wasters). Anyway, today we've got friends coming over so I made this marble sheet cake which was super easy, and it looks kind of fancy too. The cool thing is that if you wanted to use other flavors rather than chocolate you can easily substitute the cocoa powder for any flavor pudding mix, just add some food coloring into it so you get that nice marbling effect. Here's the recipe:

Adapted from Southern Living.

Ingredients


1 cup butter, softened

1 3/4 cups sugar, divided

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup half-and-half (if you don't have this use 2/3c milk with 1/3c veg. oil)

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

3 tablespoons hot water
 
1. Preheat oven to 325°. Beat butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar at medium speed 4 to 5 minutes or until creamy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract.




2. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with half-and-half, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition, stopping to scrape bowl as needed.



3. Spoon 1 1/4 cups batter into a 2-qt. bowl, and stir in cocoa, 3 Tbsp. hot water, and remaining 1/4 cup sugar until well blended.



4. Spread remaining vanilla batter into a greased and floured 15- x 10-inch jelly-roll pan. Spoon chocolate batter onto vanilla batter in pan (I put it into six dollops); gently swirl with a knife or small spatula.



5. Bake at 325° for 23 to 28 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack (about 1 hour).

The recipe is meant to be accompanied with mocha frosting however I didn't have time to make my own and opted to use store bought triple chocolate with chocolate chips frosting.

Not so Wordless and Wow Wednesday

A fellow blogger posts a wordless and wow wednesday post every week where she just posts an amazing picture. I admire her, but I have issues with not writing, I don't think it's possible for me to post a photo without words. But I will do my best to keep those words limited in honor of wordless wednesday. I think I've already failed though. Here we go:

Wow, those are some cute Spurs fans!

Wow, that's a shallow depth of field!

The Kids

It seems I haven't blogged about my kids in such a long time! We'll start with Miss Alice, she's such a handful these days and I love her for it because she keeps me so busy! She is all over the place, in fact yesterday I had to go searching for her soaking wet. I had put her on the floor with a bunch of toys so I could take a shower and she usually never moves from that spot however yesterday she felt adventurous. I had been in the shower for barely 2 minutes, just long enough to get shampoo in my hair when I realized she was being unusually quiet so I peeked my head out of the shower and she was gone. My first thought was that she may have found the cats litter box because she has been trying really hard to get into the laundry room where we keep it. I had this horrible mental image of my precious childs mouth covered in cat litter and that was all  it took to send me bolting out of the shower. I mean, what would I do if that happened? Take her to the doctors and explain that she may have eaten a cat turd? Not cool. Luckily I found her sitting outside of Haley's bedroom and I took her and put her back in her spot, closing the laundry room door on my way.

She's also growing more and more fond of Ranger although Ranger is very jealous of her and I think maybe even a little scared of her.

I couldn't imagine why she'd be scared. Oh, wait, yes I can.

As for Haley, that girl is a busy bee! She's incredibly social so it seems she's always playing with a friend, this weekend though, she's staying home with us because we miss her. This year she'll be participating in a few programs, an after school program called operation hero, a program at Inspiration Place called little chefs, and maybe a drama program offered by Joshua Tree. We're hoping to continue with girl scouts but our old troop leader moved over the summer and we're still waiting to hear from the new leader.