Snickerdoodles

image via cookandbemerry

This recipe came from my dear friend, this little lady, and it is the yummiest Snickerdoodle out there. Not to mention it is so easy, too easy, I make them way to often!

1 C Shortening
1 1/2 C Sugar
2 Eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 3/4 C Flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

Mix together
2 T sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs one at a time until well blended. Mix in dry ingredients. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and roll in cinnamon and sugar mixture. Bake until they rise and crack about 8-10 minutes at 400 degrees.

Enjoy! and eat a few for me!

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

This recipe was adapted from the Our Best Bites cookbook (you can also find it on their website!) I really love this time of year, we are always getting GIANT zucchini's at work and I just love finding some way to use them!

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup plus 2 TBS unsweetened cocoa powder (funny story, as I am typing this out, I realized that I forgot the 1/4 cup and just added the 2 TBS. I really like how mine turned out!)
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sour cream
3 cups shredded zucchini
3/4 cups mini chocolate chips

Streusel Topping (that's right!)
2 TBS brown sugar
2 TBS sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease/flour two 8 in. loaf pans (or one 9 in.)
2. mix together the ingredients for the topping and set aside.
3. combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder in a small bowl, set aside.
4. beat oil, sugar, brown sugar, and eggs until slightly fluffy (1-2 min,)
5. add vanilla and sour cream, gently stir in zucchini. take a spoonful from the flour mixture and stir in with the chocolate chips (this helps keep them evenly distributed). Stir remaining flour mixture into the batter, mix just until combined. Add chocolate chips.
6. divide the batter into the two pans, and sprinkle topping evenly.
7. bake for 50-60 min. keep an eye on it towards the end. a toothpick should come out pretty clean.

You HAVE to eat at least one piece warm...with butter! YUM!

Red Velvet Cookies

For those of you who are jumping on the Red Velvet craze...you will LOVE this recipe just as much a me. You will also love how easy they are!!

I got this recipe from here, If only I could take pictures as well as she...My cookies don't look very "red" in my picture...but they are pretty I promise!

1 package red velvet cake mix
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 sticks of butter
1/2 package white chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the butter so it is nice and smooth, slowly add the flour and cake mix, then add the egg, lastly add the chocolate chips. Bake 8-10 min (I baked mine for the full 10 min.)
The recipe says that it yields 24 cookies....but when I made these I got 48!

I just love how perfectly chocolate red velvet is! It is like rich, but not too rich, it's my fav! I love to find new ways to incorporate into my life!

Mango Chicken with Coconut Rice

One of our favorites... photo and recipe courtesy The Queens of the Kitchen

This is an amazingly easy and delicious recipe! It also makes a ton so it is good for a party, a large family, or leftovers for days!

You start by cooking some chicken breasts (seasoned with a little lemon pepper and cumin) in the crock-pot. After it is completely cooked, drain the juice from the pot and start tearing up the chicken.

Return the chicken to the crock-pot with 1 can black beans, 1 can corn, and 3 cups of mango salsa and turn the heat down to low.

Then start cooking the rice. I love my rice cooker so I will give you the directions for cooking it that way, if you would like to cook using the stove top then you can link to the website.

For the rice: 2 cups Jasmine-Thai scented rice, 1 1/2 cups coconut milk, 2 cups water, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 tsp brown sugar. mix that together and start.

It's the perfect combination of spicy and sweet! Enjoy!

Baked Chicken Parmesan

This time I forgot to take preparatory pictures of this dish. oops! Well I found this recipe on a recipe website linked from a friends blog, it was Queens of the Kitchen and they have tons of easy and delicious recipes!

1/2 c butter
1 t salt
1 t Worcestershire Sauce
2 t mustard
1 T dry Italian dressing mix (I just buy the packets and use a whole packet.)
1/2 c Parmesan Cheese
2 T parsley flakes (I never really measure these out I just sprinkle it in to my hearts content.)
3/4 c bread crumbs
2-3 lbs. chicken breasts

First you will want to melt your butter. Put the butter in a 9x13 baking dish and set the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Keep it in there until the butter is melted, then remove from oven and add the salt, Worcestershire sauce, and mustard to the butter.

Next you will cut up the chicken, I use strips, sort of thin so it has the most flavor! Then soak the chicken pieces in the butter mixture.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Dip the chicken into the dry mixture and place back into the baking dish. Bake for 45 min to and hour (depending on how big you cut up the chicken).

I serve this up with really any type of noodle, sometimes I don't love spaghetti noodles because they are messy for me to eat! I also usually just buy a Prego sauce, we like the roasted red pepper and garlic flavor. Enjoy!

Tacoy Supremeish?

So this recipe is really what I like to call "I don't know what to do with this pound of ground beef concoction ." Oh and it is super easy! After looking forever online for recipes, trying to find something clever or even just anything beyond the ordinary tacos or chili recipes, I decided to create my own little...concoction, that is really the only word for it.

First you will want to brown yourself some ground beef and drain the grease.

Then I added 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 can of tomato sauce, and 1 can of kidney beans. I also added a packet of taco seasoning to give it some flavor, you could add your own seasonings here.








After letting this simmer for...a while... I served it over some white rice with some cheese (cause that just goes with everything) and some crunched up tortilla chips.

Not too bad for a quick easy, yes we are going with concoction. Enjoy!

So what do y'all do with ground beef, I'm in need of ideas!

Hawaiian Haystacks

This is probably something that everyone is familiar with and quite honestly you probably all have been eating it most of your lives, I on the other hand was introduced to this nummy little treat my first year of college. I was a member of my college's dance team and on Friday nights, the day before a football game, we would get together as a team and have these dinner parties. One night we had Hawaiian Haystacks for one of these parties and I was amazed by it's goodness. I also have a dear friend that was a very good "mother" to all of us college kids and we had a Hawaiian Haystack night occasionally. Seriously I fell in love with this dish. I have tried to let my mother know how easy it is, but she seldom tries new things so I guess this will stay on my table, but yes it is SO easy! When I found out how to make the sauce for myself I was like, seriously? seriously? yes seriously!

First off you will want some chicken breasts. Here I have two pretty big ones. I think it is probably almost 2 pounds. You cook the chicken first. I used to boil chicken to cook it for meals such as this one, and I have since discovered that I hate my chicken boiled. For starters it is gross, the pot I boil it in has gross chicken yuckiness in it and it is so hard to clean off that I designated the pot as my "boiling chicken pot." Secondly it completely drys out and takes out all wonderful flavor, boiling chicken makes it seem so bland and blah.

Here is how I now cook my chicken... I come home for lunch about 1:00, then after I have eaten my lunch the last thing I do before I head back to work is put my chicken in the slow cooker (a wonderful creation!) Then you can season it to your hearts content and add a little water, just play with it. I don't get home until 6:00 so I usually keep it on low with a little water so it doesn't overcook. This time I used Cumin and Lemon Pepper to season.


After the chicken is cooked through, the recipe asks for the chicken to be cubed. I like to tear mine to shreds! This chicken comes out so moist and tender it is very easy to do this!

Then I wipe out the crock pot and prepare the sauce right in there.

2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 can chicken broth

So simple. Serve it over white rice, then you can use any topping you choose, really depends on your taste for this one, but a must in the Chow Mien Noodles for sure! I like pineapple tidbits, celery, and a little grated cheese.


Oh, BTW I found a "food" setting on my camera, hopefully I can start to take some shots that look appetizing. This looks pretty good to me.

Anyone have creative delicious toppings to try?

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Okay I will tell you now that these cookies were made on Sunday and it is Wednesday and they are almost gone! May I remind you that there is only 2 of us in this house!! The day I made these cookies I ate so many that I literally got a stomach ache...just like my mom would say, it really truly happened.
These cookies are truly perfection. They are a tad crunchy on the outside, but so soft and chewy on the inside! A-mazing! You can bet your bottom dollar that I will be making these again soon, like probably this weekend! I will just have to amp up the exercise regime to make room for these babies.

I found this recipe at one of my very favorite recipe blogs, Our Best Bites....and this was mine, my best bite that is!

I mean chocolate chip cookies seem pretty basic, but really you can tweak this go to recipe many different ways to get the "type" of cookie your craving. In this recipe the key is melting the butter and it also calls for 1 egg + 1 egg yolk, apparently that is what gives us the chewy factor here. I also measure ingredients exact, I think it is important to ensuring that the recipe turns out the way that you want it to. So grab those measuring cups and spoons and get crackelackin!

2 C plus 2 T flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
12 T butter (1 1/2 sticks) melted and cooled until warm
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
1/2 C granulated sugar
1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
2 t vanilla extract
1 1/2 C semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients;mix until just combined. Stir in chips.

Take about 1/4 C dough and form into a ball. Break ball in half and place dough on cookie sheet with broken edge facing up. (Or just use a standard sized cookie scoop). ...(oh this is just important to make your cookie "pretty" really just a suggestion.)...Bake until cookies are set around outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 10-13 minutes. Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in air tight container.

This Sweet Chef...

Since the Sous-Chef and I moved away from our families, and therefore gave up all dinner invitations to both sides of the family, we began cooking more. The more we cooked, created a bit of a problem...I needed more recipes and more variety! I started digging through cook books and searching the recipe blogs until I started finding recipes that worked for us, and being a small family of 2, this was a difficult task. I also thought I hated cooking, I liked baking like cookies and brownies and other treats, but I really thought I hated to cook meals. This all changed the more recipes I found the more fun it was to try them. That is what gave me the idea to start this blog. I first compiled all my recipes into a binder and as that grows I figure this will also be a safe place to store my favorite dishes, and hopefully you can enjoy them also! I don't create recipes...yet...but I cook them and taste them, and I will share the successful ones here!