Game Day Snack Week 12 - Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Mini Cakes

I got the recipe for this week from a coupon circular a few weeks ago. It was called Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake, but after making this and eating it, my husband and I can't figure out why it would be classified as coffee cake (unless since the instructions say to serve with coffee brings in the coffee part..), but they sure were tasty little afternoon treats. So, I am calling them mini cakes.

The recipe was very easy to make. It took me about 10 minutes to put all the ingredients together, and then 24 minutes to bake them.

They are easily transportable too!

I also had all of the ingredients in the house so I didn't have to buy anything special. That was great!

Here are the ingredients:

Non-stick cooking spray
2 1/2 cups Buttermilk pancake mix OR 2 1/2 cups light pancake mix
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped (optional, we did not use)


Here are the directions:

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Coat an 8 or 9 inch square pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Combine the pancake mix, 1/3 cup sugar and chocolate chips in a medium sized bowl. Add in the water, sour cream and vanilla extract.

Blend well.

Using a cake scoop or an ice cream scoop, shape dough into 16 2-inch balls.

Place in 4 rows of 4 each in prepared pan.

Combine the topping ingredients in a small bowl and sprinkle over the dough.


Bake 24-26 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy a sweet game day treat!

** Also, remember! For those of you sports fans who play fantasy baseball, Rotoprofessor.com is having a sale this weekend on its annual draft guide! This is the 3rd year this draft guide is being sold and it gets rave reviews! For just $6 you get a comprehensive draft guide electronically, with updates every 2-3 weeks until the baseball season starts. $5 through Monday night so hurry!!

Thanksgiving Day Pancake Breakfast!

Every year my husband and I switch off families. When we eat with his family, we drive a few hours to Albany and get there around noon and eat in the middle of the afternoon. When it is my family, we only drive 10 minutes down the road and we eat around 5 pm.

So on the years when it is my family, we eat a bigger breakfast, then just a little mid-day snack and then a BIG dinner! This happens to be my year. Two years ago we went to i-Hop for pancakes since they had a gingerbread pancake I wanted to try and something else that my husband wanted to try for their special holiday pancakes.

This year we decided to budget and make our own pancakes at home since 1) we are just trying to budget in general, 2) we have to save for the little one coming and 3) black Friday deals for things we actually NEED break our budget a little. So instead of going out, we spent $2.19 for pancake mix (yes, we were going to cheat and just flavor up the mix instead of starting from scratch) and we used ingredients we had in the house.

And, it WORKED! We just ate a HUGE breakfast and it was delicious. My husband decided to use some of my blackberries I snack on and make cinnamon sugar blackberry pancakes. I decided to replicate the gingerbread pancakes I had two years ago. (And my pancakes turned out WAY more successful than his!!) We also made some tater tots and oatmeal. Yum!

So for the blackberry pancakes, all my husband did was mix up the pancake mix, then put blackberries on the pancakes once he dropped them on the griddle and sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on each pancake.


They were good, but needed a little more spice - so we either needed to mix the cinnamon sugar into the batter or add some stronger flavor like straight cinnamon or nutmeg or something. But we liked the tart blackberries with the pancakes.


Here is the (general) recipe I used for my gingerbread pancakes.
- One cup boxed pancake mix
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 7 tsp brown sugar
- 3/4 cup water

Mix well and drop spoonfuls onto a griddle as usual.




To me, they tasted AMAZING! I was so proud of my effort to throw it together. I read two similar recipes online so I kind of combined them and winged it and it worked. And we have a bunch of pancakes leftover for the rest of the weekend! Yay!

I decided to add whipped cream and sprinkles to my gingerbread pancakes because that is how I was served at i-Hop and man, it was delicious. :-)


All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving morning. Next year, we will be eating on the road as we trek to Albany with an 8 month old.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Side Note for Those Who Play Fantasy Baseball!

For those of you who like the Game Day snacks, they were inspired a long time ago on my husband's fantasy sports website, www.rotoprofessor.com.

He does a draft guide every year for the baseball season and sells it for just a few dollars and it gets updated electronically every 2-3 weeks until the season starts.

So if you play fantasy baseball, head over to the Rotoprofessor and check out the coming draft guide - this is the 3rd year it is being released and it gets rave reviews! There will be a black Friday sale for the guide this year, so get yours now!

Molten Chocolate Surprise - A Kraft Recipe

The other day while I was at work, my husband sent this recipe to me that he got from the Kraft page on Facebook.

These little chocolate morsels looked delicious! We also had everything in the house already, so I knew I wanted to try and make them over the weekend.

That's just what I did Sunday right before dinner. I made these little molten chocolate cookie/cake things.

Being the craptastic baker I am, I was a bit worried, but these turned out fine except for two things. 1) Mine don't look as pretty as the ones in the picture on the link website because the batter leaked under the cookie in the muffin tin and covered some of it, so you can't see the cookie as well because they look browner from the batter, and 2) I managed to bake them for like, 1 minute too long so the center of my cookie was not as molten-y. Live and learn.

My husband better get back to baking soon because he is much better at it and I need him to be the baker for when our son needs stuff for school! I refuse to send him with embarrassing mess-ups! (Granted, he's not even born yet and we're talking a few years down the road but still, my husband can bake way better than I can. I need to stick to cooking).

The recipe was REALLY easy though, and takes less than a half hour to do. So it's perfect to surprise kids with after school or to whip up for right after dinner. And, it's just delicious!

So here's the recipe, straight from the Kraft website - I made no substitutions except using semi-sweet chips instead of squares of chocolate, but only because I had chips in the house.

Ingredients:

4 squares BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Chocolate
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
1 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup flour
12 CHIPS AHOY! Cookies
1/2 cup thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping


Directions:

Heat oven to 425°F.

Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 2 minutes or until butter is melted.

Stir until chocolate is completely melted.

Beat whole eggs, yolks, sugar and flour with whisk until well blended. Gradually beat into chocolate mixture.

Line 12 muffin pan cups with paper liners; spray with cooking spray.

Place 1 cookie, upside-down, on bottom of each cup; cover with batter.

Bake 8 minutes or until cakes are firm around edges but still soft in centers.

Cool in pan 1 min. Carefully remove cakes from pan.


Invert into dessert dishes; remove paper liners.


Serve topped with Cool Whip.


There is a little hint at the bottom of this recipe on the website that says you can make the batter ahead of time and refrigerate it for up to 24 hours. When you are ready to bake, just pour the batter over the cookies - so this makes it really easy to do during a dinner party!

Enjoy!!

Game Day MEAL Week 11 - Hearty Mac n Cheese Bake

Sorry for the delay, but with our team on at 8:30 pm (EST) tonight, my husband found no reason to hurry me along in making a snack for while he was watching football. So instead, we have something we can eat for dinner! A hearty Mac n Cheese bake - yum!

It's definitely very easy and it could be even easier depending which route you go. I cheated today (after cleaning up our backyard and getting all our patio furniture into the shed for winter) and used Kraft Mac n Cheese as my base.

If I wasn't feeling so lazy, I probably would have made the Mac n Cheese from scratch - so if you do that, just start with making your favorite recipe with nothing else in it besides the noodles and cheese.

The other ingredients we used were frozen mixed vegetables, chopped up turkey pepperoni (Hormel!), mango chicken sausage (from Trader Joe's, my favorite, but you can use whatever sausage you like), breadcrumbs and a little shredded cheddar.

Once the Mac n Cheese was done, we used half a bag of frozen mixed vegetables that we nuked slightly in the microwave to get them a little softer and mixed it into the noodles. Then we added the chopped pepperoni and sliced sausage and mixed everything until it was evenly distributed.

Then we sprinkled some breadcrumbs on the top, along with some shredded cheddar and baked it at 350 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes, until the breadcrumbs looked golden and crunchy.


The end result was deeeeelicious! (We stole some bites since it is for dinner). The pepperoni we have has a slight kick so it added that, while the sausage gave it a sweet element. It's definitely a heartier way to eat Mac n Cheese that will keep you full for a long time.

Although quick and easy, this turned out well and we'll definitely be making it again. Though I might try making my macaroni and cheese from scratch next time when I am not feeling so lazy!

Enjoy and happy game day!

Turkey Meatloaf - 2 Ways!

Yeah, Thanksgiving is a little over a week away and I chose to make turkey meatloaf this week. Timing is everything! Well, I actually made 2 turkey meatloaves; one stuffed with stuffing and one stuffed with tater tots!! At least I can freeze these if I think we're going to start getting too turkey'd out.

We had ground turkey in the freezer that we needed to use, and we just purchased a bunch of Stove Top stuffing boxes thanks to a great sale at one of our local grocery stores and a fantastic coupon making each box under $1. So my husband and I knew we wanted to combine one of the stuffing mixes with the ground turkey - so I started my research for recipes.

I found a few basic turkey meatloaf with stuffing recipes so I used one and just changed it a bit to make it more of my own.

I also found a recipe using hash brown potato patties (no stuffing in this meatloaf, just the potatoes), and both my husband and I were intrigued. I knew I could substitute tater tots since we had a huge bag of them in our freeze that needs to be used as well.

So I split the package of ground turkey in half and used half for each recipe. We both sampled a piece of each for dinner and they turned out great! My husband favors the tater tot loaf over the stuffing one and I am the exact opposite. But the important thing is - they worked. And we have dinners for a few nights...or lunches if we make a meatloaf sandwich!

Each recipe will be listed below. I will include the links with the original recipes, but will post my versions with the changes I made.

Turkey Meatloaf with Stuffing Inside! (Based on original recipe here).

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
1 box stuffing mix (I used Stovetop Sage flavor)
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk (water
1/2 cup onion (diced)
1/2 cup celery (diced)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
breadcrumbs
black pepper
nutmeg
dried parsley
paprika


Directions:

Prepare stuffing according to directions on the box. Set aside when done.

Combine eggs, turkey, breadcrumbs, onion, celery, milk and cranberries in a large bowl. Mix well. (I didn't include an exact measurement of breadcrumbs, it is used as a binder so use just enough that the meatloaf will hold together).

Transfer half to a greased loaf pan, and form into a meatloaf shape.

Spread stuffing on top of that half of meatloaf mixture.


When covered, take the remaining half of the mixture and put it on top of the stuffing. Form into a meatloaf shape and make sure to seal the edges so the stuffing is completely inside the turkey.

When formed, sprinkle the pepper, nutmeg, paprika and parsley flakes on top. (Season to taste).


Bake uncovered for 50-60 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.

Remove from heat and allow to rest for ten minutes before slicing.


Tater Tot Turkey Meatloaf! (Based on original recipe here).

Ingredients:

1 lb ground turkey
12 cup diced onion
10 3/4 Oz cream of mushroom soup (divided)
1 egg
2/3 cup breadcrumbs (I used panko)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
tater tots (I used 14 of them)
shredded cheddar


Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, add ground turkey, onions, 1/3 cup cream of mushroom soup, egg, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and garlic powder.

Mix together by hand until all ingredients are well blended.

Coat an 8 x 13 or 10 x 13 casserole dish with non-stick spray.

Press half of the meat mixture into a long rectangle in the dish.

Position the tater tots from the center out. There should be an inch or at least a half inch of meatloaf all around the edges, and you can add meatloaf where needed.


Spread the rest of the cream of mushroom soup evenly over the tater tots. Try not to get the soup on the meatloaf.


Carefully press the rest of the meat mixture flat between your hands and place piece by piece over the tater tots until completely covered.

Bring the edges of the meatloaf together, pinch and smooth out bumps. No soup should peek through.

Sprinkle a small amount of shredded cheddar over the top if desired.


Place casserole dish uncovered in oven. Bake for 1 hour.

Let the meatloaf rest for 5 minutes before serving.


Since both recipes baked at the same temperature and for the same amount of time, I was able to prepare both and then bake them together, which made it easy to do 2! I would say preparation for each only took about 10-15 minutes, so it was about a half hour total of prep and then baking. Definitely something to do when you are home for a good few hours and not trying to throw together dinner after work.

All in all they turned out well and we'll be making them again! I could see the stuffing one being used for Thanksgiving as an alternative to a regular turkey for those who opt for a "different" Thanksgiving!

Enjoy!

Game Day Snack Week 10 - Cranberry Habanero Cheese Spread

Today's recipe is, if I do say so myself, absolutely delicious. I decided to make it somewhat Thanksgiving themed since Thanksgiving is coming up and people may also be looking for good appetizers to serve before the big feast. So I found a list of things I could make with what I had in the house with only having to purchase one or two things, since my husband and I are trying to budget this month and buy only what we really need.

My husband picked this recipe, which I got from the Taste of Home website. This recipe was originally called Cranberry Jalapeno Cheese Spread, but it became my own creation and renamed Cranberry Habanero Cheese Spread with the substitutions I made on a few of the ingredients, which I will discuss below.

I will be posting my version of the recipe, so if you want to go with the original version, use the link provided above.

This recipe is also very, VERY easy to make and takes about 20-25 minutes, plus a little cooling time. It is a fantastic dip for crackers, chips, celery or whatever you like using. It can be served warm or cool, and is great for tailgating or a party appetizer. (I myself am thinking about making this for Thanksgiving this year!)

The substitutions I made were because I didn't have an exact ingredient in the house, or because I don't like something, like jalapenos. That is my husband's thing. He likes spicy peppers. So instead, we decided to use the Mango Habanero jelly I have in the house to cook with from Really Good Foods. It was a good compromise because 1) I didn't have to go buy a jalapeno, 2) I didn't have to force myself to try and eat something with fresh jalapeno in it and 3) we both love this jelly which is sweet with just the right amount of kick, and when you mix it with the cheese, it cools it down a bit.

I also substituted Trop 50 Mango Pineapple juice for the regular orange juice that the recipe calls for, but only because that was the only citrus juice we had in the house. We debated buying a small travel bottle of OJ but in the end, decided the juice we had in the house would mesh better with the mango habanero jelly.

Otherwise, I used what the recipe called for. The end result was seriously, fantastic. I loved it! My husband and I ate it with some home made pita chips and celery, and we have a little left over which I will definitely be using for a snack at work this week. It's also a HEALTHY recipe! 2 tablespoons only equals 88 calories! So it's delicious, filling with celery and healthy. Can't beat that.

I think we'll be making this again in the future for sure. I liked it too much not to!

Enjoy!

And now, the recipe (remember, my version, not the original!)

Ingredients:

1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup Trop 50 Mango Pineapple juice
2 teaspoons Mango Habanero Jelly from Really Good Foods (or a spicy fruited jelly if you have one!) ** use more teaspoons for a spicier treat!
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1/4 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 package (8 ounces) reduced-fat cream cheese
Assorted crackers or vegetables


Directions:

In a small saucepan, combine the first seven ingredients.

Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes or until thickened. (This could take less than 10 minutes, it did for me).

Remove from the heat; cool completely.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese until fluffy. Beat in cranberry mixture until blended.

Serve with crackers or vegetables.

Yield: 2 cups.