Secret Recipe Club Reveal: 3 Recipes, 1 post

It's that time of the month again....a day that I do look forward to. It's Secret Recipe Club Reveal Day for Group D. I have enjoyed being a part of this group for almost the last year. I've found and enjoyed many new recipes, and new blogs that I like to follow and read. It's a great group. There are four groups A-D, all with at least 30 bloggers posting...multiply that and you get A LOT of recipes to check out each month. 

This month I received the blog Beautiful Disasters written by an amazing young lady named Casey. She started this blog when she was just a teenager. I found that she has many interests that my own daughter's have. Playing H.S. and Club soccer, eating healthy and taking care of her body. She seems like a sweet gal. I actually seemed to have extra time this month and found 3 fairly simple recipes that I wanted to try so I just went ahead and did it. Made all three of them and I'm happy to say they were all three a success. Head over to her blog and show her some love. 

Since I made 3 recipes I'll post the recipe for the first one and the links for the other 2. Please be sure to go visit those recipes as well. You won't be disappointed.

The first recipe I tried was for her Chocolate Layered Peanut Butter Cupcakes. My daughter was having some friends over to the house to play games so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make them and not have any left in the house. 

Chocolate Layered Peanut Butter Cupcakes
via Beautiful Disasters via Jif.com

Ingredients: 

1 1/2  c. flour
1/3 c. baking cocoa
1 c. packed brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 c. water
1 Tbs. white vinegar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1 8oz. pkg. cream cheese
3/4 c. peanut butter
1/3 c. white sugar (I use organic cane sugar)
1/3 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. peanut butter chips
1/4 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

Heat oven to 350. Line or grease 18 muffin cups. In a large bowl flour, cocoa, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. Add oil, water, vinegar and vanilla to flour mixture. Stir just until smooth.

In a separate bowl beat egg, peanut butter, cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add powdered sugar and beat until creamy.

Spoon one tablespoon chocolate batter in to each cup. Spread 1 Tbs. peanut butter batter on top. Repeat layers, ending with Peanut butter layer. Sprinkle with peanut butter and chocolate chips.

Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in comes out clean. Cool in pan for 15 minutes. Remove on to cooling rack. 

These got rave reviews from all the kids who came over. They were so good and moist with wonderful flavor.

The second recipe I made was for chocolate avocado pudding. This was yummy and VERY rich! You will not know the avocado is there so give it a try.

The third recipe was for her White Wheat Batter Bread. This was super simple and tasted really yummy!

So three successful SRC recipes! It helped that the last two were super quick to make. 

Check out these other recipes:






With Joy UNquenchable,

SRC Orphan Rescue Post: Yummy Smoothie

Today is group B's reveal for the Secret Recipe Club. While I'm in group D, I noticed that there was a call out to rescue an orphan from Group B. Oftentimes I'm not able to do this because I either don't have time, or ingredients. But this time I decided to jump over and see if I could find something quick. 

I headed over to Janes Adventures in Dinner and found this yummy smoothie recipe. Check out her About me to find out more about this lady. She sounds fun. 

Our family loves smoothies and I'm always looking for new ones. We had actually decided to just have smoothies for dinner earlier today so I thought I'd see if she had any recipes I hadn't tried. SCORE! Found one. 

I apologize for the poor photo quality...we just got a new puppy and I was being rushed for the camera so my girls could take pics of puppy.

Berry Fruit Smoothie

1 c. pineapple (I suggest using fresh)
1/2 c. OJ 
3/4 c. yogurt (I used Kefir plain and peach mixed)
1 c. ice
1 c. blueberries

Combine all in blender and process till smooth. I often have frozen fruit so usually don't add ice. I didn't have yogurt other than plain greek, but did have Kefir which is so full of probiotics I opted to use this. I LOVED it! Tart and sweet all at the same time and you could mix and match the fruits you use or even add some spinach or kale (it will go unnoticed by your pickiest eaters).




With Joy UNquenchable,

Recipe: Farro with Italian Sausage

I'm not much of an experimenter when it comes to food. I'm not very good at making up recipes, in fact, I often laugh and wonder if there are actually anymore "original" recipes out there, what with all of the technology we have access to. HOWEVER, today, I made a dinner, free from a recipe, experimenting with a few things. It turned out so good. So here we go! We'll see if the remaining family members like it. 

Last week my hubby came home from Costco with some vegetarian sausages for a BBQ much to my oldest daughters chagrin..is that the word I'm looking for? Anyways, it was for her friends, all of whom are "carnivores". She was happy though, when she discovered that, yes, dad did buy some beef hotdogs too. Anyways, I had a few leftovers and thought I'd try them in a new recipe today. While my family (mom's side) is Italian, I have never liked Italian sausage. I don't care for the fennel seeds, so, honestly I only ate a little bit, but it was good.

Ingredients:

2 Links Italian Vegetarian Sausage (or other sausage of choice)
1 c. Farro
4 c. water
1 Tbs. coconut oil
1 zucchini
1/4 c. onion
2 Roma Tomatoes diced
1/4 c. olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon (or whole if you want more lemon flavor)
Italian seasoning to taste
salt and pepper to taste
fresh parsley
shaved parmesan

Instructions:

1. Place water in a saucepan along with a little salt. Bring to a boil and add Farro. Boil for 15 minutes or until Farro is plump and chewy. Remove from heat and drain. Place in a serving bowl.

2. In a nonstick skillet, melt coconut oil. On med-low, saute onion until soft and transluscent. Add zucchini and cook until crisp tender. Add tomato and cook a bit longer. Remove from pan and add to Farro.

3. Remove casing from sauage and cut in to cubes. I cut mine in half lengthwise and then in half. Saute in pan until the pieces begin to brown. I was looking for a little bit of a crisp layer to them without over cooking. This gives it a bit more of a meat like texture. Remove from pan and add to farro and vegetables.

4. Combine Olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and italian seasoning. Pour over mixture. Stir well. Add some chopped fresh parsley and shaved parmesan at the end. The sausages had a lot of flavor so I didn't want to over flavor the rest of the dish. 

This was simple and yummy!




With Joy UNquenchable,

Recipe Link: Cheese stuffed Rolls

I LOVE bread, like, REALLY. LOVE. BREAD! I'm thankful I have fairly decent self control or else it might not be a good thing.

A few months ago I found a new blog that I've had fun visiting called Yammie's Noshery. She also has another blog called Yammie's Glutenfreedom. And get this..she's only 20 years old...her recipes and photos are amazing and she is great at writing. She's also got some great tips for taking photos even of food...which maybe I should take time to read about. 

Anyways...when somehow browsing her blog, or maybe I was on Pinterest, I don't know, but somehow I came across her recipe for Peeta's Stuffed Cheese Buns. They looked to die for. I had some leftover shredded mozzarella cheese from my Pampered Chef Party on Monday so I thought I'd give these a try. Oh my goodness...they were every bit amazing and I think I need to lock myself out of the kitchen so I don't eat more. I'll post a link to her recipe page so you can go there and get the actual recipe but I'll share my photos and instructions. You could really make it simple and buy store bought bread dough, but these don't really take that long to make. 

Mine aren't near as pretty and "posed" as hers are, but I just didn't have time to "stage" my food...lol. 

 I used my Kitchenaid mixer to go through the entire process of kneading the dough. To speed up rising time, I warm my oven to 200 then turn it off. I covered the mixer bowl with a towel and placed in the warm oven till it was done rising...about 20 minutes. Then divided the dough. I made 12 pieces, but probably could have made them a little smaller.

Taking each piece of dough, roll it into a ball and then make a "well" in the center. Fill with cheese (I just had shredded) and then begin folding the dough back over the cheese making sure you seal it well. I formed it back in to a ball and placed on a greased baking sheet.

  Sprinkle buns with whatever cheese you want. I had cheddar and parmesan so that is what I used. Preheat your oven to 375. Place rolls in oven and back 12-15 minutes. Mine baked for 15 minutes and then I turned the broiler on to brown the cheese and tops of buns a bit. I didn't have anymore butter to brush over the tops of the buns to make them pretty. 

Check out all that gooey cheese. These were so good and well worth it. I do think they'd be best eaten warm or reheated a bit. not sure how good cold cheese in a cold bun will be. Enjoy!


With Joy UNquenchable,

SRC Recipe: Crockpot Corned Beef and Cabbage

Whoop whoop...it's time...it's time for the Secret Recipe Club Group D reveal. The Secret Recipe Club is a great group where each month we are assigned a "Secret" blog where we excitedly choose a recipe and then on our reveal date we share our recipes. My favorite part in the reveal is trying to guess who had my blog and seeing what they chose. 

I was so excited when I chose the recipe for my SRC Assignment. I actually have had this particular blog before. In September of 2012 I made this recipe from her blog. Emily's blog Life on food is a great blog. Please take time to read her About me page. It's great. She's quite an adventurous girl.

The recipe I chose was her Crockpot Corned Beef and Cabbage . I have been craving Corned Beef and Cabbage for awhile now and so when I saw that she had a recipe for it, I thought "why not make this one." I was a bit nervous. I grew up eating corned beef, but have never made it myself. I had been googling recipes prior to this assignment so I combined a few ideas. 

Today is St. Patrick's Day (well, the day I'm writing this post) so I knew it was the perfect day to try this. Yah, it would have been nice had I thought about the fact that it takes longer than 8 hours to cook in a crockpot and I was making this on a Sunday morning with plans to eat lunch by 1:30. You do the math. But there was no turning back. I had invited company over. So I went for it. The end result was a great, tender dinner. 

The funny thing is, the recipe calls for beer. I don't drink anything alcohol so had no clue what to look for. I FB messaged a friend of mine for advice, then went to the store and stared dumbly at all the options. Yikes! I also  opted to NOT buy an inexpensive brand of corned beef but instead chose to buy from our local Chucks Produce and Street Market. We are on a continual journey of healthier more aware eating and I wanted to know what we were eating. I purchased a brisket that is from a local farm (Oregon) called Painted Hills Beef. It was WAY more, but WAY worth it. 

Last night I prepped the onions and carrots, placed them in plastic bags to dump in the crockpot in the morning. Went to bed, set the alarm for 4:50 and couldn't fall asleep! Grr...but I survived and dinner was ready to go by 1:45. I even made Irish Soda Bread from Miz Helen's Country Cottage. She posted this recipe on last weeks reveal! I went all out! Yay!

Okay, enough of the babble...sorry, I'm tired. On with the recipe. I am putting Emily's ingredients with my additions in italics. I will post my instructions, so please click the above link to see her instructions. They don't differ much except for the order in which I added things to the crockpot. I know my crockpot and it cooks hot so I didn't add the veggies right away. Also, my corned beef didn't have a packet, but the seasonings were in with the beef so I didn't rinse it, but now thinking I should have because they were too strong for everyone. 

Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage
Adapted from Life on Food

Ingredients:

4 carrots peeled (I used a few more because there were 6 of us)
1 medium onion cut in to wedges
1 clove garlic (my addition)
4-6 red potatoes, quartered or halved depending on size
1 4lb corned beef brisket (mine was almost 3lbs.)
12 oz. Stout or Dark Ale (I used 8 oz. and 3 c. of water)
2 Tbs. sugar
2 Tbs. Vinegar
1 Tbs. Corned Beef spices or spice packet that comes with your corned beef
1 medium head of cabbage cut in wedges

Instructions:

1. Place onion and garlic in bottom of crockpot. Top with Corned Beef.

check out those spices...WOW! But I seriously should have left them out of the cooking process...it's not fun to pick them out.

2. Combine beer, water, vinegar and sugar. Stir and pour over beef. 

3. Cook on low for 4 hours. 

4. Add Carrots and Potatoes to the top of beef. Cook another 4 hours or so. 

5. At the end, remove meat and veggies, cover with foil to keep warm. Add chopped cabbage to the liquid, cooking on high till it reaches desired consistency. Mine took about 20 minutes or so. 

*Notes: After I removed the meat, potatoes and carrots, I added some saurkraut to the top, and covered it with foil to keep warm, even put it in the oven for a few minutes.

I also cooked it for 4 hours on low and 4 hours on high because I didn't really have 9-10 hours for total cooking time. It came out perfectly moist and the veggies were just right. 

And again, I would have personally rinsed the beef off and NOT added anymore spices. I think the fact that this brisket sat in the spices in the package seasoned it enough.

Well, that's about it. Mark this recipe to make next St. Patty's Day, or before.  




With Joy UNquenchable,