time...

I just realized that it's been awhile since I've posted anything on my little cooking blog.  That doesn't mean I haven't cooked or baked anything, because I did!  I had the opportunity to do some baking with a friend and we decided to try out a recipe that I had pinned on Pinterest...peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate buttercream icing.

The recipe needs a little adjusting...it could be just the type of ingredients we used.  The recipe calls for butter (what good recipe doesn't?!) and sour cream.  I only had stick margarine and low-fat sour cream...after trying the cupcakes, we think that maybe these ingredients caused the main issue of dryness.  We're going to be testing this recipe again and I'll update you on the adjustments we made.

Click here for the peanut butter cupcake recipe...Thanks to Your Cup of Cake!

Click here for the chocolate buttercream recipe...Thanks to Savory Sweet Life!

Happy baking!

Easy Monkey Bread

Any recipe that can be created, made and posted all in one Sunday morning meets the criteria of being quick and easy.  I could have easily adapted some other recipes for my one can of biscuits, but that's not as much of a challenge.

You'll need to preheat oven to 350 and while that's warming up,

tear pieces of the biscuits to make 1 inch balls...

In a small bowl, melt butter, then add sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon with a whisk.  Because I only had 1 can of biscuits, I used my bread loaf pan and sprayed it with cooking spray.  In the picture, you can see that I poured some of the sugary mixture into the greased pan as a base for the dough balls that would go in the pan first.

Than add all dough balls to pan and pour on the remaining sugary mixture, coating evenly.

Bake for 35 minutes.

Then comes the magic!

Place plate over pan and flip!

Yummy!

Watch your fingers when reaching for a piece, this stuff goes fast!

Easy Monkey Bread

   1 can of biscuits (buttermilk kind)

   1/2 stick butter, melted

   4 Tbsp sugar

   5 Tbsp brown sugar

   1 tsp cinnamon (I just sprinkled some in...didn't actually measure)

Happy baking!

2 Minute Chocolate Cake

Does your sweet tooth ever drive you crazy?!  You might be reading this post because you didn't believe the title...chocolate cake in 2 minutes?  NO WAY!!!  Well...way!

I had this saved on my Pinterest, but forgot about it until tonight.  A quick check of the recipe to make sure I had all the ingredients (cause no one wants to get their hopes up when it comes to chocolate) and I was headed to the kitchen.

This recipe is also the kind you can mix up in one bowl.  Just start with the egg and beat it lightly and then add the remaining ingredients and whisk together.

Then pour into your coffee mug.  The blog said you could use a regular sized mug, but mine is taller than most and when "baking" in the microwave, it raised up over the mug and could have potentially baked over a regular sized mug.

Ta-da!

 Salted Caramel Mug Cake
   4 Tbsp all purpose flour
   4 Tbsp sugar
   3 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
   1/4 tsp baking powder
   1/4 tsp salt
   1 egg, beaten
   3 Tbsp skim milk
   1 Tbsp vegetable oil
   2 salted caramels

   1. Into a small bowl add all ingredients except caramels and mix to combine.
   2. Pour mixture into a regular sized coffee mug.  Drop caramels into center of mixture one at a time.
   3. Microwave on high for 90 seconds.  If needed (if cake batter is still gooey), microwave on high for up to an additional 30 seconds.

Click here to go to the blog where you can find more coffee mug treat recipes!
Thanks to Babble for a quick treat to quite the sweet tooth!

Happy baking!

Crockin' Hawaiian BBQ Chicken

I love chicken!  I could probably eat chicken everyday...however, my husband isn't as big a fan of chicken.  Which means I have to find lots of chicken recipes to change things up.  I pinned this easy recipe on Pinterest and have been waiting for the right time to make it AND to find the right bbq sauce.  The recipe calls for a bottled Hawaiian bbq sauce, which I can't find at any of my grocery stores.  We even ventured to a town that has a Target to look for the sauce the original pinner used...but guess what, that's the sauce they were all out of = bummer!  I then looked up a recipe how to make some homemade Hawaiian bbq sauce...and the repeating ingredients that the recipes called for were ginger, teriyaki, and soy sauce.

If you ask my family what my favorite store is they'll say Aldi's...and they'd be correct (favorite food store).  Paul and I did our weekly grocery shopping today and while at Aldi's I found bottles of ginger teriyaki bbq sauce...cha-ching!  I swipped up a couple of bottles, which were actually a specialty item on sale.  Guess what's for dinner?!

I love recipes that have very few ingredients...this one has a total of 3!

The original recipe calls for crushed or tidbit pineapple, but all I had was sliced...so I ran a knife through them before dumping them in the cooker.

The recipe said to turn the cooker on low for 6 hours...but since I didn't have 6 hours, I turned it on high for 3  hours and then down to low for the last hour, but you can do whatever works for you...as long as the chicken is no longer pink.

After completing this recipe, there's something I'll do differently next time.  The recipe calls for everything to just be dumped in...since my pineapple wasn't the crushed kind, I don't feel I got as much flavor as I was wanting from the sauce because of how much pineapple juice there was.  I'm probably going to add the pineapple and bbq sauce and then save the pineapple sauce to add gradually as the chicken cooks.

I also wasn't as pleased with the sauce that I got...I think I'll try adding some brown sugar and soy sauce to it to bulk it up a little.  The sauce probably would have been fine had I been able to fine the Hawaiian bbq sauce at Target...I'll just have to keep looking.

Happy cooking!