Christmas Crunch Bark

Simple goodness. I have to share this recipe again, I gave it as part of a Teacher gift this year and I love it and wanted to share with you again! This time I added M&Ms to it.


Christmas Crunch Bark
slightly adapted from my original post

1 package (24 ounces) vanilla -flavored almond bark, coarsely chopped (in the baking aisle of the supermarket)
¾ cup whole or slivered almonds, coarsely chopped
¾ cup sweetened dried cranberries, coarsely chopped
2 cups crisp rice cereal
1 Cup Christmas M&Ms
10 oz dark/semi sweet chocolate, melted for drizzling

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, place into the freezer at least 1 hour.
Place almond bark into a double boiler bowl, heat and stir until melted, being sure NO water gets into the chocolate bark.
Heat a small frying pan and toast nuts at a medium low temperature until golden brown. Keep an eye on the nuts so they don’t burn. Just takes a few minutes, be sure to stir them.
Remove from heat and add cranberries to the pan. Stir until combined.
Stir cereal and half of the nut mixture into melted bark.
Pour bark mixture onto cold tray, spreading evenly. Immediately sprinkle with remaining nut mixture and M&Ms, press lightly onto surface of bark.
Drizzle with melted dark chocolate, let stand 7-10 minutes or until bark is set. You could also place in the fridge for a bit to set quicker.
Bring edges of parchment up over bark and break into various size pieces.

Yield: about 1 cookie tray full
Tips:
•You can use two packages (12 ounces each) premium white or chocolate-flavored confectionery coating candy wafers instead of the almond bark.
•When melting almond bark, make sure your bowl and utensils are completely dry. Even one drop of water will cause almond bark to harden and clump.
-Instead of a dark chocolate drizzle, you could also melt white chocolate and color it red or green with food coloring, festive for Christmas!

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enjoy,

Roasted Apple Pear Cobbler with Custard Sauce

What to do with an abundance of pears and apples? Make this wonderful cobbler with warm custard sauce! I took 3 cobbler recipes to make my cobbler, and posted them in order of assembly, don't worry it's easy, you're just roasting the apples and pears and adding them to a sauce and baking off with a biscuit topping.
I love custard sauce over apple pie, so I thought this would be just as wonderful. It was! Please note, this is not a baked custard kind of custard, this is a sauce. Now since I made this in a 9x13 pan, my fruit filling was rather thin. So you could make this in an 8x8 dish and half the recipe for the biscuit topping.

Apple Pear Cobbler

adapted from allrecipes and delicious living

Roasted apples & pears:
4-6 Golden Delicious apples, peeled and diced
4-6 Pears, peeled and diced
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

Preheat oven to 450º. In a large bowl, combine diced pears and apples with salt and 2 tablespoons syrup. Mix gently. Place fruit on baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes, until fruit is caramelized on all sides.

1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In a large saucepan, combine 1 cup sugar, water, tapioca and cinnamon. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat; gently stir in the roasted apples and pears until coated. Place in a greased 9x13 pan. (see notes above about using an 8x8 dish)

Biscuit Topping:

seen here

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

4 ounces cold reduced fat cream cheese, cut into chunks

2 large eggs

2/3 cup milk

Lower oven heat to 375'.

To make the biscuit topping, in a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder and salt until combined. Knead in butter and cream cheese using fingertips or a pastry blender until well incorporated and mixture starts to clump together. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and milk until well combined; add wet ingredient to dry ingredients, and stir until just combined.

Drop spoonfuls of biscuit topping evenly over fruit. Bake 35 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.

Custard Sauce
adapted from allrecipes, makes 4 Cups.
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup white sugar
4 cups milk, warmed
1/2 pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream together the eggs and sugar in a deep saucepan, add milk and salt; cook over medium heat stirring until mixture thickens and coats a spoon. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Serve warm or chilled.

Have a great weeked, we're off to see Santa this morning.

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enjoy,

Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings

I have never made chicken and dumpling before, why? Because the thought of gooey, wet biscuits did not appeal to me. We never even ate it growing up. Then one day I decided I needed to make it, Mr. would love it! So I read up on a few recipes and came up with this one. It was hit!! Even the kids were digging in the pot for more dumplings! Guess I'll be making this more often! I did cheat and use store bought biscuit dough, but will have to make my own next time.

Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings
adapted from allrecipes

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast, diced

2 tablespoons butter
2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of chicken soup

1 onion, finely diced

1 Cup frozen mixed vegetables
1/2 Cup diced celery and leaves
salt
pepper
1 tsp dried thyme

2 (10 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuit dough, torn into pieces (or homemade)

flour for dusting


-Place the chicken, butter, soup, onion, veggies, celery, salt and pepper to taste, thyme in a slow cooker, stir to combine and fill with enough water to cover.

-Cover, and cook for 5 to 6 hours* on High.

-3 hours* before end of cook time, Dust cut biscuits in flour and place in the slow cooker, dunk them in the broth every now and again, being careful not to let too much heat sneak out (keep lid half on). Cook until the dough is no longer raw in the center.

I forgot I wanted to add some other pics too...

Here's a peek at them cooking away:

Mr. got me a new crock pot for my birthday, it's one from Costco. It's a little bit smaller (6qt) than my other one (which the cord had a cut in it!??), but I love it. It has handles on the sides so you can move the thing around, the lid has a rubber seal and vent holes and it seems to cook just right, where my old one seemed to get too hot, even on low. I'm trying to find new recipe, so I can start using it more, happy to say I have made about 5 recipes since my Birthday in it.

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enjoy,

Cream Cheese Mints

I'm in a big candy making mood this year for Christmas, I guess all those years of making cookies for Santa burned me out. A friend reminded me of this recipe, and thankfully Cindy from Skip to my Lou blog has her own little shop to order supplies I needed to make these, and they ship fast!! They arrived just in time for me to make some for the teacher's gifts. I made a batch of red and a batch of green little swirl disks.

Cream Cheese Mints
slightly adapted from Skip to my Lou

4 oz cream cheese (room temperature)

16 oz. powdered sugar
1/8 - 1/4 tsp. oil of peppermint (or other flavoring)
gel food coloring
granulated sugar
flexible rubber mint molds

Mix together cream cheese, flavoring, powdered sugar. Start with an 1/8 teaspoon of flavoring and then add more to desired taste. Knead dough (I used my stand mixer), may need to add more powdered sugar until dough becomes stiff.
Add gel paste coloring to color the dough. If dough becomes sticky add in a bit more powered sugar while kneading in coloring.
Roll into tiny balls (make a test to determine size of ball -- each mold is a little different). Coat balls with granulated sugar.
Press ball into mold. Immediately flip mold over and release mint. Repeat over and over. Makes about 5 dozen mints depending on size of mold. Allow mints to air dry a few hours or overnight. Mints also freeze beautifully!

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enjoy,

Eggnog Quick Bread

Tina twisted my arm when she posted about this eggnog bread on her facebook page. We just so happened to have a jug of it still in the fridge (we're not huge fan of it, but we still bought one from Costco)...so I hid about 2 Cups of it away so they wouldn't drink it. Um, let's just say, I will be buying eggnog now, just for this bread alone! YUM! So, think about have this as part of your Christmas goodies! I've frozen the big loaf for when Father in Law is here next week, I bet he'll like it too.

Holiday Eggnog Bread
adapted from Mommy's Kitchen

2 - eggs

1 1/4 - cups sugar

1 3/4 cups eggnog

1/2 - cup butter, melted

1/4 - teaspoon nutmeg

1 - teaspoon spiced rum

1 - teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 - cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 - tsp salt
1 - 3.4 oz package instant french vanilla or vanilla pudding -powder


Eggnog Glaze

1 - Cup Powdered Sugar
Enough eggnog to make a glaze to drizzle over bread
splash of vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease loaf pan or mini loaf pans ( this made 1 regular loaf and 1 mini loaf for me). Beat eggs, add sugar, eggnog, butter, rum and vanilla extract. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Add the flour mixture to the batter and mix well.

Add the instant pudding powder and blend. Pour into greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for about 55 minutes for large loaf or 20-25 minutes for mini pans. Bread will be golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes. Remove and cool completely on a baking rack. When cool drizzle eggnog glaze on top.

To make the glaze:
Mix (1) cup powdered sugar, vanilla and enough eggnog to make a pourable glaze. Drizzle over cooled loaves. Let glaze set before storing bread.

enjoy,