Apple Cider Floats

Ingredients
1 cup apple cider
1/2 cup ginger ale
1-2 scoops vanilla ice cream, or any seasonal flavor such as cinnamon or apple pie
ground cinnamon and nutmeg for sprinkling
1-2 tablespoons jarred caramel sauce

Pour apple cider and ginger ale into a glass. Add vanilla ice cream. Sprinkle on nutmeg and cinnamon to taste and drizzle caramel sauce on top. Serve immediately with a straw and a spoon.

Yield: one serving

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups solid pack pumpkin puree
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 tablespoon ground cloves
1 egg white
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners' sugar
3/4 cup shortening

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease baking sheets.
2. Combine the oil and brown sugar. Mix in the pumpkin and eggs, beating well. Add the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, 1 teaspoon vanilla, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Mix well.
3. Drop dough by heaping teaspoons onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cookies cool then make sandwiches from two cookies filled with Whoopie Pie Filling.
4. To Make Whoopie Pie Filling: Beat egg white and mix with the milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 cup of the confectioners' sugar. Mix well then beat in the shortening and the remaining cup of confectioners' sugar. Beat until light and fluffy.

Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas

YIELD: 6 SERVINGS

HONEY LIME CHICKEN {OR PORK} ENCHILADAS

PREP TIME 30 MINUTES

 

COOK TIME 30 MINUTES

 

ADDITIONAL TIME 30 MINUTES

 

TOTAL TIME 1 HOUR 30 MINUTES

INGREDIENTS

•  6 tablespoons honey 
•  5 to 6 tablespoons lime juice (2 to 3 large limes) 
•  1 tablespoon chili powder 
•  1/2 teaspoon garlic powder 
•  1/4 teaspoon coarse, kosher salt 
•  1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon black pepper (I use coarsely ground) 
•  2 pounds chicken, cooked and shredded - about 4 cups total (see note) 
•  8 to 10 flour or corn tortillas (about 6- to 8-inches) 
•  4 cups (about 1 pound) shredded Monterey jack cheese (or a combo of cheddar and Monterey Jack) 
•  16 ounces green enchilada sauce (see note) 
•  1 cup heavy cream, sour cream, or half-and-half 
•  Additional Toppings (optional): sour cream, chopped tomatoes, extra lime wedges, avocado, chopped cilantro 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, lime juice, chili powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Place the shredded chicken in a resealable bag or other covered container. Pour the marinade over the chicken and toss until the chicken is evenly coated. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or up to 8 hours.
2. Lightly grease a 9X13-inch pan with nonstick cooking spray and pour about 1/2 cup of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of the pan.
3. Fill flour tortillas with chicken (save the leftover marinade!) and shredded cheese, saving about 1 cup of cheese to sprinkle on top of enchiladas. Mix the remaining enchilada sauce with the leftover marinade and the the cream (or sour cream/half-and-half).
4. Spread sauce evenly on top of the enchiladas and sprinkle with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes until brown and crispy on top. Serve with chopped tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, extra lime wedges, chopped cilantro, and/or avocado. 

NOTES

A rotisserie chicken works great in this recipe. Or, this is my go-to quick stovetop method for making cooked, shredded chicken at home. Otherwise, I often throw chicken breasts in the Instant Pot with 1 cup broth and some salt and pepper and cook for 8-12 minutes at high pressure and then shred (discarding liquid).

Here is an easy, delicious recipe for homemade green enchilada sauce. Green salsa also works for this dish (slightly different flavor profile and the consistency is a bit thinner than enchilada sauce). Also, if you want to skip the cream in the topping all together, you can mix the remaining green enchilada sauce or salsa with the leftover marinade and spread that over the top of the enchiladas and sprinkle with cheese. 

Freezable Meal: Freeze prior to baking. To bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake enchiladas, covered (without thawing first) for 1 hour. Uncover and bake 30 minutes longer, until brown and crispy on top. The tortillas may be a bit softer after freezing and baking.

Honey Lime Chicken Enchiladas

These enchiladas are one of our favorites! The filling includes marinated Honey lime chicken, black beans, corn, and cheese, rolled in tortillas and smothered in salsa verde. 

Prep Time20 mins

Cook Time30 mins

Marinate15 mins

Total Time50 mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Mexican

 

Servings: 10 enchiladas

 

Calories: 364kcal

 

Author: Lauren Allen

Ingredients

• 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 15 ounce can black beans , drained and rinsed
• 1 cup corn (fresh or frozen) cooked
• 16 ounce bottles Salsa verde
• 10 large flour tortillas
• 3 cups Monterey Jack Cheeses , shredded

For the marinade:

• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• ½ teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper optional
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For Garnish

• sour cream
• fresh cilantro

Instructions

• Cook chicken and shred with forks (or use leftover cooked chicken or rotisserie chicken).
• Whisk the marinade ingredients together in a liquid measuring cup (Should make about 1 cup). Add 2/3 cup of the marinade into the bowl with the chicken. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes or up to several hours. 
• Add chili verde sauce to the remaining 1/3 cup of marinade and stir to combine. If the green chiles are chunky I like to pulse the sauce with an immersion blender until smooth. 
• Add beans, corn to the chicken mixture. Fill the tortillas with a spoonful of the chicken filling and sprinkle a generous handful of cheese on top (reserving about 1 cup of cheese for topping on the enchiladas at the end). 
• Roll up the tortillas and place them in the pan, seam side down. 
• Pour the green chili sauce on top of the enchiladas. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.
• Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes, then place under broiler for 2-3 minutes or until cheese is golden.

Apple Pie Caramel Apples

Time: 90 minutes Yield: 15 apples Homemade Caramel: 1 C butter 2 C brown sugar 1 C corn syrup 1 can sweetened condensed milk 1 t vanilla Apples: 15 apples 15 Popsicle sticks 2 12 ounce bags white chocolate chips 1 t shortening 1 C sugar 3 t cinnamon 1. Wash your apples WELL. Scrub them with your fingers to get the filmy white stuff off. 2. Place a Popsicle stick in the center of each apple, next to the stem. 3. Line a jelly roll pan with tin foil. Put all of the apples on the sheet and place it in the freezer. 4. Melt the butter in a medium sized sauce pan over medium high heat. 5. Add the brown sugar, corn syrup and sweetened condensed milk. Stir it together with a wooden spoon. 6. Cook the caramel over medium high heat, stirring constantly. The temperature should read 335-340 when the caramel has reached the correct consistency. It should take about 14 minutes. 7. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in 1 t of vanilla. 8. Take your pan of apples out of the freezer, set the apples aside and line the pan with tin foil. 9. Dip your apples one by one into the caramel. Let excess caramel drip off the apple and back into the pan. 8. Turn the apple upside down over the pot for about 20 seconds, letting the cold apple and the caramel get familiar with each other. 9. Set the apples on the cold, foil lined pan and place it in your fridge. 10. Pour your white chocolate into a glass measuring cup. Melt the chocolate in the microwave heating it for only 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each cooking interval. Don't get the chocolate too hot. :) 11. Add the shortening to your chocolate, stir it in until it has melted into the chocolate. 12. Pour the sugar and cinnamon into a regular soup bowl and stir it together to combine. 13. Dip the apples one at a time, into the white chocolate. Let some of the chocolate drip off into the measuring cup. Then, take a knife and remove any excess chocolate letting it drip back into the cup.Now here is a special note. It's really important that you don't leave too much chocolate on the apple. Look at this sad frownie faced beauty that got left with too much chocolate. Don't let your apples suffer from chocolate overload. PS..... MyHandsomeHusband just announced that this picture looks like something strait out of The Lord Of The Rings. I does kind of look like those sad drooping trees, doesn't it! 14. Roll the chocolate dipped apple into the cinnamon sugar, coating it generously. If the chocolate starts to drip a bit, take your palm and form it back to the apple. The chocolate should begin to set up quite quickly, since we are using cold apples. 15. Return the apple to the cold pan and let the chocolate set completely. Enjoy these beauties!!!!!

Honey Yogurt Waffles

Yield: Serves 4

ingredients:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup old-fashioned oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/4 cups skim milk
3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/3 cup honey
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Maple syrup or honey-for serving

directions:
1. Melt the butter in the microwave and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flours, oats, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. In another bowl, whisk together the milk, yogurt, honey, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and whisk until just combined. Gently fold in the melted butter.
2. Preheat and lightly grease the waffle iron. When the waffle iron is hot, pour batter into the wells of the waffle iron. (Fill according to the manufacturer's instructions).
Close the lid and bake until the waffle is golden and set. Carefully remove waffle from iron and serve warm with maple syrup or a drizzle of honey.
Note: To keep the waffles warm, preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Place a tray of waffles in the oven to keep warm until serving.

BANANA COOKIES

So simple...

Ingredients

• 4 bananas, must be very ripe!
• 1 1/2 cups oat flour
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Instructions

Put bananas in food processor until pureed. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend; batter should be very wet and not too thick. Stir in chocolate chips, and drop by tablespoons onto parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Bake at 350F for 8-10 minutes. Enjoy!

Tips & Bonus Information

94 calories; 20g carbs; 2g fat; 59mg sodium; 10g sugar; 1g protein (1 cookie)

YIELD: 16 cookies 
PREPARATION TIME: 10 mins 
COOKING TIME: 8-10 mins 

Cooking pizza

THE BASIC EQUIPMENT

Pizza Stone.  Due to its ability to retain heat, it replicates the concept of placing pizzas directly into giant brick or clay ovens. 

Now…the instructions on your pizza stone may tell you to preheat your stone. I’m not going to tell you to ignore the manufacturer’s instructions (okay, so I am), and don’t shoot me if your pizza stone breaks after putting it into a hot oven, but in my experience and my completely non-scientific opinion, I don’t think that 425 degrees is hot enough to shatter your pizza stone as long as it isn’t cold to begin with and as long as it has something on it (like a crust). If you do preheat your stone, you’ll have a heck of a time getting your dough onto the stone in some semblance of a round shape before it starts to cook. 

French rolling pin. By no means do you HAVE to have a French rolling pin, but I much, much MUCH prefer my French rolling pin to my traditional rolling pin, especially when I’m working with large quantities of dough or when I’m shaping dough (like for a pizza). Because of the tapered ends, you can hold a tapered end in one hand and press the other tapered end against the dough in order to achieve whatever shape you’re after. Also, because it’s longer, it rolls the entire quantity of dough at one time rather than going back and forth over the dough, hoping that you’re achieving the same thickness.

THE BASIC INGREDIENTS

Dough. No matter what kind of pizza you make, you’ll need dough. I experimented with manydifferent dough recipes and my friend Lisa’s breadstick recipe ended up being my favorite!
I have to admit that I would love to learn to throw dough. But I also think that anyone who knows me personally would know that it would be a bad, bad, BAD idea for me to toss food products into the air. If any of you are more physically coordinated than I am OR if you already have mad dough-throwing skills (or if you just find food in the air fascinating), check out this video:

Sauce 

Pizza Sauce

1 6-oz. can tomato paste
6 oz. water (just use the empty tomato paste can)
3 Tbsp. garlic bread seasoning
1 Tbsp. sugar or honey (I usually use sugar because it’s easier and hey, I think we’ve established here that if there’s an easy road or a hard road, I usually take the easy road…)
3/4 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)

Empty tomato paste into a bowl and add water a few tablespoons at a time, stirring constantly until combined. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and allow to stand until ready to use. Covers two average-sized pizza; freezes extremely well.

Guiltless Alfredo Sauce

2 C low-fat milk
1/3 C (3 oz) low fat cream cheese
2 T flour
1 t salt
1 T butter
3 garlic cloves
1 C grated Parmesan cheese

Toss the milk, cream cheese, flour, and salt in a blender.

Process until smooth and set aside.

In a non-stick sauce pan, melt butter on med-high heat and add garlic. Stand above the pan (but not close enough to scald your face) and inhale. Ahhh…butter and garlic. Okay, now get cooking again. Let the garlic saute for about 30 seconds, you don’t want to burn it. It should be nice and bubbly like this:

Then add milk mixture to the pan. Stir constantly for about 3 or 4 minutes or until it just comes to a simmer. Keep stirring and let it cook for a few minutes more. It should be much thicker now.


When it’s nice and thickened remove the pan from the heat. Add the cheese, stir it up and then cover immediately. Let stand for at least 10 minutes before using. It will continue to thicken upon standing. Also, if you have leftovers in the fridge, the sauce will thicken almost into a solid. Just re-heat and add a little milk and it will be back to normal again.

I use this sauce for so many things. Here’s a few ideas:

-Over pasta (obviously)
-As a dip for breadsticks
-As a sauce on pizza (this is the garlic cream sauce I was referring to in this recipe) and a half batch of sauce covers 2 medium pizza’s.
-Mix it with pesto for a creamy pesto sauce (so good)
-Mix it with marinara for a creamy marinara sauce

One time when we had dinner guests over with a bunch of kids, we did a pasta bar. I made a couple different pastas, a couple different meats, and then made this sauce, marinara, and pesto. Everyone had so much fun mixing and matching and combining. The adults could get fancy with alfredo-pesto over bow-ties and the kids could have plain ol’ spaghetti if they wanted to. Toss in some french bread and a salad and you have a really fun, and really easy meal!

This clocks in at around 100 calories for 1/4 C sauce!

Olive oil; it makes your crust crispy and delicious

Garlic salt; adds to crispy deliciousness.  Garlic Bread Seasoning works great too.Garlic Bread Seasoning

print recipe text only

1/2 c. powdered Parmesan cheese

2 tsp. Kosher salt

2 Tbsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. oregano

2 tsp. basil

2 tsp. marjoram

2 tsp. parsley

Combine ingredients in a jar (preferably one with a sprinkle top) and shake. Well, don’t shake until you’ve put the lid on, but I assume most of you are smart enough to figure that out! :)

Sprinkle on top of breadsticks or combine 1 1/2 Tbsp. seasoning with 1/2 c. of softened real butter and spread on a loaf of French bread (cut in 1/2 lengthwise). Wrap in foil and bake at 375 until butter’s melted. If you want, you could also pop it open-faced under the broiler for a few minutes so it gets brownish and crispy.

Cheese (about 8 ounces, shredded or in deli slices; for most pizzas, I just use Mozzarella)

Dried oregano; this is the “secret ingredient”–everyone will ask you what made your pizza so dang good and this is it! However…use it on your “traditional” pizzas; I don’t think it would be so tasty on abarbecue chicken pizza!

Desired toppings. Whatever you like on pizza! We’re going into greater detail on this later on in the week, but the possibilities of what you can put on pizza are endless! 

but our secret weapon pizza, especially in pizza pockets , is pepperoni, black olives, green peppers, red onions, and pineapple. Mmmmmm…

THE METHOD

1. Begin preparing your dough. Complete steps through the first rise.

2. While dough is rising, prepare your sauce.

3. Preheat your oven (and your pizza stone, if you want) to 425 degrees. While oven is heating, punch down dough and shape into a disc. Spray your work surface, rolling pin, and pizza stone with non-stick cooking spray. Place dough disc onto work surface. Roll and shape into a circle. (Disregard all of this, by the way, if you’re a stinking dough-thrower). Very gently transfer the dough onto your pizza stone and continue to shape up to the edges of the stone.

4. Using a fork, prick several holes in the crust. Drizzle crust with a little olive oil…and brush all the way up to the edges. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Both oiling and garlic salting the crust help crisp it up, give it a great flavor, and keep it from getting soggy in the middle.

5. Bake crust in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven.

6. Spread a layer of sauce (if desired) over the surface of the crust. Top with whatever toppings you like (I do the flat stuff, i.e. the meat, first).   Sara does a layer of cheese first to “glue” on the toppings and then tops with a bit extra after. 

Then sprinkle with oregano.

7. Return crust to oven and bake 10-12 more minutes or until cheese is melty and the crust is golden brown.

And there you have it. Beautiful pizza, completely non-doughy in the middle, a little crispy on the edges and chewy on the inside.