Amish Bread Recipe for the Bread Machine

Welcome to Wednesday! :) Are you enjoying your week? Can you believe tomorrow's the last day of the month?? Weren't we just at the end of January? (I'm pre-posting this one, and I'm hyperventilating! Knowing this comes out two weeks before I have to be ready to leave for our family reunion AND Oregon - EEP!!! I'm not ready! :D)

Sorry. :D

Anyway! Today's recipe is Amish Bread Recipe for the Bread Machine from Mommysavers.com. :D

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, YES, PLEASE! It's the BEST ABM recipe I've ever tried. Super easy, this turned out beautifully. I mean, OH, MY.

Really. I'm tucking this one away for any time I want a fast something to throw in the machine. And I may decrease the sugar next time; it's just a touch on the sweet side. But it made the yeast rise beautifully!!!! It's not dry, it's got a good bite to it. I did coat the crust with butter as it came out, so it wouldn't get hard - the crust is almost always my least favorite, and I eat it first. Not this bread. Yummmmmm. I could eat the whole loaf by myself! :D

OK, I'm outta here! Have a WONDERFUL day, and I'll see you in MARCH! ;) Be blessed!

Homemade "Nutella"

Happy Monday! Did you have a good weekend? Did you try anything new???

Today's share is a happy share. :D One of my dear friends in college, who grew up in Germany, introduced me to Nutella about 25 years ago. (Holey mackerel, did I just admit that?!?) :D Lately, I've been trying to eat less processed food; the chemicals can't be good for me, and if I can put better things into my body, then maybe it will start behaving better. :)

So - since my mom and I love Nutella so much! - I decided to try this recipe for Homemade Nutella Spread from Leite's Culinaria.

This is a YES, PLEASE! rating. I didn't run it through a sieve at the end of the process, because I didn't want to make all that mess and lose too much of the chocolate. :D It's not very grainy, so I'm good with that.

If I can figure out a good chocolate to use, that will help; we used Hershey's bars, because I don't want the wax that goes into chips for helping to hold their shape. But that's kind of expensive! The hazelnuts were some our dear friends sent Mom for Christmas a year ago that have been in the freezer, waiting for a reason to be used. :D (We're going back to hazelnutland - Oregon grows something like 90% of the US's hazelnuts!)

Try it! Oh, I also used grapeseed oil for the oil requirement; if you want to make it even better for you, try coconut oil. You could also use xylitol for the sugar - watch for that post later on. :)

Update: After a day of being nice and spreadable, this solidified. My mom is loving it still; I'd prefer it to not tear up whatever I'm trying to spread it on. There are lots of recipes out there right now for homemade Nutella; I may see if they have anything in them that might be added to this to keep it softer. It's still good - I think it would make great truffles. Just sayin'. :D
 
OK, I'm outta here! Have a WONDERFUL day! Be BLESSED!!!

Lemon Icebox Cake

It's FRIDAY! Have you had a great week? I sure hope so! Congratulations to everyone who has a jar of Biscoff Spread coming your way! :)

I promised today would be a share and review of the cake I made for our Valentine's Day celebration; here it is! It's a Lemon Icebox Cake from Cookie Baker Lynn.

It was tasty. It was NOT worth the trouble it took to make!!!!! How do I score this? I'm giving it a personal NO, THANK YOU - but that's because it is a FUSSY frosting/lemon mousse. SERIOUSLY.

I made the angel food cake in two 8" square pans; I had a tube pan, but didn't use it once in the three years I had it, so I got rid of it. The cake was very good; angel food cakes are a bit fussy, but one usually goes into scratch-baking it knowing that fact.

The lemon mousse/frosting? THAT was kind of crazy. First, you make very sour lemon curd. Then you whip cream, add gelatin, and add it to the curd to make lemon cream. And FINALLY you add meringue to the whole thing, split the cake into 4 layers, and stack.

If you decide to make this, it's GOOD. It's a big cake, light and fluffy and lemony and a treat. But go into the process knowing it will take you a good two days to make sure everything is ready to go. And it's NOT cheap; between the cake and the mousse, it took about 16 eggs. For ONE ingredient in ONE recipe.

I'm glad I tried it. I'm glad I made it for my dad - he despises chocolate, so we can't serve any when we do a special event together. But I'm not saving the recipe.

OK, I'm outta here!! :) Let me know what you think of this one. I'd love to hear if you're planning on making it! Take pictures, and tell me your story! :)

Have a WONDERFUL weekend! It's another busy one for us - we're out of here SOON! BE BLESSED!

Almost time for the giveaway! :D

Not too long now until the Biscoff Giveaway ends! Have YOU entered? Go do it - on that post! Just click the link! Hurry! :D

I decided to share what our Valentine's Day table looked like today. My mom pulled it together - isn't it beautiful? We ate out on the sun porch; Kenn had to go shoot a basketball game, so we ate early. The flowers are ones Mom uses for Fourth of July centerpieces; the chargers were some we used for Christmas, as were the battery-operated candles.

It's a small table, but it was quite lovely!!! What do you think??

Friday, I'll share the cake I made for our dessert - that's the part I was in charge of. :) And if you've left a message on the Biscoff Giveaway, PLEASE either email me or leave another message with your address! :D

Have a WONDERFUL day! Be BLESSED!

Copycat Recipe: Olive Garden's Chicken & Gnocchi Soup

It's FRIDAY!!!! How's your week been? Do you have big plans for your weekend? If you're in middle Tennessee, come to Lamplighter's Theater Company and see LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC. You'll be out in an hour and a half, and it's a really sweet story - bring your sweetheart!

Anyway! This is a recipe for Olive Garden's Chicken & Gnocchi Soup from one of my favorite blogs, Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice. :D And I'll tell you now, it's a DEFINITE yes, PLEASE! for my whole family!!

I used organic, free-range chicken stock from Trader Joe's; I bought some around Christmas, and Kenn used it in his chicken soup when he had a horrendous toothache. I was impressed with how rich it was, so I bought four more quarts - and we used them all within 10 days. :D So there's an extra review for free! :D

This is a wonderfully healthy soup, really; with all the garlic and spinach, it's really good with vitamins. I didn't use half-and-half, because I didn't have any. :D I used 1% milk with a scant 1/2 cup heavy cream. But it was just wonderful; the longer it cooks, the thicker the broth gets. I used Cornish game hen meat we had in the freezer; cooking it again in the soup made it so tender. YUM. It's cool in this room while I'm writing this review, and it's making me wish I had a big bowl of it right here with me. :D The next time I make this, I'm going to do copycat bread sticks, too. Ooooooh......
:D

OK, I'm outta here. SO much to do this weekend!!! Don't forget to leave a comment to win on this blog post!!! (Read it for details!)

BE BLESSED!!!

GIVEAWAY!!!! Biscoff Spread

 

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

Because those few of you who actually READ this blog  allow me to justify my passion for trying new stuff, I want to give away a jar of this Biscoff Spread to SIX of you! (That MIGHT be every single one of you!!! :D )

To be entered to win, simply leave me a comment on this post. Tell me what recipe or review you thought most interesting and why. It's that easy. :) (If you're long-distance, I will do my best to get this to you quickly!) We'll pick a winner on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20. Please enter by NOON! :)

I won a 8-pack case of this from the company, so I'm sharing the love. :) We opened one, so I could let you know a bit about it. If you've seen Biscoff in the stores, you might have wondered about it. Or, you might have tried it - I first had a Biscoff cookie on an airplane. Biscoff cookies played a key role in this recipe I reviewed toward the end of the year. This spread tastes just like the cookies, except creamy! My mom said it tastes like gingerbread. :) It kind of does - the cookies are a type of spice cookie. The product is from Belgium. And the spread bills itself as "a delicious alternative to peanut butter" - but it's much sweeter, in my opinion. You have to try this stuff to understand how difficult it is to describe! LOL

Don't you want to try it? Don't you want to win? :D 

OK, I'm outta here. We're having a nice dinner with my parents tonight; I'm making dessert, which you KNOW means it'll get a review next week. :D Enjoy your day!!!!

Oreo Truffles

 Happy Wednesday! I hope you're having a great week, and have something a little fun planned for tomorrow.

IF you don't, I wanted to share this easy recipe with you! This one's from Just a Pinch, but it's floating around in a LOT of places. :)

Now, you'll notice that the recipe calls for coating these in melted chocolate chips. Personally, that's just too much deep chocolate for me to handle. So I coated some of them in leftover white coating from Christmas, and some I rolled completely in Valentine's sprinkles I picked up last year. My favorites, though, were the ones I simply rolled in confectioner's sugar!

I also used some Oreos that I'd never had before, called Ice Cream Berry Burst. They have pink centers, and I was hoping some of that pink might show up in the centers. Obviously, it didn't. :D But it gave them an interesting flavor. My mom said they had a "nice, mild" flavor; Kenn said they were "very sweet". :D I found them yummy! LOL! And since they were so easy, they're

 Stay tuned for a special post (hopefully tomorrow!) for a GIVEAWAY!

OK, I'm outta here. Have a WONDERFUL day! Be BLESSED!