Creme brulee cheese cake bars

I feel like I have been holding this post hostage and its been trying to escape. So today I am setting it free!!

My husband makes a fantastic vanilla creme brulee! He uses Alton Brown's recipe from food network. And I think the real reason he loves making it is that it involves fire. I mean what is with men and anything to do with fire? So I came across these bars just before his birthday and that is what he wanted right away. It combines his 3 favorite things after all creme brulee, cheesecake, and fire.

These are so tasty but I would make some changes next time. First of all I would try harder to wait the 2 hours to chill haha and second for the sugar  I would use vanilla sugar it just seems to brulee better.

Creme Brulee bars
(From Handle The Heat)

Crust
~9 Graham crackers crushed finely (use food processor or put in bag and use rolling pin)
~1/2 stick of unsalted melted butter
~Line a 8x8 baking dish with foil making sure it has an over hang. This is VERY important as you will have to remove the bars from the dish.

Mix together and press into the foil lined 8x8 baking dish. Bake in a 350° oven for 10 min. Take out and cool. Turn oven down to 300°.

Filling

~2 - 8oz packages of room temp cream cheese
~1 Vanilla bean split and scraped (You use the the seeds scraped from inside)
~2 eggs
~1 egg yolk
~1 Cup granulated sugar (Next time I am using vanilla sugar)
~1/2 teaspoon salt (She uses fine sea salt but I just used plain)

Place cream cheese in your stand mixer and beat until smooth. Mix in the remaining ingredients until well combined. Poor onto your crust. bake for about 45 minutes. You want the filling to still have a slight wiggle to it. Cool completely on counter then chill for 2 hours (if you can hold out haha).

Using the foil that is overhanging remove the bars from the pan and place on heat proof surface. I used a cookie sheet. Cut into squares and sprinkle with more sugar. Torch the tops until you get that pretty amber color of crisp sugar. You can also do this in the broiler but watch them closely.

(You didn't think I was handling the torch did you haha plus its his birthday let the man have fire)

Now the important part ENJOY!!!!!

Lemonade with sprite raspberry ice cubes

So life gave me a bowl of lemons so of course I made lemonade! But first I am going to let you in on a secret about me when I drink lemonade from a fountain machine. I do like 3/4 lemonade and 1/4 sprite! Give its a little bubble and just something extra. So I decided to make some special ice cubes for my lemonade at home. Sprite ice cubes with a raspberry.















It has to be the simplest thing I have ever blogged but again just ads that something special to the drink as they melt.

Ice cubes
-Sprite
-Raspberries
-Ice cube tray

Put a raspberry into each cube of the tray and poor over with sprite. Freeze over night.
Lemonade

-3/4 to 1 cup sugar(depends on how sweet you want it)
-1 cup water
-1 cup fresh lemon juice
-5 cups cold water


Take your sugar and 1 cup water and boil to make a simple syrup. Add the syrup to your pitcher along with the rest of the ingredients. Refrigerate till chilled.


Put a couple cubes into a glass poor the lemonade over and enjoy! Its pretty and tasty and just gets better as the sprite melts.

Lemon Blueberry Bundt Cake

It's summer so I hope you all have been busy enjoying the warm weather and doing fun things with the kids! Me, I have just gotten back from a trip to the east coast where we introduced my daughter to more family. Oh and we moved at the beginning of summer, you would think that's not much fun except now I have my very own LEMON TREE!! 

So with that I always have fresh lemonade in the fridge and am trying to think of what else to do with all the lemons. With summer comes some awesome fruits in the store. So this yummy cake is a classic mixture of lemon and blueberries.

I have never made a bundt cake before I only have the pan because I like monkey bread. To my excitement its probably the easiest cake to make which means be on the look out for more!

What you need

2 3/4 cup all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup room temp butter

1 3/4 cup sugar

4 room temp. eggs

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

1 Tablespoons lemon zest

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup room temp. buttermilk 

1 1/4 cup blueberries mixed with 1 tablespoon flour.

GLAZE

8-10 teaspoons Lemon juice 

1 tablespoon honey

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

What you do

-Pre heat oven to 350

-Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside flour mixture.

-In a stand mixer on medium beat butter until fluffy.

-Beat in sugar until well mixed

-Add eggs one at a time.

-Mix in lemon juice, zest, and vanilla.

-Add flour mixture in 3 parts alternating with the buttermilk.

- Beat for 2-3 minutes. 
-fold in blueberries.

Poor into a buttered bundt pan and bake for 50 minutes. Cool on cooling rack for 20 minutes. Run a sharp knife around the edge and flip out of pan and allow to completely cool

Mix ingredients for the glaze and drizzle over cake. Cut and enjoy!

( This recipe can be seen here though mine has some changes.)

Tortellini Soup

Ok so I haven't posted since December, and lets be honest I have been slacking since I moved last June. In my defense though I hate my kitchen and I had a baby. But now that my baby girl is 5 months old (let me cry just a little for a second) and we are moving to a house where we will have brand new fancy working appliances I will do my best to get back in the swing of things!!!


So to kick it off here is my new obsession, Tortellini soup. This is my take on the one that I originally found on Spark People.

What you need
2-3 links mild Italian Sausage
1 cup onion chopped
3 garlic cloves minced
pinch of red pepper flake
1 can Italian style diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste 
8 oz chopped spinach (frozen is fine but fresh is just better I actually used frozen in these pictures)
20 oz Tortellini
64 oz Chicken broth  (You can do less just depends how much broth you want)


What to do

In a large soup pot brown the sausage and onions season with salt and pepper.

 When almost done add is the garlic and pinch of red pepper flakes. Add in the can of tomatoes and tomato paste cook for 1 minute and add the stock, bring to a boil. Add in tortellini and spinach cook until tortellini is done.

Cake Batter Cut Out Cookies

These are going to be my new go to cookies when I want to use a cookie cutter. I love making sugar cookies at Christmas, you know for Santa haha. But I like my cookies soft and that seems to be a hard thing to get in sugar cookies but not these, they stay soft!!! One thing I have also decided is why stay with white cake mix? I might have to try another flavor too. Here is the simple recipe I found on Pinterest from  Goodness Gracious.


In her recipe she uses Funfetti cake mix but me I had lots of Christmas colored sprinkles around the house that I needed to use up, so I just got white Cake mix and added my own colors. I think this will be great if you are having a party with specific colors.


WHAT YOU NEED

1 box cake mix
2 eggs
1 stick softened butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla

What to do
1. Mix everything together (easy right?)
2. refrigerate from 1 hr then FREEZE for 1 hr
3. Flour your surface where you will roll out VERY WELL. You will also be adding flour ontop of your dough as you roll out because I found this is a very sticky dough.
4. Decorate if you wish (you can of course frost after baking just like any sugar cookie)
5. Bake at 350 12-15 min. Cool on cooling rack.

Here are some pictures of my process.

Step1

 

                         
No pictures for step 2  I don't think you need a picture of my bowl in the fridge and freezer :)
 step 3- 5

Enjoy these sweet and SOFT cut out cookies!!!!

Disney Trip Count Down!!

This past weekend my sister took a break from her own busy life as a working mom and wife to come down and help my husband and I get something things together for our baby arriving this December. So of course I had to show off my Silhouette machine! Her and my Brother-in-law are taking my nephew to Disney land just after Thanksgiving this year, and he is so excited! Well my sister is a pinterest lover and we found this one by Mama Of All Trades and decided Connor needed one! So this is a tutorial about ours!


What you need

-A 9 inch circle cut from card stock backed by a 9 inch piece of chip board to make sturdy (black and white paper)
- An inner scalloped circle measuring (red and white paper)
- A Mickey of course!
-30 clothes pin
-15 red scalloped circles
-15 blue scalloped circles
-30 yellow circles with numbers 1-30 on them measuring to fit inside the red and blue scalloped circles
-A glue gun, runner, stick
-Ribbon for hanging.

 Glue the two 9 inch circles together and then its a simple layering game. Glue on the large scalloped circle and then Mickey with a glue runner and glue stick

Glue even numbers to the small blue scallops and the odd numbers to the red small scallops. After they are glued together hot glue on to the clothes pins. 

Now you are ready to put the numbers around the circle and add your ribbon for hanging!! For our ribbon I did add an eyelet to the top but if you are using a much thicker ribbon you could probably hot glue it on since that ribbon would be stronger than the one we used. The great thing is all we had to buy for this was the clothes pin and you can totally change this up for a holiday count down or a trip to somewhere else. Hey a picture of grandparents and the kids would be cute in the center if you are getting ready to go visit them!

Owl Cup cakes and Halloween party time!!

Happy Halloween!!! 

Well almost at least. Here you are going to find a super cute and easy cupcake along with other links to get your home ready for this spooky holiday. So if you are having a party this year or just want some fun around your house we have some great ideas for you!



Owl Cupcakes 
Lets start with some cute and super easy cupcakes!! These can be done as mini ones like I did or regular, if you choose regular sized just make sure you buy the ingredients in regular size not mini.

What you need:
-Chocolate  Mini cupcakes- use whatever your favorite recipe is (even if it comes in a box)
-Chocolate frosting
-Mini Oreos
-Mini M&M's

Frost your cupcakes lightly. Then start opening up our oreos. The side with cream will be used as the eyes and the side with out you cut in half and use for the ears.

With the mini M&M's you really just need the brown and yellow ones. The yellow ones put on sideways as a nose (see above) and the brown ones put a drop of frosting on and put onto the eyes.

Add the half oreo sides above the eyes(like above). At this point you can be finished or if you want pipe small lines of frosting on the ears to cover the cookies and look like fur and maybe add a little bit of spiked hair around.

I think this are just too cute!!!! I really wish I had gotten big Oreos and M&M's so they could have mommies.

Here are some more fun Halloween ideas for this season

More from my blog:
Halloween Wreath

Pumpkin Frozen yogurt 

Mummy Cupcakes


From my Best Friend Veronica over at Cookingmorningnoonight

Boo Sign

Wrag Wreath


Eye ball Wreath

Monster Munch!