Cookie Dough Dip

Sorry I only got this one picture. I meant to snap a picture in the bowl, but oh well. 

This dip was really quick to make and plenty easy too. I made it the other night in a pinch to take as a snack for our Ladies' Night Out festivities at church and it was rather tasty! I used vanilla wafers to dip with.

Ingredients:
1 stick of butter, softened
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup of white sugar
dash of half and half (about a tablespoon)
1/2 cup of flour
1 cup of mini chocolate chips
1 bag of king size M&M's

Combine all ingredients minus the chocolate chips and M&M's and blend well, adding more flour to get desired thickness. Add chocolate chips and M&M's and stir with a spoon. Dip with Vanilla wafers, pretzels, or animal crackers. Refrigerate if you're not going to use right away, but beware that will make the candies harden!

Hope you enjoy this quick and easy dip!

Love,
Casey

Sister's of the Quilt by Cindy Woodsmall

It is time for me to add some more book reviews. I've been reading and reading and reading, and not reviewing! Whoops!

Title: Sister’s of the Quilt by Cindy Woodsmall

Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis:

When the Heart Cries

Her life among her Amish community brutally interrupted, seventeen-year-old Hannah Lapp faces questions neither family, nor fiancé, nor even faith can easily answer. The first book in the Sisters of the Quilt series, When the Heart Cries will ignite a broader understanding of others’ beliefs and a God-given strength to deal with pain we all experience.

When the Morning Comes

Rejected by those she loves, Hannah Lapp leaves her Amish community and seeks refuge in the world outside, leaving her family and friends to wrestle with the painful truths that emerge in the wake of her disappearance. As she struggles to find her place in the confusing Englischer world, her community deals with the turbulent aftermath of her departure.

When the Soul Mends

Hoping to help her sister, Hannah Lapp reluctantly returns to the Old Order Amish community she fled in disgrace more than two years earlier. When hidden truths are revealed about her former fiancé, she must choose whether to return to the Plain life or to the Englischer man who adores her in this captivating conclusion to the Sisters of the Quilt series.

Date Published: 2010

Acquired: Library

Reading this trilogy was a long time in coming. I checked it out from the library once, ended up taking it back without having read it...checked it out again about two months ago and renewed it three times before I finally applied myself (the reviews I've read on this book simply do not do it justice) rather than reading other things.

I finished reading "Sisters of the Quilt" after a three day marathon. I enjoyed it more than I can say. As far as typical Amish fiction goes, it brought such depth and true novel-writing to the table. It's probably the "noveliest" book series I've read in Amish fiction. It did so much more than tell a simple love story. I really connected with these characters and was very sorry to leave them behind. I got emotionally involved with Hannah’s sister’s mental health issues, with Hannah’s struggles in and out of the Amish community. I was grieved when she was judged so wrongly by her family and friends and I rejoiced with her as she started over, found her aunt, and like every reader, I was so very happy when she found her way back home again and was able to start over with Paul.  

This story just felt a bit more mature and grown up in comparison to so many I have read. Woodsmall’s characters have layer and depth and she did a wonderful, patient, and complete job telling such a rich and complicated story. I’m even more pleased that I enjoyed her so much because she is a fellow Georgian. J

Her story-telling is exceptional and I'm so thankful that I finally opened this book and devoured it appropriately. I read so much that I rarely have a problem setting down a finished book and snatching up another. However, it took me a while to come back out of Hannah and Paul's lives and begin functioning in the present again! For me, that’s a sign of an exceptional story.

Raspberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was looking for something to do and wanted to bake the other day, and decided to see what I could come up with. One of the things I had was a bottle of raspberry extract that I'd bought to bake something and never got around to baking it (I don't even know what that something was anymore), and another was a bag of white chocolate chips (I think I bought them to make Christmas candy). I also had a bag of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix and figured if I could make Mint cookies with mint extract, sugar cookie mix, and chocolate chips, I could very well try other flavors too.

All I used was:

-Betty Crocker Sugar cookie mix
-1 egg
-1 stick of unsalted butter
-1 bag of white chocolate chips
-2 tsp of raspberry extract (you can use as much or as little as you want depending on how well you like raspberry)
- a dash of pink food coloring

Combine everything but the white chocolate in a mixer, add as much food coloring as you need until you have the pink you like. I used Wilson's pink gel and so I just took a small sliver with a knife and dropped it in. A little bit of that stuff goes a long way.

When you've got everything mixed up, add your chocolate chips and stir them in. Then scoop out the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet (I like to use a cookie scoop) and bake in a 375 degree oven for about 8-10 minutes. Let them cool completely before trying to eat or remove from pan.

And viola! Easy and tasty. Husband, sister, and daddy gave a thumbs up, hope y'all like them too!

Love,
Casey

Diaper Cake

A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor invited me to come to her baby shower, which was really exciting because I love being close to our neighbors. It's especially important for us living in a townhome community (what, you didn't really think I lived on a plantation did you? ;-) because we live literally on top of one another. David and I lived here for over a year before we started to make friends - and then we got a dog. Puppies, as most people know, have to be walked on the hour every hour. If anyone else is walking their dog, you're bound to make friends when you're outside all day. I'm really thankful for that - especially now that we have three dogs (hopefully we'll have babies of our own sometime soon before we legally qualify for zoo benefits) and two cats. In any case, I digress. :)

On my neighbor's invite, she mentioned that she really needed diapers and I definitely wanted to honor that. However, I did not want to buy a pack of diapers and drop them in a gift bag. I'd seen a lot of pictures of diaper cakes, and decided I would try to do it myself. I bought one pack of diapers, a spool of ribbon, some cardboard cake plates, easter grass, rubberbands, wooden skewers, some little wooden animals for .57, and a monkey bath puppet. At home I already had a hot glue gun and safety pins.

I really liked the way the rolled up diapers looked, but I then saw that you have to put a rubberband on each of the diapers to secure them. I really didn't want to do that because I didn't want my neighbor to spend an hour disassembling this to use the diapers.

So, using the cake plate on the bottom as a guide for size I started folding the diapers in half and placing them around in a circular shape. Now, I eventually needed my husband to come sit and hold these diapers as I was shaping them. When I was done with the first layer, I took a rubberband and stretched it around to secure the diapers. See why I needed two hands?

Next, I took three wooden skewers and stuck them in the cake vertically as my connectors. Starting with folding a diaper around one skewer, and using my husband's help to secure them, I made a second layer, making sure to fold a diaper around each skewer. Then I used a rubber band to secure them.

I did the exact same thing for the third layer.

Next, I measured out some ribbon, and secured it around each layer to hide the rubber band with a safety pin.

Then, using a glue gun, I glued the animals to the ribbon.

Finally, I safety pinned my monkey bath puppet to the ribbon, and for added measure, looped some scotch tape to stick on both sides and taped the bottom of the cake to the cake plate. And done.

This took me a grand total of about 25-30 mins.

Total cost:
-Diapers: 6.97
-32 rubberbands .67
-Monkey puppet 3.00
-Wooden shapes .57 x 4
-Easter grass 1.37
-Skewers 100 ct .97
-ribbon 2.97
-cake platters 4.00
           
total: $22.23

Not too shabby to do something nice for a friend for under $25. Would it have been cheaper to throw it in a gift bag? Sure, but I wanted to make her feel special, because she is. :) Annnd, if I need to do this again, I will already have most of the things to do it!

Hope you like my diaper cake. Excuse the mess in the background, I forgot to clean up all my materials before I snapped a picture!

Have a blessed day!

Casey

Ground Turkey Lasagna Roll-ups

I've seen a lot of recipes for lasagna roll ups around, and honestly this one isn't going to be hugely different. However, most of them lack a key ingredient that has to be included if my husband is going to be enthusiastic about dinner - meat. So without sacrificing the healthy integrity of this meal, I decided that some lean ground turkey would be a smart addition.

Ingredients:

9 Lasagna noodles
15 oz of Ricotta cheese
Spinach (I used about half a container of organic spinach)
1 jar of tomato sauce (we use Ragu because we like to be fancy :)
3/4 of a block of Mozzarella cheese shredded
1 egg
1/2 cup of parmesan cheese
1 lb of ground turkey
1 tsp of minced garlic
1 tsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp of steak sauce
1 tsp of garlic powder
salt and pepper


To get started I got out a pan to brown the turkey, added minced garlic, Worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, garlic powder, salt, pepper and Italian seasoning (I do this to help the turkey have a more beefy flavor since the palate is used to having beef not turkey with lasagna). While that browns I am also boiling the lasagna noodles in one pot and cooking the spinach in another. That's multitasking! But the spinach and noodles are pretty low maintenance, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Noodles on my stove take about 9-10 minutes to get the texture I like them; you likely know how to make your own noodles though and so I suggest you cook them the way you like.

When the noodles are done, drain them and drape them around the container to dry somewhat (they'll be easier to handle that way), drain the spinach and chop it up, and take the browned turkey off the heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix the container of ricotta cheese, egg and parmesan cheese. Add ground turkey and spinach and stir well. On a piece of parchment paper, lay your noodles flat and line them with the ricotta turkey mixture. Be careful not to overfill them, lest when you roll them up the mixture falls out. Roll up your lasagna noodle and place them into a greased 9x13 baking dish. Pour over the tomato sauce evenly then top with shredded mozzarella cheese. Bake for 40 minutes on 350.

As always, I hope that you will enjoy this recipe.

Have a blessed day!

Whole Wheat Loaf Bread

If you're ever thinking about reading about the effects of MSG vs eating real food to protect yourself from scary chemicals and unnecessary ingredients in your food - I'd suggest you rethink going down that road unless you'd like to enhance some serious neurosis about food chemicals. Unfortunately, a bout of insomnia brought about an intense google-study of MSG and now I am a woman on a mission. I used to think Skim milk was good for you - boy was I wrong. It's not even really milk. So scary and gross. I've become a whole milk dairy kind of person overnight and I have sworn off of already shredded cheeses and about two dozen other things. It's made me look at food entirely differently. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it though, unless you want to be reconsidering all the foods you buy at the grocery store. So I give you caution. Just buy whole milk and take my word for it. :)

Anyway, another result of me reading up on all this stuff was my new dedication to get all kinds of unnecessary sugar out of our diets. For instance, why is there extra sugar in bread? Doesn't it just turn to sugar via digestion anyway? Why do I need sugar on sugar on processed flour that turns into sugar? I decided I wanted to try my hand at making my own whole wheat bread. There are a ton of recipes out of there and they're all kinds of different. I think the end result must be similar though, right? I picked this one though, for three reasons.

1. There was no call to put processed sugar into the batter (It calls for honey instead).
2. There was a video tutorial.
3. It sounds like Giada de Laurentes narrating (I'm not sure that's so, but hey, it made me feel pretty good at giving it a try).

*Also, it has good reviews. This blog post is another one. :)

So I'm just going to direct you to it here.

I was pretty intimidated by the whole bread making process. Could I do it? What if I made a mess and wasted all these ingredients? I'd never kneaded anything! But I bit the bullet and calmed down, realizing that I was shutting myself down without even trying. I discovered that this is the kind of recipe that it's not a huge deal if you make a mistake and don't do everything just perfect. Everything is going to turn out pretty good as long as you do it as close as you can. I've now made this bread twice and both times it's turned out pretty tasty. I'm still working on the storage execution. For now I'm wrapping it in a clean towel and putting it in a large rubbermaid container. I need to get a bread bag or something. That'll be for the future.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe link. 

Key Lime Cupcakes

Cake mix

1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour

1 1/2 tsp of baking powder

2 large eggs

3/4 cup of white sugar

1 stick of unsalted butter

1/2 cup of buttermilk

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 T of Key Lime Juice

1/2 tsp salt

Green and Yellow food coloring

Frosting

2 sticks of unsalted butter

2 tsp of Key Lime Juice

2 cups powdered sugar

1 heaping tsp vanilla

Zest of one Lime

Cupcakes:

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees. Allow butter to soften to room temperature. To aid with this process, I take a stick out of the fridge and cut it into chunks or slices before I do anything else and dump it in my mixer bowl to soften while I do other things. While that's getting soft, combine flour, baking powder, and salt together in a separate bowl and whisk well. Set it aside. Now is when I take my time getting everything else ready (so my butter can soften, you know). I line my cupcake pan with liners, measure out my milk, go ahead and dump the sugar into the mixing bowl with the butter, take my eggs out and crack and whisk them together in a small bowl, set out the vanilla, etc. THEN when I can think of nothing else to do, I turn on my mixer and cream the butter and sugar well. Depending on how patient, or impatient, I have been, I might have to turn my mixer on high to make sure the butter and sugar are well creamed. Make sure you take a spatula and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl to get out excess sugar that's tried to get away.

Next add your egg mixture (I usually pour in half, mix, and then pour in the rest and mix again), again the time to make sure all is getting mixed and not sticking to the sides or bottom. Add vanilla.

Finally, it's time to alternate adding the dry ingredients with the milk. A good rule of thumb for baking in general is to begin with the dry and end with the dry. You're going to have way more flour mix than you do milk, so give generous with the dry and sparingly with the wet, stopping to mix each in the batter before adding the other. In the end, you'll add your Key lime juice. This is usually pretty easy to find in the grocery store with the baking supplies. If you can't find it, though, I don't see why regular lime juice wouldn't do the trick.

Once you've got your batter, this is where you will add the green and yellow food coloring. Mix just a dash at a time until you're getting the color you like. It might take a try or two to get it right. If there's an exact science to this I haven't discovered it yet!

Lastly, a good rule I follow for filling cupcake liners is a little bit more than halfway, about 3/4's because I like my cupcakes to rise above the paper. I don't know why they taste better to me that way, they just do. I take either a Tablespoon spoon or a cookie dough scoop and fill them up about three scoops each. My goal is to make them all even. If you're making 12, then you should have no batter left over.

Bake them for about 18-20 minutes.

Frosting:

When the cupcakes are cool enough, I cut up two sticks of cold butter and a heaping tsp of vanilla and cream them in my mixer until they are no longer solid. I then add the powdered sugar one cup at a time and mix well until all is combined. Then add the key lime juice and lime zest. If you're not a huge fan of the zest, half it. I just think it looks pretty with the frosting and the smell is so refreshing while you're zesting! To frost these, I simply filled a ziplock back with the frosting and snipped the corner. It doesn't exactly look professional, but I thought it was cute enough since I was making these for a friend's birthday.

Hope you like this really easy recipe!

Casey