Along Came a Crockpot...

And all of a sudden I know how to cook...kind of.  I love that since I started working from home and now that I'm just home most of the day, I can really utilize my crockpot.  Not to say that I couldn't when I worked outside of the house, but I'm still hesitant to leave something plugged in and emanating heat for 8 hours of the day.  I don't want to be the one at fault for burning our house down. ;-) And because I haven't mastered cooking full-on meals, I've resorted to easing into my cooking escapades slowly by using the "slow cooker".  Ooh, the irony! 

My bf loves his meat just like pretty much every guy does, so when I found this Pulled BBQ Chicken recipe on How Sweet It Is, I knew he would LOVE it! And for someone like me who doesn't usually gravitate towards meaty dishes, it actually looked pretty darn delicious!  I used some variations in the way I prepared it, so I'll explain...

Jessica used 6 large chicken breasts in her recipe, but I knew that 1) it's just Mike and I eating this and 2) Mike can't stand leftovers (except for a good pizza or Hamburger Helper dish, and maybe this would be included but I didn't want to take my chances) so I decided to halve the recipe. 

Here's what I used...if you compare hers to mine you'll find I used some creative liberties in mine ;-) but I gotta say, it totally worked!

Ingredients:

3 large boneless and skinless chicken breasts

1/2 Tablespoon of paprika

1/4 teaspoon of garlic salt

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

8 oz. of beer (yup same amount she used with less chicken just because the BBQ sauce I used was thicker than hers, so I wanted the extra liquid to thin out the BBQ sauce a bit)

1/2 bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (about 14 oz.) 

So, while at the grocery store I thought for sure I saw "Sweet Baby Ray's" BBQ sauce on the recipe...well, I did...but it was the example of what NOT to use as it is a thicker sauce and may burn if left too long in the crockpot.  Because of the thickness of the sauce I used what I call a "thin" beer rather than the Amber kind Jessica used.  I used 8oz. of a Corona.  

I woke up rather late and the recipe called for 8 hours of crock pot cooking...at 10:30 I was not about to be eating dinner at 7-8 at night.  No Sir-ee!

So, I poured the BBQ sauce and beer in the crockpot and stirred till both were evenly mixed.  Then, I seasoned the chicken with all the spices and added it to the crockpot.  I cooked on HIGH for about 1.5 hours before turning the crockpot to LOW.  I allowed the chicken to cook for another 2 hours before switching the crockpot to WARM for another 3 hours.  We were ready to eat at about 6! 

Every so often I would turn the chicken making sure all sides were adequately cooked and soaking up the sauces.  By doing so, the chicken started to pull away from itself on its own.  It really was perfection! 

I used a Colombo Potato Dinner Roll as the bun for our mini pulled BBQ chicken sliders.  And from my Best of Betty Crocker Magazine, I made a perfect bowtie pasta salad to go with the meal.  

Mike was definitely satisfied with my cooking choice and devoured 3 mini sliders in minutes!

And as promised...the apple treats are still a-comin! I will be making Mini Apple Pies tomorrow :-) I can't wait!

I'm gettin' fancy!

It's been awhile since I made my first cakepop...and I've mastered not only the rounded shape and the smooth candy coating. I think I've mastered the best flavors as well...which frostings will go best with what cake and so on. And today I've stepped up my game to the next level and incorporated food coloring gel!

I've always wanted to use the food coloring gel since I used Little Miss Momma's tutorial on how to make cakepops. She used this great light blue swirly-doo a-top the cakepop...but I just wasn't ready at the time for that much pizzazz.

Don't her's look amazing! This is what I was going for today...

My boyfriend's good friend Lisa is a fanatic of cupcakes, cakepops, probably anything to do with cake. So I told her I would make a batch of cakepops for her special day.

So my swirly-doos aren't as spectacular as hers but I tried! I added a touch of star sprinkles...ya, gotta make a "wish upon a star" on your birthday ;-) (Corny, yea?)

Might I add...I did a splendid job!

Can't forget to wrap it up all purrty like! I had a great little basket and bought some cellophane to tie all together.

And there you go!

I also happened upon these bad boys below at the dollar store...I'm warning you... they are killer delicious! They taste like teensy versions of cakepops. I had them devoured for breakfast with my coffee the other day. It was a great combo!

Arroz Con Leche

That's just what I made today!

I knew I liked rice pudding from ages ago when my sister put the Kozy Shack Original Rice Rudding into the grocery cart. I'm still not sure how she knew it would be good...but it was phenomenal!

Then, while taking a breakfast run to the cafeteria at work one day, I stumbled upon Arroz Con Leche. Usually, anything sweet for breakfast is right up my alley! And it was heavenly. The hot milk, and the texture of the rice, and it's sweetness combined to make a quite sinful breakfast. Unfortunately (or fortunately for my tummy) the cafeteria only offered Arroz Con Leche on Fridays. Therefore, it became a dangerous weekly routine. :-/

Now that I'm no longer working onsite...I thought I'd try my hand at figuring out how to make Arroz Con Leche. I found this great recipe from Food Network Star: Ingrid Hoffman. The process is very easy but does require a bit of time. However, there's a lot of down time in between some steps.

Step 1: Soak 1 cup of long grain white rice (I used Jasmine rice) into 4 cups of water with 2 cinnamon sticks for 1 hour. See...I told you there'd be some down time ;-)

Step 2: Heat the water and rice to a boil (about 5 minutes) and then lower heat to cook for 10 minutes or until water is almost evaporated.

Step 3: While boiling water...beat 1 egg in medium bowl and then add 3 cups of whole milk (I used 2%) and mix well. Add the egg mixture to the rice. Then, add 1 can of sweetened condensed milk (12 oz.) and 1 tablespoon of Vanilla extract to the rice. Heat over low-medium heat, stirring carefully. Heat until it thickens for about 25 to 35 minutes. Note: As it cools, the rice mixture will continue to thicken!

Step 4: Consume!!!

As you can see, I topped mine with some extra cinnamon!

My craving has successfully been satisfied and...I think I ate too much ;-)

Cake Pops!

Only recently have I really desired to learn how to make cake pops. It was after a baptism where they had cake pops as the party favor did I learn how freaking amazing they are! I always thought they looked extremely difficult to conquer (and I'm in no way saying they are the easiest thing to make) but it made so much more sense after following the detailed visual instructions from Ashley Stock's blog. So with her expertise, I went to town... literally.

Had to stop at Michael's for a few supplies: candy melts, cake pop sticks, and styrofoam (I'm gonna keep you guessing as to why styrofoam is needed).

Candy Melts

So you bake your cake as usual (as the box tells you), let it cool, and dump the thing in a bowl with half a container of your choice frosting. I would go with the same flavor as your cake, but but it's all about creativity so whatever floats your boat. Then mash away! Once mashed, roll the cake into 1-inch balls.

Now here is where I'm going to insert some things I've learned. Use less of a roll and more of a compact. If you roll the cake until its a solid ball, you've pretty much got yourself cake dough all over again. I didn't realize this until all my cake was in the form of highly dense rolled cake balls. So a more compacting technique may get you a cake-ier consistency which, I would think is what it's all about.

Technique tip: The balls should be somewhat small as a small carboard stick needs to withhold the cake balls weight (another reason you don't want dense balls ;-)

Confetti Cake with Rainbow Chip Frosting

Once the cake balls are formed, the sticks must be placed. So, microwave the candy melts until smooth adding a large spoonful of shortening for thinner consistency. Dab the stick into the melted candy and place in the cake ball. Should look like the picture below once sticks are placed.
Technique time: After sticks are placed, use a styrofoam base as a holder for the cake pops. The stick should be able to harden to the cake ball in this right side up fashion. Because my cake balls were so dense and large, the stick fell right through the cake ball despite the candy melt "glue" to hold it in place.


Once the candy melt glue has hardened to withhold the cake balls weight you are ready for dipping and covering the entire cake ball with the candy coating.
Now, as you can see below, I have not perfected the "covering of the cake ball", so I really don't have any techniques tips for this part of the project. However, I can tell you that the consumers have thus far loved the extra glob of candy coating. I had to dump this extra glob on so my cake ball would finally stick to the stick, but the presentation was/is awful! With some practice, I will master the candy coating adding sprinkles, colored icing, and more decortions!

So ta-dah! Here they are all set in my cake tupperware ready for my consumers at work.