Strawberry season is here! We love to go to a local farm and pick gallons at a time. Some we snack on, some we slice and freeze for later, and some end up in delicious recipes. We make strawberry balsamic chicken salads, strawberry smoothies and other delights, but my favorites are the sweet treats. One of our Mother’s Day traditions is to go pick berries together (usually the Saturday before), so I wanted to create something that we could enjoy for brunch on the special day. Making brunch with a toddler requires some planning, and recipes that you throw in the oven are ideal. That’s where the chocolate covered strawberry baked French toast comes in. It comes together easily and bakes for 40 minutes, giving you time to get ready, set the table and welcome you guests to a warm sweet breakfast right out of the oven. READ MORE
Brittney Lee is a native Arkansan with a love for bright lights and big city. She often escapes her 20-acre home south of Fort Smith to shop, eat, and catch a concert in the big city. She blogs about her life, her family, her faith, her adventures, and her country home at RazorbackBritt.com.
I had the pleasure of attending a French Croissant Workshop last week. It was the first step in crossing off a goal on my life bucket list: make chocolate croissants from scratch. To find out how Gina’s adventure READ MORE.
Anita Stafford: Chocolate Kiss Bundt Cake
At holiday time I am often desperate for help in the kitchen. If you stop by to visit while I’m cooking, you may find yourself wearing an apron, and I’m not picky about age or gender. I handed the recipe for this chocolate bundt cake to an eleven-year-old boy. I was up to my neck preparing casseroles, and I was running out of time to finish the baking. He had never baked a cake before, and he did an amazing job. He’s my official sous chef now. His cake was the centerpiece for the dessert table. I think it has everything that makes a cake perfect. It’s easy, it’s pretty, and it’s chocolate. For the recipe READ MORE
Keisha McKinney: Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice
The weather got cool this week. The afternoon sun is perfection. My yard is covered with leaves and the colors they are a changing. All that means is when I’m on Pinterest and I see anything pumpkin, my eyeballs turn to hearts and I get all googly eyed!!!
Such was the case last week when I ran across a new pumpkin bread recipe from the Domestic Rebel. Baby cravings have me eating all kinds of weird things at odd times, but in the middle of the afternoon I decided it was time to make a treat we could eat after dinner that night….. so I did. READ MORE
Lydia Sartain: Beyond Easy Pumpkin De-Lite
I get it, half of you are like enough already lady, we get it. YOU LOVE pumpkin, while the other half is stoked every time they see the work pumpkin in a title. Well I will try to tame my pumpkin wand after this recipe! MAYBE….READ MORE
Photo Courtesy of Key Ingredient https://www.keyingredient.com/articles/5548702331699200/attention-grabbing-fall-salads/
Mel Lockcuff and Debbie Arnold: Published on Key Ingredients
Once upon a time, Mom would chop up a head of iceberg, throw on some mayo and call it a salad. Maybe toss in a chopped tomato for a special occasion. Salad was always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Seen, but not heard. In the chorus, not the star. You get the idea – boring!
I did not think I would fall into the continued excitement over the “Sweet Potato Brownies”, in fact I laughed with a good friend about how they sound more like “Frownies, fake brownies”. The truth is the recipe has been around for a while but for some reason just now caught everyone’s attention on social media and Pinterest. I decided I needed to try them for myself and see if they were worth all the fuss. READ MORE
Turtle candy yes or no? If you answered yes then you are going to love this Chocolate Turtle Slab Pie! If I could only use 3 words to describe this recipe, decadent is the first word that comes to mind, followed by easy and huge. I’m talking one ginormous, scrumptious, crowd pleasing and feeding kind of pie that couldn’t be simpler.
This pie uses an 18x13x1 sheet pan. Even if you don’t have a crowd to please, you can easily cut the recipe in half and use a quarter sheet pan that’s only 13x9x1.
Go on and get in that kitchen. This recipe will make you be glad that you did. READ MORE
Lacie is a busy mom who blogs about making everyday life easier. When she isn’t blogging, you will usually find her volunteering at her kiddo’s school. Lacie wants to share her easy recipes, DIY projects, and school related ideas with other busy moms everywhere.
Keisha Pittman McKinney shares her chocolate pie and the sweet story behind how it came to be such a family favorite.
So, I figured out pretty quickly that pie was the quickest way to Mr. McKinney’s heart. And more specifically his mama/Grandma’s chocolate pie.Its makes an appearance at every holiday, birthday, or when he is home and just says, “mom, I think pie would be really good.”My grandmother made pies and frankly pies are my favorite dessert too, so I was so ok with that.
Heck, we love pies so much, we threw cake out the window in our wedding planning and had a pie bar instead! I found out who made the best homemade chocolate pies in the town where we got married and I hired a “grandma” to make about 30 chocolate pies that she delivered the morning of our wedding. It was perfection!
Year 2 of marriage found me brave enough to ask for Grandma’s recipe and try to attempt it on my own.I just opted for my grandmother’s or Ree’s recipe in year 1…or when my mother-in-law asked what she could bring to our house, I would keep it simple and ask for her to bring the chocolate pie and save me messing it up. READ MORE
Keisha (Pittman) McKinney is settling in to married life in South AR after she #becamemrsmckinney.A Digital Media Director by day for a church in Northwest Arkansas, Keisha is remembering what it’s like to plan ahead for shopping trips to “the city,” getting resourceful at her small town Walmart and creating online shopping personas everywhere.She blogs @bigpittstop about daily adventures, cooking escapades, #bigsisterchats, the social justice cases on her heart, and all the activities tied to becoming a new mama in Jan 2018!
It’s June and while it may not officially be summer, school is out and the summer heat is just getting turned on.My garden is finally getting the kick it needed. One of the few fruits of my yard I have been enjoying is my raspberries.They over spill in a flower bed near our back porch.I have a table where I write and draw at that’s right next to the raspberry bed.I can reach out and snatch a snack when needed.As a teenager I developed a sever allergy to the “other red berry” so raspberries are my go to berries.
While these late spring temps are still pleasant we know the heat is coming. One thing I always look for as the temperatures rise outside is a way to cook that does not heat up my house. Dessert, in my opinion, is often greatly overlooked. Sometimes you just want a little dessert that doesn’t involve a major baking event.A small one or two serving creation doesn’t sit around on your counter tempting you to indulge.So in my desire to beat the heat and not eat a whole cake myself I created this microwave cup of cake recipe.
I can hear you now. “Microwave?!”But trust me on this.Think of it as a grown up much tastier version of our Easy Bake Oven adventures.The recipe is easily adaptable to many flavors.But since I have raspberries in abundance and there’s always an occasion for chocolate, I whipped up this version of a Choco-Raspberry Micro Cake.
This is also a quick and easy recipe for the kids to make.Watch the video of my son and me whipping up a bowl.
Combine all dry ingredients into a small mixing bowl with a fork.
Whisk all remaining wet ingredients with the fork in a liquid measuring cup.
Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Lightly grease 2-3 coffee cups, ramekins, or 1 cereal bowl. Toss in a few raspberries. Pour batter halfway up baking dish. Place the cup on a plate in case the cup overflows while cooking.
Microwave on high in two 30-second intervals. Cook in 15-second intervals until you can smell the chocolate.
Be careful because the cake and cup will be hot. Top with whipped cream, ice cream, or powdered sugar and enjoy!
I love weird stuff – to a degree. In particular, I love midcentury modern weirdness, and I found this cake on Mid Century Menu, a blog about recipes and cocktails from the 1930s-1970s (sometimes beyond, but who’s counting?).
As a kid, my mama would make chocolate cake with leftover mashed potatoes. Did I care? Not a whit. And, I would not have known if she hadn’t told me. When I ran across this recipe, I knew I had to make it for a number of reasons, including:
My love of cake, first and foremost;
My love of pinto beans;
My love of weird things, particularly cheap, fast and easy weird things; and
I needed a dish for a church potluck.
Something that spoke to me about this recipe, besides being unusual, is its use of cheap, readily-available items almost everyone has in their cabinets. Pinto beans (and mashed potatoes, for that matter) sustained by family for generations, and we ate what was prepared until they were gone – no tossing anything out because we were tired of eating it. Essentially, the pinto beans in this cake serve as a filler so you don’t have to use as much flour for volume, and they are tasteless after the cake has baked, the same way the mashed potatoes are in my mother’s chocolate cake.
I like to think this recipe was born by someone who made too many beans, wanted to create some way of feeding them to her family one last time but had too few ingredients (or money with which to buy them), and made something actually delicious with what she had on hand. You can find the original recipe at MidCenturyMenu, but I simplified this even more to be as cheap, fast and easy as possible. My version is below, and the steps I took to make it are somewhat unorthodox, too.
The main thing to keep in mind with this cake is to use what you have on hand. Have some apples or pears about to go bad? Dice those up and toss 2 cups into the cake instead of the can of apple pie filling. Have leftover nuts from Christmas? Chop those and use in place of the walnuts. If you don’t have raisins, replace with canned pineapple or leave them out altogether.
If you use the cinnamon and sugar combination to prepare the bundt pan, you may notice your cake comes out dark. Rest assured, it’s not burned. You can use flour if you’d prefer, but I like to use the sugar and cinnamon to give the cake a little extra crunch and flavor.
And the original recipe called for cooked pinto beans that were fresh, dried or frozen. I used canned because it’s what I had available, they are already cooked, and I can’t taste any difference between canned and the other preparations.
As for how much time to bake the cake, I say start with 50 minutes and add or subtract time according to your oven. Everyone’s oven bakes differently so keep an eye on the cake after 50 minutes and check for doneness in 5-minute increments.
To ice or not to ice? I say a cake without icing is a great big muffin. You can make homemade frosting, dust the cooled cake with powdered sugar, ice with whipped cream or grab a cheap can of store-bought frosting, melt it to pourable consistency in the microwave and drizzle to your heart’s content. Whatever you do, this cake will stand up to it.
I hope you try this and are pleasantly surprised. If you’ll excuse me, I have cake to eat.
KD Reep is a writer, public relations practitioner and aspiring romance author in Little Rock. She owns Flywrite Communications Inc., a marketing communications agency in Mabelvale. She is a six-time recipient of the Public Relations Society of America’s Prism award and has been published statewide as well as in the Arkansas Times, Savvy Magazine, Bourbon & Boots, Arkansas Money & Politics, Delta Farm Press and Rice Farmer magazine, among others.
I’ve always heard it said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But, I’m convinced that not just any meal will do.
As a single gal one thing I’m thankful I snagged from my mama is her cooking skills. (I guess it doesn’t hurt that I look just like her too!)
But, I’m pretty sure if I knew my house were burning down, there are about 3 things I’d quickly grab and the typed collection of my mama’s recipes are at the top of that list.
See, at our house, food was the way you told someone you loved them. Whether it was a German Chocolate pie when my dad got a promotion at work or a pasta dinner to carb load the night before my sister’s big soccer game, she always came through with just the right meal.
So, one can only assume then that if one were on a manhunt, then one would prepare a meal. **hypothetically of course! **
I recently found myself walking into my Sunday night bible study with what I thought was a perfectly prepared offering for the dinner menu that had been posted on our Facebook page. What I quickly found out was I was the only one who showed up with a 9 x13. Everything else was in its original grocery store container and displayed perfectly for our smorgasbord buffet. Much to my amusement the new guy in the group was standing closest to the delectable delight I had hauled across town in my carriage which was protecting the dessert I had just removed from the oven moments before I left the house.
“What’s wrong with these people?” was my first thought. But I quickly learned that girls my age don’t really do much home cookin’. (Which surely has to give me the upper edge?) So, I’ll keep showing up with homemade desserts and hope at some point it will overcome all my other faults.
The way I see it, I have two options: show up with a homemade layer cake or bat my eyelashes and twirl my hair. Since my lashes are stubs and I’m not one for putting up fronts, I’m gonna stick to mama’s recipes. They worked for my daddy and he’s a pretty cool dude.
So, today I’m sharing with you Dirt Dessert – the last menu item I made and carried to a man’s house to finish off the menu, just the way my mama fixes it on a summer afternoon while dad’s mowing the yard! After all, everybody needs a treat for dinner.
Mixthe pudding and milk in bowl and set aside. The pudddig will thicken while you prepare the other ingredients.
Crush the cookies in food processor (If you don’t have a food processor, put them in a gallon Zip loc bag and crush with a rolling pin or meat mallet – you know the tools you’ll use to chase him when he’s your husband later!)
Beat together the cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth.
Add in vanilla and mix thoroughly.
Fold in ½ of the tub frozen whipped topping.
Reserve ½ cup of cookie crumbs; spread the remainder of the crumbs across the bottom of 9x13 baking dish.
Top with the cream cheese mixture and spread evenly.
Cover cream cheese mixture with pudding, spreading evenly to edges. Cover top with remaining frozen whipped topping and sprinkle with reserved cookie crumbs.
Notes
I’m not a fan of the worms. I just don’t feel like grown men are into gummy worms, but if you’re making this for kiddos or another occasion, feel free to make it a little more “fun” and add your own gummy creepy treats! And of course, it’s always better when served in a container where you can see all the pretty layers – to make the layers, split the cream cheese and pudding layers in half and save a few cookies for in between.
By Keisha Pittman of Big Pitt Stop
Arkansas Women Bloggers https://arkansaswomenbloggers.com/
While I’ve still not snagged the man, I’m going to guess it has nothing to do with the menu. The right one just hasn’t eaten any of my treats yet!
Keisha Pittman is learning to dance in the rain and glory in the rainbows. She started a blog, bigpittstop.blogspot.com, to tell the story of her walk through cancer. Five years later, she’s kicked cancer’s butt, and learned to navigate life a little differently. A self-proclaimed nerd, there’s nothing she won’t try, no side road she won’t take and no recipe she won’t improve. Lucky for us, she likes to talk about her adventures with a healthy dose of self-deprecation humor, and always looks for the good in every situation and person. Come follow along.
Before I had kids, I threw the best parties. Any occasion to celebrate, I would open my house and gleefully experiment in the kitchen. I would decorate my house for every holiday and had cute dishes to take to all the parties we went to. Ohhh… and I was a size 4.
Now…
There are two rotting pumpkins on my front porch which, although gross, shows signs of progress as per the fact that we actually decorated with something this year to celebrate fall. My husband Ben is already groaning that he will have to get the Christmas decorations out soon and last year- try not to judge- we didn’t even have a Christmas tree up. I can’t serve more than five people with matching plates at the moment and my “fancy Christmas dish” is a bent Christmas-colored tin that I saved after someone gifted us with a plate of cookies. Moving, having two crazy boys and just good life living have broken a thing or two along the way. C’est le ve. Ohhh and I’m not going to tell you what size jeans I’m wearing today…
Life has been very different- working full time obviously takes up a lot of time and since I’m not home physically anymore, those little free pockets of unexpected time that I had to play with flour, water and sugar in the kitchen have evaporated. These days, I need something quick, dependable yet delicious as chocolate chip cookies for pop-up dinners, community groups and parties.
I love gourmet, will forever search out the fancy and savor the special but for my plain, hectic and frugal phase of life that I am in right now, I have found my special, go-to dessert. Texas Sheet Cake.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Texas Sheet Cake before. It was my Minnesota mother-in-law who introduced me which I find a humorous irony as I’m the one FROM TEXAS but nonetheless I am thankful. At first, I was embarrassed to bring “such a basic recipe” but, event after event I watched people’s faces light up with recognition, watched their eyes close as they took a bite and carried home an empty cookie sheet. I changed my mind.
Really this is the best dessert. You can mix it in a few minutes, it only takes 15 minutes to bake and the homemade icing is a breeze. The incredibly moist, rich, and flavorful cake combined with the chocolaty, buttery icing is one of the best tastes around and because there is no way that I could just follow a recipe without changing it just a little, this cake recipe has been gourmet-ed up for you here today, but don’t worry, it also works when you just have the basic ingredients.
Oh and this is also for my Vlogging Bestie- Taylor over at Texas Women Bloggers! Hey girl! 😉
2 cups flour (OR 1 1/2 cups white flour, 1/2 cup coconut flour)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 Great Day Farms organic eggs
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla (home-made is best! If you can't, just buy a high quality one.)
1 teaspoon Ceylon cinnamon (I put 2 tsp in my cake!)
1 teaspoon chili powder (optional)
Icing
1 stick margarine (1/2 cup)
4 tablespoon cocoa powder
5 Tablespoon milk (or almond milk)
1 tsp vanilla
1 pound powdered sugar
optional: crushed walnuts
Cake
In a saucepan, add margarine, cocoa, oil and water. Boil for 2-3 minutes.
Mix remaining ingredients together in a large bowl. Add cocoa mixture, mix well.
Bake in a 15 x 10-in.ch jelly roll pan coated with nonstick spray at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
Cool and frost.
Icing
Boil margarine, cocoa and milk for 3 min. Add remaining ingredients, mix well. While still warm, spread on cool cake.
Notes
Bonus: (for the nights you have an extra 15 minutes)
So much of a recipe is about presentation so on the nights you aren't running out with burning fingers and dripping icing, take a little time to make your cake look as good as it tastes!
After the cake is cool and the icing hardens, carefully cut into large squares. Stack on a plate as neatly as possible in a pyramid shape or put 1 large slice on a desert plate.
Get your sifter out and lightly sift powered sugar on top, then a bit of unsweetened cocoa. Top with a mint leaf and raspberry.
If it's for a Christmas party, sprinkle on some crumbled peppermints.
Enjoy having the best tasting thing at the party!
By Heidi Clark of The Busy Nothings
Arkansas Women Bloggers https://arkansaswomenbloggers.com/
Glammed UpTexas Sheet Cake
Cake:
4 Tablespoons cocoa powder
2 sticks margarine (1 cup)
1/2 cup oil
1 cup water
2 cups flour (OR 1 1/2 cups white flour, 1/2 cup coconut flour)
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 Great Day Farms organic eggs
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla (home-made is best! If you can’t, just buy a high quality one.)
1 teaspoon Ceylon cinnamon (I put 2 tsp in my cake!)
1 teaspoon chili powder (optional)
In a saucepan, add margarine, cocoa, oil and water. Boil for 2-3 minutes. Mix remaining ingredients together in a large bowl. Add cocoa mixture, mix well. Bake in a 15 x 10-in.ch jelly roll pan coated with nonstick spray at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Cool and frost.
Boil margarine, cocoa and milk for 3 min. Add remaining ingredients, mix well. While still warm, spread on cool cake.
Bonus: (for the nights you have an extra 15 minutes)
So much of a recipe is about presentation so on the nights you aren’t running out with burning fingers and dripping icing, take a little time to make your cake look as good as it tastes!
After the cake is cool and the icing hardens, carefully cut into large squares. Stack on a plate as neatly as possible in a pyramid shape or put 1 large slice on a desert plate.
Get your sifter out and lightly sift powered sugar on top, then a bit of unsweetened cocoa. Top with a mint leaf and raspberry.
If it’s for a Christmas party, sprinkle on some crumbled peppermints.
Enjoy having the best tasting thing at the party!
Heidi is a wife, mom and lover of beauty. She has been blogging since 2007 and enjoys writing about a variety of topics on her lifestyle blog TheBusyNothings.com, which she now writes with a few friends as co-contributors. Heidi is the director of social media marketing for Great Day Farms and loves that her passion for social media and writing are now what she does full time.
Perusing my collection of cookbooks you’d probably find it interesting seeing Disney’s Family Cookbook {link: http://www.amazon.com/Disneys-Family-Cookbook-Irresistible-Recipes/dp/078686382X } amongst all the other more grown-up cookbooks. I bought it fifteen or sixteen years ago when I was a nanny. I loved cooking and baking for my charges and this particular cookbook was fabulous for baking with kids.
It’s filled with simple, tasty recipes easy enough for kids to help with, whether it’s scooping flour, mixing batters, or even just licking the spoon. The book is filled with large, colorful photographs, easy-to-read recipes, and comes spiral bound for easy maneuvering. The outside cover is durable enough to stand up to sticky hands {as evidenced by my much used copy} and splatters wipe off easily.
I remember making these multiple times and enjoying them every time. With this batch, however, I received only mediocre results. The muffins were better eaten immediately after baking, but seemed dry after a few hours. Reheating didn’t seem to help. Also, I would definitely recommend adding 2 teaspoons of jam instead of the as-written one teaspoon.
I was slightly disappointed that they just didn’t taste the way I remembered them! So, I asked myself how I could make them better and this is what I heard:
“Self, what goes with peanut butter better than anything??” And, I answered! Chocolate.
I added five “chunks” of Nestle Tollhouse Chunks per muffin. In retrospect, I could have added at least five more.
I liked the chocolate better, but sadly, they were still a tad too dry for my liking. Any foodies out there have any suggestions how to improve this recipe?
Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Muffins {Foodie Friday} Written by Kelly Peterson of Kelly’s Pink Bicycle.
I’m not a gluten-free expert. In fact, if there was a level below novice, I’d be in that category. But we have recently found that my husband appears to be somewhat gluten-intolerant, and since I love him very much I am learning to cook with his needs in mind.
However, gluten-free baking is INTIMIDATING. I didn’t realize how many different types of flours existed until I began scanning through gluten-free recipes for bread, donuts, pastries, and cakes. I’ve been sticking to lots of rice and vegetable dishes because they’re healthy and easy to make, but this past weekend I decided to venture outside my comfort zone and bake.
I decided to start small with my version of gluten-free chocolate chip muffins, adapted from a recipe from Arrowhead Mills. You could easily make them bigger (they’re pretty small) by filling the muffin tins all the way to the top, and lengthening the oven time to 25 minutes or so. You could also do all kinds of fillings – I used chocolate chips and dried cranberries, but I bet they’d be amazing with blueberries, chopped apples, shredded coconut, or even crunchy peanut butter!
My husband gave them a thumbs up, and he’s a pretty picky eater. I hope you like them!
Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Muffins (makes 15)
Ingredients
2 cups gluten-free baking mix (I used Arrowhead Mills Gluten-Free Pancake & Baking Mix)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp xantham gum
3 Tbsp milled flax seed
1 egg
¼ cup honey
¾ cup water
¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp vanilla
¼ cup gluten-free chocolate chips
¼ cup chopped dried cranberries
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the first 4 ingredients.
In a small bowl, mix together all wet ingredients (egg, honey, water, applesauce, and vanilla)
Pour liquid mixture into bowl with dry ingredients and mix only until lumps are gone.
Mix in the chocolate chips and cranberries (don’t over mix!).
Fill oiled muffin tins ¾ full with muffin mixture. The mixture will be thick.
Bake for 17-20 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.
Kelly is in love with her husband, her cookbooks, and her bread machine. When she’s not reading The Hunger Games or trying to sprout her own lentils, she can typically be found spending way too much time on Facebook and Twitter. You can read more at Kelly’s Pink Bicycle.
Year 2 of marriage found me brave enough to ask for Grandma’s recipe and try to attempt it on my own.
Keisha (Pittman) McKinney is settling in to married life in South AR after she #becamemrsmckinney.
Written by ARWB February 2012 Blogger of the Month, Gina Knuppenburg of 
