06/26

Delicious 3-Ingredient Fruit Dip

strawberry-cream-cheese-fruit-dip

Easy and delicious is one combo we can’t resist. If your looking for a yummy recipe to share at your next BBQ, or a festive side on the 4th of July, we’ve got an amazing recipe for you. Our grandma always has a tray of strawberries with this amazing 3-ingredient fruit dip every Easter. We devour it. We love anything with cream cheese, so it was bound to be a favorite from the beginning. Place it on a tray, pack it in a jar, dip strawberries or take a spoonful – whatever you do, make it! Yum.

Ingredients:

  • 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
  • Kraft jet-puff marshmallows, 7 oz.
  • 1 tsp Vanilla

Mix all ingredients with a mixer in a bowl, refrigerate and serve with a large tray of strawberries. It’s that easy!

strawberry-cream-cheese-dip

strawberry-cream-cheese-dip

strawberry-dipped-in-a-cream-cheese-treat

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06/29

Gluten Free Pancakes {recipe}

gluten-free-pancakes-july-4th-firework-breakfast-blueberry-strawberryThis 4th of July firework pancake breakfast will be enjoyed by those who are GF, and those who are not. We have found some gluten free store-bought pancake mixes to be decent. Some are better than others. This homemade, gluten free pancake recipe is easy to make, and our favorite thus far on our gluten-free venture.

gluten-free-pancakes-july-4th-firework-breakfast-blueberry-strawberry

Gluten Free Pancakes

Ingredients:

  • 2% milk {almond milk can be substituted}
  • 1/4 cup butter {4 tablespoons}
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup gluten free quick cooking oats, ground {we use a Magic Bullet to grind it}
  • 1/2 cup Pamela’s gluten free flour
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 tablespoon ground flax seeds

Directions:

  1. In a medium bowl, add the dry ingredients, including flour, ground up oats, baking powder, salt, sugar and flax seeds.
  2. In a separate medium bowl, add two eggs and whisk.
  3. Melt the butter in a pan on the stove with the milk until butter melts.
  4. Stir the milk and butter into the eggs and whisk.
  5. Slowly whisk the wet ingredients into the bowl with dry ingredients.
  6. If the mixture is too thick, add more milk to make it a consistency you like.
  7. Pour and flip.
  8. To make the pancakes festive for July 4th, use a star cookie cutter to create star pancakes that can resemble fireworks.
  9. Spread butter on top, decorate your plate with blueberries and strawberries to make the stars look like fireworks, sprinkle powdered sugar on top and then pour maple syrup over the pancakes.

gluten-free-pancakes-july-4th-firework-breakfast-blueberry-strawberry

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07/10

worm pudding {recipe}

worm pudding_jsorelle

There is nothing my 6-year-old and 2-year-old son loves more this summer than worms, water and dirt {mud}.  And there is nothing my 4-year-old daughter loves more than sugar. So, for their recent birthday celebration at school, we made dirt pudding cups, which I lovingly call ‘worm pudding with a budding flower’ {my husband thinks the flower looks like the kind that opens up and eats people, but I was going for a tulip}. You decide for yourself, but whatever flower you think it is, make this dessert. So yummy.

chocolate mousse worm pudding for kids

Chocolate Mousse
{recipe by Kimi Hansen}
makes 13, 9 oz elegant plastic cups or more if you use smaller shot glasses

Ingredients
2 cups chocolate chips
2 cups whipping cream
2 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla
Oreo cookies
13, 9 oz plastic cups
13 strawberries or other ‘flower’ fruit
13 gummy worms
Sharpie Oil-Based Paint Markers

How To
Use Sharpie Oil-Based Paint Markers {love these things} to draw grass on the outside of the cups. It dries almost immediately.
Add chocolate chips, vanilla extract and egg yolk to a blender.
Heat cream to a boil on the stove and then slowly add the cream to the other ingredients in blender.
Pulse ingredients together
Wait until it cools a bit before you pour in plastic cups.
Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. After the first hour or 2, stick a worm in the semi-hard pudding and continue to refrigerate.
Before serving, top with crushed Oreos
Use a straw or toothpick and add your ‘flower.’ It can be made with a strawberry like I did, with 4 slits on top and whipping cream on the inside, or even raspberries and blueberries.

worm pudding

worm pudding for kids

worm pudding with a flower

worm pudding with a flower

Just look at this chocolate, happy face. Pure joy.
chocolate mousse face

{images via j. sorelle}

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08/15

thursday night FAC

It’s almost Friday, so make this week’s FAC on Thursday. Come on, you deserve it. Today, our ingredient from the garden is fresh strawberries, so it seems fitting that you celebrate your Thursday FAC with a Strawberry Margarita. I planted strawberries years ago, and they come back every year bigger and better. I don’t do a darn thing, and they keep growing. As long as I pick them before the rabbits and birds get them, life has been sweet with strawberries this summer.

The BEST….seriously, the BEST…margarita is a strawberry light from The Rio in downtown Denver {or Fort Collins, or Steamboat}. I can’t drink any other margs – they just don’t even come close. However, I think I’ve created one that does…I savored every last drop. Hope you do too.

Strawberry Margarita
recipe adapted from friend, Reid Griebling
yields 4 glasses

Ingredients
6 counts {yes, count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…sorry I didn’t measure and followed bartender orders} white 100% Agave Tequila
1-2 tsp Agave Nectar
1.5 count Cointreau {or Triple Sec}
20 fresh strawberries
3 limes + 1 lime for garnish
2 cups of ice

How To
Add strawberries, agave nectar, Tequila, Cointreau, fresh squeezed lime juice and ice in a blender.
Adjust to taste.
Cheers!

{images via Tutto Bella}

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07/08

{recipe} mini patriotic pound cakes

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July holiday. We had a terrific weekend with family and friends at the pool, on the golf course and at fabulous parties {you will see party details soon}.

We had some glitches last week on our blog {convenient with a holiday, huh?}, so forgive us for not getting some of our patriotic posts to you. Good news is this recipe is easy and versatile. You don’t need to decorate with red, white and blue. Use fresh strawberries and blueberries if you want – but design it with someone’s name, a flower or even shapes.  Keep this in your recipe books because it is the best pound cake recipe ever! It’s the perfect summer time dessert. It’s slightly revised from my grandma’s recipe, and I think my grandma is one of the best cooks I’ve known. I will always cherish the special times I spent in the kitchen with her.

Mini Pound Cake
makes 14 or 1 loaf

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter {softened}
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1.5 cups whole milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt

How To
Add butter, eggs and sugar and mix with a blender until well blended.
Add salt and baking powder to the flour, then add the flour and milk, alternating each {while blending}.
Add vanilla and blend.
Pour into baking cups {you do not need to grease baking cups, however if you are using a standard loaf baking tin, you need to grease the pan}
Fill the baking cup 1/2-3/4 full.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-23 minutes. If you are making a standard loaf, cook for 50 minutes.
Stick a toothpick in the loaf or mini loaf, and if its comes out clean, it’s done.
Top with whipped cream and decorate with fruit.

Whipping Cream
2 cups heavy whipping cream
2-3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla.

Whip on a medium to medium-high speed until cream gets thicker and forms peaks.

Savor each bite! I know I do.

{images via Tutto Bella Blog}

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