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My cousin, Sarah, made these adorable and delicious stuffed strawberries for my other cousin’s (her sister’s) bridal shower this past weekend.

You’ll need:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• strawberries (amount depends on how big yours are… but ~2 of the clamshells you’d get at the grocery store)
• vanilla wafer cookies, crushed

Combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract in a bowl.  Put in a piping bag with desired tip or put into plastic zip top bag and use as a makeshift piping bag.

Wash strawberries and remove the hulls.  Using a paring knife, at the end where the hull used to be, hollow out a bit of the berry.  Discard or snack on removed strawberry innards.

Pipe cream cheese mixture into the hollowed out berries.  Top them with the crushed vanilla wafer cookies.  Enjoy!

Last night I decided to get my curd on.  I had a surplus of Meyer lemons, and Sean had brought a large bag of blood oranges home from work.  It only seemed natural.

I found the recipes on Cookie + Kate.  Please head over there for the recipes.  I made the Meyer Lemon curd exactly as the recipe states.  Next time around I would consider using more honey, or switching to sugar again.  I made the blood orange curd with ~1/3 cup of sugar instead of the honey.

Lemon on the left, blood orange on the right.

You’ll need:


2 cups pretzel twists or small sticks, crushed
3/4 cup butter, melted
3 tbs sugar


1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1 (8 oz.) container frozen whipped topping, thawed


2 (3 oz.) packages strawberry-flavored Jello
2 cups boiling water
2 (10 oz. ) packages frozen strawberries (it’s nice if these are sliced, rather than whole)


Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.  


Stir together the crushed pretzels, melted butter, and 3 tbs of sugar.  Press the mixture into the bottom of a 9×13 inch baking dish.  Bake for 8-10 minutes, until set.  Set aside.


In a large mixing bowl, cream together the cream cheese and 1 cup of sugar.  Feel free to use light cream cheese or that neufchatel business, if you’d like.  Fold in the whipped topping.  Smooth this mixture across the cooled crust.


Dissolve the Jello in boiling water.  Stir in the frozen strawberries, and set this bowl in the fridge for just a bit.  You want your Jello mixture to set a bit before adding it to everything else.  Otherwise things are a runny mess.


After the mixture has attained the consistency of egg whites, pour and spread it over the cream cheese layer.  Then refrigerate this dish until it has set.

Festive chocolate covered pretzels, at that.  =D I don’t really think any one person can lay claim to the chocolate covered pretzel, so I can’t attribute the inspiration for this post to any particular person/blog.  However, I did happen to see some super cute chocolate covered pretzels very recently, posted by Kim, on the blog Feed Me, Seymour.  Please swing by her blog if you haven’t done so already.  You’ll be happy that you did!


Every year during the month of December (and sometimes a little earlier than that) I become acutely aware of the fact that the holidays are approaching.  I mean, aside from seeing nonstop commercials and ads and whatnot, I start to feel Christmas-y.  That hasn’t happened yet this year.  I obviously know that Christmas is 1 week away, but I’m still not feeling it.  Maybe it’s because the weather has been pretty warm lately, or maybe it’s because I’ve just been busy with school and have only recently been able to pull my head out of my ass.  Who knows.  Regardless, I’m not feeling the holiday spirit quite as much as I’d like.  That’s where these chocolate covered pretzels come in.


Sean was out of town this weekend, so I took that as my chance to spend (probably) too much time in the kitchen.  Perhaps some baking would help put me in the holiday mood?  It did… a little.  Cranking up the holiday music and helping some friends decorate their tree helped too. =)  These chocolate covered pretzels are really easy to make, and look pretty impressive, or at least I think that they do.  You can use different colored sprinkles for different holidays, too.

You’ll need:


chocolate chips/chunks (whatever kind you’d like)
pretzels
assorted sprinkles


Melt your chocolate chips in a double boiler, or, do like I did.  Place them in a glass bowl and microwave in 30 second increments, stirring frequently.  You can add a little butter or a smidge of vegetable oil to the chocolate too, if you like.  I added a little bit of vegetable oil.


Dip pretzels in chocolate, allow excess chocolate to drip off, and apply sprinkles!


It’s that easy. =)  Let them cool and the chocolate set.


I would, however, make a few recommendations: 


1) Put some parchment paper on a cookie sheet.  It will provide a relatively non-stick surface on which your pretzels can dry.  


2) For the love of all things holy, apply the sprinkles to the pretzels over a baking dish.  Otherwise you’re going to have a mess on your hands.  I used a 13×9 Pyrex dish.


3) If you use milk chocolate chips or chunks, put the cookie sheets in the fridge while the chocolate sets up.  Otherwise it will take a really long time to set up (or at least mine did).


I used milk chocolate and white chocolate chips.  Although I’m a bigger fan of eating milk chocolate, I thought that the white chocolate ones came out looking better.  It’s easier to see the sprinkles against the white chocolate background, and white is more festive than the milk chocolate.

Here’s the whole assortment =)

Pretty cute, huh?  Plus check out the adorable penguin bowl I have them sitting in!  I couldn’t resist.  Whip some up for a holiday party, for friends, or just for yourself.  Enjoy! 

So Sean and I had a little Halloween party over the weekend, and since I’ve somehow managed to not post any Halloween-related recipes, I thought I’d share one with you that I served at the party.  It’s your basic Rice Krispie treat, but jazzed up for Halloween.  I hope you enjoy them!

This recipe was originally found at Pass the Plate.  


You’ll need:


3 tbs butter
4 cups mini marshmallows
1/2 cup peanut butter
6 cups puffed rice cereal 
12 oz. bag of candy corn


In a large saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.  Add the marshmallows and stir until completely melted.  Stir in the peanut butter until it has melted, too.  This is kind of a sticky mess… so be prepared!  Remove from the heat and stir in the cereal and candy corn until everything is well coated.  Use a buttered spatula or piece of wax paper to evenly press the mixture into a well-greased 13x9x2-inch pan.  Let them firm up, cut into desired shapes/sizes, and enjoy!


If your store happens to be out of regular candy corn (coughWalmartcough…) go right ahead and use some of the other varieties.  I used some (somewhat racially insensitive…) Indian Corn, because I was a little wary of the caramel-flavored candy corn.  By the way, when did they even come out with the flavored candy corns?  I completely missed out on that one.

Enjoy these!