Brown Sugar Wafers

I think this was my Dutch grandmother's secret recipe, but I can't be for sure. I came across this recipe written by my mom and decided to make it with my boys last night. They had fun and have been gobbling these cookies down ever since. I think they'll make my dad proud too.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

3/4 cup packed organic dark brown sugar

1 egg yolk

1 tbsp vanilla

1 1/4 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 - 1/2 cup pure cane sugar (or granulated) for pressing

Directions:

Beat the butter until it's creamy. Gradually add the sugar while beating. Add vanilla and yolk next. Add flour and salt. Mix well, shape into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for 2 hours. Roll into 1 inch balls and place on baking sheet. Butter the flat bottom of a glass cup then dip in granulated sugar, press onto cookie balls until flat. Re-dip in the sugar between each pressing for less sticking.

Bake 340 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet and then carefully remove with a thin spatula onto a cooling rack.

These are great by themselves or with a bowl of vanilla bean ice cream.

Gluten Free Chocolate Cake with Garbanzo Beans!!

Oh my lordy this is probably the best chocolate cake I've ever had!! And it doesn't have gluten!

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

4 eggs

3/4 cups white sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Put the chocolate chips into a microwave safe dish and nuke them for 1-2 minutes, stirring every 20 or 30 seconds to make sure they're mixed together and melted.

Mix the beans with the eggs in a food processor until smooth. Add the sugar and baking powder and give it another whirl to mix it all together.

Fold the beans into the chocolate and mix well. Pour into a greased and flour powdered 9 inch round cake pan and bake for 40 minutes on 350 degrees (or 340 in a convection oven).

Cool for several minutes in the pan and then reverse dump onto a large plate. Top with sprinkled confectioner's sugar, whipped cream, strawberries, or frosting.

So perfect!

Grandma's Famous Banana Bread

My kids love this. The neighbor kids ask for these banana muffins every time they come over. I had to make another batch tonight. My grandma and mom always made these into loaves of bread. This makes for having to figure out how to keep the chocolate chips spread evenly throughout the bread (mine always fall to the bottom) and how to get the bread to fall out of the pan easily (I usually lose half the loaf to the oiled and floured pan - WTF?). Anyway, these silicone cupcake liners have been wonderful for us over the years. Here's a run down of the recipe from memory:

Mash 2-3 bananas in a bowl (old frozen bananas work well as do fresh ones)
In a separate bowl, mix 1/2 cup of warm butter (my grandma called it spry - love that word) and 1.5 cups of sugar (I use a little less and use turbinado or pure cane sugar).
Mix in two eggs
Add 2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Mix mix mix.
In a small measuring cup, combine 1/3 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of vinegar (to sour the milk).
Alternate adding bananas, then milk, then dark cocoa chips (optional) into the flour mix. Once you've mixed it all together, spread into about 18-24 muffin/cupcake tins and bake 350 for about 45 minutes (my oven is convection, so the timing may vary). When doing a loaf, it calls for an hour and 15 minutes cooking time (another reason to do the cupcakes).

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies

So I finally got around to baking these Whole Foods Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies. For some reason, baking on a day that it's a 102 degrees outside is never very appealing, but the end product was very yummy and worth it!!

I did mine with organic peanut butter and added Reeses Peanut Butter chips. The kids love them and I am happy they're getting a little extra protein!

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies

I haven't tried these Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Cookies yet, but they look great! A friend of mine posted this link to a group I'm in and I had to remind myself to put these on the cooking to-do list for this week!

Salmon, Potatoes, Cauliflower Sunday

Our yummy salmon meal turned into a Pesto Cheese pizza because of this freakin' time change. The boys were starving, we hadn't finished our projects for the day, and it was just so easy to order a pizza. We'll adjust our menu to have salmon tomorrow for sure!!

For breakfast we made these yummy Pop-Up Pancakes!! We put cream cheese, WF mixed berry jelly, whipped cream, and powdered sugar on top (these were my favorite). They were also good with Nutella and powdered sugar. I think I'll try these for dinner and throw some grilled veggies, cheese, or almond butter on top. These might make for a very hearty dessert too!!

Festival Food Friday

We'll be at ACL tonight. We'll probably try to sneak in some fruit and a doctor's note showing that my son has low blood sugar. Who can resist a cute little sick boy? The ACL festival food isn't all that horrible, BUT you have to pay $10 for a single taco that won't get a family full AND you have to wait 30 minutes in line to get it. We'll definitely fill up before we get there and bring our alloted 2 bottles of sealed water with us.

Here is what Chaz requested for lunch... homemade banana bread, homemade zucchini muffin, and alphabet soup.

Here is the recipe for my grandma's famous banana bread:

Banana Bread Ingred:

1 1/2 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Spry (butter)
2 Eggs
1 TSP Baking Soda
1/2 TSP Baking Powder
2 Cups Flour
1/4 TSP Salt
1 TSP Vanilla
2-3 Mashed Bananas
1/3 Cup Milk Soured with TBSP Vinegar
*1 Bag Chocolate Chips (*Optional)

Mix: Sugar and spry. Add eggs. Mix dry ingredients. Alternate mixing bananas and milk to rest. (*also, don't forget to add the chocolate chips if you make it with them!!) Bake 350 for 1hr and 15 min

Carrot/Potato Soup and Bread Thursday

I made some soup today... it turned out nice, but didn't seem like anyone was too excited for hot soup on a hot day. You can see the soup in progress in the pics. You can also see the birthday cake we got for Cooper.

Eating at the Neighbor's Tuesday

Wow... what a surprise!! Our neighbor invited the whole family over (Katie, the kids, and all) for dinner tonight. It was really nice. We had some yummy butternut squash soup (Cooper devoured it), some squash casserole, and some rice and chicken sausage. It was all really good. Then for dessert, we had chocolate pasta with ice cream, fruit, and whipped cream topping. It was so good. It kind of looked like this below pic, but only better!!





Now I have more cooking ideas and will definitely have to invite them over for dinner soon!!

Spinach and Onion Quesadilla Thursday

I made the boys some plain cheese quesadillas (blah) with black olives and cookies. By the time I finished making their food, I decided I'd leave the rest of the dinner up to dad or Katie. Luckily, they did most of it! We sauteed some onion rings in olive oil, then added spinach to wilt, then heated up the tortillas, stuffed them with the veges, then topped it with cheese.


They were really yummy. We had guacamole and chips/hot sauce to go with them.

Also, Cooper's had a tummy problem for a few days, so you can see two items from the BRAT diet pictured here too... he didn't eat much of it!!

Shrimp, Steak, Vege Kebabs, Corn, Peaches Saturday

For my sister in law's birthday, she and her boyfriend grilled up some yummy shrimp, steak, vegetable kebabs, some corn on the cob, and then some peaches! We had some Mexican Wedding Chocolate cake (Yum!!) for dessert too.

The boys loved the corn and the special hotdogs made for them!

Broiled Squash Pasta with Cheese and Salad Tuesday

For lunch, we had two on-the-go lunch boxes ready for both boys. Mine was a Caesar salad turkey sandwich with cheese and a hard boiled egg. This is what the boys' looked like:



For dinner, I cooked up some broiled squash pasta with cheese and made a salad with avocado and vinaigrette dressing. I thought it turned out quite nice (even if dad was really late home from work- he's still not here actually! We'll see if he likes it!!). The boys ate some cauliflower too (and then a lot of it ended up on the floor after a fit of rage).



Oh- and I almost forgot about the banana pudding with real banana slices for dessert! Yum! Chaz gobbled it down!! Cooper didn't like it... he preferred a plain banana.

Fusilli Pasta, Roasted Chickpeas and Brownies Thursday

Friday is almost here!! We're digging deep into our cabinets and Greenling box today to feed the family!! It turned out to be 5 stars all the way too! Yay! I love when that happens!!

We put some Annie's Goddess salad dressing on some fusilli pasta, added a can of sliced black olives, some sliced tomatoes, salt, topped it with feta cheese and some roasted chickpeas (in olive oil and salt). It was quite yummy. The boys loved the pasta and the olives. Cooper loved the beans. We all loved the brownies we had along side of the meal too!!

Ravioli and Bread Thursday

The boys will be eating this with their aunt tonight. It's the yummiest ravioli ever. Get it at Costco in the frozen section.

I'm sure we'll be heating up some whole wheat bread and possibly tossing some carrots into the mix.

Chocolate Mess Crockpot Cake and ice cream for dessert!!

1 package chocolate cake mix

1 pint sour cream

1 small package instant chocolate pudding

1 small bag chocolate chips

3/4 cup oil

4 eggs

1 cup water

Spray crockpot with non-stick spray. Mix all ingredients. Pour into crockpot.

Cook on low for 4-5 hours.

Serve in a bowl with ice cream.