Almond Cheesecake Cookies

Long ago, when I was still a teenager, a friend of mine introduced me to the wonders of pudding cookies. Wow - the things you could do with pudding and how it changed cookies! They are a softer cookie and all the flavors gives you so many possibilities with flavors! These cookies use almond flavoring (a favorite of mine!) and cheesecake pudding. Um, YUM! How can you go wrong with this combination?

 

 Almond Cheesecake Cookies

3/4 c. butter, softened

1/4 c. sugar

3/4 c. brown sugar

3.4 oz box instant cheesecake pudding

2 eggs

1 tsp. almond extract

2 1/4 c. flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 bag. vanilla chips

Cream the butter and sugars together in a large bowl. Add the eggs, almond, and pudding and stir. Add the flour and baking soda; stir well until combined. Add the vanilla chips and fold in. Use a cookie scoop to drop balls of dough onto cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees 10-12 minutes or until the edges of the cookies turn golden brown.

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

This is one of my favorite recipes. I love to make soup in the colder months and, for me, this is real comfort food. Potatoes, sour cream, cheese... Yum! This is one that I will double or triple, then freeze for my family to eat on nights I work.

 

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

4 large potatoes, baked

10 Tbsp. butter

2/3 c. flour

6 c. milk

1 1/2 c. shredded cheese

1  tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

1/2 bag real bacon bits

1 c. sour cream

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Add the flour and stir until it is smooth. Turn heat to medium and begin adding the milk very slowly, stirring as milk is added. I add a small amount of milk, stir it in, add a small amount of milk, stir, and repeat until all the milk is added. In a bowl, scoop out all the insides of the potatoes. Add some of the milk mixture from the pot and mash the potatoes. Add additional milk slowly, mashing potatoes until it makes a thick soup, then add it to the pot with the remaining milk mixture. This mixes the potatoes into the soup better and leave some chunks without huge chunks. Add the cheese, salt, pepper, and bacon bits. Stir. Heat through and add sour cream, stirring to mix it in really well. Sprinkle additional cheese on top when serving. 

To freeze: Cool the soup and divide into freezer bags. I prefer bags to rigid containers because you can stack them up in the freezer and save a lot of room. When you are ready to eat the soup - thaw it, heat, and serve.

Double Chocolate Banana Cookies

We had some more bananas sitting out that no one ate in time before they turned brown. Normally, I make muffins out of them for our Saturday muffin tradition, but I didn't feel like it. So I made cookies instead. With chocolate. Because chocolate makes everything better. 

 

Double Chocolate Banana Cookies

1 1/4 c. butter, melted

3-4 overripe bananas, mashed (about 2 cups mashed banana) 

2 eggs

2 c. sugar

1 3/4 c. flour

2 c. oats

1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking soda

2 c. chocolate chips

Combine the melted butter, banana, eggs, and sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Add in flour, oats, cocoa powder, baking soda, and chocolate chips. Stir to combine. Refrigerate batter for an hour. This is actually important or the batter will spread out too much on the pan and you will have one very large cookie rather than individual ones. Drop chilled dough on cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15-17 minutes. Remove from pan immediately or use parchment paper - they stick if you leave them on too long.

Spicy Honey Terriyaki Chicken

Our church time changed to 11 o'clock this year. I love it because I no longer have little kids at home where this time ruins their nap times. The best part is that I get to SLEEP IN! I LOVE this! With the long shifts I work plus working two jobs and going to school it never feels like I get enough sleep. However, this time also means we miss lunch and everyone comes home from church hungry. This is a meal I can throw in the crock pot in the morning and have ready to eat when we get home. It's a life saver to be able to do this - there is nothing more whiny than a bunch of hungry boys!

 

Spicy Honey Terriyaki Chicken 

1 medium onion, sliced thin

2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast

2 Tbsp. garlic paste

2 tsp. ginger paste 

1/4 c. soy sauce

1/4 c. honey

1 c. chicken broth

1 tsp. crushed red pepper

1 tsp. black pepper

3 Tbsp. corn starch

3 Tbsp. water

Put the chicken, garlic, and ginger in a large crock pot and cover with onions. Pour the soy sauce, honey, and chicken broth over the chicken. Sprinkle with the red and black pepper. Cover and cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 5 hours or until the chicken is cooked through. In a small bowl, stir the corn starch and water together. Pour in the crock pot with the chicken and stir, shredding chicken into large pieces. Cover and cook for 30 minutes on high or until the mixture is thickened. Serve over rice or noodles. 

Waffles

My kids are in love with waffles. Especially these waffles, which kind of boggles my mind because they like them even more than the chocolate waffles. Go figure. It's what I get for having boys instead of girls.

 

Waffles

1 3/4 c. flour - I use half white flour and half whole wheat

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 3/4 c.milk

1/2 c. oil

2 eggs

Combine the milk, oil, and eggs and a medium bowl. Add in flour and baking powder. Stir to combine just until the dry ingredients are mixed in. The batter should still be a little lumpy. Pour batter into a lightly greased waffle iron and bake following the manufacturer's instructions. 

Snowflake Sugar Cookies

I am not a great cookie decorator - I have a friend who does that for me. But once in awhile I get my stuff out and make my poor attempts. This time, I totally cheated. Let's face it: cleaning up all the decorating stuff is a pain, and a pain I'd rather not do. Even with disposable decorating bags... well, I cheated. For this, I put the frosting in a baggie, flooded the cookie, piped on the snowflake, and tossed the baggies away. Easy. Minimal clean up. Perfect. Even if I'm not that great at decorating.

 

Frosting

3 Tbsp. butter, softened

3 c. powdered sugar

2-3 Tbsp. milk

1 tsp. almond extract

Mix the butter, powdered sugar, almond, and 1 Tbsp. milk together in a bowl. Add additional milk as needed to get it the consistency you want. If you are adding liquid coloring be sure to add it before all the milk as it will thin your frosting. I use gel coloring which doesn't thin. Just don't use very much because it can really color (this snowflake was intended to be a LIGHT blue...).

Cheesy Garlic Bread

My family loves to have pizza and movie night. We do it fairly frequently - like several times a month but not quite every week. I frequently make the pizza but we occasionally buy it from somewhere cheap. And then we get the cheesy, garlic bread, too. Yum! So, I was making pizza for us one night and figured that I could make the cheesy bread, too. It can't be that hard, right? Fortunately, I was right! And I had all that lovely pizza dough right there in front of me, so I used enough dough for one pizza (recipe here) and turned it into cheesy garlic bread.

 

Cheesy Garlic Bread 

dough for one pizza, recipe here

1/8 c. butter, melted

1 Tbsp. garlic paste

2 tsp. Pizza magic other seasoning you like

1/2 c. mozzarella cheese

Roll dough out onto greased jelly roll pan. Mine was on the thick side because that's how I like it but you can make it as thin or thick as you want. Cut the dough with a pizza cutter. This makes it easy to pull apart when it's baked. Don't separate the pieces, only cut the dough. Add garlic to melted butter and stir. My local grocery store sells garlic paste in the produce section and I love to use that, but you can use fresh garlic, garlic salt, whatever form of garlic you like. Spread the butter/ garlic mixture over the dough. Sprinkle the seasoning over the butter, then sprinkle the cheese over all. Bake at 375 degrees 10-12 minutes. Baking time will depend on how thick you rolled your dough - thinner dough will cook faster. Keep an eye on it while it's baking. It's done when the edges turn golden brown.