Cool and Fresh Corn Chip Salad
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A cool and refreshing corn chip salad. People will be begging for the recipe.
Read More
Easy Homemade Breadcrumbs
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Never again buy breadcrumbs! Make your own instead. Quick and easy to make, you’ll wonder why you never made them before.
Read MoreHomemade Salsa Dry Seasoning Mix
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Are you looking for a quick but flavorful salsa? This dry ingredient recipe is what you are wanting. It is quick and easy and you’ll be able to eat salsa as soon as you are fixed mixing everything together. The longer it sits, the better the flavor comes through.
Read MoreEasy Crock-Pot Apple Butter
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My first canning project for the season was apple butter. Before we moved, my Momma called and told me her trees were full of apples and asked if I wanted some when we got back to Georgia. I was so excited about having apples I knew were not full of pesticides for cake, jelly, and apple butter. I was amazed at the huge bag of apples in the bottom of her spare refrigerator; all I could think about was making Apple Butter.
When making fruit butter, I love using the crockpot. All I have to do is dump everything in there and let it cook with an occasional smushing and stirring. The longer it cooks, the better it tastes. Cooking the apples overnight keeps the impatience down and you wake the next morning to the glorious smell of cooked apples.
My family is not a big fan of the spicy flavor of nutmeg or cloves in apple butter. So for us, there’s no nutmeg or cloves in this recipe; just yummy apples, sugar, and cinnamon.
We love apple butter on biscuits, toast, and I love it on plain bagels. What can I say, I even love to eat it by the spoonful.
Ingredients:
4 pounds of apples – peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces
3-4 cups of sugar * see note below
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Directions:
Place apples in a crock pot and pour sugar, cinnamon, and salt over apples. Stir to coat. Cook on high for 2 hours, stirring and mashing the apples. Turn down to low and cook overnight. The apples should be a dark brown and the mixture should be thick. Continue mashing the apples until your desired consistency. We like our apple butter smooth with no lumps.
Spoon the hot apple butter into sterile jars, leaving a ¼ inch headspace. Place lids on jars and put into a water bath canner and process for 10 minutes.
*Depending on your taste and the type of apples you use the sugar amount will vary. For example if you use Granny Smith apples, you'll need more sugar while with Red Delicious you may only need three cups.
** I am not a canning expert. Ingredient list and process time come from my Ball Blue Book. **
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When making fruit butter, I love using the crockpot. All I have to do is dump everything in there and let it cook with an occasional smushing and stirring. The longer it cooks, the better it tastes. Cooking the apples overnight keeps the impatience down and you wake the next morning to the glorious smell of cooked apples.
My family is not a big fan of the spicy flavor of nutmeg or cloves in apple butter. So for us, there’s no nutmeg or cloves in this recipe; just yummy apples, sugar, and cinnamon.
We love apple butter on biscuits, toast, and I love it on plain bagels. What can I say, I even love to eat it by the spoonful.
Easy Crock-Pot Apple Butter
Ingredients:
4 pounds of apples – peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces
3-4 cups of sugar * see note below
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Directions:
Place apples in a crock pot and pour sugar, cinnamon, and salt over apples. Stir to coat. Cook on high for 2 hours, stirring and mashing the apples. Turn down to low and cook overnight. The apples should be a dark brown and the mixture should be thick. Continue mashing the apples until your desired consistency. We like our apple butter smooth with no lumps.
Spoon the hot apple butter into sterile jars, leaving a ¼ inch headspace. Place lids on jars and put into a water bath canner and process for 10 minutes.
*Depending on your taste and the type of apples you use the sugar amount will vary. For example if you use Granny Smith apples, you'll need more sugar while with Red Delicious you may only need three cups.
** I am not a canning expert. Ingredient list and process time come from my Ball Blue Book. **
Homemade Taco Seasoning
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There is something about homemade taco seasoning! Creating your own seasoning can help you remove or lessen certain ingredients. This homemade taco seasoning is better than any store bought package.
Read MoreHomemade Condensed Cream Soup
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Homemade Condensed Soup - this recipe doesn’t require you to keep a container of the base soup on hand.
Read MoreHomemade Peanut Butter
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Peanut butter, there’s something yummy about the peanutty taste (especially with apples). YUM! Homemade Peanut Butter is even tastier than you can imagine and it only contains healthy things. While the convenience of grabbing a jar of our favorite brand maybe something that is a cheaper to do, it’s what’s inside that makes me go “hmm”. We’ve cut out almost all hydrogenated oil products - yep, it’s in peanut butter - one step at a time.
When I began researching homemade peanut butter, I found several articles stating you need a certain peanut or there were several steps that I didn’t want to take to make my own. Shelling peanuts was out of the question, dealing with the papery skins I didn’t want to deal with, oven roasting – it’s summer time for goodness sake, I wasn’t heating up my kitchen. I even found one where the raw peanuts were boiled before roasting - one step I didn't want to deal with.
I bought my peanuts HERE. Talk about super fast shipping! It was well worth the $14 to have my box of peanuts delivered to my doorstep by the FedEx man within four days.
After doing some reading on the perfect type of peanut for making peanut butter, I went with THESE since they were labeled for peanut butter and I didn’t have to do anything with them other than pouring them into the food processor bowl.
Depending on how big your bowl is, you may be able to process the whole pound of peanuts, if not (like me) you can chop them up in batches. Just chop them until they become coarse, crumbly little pieces. If you have two batches, you can add all the peanuts in at this time, depending on your bowl.
Drizzle the oil in the peanuts while processing. The peanuts will begin to ball up, but keep processing, they will become smoother. My peanut butter did not become as smooth as store bought, but we like it just the same. At this time, I also added the honey and salt. It did take a couple of times of tasting to get the sweetness we like. If needed add more oil/ salt/ honey at this time.
Storage - I’ve read different things about storing the homemade peanut butter in the refrigerator. I put my jar in the cabinet for a week and did not see a difference. I then put it in the refrigerator and it became thicker and harder to spread, so back to the cabinet it went.
You may find the oil will separate from the peanut butter, just give a good stir before using.
Place the peanuts in food processor bowl and chop until coarse. Drizzle the oil while processing until peanuts began to come together. Add salt and honey and continue processing until tastes and smoothness is acquired. Store in an airtight container.
Homemade peanut butter is easy to make.
When I began researching homemade peanut butter, I found several articles stating you need a certain peanut or there were several steps that I didn’t want to take to make my own. Shelling peanuts was out of the question, dealing with the papery skins I didn’t want to deal with, oven roasting – it’s summer time for goodness sake, I wasn’t heating up my kitchen. I even found one where the raw peanuts were boiled before roasting - one step I didn't want to deal with.
I bought my peanuts HERE. Talk about super fast shipping! It was well worth the $14 to have my box of peanuts delivered to my doorstep by the FedEx man within four days.
After doing some reading on the perfect type of peanut for making peanut butter, I went with THESE since they were labeled for peanut butter and I didn’t have to do anything with them other than pouring them into the food processor bowl.
Depending on how big your bowl is, you may be able to process the whole pound of peanuts, if not (like me) you can chop them up in batches. Just chop them until they become coarse, crumbly little pieces. If you have two batches, you can add all the peanuts in at this time, depending on your bowl.
Drizzle the oil in the peanuts while processing. The peanuts will begin to ball up, but keep processing, they will become smoother. My peanut butter did not become as smooth as store bought, but we like it just the same. At this time, I also added the honey and salt. It did take a couple of times of tasting to get the sweetness we like. If needed add more oil/ salt/ honey at this time.
Storage - I’ve read different things about storing the homemade peanut butter in the refrigerator. I put my jar in the cabinet for a week and did not see a difference. I then put it in the refrigerator and it became thicker and harder to spread, so back to the cabinet it went.
You may find the oil will separate from the peanut butter, just give a good stir before using.
Homemade Peanut Butter
Ingredients:- 1 lb peanuts
- 2 Tablespoons oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 Tablespoons honey
Place the peanuts in food processor bowl and chop until coarse. Drizzle the oil while processing until peanuts began to come together. Add salt and honey and continue processing until tastes and smoothness is acquired. Store in an airtight container.
Honey Sweetened Chocolate Sauce
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I am a chocolate lover! Chocolate ice cream, chocolate milk, chocolate gravy, the list could go on. Whoever said, "Chocolate makes everything better" was on to something. Believe it or not, chocolate is GOOD for you. What is not good for you is all the sugar and additives that are included in all the tasty, chocolatey treats that are on the market.
Several years ago, I stopped buying Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. It was our staple for making chocolate milk and topping ice cream. Sadly, it is full of sugar and additives, things that we have cut way back on. I knew making homemade chocolate syrup would be possible, because I make Chocolate Gravy for biscuits. The two are very similar in making with a few differences.
When we returned from our trip with twenty pounds of honey, I knew I would be incorporating more honey by reducing the usage of sugar in my cooking. My BIG test with honey was making a chocolate sauce. Since this recipe doesn't really get thick like my syrup recipe, I think of it as a sauce instead of a syrup. Although, you could had a little thickener to the sauce to have more of a syrup. Saucy or syrupy either way it is so good.
I found this recipe HERE after searching if it was possible to make chocolate syrup using honey instead of sugar. I was excited about finding it and I knew I had to give it a try. I was a little leery while making this because I didn't want it to have the honey taste. The first thing I made with the syrup was chocolate milk. I knew if I was going to taste the honey, it would be in the milk. Yep, there was NO hint of honey in my milk. In fact, this glass tied with the best tasting chocolate milk I have had. The other best tasting chocolate milk came from a dairy in Florida when we visited St. Augustine years ago.
I did make a couple of changes to the recipe the second time I made this, like adding an extra ⅛ of a cup of cocoa ~ what can I say, we love chocolate. Another thing I changed was the amount of water from 1 cup to ¾ cup to help thicken it a little.
Ingredients:
Directions:
In a pan combine cocoa, honey, water, and salt. Bring to a rolling boil and boil for 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Store in a sealed contain in the refrigerator.
Enjoy!
HONEY SWEETENED CHOCOLATE SAUCE ~
An amazing substitute for store brand chocolate syrup.
Several years ago, I stopped buying Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. It was our staple for making chocolate milk and topping ice cream. Sadly, it is full of sugar and additives, things that we have cut way back on. I knew making homemade chocolate syrup would be possible, because I make Chocolate Gravy for biscuits. The two are very similar in making with a few differences.
When we returned from our trip with twenty pounds of honey, I knew I would be incorporating more honey by reducing the usage of sugar in my cooking. My BIG test with honey was making a chocolate sauce. Since this recipe doesn't really get thick like my syrup recipe, I think of it as a sauce instead of a syrup. Although, you could had a little thickener to the sauce to have more of a syrup. Saucy or syrupy either way it is so good.
I found this recipe HERE after searching if it was possible to make chocolate syrup using honey instead of sugar. I was excited about finding it and I knew I had to give it a try. I was a little leery while making this because I didn't want it to have the honey taste. The first thing I made with the syrup was chocolate milk. I knew if I was going to taste the honey, it would be in the milk. Yep, there was NO hint of honey in my milk. In fact, this glass tied with the best tasting chocolate milk I have had. The other best tasting chocolate milk came from a dairy in Florida when we visited St. Augustine years ago.
I did make a couple of changes to the recipe the second time I made this, like adding an extra ⅛ of a cup of cocoa ~ what can I say, we love chocolate. Another thing I changed was the amount of water from 1 cup to ¾ cup to help thicken it a little.
Ingredients:
- 1 ¾ cup + ⅛ cup cocoa
- 1 ⅓ cup honey
- ¾ cup water
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
Directions:
In a pan combine cocoa, honey, water, and salt. Bring to a rolling boil and boil for 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Store in a sealed contain in the refrigerator.
Enjoy!
