Care Bears for the Mare Bear!

This week is a big week in our household, our youngest is turning 1!
I really like to make special cakes for my family members birthdays and it's always a fun challenge to figure out what to do and how to execute the plan.
Sometimes they're great and sometimes I'm just thankful my kids are excited I can make anything be it great or not so great looking. :)

Currently I am toying with 2 different ideas for my daughters cake, either a castle using one of those castle kits from the craft store or just going from scratch and drawing and creating a template on my own.

Today's adventure led me to some Care bear cakes as our litte ones nickname is Mare Bear.

So here is a recipe for buttercream frosting as I will need to make a lot of this for the cake!



Ingredients:

* 1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
* 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine softened
* 1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
* 4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
* 2 tablespoons milk

Makes: About 3 cups of icing.


instructions
(Medium Consistency)

In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating well on medium speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep bowl covered with a damp cloth until ready to use.

For best results, keep icing bowl in refrigerator when not in use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Rewhip before using.

For thin (spreading) consistency icing, add 2 tablespoons light corn syrup, water or milk.

For Pure White Icing (stiff consistency), omit butter; substitute an additional 1/2 cup shortening for butter and add 1/2 teaspoon No-Color Butter Flavor. Add up to 4 tablespoons light corn syrup, water or milk to thin for icing cakes.
NOTE: Changes in Wilton's traditional recipes have been made due to Trans Fat Free Shortening replacing Hydrogenated Shortening.

Pork chops and friends

Toinght is a dash and go meal as my husband and oldest daughter have a special event at church.
So we're having pork chops seasoned with Kirklands organic no salt seasoning (I love the smell of this stuff!) fried potatoes, some croissants and a salad!
Today's recipe that you see out of this mix though will be the fried potatos.
My mom used to make these when I was growing up and I always got excited because they were so good! She would fry them up in vegetable oil with some onions and Mmmmnnnnmmm!
I make mine a little differently now thanks to the influence of my mother in law but the basic concept is the same, take some potatoes chop them up into pieces and fry away!

4 large russett potatos
1 gallon size ziploc bag
salt or seasoning of choice
1 onion sliced or chopped whichever you prefer
2 Tbs vegetable oil (or for a healthy alternative cooking spray)

Chop potatoes up into bit size chunks (my mother did them in a triangular style shape) Place into ziploc bag with 1 Tbs water. Heat in microwafe for 3-4 minutes, let sit for 10 min in microwave to the potatoes have a chance to be "steamed"
Heat oil in pan, toss the taters in and fry them up until browned, add the onion about halfway through for flavor.

Soda anyone?

Here's another "Irish" favorite, don't know how true this is to the Isle original but I'm sure it's good!

Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients

* 4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 3 eggs
* 1 pint sour cream
* 1 cup raisins

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease two 8x4 inch loaf pans.
2. Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the eggs, sour cream and raisins and mix until just combined. Distribute batter evenly between the two pans.
3. Bake loaves at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 1 hour.

March madness!

Wow, talk about a break form the blogsphere! Really I have been cooking for my family and I have wanted to come back and share about it but time just keeps getting away from me and life insists on popping up over and over again! :)

Well it's March now and so this year I am hopping on the St. Patricks day bandwagon and plan to make themed dished in honor of it.
In our house we remember who St. Patrick is with a little help from Veggie Tales and Focus on the Family.
No pub hopping for us, never really was into that scene anyways so we're not missing much.

Today's meal is the centerpiece for St. Patty's day meals. It will be a first time go of it for me so I picked a slow cooker version to make that seemed simple and had no major frills about it.

Corned Beef and Cabbage


Ingredients

* 1 medium onion, cut into wedges
* 4 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered
* 1 pound baby carrots
* 3 cups water
* 3 garlic cloves, minced
* 1 bay leaf
* 2 tablespoons sugar
* 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
* 1/2 teaspoon pepper
* 1 (3 pound) corned beef brisket with spice packet, cut in half
* 1 small head cabbage, cut into wedges

Directions

1. Place the onion, potatoes and carrots in a 5-qt. slow cooker. Combine water, garlic, bay leaf, sugar, vinegar, pepper and contents of spice packet; pour over vegetables. Top with brisket and cabbage. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours or until meat and vegetables are tender. Remove bay leaf before serving.

Tater Tot casserole, revisited and revised!

So today around 4pm I realized oh no I forgot to defrost meat for dinner!
Then I remembered I had this HUGE package of ground beef in my fridge from my costco trip the other day. Hooray!
Well back to it being 4pm, still didn't have much of a dinner plan so I thought what the hey tater to casserole!
Too bad I didn't quite have all of the ingredients needed so I improvised some.... hope it works out! ha ha ha

1.25 lbs ground beef
salt and pepper to season
Kirkland signature, organic no salt seasoning
1 can cream of celery
1/2 can of milk
1 12 oz jar of turkey gravy
1 C of frozen peas
1 C of frozen corn
1 C shredded cheese
1 28 oz bag of frozen tater tots

Fry up the ground beef (I seasoned the meat with Nortons Salt & Pepper seasoning) drain off fat and layer in bottom of 9x13" glass pan.
Shake organic seasoning over top of layered meat, about 4-6 shakes worth.
Spread peas and corn over meat, then pour cream of celery, then gravy, then milk over top of that.
Cover with tater tots and then top that all with the cheese.

mmmmmmnnnnn, tacos

So I hope to make some tacos for the family this week and wanted to make my own shells!
How many of you have tried buying ready made corn shells only to open the box and find a 1/3 of them broken to bits!?! Annoying right?
So here is a simple way to do it yourself.
How to fry up your own shells at home

As for my meat, I will most likely fry it up in some taco seasoning (which we buy in bulk at Costco) and maybe some chopped onion as well.
I use romaine for lettuce around here and just chop it up finely as romaine has better nutrients in it then regular iceberg which is just a filler food with no good value to it at all.

Marinating in thoughts.....

A lot has been going on around here lately and it has me thinking about marinating for cooking juicier meats.
This evening we had pork chops that I had marinated (unintentionally) for a day and a half.
I kind of threw this sauce together by the skin of my teeth but it came out pretty good!

1/2 C low sodium soy sauce
2 C chicken broth
2 shakes of lemon/pepper seasoning
4 shakes of cumin
4 shakes of curry
3 shakes of dried parsley

I made sure the liquid covered all of the chops and also flipped the bag once in the morning after it being in all night and then again the next night so it had an even "swim" time. :)

Then I baked the chops for an hour at 325 degrees Fahrenheit and then finished it off at 350 degrees until the temp reached 130 degrees.