Apple Crisp

I know, that is an embarrassingly large dollop of whipped cream on top of that apple crisp, but what can I say? I'm a whipped cream girl. I love this apple crisp--it's one of those foods that just tastes like home. And when the weather is cold and nasty it's especially nice to curl up inside with a bowl of this. Then there's the added bonus that it contains apples and oatmeal, so you can tell yourself that it's a healthy dessert. At least, that's what I'll be telling myself while I'm digging through all that whipped cream.


Ingredients
Filling:
5 large cooking apples (peeled and sliced)
1 c. sugar
2 T. (heaping) flour
1/4 t. cinnamon
Pinch salt

Topping:
1 c. oatmeal
1 c. flour
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 t. soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. butter, melted

Directions
Mix filling ingredients together and put in greased 9x13" pan. Sprinkle with topping and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot with ice cream or top with whipped cream.

Foodie BlogRoll Rocks, and I Like Black Forest Cake

If you look in my right margin you may notice a slight change. In my "Saving My Pennies to Buy..." section it no longer lists a Flirty Apron. That is because Foodie BlogRoll, in their awesomeness gave me a prize for being their 3000th blog. The prize: A Flirty Apron of my choosing! Yay!


The cute cherry pattern on the one that I chose made me hungry for some Black Forest Cake, so I made one. If you were here, oh great Foodie BlogRoll administrators, I would share it with you. As it is, though, I'll just post the recipe which I modified from a Pampered Chef one. Forgive me for the rotten artificial lighting in these pictures. To get a picture of myself in my apron I had to wait until my husband got home which was sadly after sunset.


Ingredients:
1 box devil's food cake mix
1 c. sour cream
1 container (8 oz.) frozen whipped topping, thawed
3/4 tsp. almond extract, divided
1 package (3.3 oz.) white chocolate instant pudding
1 can (21 oz.) cherry pie filling
1/4 cup slivered almonds, optional

Prepare and bake cake mix as directed in two 8-inch round cake pans. Cool cake 15 minutes then remove from pans. Cool completely.
Cut the round tops off the cakes to make them flat. Combine sour cream, whipped topping and 1/2 tsp. of the almond extract in a bowl. Add pudding mix and whisk vigorously until mixture is blended and very thick. Fill a pastry bag with cream filling and set aside, or just set aside about 1/4 of the filling. Spread remaining filling on the top of one of the cakes. This will be your bottom layer. In a bowl, combine pie filling with remaining 1/4 tsp. of almond extract. Carefully spread half of the pie filling over cream layer.
Top with remaining cake layer, cut side down. Using pastry bag or ziploc bag with a corner cut off, pipe cream filling around top of cake. Fill center with remaining pie filling. Pipe dollops of whipped topping on top of pie filling if desired. Sprinkle with slivered almonds. Serve. Yield 12 servings.

Boiled Raisin Cookies

Sweet biscuits, these cookies are good. Don't let the fact that the title contains the word "boiled" scare you away from them. They are divine. This recipe was given to me by my Aunt Lynne, and they very well may be the tenderest cookies I've ever eaten. And they have raisins in them so you New Year's resolutioners can tell yourselves you're just eating them to get a serving of fruit in. And to top it all off, they sparkle in the sunlight--how sweet is that? Give them a try. Even my non-raisin loving husband liked them.


Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. raisins
1 c. water
1 c. sugar
1 c. shortening
3 eggs
1/2 t. vanilla
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3 c. flour

Directions:
Boil raisins in the 1 c. water over medium heat, stirring occasionally until water is boiled off; set aside. Cream together shortening and sugar; add eggs and vanilla. Mix well; add raisins and mix again. Sift together dry ingredients and add to the creamed mixture. Roll dough into walnut or golf ball sized balls and roll in granulated sugar. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies. . .

With cinnamon cream filling. Oh yeah. I got this recipe from my cousin's excellent food blog. In fact, hers is so good I debated whether or not to give you a link to it for fear that you'd never come back to mine, but it's just too good not to share. Here it is: One Lovely Life. These cookies are so good. I took them to a family get together today and they disappeared so fast I didn't even get one. Thank goodness I had a few extras left at home. Here's the link to the recipe on my ridiculously talented cousin's blog. She says you can make extra filling if you want, but I really didn't need it. I filled mine pretty generously and I still had a little left over (and would have had even more left if I hadn't been snitching out of the bowl). Enjoy!

Ick

Back when I started this blog, I promised to not only post about my baking successes, but also to share my baking flops. This is one of those. I give you potato nests:

This is a Taste of Home recipe and it looked and sounded really good, so I tried them for our New Year's Eve party. Let's just say they never made it to the table. It's not really Taste of Home's fault, I just didn't use the right stuff and they didn't turn out well. For one thing the nests were grey. Now as a general rule I don't eat grey food. The problem was that the recipe makes 24 nests but I only had 12 mini muffin cups so I had to bake half the recipe at a time. You know how potatoes kind of turn grey if they are exposed to air for too long? That happened to the grated potato that was waiting to go in the oven. Despite the unappetizing color, the nests themselves did taste pretty good. The real ick factor came in the form of the filling. The recipe says to fill them with garlic-herb cheese spread. When I went to the grocery store I was directed to this Chef Tom's garlic spread with cheese:


Apparently, this is not what the recipe was talking about. This stuff was way too salty. I'm talking knock you over salty. And it gives you really bad garlic breath. I'm thinking this might be o.k. on baked potatoes or french bread, but in a concentrated scoop like this it was nasty. Luckily we had enough left over Christmas goodies to fill up our guests without having to serve these. So the moral of the story is, if you want to try this recipe, make sure you have enough mini muffin cups and steer clear of Chef Tom.