Fresh Strawberry Muffins

My kids have been on a muffin craze the last few weeks. They love to eat foods they can pick up and without forks or spoons involved. I guess it faster to get the food into their mouths and floor, chew, swallow, then get back to causing havoc!! They are good at that. 

This yummy recipe was a shared link on Facebook that popped up one day on my news feed. It looked too good to pass and I just had to try and make them myself. 

The mix of sweet strawberry and the spice from the cinnamon are the perfect match to an afternoon tea. 

Right out of the oven!

Fresh Strawberry Muffins

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

2 cups of flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries

3 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and mix well.

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to butter mixture. Add vanilla. Gently stir in strawberries.

Spoon batter into muffin pans.

Combine sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over muffins.

Bake at 375º for 20-25 minutes.

Makes one dozen muffins.

Do you have a good muffin tin recipe you would like to share? Let us know on Facebook and it can be featured on our blog!

By Mommy Melissa

Icy Fruit Pops

Its winter, freezing cold and what do my kids keep on asking me for? Fee-zees! Every day, over and over again. I stock piled them from the summer but there are none left. How can you explain to a one year old and a two year old that they are not in season and mommy has no idea where to find freezies in the middle of winter?! You cant. I tried!

Since popsicles are about the same thing. I dug out my icepop molds and was going to just use juice when an idea came to me. I had a few cans of peaches in the pantry. What if I pureed them and froze that instead? 

It worked well. They loved it! They still ask for Fee-zees but they are pleased with these icy fruit pops. Especially the star shaped ones.

Do your kids ask you for out of season products? What solutions have you come up with?

By Mommy Melissa

Apple Carrot Cake with Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese Frosting

Here is a quick cake idea I had come up with. Using the idea from a pineapple dump cake recipe, I decided to give it a shot! The end result was really tasty and perfect to finish off a meal in the fall. It has the flavours of autumn in it.

First I started by grating four large peeled apples. Then I poured a carrot cake mixture on top. Just the box of mix, not the other ingredients it called for. Once it was all mixed up I baked it for 40 minutes at 350.

While it was baking, I prepared the pumpkin spice cream cheese icing. (it tastes as good as it sounds!)

Mix them all together in a mixer and whip it until it is nice and fluffy. If you want to give it an extra pumpkin boost, pumpkin puree added would be amazing. I wanted to but there was none to be found that day.
Once the cake is out of the oven and cooled, ice it with the frosting then sprinkle with a little cinnamon for some pizzazz!

Here is the full recipe
1 box carrot cake mix
4 grated large apples, peeled
1 block of cream cheese, softened
3 cups icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tbsp pumpkin puree (optional)
cinnamon to sprinkle on top

1. Mix the grated apples with the cake mix. Pour into baking dish.
2. Bake at 350 for around 30-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
3. Whip the remaining ingredients in a mixer until light and fluffy.
4. Spread the frosting over cooled cake. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.

Be sure to stay tuned for another giveaway coming soon! 

By Mommy Melissa

Super Easy Caramel Apples!

Nothing says Fall like fresh apples. And nothing says YUM like dipping those apples in melted, gooey caramel. Every year I make treats to send in for the kids classmates on Halloween, and this year I decided on caramel apples. But I'm a little lot short on time and already had a box to paint to look like a Minecraft zombie head, so I didn't want to make the caramel from scratch (although I do have a very good caramel recipe written down somewhere). This recipe is super simple and virtually fool proof. Here it is!

 

Start with your apples. I had to use 47 of them.

 

After I took this picture, I twisted off every stem and inserted popsicle sticks. After doing about 10 of them I started stabbing them with a knife and then putting the sticks in. Much easier.

 

I'll apologize in advance because I forgot to take any pictures until I was done. I made these at about 2am and really just wanted to go to bed.

 

Now for the caramel. I used 9 180g bags of those individually wrapped chewy caramel squares. 3 bags did 12-15 apples. If you have kids making these with you, get them to unwrap the caramel. It's tedious and boring and I swear they glue those suckers closed.

 

Once you have your 3 bags unwrapped, dump them into a microwave safe bowl, along with 2 tbsp of water. Microwave for one minute; stir. Microwave another minute; stir. Do that one more time, and you should be all melted and ready to go!

 

Now you just swirl away! You could roll in virtually any toppings you want at this point, but I decided to skip it for the sake of getting at least a few hours of sleep. I like sleep. After coating each apple, scrape the bottom with a spoon (a lot of caramel will pool here) and place it on a square of wax paper. I found the paper made it a lot easier to put the apples into cellophane bags.

 

If you are bagging them, do not put them in the fridge! They will weep and we don't want that. Bagged up at room temperature, they should keep about a week depending on the freshness of the apple. Roughly the same time in the fridge, too.

 

There you go! These really couldn't be any easier... or yummier! Enjoy :)