Maplewood Kale Chips

The nutritional info for Kale is quite amazing! One cup of kale contains 34 calories, 6.7g of total carbohydrates and 1.3g of dietary fiber. This is a great way to eat your vegetables and not add butter, cheese and other bad fats to your diet. I have been making these all winter and spring and I am just now getting around to blogging them. I have tried making many different versions, like using salt and vinegar and spicy red pepper. This Maplewood is by far my favorite version.

1 bunch of Kale
Olive Oil
Grill Mates Maplewood seasoning (this is a dry powder seasoning sold in the spice aisle at most markets)

Heat oven to 375°
Wash your Kale. Seperate the leaves from the "spine" of the Kale by running a knife down both sides of the ribbing. Tear or cut your leaves into chip size  pieces. Place the cut leaves  into a large bowl. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil over the top of them. (Don't use too much or the burn a lot easier). Use your hands to toss all the olive oil around the Kale. They should have an even glistening of oil on the leaves. Place the oiled leaves onto a cookie sheet or broiler pan. Place in oven for 15 minutes. Using tongs, flip the chips over. Place back in the oven for 10-15 more minutes or until they are crisp.

Paw Pops

For those of you that know me, you know that I despise shopping! So when I needed to buy a specific something, I called my friend Tami and she knew just where to find it. We found it this morning and it worked perfectly for what I needed it for. So when she told me she needed help making some paw pops, how could I refuse? They were fun to make and it's always great to spend the day with a friend. Making these today, sure made me wish that I had dogs again. Unfortunately we lost both our pets last year. So instead of getting another dog, I planted a garden instead. I'm sure having fun with that too. I guess when I need a "dog fix" I can always make these paw pops ;)

 This requires a dog paw mold and various kinds of melted chocolates. We used white chocolate, milk chocolate and peanut butter melts!

Birthday Cake Popcorn

What do you get when you mix sweet with salty? 5 extra lbs!!! Seriously, I don't even care for popcorn and this tasted great to me. I guess the pull of sweet and salty is more than I can fight against. I fought pretty hard though and only tasted a couple of bites.  Hopefully everyone at work will eat this and I won't bring any extra home.
The original recipe is found at:http://buddingbaketress.blogspot.com/2011/05/birthday-cake-popcorn.html
 This girl is a genius baker. She has some great recipes on her site. Check it out! 
There is not very many M&M's in my version because I purposely bought a VERY small box of them so as not to tempt me to eat any if there was leftovers. It worked. There might not be as many in the popcorn, but I did not fall into temptation. You see....there IS a method to my madness haha. 

1 bag of popcorn, popped
8 ounces of white chocolate candy coating, melted
4 heaping teaspoons of yellow cake mix
Mini M&Ms
Assorted sprinkles

Pop popcorn and spread out on a paper towel, removing any kernels or burnt pieces, and place in a large bowl. Mix in mini M&Ms. 

Melt white chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until melted and smooth. Stir in cake mix until smooth, then stir in about 3 teaspoons of sprinkles. Immediately pour over popcorn. Using a wooden spoon, mix the popcorn and M&Ms until completely coated. 

Pour out onto wax paper or into a wax-paper lined jelly roll pan and spread into a single layer. Sprinkle with sprinkles until festive, then let cool and harden. Break into pieces and enjoy! 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn

I am probably the only person in the world that does not like the smell of popcorn cooking. I'm not sure why I have an aversion to it. I guess it could be that my mom used to make it a lot. A LOT!!! I sure do love my mom, but I found it horrible to smell the popcorn. Even now when I'm at work, I want to walk into the staff lounge with my nose plugged when someone has been popping popcorn. So for someone that doesn't like the taste and/or smell of popcorn, I wasn't sure what I was going to think of this snack. I needed to make something to take to church tomorrow and I had all these ingredients in my house. Turns out it's actually pretty tasty. The chocolate and the peanut butter hide the taste of the popcorn well in this one. Now if I could just get my  house to get "un-stinky" from cooking it lol.

For popcorn: 8 cups popped popcorn 1/2 cup salted cocktail peanuts 1/2 cup corn syrup 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup peanut butter 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips For topping:  1/2- 1 cup milk chocolate chips 1 gigantic spoonful of peanut butter (You can use whatever milk chocolate to peanut butter ratio you want here. I like to use a lot of peanut butter to cut down on the sweetness of the chocolate)

Preheat oven to 300°. Grease a large roasting pan. Combine popped popcorn and peanuts in the pan.
In a medium saucepan, melt together corn syrup and sugar. Stir until sugar is thoroughly dissolved. Add the chocolate chips and stir until melted. Add  the peanut butter and stir until mixed together.  
Pour over the popcorn in the pan and stir to coat it well.
Bake for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. (I stirred mine every 7 minutes). Put on wax paper and allow to cool down. 
In a saucepan, mix together the topping ingredients. (milk chocolate chips and peanut butter). Drizzle over the chocolate popcorn and let sit on the wax paper until the new chocolate topping has firmed up. (This can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on the weather)
Break apart and enjoy.

*original recipe from: http://www.yummly.com/

Pretzel Bites

Who doesn't love pretzels when they are dunked in butter and rolled in flavors? I know I do.Thiis recipe isn't exactly "pretzels" but it's close enough when you are in a hurry and want to make a quick snack.

Here is a link to the recipe which I found on "Pinterest" which has become my new obsession!!

http://www.justgetoffyourbuttandbake.com/?p=932

Chocolate Covered, Cake batter flavor with sprinkles, Rice Krispy Treats

This is what happens when I am bored on a Sunday afternoon. I had recently stumbled across an idea on the internet of making cake batter flavor rice krispy treats. I thought it sounded good...I mean who doesn't like cake batter flavored anything???? So I completed the rice krispy treats and then it hit me....cover them in chocolate and they will taste even better. Sugar rush? Yes! But oh so good!!

This is just part of the oh so yummy goodness that you need.....

This is after the rice krispy treats were baked and sitting on the counter. At this point I had not gotten into them.....

Cut into squares and waiting patiently to be "dipped"

This is after I had only dipped one or two. Here you can see how yummy they are looking....

AH...the final product....

3 tbsp butter
10 oz mini marshmallows
1/3 cup yellow cake mix
6 cups rice krispys
1.75 ounce container of sprinkles
Melting chocolate
White chocolate

Melt the butter and marshmallows together on the stove top in a large pan. Stir in little bits of the cake mix powder at a time and make sure you stir it in thoroughly. After all the cake mix is mixed in, stir in the rice krispys and half the bottle of sprinkles. Mix thoroughly. Leave on counter top for at least a half an hour. To insert the stick, I like to melt just a touch of chocolate and dip the end of the stick into the chocolate before inserting it into the krispy pop. This helps stabilize the stick and somewhat adheres it to the rice krispys. Place the stick into the pop and dip into melted chocolate. After the chocolate hardens on the outside, drizzle white chocolate over the top of it.

Soft Pretzels

Wow, it's been almost a week since I posted anything on my blog. It was busy around here with Christmas. I woke up early this morning and realized there are not very many groceries left in this house, which is very unusual for me and I have no intentions on going grocery shopping in the rain today. So we will make due with some meat in the freezer and a few vegetables we have left. Since I am tired of snacking on "sweets and goodies" from Christmas I decided to tackle a not so sweet snack for today. These soft pretzels were super easy to make and require very few ingredients. As I was rolling the dough out I couldn't help but feel like a kid again rolling play dough.

Soft Pretzels

1/4 oz pkg active dry yeast
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups warm water
5 cups flour
8 cups water
3 Tbsp baking soda
Coarse salt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 475. Grease baking sheets
2. Combine yeast and brown sugar in large bowl. Gradually add 1 1/2 cups warm water, stirring until yeast is dissolved. Let stand 5 minutes.
3. Stir in flour. Blend well. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic,
about 5-10 min.
4. Pinch off a ball of dough and form a ball. On lightly floured surface, roll each ball into a rope and shape into a pretzel. (makes approx 12 pretzels)

5. Combine 8 cups water and baking soda in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Lift pretzels with a spatula and drop them into boiling water a couple at a time. Boil until pretzels rise to the surface, about one minute.
6. Place pretzels on greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with coarse salt if desired. Bake at 475 for 8 minutes.
Serve warm!

Chocolate Cracker Jacks

The other day I posted a chocolate popcorn recipe. It was very good, but I didn't get to eat any, as it was a gift for someone else. So today, I tried a different recipe that did not use marshmallows, but used Karo Syrup instead. This recipe also called for peanuts. I like this recipe better, because the consistency was more like "caramel corn" and the salty peanuts helped cut down on the sweetness. Fortunately I had all the ingredients handy in my pantry and didn't need to buy anything to make this.

Ingredients

• 2 quarts popped popcorn
• 1 cup peanuts
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup corn syrup
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees
2. Spray Pam into a large baking pan with sides.
3. Place popcorn and peanuts into a large bowl, and set aside.
4. Stir together the sugar, corn syrup, cocoa powder, and butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat until it comes to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes. Stir in the vanilla, then pour over the popcorn. Stir until the popcorn is well coated. Spread the popcorn into the prepared pan.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven, and cool to room temperature. Break into pieces and store in an airtight container.

Chocolate Popcorn

I needed to make a quick, sweet snack to pack into a gift for bosses day. The teacher I work for only eats sugary snacks on weekends. It was only Wednesday, so I knew I had to come up with something that would stay fresh longer than the typical cupcake or cookies. I found a recipe for chocolate popcorn on cooks.com and tried it out. It turned out really good, almost like a chocolate caramel popcorn.

4 qts popped corn**

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup choc chips

40 large marshmallows

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

** I used Kettle Corn that you cook in the microwave since it's all I had available in my pantry. 

Place popped corn in greased 13 X 9 inch pan. Melt the butter, choc chips and marshmallows together in a large pot. Stir till smooth. Stir in vanilla and salt. Pour over popped corn and stir. Bake at 250 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. After it's done baking, give it a good stir to "pick up" the chocolate that has settled to the bottom of the pan and coat the popcorn better. Pour out onto waxed paper and let cool. Enjoy!