Pinterest Semi-Fail

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for Apple Butter Yeast Rolls in the crockpot. I am a lover of all things crockpot, so I decided to give them a try on our coveted Wednesday crockpot dinner night. 

First off I had a few things working against me while making these...

1. Kids begging for after-school snack and homework help

2. A time crunch... I had all of 30 minutes to get these into the crockpot before we needed to head out the door.

I made the deadline and got them in the pot before leaving, SUCCESS... or so I thought.

 

This is how my Yeast Rolls turned out.

 

This is what they should have looked like.

Photography skills aren't the only thing lacking in my photo. My rolls turned out more like little dough balls!

Despite their appearance,  they were still pretty tasty.

After looking back through the recipe and reading the instructions thoroughly, I found my miss-step. I didn't put the sugar in the water to poof the yeast. 

Verdict: Will try again!!!

Yield: 24 rolls
Prep Time: 20 minutes active time
Cook Time: 3 hours

Apple Butter Yeast Rolls Recipe

A crockpot bread recipe. From A Spicy Perspective

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tsp. dry active yeast (1 packet)
1/2 cup warm water
3 Tb. sugar
1/2 cup apple butter
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp. salt
4 cups bread flour
4 Tb. melted butter
2 Tb. brown sugar (optional)

Directions:

Using an electric mixer with a bread hook, place the warm water (just barely over luke-warm, too hot will kill the yeast) and sugar in the mixing bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let it foam for 10 minutes.

Then turn on the mixer and add the apple butter, egg and salt. Slowly add the flour. Once all the flour is in the bowl, add the melted butter. "Knead" the dough with the bread hook for 5-8 minutes.
The dough will be smooth, but very tacky. Dump it out onto a floured work surface. Using a floured knife, cut the dough into 4 quarters. Then cut each quarter into 6 equal pieces, to make 24 small dough segments.

Turn the ends of each dough segment under to create little balls. Then place a large piece of parchment paper in a 6 quart slow cooker, and press down. Arrange 12 dough balls in the slow cooker. Then carefully lift the parchment paper out, and repeat with the remaining dough balls and another piece of parchment, creating two separate batches. Place the lid on the crockpot and cover the additional dough balls on the counter, with plastic wrap. Allow them to rise for 1 hour at room temperature. *At this point the dough balls could be put in the fridge for up to a week, until ready to bake.

Sprinkle the rolls with a little brown sugar. Turn the slow cooker on high and "bake" for 60-90 minutes, depending on your crockpot. To test, touch the top of the rolls. If they feel slightly firm and are no longer tacky, the rolls are ready. Repeat with the second batch of dough balls. Each batch will cook for 60-90 minutes, 3 hrs total.

 

 

Growing Green Onions... Inside

Once again I saw a brilliant idea on Pinterest to grow green onions on your counter in glass of water. The idea was genius! What a great way to get more for your money. 

Most recipes just use the green top of the onion, so once you cut off what you need you place the rest in a cup with water. 








Ten days later, this is what my cup of onions looked like. Quite a bit had grown. I couldn't believe it actually worked. 


This was the second time growing these particular onions. I will update after a month or so to let you know how its going. I am not sure if it will be an endless growing thing or if there is an end to their life.

Another idea I found on Pinterest, is a way to store the green onions if you don't need them at the time. I chopped them up, placed them in a bottle, and put it in the freezer. Then when I do need them I can just shake out the amount I need and put it back in the freezer.

I LOVE Pinterest!

My first attempt at DIY canvas photo. I used the tutorial using tissue paper. It was a little challenging. I didn't get my picture completely smooth there were some wrinkles, but I really like the way it turned out. I am tempted to try some different products on the next canvas I do. This tutorial uses a workable fixative, which sets the ink and keeps it from smudging. Which would really help, because when I was done with this one, my fingers were a little black.

We amended our menu this week after I found out that it was National Pancake Day. So naturally we needed to have pancakes. I made the traditional pancakes along with trying Banana Bread Pancakes. The only difference I made was adding oatmeal. I soaked 1/2 cup of oats in the milk while I combined the dry ingredients. Since I added the oats I cut the flour down to 1 1/2 cups. 

Whole Wheat Brown Sugar Banana Bread Pancakes

makes 12 pancakes

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

2/3 cup milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

3 large ripe bananas, mashed

2 tablespoons butter, melted

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Measure out the milk and add the vanilla extract to it. Whisk together the dry ingredients and add in milk and vanilla, stirring to combine. The mixture will still be dry. Add in mashed bananas and mix. Add in melted butter and stir until batter is somewhat smooth.

Heat a skillet or grilled on medium heat. Using a 1/3 cup measure, spoon batter into rounds and cook until bubbles form on top – about 2-3 minutes. Flip and cook for a minute or two more. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve hot with butter and syrup, or the vanilla maple glaze.

Note: if you don’t have/can’t find whole wheat pastry flour, use 1 cup of regular whole wheat and 1 cup of all purpose. Or 2 cups of all purpose.

Vanilla Maple Glaze

1/2 cup maple syrup

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir until smooth. Pour over pancakes. 

I have been waiting to make these beauties for a while now. Some little munchkin kept eating my marshmallows. I LOVE anything cinnamon! So Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispie bars were a definite try! They are quick and easy way to get a cinnamon roll fix. This recipe will be a repeat!!

This is an old project, but I found the basic idea for Jayden's Valentine box from greenzebracrafts.com. We used cereal boxes to make the shape of C3PO's head then used paper mache. It was a fun, yet messy endeavor. The kids didn't really care for touching the goo.

I can't believe it was that easy.....

I was roaming around pinterest the other day as usual. When I came upon a picture of my beloved kitchenaid mixer, with meat in it. I had to click to figure out why meat, mine is usually full of cookie dough! simplyhealthyfam.blogspot.com said that if you stick chicken in the mixer with the usual paddle, turn the mixer on to speed 4-6 and in just 20-30 seconds you'll have perfect shredded chicken. So, we were having French Dip sandwiches last night and I decided to give this a try with the roast I cooked.

I placed the whole roast in, I didn't cut it up at all.

Turned the mixer on to 5 and in no time at all.... it was perfectly shredded! It was sooooo easy!

The only parts that weren't shredded where fatty pieces that you wouldn't want.

Tip: Make sure the meat is warm/hot before you shred it. Refrigerated meat is harder and may harm your mixer.

French Dip Sandwich Rolls  

1 pkt onion soup mix 

1 can beef broth 

2 lb chuck pot roast, trimmed 

1 pkg fresh potato rolls 

4 oz shredded mozzarella    

*Combine beef broth and onion soup mix in crock-pot.  Add roast.  

*Cook on low 8 hours.  

*Remove roast to slice or shred.  Open rolls. Layer beef, then cheese.

*Place on cookie sheet.  Cover loosely with foil.

*Bake @375o for 25 min.  

Serve with bowls of au jus for dipping. 

Mini Apple Crisp Triangles

Since it was a crappy day outside yesterday, I decided it was a great day to bake something new! I found a recipe for Sugar Crumb Crispy, I believe on Pinterest, and added a few things that I thought would make it a little more like mini apple crisp. The ones I made without apple butter actually reminded me of the dessert pizza from Papa Murphys. So you can make them with or without apple butter they are good both ways!

Mini Apple Crisp Triangles

• 3-4 tbs butter *make sure butter is cold*
• 2 tbs sugar
• 2 tbs brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• dash of salt
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup oatmeal
• Apple Butter
• 1 can Cresent Rolls

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
Cut in butter to sugars, cinnamon, and salt and flour to form crumbs.
On an ungreased cookie sheet, separate crescent roll dough into 8 triangles.  Sprinkle crumbs on top.
Bake at 400 degrees F for 8-12 minutes.
After they were cooked and cooled I cut them into smaller triangles but you can leave them big too!


GLAZE

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar  (if the glaze is too runny, just add more powdered sugar to get yours to the desired consistency)
• 1 Tbsp. softened butter
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla
• 1 to 1-1/2 Tbsp. milk

Blend together and drizzle over triangles.

Below are some step by step photos.....

Cut in butter to sugars, cinnamon, and salt and flour to form crumbs.

On an ungreased cookie sheet, separate crescent roll dough into 8 triangles. Then if you are using Apple Butter, spread that onto the triangles.

Sprinkle crumbs on top. Then Bake 8-12 minutes. I did mine for 10.

Hot out of the oven ready for glaze.

Getting a Handle on this mess....

Ever since school started I have struggled with time management. Things like getting/keeping the house clean, laundry, work, and projects. So enter my favorite website Pinterest to help solve one of those problems! I saw an idea of separating your house up... room by room... day by day and clean that way. My 3 Monsters blog is where the idea stemmed from and she does a total of an hour of cleaning. 30 mins of stuff that needs to be done daily and 30mins in the room of the day. She even had a beautifully wonderful print out of her chores, because like she said it is easier when its pretty! So I made up my own daily chores sheet, put it in a sheet protector (to make it dry erasable) and put it inside one of my kitchen cabinets.

I have been using this system for almost 2 weeks and I am loving it! No more cleaning on Weekends... Weekends is FAMILY TIME!!!

Latest Tries...Pinterest

It has been a crazy last couple of weeks with school starting, working, and I have found a new obsession... Zumba. Anyway, I figured I would do an accumulation post of the things I have tried off of pinterest and the blog world lately.

First, I made these Cake Batter rice krispie bars. It seems you can put cake mix in just about anything these days. They were a huge hit!! You can find the recipe on that site or you can just add 1/4 -1/3 cup of yellow cake mix to your usual krispie bar recipe.

Next, Candy Bar Surprise Cookies just think your best chocolate chip cookie with your favorite candy bar inside.... very sinful! We tried KitKat and Reeses. This would be a great way to use up halloween candy.

"Drunken Gummies" were a combination of something we tried and heard about from a wonderful Adventureland Inn bartender and research online. The basics is you take gummy bears and soak them in alcohol for about 8 days. Just put enough alcohol in to cover the bears. They are a great treat. Although only one of mine turned out. The 2 vodka kinds ended up a big melted sticky mess. I am not sure it was the plastic containers or another issue, but we will definitely try again!

Last isn't food related surprisingly! I got this wonderful organization idea from Missy at http://starrfam.blogspot.com/ . I bought drawers from target for each kid, and this is swim central! All swim suits and swim diapers go in a drawer. and then on the shelf above is towels, toys and sunscreen. So when we want to go swimming I just have to go to one place to get it all!