Showing posts with label Quick and Easy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quick and Easy. Show all posts

Monday, June 24, 2013

Lazy Person's Chocolate Croissants

Chocolate Puff Pastry

I made these last week and now Mr. Chocolate wants me to make them all the time. I call them the lazy person’s croissant because you are not making the pastry from scratch. They are fast, easy, and yummy!

For these "fauxsants au chocolat" you will need:
  • 1 sheet puff pastry
  • Chocolate Chips
  • Powdered Sugar
I just used store brand puff pastry. You can find it in the frozen aisle at the grocery store. The longest part of making these is thawing the pasty dough out which takes about 40 minutes.

Puff Pastry

Roll out your thawed pastry. It’ll come folded in thirds.

Rolled Out Puff Pastry

Roll out on a lightly floured surface then cut into strips.

Puff Pastry Strips

Roll out each of your strips a little more and sprinkle a handful of chocolate chips onto each strip.

Puff Pastry Chocolate Filling

Fold the pastry over the chocolate chips and then again.

Folded Chocolate Puff Pastry

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, drizzle with melted chocolate and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Chocolate Filled Puff Pastries

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Easy Cranberry Sauce From Scratch

Easy Cranberry Sauce

Whenever I tell people I make cranberry sauce from scratch they think I’m nuts (the reason they give me is the making from scratch part anyway) but I can’t think of an easier thing to make.  So I’m sharing here in case anyone thinks this is really hard. Of course when you make it and people like it, it was really really really hard. You know, like you picked each berry by hand hard.

I shared the recipe straight from the Ocean Spray website last year but this year, I remembered to take pictures while I was making it.

For this you will need:
  • Fresh or frozen whole cranberries. I used Ocean Spray
  • Sugar
  • Water
  • Orange peel ( optional)
You need 1C Sugar for each bag of berries. I used two bags so 2C. Same amount of water. Put those in the pot, bring pot to boil. I like to add fresh orange peel to mine:

Cranberry Sauce Sugar
Photographed here before adding the water.

Once boiling, add berries. We have lots of cranberry bogs here in WA and we pass them on the way to visiting my father in law. So if you see this on your bag, we probably drove by them!
Ocean Spray Cranberries

Mr. Chocolate loves cranberry sauce as its own dish. Not as a condiment. He will literally eat a bowl of it. So this time of year I stock up and throw bags of berries in the freezer.

Cranberries 1

Here they are in the sugar/water/orange peel. You want them to come to a boil and they’ll get a bit foamy. You do want to watch this pot boiling though because the berries will foam up and can bubble over. 

Cranberries foamy

As they bubble, they’ll turn a darker shade of well, cranberry. I let them go until they just about reach the top of the pot and then turn off the heat. Let them come to room temp or mostly cool off. Go make crafts.

Cranberry Sauce

Once they’re cooled down, pour into bowl, cover, refrigerate. I leave the orange peel in until I ladle into my serving dish to let the flavor set.

Seriously. Easy. And the recipe’s from the back of the Ocean Spray bag!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Quick Book Page Leaves and Thanksgiving Decor

I first started decorating for Thanksgiving when my son was in pre-school. We were in a store right after Halloween and the Christmas stuff was up and he said “What about Thanksgiving?” and then went on to opine about how Thanksgiving was getting short changed and having a very strong opinion about that. I understood I wasn’t going to hear the end of it if I didn’t decorate especially since "Mr. Too Smart For His Own Good and My Sanity" also pointed out that I had no excuse since I made all that crafty stuff. At. Four. Years. Old.

What’s that got to do with this post? Who knows. I just thought I’d share some of my Thanksgiving décor to which I added some last minute ( like 30 minutes before leaving to go see a movie last minute) easy leaves I made to hang on some curly willow I keep on my mantle.
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I just cut some leaf shapes freehand from some dictionary pages; smudged some distress inks ( Ranger) over them ( actually distressed the paper first, then cut the shapes with a decorative edge scissors) added copper eyelets and twisted some copper wire on.
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This sits in a vase on my mantle that I switch out seasonally. ( Dollar store vase and candlestick) .
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I left the tulle I draped over a table in my living room for Halloween along with a couple of glass pumpkins and added some Thanksgiving accents:
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One of the turkey’s I made over this year
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"Mr. Smarty Pants Four Year Old" is now a Freshman in College and coming home for Thanksgiving in 9 days ( not that I’m counting) so I made a little extra something for his room:
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Cut the pennant shapes old school ( a ruler!) but the rest using my Cricut Expression ( Doodletype and Sentimentals carts) and chose an owl accent since they’re so wise and smart…like a certain former four year old I know.
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