Valentines Treats

The day of love is coming…make treats for your husbands, friends and neighbors! Here are some twists on two of my recipes that make great valentine surprises!
First:

Recipe Link HERE
I just made these with strawberry cake mix and rolled them in sprinkles after filling the middles with cream cheese frosting. If you want to you can cut your cookies into hearts after baking to spread a little more love!
Next:

Recipe link HERE
For these I used Cheesecake pudding this time. Then I dipped some in sprinkles, left some plain, and drizzled chocolate over the others. These are so good with the cheesecake filling. YUM!
What is your favorite Valentines recipe?? I’d love to check some of them out if you leave links in the comments below!
Happy Month of Love. I hope someone spoils you and makes you feel loved!

This post was featured on: Sugar & Slice I feel so loved! Head on over there and visit! Pin It

Food Network Debut

Okay that title is a little misleading…I really had my MBASA debut today. MBASA is a spouses association for the spouses of MBA students at BYU. Because I have a baking blog and love to bake and cook they asked me to teach a cooking class to some of the wives. I was so excited and had so much fun! The women in MBASA are amazing and I am so glad to be part of such an amazing group of ladies! Even though I know the class went well and it really was a lot of fun here is a play by play of how it really felt to be teaching this class…haha

So I gathered my supplies, put on my “food network” face and off I went. I spent hours before thinking of the things I would say, do, jokes I would tell…etc. It was going to be fabulous, funny, witty, charming, you name it I would be it! I was going to get a call from the Food Network the next day because of the rave reviews sent in by all of my new fans! Right??? Maybe not quite….

I got started making Brownie Bites and was feeling great minus my shaking hands when I turned on my kitchen aid hand mixer and it fell to pieces! Okay not all to pieces but it broke. I hadn’t even started into my “Giada De Laurentiis” script (I like to watch her show so I was pretending I was her) and my mixer breaks! It is okay I tell myself and I kept going using a whisk. The brownie bites turned out great and everyone was happy eating yummy treats.

Move on to Funnel Cakes….I only had medium eggs not large and without knowing some of the milk spilled in the car on the way there. The batter was SO THICK. It wasn’t funneling. So I added water…still not funneling. Finally borrowed milk from the girls house it was at and we got our funnel cake on! I was worried now that I had lost the faith of probably 2/3 of the people there that I had any talent at all. haha At this point I felt like one of the contestants on the very first day of “The Next Food Network Star” that gets voted off in the end because they couldn’t describe how the food was smelling to the camera because the viewers at home couldn’t smell it so they had to help them smell with their imagination….sorry back to the subject at hand. 

I think all in all it actually went better than I am imagining in my head. Maybe all the women were sitting there thinking that I seemed to elegantly dance as I moved from stove to counter to sink and that the way I whisked the brownie filling was like watching Julia Child in her kitchen….I actually think I am going to try to keep telling myself that this is what they were thinking. Maybe I really will get that call from the food network….

I can tell you this: If nothing else…the kiddos loved the food! I figure that since I am a mom that is a pretty good result. I will need my kids to love my food. So I have some good reviews from children ages 3-8 if you want to hear them :)

I also have a greater appreciation for people with cooking shows than I ever had before.

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Tapioca Pudding Bread

Mark supposedly loves tapioca pudding. I bought him some for the elk hunt…he never ate them. I sent him some in his lunches thinking he had eaten them. Then one day I looked in his backpack to put his lunch in there and I found all 4 uneaten pudding cups. So at this point I decided he was never going to eat them. (And I wasn’t going to believe him that he loved them anymore) The funny thing is that normally if he doesn’t eat his treats. I just eat them. Problem solved. But unfortunately I can’t eat them so I wanted to figure something else out to do with them. Enter: Tapioca Pudding bread…..

This was a total experiment. I was not sure how it would turn out. In the end it was super yummy! (According to my taste testers: Mark and my neighbors) Originally I was trying to make tapioca pudding cookies. As I went long I realized the batter was more the consistency of bread so I changed course!

Here is what you need:

4 Tapioca Pudding Cups
1 Cup Sugar
1/2 C Brown sugar
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
3 C Flour
Preheat oven to 350

Cream tapioca pudding and sugar in a mixing bowl. Then beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the remaining dry ingredients and beat until combined. Pour into greased bread pans (I made 2 loaves) Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

While baking make this:

Cream cheese frosting (This is Marks Recipe he used on my blue velvet cake last year on my birthday)

16 oz. cream cheese softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar sifted
pinch of salt
First blend butter and cream cheese and then add the rest of the ingredients beating until smooth and creamy. Spread on top of the cooled bread loaves.

Tips from Kj:

Mark and our neighbors liked this bread the most warmed in the microwave.

This is a great dessert to use when you can’t get your kiddos to eat. From what I have heard they eat dinner better than they ever have to get a bite of this! Pin It