Grandma H's Dump Cake

So it's Easter today and we really don't have any plans. For the first time in weeks we don't have to get in the car and drive anywhere. It's actually kinda nice. I'm getting laundry and dishes done and just spending time relaxing. So as is the norm when I'm sitting around doing nothing, I get a hankering to do some baking.

When I was a kid I used to spend my summers at my Dad's parents house up in the mountains in California. The lived in a little town called Meadow Valley outside of Quincy. Grandma H (otherwise known as Grandma Doggy) was always cooking and baking. One of my favorite desserts she used to make is soooo yummy and soooo easy to make. Of my Three Things only Thing 1 ever had a chance to meet his Great Grandma before she passed away 4 years ago. So I like to be able to cook and make her recipes to keep a little piece of her specialness a part of my boys life.

So on account of the fact that it's Easter I thought I'd make something special today and Grandma's Dump Cake seemed to be calling my name. The only problem... I don't have any ingredients on hand, so it looks like we'll be making a quick trip to the store afterall! ;)

This recipe is a pretty standard Dump Cake recipe and it comes out great every single time! I have only very minorly modified it by adding in just teeny bit of vanilla extract. The best part about it is that it is so easy to make that my Things can help make it too.

Ingredients:

• 21 oz can blueberry or cherry pie filling
• 8 oz can crushed pineapple (the can pictured is a 20 oz can because they were on sale and it was cheaper to buy that then the 8 oz. I just measured out 8 oz)
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans work great)
• 2 sticks unsalted butter or margarine
  

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 9 in square pan with baking spray.

Spread ingredients as they come from the box or can in order listed above (pie filling, pineapple, vanilla extract, cake mix, and nuts). Top with butter or margarine that has been cut into marble sized pieces.

Bake for about 40 minutes.

And that's it! You're all done. When top is golden brown take out of oven and cool in pan on cooling rack.

Bunny Ears and a Kiwi Crate Update

So the hubby was gone for the three weeks leading up to Easter. Luckily I'm a planner and already had all my Easter and Easter basket fillers before he left so I didn't have to try and buy them when the boys were with me. One of our pre-Easter activities was an Egg Hunt for a play group we are apart of. I volunteered to organize the craft and came up with a super easy bunny ears craft for the Littles to do. This craft was great because I preassembled everything so that the day of the Egg Hunt there was very little for the kids / moms to have to do, but they got a really cute craft out of it.

I'm all about shortcuts and making things easier, not harder. So I freehand just drew an outline of the bunny ears. The larger one was for the outer white part of the ear and the smaller was for the inner pink part of the ear.

After making the template I traced it onto the pink and white papers and cut them out. Here's a couple tips for cutting things out when you need to cut multiples... when it's small enough fold the paper in half (which is what I did for the pink papers). This way you trace and cut less. Because the white part was bigger I could only fit three ears to a page and couldn't fold in half so I stapled the edges to keep the paper from shifting when I was cutting. I didn't need to staple the pink paper because when it is folded it will stay together when you cut it. I had to make fifteen sets so I needed 30 of each piece. With the pink I just folded all the paper together so I just had to make 5 cuts and I had all 3 pieces. Be careful about trying to cut too much at once. I could cut through about 6 pieces of paper. If you try to cut too much your cuts will get messy and your scissors won't be able to cut through it all.

The next step is to glue the pink center to the white outer ear. I used a glue stick to glue it because liquid glue will make it wrinkly and the glue stick will keep it smooth.

After that I glued the ears to the headband piece. Because I'm a former teacher I used a bunch of old sentence strips that I still had. I did use liquid glue for this step because it has a stronger hold and I didn't want the ears falling off. I just put a little at the bottom of the backside of the ear and stuck it on to the sentence strip. If you don't have sentence strips you can take a piece of construction paper, fold it horizontally or "hot dog" (so it's longer). Then cut along the fold. Staple or glue the ends of one side of each strip together to make a long band.

Then I just laid them all out to dry flat. The next step is what we did at our playgroup outing. Using the liquid glue I did a thin line through the middle of the exposed white part of the ear. Then I took cotton balls and stuck them in the glue. I pulled my cotton balls apart to spread them out and use less cotton balls. But you can just grab them and stick them too. I did one ear at a time so the glue didn't dry before I got them cotton balls stuck on. I don't recommend using a glue stick for the part. The cotton balls might stick at first but the glue won't old as log and they'll be falling off before you know it.

Now the only step left is to wrap around child's head to fit the band and then staple to hold the ends together. I don't recommend stapling while band is near child's head.

Now depending on how big kiddos head is, you may need some reinforcement on the back to keep the ears sticking up. You can use Popsicle sticks or straws. I just so happened to have straws at hand so I cut one straw in half and taped it to the ears.

Thing 1 didn't want anything to do with making ears at the Egg Hunt so he let me use his as an example for everyone else.

As you can see he was less than thrilled to be wearing the bunny ears!

Here are a few photos from the Egg Hunt! Here's our craft table all set up and ready to go!

Look at this Little! Isn't he just the most adorable thing ever?!

This is my friend who's the mom of the two twin Littles pictured in the bunny ears since my own Things were so uncooperative! Aren't they just the cutest? She's the super mom who coordinated the egg hunt for the play group!

Here's her other Little He's just a ham for the camera!

Now I have to be honest... if it wasn't for Thing 3 taking the longest nap ever and Thing 1 and 2 being distracted by a Kiwi Crate activity I don't know how I would have gotten this done. So here's the other project that came with our last Kiwi crate with the plants theme.

It was super easy and the boys could pretty much do it unassisted. First they had to color the flowers and plants. Then they punched them out and stuck them on pipe cleaners. After that they decorated the pots with modeling clay, put a little modeling clay in the bottom of the pot and stuck the pipe cleaners in the modeling clay in the pot.Super easy and fun and it kept them busy!

Thing 1's pots

 Thing 2's pots

 We made a garden!

And it was only fitting that we put our flower pots with our window garden. Can you believe how much these seeds have grown in two and a half weeks!? I love that every time I'm at the sink I get to see all this!

Thing 1's plants

Thing 2's plants

Baked Coconut Crusted Chicken

Have I got a recipe for you! These chicken tenders are so good, there's no way you can eat just one. They are so easy to make and I had all the ingredients already in my pantry and refrigerator. I like to buy chicken breasts at Costco. I get the ones over in the refrigerated section. They come with six packets with two breasts in each packet. They are great for us because I just freeze them and pull out a packet when I need it. The breasts are always large and two is more than enough to feed the four of us. This recipe called for tenderloins, so I just cut the breasts into strips to make tenderloin sized pieces. You could also cut them even smaller and make nuggets for the kids or stick them on little toothpicks or sticks for a fun finger food at a party. 

A friend of mine introduced me to the recipe. She had made it the night before and her kids just gobbled it up. I'm always looking for new things for my kids to try, so I decided to give it a shot. She had made a few changes and then when I made it I took her suggestions and then modified it a little more. My kids really liked the chicken but didn't care for the sauce. I did opt to use balsamic vinegar instead of white vinegar. I love balsamic, but it might have just been too much for my munchkins. Here's the Skinnytaste recipe that it was modified from.

Another thing I loved about this recipe.. my kids have been showing more interest in helping in the kitchen, so Thing 1 was my helper and he mixed the coconut crumb mixture, whisked the egg whites, and then mixed the ingredients for the potatoes au gratin (what can I say, I was trying to clean out the pantry). He felt really helpful and these were tasks he could successfully handle without making a huge mess. Here's our end result!

Ingredients:
For the Coconut Chicken

• 2 chicken breasts sliced into tenderloins
• 6 Tbsp shredded coconut (sweetened)
• 1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
• 3 Tbsp panko bread crumbs
• 3 egg whites
• salt and pepper
• oil spray (I used my Misto with olive oil in it but you can also use Pam cooking spray)

For the Vinaigrette

• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar (but if you want less tang use white)
• 2 tsp dijon mustard

Directions:

Whisk all the ingredients for the vinaigrette and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut your chicken breasts into tenderloin sized pieces and season with salt and pepper.

Whisk the egg whites in a small bowl. Combine the coconut, Italian bread crumbs, and panko bread crumbs in another dish/bowl.

Dip tenderloins into egg whites then into coconut crumb mixture. Lay flat on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper (makes for super easy clean up). Spray lightly with olive oil spray. Bake for about 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked completely through. Flip tenderloins once about halfway through for even cooking and to get a nice golden crust on both sides.

Remove from oven. The crust should have a nice caramel colored crust. When you serve the chicken, you can either use the vinaigrette sauce for dipping or just drizzle a little over the whole tenderloin. I opted for a light drizzle so I could keep the calories in check. ;)

Enjoy!

Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti Squash

As I mentioned in the previous post I have a friend who shared a bunch of vegetables from her Bountiful Baskets coop. Besides the zucchini there was also some spaghetti squash... yum! So the recipe I'm sharing today is one I've made before and liked with a few modifications. I actually made this recipe last week before my husband left for three weeks and the baby conveniently got uber sick. Luckily for me it made a lot and reheated well so while I ate the same thing straight for three days, it was easy and good! LOL! Life of a mom! I used this Skinnytaste recipe as a guideline and made a few of my own changes.

A couple things before I share the recipe... a lot of "skinny" recipes that call for cheese use pre-shredded lowfat cheese. I don't like all the chemicals and preservatives they add to shredded cheese just to keep it from sticking, so I prefer to buy block cheese and shred it myself. Then I just use a food scale to weigh out how much I need. I know it adds back calories... but I just personally believe it is healthier. I also added chicken to this recipe. I buy it in bulk at Costco and it comes in packs of two chicken breasts and I just freeze them. For this recipe I had the hubby grill two of the breasts and I chopped it up and added it in. And mine did come out a little saucy... the spaghetti squash were on the small side... so hindsite I wouldn't have added all the sauce. If your spaghetti squash are on the small to medium side, add sauce gradually until you have the consistency you want. I just accommodated by using a slotted spoon when I served it so that some of the sauce drained out.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium spaghetti squash
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 cups milk
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 8 oz shredded cheddar cheese
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 cooked chicken breasts chopped into bite sized pieces
• Grated Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top
• Grape tomatoes halved (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut spaghetti squash in half lengthwise. Use a spoon to scrape out and discard seeds. Season with salt and pepper. Place cut side up on a baking sheet and bake for about an hour (until tender).

Use a fork to separate the strands. I find that scraping from the outside shell towards the center of the spaghetti squash keeps the strands in tact and from getting mushy. Place strands in a bowl and discard the shells. Keep oven heating at 375 degrees.

Heat the butter and oil in a large sauce pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook about 2 minutes. Stir in flour and reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring continually, about 4 minutes.

Add milk and chicken broth, whisking continually while raising heat to medium-high until mixture is boiling and becomes smooth and thick, about 3-4 minutes (mine took a little longer). Season with salt and pepper.

Once it becomes thick, remove from heat and add cheddar cheese. Mix until the cheese is melted and sauce is well combined.

Combine with chicken and spaghetti squash.

Pour into baking dish and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes until top is bubbly and golden. I also had a large amount of tomatoes from the Bountiful Basket, so I added some cut grape tomatoes in the last 10 minutes. I didn't want them to overcook and become mushy so I waited until it was almost done cooking..

Enjoy!