Perfect Valentine Brownies & Super Bowl Queso Dip

 

Hello my Friends!

Happy Friday Eve to you. :) 

Do you have any fun weekend plans - particularly any fun Valentine's plans? 

Matt & I are planning to snuggle in as more snow is on the way tomorrow night. But he's going to cook me a steak dinner. Yay me! 💝😋 

We also have some little gifts we plan to exchange together. And I ordered us some special gourmet chocolate covered cherries and a few chocolate truffles that arrived the other day that I'm chilling in the fridge until tomorrow. Isn't it wonderful to have an excuse to celebrate L❤️VE? 

I thought I'd share a couple recipes I had made for our little Super Bowl gathering last weekend. And one of them is for these amazingly decadent and delish blackberry swirl cheesecake brownies! They would be SO perfect as a valentine treat too. 

isn't the swirl so pretty? 

You can see the spread behind us with all the goodies. We watched on the big screen downstairs in our media room (& half of the downstairs is Matt's office as you can see too) 

You can find the full recipe for these brownies on my pinterest board "sweet treats" which you can find if you click here.  But here are parts of the recipe I was able to screen shot (it didn't have a print option which makes it nice and neat). I took a shortcut and made the brownie layer from a Ghiradelli brownie box mix which I highly recommend. So much easier and SO yummy. So I'm only sharing the rest of the recipe for the cheesecake layer and the blackberry swirl. 

*so basically make the boxed mix by the instructions and pour into the bottom of greased 8x8 pan. Then follow the rest of the steps shared here. Doing the boxed mix did add to the overall baking time for me. I think mine took more like 45 minutes or so. I topped them with a drizzle of chocolate sauce and fresh blackberries on top. They were a hit with everyone! 

Some other ideas the recipe gave were:

☀️ serve them in the summer with blackberry sorbet (doesn't that sound amazing?). 

🍂🍁Do an Autumn edition and add a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg to the brownies. 

🎄❤️💚And even a holiday version by adding some orange zest the cheesecake layer. No matter which way you make them - I just recommend that you do! 

Another yummy snack at our super bowl table was a queso dip. I didn't get a good after pic but this was it looked like in the works melting in the slow cooker. We had done up a nacho bar with different chips, taco meat, and then queso dip and all the fixings - so everyone could build their own nacho plate. This queso was also a hit and wonderful to keep nice and warm in the slow cooker for the whole evening. You can find the recipe under my pinterest board "appetizers" if you click here. But I've also shared it below. 

Enjoy! 

xoxo

Italian Chicken Soup

Hello dear Friends.

Yay, that soup season is here!! Matt is a soup lover just like I am, so we have already made quite a few soups already in this relationship. Lol He makes a mean Zuppa Tuscana type one - that's a bit more waist friendly because he only does 1/2 as many potatoes and adds cauliflower and it's DELISH! 

I recently found this magazine: 

And there are so many wonderful sounding soups and stews in it. So I'm determined to make all the ones that interest us the most over the course of this Winter. Here is the first one I made right before Thanksgiving. I kind of changed a few things to make it simpler and faster and it turned out awesome! We both thought it was a nice light fresh soup with all the fresh herbs. And we liked the Italian twist to it with the tomatoes. 

You'll see in the recipe it calls for using a whole raw chicken. I made it easier on myself and I used a rotisserie chicken. So I took a fully cooked rotisserie chicken and pulled of all the meat from it and cut it up and set it aside in the fridge. I then used the carcass - along with the other ingredients called for (cut up celery, carrot, onion, garlic and rough chopped tomato, seasonings, bay leaf etc) and I let that slow cook all afternoon to flavor our "broth". 

Once the broth was complete I strained everything out of it. I put that broth back in the slow cooker and added some orzo pasta and freshly chopped tomatoes and let that cook until the orzo was done. 

I then finely chopped up the fresh herbs and put them in to cook for the last 5 minutes, along with some lemon juice and the chicken I had cut up earlier. 

I dished up our bowls and topped them each with some parmesean cheese. We had ours with some little ciabatta roll sandwiches and it was delicious. 

Here's the recipe from the magazine. Do you write little notes next to recipes you like too? 😉 

Are you a big soup person? I think living in the north, where we get a lot of cold weather, soup is such a comfort and warms the soul. 😋 

Enjoy! xoxo

Chili, Sloppy Joe's and Cornbread

 

Hello dear Friends and happy Thursday! 🍂 

I thought I would share several recipes today. When I mentioned my brown sugar chili a while back, I realized from some of you that I've never shared that recipe. So I thought I would do that today. I made sloppy joes last night and have a favorite easy recipe for that - so thought I'd throw that in too. And since I do cornbread with both, (I sometimes like to serve sloppy joes over cornbread instead of on buns), ... that will round out the recipes for today.  They are all great cozy Fall foods! 😋 

BROWN SUGAR CHILI

1 lb. ground beef

1/2 an onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 can chili beans (I use mild)

1 can kidney beans

1 can Busch's baked beans 

chili powder

cumin

garlic powder

paprika

red pepper flakes or cayenne (optional)

brown sugar (1-2 tbsp)

1 can tomato sauce

Brown & season ground beef, drain and set aside. In same pan, saute onion and pepper until softened a bit (can add oil to the pan if too dry). Add back the browned hamburger meat and add all of the canned beans. I use the liquid from all but the kidney beans -those I drain first and I only use 1/2 a can usually as I don't like them as much. Lol Then I season and I have never measured these so I'm not sure how much I use. I would guess I use several tbsp to even a 1/4 c. of chili powder, then maybe about 1 tsp of the other seasonings. Other than brown sugar, which I use at least a tbsp or more. And the cayenne I use about 1/4 tsp. I then taste as I go. I just like it to be a nice sweet heat. I then add the tomato sauce and check again to see if any more seasoning needs to be added. I let it simmer on the stove awhile...or I put it into a slow cooker and leave it on low or warm until we're ready to eat. I have also doubled this recipe and it's turned out great. I have been requested to bring this for potlucks through the years and it's been a favorite that I make for many family members. I usually serve it with shredded cheese, raw onion, sour cream and fritos for toppings. And often a side of cornbread muffins. 

FYI: it's perfect football food! 😋 

how it looks at the seasonings stage before tomato sauce is added

And the final product: nothing like a big pot of chili in the Fall - yum!

For the cornbread I keep it easy and use a boxed one (I love Famous Dave's). And I make it like it says on the box. But then I doctor it up by adding chopped up pickled jalapeno and about 1/2 a cup or so of shredded cheddar cheese. And when serving with chili I usually make 6 jumbo muffins.

When they come out of the oven I glaze them with honey butter while they're still hot. I make that by mixing 1/4 c. (half a stick) of softened butter with 2 tbsp of honey. More sweet heat to the muffins then too. Just brush honey mixture over the tops. I cannot tell you how insanely good they are this way - not spicy at all. Just so delish!

For sloppy joes I make the cornbread the exact same way...only I make it in an 8x8 pan and then brush the top of the bread with the honey butter glaze when it comes out of the oven. 

I use this recipe for "neat sloppy joes" from the Allrecipes website. You can find it here.

EASY SLOPPY JOES

Ingredients:

 2 pounds lean ground beef 

½ cup chopped onion 

1 cup chopped celery

 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed tomato soup

 ¼ cup ketchup

 1 tablespoon white vinegar

 ¼ cup packed brown sugar 

1 ½ teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 

½ teaspoon salt 

¼ teaspoon garlic powder 

  Directions:

 Step 1 Place ground beef in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook until evenly browned, stirring to crumble. Add onion and celery, cover the pan, and cook until tender and transparent, about 5 minutes. Drain off any grease. Step 2 Stir the tomato soup (undiluted), ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce into the beef mixture. Season with salt and garlic powder. Heat to a simmer over low heat, and cook until thoroughly heated, stirring frequently to prevent it from burning on the bottom. Step 3 Spoon the hot beef mixture onto buns, which may be toasted first, and serve. (or as I do, over a piece of honeyed jalapeno cornbread. 

These have all been regular hits in my world. If you try them I hope you enjoy! xo

Slow Cooking Thursday Christmas Edition - Snow Cocoa

I love finding fun recipes. And I've always loved using my slow cooker. I plan to get an instant pot one of these days...but I will probably still use my slow cooker for a lot of my favorite recipes. My friend Sandra at Diary of a SAHM blog used to do a Slow Cooker Thursday linking post. She decided to bring back a holiday version for folks to share their slow cooking Christmas recipes. You can find her link here.

 So even though I'm a day late, I thought I would share my snow cocoa recipe today. It's been a favorite around here for the holiday season. And especially when my besties get together each year and do our girlfriend Christmas (we've been doing it around 30 years now!). And many of those years we enjoyed ladling this creamy concoction into mugs and adding a little bit of mint bailey's irish cream, or some other spirit. 😉 Pop in a candy cane and you're instantly in the Christmas mood! ☕️ 

SNOW COCOA

This was also fun to make a batch of, and leave on warm, when we'd go out as a family to sled or skate on a rink. On a chilly, maybe even snowy day, is there really anything better than a cup of cocoa?