Peanut Butter Balls!

I know, I have ignored this part of the Organic Poptart as well! But its okay! I am making it up to you! I am posting recipes here in Christmas,/ holiday/ series! Hopefully one tasty recipe per week! Today I have for you Peanut Butter Balls!

Prep Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 18-ounce jar peanut butter
• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1 cup butter, melted
• vanilla Almond Bark
  

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients together except for almond bark. (If you have a counter mixer, that works great, unless you want to tone up your arms before christmas! then by all means mix by hand! ) Shape into 1-inch balls. (Or you can be like my brother make them to walnut size balls then end with Baseball size balls.) Melt almond bark in microwave. Take bowl out frequently, because we don't want to burn the almonde bark
Dip balls in being sure to cover completely. Put on wax paper to harden.

Pretty easy recipe, but really good and also makes a lot of cookies, if you keep to making them only 1 inch big.

You can also use chocolate or peanut butter almonde bark and put drizzle on top. Get crafty with it!

Homemade Nutella.

*cheesy cooking show music plays* And now welcome to the Artist's pantry! Where you get tasty recipes and good show to watch!....No? Don't like the music?We'll try something different. Anywhoalls, I have a new recipe I tried out for you all! Which I just loved and super proud of! But in all reality probably not worth the trouble to make when you can buy it already made at the store. But! mine has Agave nectar instead of sugar and tastes fresher! NUTELLA! Ah. The sweet treat to add to your toast for a great breakfast! Or to munch on with your pretzels sticks. For those who don't know nutella is a hazelnut spread. i went online to search for a recipe and came across many. So like I normally do i take a couple and come up with my own.

1 cup of Hazelnuts- Okay so these nuts are harder to find than any other nut. They are not wal-mart! Or at least at my wal-mart, so I went to my trusty Shnucks, which has the little Diamond 1/2 cups bags. I got 2.

6 Tablespoons of Agave Nectar
1 Tablespoon of Olive oil. -If you have hazelnut oil then this works better, but olive oil works just fine.
1/4 cup of cocoa powder.- Now if you are me, you don't have any normal cocoa powder, you have Special Dark Dutch Processed Cocoa, which tastes really good whenever cocoa powder needed.

1 Tablespoon of vanilla

Okidokie. Now have food grinder and grind up all your pretty already chopped up hazelnuts. If you don't have already chopped hazelnuts, then you will have to follow this step. If you do, skip this step highlights in blue.

For whole hazel nuts, bake in oven at 350* for 8-10 minutes. Then take out of oven, cool slightly before placing on a paper towel. With the paper towel remove a much of the nuts skin as you can.

Grind up your hazelnuts in the food processor, ( a great blender works fine too) until nuts look like pastes or creamed butter.

Scrapes the edges to put back in center then add the rest of the ingredients and blend away!

Nutella should begin to smell nice and tasty. If your nutella comes out a little thick either add a little of agave or oil, but not to much oil cause it wont taste as good.

Mine looks dark cause of the dark chocolate cocoa, but still tastes great!
Enjoy and post your comments if you like the recipe!

Recipes makes about a normal sized jar of regular Nutella.


Love you all

Toodles!

Italian Beef ala Crock-pot

This is my own recipe that I like to fall to when I have not planned anything for dinner and would probably be gone all day. I can be eaten in slices but I prefer to shred it up and melt swiss cheese on it on flat bread!

Ingredients:

A beef roast! Whatever pounds you use. It doesn't matter to me!
A tablespoon of oregano
A teaspoon of parsley
About a teaspoon to tablespoon of garlic powder or whole garlic (depends on how much garlic you like)
Half a cut up onion or lots of dashes of onion powder(again, depends on how much you like onion or if you don't have onions to cut up, like me cause I forgot to get them at the store.)
2 tablespoons of chicken or beef bullion
a smidgen of rosemary
a smidgen of thyme
And about 1/2 to a whole cup of water

Now here are the super hard directions!
Toss everything in crock-pot and cook on low or high for as long as you want until you thinks it done! I have no idea how long. Sometimes it 6 hours something all day sometimes just 3 hours. Depends on my day. All I know it tastes good once I am finished! Shred it up, place on flat whole wheat bread, melt some swiss cheese on there, super tasty dinner! My hubby likes fries and peas with it.

Sorry for the really bad pictures! I need a better camera!

Blueberry Cobbler

Blue Berry Cobbler!

Yummy! Nothing is better than fruit in season, getting them at a great deal! and then making blueberry cobbler! This recipe I found online and modified it a little so it didn't have as much white sugar.

Ingredients

• 3 cups fresh blueberries
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  
• 1/4 cup orange juice (or a couple of dashes of lemon juice)
  
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar ( I put agave nectar with only a sprinkle of sugar and made it 3/4 cups of flour. It tasted great, but you can stick to the original recipes.)
  
• 1 egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In an 8 inch square baking dish, mix blueberries, 3 tablespoons sugar, and orange juice. Set aside. In a small bowl, thoroughly mix flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream butter and 1/2 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla extract. Gradually add flour mixture, stirring just until ingredients are combined. Drop batter by rounded tablespoons over blueberry mixture. Try to cover as much of filling as possible.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until topping is golden brown and filling is bubbling.(Or until you forget about and race to see if it burned only to find God had mercy and didn't let it burn.)
   

Three cups of blueberry can get expensive, but only if you buy it by the pint. If you can hand pick them it can be a lot cheaper. I went blueberry picking the other day at a place called Liberty Blueberry Farms where you can ...well pick your own blueberries. It cost about 2.35 per pound. I got almost 5 pounds for about 7 dollars, which can make about...I think about 3-5 of these cobblers. (a whole lot of blueberries!)
Here is the link so you can have the info for yourself if you live in the local area.

http://www.libertyblueberryfarms.com/

Broccoli Chedder Soup!

This is is a really tasty soup! I just made it like...20 minutes ago and just now finished my bowl. I loved it so much. You can tell how tasty it looks by the blue tinted pictures above or below! (My camera's battery died right I took the pictures and I forgot to take it off the blue setting! Now to the orginal recipe, normal flour can be used to thicken the soup; however, because white flour can cause craving and not really all that healthy, I used whole wheat pastry flour, which is much healthier and pretty much works like white flour.
Also this recipe does not require rice,. For Hubby's sake I add it, to make it a little more hartier.

1 lg. bunch broccoli, chopped or 1 (20 oz.) bag frozen, chopped broccoli (Cut the up in smaller pieces if you like. That is what I did.)
1/2 cups. butter ( I used salted better, because I like salt!)
1 small onion. ( You can leave this out if you like. It still tastes great either way)
1/2 cups. flour
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
2 c. milk
16 oz or 2 cups of chicken broth
1 1/2 c. grated Cheddar cheese

Cook broccoli, drain. Set aside. Saute onions in butter. Stir in flour. Cook 5 minutes. Add milk slowly, continually stirring. Stir in grated cheese, blend until smooth. Slowly blend in chicken broth. Add broccoli. Simmer at least 15 minutes, longer for thick soup.

Anywhoalls. Enjoy!

Celebrated with Spice Chiffon Cake!

This is the first post for the Artist's Pantry! So excited that the Organic Pop-tart is getting farther along. Now with a recipe blog conjoined I am super excited! To celebrate the first post I will post my recipe for one my favoriet cakes, sadly though my camera did not get any good pictures and battery died so the recipe will have to do. Here is it, Spice Chiffon Cake


1 1/2 Cups of Sugar
2 cups of flour ( I use whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of allspice
1/2 teaspoon of cloves
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/2 of pumpkin spice if ya have it
3/4 cup of water (cold)
1/2 cup of olive oil
7 eggs separated


Glaze:

2 tablespoons butter (Only butter, Margarine does not work or taste good)
1 tablespoon flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup of milk 1/4 cup of packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup of powder sugar

In a big bowl. I like to use my metal bowl or coke-cola bowls, mix sugar, flour,baking powder,salt, and all the spices. (Basically your dry stuff)
Then add your cold water, oil and egg yolks. Mix well, but don't over do it, cause it can be abused and cake won't rise as well. Not sure why, but just does so.
Next whip up your egg white until you have firm peaks. (if your like me, put your egg whites in an electric mixer and forget for a little while, then suddenly remember you are making something, then rush back to have perfect egg white peak)
Next slowly fold the egg whites into batter. Make sure not to over mix, because the egg whites are what make the chiffon cake so fluffy!
Pour mixture into a ungreased 10inch tube pan. What I like to do is trace and cut a piece of wax paper or parchment paper to lay at the bottom so the cake doesn't stick to the bottom.
Bake at 325 degree oven for 70 minutes. Make sure to keep a close eye on it, cause you don't want to burn the top/bottom of the cake.

Now for the tasty glaze! It so good!
In a saucepan, melt the better. Once melted quickly add the flour and salt. Next add the milk all at once while keeping up a constant stir. Bring to boil, while keep stirring. Keep stirring until thick and bubbly.

Quickly remove from heat and add brown sugar, vanilla and powdered sugar. Blend well then pour warm over the cake, (once the cake had cool off a bit, of course)

If desired sprinkle chopped walnuts over the top.
Serve to guest to enjoy and don't think about all the sugar in it, because its too tasty to feel guilty about it.


Hope you try out the recipe and enjoy it! I will post pictures in my next recipes post!
Love ya all and Toodles!

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