Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Ariel told me that the other day Richard asked her to make macaroni and cheese like your mom, to help get rid of the milk; he told her “you know the recipe”. She told me that she looked at him and thought are you mad.  And then told him I can’t make it, I don’t even think there is a recipe.
 She even posted this story on Facebook, and she was asked if she ever found out the recipe to let them know. She replied; it’s in her head. She never makes it the same way twice. I don't think I'll ever know it.

Well today is your lucky day Ariel here is my recipe for Baked Macaroni and Cheese. Well today’s version anyway.
She is right I never make it the same way twice. It all depends on what cheese that I have on hand. Sometimes I top it with more cheese, or crushed potato chips. Today I used Crushed Cheez-it this happens to be Richard’s favorite topping.

 

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

8oz. elbow macaroni
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 cups milk
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
4oz. cream cheese
1 cup of crunched Cheez-its

Preheat oven to 350⁰F. Spray a 9x13 inch baking dish with cooking spray: set aside.

Cook pasta according to the instruction on package, drain.
In a medium size sauce pan melt butter, blend in flour, salt and pepper. Cook until bubbly for about a minute. Gradually add milk and cook stirring constantly until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat add cheddar cheese and cream cheese stir until melted; stir in cooked pasta. Pour into baking dish and top with crushed Cheez-its.
Bake for 30 minutes.Pin It

Bubble Sloppy Joe Bake

Simple is always the best way to go, when it comes to cooking. This was not my first time making a bubble bake; I used to make a pizza bake for the girls when they were younger. But this was my first time making a Sloppy Joe Bake.

It came to me yesterday when I was looking in my pantry. I was teasing Richard; I asked him “What do you see when you look in here?” He said “He said a lot of cans.” I then replied “I see all the different dishes that I can come up with. You better hope that nothing happen to me because you will have a lot of cans to get rid of. Take this can of sloppy joe mix I could make sloppy joes, but we don’t have any buns. I am going to make a bubble bake with it because I also have a couple of cans of biscuits that are about to expire.”

That is what I did and this was my end results!

Richard tells me tonight while eating dinner that this is a keeper!

 

Bubble Sloppy Joe Bake

1 pound ground beef
1 (14oz.) can Sloppy Joe mix
2 small tubes of can biscuits
2 cups grated cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 400⁰F. Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish, set aside.

In a large skillet brown ground beef; drain. Add Sloppy Joe mix; set aside.
Cut biscuits into quarters; careful fold cut biscuits into the mixture in skillet. Pour mixture into baking dish.
Bake for 15 minutes; sprinkle cheese on top and bake for another 5 minutes.
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Macaroni and Cheese Lasagna

Who doesn’t love macaroni and cheese? And what if you turn that all time favorite into another all time favorite. Lasagna!

I bought these off brand boxes of macaroni and cheese and every time that I would make them I would hear that it didn’t taste the same as Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Which lead to me finding out ways of using up the boxes that I had left? Will I found this recipe on the Kraft web-site and decided to give it a try.

When I was preparing this dish I started thinking how about making Macaroni and Cheese Chili Bake or maybe a Macaroni and Cheese Taco Bake. I wonder how many boxes of this brand of Macaroni and Cheese I have left!

Well if you are wondering how it tasted it turned out pretty good. I wish I would have known about this dish when the girls were still living at home, I know that they would have asked me to make it all the time, I would just have to have made sure that I used Kraft and not the off brand back then too!

Macaroni and Cheese Lasagna
1 (7.25 oz) boxes of Macaroni and Cheese
1 pound ground beef
1 (24oz) jar pasta sauce
2 cup grated mozzarella cheese

Prepare the box of macaroni and cheese according to instruction on box.
In a large skillet brown ground beef; drain. Add pasta sauce and heat until warmed.
In a  baking dish place half of prepared macaroni; top with a layer of pasta meat sauce then top with 1 cup of the cheese. Repeat layers one more time ending with cheese.
Bake in oven at 350⁰F for 30minutes. Pin It

Barbecued Sloppy Joes

I have written in the past about how much I love Sloppy Joes. I posted a recipe a few years ago for Sloppy Joes that I would make for my girls when they were young. Will the other day I decided to try something new. I found a recipe in a cookbook by Land O Lakes. I adapted their recipe into a Sloppy Joe. And if I do say so myself, it turned out very tasty. But you don’t have to take my word for it, Ariel’s boyfriend Derrick said that it was the best tasting Sloppy Joe that he has ever had!

Barbecued Sloppy Joes

1 pound ground beef

2 garlic cloves, minced
1½ cups ketchup
1 package of onion soup mix
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 tablespoon vinegar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
½ cup water

 In a large skillet brown ground beef with garlic; drain. Add remaining ingredients and simmer on medium for 15 minutes. Serve on buns with cheddar cheese.

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Funfetti Cookies

Richard and I went to the Mercy Me concert last night at the Stanislaus County Fair with some friends from our church. The night started out with pizza at Tary’s here in Atwater. Then we met up at the fairgrounds in Turlock. Mercy Me was wonderful and a great time was had by all.

It was great to share such a night with my friends and family memories to last a life time.

And now let me share, a fun and easy cookie recipe with you.
These cookies are easy to make. And they would be fun cookie to bake with your kids. Everything is done in a bowl with a wooden spoon there is no mixer evolved that makes them kid friendly.
Just like I had fun last night with my friends and family I know you will have fun time making these cookies with yours!

This recipe can be found on the Pillsbury web-site.

Funfetti Cookies

1 box Pillsbury Funfetti Cake Mix

1/3 cup oil
2 eggs
1 (15.6-oz.) can Pillsbury Funfetti Vanilla Frosting

Preheat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine cake mix, oil and eggs; stir with spoon until thoroughly moistened. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. With bottom of glass dipped in flour, flatten to 1/4-inch thickness.

Bake for 6 to 8 minutes or until edges are light golden brown at 375⁰F. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets.

Spread frosting over warm cookies. Immediately sprinkle each with candy bits from frosting can. Let frosting set before storing. Store in tightly covered container.

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Chili Cheese Enchiladas

This was one of my mom’s recipes, I don’t where she came up with this recipe, but it is a keeper. I have been making this for my girls for years but without the onions that’s because they don’t like onions. Now that they are all grown up I now put lots of onions in the enchiladas that because I love onions.

My daughter Brandy loves this recipe so much that she has also featured this recipe on her blog, but I can guarantee that she didn’t add the onions.

Chili Cheese Enchiladas
8 corn tortillas
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 cups grated cheese blend, (cheddar and Monterey jack)
1 small onion, chopped
1 (15 oz.) can chili (without beans)

Preheat oven to 350⁰F. Spray a 13x9 inch baking dish with cooking spray.
In a medium skillet warn tortillas in oil until flexible. Place about ¼ cup of cheese and 1 tablespoon chopped onion in center of each tortilla; roll up tortilla and place seam side down in baking dish; repeat with remaining tortillas. Spoon chill over rolled tortillas; top with reaming cheese and onions.
Bake in preheated oven 15 to 20 minutes.Pin It

Spiced Chocolate Roll -Out Cookies

Happy Halloween! I hope everyone is having a spooky good time today! This is an easy fun cookie to make! I love the roll out cookie recipe that in featured in the Wilton yearbooks I have been using it for years, but today I wanted to make a chocolate version; I found this one on their web-site a spice chocolate cookie. After baking the cookies I use Wilton’s Royal Icing recipe to decorate each cookie by piping a spider web design on each cookie. You can buy the meringue powder for the royal icing recipe at Michaels or a cake decorating supply store. I like using the royal icing to decorate my cookie with because the icing gets hard and then cookies can be stacked together after the icing is dry.

Spiced Chocolate Roll -Out Cookies
¾ cup (1 -1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 squares (3 oz.) unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375⁰F.

In medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Blend in chocolate. Gradually add dry ingredients to butter mixture, beating until smooth. Form dough into disc, cover and chill until firm, about one hour.
Roll dough approximately 1/8-in. thick. Dip cutters in flour, cut and transfer cookies to cookie sheet.
Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool cookies completely on pan.

Royal Icing
3 tablespoons Meringue Powder
4 cups sifted powder sugar
6 tablespoons water

Beat all ingredients at low speed for 7-10 minutes (10-12 minutes at high speed for portable mixer) until icing forms peaks. Makes 3 cups

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Candy Corn Cookies

Hey! Guess what? It’s another food holiday, and this one is a good one! It’s national candy corn day! I love candy corn! Because I love it so much I want to buy it the moment the store starts selling it for Halloween!

Now the stores start putting their Halloween stuff out in August, but my waist line can’t take that much candy corn. So I made a pack with my friend Shelly, who also happens to love candy corn that we would have to wait until the month of October before we could buy candy corn.
Some years we can hold out, but sometimes…I mean most of the time we can’t, we just need to have our candy corn fix for the year!
One of my favorite web-sites that I love to find recipe on happens to be Pillsbury, they also send me emails every week, and because this week happens to be Halloween they sent out their email featuring Halloween recipes and this adorable candy corn cookie recipe happen to be one of them. And of course with my love for candy corn and cookies I just had to make them. They took a little time but they were so worth it. You need to whip up a batch for you and your family for this Halloween!

Candy Corn Cookies
1 pouch (1 lb 1.5 oz) Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix
1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted
1 egg
Orange paste food color
2 oz. semisweet chocolate, melted, cooled

Line 8x4-inch loaf pan with waxed paper, extending paper over sides of pan. In medium bowl, stir cookie mix, butter and egg until soft dough forms.

On work surface, place ¾ cup dough. Knead desired amount of food color into dough until color is uniform. Press dough evenly in bottom of pan.

Divide remaining dough in half. Gently press on half of remaining dough into pan on top of orange dough. On work surface, knead chocolate into remaining dough until color is uniform. Press over plain dough in pan, pressing gently to edge of pan. Refrigerate 1 ½ to 2 hours or until firm.

Heat oven to 375⁰F. Remove dough from pan. Cut crosswise into ¼ -inch-thick slices. Cut each slice into 5 wedges. On ungreased cookie sheet, place 1 inch apart.

Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until cookies are set and edges are very light golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet. Cool completely.Pin It

French Toast Waffles

My two most favorite dishes to have for breakfast are waffles and French toast, when I found this recipe in my Joy of Cooking cookbook I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. What a fun way to serve French toast, no wait or is it waffles. Whatever you want to call them I just call them, DELISIOUS!

French Toast Waffles
3 eggs
½ cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
6 slices white sandwich bread

Preheat waffle iron. Whisk together eggs, milk and butter. Coat the bread well in the egg mixture.

 Place in the hot waffle iron, close lid, and cook until the bread is a golden brown.Pin It

Beef and Bean Burritos

This is a tasty easy quick meal that you can make for your family. I have been making them for my girls for as long as I can remember. I like to buy the taco seasoning from Costco because I use it in a lot of my other recipes. Today I use jalapeño refried beans but you can use and flavor that your family likes. And fill the burritos with all the other fillings that you love.

Beef and Bean Burritos

1 pound ground beef
1 can refried beans
1 package taco seasoning (1/4 cup if you have the bulk container)
1 cup water
Flour tortillas; warmed in microwave
Extra filling of your choice: salsa, cheese, sour cream

In a large skillet over medium heat brown ground beef; drain,

 add refried beans, taco seasoning and water,

and simmer 10 minutes.

Spread ¼ to ½ cup filling down center of each tortilla;

top with your choice of topping,

roll up and enjoy.

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Chicken and Pastry

Oh how I love this dish. Most people on the west coast have never even heard of chicken pastry. They have heard of dumpling but not pastry. When I was young I would watch my grandma Anne Mae Whitley roll out the dough on a big white sheet dusted with flour, then cut the dough into strips and drop them into hot broth. When I worked at the mall in Rocky Mount NC I would go to the K&W Cafeteria and eat a bowl for lunch. When Brandy was a little girl she asked me if I would make it for her wedding dinner when she got married. Out of everything that I cook for my family I believe that this is their favorite, the one that everyone wants to be home for.

Chicken and Pastry
1 3-4 pound whole chicken
6 to 8 water
4 bouillon cubes
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste

Place chicken in a large pot; cover with water; add bouillon and bring to a boil; cook chicken about an hour or until done. Remove chicken from pot; and cool.

Meanwhile prepare pastry; Sift flour into a large bowl; add ½ to ¾ cup of the broth from the pot to the flour and mix with a fork until a stiff dough forms. Place on a flour surface and knead slightly. Roll out on floured surface to ¼ inch (use more flour as needed it will help thicken the both); let rest. Debone the chicken; set aside.

Bring broth back to a boil. Cut pastry into strips and drop into boiling broth, stirring gently to cover all strips.

When all the strips are in the pot boil 10 minutes; return chicken to pot and boil 5 more minutes. Pepper to taste.

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Sloppy Joes

One of my favorite comfort foods are Sloppy Joes. I loved them as a kid and I still love them as an adult. When I was growing up I ate the sauce from the can “Manwich”, but when I made them for my family my girls would look at the sandwich and pick at the onions, peppers and seasonings in the sauce and say“Whats this”, “Whats that” and “I don’t like this”; so I started looking at different recipes and came up this, nothing but meat and sauce, but still had all the flavor. When I was a kid I would eat them with my Step-mom Gen’s homemade sweet pickles, I now eat them with the best hot sauce, Texas Pete. I have to special order Texas Pete because it's made in North Carolina and they don't sell it here in California.


Sloppy Joes

1 pound ground beef
1 cup ketchup
½ cup water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons prepared muster
1 teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon salt

In a large skillet brown ground beef; drain. (This is the best tool from Pamper Chef for breaking up ground beef.)

Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer 10 to 15 minutes.

Serve on toasted rolls or buns.

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