Recipe Review: Chicken Pot Pie with White Sauce

I was looking online for ideas for freezer meals, and a website suggested chicken pot pie.

I made this highly rated recipe from the Taste of Home website.  The recipe makes two pies, so I made one for our family and one for a friend.

To keep things easy, I used refrigerated Pillsbury pie crust and frozen mixed vegetables--I cut the green beans in half for a better size.  I cubed and boiled red potatoes with the skin on (2 cups is about 1-1/2 large red potatoes).  I purchased salt-free chicken stock instead of broth (stock has a richer flavor).  I followed the recipe and LOVED the white sauce that goes into the pie.

I appreciated that the recipe including instructions for freezing the pie and baking it later.

This is not low calorie -- it's definitely comfort food (lots of butter!).  But just a slice fills you up.  I want to try this again in the future using coconut milk for a dairy-free recipe.

Dirty Soft Drinks

I'm always looking for fun non-alcoholic drinks.

I was recently in Utah and tried Swig, a place that sells soft drinks and cookies.  They are famous for their Dirty Dr. Pepper (DP with coconut syrup).  I also tried their Raspberry Dream (Dr. Pepper with raspberry puree and coconut cream).

I had my girlfriends over for a girls' night in, so we made our own dirty drinks.  I bought most of the supplies at the grocery store (you can find coconut cream in the liquor aisle) and I found the Torani syrups at World Market -- they have a huge selection of flavors.  I made raspberry puree by putting raspberries and sugar in the food processor and I bought a bag of pebble ice at Sonic.

It was fun to try different combinations!  The Raspberry Dream is one of my favorites.

Giant Cake Pop, Ombre Cake Pops, Minnie Mouse Cake Pops

Two of my colleagues have birthdays coming up.

One of them once told me that she wanted a cake ball the size of a baseball.  I've been thinking about it ever since!  I made her a cake pop that is a little smaller than a tennis ball, but I think she'll like it.

I made it the same way I make regular sized cake pops, except I used a heaping 1/4 cup of the cake ball mix and I used a 6-inch "cookie stick" instead of a sucker stick.  I also needed a larger container for my melted chocolate.

I packaged it with a large treat bag and a wide ribbon.  I think it makes a fun gift!

My other colleague loves the color pink.  I saw an idea online for pink ombre cake pops.  I melted white chocolate and tinted it with pink oil-based food color.  After each cake pop, I added more food color.  The result is cake pops in five shades of pink.

I packaged them in a bucket from the One Spot at Target, with pink shred of course (I stocked up on multiple colors of shred when it was on clearance after Easter).

While I was at it, I made some Minnie Mouse cake pops.  I used slightly more than 1 tablespoon of mix for the cake ball.  I used Ghiradelli chocolate melts for the ears (I trimmed them a bit so they would stick better), and the bow is a Wilton icing decoration I found at the grocery store.  I attached the ears and the bow before the chocolate coating hardened.

My son saw an idea online for chocolate chip cake pops so I used a yellow cake mix, cream cheese frosting, and semi-sweet chocolate chips.  I love the look of the chocolate chips, but I found that mini chips worked better -- the regular size chips make it hard to roll the cake balls and difficult to insert the stick.  These are made from cake but taste like cookie dough!

Recipe Review: Raspberry Breakfast Bars

I needed to make an item for a brunch potluck at work, so I made one of my favorite recipes: raspberry breakfast bars from the Smitten Kitchen blog.

These are more like a cookie than breakfast, as they are full of butter and brown sugar.  The tartness of the raspberry and lemon is the perfect compliment to the sweetness of the crust.  I've made this recipe with blueberries and the result was too sweet for me, but I think that blackberries would be delicious.

You make the crust in a food processor.  Very easy.

Then you mix together the filling ingredients.  The hardest part is zesting and juicing the fresh lemon, but you can save that step by using bottled lemon juice and dried lemon peel (just use less).

These bars smell amazing as they're cooking, and they taste amazing too.

Reindeer Pancake

I often make special shaped pancakes for my little boy, so at Christmas time I made him a reindeer.  I used slightly less than 1/4 cup of batter for his face.  I poured a triangle shape from a measuring cup.  For the antlers, I used a spoon to pour the batter on the griddle.

I even included interchangeable noses -- one raspberry and eight blackberries.