Recipes: Valentine's Day Sugar Cookies

              Hey y'all! :) It's almost the weekend, woo hoo. I wanted to share a wonderful (probably the best) sugar cookie recipe yet. My aunt Carri's and grandma's is pretty awesome but this is right up there in the same ball park. So good!! Mam made these for Christmas and everyone loved them and I knew I had to make them for Valentine's Day and share with you all. The best part is they aren't overly sweet, sounds weird with it being a sugar cookie but they are so delicious!

            I hope you all have fun weekend plans. We are heading to Indiana to spend time with family and friends. I hope you enjoy your Friday and weekend ahead and of course this recipe. Make this for your significant other or for your kids, because it's a good one. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Valentine's Day! xoxo

Sugar cookie recipe:

ingredients:

-1 1/2 cup of sugar

-1 cup of shortening

-2 eggs, well beaten

-3 Tablespoons of sour cream

-1/2 teaspoon of Baking Soda

-1/4 teaspoon of salt

-1/4 teaspoon of vanilla

-3 cups of flour

details:

-pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees

-cream the sugar and shortening together first

-add the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla

-slowly add in your flour, salt, and baking soda

-mix this well

-chill for 3 hours in the fridge

-roll the dough out to your desired thickness and cut or form into ball

-bake for 400 for 8-10 minutes

-cool the cookies on a  cooling rack

-then ice the cookies and enjoy!

For the icing, I just use powdered sugar, water, and vanilla and whipped this up to make a thick consistency, you can also purchase your own icing as well to ice these

Recipes: Valentines Day Classic Cake

                   Hi everyone! I hope you are having a fabulous week! I can't believe we are already in February and only a week or so away from Valentines Day already. Crazy! As you know from my previous blog posts, we have just finished our January Whole 30 so this is a funny post going from healthy food to a  delicious cake haha! But, the truth is I love to bake. Baking is so therapeutic for me and brings me so much happiness. Even if I just have a bite or don't eat any of it; regardless, I just like to bake for people. I think this is in my blood and DNA from my mother, and both of my grandma's (which I am totally okay with :))

                   With the Valentines Day holiday quickly approaching, I thought it would be fun to share a classic and yummy yellow cake with chocolate frosting with you. This is a great recipe and so delicious. I will also be sharing a new cookie recipe with you this week as well so stay tuned for that but to start this off, here is the cake recipe. I hope you enjoy this and hope you enjoy the Valentines Day kitchen details. Happy Tuesday :) xo

Yellow Cake recipe:

Ingredients:

-4 large eggs

-1 cup of milk

-2 teaspoons of vanilla

2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil

-2 1/2 cups of cake flour

-1 1/2 cups of sugar

-1 teaspoon of salt

-2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

-1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter softened  

Details: 

-preheat your oven to 350

-grease two 8 inch baking pans 

-use this same mixture/details below for both of your 8 inch baking pans

-in a large mixing bowl combine your eggs, milk, and your other liquid ingredients here

-using a separate bowl combine the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder

-whisk the dry ingredients 

-then, add in small amounts of your butter a few pieces at a time to the dry ingredients bowl

-mix this until the dry ingredients are moistened by the butter and form crumbles

-then add 1/2 of the liquid egg mixture to the dry ingredients

-the batter will begin to thicken 

-then pour in the remaining egg mixture and beating/stirring until smooth

-bake at 350 for 30-35 min or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean

-Let the cake cool completely before stacking on top of each other or cutting/icing

Chocolate Frosting:

ingredients:

-2 sticks of unsalted butter softened 

-6 cups of powdered sugar 

-1 cup of cocoa 

-1/2 cup of milk

-2 teaspoons of vanilla

details:

-beat your butter first for a couple minutes on medium speed of your mixture 

-then, add your vanilla and blend into the butter

-then, add in your powdered sugar and cocoa powder 

-add in your milk 

-begin beating at a low speed until a thicker consistency 

Recipe: Trader Joe's Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins

            Happy Wednesday! I hope you are all having a great week! In the season of everything pumpkin, I wanted to share an amazing gluten free pumpkin bread mix that I recently purchased at Trader Joe's. It's funny, I had several people message me asking me for the pumpkin muffin recipe from my blog post picture on social media earlier in the week and I told them I would post it, but surprise!! It's the easiest recipe ever, and from a box haha!

           Normally, I love baking things from scratch- it's that excitement and thrill of trying something new and creating something homemade that makes it wonderful; however, every once in a while I will try a box to see what it tastes like or for something new. In this case, I am glad I purchased this box because I will be going back for more. You can make muffins or bread out of this mixture. I sprinkled cinnamon on top to give it more of a cinnamon taste when you bite in and I love how good these are! Happy Fall, Happy Pumpkin Recipe, and Happy Baking :) Enjoy the easiest recipe I will ever post haha :) xo

Here is what the packaging looks like so you can look for it: 

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Pumpkin Mix

Trader Joe's Gluten Free Pumpkin Bread & Muffin Baking Mix is easy to make (add egg, oil & water, mix, and bake), and even easier to eat. 

recipe: holy fudge black bean brownies

                Yes, I know what you are saying right now... Ew black beans in brownies? Yes! Coming from someone who doesn't even like black beans and just made them for my husband, they are so good! Hi everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Labor day weekend, long weekend that is. Reed and I went to Memphis for the weekend to visit his family and had such a good weekend with them. We got back on Sunday night and I had all day on Monday to catch up, be productive, and get creative.

                I made these black bean brownies last week from my most recent obsession. Do you follow Laura Lea Balanced? If you don't and if you want healthy recipes especially for those of you who need gluten-free, dairy free, vegan, or vegetarian recipes.. this is your gal! She is based in Nashville and I have followed her blog and social medias for awhile but recently ordered her cookbook and have been blown away by super healthy dishes & desserts with really clean ingredients that actually taste really good!! It's been exciting but also very inspiring to mix up something new and actually good for us.

                I will tell you, I don't even like black beans; but Reed loves them. He wanted something with chocolate and thought this recipe would be a test to see how good these were. They are truly delicious. You can't even taste the black beans at all. This recipe is great because it is dairy free & gluten free. Reed ate 3 in one night if that tells you anything haha! I wanted to share the recipe with you all from Laura Lea's cookbook.

Recipe from: Laura Lea Balanced Blog

makes 15BROWNIES

Holy fudge black bean brownies

INGREDIENTS

• 1 15 ounce can unsalted black beans (prefer organic), drained and rinsed thoroughly
• 6 tbsp cocoa powder (I like Ghirardelli or Trader Joe's brand)
• 3/4 cup maple syrup, grade A
• 2 teaspoons vanilla powder (or sub vanilla extract)
• 1/4 cup unsalted almond butter
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate roughly chopped (sub chocolate chips)- dairy free chocolate if wanting DF

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and line a loaf tin with parchment paper, making sure there are at least 5 inches of parchment overflowing on each side.
2. Combine all ingredients except chopped chocolate in a food processor or high speed blender. Puree until completely smooth, scraping down the side as needed.
3. Empty mixture into a mixing bowl and stir in chopped chocolate/chocolate chips. Turn dough into loaf pan and shake gently to create an even layer. At this point, you can trim back some of the parchment but leave an inch or two overhanging.
4. Bake for 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with only a tiny bit of batter. Remove from oven and allow to cool at least 30 minutes before removing and slicing. If you can wait an hour the pieces will hold together better.

recipe: semi-homemade summer berry cake

           Hi everyone! Happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend. Reed and I had a great weekend with my family in town and spending some down time on Sunday catching up on the house, relaxing, and enjoying a Sunday drive. It was nice and cool on Saturday and it made me excited for fall and cooler temps to come. Hopefully that will be here sooner than later :)

           I have been wanting to make a nice berry cake for summer and I just got around to it this past weekend. This is totally semi-homemade and not much of a recipe but it was delicious and made for a pretty cake; therefore, I wanted to share. I purchased an angel food cake at the grocery store and whipped up some icing and decided to make it look good by adding berries on top. A nice fresh and fluffy cake for Summer. For the icing I used powdered sugar and cream cheese and whipped it together to put on top of the angel food cake. Then, I dressed the cake with fresh cut strawberries and blueberries. I decided to add a little sweet and sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

        This made for a quick and super easy dessert after dinner. This would be a great dessert to take to a get together or dinner anytime during the Summer. This would also look great for the 4th of July holiday. I hope you are all having a great week and enjoying the last few weeks of August. Have a great week  :) xoxo