Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding

KRISPY KREME BREAD PUDDING

For the record, I've never been a bread pudding kind of gal, or a breakfast casserole kind of gal. Or a stuffing kind of gal. It's the soggy bread in all of the above that gets to me. Bread should NOT be soggy!!

This is soggy, bread pudding just has to be that way! But with a box or 2 of krispy kreme donuts, you won't care because you'll love how sweet it is.

• Donuts
• eggs
• butter
• fruit cocktail
• cinnamon
• sweetened condensed milk
• vanilla

Cut your donuts up into bite size pieces. Try not to eat too many while you cut. I know it's hard to contain yourself.

Whisk together your eggs, condensed milk, vanilla, cinnamon

It'll probably smell really good, but please don't taste it.

Drizzle all of it over your donuts and stir it good.

Let it sit for a bit and soak everything up.

Add your fruit cocktail, stir again, and let it sit, soaking up all the juices.

I made a half batch, because Captain Jax ate the other box of donuts.

After it cooks, it's nice and brown. I loved the crispy pieces on the top!

I ate it warm, gave my little brother the left overs and he ate it cold. Said it was still really good cold. So it's a versatile dish as well!

A beautiful recipe card I received in a swap on SplitCoastStampers. (stay tuned! Next week I have a recipe book giveaway with hand-crafted recipe cards like this one!)

She even had glazes you could put over the top! I'll include those for you, don't worry :)

Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding

• 2 dozen Krispy Kreme Donuts
• 3 eggs
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 1-2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 stick melted butter
• 1-2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 can (15oz) fruit cocktail
• 1 cup chopped pecans (optional)
• 1 tsp nutmeg (optional)

Preheat oven to 350degs. Tear the donuts into little chunks and set aside in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Add milk and beat together. Add vanilla, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mix well. Pour egg mixture into doughnut chunks and stir. Add fruit cocktail, with juice. Add the pecans, and stir well. Let mixture sit long enough for the doughnuts to soak up as much liquid as possible. Pour into a 9x13 glass pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve with your choice of glaze.

Butter Rum Sauce

• 1 stick butter
• 1 lb powdered sugar
• rum, to taste

Melt butter and slowly stir in powdered sugar. Add rum and heat until bubbly. Pour over top of the pudding.

Buttermilk Glaze

• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
• 1/4 cup margarine
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine first 5 ingredients in saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Stir in vanilla. Pour over the top of the pudding.

Creamy Dill Tilapia

CREAMY DILL TILAPIA


We're trying to eat more fish around here. We live in Utah though, and fresh fish is NOT available. Unless you want your neighbors goldfish, or you fish for trout in the rivers around here.

I don't want either of those options, so I buy frozen and cross my fingers I can make something Captain Jax will eat (picky man. . .)

This one worked!! I'm glad too, because it was an impulse buy of 10lbs worth. . . .

Here's what you'll need:

• 3-4 tilapia fillets
• sour cream(there is a dairy free option out there!)
• mayonnaise (also easy to find dairy free)
• dill
• lemon juice
• garlic powder
• cajun seasonings
  
• salt
• pepper

Sprinkle your fish with salt and pepper, and you can either put a small dash of lemon juice on each fillet, or slice and lemon and leave the rings on the fish while it cooks.

Mix together your sour cream, mayonnaise, and dill.

I love the smell of dill. I always forget, because it's not a commonly used spice in my kitchen, but I really love it.

I decided to pour the mixture over the fish and let it cook with it. You could do this, or you can drizzle it over the top when it's done cooking. It makes a lot of sauce, so it was easy to cover the fish completely while it cooked.

Mmmm, and it makes for a creamy yummy fish dish, that K-girl AND Captain Jax both loved.

This is the card I made for a fish recipe swap I'm in on SplitCoastStampers.

Creamy Dill Tilapia

• 4 tilapia fillets
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• 1 Tbsp Cajun seasoning
• 1 lemon, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh dill (or dried)

Preheat oven to 350 degress. Lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish. Season the tilapia fillets with salt, pepper, and Cajun seasoning on both sides. Arrange the seasoned fillets in a single layer in the baking dish. Place a layer of lemon slices over the fish. About 2 slices per fish. Or you can just squeeze a little bit of lemon juice over the fish. Bake uncovered for 15-20 minutes, or until the fish flakes easily with a fork.

While the fish is baking, mix together the mayonnaise, sour cream, garlic powder, lemon juice, and dill in a bowl. Serve with the tilapia. You could also cover the fish with this sauce before baking.

(Linked up at: Ingredient Spotlight, )

Double Chocolate Brownies

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

This recipe is from my dear sister. She recently moved across the freakin' country and I miss her like crazy. I probably spent every day with her and her kids. K-Girl and I are still going through withdrawls.

Here's what you're going to need to make these super rich tasty brownies:

• flour
• sugar
• eggs
• vanila
• salt
• baking soda
• butter
• chocolate chips
  

in a saucepan on the stove, melt the butter, and sugar together, then add 1 bag of chocolate chips and the vanilla.
Mix it up good until the chocolate is all melted, and everything is smooth. Let it sit until it's cooled off, otherwise it's going to cook the eggs, and then these brownies aren't very good.

Mix the chocolate with all the other ingredients. Except for the second bag of chocolate chips. Don't mix those in yet.

Then, once you got everything mixed together good, you can add the second bag of chocolate chips.

Pour it in your GREASED baking dish. (try my release stuff: equal parts shortening, oil, and flour, spread on the bottom of anything you bake. Nothing sticks!)

Mmmmm, this baked up a little funny, and even spilled over! So be cautious, and put a pan underneath it just in case.

And here's her beautiful recipe card she made for the recipe swap. I love the hershey kiss stamp she used!

Double Chocolate Brownies

• 1 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 stick butter
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 cups chocolate chip

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine sugar, water, and butter in saucepan, heat to melt butter. Remove from heat and add 2 cups chocolate chips and vanilla. Let cool 15-20 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. Bake in 9x13 pan for 40 minutes. Let cool completely for best results

Cheesy Crockpot Chicken

CHEESY CROCKPOT CHICKEN

This was such an easy recipe, I was pleased! I don't use my crockpot very much, because there's just the three of us, and my munchkin doesn't eat THAT much.

Yet.

If she's going to be anything like me though, she'll soon start putting away her fair share of food!



We've got chicken breast, cream'o'chicken, can of cheddar cheese soup, and salt and pepper. That's it! Things you probably already have lying around your house.


Lay your chicken breasts in the crockpot, and season them with the salt and pepper. I use onion salt for most things, I love it.


Mix together your soups. I used the nacho cheese to give it some flava! and it did, it was great!


See how you can see a little bit of pepper chunks from the nacho cheese? It's yummy, not even spicey!


Then cover the chicken with the soup mixture.


Cook it on low for 8 hours, and serve with some pasta or rice.


Yum. This chicken was literally melting in my mouth, it was so tender.

Thanks Rebecca for this recipe! We loved it!

Rebecca's Recipe Card

CHEESY CROCKPOT CHICKEN

• 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• garlic salt, to taste
• pepper salt, to taste
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup
• 1 can condensed nacho chees soup

Place chicken in crockpot. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Mix undiluted soups and pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Serve over rice or noodles.

Congo Bars

CONGO BARS

Now that Christmas is just a few weeks away, my mind tends to turn to cookies. Growing up, we would make cookies all month, and freeze them. Then come Christmas morning, we'd have plates and plates of cookies on the table and counter, that would we graze on all day long. The best sugar buffet EVER.

Over at Splitcoast Stampers, I hosted a few cookies swaps. The way the swap works is everyone makes a set number of the same thing. For my cookie swap, everyone made 6 recipe cards, all of them identical. Then they mailed them to me, and since I took the time to host it, I got to keep one of everyone, and they got 5 different recipe cards mailed back to them.

and now? I have about 100 different cookie recipes I can't wait to try. The first on my list was Congo bars, crafted by a lady with the screen name 'FLscraphappy'. The main reason I picked this recipe is because I had all the ingredients on hand. That always helps!


here's what we're baking with today--flour, brown sugar, eggs, butter, salt, baking powder, and chocolate chips.


melt up the butter and mix with the brown sugar. I learned something while making this recipe.

Actually, this was the second time I made this recipe. The first time, I put a bag of sugar into the recipe, thinking that the box of sugar the recipe calls for, is the same size as a bag of sugar.

Let the record show that I now know that a bag of brown sugar is TWO TIMES the size of a box of brown sugar. Captain Jax sure loved the first batch though.


this is what the brown sugar and butter mixture look like after they're all mixed together. My first batch sure didn't look like that.


then go ahead and add everything else. No need to mix the eggs before adding them, just throw them in there with everything else.


Is it odd that I don't like to eat raw cookie dough? When I was in college, my room-mates LOVED to eat raw cookie dough. I dunno, I prefer a nice warm cookie to th raw dough.


Then ta-da! after letting them bake, and cool, we have a nice tray of congo bars! (and I was so excited to finally break out my Christmas platters. All two of them)

Here's FLscraphappy's card she created. I love the ribbon on the side, so nice.

CONGO BARS

• 1 1/4 sticks margarine
• 1 box (1 lb) brown sugar
• 3 eggs (do not beat before mixing)
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1/ tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 bag chocolate chips or butterscotch chips
• 1/2 cup nuts (optional)

Melt margarine and add brown sugar. Add all other ingredients. Spread mixture on greased cookie sheet with rim. Bake at 325 for 3 minutes. If using smaller dish, bake for up to one hour. Do toothpick test to determine doneness.

my notes:
-in the first batch, the one with the extra sugar, we used butterscotch chips. I like the chocolate chips much better.
-in the second batch, I put the dough into a 9x13 pan and baked for about 45minutes. They were still soft to eat, and a bit thicker, which I like.