baked potato

pumpkin bundt cake

this is cute: two bunt cakes make a perfect chocolate pumpkin, drizzled with orange colored icing, green cake ice-cream cone for a stem. looks pretty easy.

Butterfly Snacks

 (for your children or grandchildren)

Supplies:
-Clothspins
-Snack size ziplock bags
-Googly eyes
-Pipe cleaners
-Glue
-Paint, glitter glue, puffy paint (I only had the kids use paint, but any of these other options would be fun too)
-Snacks (goldfish crackers, dried fruit, cereal, grapes, trail mix, blueberries, etc.)

Directions:
For each bag, decorate one side of a clothespin with either paint, puffy paint or glitter glue. Glue two small googly eyes near the gripping end of the clothespin and let the glue dry.

Put your snack into a snack-size ziplock bag until it's a little over half full. I liked to fill the bag half with goldfish and half with grapes. Seal the bag, cinch the middle with your fingers, and clip it with the clothespin.

Next, fold down/curl the tips of a 6-inch length of pipe cleaner, then bend the entire piece in half. Clip the pipe cleaner in the clothespin.

Chip Cookies

Have you ever wondered why chocolate chip cookies can be chewy, crisp, soft, flat, thick, cakey, greasy, bland, flavorful, moist, or crumbly?
This shows how various ingredients and techniques can affect the taste, texture, and appearance of your chocolate chip cookies. This will hopefully help you understand how chocolate chip cookies work so you can make the PERFECT batch every time, whatever you consider to be perfect. This information will allow you to alter or create your own chocolate chip recipe that produces cookies just the way YOU like them.
Baking Powder:
Removed baking soda from recipe and used 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. This produced results that were more cakey and puffed while baking.
Baking Powder AND Baking Soda:
Used 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. This produced results that were crisp at the edges, soft in the middle, with a good amount of spread. The combination of the two leaveners produced the best results in my opinion.
MORE Flour:
Increased the flour to 2 cups (250 grams) which created a more crumbly dough and very little spread. The cookies were small yet thick and relatively undercooked (ooey and gooey) in the middle.
MELTED Butter:
I replaced the room temperature butter with melted and cooled butter. Instead of creaming the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, I simply stirred the butter and sugars together then let sit for 5 minutes, until the sugar was better absorbed by the butter. This produced flatter cookies that had a shiny, crackled top reminiscent of brownies. They were also more crisp at the edges.
All Granulated Sugar:
I used 3/4 cup granulated sugar in this recipe which produced flat, white, chewy, and slightly crunchy cookies but with little flavor. Since baking soda (called for in the control recipe) requires an acid (such as brown sugar) to react, these cookies fell very flat as you can see by the way the chocolate chips protrude.
All Brown Sugar:
I used 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar in this recipe which produced thick, brown, and soft cookies with an intense butterscotch flavor. The original control recipe uses an even ratio of granulated and brown sugars. If you prefer your cookies to be flatter, chewier, or crisper, use more granulated sugar. If you prefer your cookies to be softer and thicker and have a pronounced butterscotch flavor, use more brown sugar.
24 hour CHILLED Dough:
I used the control recipe but chilled it in the fridge for about 24 hours before shaping and baking. This produced cookies that were slightly thicker, chewier, darker, and with a better depth of butterscotch flavor. If you have time, try chilling your next cookie dough for at least 24 hours, or up to 48 hours.

Salted Caramel Pretzel Bark

this is sooo easy to make!

2 sticks of butter
1 cup of light brown sugar
1 reg. bag of pretzels (you'll use about 3/4 of the bag)
12 ounce bag of chocolate chips
Sea salt - ( I use our coarse sea salt with our grinder)

Preheat the oven to 400.

Line a large bar pan with parchment paper, cover with pretzels
In a medium saucepan melt the butter over medium-low heat. When it begins to bubble add the brown sugar. Stirring occasionally let the butter/sugar mixture meld together and brown. This should take about 3 minutes. Do NOT let it boil, you will have sticky goo that is no good. When you have a nice, brown caramel pour it over the pretzels, slowly and evenly. You can then use a spatula to spread it out, you have to work quickly and gently. It hardens fast so even pouring is the best method.

Bake the sheet for 5 minutes.

Remove the sheet from the oven and sprinkle the whole bag of chocolate chips evenly over the mixture.

Place back in the oven for about 45 seconds. If you let it sit there too long the chocolate will burn.

Remove from the oven and use a silicone spatula to evenly spread the chocolate over the top.

Sprinkle with sea salt and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour.

stain remover

The ultimate stain remover that actually works on a seriously set in stain! Never buy oxyclean again!
The mixture is:

1 tsp. Dawn dishwashing detergent
3-4 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide
couple tablespoons of baking soda.
Scrub on with a scrubbing brush 

garlic butter shrimp

1 pound frozen deveined shrimp (thawed under cool running water)
2 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp garlic

Melt butter and garlic in saucepan.  Add shrimp.  Cook 2-3 minutes until shrimp turns pink.  Tastes delicious!