Superbowl Team Cookies

The big day is coming….Superbowl Sunday! A time of food, feasting, drinking, and celebration with friends and family while cheering on your favorite team. And what better way to show your team spirit during this football extravaganza than to represent the two top teams with their very own cookies! I love football and I love cookies so with Superbowl Sunday it was only obvious to me to combine the two.

How do you do that, you ask?

Well, you represent the teams by making the cookies with the team colors. The Denver Broncos are represented by their team colors of orange, blue, and white. For this, I used orange and blue M&M’s, white chocolate chips, and blue nonpareils sprinkles on top.

While the Seattle Seahawks whose team colors are green, blue, white, and silver are represented by using green and blue M&M’s, white chocolate chips, and shimmering silver cupcake gems sprinkled on top.

It’s so easy to do! I just bought a large (Sam’s Club large) bag of M&M’s and separated the orange and blue M&M’s in one bowl and the green and blue M&M’s in another bowl. I noticed there aren’t as many blue M&M’s in the bag as there are the other colors, so if you want more blue M&M’s, I suggest you buy two large bags so you have plenty of blue M&M’s to match the orange and green amounts. The best thing about this part is you can have the family help you separate the M&M’s!

And what better flavor to add to this mix of chocolates than peanut butter! I use my peanut butter cookie dough mix for this recipe. The M&M’s chocolate mixed with the peanut butter and white chocolates makes for one yummylicious cookie! It’s the kind of yummylicious that just makes your mouth water thinking about how good the peanut butter and chocolates taste together! So darn good that you’ll be eating the other teams cookies like I did! Sorry Peyton!

No matter who wins the game, these cookies are sure to be the winner of the Superbowl party!

Superbowl Team Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter

½ cup sugar

1 cup Brown sugar, packed

2 teaspoons Vanilla

2 large eggs, beaten

1 cup creamy peanut butter (can also use chunky peanut butter)

2 cups flour, sifted

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Baking Soda

1 tablespoon Cornstarch (this makes the cookies Fluff)

1 and 1/2 cups white chocolate chips

1 cup orange and blue M&M’s, mixed

1 cup green and blue M&M’s, mixed

Blue nonpareils sprinkles, to sprinkle on top after baking Denver team cookies

Shimmering silver cupcake gems, to sprinkle on top after baking Seattle team cookies

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.

Spray cookie sheets with non-stick spray. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine softened butter with white and brown sugars until creamy.

Add vanilla, eggs, and peanut butter until well blended.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and cornstarch.

Mix dry ingredients a little at a time with peanut butter mixture until blended thoroughly.

Mixing by hand, add in white chocolate chips, blending throughout dough mixture.

Separate dough mix by hand and place mix in a separate mixing bowl.

In one batch of dough mix, add orange and blue M&M’s, blending well. This will be your Denver team cookies.

In other batch, add green and blue M&M’s, blending throughout mix. This will be your Seattle Seahawks team cookies.

Chill both dough batches for 1 hour. (*This helps keep cookies from flattening out.*)

Drop tablespoon size balls onto lightly greased cookie sheet.

Place cookie sheet in pre-heated oven for 10 minutes. Until cookies show a little bit of browning around the edges.

After taking cookies out of the oven, immediately decorate for team. For Denver team cookies, sprinkle blue nonpareils sprinkles on top of cookies and let cookies cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before placing them on a wire rack to cool completely.

For Seattle team cookies, sprinkle shimmering silver cupcake gems on top of cookies and let cookies cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before placing them on a wire rack to cool completely.

After cookies have completely cooled, store in an airtight container where they will stay fresh up to 1 week.

Makes approximately 40 cookies.
*I can’t tell you exactly how many because I ate some while baking!!*

**Helpful Hints – Not only can these cookies be made for Superbowl but you can personalize them for any sporting event, especially for kids teams!

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey minus the Superbowl XLVIII 2014 image. Superbowl XLVIII 2014 image obtained from here.  Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Sweet and Spicy Monkey Bread

 

It was only a matter of time that this would become the recipe for the day here at Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Yep, you guessed it, it has to do with sweet and spicy….and not just sweet and spicy but sweet and spicy monkey! Yep, there really is a recipe out there called sweet and spicy monkey bread! And really, I didn’t even know this recipe existed until I was searching for monkey bread one day and came across it!

I remember my first taste of monkey bread, an ooey, gooey cinnamonee bread that you eat with your fingers! Since then, I’ve only made monkey bread once because I was kinda disappointed when all the bread pieces didn’t cook all the way through. Yea, not to tasty when you bite into a piece of raw dough! Ick!

So when I came across this recipe, I wasn’t quite sure about making it but I couldn’t give up without trying sweet and spicy monkey bread. After all, it has my namesake!

Whenever I see pictures of monkey bread, they always layer the dough pieces 3 or 4 stacks high, which is what I did when I first made it. So I decided to try something different this time. I layered my pieces in a cake pan and only placed a few pieces on top of the first layer hoping the pieces would cook thoroughly. I only had one cake pan, so I used a bread pan for the rest and did the same thing. This way at the most, there is only 2 layers. You can also use a brownie pan, just make sure it’s a metal pan.

Wa La! Not only were all the pieces cooked thoroughly, but they all had been drenched with the sugary butter mixture, making them ooey gooey cinnamonee sugary finger licking good (if you have noticed yet, I love eating sugary treats with my fingers).

I adapted this recipe from Rachel Ray's Superbowl Sweet Spicy Chocolate Monkey Bread. I used less cayenne pepper since I wasn’t sure how it would taste because I’ve never mixed cayenne with my chocolate before. I was surprised that you can’t even taste the cayenne and it really does accentuate the flavor of the chocolate! And the chocolate flavor isn’t overpowering, it’s a mild flavor that emphasizes the cinnamon! All the flavors of cayenne, chocolate, and cinnamon blend together beautifully in this recipe that you won’t be able to resist having just one bite!

This bread makes a great addition to any get together since it’s already in bite size pieces (Hint, hint… Superbowl is coming up next weekend). This bread will be a big hit at breakfast too!

Sweet and Spicy Monkey Bread

Ingredients

½ cup granulated (white) sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 and ½ teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/16 teaspoon cayenne (red) pepper

¼ teaspoon sea salt

2 cans of refrigerated buttermilk biscuit dough

1 cup brown sugar

¾ cup unsalted butter

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.

In a large zip lock bag, combine white sugar, cinnamon, cocoa powder, cayenne pepper, and salt. Seal bag and shake to mix together. Set aside.

Pop the biscuits out of their packaging and separate biscuits.

Cut biscuits into quarters.

Place quartered biscuits into zip lock bag, seal, and shake until all pieces are covered in sugar & spice mix.

Arrange biscuit pieces to cover bottom of pan (preferably a metal pan like a cake pan, bread pan, or brownie pan) covering entire bottom of pan, with no more than 2 layers.

Place butter and brown sugar into a small saucepan and heat until melted, stirring occasionally.

Pour melted butter and brown sugar over biscuit pieces.

Place pan into oven and cook for 25-30 minutes.

Cool in pan for 10 minutes before transferring to another dish so the gooeyness will be on top. Be careful as pan will still be hot to the touch so be safe and use oven mitts to protect your hands.

Serve warm.

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Fat-Free, gluten-free Salad Dressing

With a New Year, comes New Year’s resolutions and one of the most popular resolutions is to lose weight. One of the best ways to lose weight, along with exercising (sorry you can’t just take a pill for losing weight, I wish it was that easy!) is to improve your eating habits. Not only eating healthier, but eating smarter helps you achieve these goals faster than just exercising alone.

A lot of people think that by just eating salads it will help them lose weight. Wrong! I say this because when I see people substitute a salad for one of their meals, I see lettuce, mixed with a lot of cheese and bacon, swimming in Ranch dressing.

Ranch dressing has a whopping 15 grams of fat and 328mg of sodium per 2 tablespoons!!! And when I see people use Ranch dressing, they usually are putting more like 8-9 tablespoons of dressing over their salads. Even light Ceaser salad dressing has 8 grams of fat per 2 tablespoons! Now this is better than 15 grams of fat, but we can do better than this.

I came across this salad dressing recipe when I was vacationing last year with my BFF in California and she had just started a special diet to help her lose a few pounds. She was under the supervision of a dietician who was helping her eat smarter and healthier. Now I tweaked the recipe a bit but it remains fat-free and gluten-free and still tastes delicious while helping me cut the fat and reduce my sodium intake.

Here’s my fat-free, gluten-free salad dressing that I hope you will enjoy as much as I do while not only helping you eat healthier, but eat smarter too!

Fat-free, gluten-free Salad Dressing

Prep time - 5 minutes
1 serving and makes enough for about 2 cups of lettuce of choice

Ingredients needed:

1 teaspoon Balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon Apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon Olive oil

1 Squirt Dijon mustard

1 Squirt of Honey

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Add vinegars and olive oil to small bowl. Squirt approximately ½ teaspoon of Dijon mustard and honey to vinegar mix. Blend well. Add in salt and pepper to taste. Pour over salad & Enjoy!

Helpful Hints:

*I use pink Himalayan salt because it’s better for you than sea salt and table salt. I only use a small amount of salt for taste. If you want to read more about pink Himalayan salt here’s a link at body unburdened

* I found these cute little containers at my local Wal-Mart which are great for storing things like salad dressing.

* I make my salad dressing in these containers ahead of time so when I take it to work, it's already made and it fits in my lunch box.

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Creamy Tomato Soup

With all this cold weather, I keep finding myself thinking of summertime. The sun’s rays shining down from the sky to warm your skin, playing in the water, summer flowers, and going barefoot every day. And living here in Georgia, nothing beats a home grown tomato during the summer! Red, ripe tomatoes with their sweet, salty, tangy flavor that tastes delicious all by themselves. Not to mention, their red, robust color that brightens any meal. Tomatoes always remind me of summer.

And the best way to bring a little bit of summer to these gloomy, cold days of winter is to bring a taste of summer back into your life. Nothing does that better than tomato soup! Tomato soup has been my favorite soup ever since I was a little kid, and now I understand why since it reminds me of summer days. Its rich, creamy texture along with its sweet, tangy flavor warms you up for a little while when it’s still cold outside.

Surprising to believe since it has always been my favorite soup, I have never made homemade tomato soup before this past weekend. I really don’t understand why since it’s so easy to make and taste much better than canned soup. The flavors really explode when you make your own tomato soup. The taste of basil, oregano, and thyme with the rich flavor of tomatoes…Mmm, my tummy’s rumbling just thinking about it! Of course, as my mom always says, “everything’s better when it comes from the heart”. So true mom, so true!

Here’s my recipe for homemade creamy tomato soup. I’m certain it will help keep you warm during these cold days of winter.

Creamy Tomato Soup

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons Olive oil

4 garlic cloves, roasted

1 shallot, diced

28 ounce canned Organic Crushed tomatoes with Basil

14.5 ounce canned Organic diced fire-roasted tomatoes

4 fresh Basil leaves

½ teaspoon fresh oregano

1/8 teaspoon dried thyme

1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

2 cups Organic vegetable broth

1 and ¼ cups half and half, fat-free

Salt and pepper to taste.

Directions

Preheat oven to 400F degrees.

Cut top off garlic bulb, leaving the tips exposed.

Place on aluminum foil, a sheet large enough to wrap bulb in.

Drizzle ½ to 1 Tablespoon olive oil over top of garlic to help keep exposed tips moistened while they cook and wrap bulb in foil.

Cook for 1 hour or until bulb is tender. *Cool to room temperature. **Important so you don't burn your fingers.

 

While garlic is cooking, heat 1 Tablespoon olive oil in skillet over medium heat.

Add in diced shallot and sauté until tender, about 2-3 minutes. Let cool.

Unwrap garlic and gently squeeze out 4 garlic cloves. Cloves will be soft and tender.

In a blender or food processor, add crushed tomatoes with garlic, shallot, basil leaves, oregano leaves, thyme, and sugar. Blend until mixture is smooth or desired consistency (I prefer mine smooth instead of a chunky soup).

Pour into crockpot.

Blend remaining diced tomatoes until smooth and pour into crockpot.

Add in vegetable broth. Stir mixture.

Set crockpot on Low setting and cook for 3-4 hours.

During last 30 minutes of cooking, add in half and half.

Continue cooking on Low setting for remaining 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with grilled cheese sandwiches, grilled cheese croutons, French bread, pita chips, or crackers.

Helpful Hints:

*You do not have to use organic ingredients or fresh herbs to make this soup. Just remember the rule for using fresh herbs to dry -  when cooking with fresh herbs, you need to use three (3) times the amount as compared to recipes that call for dried herbs.

*You can also use regular or low fat half and half instead of fat free.

 

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Honey and Fig Yogurt

As I was shopping in the produce section of my local supermarket, something caught my eye, it was figs. When I was little, one of my neighbor’s grandma, who lived down the street from us, had a fig tree in her backyard. I remember going over there to pick the figs off the tree. Mmm, the taste of those figs picked right off the tree on a hot summer day, all gooey and sweet, we ate as many as we could! Needless to say, when I saw the figs that day in my supermarket, it brought back a lot of memories. And remembering how good they tasted, I bought some.

I can eat figs all by themselves and I bought these because I thought figs would be great for work when I needed a pick me up. But the other morning as I was eating my yogurt, I thought to myself that figs would be quite a tasty addition to my usual plain yogurt. As the wheels started turning in my mind to create something tasty, I came up with this recipe for honey and fig yogurt. I was quite surprised with how delicious it really was!

The creaminess of the yogurt, the sweetness of the honey combined with that of the figs, the crunchy texture of the fig seeds, paired with cinnamon and ginger….Oh my, I felt like I should be sitting oceanside in Greece while sipping an espresso and enjoying my honey and fig yogurt! Sigh….a girl can dream!

To get back to this healthy, sweet creation I made, not only is it simple to make and scrumptiously yummy, but it’s good for you too! Four figs contain a whopping 359mg of potassium, are fat-free, and with only 160 calories! Added to yogurt, this meal is a great way to start your day or to have as a snack.

Maybe you too can be swept away while enjoying this honey and fig yogurt to the Mediterranean seas. Maybe for a little while, at least until the dog barks, or your hunny asks you where the car keys are, or you’re startled out of your daydream by the buzz of your phone. Sigh….

Honey and Fig Yogurt

Prep Time - 7 minutes

Ingredients

1 cup plain yogurt

4 dried figs

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ginger

1 Tablespoon Honey

Directions

Take 4 dried figs and cut off pointed top.

Slice figs into small bite size cubes. Set aside.

In a small bowl, add yogurt, cinnamon, and ginger, and ½ Tablespoon honey. Blend well making sure spices are thoroughly mixed with yogurt.

Combine figs pieces to yogurt mixture.

Drizzle remaining honey over mixture and be prepared to be swept away!

 

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Crockpot Honey Garlic Chicken

Ever since I quit eating anything with beef and pork (going on almost 2 years now), trying to find a recipe for chicken that hasn’t already been done is hard to do. But I finally found a recipe for chicken that is out of this world! Not only does it taste yummy, but it’s a crockpot recipe and simple to make! That meets 3 of my recipe requirements:

1.) is yummy
2.) get to use my crockpot!
3.) is simple to make.

I found this recipe on Pinterest (my new go to place for recipes of any kind) when I was just browsing. It comes from Kelly Senyei of Just a Taste food blog at www.justataste.com

Usually when I find a recipe, I make it as written the first time around. If I make it again, I usually change the ingredients by adding something else that I think will make it taste better. I didn’t have to do any of that with this recipe as Kelly has perfected this recipe to a tee! It was mouthwatering good just like she wrote it although I did add some diced pineapple.

Even though this recipe is not mine, I just had to share the goodness with y’all. This recipe will make you love chicken once more! No longer is the chicken dry and tasteless. This chicken is juicy, sweet, tangy, a little bit of spicy, and plate-licken’ good! Yep, you read that right, plate-licken’ good as this recipe makes you wana lick your plate after you finished your meal! It is just that good I can’t even think of words you haven’t already heard to describe it! You just have to try it and tell me what you think. Just look how juicy this is!

And not only am I sharing this meal, but I also added a recipe for homemade hoisin sauce, which this chicken recipe calls for, since I try to make stuff at home because I don’t want all the added preservatives and sodium. Of course, that rule goes out the window when it comes to sweets!

The hoisin sauce recipe will be posted below the slow cooker Honey Garlic Chicken recipe if you prefer to make your own hoisin sauce too.

Here’s the recipe for slow cooker Honey Garlic Chicken…

Ingredients

3 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts

½ cup honey

½ cup Low Sodium Soy sauce

¼ cup Blackberry jam

¼ cup Hoisin sauce (homemade recipe of hoisin sauce listed below)

2 Tablespoons Olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup diced onion

¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

1 Tablespoon Sesame seeds

¼ cup diced pineapple, drained (optional)

Directions

Place chicken breasts in bottom of crockpot so they do not overlap.

In a medium bowl, mix together honey, soy sauce, blackberry jam, hoisin sauce, olive oil, garlic, onion, and red pepper flakes. After ingredients are well blended, pour over chicken breasts.

Place the cover on crockpot and turn temperature to Low setting. Cook on Low for 4-5 hours, until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Once chicken is done cooking, remove chicken from crockpot (don't use your fingers as chicken will be HOT!) and place on a clean plate or cutting board. Turn off your crockpot, leaving the juices inside for now.

Using two forks, gently pull the chicken meat apart, shredding the meat.

Place shredded meat in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.

In a small bowl, take the cornstarch and mix it with 3 Tablespoons of cold water until the lumps are gone. There might still be a few small lumps, but try to dissolve all of the cornstarch into the water.

Taking the juices from the crockpot, pour into a small sauce pan set over medium heat and slowly add in the cornstarch mix, blending well.

Bring to a boil and continue cooking until it becomes thicker, about 3 minutes, or until desired thickness. Remove sauce pan from heat.

Pour sauce over the shredded chicken, mixing thoroughly.

Sprinkle sesame seeds and pineapple over chicken.

Serve over rice, couscous, or quinoa.

*Could also be served up on Ciabatta or French bread as a sandwich.

Yields – 4 servings

Prep time – 20 minutes

Cooking time – 5 hours.


Hoisin Sauce

I came across this recipe at http://chinese.food.com/recipe/homemade-hoisin-sauce-312992 by author Alskann, when I was making an Asian meal and wanted to make my own sauce. I found this sauce to be exceptionally delicious, complimenting the flavors of the foods, and easy to make. So if you want to make your own hoisin sauce for the slow cooker Honey Garlic Chicken, this is the recipe for you!

Homemade Hoisin sauce

Prep time - 10 minutes

Ingredients

4 Tablespoons Soy sauce or low sodium soy sauce

2 Tablespoons creamy peanut butter

1 Tablespoon molasses or 1 Tablespoon Honey

2 teaspoons seasoned rice vinegar

1 garlic clove, minced

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 teaspoon Sriracha Hot chili sauce

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

Place all of the ingredients in a small mixing bowl and whisk until completely blended.

Add to desired meal.

Helpful Hints:

*You can make this spicier by adding more red pepper flakes to your liking or make it kid-friendly and leave out the red pepper flakes.

Slow Cooker Honey Garlic Chicken recipe by Kelly Senyei of Just a taste. Please do not republish without her permission. If you would like to share this recipe on your site, please write in your own wording the method of preparation and use your own photographs. Also link to Kelly's site  as the original post at http://www.justataste.com 

Pink and Yellow Sprinkle Cookies

Today is the one month anniversary of Sweet and Spicy Monkey! And this whole food blog thing isn’t as easy as it seems…a lot of hard work with long hours in the kitchen go into the makings of a food blog. Countless recipes, decisions of what to make, the cooking and baking process, writing, and the photos (which I’m working on still and hopefully will be getting a new camera soon to help with this process). My hat goes off to the people that do this full time and make it look so easy! But I am rolling up my sleeves while furrowing my brow as I stumble on through the learning process of having a food blog with you by my side.

For starters, I would like to say thank you for stopping by and reading Sweet and Spicy Monkey and I love y’all!!! I couldn’t have done it without you and I hope to be doing this a year from now too as I enjoy cooking, baking, and sharing. THANK YOU!!! Xoxo

So to celebrate this special occasion, I am making pink and yellow sprinkle cookies because I like pink and yellow and nothing else says “celebrate” like sprinkles! And I know y’all need a little something special to get through this January gloom and sprinkle cookies make everybody smile!

Let’s get to celebrating!!!!!

Pink and Yellow Sprinkle Cookies

Ingredients

½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

¾ cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

1 and ½ cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

¼ cup Nonpareils sprinkles for mixing with dough

2-3 drops of Red food coloring

2-3 drops of yellow food coloring

1 cup Nonpareils sprinkles in a bowl for rolling dough balls in before baking

A sprinkling of Decorating cupcake gems in Shimmer Silver for sprinkling on top after baking.

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter until creamy.

Add sugar until blended.

Add egg and vanilla, mixing well.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cornstarch. Mix dry ingredients with a fork (a couple circles in the bowl with a fork should do it).

Slowly add dry ingredients to wet, mixing well. (I did this part by hand since the dough mixture is thick).

After blending in dry ingredients, add ¼ cup sprinkles and mix throughout dough.

Once combined, separate into two dough balls and place into separate bowls. We’re getting ready to add the food coloring, so if you are only doing one color or no color, you can keep dough in one bowl.

Once separated, add a couple drops of yellow food coloring to one of the dough mixes and knead by hand. You do not have to have coloring throughout dough, just knead out dark spots of coloring. Set aside.

Add a couple drops of red food coloring to other dough mix, again kneading by hand just enough to remove dark coloring.

Cover both bowls and place in refrigerator to chill for 2 hours. *This step is important as it helps cookies from flattening out when baking.*

After 2 hours, preheat oven to 350F degrees.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Remove one bowl from the refrigerator and spooning 1 Tablespoon full of dough mix into your hands, make a ball. Continue to make balls for rest of dough mix. Best to do this one bowl at a time since you want to keep dough chilled before baking.

Pour one cup of sprinkles in clean bowl and roll balls in bowl until thoroughly coated with sprinkles and place onto lined cookie sheet. Place 3 inches apart.

Place cookie sheet with sprinkled balls into oven and bake for 10 minutes at 350F degrees.

After 10 minutes, remove cookie sheet from oven and sprinkle a little of the Shimmer Silver cupcake gems on top.

Let cookies cool 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack where they can cool completely.

Cookies should be stored in an air tight container where they will remain fresh for up to 1 week.

Yields – 18 cookies

Prep time – 2 hours and 45 minutes (includes chilling time).

 

 

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Fluffy Red Velvet Cookies

Since living in the South, I have come to learn how much Southerner’s love their red velvet cake! The captivation of red velvet cake goes back generations for these folks. As long as they can remember, there was always a red velvet cake around during celebrations. For Southerner’s, red velvet cake is a tradition.

Now me being from California, the charm of red velvet cake was appealing to me, I just had to try it and see what everyone was buzzing about. So I tried the infamous red velvet cake and found that it was a little too rich for my liking, which I found quite odd considering I do have a sweet tooth and I do love my chocolate. Maybe it was the cream cheese frosting paired with it, I don’t know.

However, this doesn’t mean I have given up completely on the Southern tradition of red velvet. So, I was really excited when I came across the recipes for red velvet cookies! I do love cookies and there is no cream cheese frosting on this red velvet, so I decided to give red velvet another try.

Now the first time I made these cookies was around Christmas time as I loved their color and thought they would make a great Christmas cookie, being red and all. Needless to say, the first batch of these did not turn out how I hoped they would. Oh, they had a rich red color and tasted quite delicious, better than your normal chocolate chip cookie, but they didn’t turn out fluffy like the pictures I saw of red velvet cookies on Sally’s Baking addiction.

I was disappointed once more with the whole red velvet notion. I was starting to think that one had to be of Southern roots just to make red velvet anything! And Southern California wasn’t part of this clique.

Being the baker I am, I baked on. And during this journey, I have come across a little secret of the baking world. Come a little closer and I will share with you….cornstarch! Yep, that’s the secret ingredient baker’s use to make their cookies F l u f f. Pure, simple cornstarch. Cornstarch helps increase the hydration in the flour, making cookies light and fluffy while cakes seem “lighter”. I have no idea who discovered this, but I have got to thank him or her for their great contribution to my cookie making! Thank You!!!!

You can see why I was so excited to try this little baker’s secret on the red velvet cookies because all mine needed were a little lift to look as good as they tasted. And I was correct in my calculations, the cornstarch provided the oomph!! The South will rise again!

 

YAY!! I am a true Southerner now!! I have made red velvet cookies successfully! Ta-da!

I hope y’all find these red velvet cookies as light and fluffy as mine (finally) turned out! And as tradition holds in the South, these cookies will bring charm to any celebration!

Fluffy Red Velvet Cookies

Ingredients

½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

¾ cup light brown sugar

¼ cup white (granulated) sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1 Tablespoon almond milk

2 teaspoons Vanilla extract

2.5 teaspoons Red food coloring

1 and ½ cups + 1 Tablespoon all-purpose Flour

1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cornstarch

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate mini morsels (chips)

Directions

Using a large mixing bowl, add room temperature butter and beat until creamy.

Add in brown and white sugars until blended.

Beat in the egg, almond milk, and vanilla until thoroughly mixed.

Add in food coloring, blending throughout dough mix.

Slowly add in dry ingredients - Flour, cornstarch, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Blending dry ingredients well throughout wet mixture. Dough will be sticky.

After dry ingredients are blended, add mini morsels to dough mix and blend throughout.

Cover dough mixture and place in refrigerator to chill for 1 hour. *Chilling is necessary and cannot be sped up by placing dough in the freezer.

After 1 hour, preheat oven to 350F degrees.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Spoon 1 Tablespoon of dough mixture into your hands and shape into a ball.

Place balls on lined cookie sheet, leaving room between (I placed 8 dough balls on an 18”x 11 ½” cookie sheet if that helps give you an idea of the spacing).

Place cookie sheet with dough balls in oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. Watch closely as you do not want to burn the cookies.

Remove cookies from oven and let cool for approximately 5 minutes on the cookie sheet.

After 5 minutes, transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool completely. Enjoy!!

 

Yields 26 cookies (give or take a few samples while baking)

Prep time – 1 Hour 15 minutes (includes chilling time)

Total time – 1 Hour 40 minutes

Store cookies in an airtight container. Cookies should remain fresh up to 7 days.

Cookie dough may be frozen up to 2 months before baking. Just be sure to thaw overnight before using.

*Helpful Hints:

Let cookie sheets cool down between batches before placing more dough balls on them.

To obtain room temperature butter and egg, simply remove from refrigerator about 1 hour before preparing dough mix. If butter is still a little firm after 1 hour, you can also place butter in microwave for 10 seconds. Keep an eye on it because you do NOT want it to become melted.

Place dough mix in refrigerator between baking batches to keep chilled.

Be careful with what you touch as your hands will turn red after rolling the dough into balls.

 

 

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bits Cookies

It was warmer in Iceland yesterday with a balmy temperature of 33.1F degrees than it was in my hometown of Georgia, USA, where the morning temperature was a frosty 6F degrees and the high was a cozy 27F degrees! I was wearing sweats, thermals, socks, and had the heat on and still feeling chilly inside my home. All I can say about this polar vortex is that it makes for a great time to start baking!

As I was searching through my recipes and cupboards trying to figure out what to bake, I realized I had bags where I only used half of the contents or more of candy and chocolate chips in different flavors where it wasn’t enough to make a full batch of cookies but just enough to tempt you to grab a handful as you walked by. So as I was going through my recipes on Pinterest, I came across this great idea of gathering up all the half used candy bags and adding them all to one delicious peanut butter cookie batch! Thanks to Jocelyn of insidebrucrewlife I discovered what to do with all these bags of candy.

Now being the self-proclaimed peanut butter connoisseur that I am, I have got to say, this is the BEST peanut butter cookie dough recipe that I have ever tasted!! It makes a light and fluffy cookie with a hint of peanut butter flavor….Oh my, I’m drooling on my keyboard just thinking about it!! I had to use a lot of willpower to keep myself from eating just the cookie dough before I baked the cookies. And the reason I didn’t eat all the baked cookies is because I was just too full and couldn’t eat anymore! There goes the diet…

So, with all my half bags of Reese’s white chocolate peanut butter cups, peanut butter and chocolate chips, and chocolate chunks I made these Peanut butter chocolate bits cookies. The “bits” are all the leftover candy and chips I had in my cupboard. I can’t really call them “chips” because I also added quartered Reese’s white chocolate cups since I was going with the peanut butter theme. Plus, I didn’t know what else to add them to at the moment and they just sounded like they would be yummy in these cookies. The white chocolate really adds to the flavor of these cookies.

With that said, you can also add any leftover candies or chips that you think will be scrumptious in this peanut butter dough and come out with your own recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Bits cookie! You really need to try the concoction I came up with as these are lip-smacking good and I am certain you will agree!!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bits Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter

½ cup sugar

1 cup Brown sugar, packed

2 teaspoons Vanilla

2 large eggs, beaten

1 cup creamy peanut butter (can also use chunky peanut butter)

2 cups flour, sifted

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Baking Soda

1 tablespoon Cornstarch (this makes the cookies Fluff)

¼ of a 12-ounce bag chocolate chunks

¼ of a 12-ounce bag peanut butter and chocolate chips (it’s a chip that has both peanut butter and chocolate swirled together, Mmmm!)

½ bag of Reese’s white chocolate peanut butter cups, quartered. (Freezing them beforehand helps keep the cups from falling apart to pieces, if they do crumble, no biggie, they still taste great!)

½ of a 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F degrees.

Spray cookie sheets with non-stick spray. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, combine softened butter with white and brown sugars until creamy.

Add vanilla, eggs, and peanut butter until well blended.

Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and cornstarch in a separate bowl.

Mix in dry ingredients a little at a time with peanut butter mixture until blended thoroughly.

Mixing by hand, add in quartered Reese’s cups and chips, blending throughout dough mixture.

Drop tablespoon size balls onto lightly greased cookie sheet.

Place cookie sheet in pre-heated oven for 10 minutes. Until cookies show a little bit of browning around the edges.

After taking cookies out of the oven, let cookies cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes before placing them on a wire rack to cool completely.

After cookies have completely cooled, store in an airtight container.

Makes approximately 40 cookies.

*I can’t tell you exactly how many because I ate some while baking!! Ok, I ate a lot!!

Helpful hints:

*I find after you put your cookies in an air tight container and place them in the refrigerator, they stay fresher.

Let me know how you like these and any other “bits” you added to the cookies. Enjoy!

 

 

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.

Crockpot White Bean and Chicken Chili

Baby, its cold outside! And I have got the best chili to warm you up on winter days like this! I don’t know about you but I love to make crockpot (slow cooker) meals when it’s this cold outside. Just the smell of something cooking warms the house up and makes your tummy grumble just thinking of how good it’s gonna be when supper time finally rolls around. And not only will this warm you up but it’s easy to make too! What more can you ask for when you’re busy doing other things, like snuggling up with your hunny (or a good book) in front of the fire.

I found this recipe a few years ago from Better Homes and Gardens magazine and since then, I have adapted it to making it in my crockpot. I’ve got to say, I find it much easier to make in the crockpot than over the stovetop just because you can start it, go run some errands or clean house, come back and spend another 10 minutes prepping it, then come back after about an hour, and dinner is on! Total time prepping for crockpot is about 10-15 minutes and cooks all day long while you’re busy at work.

Whereas, cooking it on the stovetop is continuous time in the kitchen, even though it’s quick to make, approximately 20 minutes total time over the stovetop. But who wants to do that when they get home from a cold, long day at work? Not me! I would rather just start dinner in the morning and come home to the smell of something cooking, throw in the remaining ingredients, and go take a long, hot shower to unwind and come back in the kitchen and serve up a bowl of chili!

Here’s my recipe for Crockpot White Bean and Chicken Chili to help you start your week.

Crockpot White Bean and Chicken Chili

Ingredients

2 – 32 ounce boxes Chicken broth (can use low-sodium also)

1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breasts

3 - 15.5 ounce cans Cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (or white beans)

1 – 7 ounce can diced green chilies

8 ounces shredded Pepper Jack cheese or Monterey cheese (approximately 1 and ¾ cup)

2 – cups coarsely crushed Tortilla chips

Remaining tortilla chips (I like Daily Chef All-Natural Multi-Grain tortilla chips -available at Sam's Clubs)

Directions

Bring out crockpot or slow cooker and spray inside with olive oil. Wipe out excess oil with paper towel. This helps the chili from sticking to the sides, even though there will be some sticking.

Pour in one box of chicken broth and turn crockpot to Low setting.

Place unthawed chicken breast in crockpot.

Add beans.

Add ½ of the 7-ounce can of chilies, placing other ½ of chilies aside until one hour before dinnertime.

Let cook on Low temperature for about 5-6 hours. Enjoy your day at work or go run some errands as you’re good for the rest of the day until you return.

About 1 hour before dinnertime, remove chicken breasts and place onto a plate. Shredding meat with two forks as meat will be hot to the touch. Add shredded chicken back into broth.

Add other ½ of chilies.

Grate pepper jack cheese and stir in with shredded chicken, chilies, and broth.

Coarsely crush 2 cups of the tortilla chips. I find it easy to place tortilla chips in large mixing bowl and crush with bottom of a cup until I have 2 cups. Add crushed chips into crockpot, stirring throughout.

Turn crockpot temperature back to High setting and let cook for remaining hour.

5 minutes before serving dinner, preheat oven to 405F degrees.

Take remaining tortilla chips and place on cookie sheet, sprinkle with grated pepper jack cheese.

Place cookie sheet with tortilla chips and cheese in pre-heated oven until cheese melts, approximately 5 minutes, give or take.

Remove from oven and serve with chili. Enjoy!

Let me know what you think of my Crockpot White Bean and Chicken Chili, I’d love to hear from you!


Helpful tips:

* You'll notice I have two 32 ounce boxes of chicken broth in the ingredients listing. You might not even need the second box, but I usually just add the broth in as needed and sometimes I use more, sometimes less. Plus after it sits all night in the refrigerator, the chili tends to thicken up so I usually add more broth.

*If you forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer and chicken is still frozen when you start making this and you’ll be home or able to return in 2 hours, you can place the frozen chicken in the crockpot and put the setting on High temperature for 2 hours. Then return and turn the setting back to Low. Then you’re good until about 1 hour before dinner.

*You can put beans in chili either in the morning with chicken breasts and broth or about one hour before serving dinner since they are already cooked, whichever you find easiest. I prefer mine to cook all day.

*You can prep remaining ingredients (grated cheese, crushed chips) the night beforehand or in the morning if you will be away all day, to help make it easier for you when you return back home.

*I add ½ of the chilies in beginning with chicken to help get their flavor. And since cooking all day will lessen some of their flavor, I add remaining chilies during last cooking hour. You can add all in beginning or all during the last hour if you choose.

*If you find chili too thick after adding crushed chips, you can add more broth. Chili will thicken up.

*If too watery, add more crushed chips.

 

 

All content and images are property of Sweet and Spicy Monkey. Please do not reprint this content without my permission. If you wish to include this recipe on your site, please re-write in your own words and use your own photographs. Or you can link back to this post for the recipe.