Baked Chicken Egg Rolls and Ham Fried Rice

This meal is a favorite of my hubby's - his favorite part is the ham fried rice.

Every two weeks we buy a rotisserie chicken and then I usually get at least three meals out of it. This is one of our favorite meals to make with the leftover chicken.

Start out with about eight ounces of coleslaw mix. Then add 1-2 sliced green onions and shredded baby carrots to your liking. Cover with saran wrap and microwave for one minute. Stir and microwave another thirty seconds.

Then add about a cup of shredded chicken. Next I add some flavor. I don't like to use sweet & sour sauce on my egg rolls so I like to add lots of flavor to them. I add about a teaspoon of soy sauce and hot chili sauce and then a few shakes of Hot Shot! pepper and a shake of salt. If you don't like a lot of spice you can just use regular pepper and leave out the hot chili sauce. Now you are ready to make your egg rolls.

I usually make six egg rolls with this amount but you can make them each as small or large as you want. I'm still not the best egg roller after making these a dozen times. Maybe I can watch a YouTube video on that.

Put your finished egg rolls on a greased pan and put them in the oven for ten minutes at 400 degrees then turn them over and put them back in for another six to seven minutes to get the golden color below.

As the egg rolls are baking, I chop up some onion and ham (a couple slices each) and cook in some olive oil until the onion is tender then I add about two chopped green onions right at the end. Then set that to the side and scramble two eggs with a little salt and pepper added to them. I have been cheating a little with the rice and have been using frozen rice so I just do that at the end since it only takes four minutes to cook. If you would like to cook rice from scratch you will want to start it when you put the egg rolls in the oven. Stir the onions, ham and egg in with the rice and add some soy sauce, salt and pepper.

Enjoy!

Egg Roll mixture:

8 oz coleslaw mix

1-2 shredded baby carrots

1-2 sliced green onions

1 cup of shredded chicken

1 tsp hot chili sauce

1 tsp soy sauce

dash of salt & pepper

Ham Fried Rice:

2 slices chopped onion

2 slices chopped ham

2 sliced green onions

2 scrambled eggs

10 oz bag frozen rice

1 tsp soy sauce

salt & pepper

3 Ingredient Oatmeal Scotchies

These are my somewhat healthy go-to cookies of the moment.

They only require 3 ingredients (if a cookie mix counts as one ingredient) and they are so quick that I make them way to often.

Just add a single serve cup of applesauce to a package of oatmeal cookie mix and combine. Then mix in as many butterscotch chips as you would like and dig in - since there are no eggs in this version, the cookie dough is safe to eat.

Or bake them according to the directions on the package.

Enjoy!
P.S. Since there is no butter in the recipe - they do stick to the pan a bit so you might want to grease your pan first or use either parchment paper or a baking mat.

Homemade Reese's Peanut Butter Treats

I made these for Easter but these flower shapes could work for any spring celebration.

There are a million recipes online that all vary slightly but this is what I used:

16 oz of powdered sugar

1 and 1/4 cup of peanut butter

1/4 cup of butter

2 tablespoons half&half - or until you reach your desired consistency.

Some recipes also add graham cracker crumbs and/or brown sugar and honestly, the recipe above is approximate because after looking at so many recipes - I just kind of winged it.

Mix ingredients together and shape to your desire.

Put them in the freezer to harden.

Melt one package of Wilton candy melts or other chocolate coating of choice. It works best to put a little shortening in the chocolate so it's a little thinner for dipping. Take peanut butter shapes out of freezer and dip in chocolate coating. I usually use two forks and a spoon when dipping - the spoon to help cover the shape with chocolate and one fork to pull it out of the chocolate from the bottom and another fork to push the piece off of the other fork and onto the parchment paper to set up.

Decorate to your liking.
Happy dipping!

These take patience but they are worth it!

Banana Streusel Muffins

These muffins turned out pretty well and were really easy to put together.

I had some bananas on my counter that I needed to use soon so I looked up banana dessert recipes and this recipe popped up.

I have never been a big fan of baked banana goods and have never made any so I was a little apprehensive about weather or not I would like these but decided to take a chance so I could use up my bananas.

I found the recipe here: 

Muffins:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 bananas, mashed

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup butter, melted

Topping:

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 Tbs flour

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbs butter

Directions: Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a small bowl - mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together and set aside. I actually just realized I left out the salt and mine still taste great.

The next step is to mash your bananas - I had never done this before and found that a fork worked the best when they were chunky and a spoon worked best in the end to get them really smooth.

Then mix in the sugar, egg and butter. I actually only used about 1 Tbs of butter and made the rest of the 1/3 cup up with cinnamon applesauce to make them more healthy.

After that is combined, add the flour mixture just until moist.

Evenly pour batter into a 12-slot greased or paper-lined regular muffin tin. The original recipe said it would make 10 muffins but it easily made 12. Don't mind the Christmas muffin liners - all I have are seasonal patterns.

Mix the topping ingredients together until it resembles a course crumble. Then sprinkle topping over the 12 muffins.

Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

This is what you end up with. These are soooo good when they are warm! I might just become a fan of baked banana goods.

Peanut butter and chocolate cereal treats AKA Scotcheroos

This recipe had me at peanut butter and chocolate. I love that combination of flavors. Today at work I had the worst craving for something sweet. So much so that I almost went out and bought me some cookies from one of our local cookie shops.

As soon as I got home, I went to work trying to decide which of my hundreds of "Sweet Treats" pins I should make. I wanted something quick to make since I still had to make dinner too. I actually have made these twice before right in a row since they were so good.

This recipe is all over Pinterest - but here it is:

1 cup white sugar

1 cup corn syrup

1 cup creamy peanut butter

6 cups cereal - Chex, Rice Crispies - whatever you have on hand

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup peanut butter chips or butterscotch chips

1 tsp vanilla

Stir the sugar and corn syrup in a sauce pan over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Then take off the heat and stir in your peanut butter - if you want the peanut butter flavor to stand out more then add another 1/2 cup. After the peanut butter is evenly stirred into the mixture, pour over cereal mixture and coat evenly. Press mixture into a greased 9x13 pan or just turn out onto parchment paper if you want to just pull chunks off to eat it like I do. Melt your chips together in the microwave in 30-second intervals. When melted, stir in the vanilla. Pour over the top of the cereal mixture and let set before cutting or just drizzle it on top like in my example.

I used half a bag of peanut butter and milk chocolate chips on these. I used a Ziploc bag to melt them in and then cut the corner off to drizzle over the cereal mixture.

This recipe is gluten-free also. Just check your cereal - I hear some of the off-brands are not always GF.
If you cut them in bars - which makes it easier if you are taking them to a party - they look something like this:

This is a pic from the first time I made these. Either way - they are delicious!

Circus Animal Cookie Truffles

Circus Animal Cookie Truffles

I came across these on Pinterest and just had to try them.

I had made the Oreo truffles a while back so I thought these would be about the same process.

The recipe is basically a bag of crushed Circus Animal cookies mixed with 1/2 can of frosting. You then roll them into balls and put them in the freezer for an hour or so - if you try to dip the balls in your melted coating while they are warm then the butter in your frosting will mix with the coating and you will have a big mess.

When you are ready to dip your cookie balls, melt your chips in a bowl 30 seconds at a time. I usually add a little shortening to the melted chips to give it a smoother consistency. Then pull your cookie balls out of the freezer and start dipping. I usually use a fork and a spoon for this process. I use the spoon to cover the cookie ball with the melted coating and then when it is fully covered I take it out with the fork and give it a tap or two on the side of the bowl so the coating is not quite as thick. The white coating is kind of transparent, so it actually works better kind of thick to hide what's underneath. Then quickly sprinkle your topping on before the chocolate/vanilla coating hardens. If you don't have any sprinkles for the top - there should be enough in the bottom of the cookie bag.

I made my own cream cheese frosting to mix in with the crushed cookies, which I crushed in a mini food chopper.

Cream Cheese Frosting recipe:

1 8 oz. package of cream cheese - I used the reduced fat version

1/2 cup of butter or 1 stick

3 to 4 cups of powdered sugar - depending on the consistency you want (I used about 4)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

You only need about one cup of this for these cookie balls depending on how much it takes so you have no loose cookie crumbs when mixed together.
You will have extra frosting which means you will need to find something else to make to use it - that's not really a bad thing. You could make some cupcakes, sugar cookies or cake bites to name a few ideas. I guess I better get busy making my next treat.

More Pinterest recipes

Copycat Mexican Pizza from Taco Bell. I found the recipe here. I made two of these like the recipe says and each of us could only eat half of them. Next time I'm making one of them for us to split. I used the rest of the ingredients to make Nachos:

Next we tried some Asian food:

Baked chicken egg rolls with ham fried rice. I used this recipe for the eggrolls. I didn't have hoisen sauce so I used soy sauce. I also used chicken instead of pork because I had leftovers from a rotisserie chicken. We bought some sweet and sour sauce but didn't really like it so maybe I'll have to find a recipe to make my own next time. For the rice: I diced up some onion, green onion and ham and cooked it in a little olive oil. Then I added a scrambled egg and some cooked white rice along with some soy sauce and it was delish.

These are copycat southwestern eggrolls from Chili's with their avocado-ranch dipping sauce. I found the recipe here.

These were delicious! I left out the spinach and fresh parsley because I didn't have it and maybe I dislike spinach just a little bit. I also tweaked the sauce just a bit to my liking. I left out the vinegar and buttermilk and added some chili powder for a kick. I don't like avocados so I was a bit skeptical but it was great. My hubby wouldn't try it though. He doesn't like avocados either and wasn't willing to try it. The other thing I changed was that I baked these instead of frying them and they still tasted great! Bake at 400 degrees about 10 minutes on one side and 4 minutes on the other or until they look done to you.

And now for dessert:

Peanut better kiss cookies from Chef In Training. These were so good that me and the hubby went through these in about four days and then I had to make a second batch.

Cookie dough truffles. 

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
chocolate candy coating for dipping

If you are a cookie dough lover like me, you will love these. They won't make you sick either since there are no eggs in these. They are a little hard to dip. I have found that adding about one teaspoon of shortening to the melted chocolate makes the chocolate easier to work with.

Onto my next pinned recipe.......

Pinterest recipes

I have actually been trying a lot of recipes lately from Pinterest.

I've been kind of bored with the same old things for dinner and I wanted to make some of the yummy dishes I've been pinning so.........

I made this delicious copycat Olive Garden alfredo sauce for my chicken linguine tonight. The hubby said it was delicious and he would be more than happy to eat leftovers tomorrow - yay no cooking for me. Unless I decide to make the copycat Pizza Factory breadsticks I found here. 

I made these once before but I didn't have parmesan to sprinkle on top so I've been wanting to make them again.

Here are some of the other Pinterest recipes I have tried in the last two weeks:

This corn chowder is delicious! I have made it several times. I always add diced ham to it for the hubby though because he has to have meat or it isn't a meal. I also stir in some cheddar cheese before serving. I have also added green onions and diced red pepper to give it a little kick.

This twice baked potato casserole was very good also. I only wish I had added more green onions. Oh, and apparently I can't cook bacon crispy enough because my hubby asked me what the chewy stuff was.

I also tried this taco pasta. Mine did not look this good because my hubby does not like tomatoes. I did not put the garlic in mine either because I am not the biggest fan of it. I did add Rotel tomatoes (original) to my portion and it made it better. My hubby said he liked this though so I might make it again.

I saved the best for last - at least the sweetest one. I made these churro waffles for dinner one night and they were so good. They smelled delicious while they were cooking in the waffle maker - it must have been the vanilla and cinnamon in the batter. It was definitely more like eating dessert than dinner.

All these recipes were hubby approved.

*Only the first two pics are mine. I promise I'll get better at picture taking now that I have my new camera but I have been so busy working six days a week and cleaning my entire house from top to bottom that it is still sitting in the box.

My hubs thinks I'm crazy because I waited a year to buy that camera and I haven't used it yet.

That will be my next project.

Carmelitas

I was craving a sweet treat and knew I wanted to try one of the hundreds of recipes I had pinned on Pinterest. I love cookie bars and I love caramel so this recipe looked like a winner.

I found the recipe here

32 caramel squares, unwrapped
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda. Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of an 8x8" pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crust. Pour caramel mixture over chocolate chips. Crumble remaining oatmeal mixture over caramel. Return to oven and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.
*A stint in the fridge will help them cool off if you're pinched for time. They shouldn't be served cold, but all of that molten caramel takes a long time to cool down. They should be stored and served at room temperature.
**If you want to use homemade or store-bought caramel sauce in place of the caramel/cream mixture, use 1 1/4 cups of sauce.
***To make a 9x13" version, simply double the amounts. 

I used half and half because that's what I had on hand and it worked great with the caramels - also saved me some calories.

I'm really good at choosing really rich recipes to try lately and this is another one.

They are delicious.

The only thing that I would change is the next time I make these, I'm going to reduce the butter to 1/2 cup. The cookie base was too wet to crumble it on top and I had to add a bunch more oats - I would rather just cut out some of the butter so it's not so greasy.

I will definately make these again!

Another successful Pinterest recipe made, only hundreds more to go!

Homemade butterfinger bars

Another Pinterest recipe is checked off my list.

I have been wanting to make these since I pinned them. I bought some candy corn on sale after Halloween and am just now getting to make these. In my defense, I have been busy with all of my other hobbies. The busiest time of year for me is October through December. I love to decorate for Halloween and Christmas as you probably know if you follow my blog.

I found this recipe on Pinterest. You can find it here.

This recipe uses three ingredients and there is no baking involved.

I like to have people taste these before I tell them the ingredients.

Most people are surprised that candy corn is an ingredient.

Here are some tips for making this recipe:
First of all, 1 lb equals two cups - I have a handy magnetic chart hanging on my refrigerator to help with that.
When you are combining the melted candy corn and peanut butter, there is a lot of stirring involved - I almost called in my husband to assist because my arm was tired.
Press the mixture evenly into your pan and let it sit for a while to cool.
I didn't have parchment paper so I just buttered my pan - it worked well but it was hard to get the whole square out of the pan at once. I wanted to cut these into little squares on a cutting board because it is easier to use a sharp knife for that and I didn't want to ruin my pan.
I dipped a few of these in the morning before work so I could pass them around and I made a big mistake in my rush.
Make sure you have waxed paper or parchment or something on the surface to make it non-stick while they are setting up. I put them straight on a metal pan and then had to use a spatula to scrape them off.
These are the ones I took to work - they are not quite as pretty:

When you melt your chocolate, make sure to add a little shortening to make the chocolate more smooth and a thinner consistency.
These worked better for me than anything I have ever dipped and I dip a lot of treats!

When dipping, make sure the pieces don't have a lot of crumbs on them or your chocolate will become lumpy.
My technique is to use a spoon to cover the piece and then use a fork to pick it up out of the bowl and shake the excess chocolate off on the side of the bowl.
Then the treat will just slide off the fork onto your waxed paper or you can use another fork to slide it off.
When they have dried - if you have some extra chocolate pooled at the bottom - you can just trim it off with a sharp knife.
We will be having ours at our Thanksgiving feast.
I hope these tips help you when you try your hand at them.

Heavenly Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

These are heavenly! In fact, when I exclaimed that they were heavenly after my first bite, my husband came running from the other room because he thought something was wrong. I laughed and then gave him a bite and he was glad he came running because he agreed.

This recipe came from Pinterest. Yes, I actually made one of the many recipes that I have pinned and it was soooo worth it.

I found the recipe here from the blogger The Girl Who Ate Everything - I love her blog name BTW. After I made these heavenly bars I searched her blog for more yummy recipes and pinned a bunch more - hopefully I actually make some of them.

Then I got worried that I might eat the whole pan and really wanted to share this wonderful find so I took some to work and all my co-workers agreed that these were delicious!

So, when these are gone - which won't be long, I think I'll try another pinned recipe or one from my 60+ cookbooks.

Hopefully it will be just as delicious!

So, my advice is to try some of those recipes that you have pinned over time. You might just find a winner like I did!

Lemon Cream cupcakes

I wanted to try a recipe from my new cookbook that I got for Christmas.

We had bought a lemon cake mix the last time we went shopping so I went with this recipe. For those of you that don't have this book, here's the recipe:

Lemon Cream cupcakes

1 box lemon cake mix

2 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 (8 oz) package cream cheese

2 Tbsp. grated lemon zest

1 recipe whipped cream

1 tsp. lemon extract

1/2 cup crushed lemon drop candy

Mix together cake mix, eggs, sour cream, and cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add grated lemon zest and combine. Scoop batter into paper liners, filling 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Remove and cool cupcakes on a wire rack. Add lemon extract to whipped cream and combine well. Top cooled cupcakes with lemon whipped cream and crushed lemon candies.

I love frosting and didn't want to do the whipped cream thing so I found a lemon butter cream frosting recipe also in the book and went with that.

Lemon frosting

8 Tbsp. (1 stick) butter at room temp

3 3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted

3-4 Tbsp. milk or cream

1-2 drops food coloring

2 tsp lemon extract

Can I just say yum?

There's something about home made frosting.

I need to work on my frosting technique but they taste awesome and that's what I'm going with. They were also super easy. I didn't sift the powdered sugar or put the lemon zest in the batter and they still turned out great - aren't those just suggestions anyways?

I'm good at leaving out things that I don't love in a recipe.

Anyways, I need to get these out of my house cause they are good!

Chocolate graham crackers

 

For those of you that don't like to spend hours in the kitchen, here is a simple treat.

I always have some left over icing when I make cake bites and I hate to waste things.

So, I grab some graham crackers and make chocolate graham crackers out of them.

Yum!

If you don't have any icing, you can mix cocoa powder, powdered sugar, vanilla, a little butter and warm water until you get the right consistency and flavor.

That's the way my mom always made them when I was a kid and they were just as yummy!

Oreo Truffles

I've been wanting to try these for a while because they sounded a lot like the cake bites I've been making except with cookies.

The recipe is simple: crush 36 Oreo cookies and mix with one 8 ounce package of cream cheese. Roll into balls and refrigerate. Then cover in melted chocolate.

Easy right?

Well, when discussing this recipe with a co-worker, she suggested using a food processor to crush the cookies because otherwise you can't get the crumbs fine enough.

I should have listened.

The recipe suggested putting them in a bag and using a rolling pin to crush them for people without food processors. So, since I did not have a food processor, I tried the rolling pin idea and that didn't work so well. I spent a half hour trying to get the cookies fine enough by first using a rolling pin and then I dumped the large crumbs in a bowl and used a potato masher to try to crush them finer and in the end I was just crushing the large pieces with my fingers - I almost drove to Wal-Mart right then and bought a food processor because it was so frustrating.

I finally got them small enough and mixed them with the cream cheese and rolled them into balls. Then I put them in the fridge and was done for the night. 

The next day I went to Wal-Mart and look what I bought:

I picked this up for 5 dollars and used it to crush the few remaining Oreos to sprinkle on top.

So easy.

This is what the Oreo truffles look like before dipping them in chocolate.

And, here's the final product. Yum! My husband approves so they must be good.

Oh and make sure you put the dipped oreo balls on wax paper to dry so you can easily take them off.
The first dozen that I dipped were put on a clean metal sheet pan and I had to use a spatula to get them off.
And, since these have cream cheese in them, it is best to refrigerate them.