Healthy Almond Meltaway Cookies.

Today I am bringing you an updated Healthy Almond Meltaway Cookies recipe. As most people in the world including my family are getting healthy I thought I would repost this yummy recipe. If you are anything like me, you still have to have something sweet while eating healthy. This recipe is even better then the original full fat version. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! In the next coming weeks I will be talking a bit more about the system we will be using to get healthy. Below is the original post as well as new photos. As a side note in the original post I announced I was moving back home to Florida. It is crazy to think we are two short months away from being here a full year! 

Today I am  taking a quick break from iTunes Tuesday to bring you delicious Almond Meltaway Cookies, that on top of being yummy are also healthy! As a side note I can officially tell you that we are moving home to Pensacola, Fl woohoo! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming  My mom loves almond so they were a hit with her as well as my dad and I. The original recipe comes from The Novice Chef. I changed the recipe up a bit to make it a little healthier . The original recipe also had a glaze on top, I did not include the recipe for this but feel free to stop over at The Novice Chef to get the original recipe.  Enjoy

Ingredients 

2 cups King Arthur Organic Unbleached Flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt 
1 cup Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil

3/4 cup Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Fair Trade Cane Sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon almond extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside. In measuring cup whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. In a stand mixer using flex edge beat Coconut Oil and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and almond extract, mixing until combined. Add flour mixture 1/2 cup at a time, mixing until completely combined. Using cookie scoop press dough into scoop making sure it is packed in scoop, release dough unto prepared baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. The cookies will not look browned or cooked, but they are! Remove from oven and let cookies rest on baking sheet for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Life Update

As I mentioned on Saturday we are moving to Pensacola Florida. The day is quickly approaching and time is dwindling, we have less then three days before the big move. Yikes! I think we are in good condition and just about ready. iTunes Tuesday has been cancelled for a while with the move and all but hopefully will be back soon 🙂 This also means that I may not be posting as often as I would like for the next few weeks while we get settled in. I am so excited for this new season in our lives, I know God is orchestrating all of this!

When we announced we were moving several people asked how I felt about all of this, and all I can say is I could not be happier about this change! Pensacola is where I grew up so it is like moving home for me, it is where so many of my best memories were created. We have so many friends there that are more like family then friends. We have moved so many times and I still love moving but I think I am ready to settle down in one place for a while! After living in the Atlanta area for the past couple of years I can honestly say that I do not think big city life is for me. I learned so much here in Atl and will be taking all of the experiences with me. I had my first real  job here, I was able to Assistant Direct two children’s musicals with hundreds of children and I loved getting to be involved in Children’s Church! As God opens the doors in Pensacola I look forward to all that He has in store for me and how I can be a Blessing to others.

Before I sign off,  I thought I would leave you with a picture of Arianna helping us pack. She has no idea the fun that will be coming her way in the next few days 😉

Arianna “Helping Move”

Moms Italian Pasta Bake

Today I bring you my Mom’s Italian Pasta Bake, many years ago she cooked for a family and this was one of their most requested dishes! This dish taste great if you want to freeze it, you could also make a double batch. If you decide to freeze it do not add the cheese until ready to Bake.  I love this dish, it is truly a comfort food! It is also super easy to make, I think it is the shortest recipe I have ever posted!

Ground Chuck and seasonings.

Browning the meat.

The browned meat ready to be drained.

Our pasta of choice.

Cooking the pasta.

The drained meat ready to be mixed into the sauce.

Pasta, Sauce and half of cheese mixed together.

Pasta Bake with the rest of the cheese on top and ready to go into oven.

Ingredients

1 pound of ground sirloin

16 ounce box Muellers Penne Pasta

24 oz jar of your favorite pasta sauce

Italian spices of choice

8 oz mozzarella cheese

4 oz Parmesan cheese

Directions

Brown the sirloin in a large pan. Once meat is cooked drain off any fat on a paper towel. Cook pasta until Al Dente. Put into baking dish of choice, add in sauce as well as the meat and the cheese, mix until blended and bake it at 350 for 30 minutes or until all the cheese is melted and top is golden brown.

Great Grandma’s Potato Salad

We are having friends over tonight for a cook out and my Mom asked if  I would make my Great Grandma’s Potato Salad.  This recipe has been in our family for years. The only thing my Mom changed with the recipe is,  she does not add celery & carrots, but you could if you like a little extra crunch.  This is my Dad’s favorite and he requests it quite often,  Mom always makes it for his Birthday and Father’s Day! Always make the salad in a bigger bowl then you think you need. The salad also tastes better after it sits in the fridge for a day.

Cooking the potatoes and eggs.

Potatoes cooling.

Peeling the hard boiled eggs.

Peeling the potatoes.

Cutting the eggs.

Dicing the onions.

The sugar, vinegar, and mayo.

Measuring the mayo.

Mixing together all of the ingredients.

Ingredients
2 tsp sugar

2 tsp vinegar

1 1/2 cups mayo

5 potatoes

6 eggs

1 medium onion

Dash paprika

Directions

Boil your potatoes till done. Boil eggs until hard boiled. After potatoes and eggs have cooled peel and cut up your potatoes into chunks then peel and dice the eggs reserving one hard boiled egg. Cut your onion into small pieces. Mix the mayo, sugar, and vinegar together in a small bowl. Add to the potatoes, eggs, and onion and mix until well blended. Taste salad you may need to add more of the mayo mixture, if so mix up half cup mayo, 1 tsp vinegar, and 1 tsp sugar. Once the salad has reach the taste and consistency you desire slice the hard boiled egg you reserved and lay on top. Lightly sprinkle top of salad with Paprika.

Healthy Almond Meltaway Cookies.

Today I am  taking a quick break from iTunes Tuesday to bring you delicious Almond Meltaway Cookies, that on top of being yummy are also healthy! As a side note I can officially tell you that we are moving home to Pensacola, Fl woohoo! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming 🙂  My mom loves almond so they were a hit with her as well as my dad and I. The original recipe comes from The Novice Chef. I changed the recipe up a bit to make it a little healthier . The original recipe also had a glaze on top, I did not include the recipe for this but feel free to stop over at The Novice Chef to get the original recipe.  Enjoy 🙂

Adding in the baking powder to the flour and salt.

Mixing together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

Measuring the Organic Cane Sugar into my bowl.

The sugar and Coconut Oil.

Creaming the sugar and Coconut Oil.

Adding in the Almond extract and egg.

Adding in the flour to the dough.

The cookie dough all mixed up.

Using my cookie scoop to measure out the dough for each cookie.

Cookies ready to go into the oven.

Ingredients:

2 cups King Arthur Organic Unbleached Flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon flaked sea salt (or can use regular table salt)

1 cup BetterBody Foods & Nutrition Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil

3/4 cup Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Fair Trade Cane Sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon almond extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside. In measuring cup whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. In a stand mixer using flex edge beat Coconut Oil and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and almond extract, mixing until combined. Add flour mixture 1/2 cup at a time, mixing until completely combined. Using cookie scoop press dough into scoop making sure it is packed in scoop, release dough unto prepared baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes. The cookies will not look browned or cooked, but they are! Remove from oven and let cookies rest on baking sheet for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Saint Patrick’s Day Food

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!  On Saint Patrick’s Day in the T household  we decided to go all out.I don’t think we have a lick of Irish blood in us but we sure love the food! We made Crock Pot Corned Beef & Cabbage recipe by Salt and Pepper Moms, as well as Irish Soda Bread and Irish Cream Dessert recipes below. For the Irish Soda bread, I followed the basic recipe but others include caraway seeds and raisins. You could also use green food coloring to give the bread some pizzazz. We bought Kerrygold Butter to go on the bread, and let me just say I think we will be buying the butter from now on! The Irish Cream Dessert original recipe came from Food Network UK, I changed it up a bit.

Irish Soda Bread

Flour, baking soda, and salt.

Adding in the Buttermilk.

Bread dough ready to be kneaded.

Bread on floured board.

Bread ready to go in the oven.

Bread out of the oven with Kerrygold Butter.

 

Ingredients

4 cups flour
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups buttermilk

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and salt. Gradually stir in the buttermilk until the dough comes together in a slightly sticky ball, dough will be shaggy. Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead gently a few times. Form the dough into a ball. Cut an X into the dough with a sharp knife, about 1/4 of an inch deep. Bake for 30 minutes until the crust is dark golden brown and a knife comes out clean.

Irish Cream Dessert

Melting the butter.

Crushing the Gingersnaps.

Whipping the cream.

Whisking together the sweetened condensed milk and creamer.

The finished whipped cream.

Folding in the Whipped Cream into the Creamer mixture.

Lined ramekin with the gingersnap cookies mixture.

Pouring the cream into the ramekins.

Filled ramekin.

Filled ramekin topped with gingersnaps.

Ready to go into the freezer.

 

Ingredients 

20 gingersnap cookies

2 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 cup heavy cream

12 oz  sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup Baileys Irish Creamer, Original

4 Ramekins

Directions

Line the ramekins with plastic wrap creating a shell and leaving long flaps to cover the ramekins later. In a food processor, pulse gingersnap cookies with melted butter until small crumbs form for the crust. My food processor was not available so I left the ginger snaps a bit chunkier. If you do not have a food processor put cookies in Ziplock bag and crush with a can. Press half the cookie crumb mixture, dividing evenly, firmly into the bottom of each ramekin. Reserve the other half of the crumb mixture for the topping. In a large bowl, Whisk heavy cream until soft peaks form. In a separate large bowl,  whisk together condensed milk and Irish cream then fold in whipped cream. Pour evenly into the ramekins. Top with remaining gingersnap crumbs and cover with the extra plastic wrap, pressing to compact mixture. Freeze until set, about 5 hours. To serve, remove plastic wrap from top and then gently turn ramekins over to release dessert onto a serving plate. Gently remove plastic wrap.

Homemade Bread

As I have mentioned before Here, I have been making all of our bread homemade since the beginning of the year and I am loving it! I love how easy it is to make it and also knowing what is in my bread! Bread is a large part of my food pyramid lol, I have been trying to eat healthier but bread was one thing I was not willing to let go! The recipe I use has been adapted from Make and Take. I have been using King Arthur Flour for this recipe and love it! I have used their cake flour, all purpose and whole wheat flour for this recipe and each time it comes out wonderfully! As I have learned making bread takes time and practice, my first couple of loaves did not turn out as I would have liked but with each batch they would get better. This recipe makes two large loaves, I let mine rise for 5 hours but feel free to let rise for as little as 2 hours.

Pouring flour into mixing bowl.

Flour as well as salt in bowl.

Pouring in yeast.

In the warm water goes.

Ready to mix.

Dough all mixed up and the bowl is ready to be greased

Greased bowl ready to rises.

Greased cling wrap tightly covering bowl.

Bowl covered with cling wrap and towel set in a warm place to rise.

The dough after the full 5 hours of rising.

Cutting the dough into two pieces.

Ball of dough ready to be pulled into loaf.

After the two loaves rose for 30 minutes.

Loaves and water in oven ready to bake.

Baked bread.

Ingredients 

3 cups warm water

1 1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast

1 teaspoon kosher or other course salt

6 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour such as King Arthur Organic all purpose flour , plus more for dusting

Olive Oil for greasing bowl

Directions

In the bowl of Kitchen Aid mixer place all of your ingredients. Using flex edge beater mix until dough pulls off  bottom of bowl with no flour on bottom of bowl. While bowl is still raised and dough is still on beater grease all around the bowl with olive oil. Lower bowl and scrape dough off of beater. Grease Cling Wrap with Olive Oil, cover top of bowl with cling wrap making sure there is no air leaking into the bowl. Cover top of bowl with towel and place it in a warm spot. Let rise anywhere between 2-5 hours, I let my bread rise for the full 5 hours. Try not to move bowl from where you first placed it, the more you move it lets air drafts into the bowl. After you have let the bread rise set out two cookie sheets covered with parchment paper. Sprinkle flour on top of dough, using knife cut down the middle of the dough. Flour both hands generously, pull half of bread out of bowl. Pull all of the sides of the bread down onto the bottom to form a large round somewhat flat ball of dough, place unto one of your cookie sheets. Repeat with other half of dough. Cover both loaves with greased cling wrap and let rise for 30 minutes.  Preheat oven to 450. After 30 minutes of rising, slice tops of loaves and take cling wrap off. Place large pot of water on bottom rack of oven, this helps crisp the outside of the bread but keep the inside soft. Place bread into oven for 30-35 minutes, you will know the bread is done when you tap on the top of the bread and sounds hollow. Remove from oven and place bread onto cooling racks. Once the bread is cooled you can either slice it or if you are not going to eat both loaves within a couple days you can freeze the loaf. I slice into pieces for easy use and pull out of freezer what I need at that time.

iTunes Tuesday March 11, 2014

Welcome to another iTunes Tuesday. If you have questions on how iTunes Tuesday works click Here to read more about it 🙂

Tiger Darrow is a great new artist I found through the AVbyte Brothers Channel, her music is different then most mainstream artist.

I had not heard Human by Christina Perri before Caitlin Hart covered it but it has now become a favorite of mine!

The Scientist cover by Tyler, Kina and Lindsey is wonderful, I am so glad all of these artists decided to do a cover together. The cover is enchanting!

Ali and The New Velvet’s cover of Counting Stars is a wonderful mix of the two artists!

for King and Country has very quickly become my favorite Christian Band! They are so different then all of the others on the market right now! I highly recommend all of their music!

Lyne is a wonderful new game that I downloading in the last week that has me addicted!

Tiger Darrow- Thinkin’ ‘Bout You

Christina Perri – Human – Cover by Caitlin Hart

Coldplay – “The Scientist” – Tyler Ward, Kina Grannis, Lindsey Stirling

OneRepublic – Counting Stars -Ali Brustofski & The New Velvet

for KING & COUNTRY – “The Proof Of Your Love”

Lyne

iTunes Tuesday March 11, 2014

Welcome to another iTunes Tuesday. If you have questions on how iTunes Tuesday works click Here to read more about it 🙂

Tiger Darrow is a great new artist I found through the AVbyte Brothers Channel, her music is different then most mainstream artist.

I had not heard Human by Christina Perri before Caitlin Hart covered it but it has now become a favorite of mine!

The Scientist cover by Tyler, Kina and Lindsey is wonderful, I am so glad all of these artists decided to do a cover together. The cover is enchanting!

Ali and The New Velvet’s cover of Counting Stars is a wonderful mix of the two artists!

for King and Country has very quickly become my favorite Christian Band! They are so different then all of the others on the market right now! I highly recommend all of their music!

Lyne is a wonderful new game that I downloading in the last week that has me addicted!

Tiger Darrow- Thinkin’ ‘Bout You

Christina Perri – Human – Cover by Caitlin Hart

Coldplay – “The Scientist” – Tyler Ward, Kina Grannis, Lindsey Stirling

OneRepublic – Counting Stars -Ali Brustofski & The New Velvet

for KING & COUNTRY – “The Proof Of Your Love”

Lyne

30 Minute Healthy Dinner Rolls

For dinner today we are having Pressure Cooker Chicken, and I decided to make up quick dinner rolls to go with it. Let me just say I was shocked at how well these turned out! I adapted my recipe from Real Mom Kitchen. I wanted to make the rolls a bit healthier so I used Honey instead of sugar and Coconut Oil instead of regular oil. I also used cake flour instead of all-purpose since its all I had on hand today, I desperately need to run out to the store to buy more flour. I think I use 10 pounds of flour in a month, crazy! These rolls will become regulars in our house for sure!! Next time I think I will double the recipe and freeze half to pull out when ever we want rolls.

Proofed Yeast.

Mixing the dough.

Dough all mixed up, with the sides of the bowl clean.

The 12 sectioned rolls.

Forming the rolls.

Forming the other side of the roll.

Bottom of formed roll.

Rolls before sitting for 10 minutes.

After the rolls had sat.

Baked Rolls.

Finished product.

30 Minute Rolls

Ingredients

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp warm water
1/3 cup melted Coconut oil
2 Tbsp yeast
1/8 cup honey
dash of salt
1 egg
3½ cups cake flour

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine water, oil, yeast, and honey. Allow mixture to rest for 15 minutes.
With the flex edge beater mix in salt and egg and 2 of the cups flour until combined. Add remaining flour ½ cup at a time.
Section dough into 12 balls. Shape dough by pulling sides and folding under into 12 balls and let rest for 10 minutes.
Place rolls on baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes until tops are golden brown. Makes 1 dozen.