Cranberry Apple Crisp

In a recent post, I mentioned that I had gone to an apple orchard.  I wanted to share some of the recipes that I used because I had 13 pounds of apples to go through!  One of my favorite apple recipes was an apple crisp that I made from my Cuisine at Home magazine.  It was super easy and the streusel on top just set it over the edge of goodness!  

Picture Source

Here's the recipe:

Apple Crisp

Adapted from Cuisine at Home

Issue No. 95

Ingredients:

For the Streusel:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp salt

2 sticks cold butter, diced

3/4 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup chopped pecans

Filling:

3/4 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup cider or brandy

4 lbs Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  For the streusel, whisk together flour, sugar, brown sugar, and salt.  Cut butter into flour mixture with a pastry blender until thoroughly combined.  Mix oats and pecans into flour mixture; cover and refrigerate.

For the filling, soak cranberries in brandy or cider for 20 minutes, until plumped, 20 minutes.  Drain and save liquid for another use.  Toss together apples, cranberries, brown sugar, lemon juice, 2 Tbsp flour, cinnamon and salt in a bowl.  Transfer to a 9x13 inch baking dish.  Cover apples with streusel and bake until apples are tender, about 50 minutes.  Let apple crisp rest on a cooling rack 30 minutes before serving.

I'm pretty sure you will enjoy this as much as I did.  Just add a scoop of vanilla ice cream and you'll be set!  Happy Fall!

Week Six

I'm back today with another week of recipes for you to try out.  I'm a week behind, so here's what we had last week.  I find this week's food to be particularly tasty, and I've had them all before, so I know that they taste good.

Monday: Guinness Roast Beef 

• Okay, this was A-mazing!  And it was a splurge, but who cares because it tasted so good.
• I had the onions, garlic, spices, and corn starch.
• I bought a chuck roast ($9), beef broth ($2), 2 bottles of Guinness ($4), 4 carrots ($1), and a head of cabbage ($1.50).

The total was $17.50, but I had leftovers and I reused the meat for another day.

Tuesday: Cajun Fettucini Alfredo (I will post this recipe soon)

• For this recipe, I had the alfredo sauce and the spices. - (I froze this a month or two ago, and when it defrosted, I just added some more cream and some more parmesan cheese to even out the consistency.)  It tasted totally fine - I was leery to freeze that type of thing, but it worked!
• I bought the chicken ($12) and the fettucini ($2).

This recipe cost $14, and I had enough for lunch the next day.  For the spices, I used Penzey's spices red and black spices.

Wednesday: White Chicken Chili

• For this recipe, I had all of the spices, the onion, the garlic, the olive oil, dried beans, the chicken from last night and 4 cups of chicken broth.
• I purchased the parsley ($2) and another container of chicken broth. ($2)

My total for this meal was $4, and I froze two more containers of it.  That will be two more dinners for us, and 3 lunches for me!

Thursday: Open Faced Roast Beef Sandwiches

• For this, I had the roast, the gravy, the bread, and I simply bought the potatoes to make mashed potatoes ($2).  

The total is $2 for the dinner, and we definitely had enough for a lunch too!

And, this recipe is pretty self-explanatory.  Toast bread, add roast, put mashed potatoes on the side, drown the whole thing in gravy... you're set.

Friday: Butternut Squash stuffed Shells with Brown Butter Sauce

• For tonight's dinner, I had the ricotta cheese, the pasta shells, garlic, parmesan cheese and the butter.
• I bought butternut squash ($2), a container of spinach ($2), and the sage ($2).

This meal cost $6, and we had way too much of it.  It was good on day one, so make a half portion because this is the dinner that never ends.

Saturday: Waffles with strawberries and whipped cream

• I had everything for this recipe (flour, milk, eggs, cinnamon, rice krispy cereal, vanilla, vegetable oil, baking powder, salt and heavy cream) except for the strawberries ($2).
• I use the heavy cream to make fresh whipped cream, I cut up the strawberries, and the secret weapon is Trader Joe's sugar-coffee grinder.  Grind some on top of your waffles, and you will not be disappointed!

Dinner = $2.

Sunday: Stuffed Shells Again for free!

The meals this week cost $45.40  I'm pretty impressed with this one if I don't say so myself. :)

Have a great week!

All pictures are from Pinterest.

Candy Bar Cookies

The other day, the hubby and I went a restaurant called Room Four here in Indy.  It was pretty tasty, but the best thing that we had there was the candy bar cookies served with cocoa laced whipped cream.  I was skeptical at first (I don't know why), but after the first bite, I was sold!  So when it was time for me to make a batch of cookies, I decided to try my own.  Granted these are not quite as good as the Room Four candy bar cookies, but they are extremely tasty in their own right.

Here's how you can make your own:

Candy Bar Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from The Picky Palate

2 sticks softened butter

1 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 bag of chocolate chips

3/4 bag of heath bits

1 bag of mini snickers - you know.... the smallest size possible

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  In the stand of a mixing bowl, mix the butter and sugars until light.  Then, mix in the vanilla and eggs.

In a medium sized bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.  Gradually add the flour mixture into the butter, and finally add the chocolate chips and heath bits.

Using a 1/4 cup scoop, take the dough, make a dent, insert a snickers bar, and wrap the dough around the candy bar.  Pinch off any extra dough that's unneeded to cover up the dough.  You should end up with a cookie that looks about the size of a golf ball.  I put twelve of these on a cookie pan, and froze the rest.  I think I ended up with about 36 cookies in all.

Bake the cookies for 9-14 minutes... mine took about 10.

I hope you enjoy!