Review of Cream Cheese Banana Pudding

My husband’s childhood comfort food is Banana Pudding.  Every time he visited his Grandparents there was banana pudding.  So, you know anything tied to grandma is going to stick with you.  After we married she still made it every time we came.  So, I started to make it for him on special occasions.  I would layer the vanilla wafers, vanilla pudding, bananas and cool whip. 

After about 15 years of making it this way my husband pointed out to me, that Grandma made the pudding with a meringue on top instead of the cool whip that I had used, for 15 years.  Ugh!  I don’t know why I never noticed.  So, I finally started to make it right. 
This year for his birthday I was planning on making his favorite when I ran across this delicious version of Banana pudding.  They had me at “Cream Cheese”.



Do  I make it this new wonderful way and risk disappointing him?  Or do I make two?  Well you know that I made two, because as you all know 2 are better than 1.  He did like the cream cheese version also but he loved, loved, loved his grandma’s version.  She died just a few years ago and we really miss her.  It was like a piece of her was here for his b-day.

I found this recipe on one of my favorite recipe blogs
Country Mama Cooks she has great ideas.  She had hers in individual bowls which was very cute.  I just didn’t have the bowls.  So, I used our trifle bowl.

Below is Country Mama’s recipe:

Cream Cheese Banana Puddin' Ingredients

• 8 oz container Cool Whip(thawed)
• 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 3 oz cream cheese (softened)
• 1 box Nilla wafers
• 4-5 bananas
• 5.1 oz package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 2 1/2 cups milk

Cooking Directions

1. With an electric mixer blend the sweetened condensed milk into the softened cream cheese.
2. Then fold in 1/4 of the Cool Whip.
3. Now make your pudding using 2 1/2 cups of milk and refrigerate for 30 min.
4. In a large bowl or 6 individual serving dessert cups, layer vanilla wafers,pudding, bananas and cream cheese mixture.
5. Repeat and put the rest of the Cool Whip on the top .
6. Garnish with Nilla wafer crumbs and refrigerate until ready to serve.

My review of this: this one was gone before the traditional one and I loved it.  My family loved it too.  I would suggest that you try it.  Enjoy! 
God Bless
Jeannie

Corn Dog Muffins

A couple of weeks ago I made these corn dog muffins.  My family really liked them.  I found the idea here.

Corn Dog Muffins
These are so easy.


Here I had 2 boxes of Jiffy mix, made according to the instructions and I added 1 cup of Cheese.


I put them into the muffin papers(I purchase gobs of muffin papers just after Christmas on clearance, just for my family) in the pan.


Then I cut hotdogs into quarters.


And poked them into the center of each muffin.


So, these are regular sized muffins, but while I was at my mom’s house we tried these in mini muffin tins.  The mini muffins are perfect because you can dip them into ketchup or mustard a little easier.  So give that a try.  Hope you enjoy these.
Jeannie

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

We have two Zucchini plants in our garden.  Anyone who has grown zucchini knows that you will get a ton of zucchini from just two plants.  So, I am looking right now for ways to use it.  If you can add Chocolate chips to something I’m gonna try it.

The start of this recipes came from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.  Then I kicked it up.

1 3/4 cup Flour
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 beaten Egg
2/3 cup Brown sugar
2/3 cup Sugar
1 1/2 cup shredded Zucchini
4 Tablespoons Sour cream
1/4 Coconut oil or other cooking oil
1/2 cup Chocolate chips

Grease your pan with shortening and set aside.  Mix the first five dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl.

Next, mix together remaining ingredients in mixer minus the Chocolate chips.  When mixed well add dry ingredients to the wet mixture.  Finally, stir in Chocolate chips.

Spoon batter into the greased pans and bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until you can insert toothpick and it comes out clean.  Remove from pan and cool on a cooling rack.

Hope you enjoy!!

Jeannie

Review of Red Clover Lemonade

I found on one of the blogs I frequent this recipe and I thought I would try it.  The blog is New Life on a Homestead. The picture she took was just so pretty and we have this clover everywhere around here, so I had to give it a try.  We rode our bikes to Jacob’s dentist appointment yesterday and went by a field full of clover.


Credit for Photo
 New Life on a Homestead

Red Clover Lemonade

• 3 cups Red Clover blooms
• 4 cups water
• 1 1/4 cups lemon juice
• 4 Tbsp honey

Boil the blooms in the water for 5-7 minutes. Strain; add lemon juice and honey to the remaining liquid. Stir, then chill for two hours. Serve over ice. Enjoy!



I put about 1 1/2 cups of Clover in a pan of 2 cups of water.  I didn’t pick enough clover so I had to alter the recipe.  I also only had pink lemonade mix so that is what I used and left out the honey.  I added 1 quart of water.



The finished product.  It tastes pretty good.  It is funny it has a honey taste and I didn’t use any.  It really just tastes like Pink Lemonade with honey in it.  You’ll have to try it too.

Jeannie

Yogurt Covered Strawberries

I have a great use for those Individually Frozen Strawberries that I showed to you the other day.
My family really liked these so much.  Again, they were gone before I could take a picture.  But I have the picture below from the blog that I found them on.

This recipe comes from This Chick Cooks.Net .  I did tweak mine a bit.  The original recipes is simply Fresh Strawberries and Vanilla Yogurt.  I wanted them to have a sweeter harder consistency so I melted White Chocolate Chips and blended it with the yogurt before I dipped the berries.  I also really liked starting with already frozen strawberries.  They seem to set up faster. 
Yogurt Covered Strawberries

Ingredients

• strawberries
• yogurt
• vanilla to taste

Instructions

1. Cut tops off of berries. Dip the berries into yogurt and place on cookie tray in the freezer until firm. Repeat process until the berries have your desired amount of yogurt shell. I dipped mine twice.
2. Store in the freezer.
3. These are best served after sitting out for a few minutes.

Once mine were frozen on the cookie sheet, I again transferred them to a zip lock bag to keep them fresh.  I hope you all enjoy these.

Jeannie

Freezing Strawberries

We were blessed with beautiful strawberries.  My friend Melissa let us come and pick with her at her Mother-in-law’s giant strawberry patch.  Thank you Melissa and Wendy.

She gave me a great tip on Freezing them, that is so simple, but I had never thought of it, so I thought I would pass it on to you.  She told me to put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them individually, once frozen you can throw them into a ziplock bag.  I love this it is so great for smoothies and all sorts of things.  You can just pull out a handful instead of thawing the whole big clump.


Here they are in the ziplock in the freezer.  We froze 3 gallons sized bags that way and we are already down to two. 
Enjoy!!
Jeannie