Plan ahead convenience food: Meatballs!

There's nothing I dread more than planning out a meal plan for the week. I inevitably end up short by the end of the week. Or I forget to defrost what I had planned and then I'm left scrambling at the last minute to figure something out. We're trying to cut back on our eating out budget, and there's never enough time to do another grocery run before the kids start getting hangry. So I like to be prepared for the days I'm unprepared. One of my go-to's is frozen meatballs and spaghetti. It's easy to boil some noodles and throw on a jar of spaghetti sauce, but I really like having some sort of protein with our dinner too.

My favorite recipe for make-ahead meatballs is from Pioneer Woman. But I like to tweak it a little for convenience. Here's my adaptation:

3 pounds Ground Beef
3 cloves Garlic, Minced
1.5 cups Bread Crumbs
4 whole Eggs
1.5 cups Grated Parmesan
1/2 teaspoon Salt
Freshly Ground Black Pepper
Splash Of Milk

Preheat over to 400F Degrees. Combine meat, garlic, breadcrumbs, Parmesan, eggs, salt, pepper, and a splash of milk in a mixing bowl. Mix together well with hands. Spray cookie sheet with oil. Roll into 25 1 1/2-inch balls and place on a cookie sheet. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes or until no longer pink in the center. Cooking time varies based on how big you made your meatballs.



Once the meatballs have cooled, I separate them into gallon freezer bags with about 15 meatballs per bag. That's usually enough for a meal for my family of 4. Since these are pre-cooked, all you have to do is throw them on the stove in the spaghetti sauce while you cook your noodles to heat them through.

Safe Sparklers

I was really hesitant to let the girls play with sparklers this year. Burns from sparklers can be really bad. So we put a hole in a plastic cup and had them hold them like that. It'll keep their fingers and hands safe from hot sparks! Then when the sparkler was done, we had a bucket with water for them to drop them in.

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cake

I made this chocolate chip strawberry cake today.

The next time I'll be more generous with the strawberries. Really cram them in there close together. In this one I didn't have a whole pound to use. I also over-baked mine by a bit, so next time I'll be checking it closer to 45 minutes. I also think I'll try doing 50/50 with brown sugar and white sugar. My milk and egg weren't room temperature, so it curdled a little when I added it to the butter and sugar, but the cake still turned out fine. The original recipe also calls for sifting the flour which I didn't do.

Ingredients

• 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 3 tablespoons Greek yogurt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg, room temp
• 1/2 cup milk, room temp
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips plus more for sprinkling the top of cake
• 1 pound strawberries, hulled and halved

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x3-inch springform pan or a 9-inch square pan with butter or cooking spray. 
2. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together into a medium bowl.
3. In a separate large bowl, combine butter, Greek yogurt, and 1 cup sugar and, using electric mixer, beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy - no more than 2 minutes.
4. Reduce speed to medium, mix in the egg, beat until light and fluffy. Then mix in milk, vanilla.
5. Keeping the mixer speed low, mix in the flour mixture, gradually, just until combined. Do not over mix.
6. Fold in chocolate chips into the batter. Transfer batter to springform pan. Arrange strawberries on top of the cake, cut sides down and close together. Place chocolate chips in spaces in between.
7. Bake cake for about 45 min to 1 hour until the top is golden brown and the tester comes out clean. 
8. When the cake is done baking, let it cool (still in the baking pan) on a wire rack. After cake has cooled for about 40 minutes, release the cake from the springform pan. 

Chocolate Buttercream icing

Recipe from epicurious.com
Frosting:

• 10 ounces bittersweet chocolate (do not exceed 61% cacao), chopped
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Place chopped chocolate in medium metal bowl; set bowl over saucepan of simmering water and stir until chocolate is melted and smooth. Carefully remove bowl from over water; let melted chocolate cool until lukewarm, stirring occasionally.

Using electric mixer, beat butter in large bowl until smooth and creamy. Sift powdered sugar over butter and beat until well blended, about 2 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Add melted chocolate and beat until well blended and smooth, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl.

Place 1 cake layer on platter. Spread 3/4 cup frosting over top of cake layer to edges. Top with second cake layer; spread 3/4 cup frosting over. Top with third cake layer. Spread remaining frosting decoratively over top and sides of cake.

Birthday

My baby girl turned 5 years old last week. Happy Birthday!

Peanut butter and chocolate baklava

This recipe (and image above) comes from Crazy for Crust.

I love baklava. This picture with chocolate and peanut butter has me drooling. Who knew you could improve upon baklava?Instead of the traditional nuts and honey filling in baklava, this is filled with peanut butter and chocolate chips.

Get the full recipe at http://www.crazyforcrust.com/2013/01/peanut-butter-baklava/

The best banana bread

There are two things that make this banana bread super special. 1. It has vanilla pudding in the mix. 2. It has a vanilla browned butter glaze. Have you tried browned butter? It has this amazing nutty flavor. A perfect compliment to the sweet vanilla. Here's the full recipe: http://www.averiecooks.com/2012/08/banana-bread-with-vanilla-browned-butter-glaze.html