Ode to my Slow Cooker

How I love thee my dear sweet Slow Cooker, let me count the ways...

For your ease,
Your capacity to please.
You make tough meat,
Super easy to eat!

The way you never let me down,
And at the end of the day, 
You turn my frown right around.

You take whatever I give you,
Raw or frozen.
It's always something new.

Okay okay...I'm getting a bit off track here.  But, I love our slow cooker.  I never realised how amazing they are until moving in with the mister, working full time and going to school full time.  The slow cooker is a massive time saver: you throw it in the morning, put that sucker to low and you have a fantastic dinner when you get home! If you're really on the ball, you can even make large quantities of  meals,  put them in the freezer and pull out a meal (freezer bag) every morning and toss it in your slow cooker! Bingo-bango-done-zo :)

I wanted to share with you some places where I go to get recipe ideas:

• Desserts from Stephanie Lynn
  
• Entire year of using a crock pot
  
• Crock-pot cookbook
  
• Freezing Recipes from Mama and Baby Love

How do you use your Slow Cooker?

Soda Cake

I love love LOVE sweets and put that together with my desire to bake...well, needless to say I'm surprised I don't weigh 1,000lbs.  I like to find ways to have my cake and eat it too without it going to my thighs!! I've made this recipe on several different occasions and it still amazes me how easy and tasty it is.

My Saturday night was spent with this handsome little fellow (the Mister was being ultra Canadian and watching Hockey...eh!)  A piece of guilt free chocolate cake and a little scoop of fro-yo!

All you need is a cake mix and a can of soda! That's it, I swear!!! In this recipe I've used Diet Pepsi, but I've made "Yellow" cake before with Ginger Ale or 7up! I would like to try Chocolate cake with cherry Pepsi. Oh...you could do Vanilla and Orange Soda for a Creamsicle cake...with a nice orange glaze...Or maybe a root beer float cake...mmmm

Back to the cake at hand: Chocolate-Diet Pepsi :) So as I said earlier...all you need is a can of soda and the cake mix! Make sure you pre-heat the oven to the specified temperature on the box (should be around 350 C)

Add the soda to the mix (in the bowl, of course).  It will be fizzy, which is pretty cool, but just keep on stirring and it will mix right in.

Choose your pan, oil said pan and pour it on in! It took me less time to mix everything together, grease the pan and pour it in than it did for the oven to heat up! That's how quick this is!!!


Put the little guy in the oven and make sure you watch it: it will take less time than specified on the back of the box.  This bunt cake usually says it takes around 40-45 minutes...it took 30 minutes with the soda.  So, make sure you watch it.   Burning a dessert should be considered a crime ;) Also, the top will won't 'spring back' like a normal cake does, so you're going to want to stick a knife in it and make sure it comes out clean.

Here is the sweet thing out of the pan, up close and personal! The texture is a little different than the traditional cake, but me-oh-my so good.  I sprinkled a little powdered sugar on it and called it a day.  Give it a try and let me know what combinations you come up with!!

Let your imagination run wild-it will be a tasty experiment!

Kitchen Chaos

So, I'm not sure about you, but our pantry is always a mess.  I swear we put things away in there and when we close the doors, little pantry elves come out from the wood work and muck it all up. So...I'm blaming them ;)

It seemed that our pantry elves had been extra busy while I was away in London this past term.  So we decided to sort it out and give those little guys a new home...our closet! :)

Firstly...here are some pictures of our pantry pre-organisation...it's scary, so be prepared.

So, we pulled everything out and tried to figure out what system worked best for us.  Blissfully Domestic had some great tips when trying to consider how to get a new system: check out her tips here.  So we thought of what would work.  We decided to go by type of good (Beans, Pasta, Baking Goods etc.) and FIFO (First In-First Out: put the older stuff in the front so you use that first!).  The top shelf is dedicated to baking stuff  that I won't use as often, then things we use to cook with and the next shelf has snacks, drink mixes and condiments!


....Up close and personal (check out those sight lines)

                          The full pantry....















 I also have a bit of an obsession with Tupperware and it's a constant battle to keep it organised.  You can see in the full picture I've pulled two of the Mister's shoe boxes (shhh) and separated lids/containers.  I'm hoping this will help keep my love affair in order! :)


It's just the first day, but, I think this just might stick! I really like the idea of putting a whiteboard on the inside of the pantry door to keep track of what you use. I hope this inspires you to reorganise your pantry...it cost us no money and only took about 45 minutes!

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

Even though I'm not Irish (at all!) I still love St. Patty's Day...actually, I love ANY holiday that you bake for! :)

I've seen these delightful little rainbow cupcakes all over Pinterest and blogs and knew they would be perfect for today! Check out this recipe from Disney's Family Fun, so I figured I'd give it a go while the Mister is away...which also means that I have all of these cupcakes to myself...eek!

The recipe called for a plain white cake mix (which I didn't have), but I did have a Funfetti mix on hand and I figured more colours would only make it more festive!  I also didn't have any eggs (double eek!). But I did/do have egg whites, so I just used that (3tbs & 2tps = 1 large egg). 

I mixed everything up, per the directions on the back of the box then divided up the batter into 6 different bowls. 

I added the dye to the bowls (ROY G BV...I didn't forget indigo, I just didn't have enough plastic bowls! :) ) 

I put just under a teaspoon of each colour in for each cupcake and I only got 18 cupcakes.  However, I think I could have added a little less of each colour and made it to the 18.  It was really helpful to have the colours lined up how you want to put them in and do all of one colour at once (it'll save you a TON of time!).  Seeing as I had empty spaces on the second tray, I spaced them apart and put water in the empty spots.  My mom always said this helps to prevent the empty ones from burning.

So, in the oven they went and I waited (rather impatiently, but it did give me time to do the dishes) for the end result...and needless to say, they were worth the wait!!! I let them cool and frosted the little lovelies with store-brand vanilla frosting.  They would also be fantastic with some homemade whipped cream on them! :)

Oh! If you're anything like me and get food colouring all over yourself...nail polish remove works a treat!:)

Happy St. Patty's Day! I hope there is a treat at the end of your rainbow! :)

Let's get this party started!

Well, first post!! I've decided to start this blog because I'm currently in limbo with finishing up grad school, while waiting for PR status in Canada (woo immigration!) and needed to fill my time!  My dear friend Sara (http://beautifullycontained.blogspot.com/) has an AMAZING blog and I've been inspired to follow in her fashion and start blogging! :)

I've decided to make this a mishmash of standard life happenings, craft projects, baking and everything in between! I hope you enjoy, heaven knows I will! :)