CTMH

Ok I know that this is a food blog but I am breaking the rules for just this post. I am also an independent sales consultant for Close to my Heart. They are a scrapbooking company. They wanted to know what my favorite product of theirs is. I had to think about it really hard because recently I have been LOVING the acrylic stamp sets cause I have been using them more, but my ALL TIME FAVORITE still are the books they have that provide step by step instructions to make beautiful layouts for scrapbooking and card making. I just received their newest book MAGIC and am so excited to start using it!

Celestial Pecan Cream pie

This is by far my husbands favorite dessert that I make. He is the one that made up the name Celestial Pecan Cream Pie!

This recipe is courteous of allrecipes.com by Karen Neilson

Ingredients

2 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crusts

6 tablespoons butter

1 (7 ounce) package shredded coconut

1 cup chopped pecans

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1 (16 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

1 (12 ounce) jar caramel ice cream topping

Directions

Place butter in a medium skillet and melt over medium heat. Add coconut and pecans, stirring to coat. Saute until coconut and pecans are lightly toasted, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whip together condensed milk and cream cheese until fluffy. Fold in whipped topping. Spoon 1/4 of cream cheese mixture into each graham cracker crust. Drizzle each with 1/4 of caramel topping. Repeat layers with remaining cream cheese mixture and caramel. Top each pie with coconut and pecan mixture. Freeze overnight.

Whenever I make this I make my coconut mixture and then put it on a large plate and spread it out evenly into as thin of a layer as I can and stick it in the fridge or freezer while I am making the cream part of the pie. This makes it so the coconut is not hot and melting the cream while you are trying to layer it. Also I have yet to ever use the entire thing of carmel for the drizzle part. I think that if you were to actually use it all it would be way to sweet. I also buy the squeezable kind of caramel, it makes for very even drizzling.

For a home made graham cracker crust be sure to look under the Strawberry Ice Cream Pie recipe.

ENJOY

Best Brownie Fudge Ice Cream

Let's be honest everyone loves ice cream and for those who don't love ice cream are just a little bit crazy (no offense). We love ice cream in our house so we try to come up with different kinds that we can make and I must say the brownie ice cream we came up with is so good!

Ingredients for Best Brownie fudge Ice Cream

Brownies

2% or whole milk

heavy whipping cream

salt

sugar

vanilla

hot fudge (not heated)

First off make your brownies. Now these brownies can be your made from scratch perfect brownies or you can cheat like I did and make them from a box. After the brownies were done baking I let them cool for about 10-15 minutes and then took out about a fourth of the pan and put them on a plate and put them in the freezer to freeze. After they had been in there for about an hour I took them out and cut them into bite size pieces and separated them onto the plate so they were not touching each other. After doing that put them back into the freezer to re-freeze.

Now it is time for the ice cream. I just made a vanilla ice cream base. Now with vanilla ice cream don't cheat on the vanilla! Make sure to use REAL vanilla not imitation. It is a little more expensive or you can make your own. My sister in law and brother made our family some for Christmas last year it is the best stuff ever (thanks Gary and Sarah)!

Ingredients

2 cups 2% milk (or whole milk)

2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

stir all of the ingredients into a bowl until salt and sugar are dissolved. Pour into your ice cream maker and run for how long it is required for your machine.

Once the ice cream is done you need to move very quickly so it does not melt. Put your ice cream into whatever bowl you are going to have it freeze in. Stir in the brownie bites and then take the hot fudge (not heated!) and put in a good size dollop and stir until the fudge is evenly distributed but be careful not to stir to long because it will become chocolate ice cream and you want a more thick fudge look and flavor with vanilla ice cream.

ENJOY!

Gourmet Hamburgers

No summer would be complete with out making hamburgers on your grill! Here a recipe for the best burgers ever!

1 lb ground beef

1 white onion

1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg

1 tablespoon favorite bbq sauce or ketchup

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

6 hamburger buns, split

Directions

Preheat a grill for high heat.

In a large bowl, mix together the Cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, onion, egg, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Crumble in the ground beef, and mix together by hand. Form into 6 patties. Place patties on the grill, and cook for 5 minutes per side, or until well done.

Now a lot of people do not like to add the egg because they feel that it gives the hamburgers a meatloaf flavor. I have done it both ways and they taste the EXACT same, the only difference is that the ones that I made WITH OUT the egg fell apart all over my grill while I was trying the flip them. The ones WITH did not do that.

I have made this recipe enough times that I now just kind of guess how much of each ingredient I am putting in so don't feel bad if you don't use exact measurements.

*Tip for cooking is let them cook for a good long time on the first side because they hold up better when you try to flip. To insure they don't burn cook on a medium low heat.

ENJOY!

Strawberry Ice Cream Pie

Mmmm....who loves ice cream? Who loves pie? If you have answered NO to any of these questions...well your just crazy! I love ice cream and I love pie, so I thought why not put them together. OK I know I am not the first one to put this idea together but hey I am going with that anyway! I have made a couple of different kinds of ice cream pie but this one is for Strawberry Ice cream pie.

First we will start with the pie crust. My favorite online recipe place to go is allrecipes.com. I use it faithfully, and I never pick a recipe unless it is 4-5 (5 being the highest) stars in ratings. All three of the recipes we will be using for this pie is from allrecipes.com

Pie Crust (Graham Cracker Crust by Carol)

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs

1/3 cup sugar

6 tbs butter melted

I took one package of the graham crackers and put them in my vita-mix and ground them very fine. Once they were done I mixed 1/3 cup sugar with the crackers. I melted my 6 tbs of butter and mixed that into the cracker and sugar mix. Once all of the cracker crumbs were nice and wet I poured it into a 9" pie plate and with the back of the spoon shaped the crumbs into the pie plate. Make sure you get up the sides nice and good. Once that is done bake the pie crust in the oven for 7 min on 375 degrees fahrenheit. When it is cooked set it aside to cool.

Strawberry Ice Cream (Easy, Eggless Strawberry Ice Cream by ejw825)

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup white sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups mashed fresh strawberries

2 drops red food coloring (optional)

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the milk, cream, sugar, salt, vanilla, strawberries, and food coloring. Pour the mixture into the freezer bowl of an ice cream maker, and freeze according to manufacturer's directions. With my strawberries my husband hates frozen fruit in things because they are so hard to chew through so I took a 1 pound package of strawberries and threw them into my vita-mix and pureed them very well. I did not add the food coloring because the pureed strawberries gave the ice cream a very nice pink color.

There was a little more ice cream mixture then my ice cream maker could handle and I have a 2 quart machine so as it started to thicken I would take out a little cup here and there and we would just eat it as it was coming out or you could just stick it in the freezer or just hold out some of the mixture and keep it in your fridge and make the next day.

Once the ice cream was done I put it into my cooled graham cracker crust and put it in the freezer and let it set up.

Whipped Cream (Sweetened Whipped Cream by Taste of Home Test Kitchen)

Ingredients

1 cup heavy whipping cream

3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

In a chilled small mixing bowl and with chilled beaters, beat cream until it begins to thicken. Add confectioners' sugar and vanilla; beat until soft peaks form.

Working very quickly so it would not melt I took out my piping bag and a decorative tip and piped the cream onto the pie. I did that for looks you can just use a knife or a spoon and spread the cream around as well. After the cream was on the pie I took my squeeze bottle of caramel and drizzled it on top and for looks and color added quartered slices of strawberries on top. Freeze and ENJOY!

Rice Pilaf

In my house about the only thing we eat with our meals is rice. My husband is not a big meat and potatoes kind of guy so rice it is! Because we have a lot of rice I have to think of ways to make it, and I came up with this recipe for rice pilaf.

Ingredients

2 tbs butter

1/4 cup broken thin egg noodles

1 cup long grain rice

1 can (14 oz) chicken stock

2 tbs water

1/2 cup chopped red pepper

1/2 cup chopped green pepper

Italian seasoning

Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan and sauté the egg noodles in them. Careful not to let the butter burn. Sauté the noodles for about 7 min stirring constantly. Stir the rice and add the chicken broth and water. Bring to a boil, cover and turn down the heat to low and let it simmer. When all but 1/4 of the water is gone from the rice, stir in the red and green pepper. Cover and finish cooking the rice. When the rice is cooked remove from heat and stir. Once it is all mixed up shake in Italian Seasoning to your liking. I put in about 7-8 shakes. Stir and serve warm.

I serve this with bbq chicken, honey chicken, bbq steak... its just great to pair up with just about anything.

ENJOY!

Dutch Oven BBQ Chicken

I don't have central air in my house so it gets really hot in my house when I have to use my stove and especially when I have to use my oven! So this summer we have tried to do a lot grilling, but our new favorite this summer is dutch oven cooking. Our neighbor makes some of the best dutch oven chicken and we finally got his recipe for it. We about died when we realized how simple it was! Ok you ready.....here is the recipe.

1. 6-10 skinless chicken thighs (we have done it with bone in and out, I prefer out)

2. 1 bottle Sweet Baby Rays Honey bbq sauce

3. 1/2 cup of brown sugar

Yep thats it. I typically buy Bulls Eye Original bbq sauce, but for this recipe Sweet Baby Rays is what you need! First you need to start heating up your charcoal. Next you want to braise the chicken on your grill to seal in the juices. While your chicken is braising take your dutch oven and mix the sauce and the brown sugar together. Once your coals are heated throughly (you want them to be white) then you arrange about 12-15 coals on bottom and 10 coals on top. Take your chicken off the grill and put them in your dutch oven, mix them in the sauce so they are nice and coated in it. Then put the top on and cook them for 1 hour to 1.5 hours until the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 165 degrees fahrenheit.

I served this with green beans and my rice pilaf. It was so tasty good. My three year old has been going on a food strike for awhile were she would only eat about half her dinner and then claim to be done. We didn't have to ask her once to please eat her food, or to please sit down and finish her dinner. She didn't even ask for water (which is huge for her at meal time). The next thing we knew she was asking to be done please and her bowl was empty!