Thursday, October 29, 2009

Pumpkin Dip

Jeff and I are throwing a Halloween costume party tomorrow night for a bunch of our friends. I found this recipe for pumpkin dip. It tastes like liquid pumpkin pie and is to die for! This took like 10 minutes to make and was so incredibly easy!

You will need:
* 1 8oz. package of cream cheese (softened)
* 1 150c. can of pure pumpkin
* 2 cups confectioner's sugar
* 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie seasoning
* 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon frozen orange juice from concentrate

Put cream cheese and confectioner's sugar into a bowl.

Mix until creamy and well blended.

Gradually add in the pumpkin.


Add in the spices and orange juice. I found that the Kitchenaid Mixer didn't mix it perfectly, so I had to stir it too. This made A LOT of dip! We plan to serve it with honey graham crackers and Nilla Wafers! 

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Chicken Barbeque

In an effort to work on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days I decided to use my Cooking Light Slow Cooker Cookbook (which I registered for and got as a bridal shower gift) to make a meal called Chicken Barbeque.

What you will need:
* 1/2 lemon sliced and seeded (I used a whole one because we love lemon!)
* 1.5 cups cut onion (I don't like onions very much, so I left this out)
* 3 chicken breasts, each cut in half
* 1 bottle (18oz) of BBQ sauce (your choice of brand. I used Sweet Baby Ray's)
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup of Coke (NOT DIET! It has to be regular Coke!)
* 1/2 cup water

Put the sliced lemon into the crockpot. Hopefully you can slice it more evenly than me!

Place the chicken breast halves on a slice of lemon. This made the chicken have a hint of lemony taste and it was sooo good!

Squeeze the entire bottle of BBQ sauce into a bowl.

Add in the 1/2 cup of Coke and stir until blended.

Pour the mixture over the chicken and cook on HIGH for 1 hour. After that, cook on low for 3-4 hours. The cookbook told me to do 4 hours, but we found that the chicken was a bit overcooked, so I will definitely shorten the time next time I make this dish!

Once chicken is tender several hours later, remove it with a slotted spoon (so you preserve the sauce) and put it aside. Get the lemons out and throw them away.

Put the flour in a bowl and gradually whisk in 1/2 cup of HOT water.

Mix the flour/water mixture in with the leftover sauce from the crockpot. Turn the crockpot back to HIGH and stir occasionally for about 10 minutes. The sauce should be nice and thick, that's how you can tell that it's done.

It will look something like this.

Not sure why this pic won't go horizontally! Anyway, spoon the sauce over the chicken, serve with a veggie of your choice and enjoy!

Jeff and I really liked this and will definitely eat it again. I just need to make sure not to overcook the chicken! Since there's not a ton of liquid in with the chicken, it dried out, so one less hour would have made a huge difference!