St. Patrick's Funfetti Blondie Bites

St. Patrick's is almost here! Only a few more days to make as many green and Irish things as possible. This weekend I went to the Green Beer Races which is quickly becoming a tradition. This is the third year I've gone and it only gets better every year. It's green beer though so I don't know who would be able to resist that. Since I was in such an Irish mood I wanted to make some St. Patty's treats. My favorite cake is funfetti and I've been obsessed lately with blondies so I bring you the St. Patrick's Funfetti Blondie Bites! OK, so maybe they should really be called Greenie bites? Leprechaundie Bites? They aren't so blond once you add in that green food coloring. Andddddd you should really wait until they are completely cooled so yours turn out in perfect squares versus my oddly shaped ones. They just tasted so good I couldn't stop cutting/eating them immediately after they came out of the oven.

St. Patrick's Funfetti Blondie Bites
Yield ~25

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons oil
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
dash of salt
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
green food coloring
1/4 cup sprinkles

Candy melts (whichever color you prefer, I used green for St. Patrick's)
Sprinkles

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter and mix in with brown sugar, sugar, vanilla, and oil. Next add in the baking powder, salt, powdered sugar, and flour. Last mix in the green food coloring (if you'd like them to be green, omit if you want plain funfetti) and the sprinkles. Pour into a small baking dish. I used a small 6x6 but you could easily double the recipe for a 9x9 baking dish. Place in oven and bake for 25 minutes, check on blondies and bake a few more minutes or as needed until firm. Let blondies cool, then cut them into 1 inch squares. Place them on a baking sheet and freeze for about 30 minutes. Once they have hardened up some, melt the candy melts in a bowl microwaving for 30 seconds at a time until completely melted. Place a square onto a fork and dip into chocolate shaking excess off. Then place the blondie on a sheet of wax paper to harden and add sprinkles if desired. 

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Spaghetti Cupcakes

The best part of today is my NEW blog banner! I'm in love with it and I have to thank my wonderful friend Allison for making it for me. She's a real pro with that design stuff. She's also a real pro singer too. She's so unbelievably talented and I'm so happy to have her in my life :) You should all let me know what you think of it in the comments! BUT anyway, what's a blog post without a recipe?

These are the dessert I told you all I brought to the Italian potluck dinner I went to last weekend... Spaghetti Cupcakes! I'd been dying to make these forever (like since last summer) but I never really had a reason to until the potluck. It was destiny, obviously Italy was calling my name. These probably didn't last longer than an hour. My recipe made a ton of them and I only brought half a ton. I should've brought all of them so I wasn't left alone with the rest on Sunday.

Spaghetti Cupcakes
Yield ~60 mini cupcakes or 24 regular size cupcakes

No Fail Vanilla Cupcakes
1 package vanilla cake mix
1 package vanilla pudding mix (3.9-5 ounce)
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Vanilla Frosting
1/2 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
enough milk to get desired consistency

Strawberry Preserves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together eggs, sour cream, oil, water, and vanilla. Add in the cake mix and pudding mix and stir until all combined. Bake about 15 minutes or until slightly golden. For frosting cream butter and vanilla together. Add in the powdered sugar 1/2 cup at a time. Add in milk until desired consistency is reached. To create the spaghetti noodle frosting you will either need a small tip for your frosting bag or you can put the frosting in a strong sandwich plastic bag and cut a small opening in the corner. Squeeze the frosting out in random directions to make it look like noodles. After you have finished, take about 3 tablespoons or so of strawberry preserves and mix it with 1 tablespoon of water. Place spoonfuls of the mixture on top of the frosting for sauce. If you are making larger cupcakes you can use Ferrero Rocher's to place on top to look like meatballs, for the smaller version you can use Whopper's.

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Baby Stuffed Peppers

These puppies make me happy purely by the colors. When you just look at this dish doesn't it put you in a good mood? What's even better is today I am going to the store to get little baby seeds so I can get a head start on our gardennnnn! I'm going to get so many types of peppers (and tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) then I can just have a bunch of these right outside.

This past Saturday I went to an Italian potluck. I definitely brought a dessert but I really wanted to make a dinner dish too. I had to throw something unexpected in there. I love stuffed peppers so I decided to make those on a smaller scale so they were a bit more party friendly. One thing this meant though was I had a lot to carry to my friend's place. She lives in downtown Annapolis so parking is limited which means long walks to her place sometimes. On the walk home, somehow all the dishes ended up in a box being balanced on top of my boyfriend's head while we sang the Lion King song... I have no idea what to even say about that except it made the walk home much more enjoyable.

Baby Stuffed Peppers
Yield ~25 baby peppers

25 baby sweet peppers
3/4 cup uncooked rice
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 lb ground chicken
1 onion diced
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp Italian seasoning
2 cloves garlic
1 can tomato sauce (~15 ounces)
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
dash salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Boil 3/4 cup rice with 1 1/2 cups water until cooked. In another pan spray with vegetable or canola oil and add in ground chicken, onions, and garlic on medium high. Keep on heat until chicken is cooked through. Once rice and chicken are cooked add them to a bowl and mix in the parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes, Italian seasoning, worcestershire sauce, half the can of tomato sauce, and salt and pepper. Place the baby peppers in a casserole dish and then fill them with the filling. This could also be used for regular sized green peppers. It should make about 5 or so. Once you have filled all the peppers fill the dish about 1/2 inch with water and pour the rest of the tomato sauce on the peppers. Place uncovered dish in oven and bake for about 45 minutes.

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Tears of Butter

Hold the phone YA'LL! Paula Deen has further proven how annoying she is. Since I speak in food and weather and occasionally some bitchin, I have some of that for the first time. This morning a friend shared this article with me. I am not surprised that she would be involved in a restaurant that has racist tendencies especially towards the employees. This is probably what she is telling the authorities right now.

I actually watched her show the other day, not because I really wanted to know her recipes but because listening to her talk makes me laugh in a painful way. Trust me, I love Southerners. My mom's entire family lives in Georgia and I love going down there. When I listen to Paula though, I sort of cringe and when she takes a bite of her buttery dishes I almost barf because who in their right mind really gets that much enjoyment out food? I mean, of the top 3 things I enjoy most in this world food is in there but she just makes it sexual. Last year I even tried to make one of her recipes and followed it to a T. It was a huge flop so I'm not even sure how it made it on her site. At any rate, Paula is just crying tears of butter now because she's been figured out.

Colcannon Potatoes

Guess what!?! St. Patrick's Day is getting closer and closer. I love St. Patrick's, the last 3 of them my dad and I have gotten into some fun mischief so I always look forward to it. Whether it be roaming the streets of Grand Forks, North Dakota screaming "Yep, OK!, and You betcha" in typical North Dakota accents as we drank our green beer or going to the Eastport Green Beer Races it's always a blast. This Saturday, we're going to the green beer races again. So, today I'm bringing you a little pre St. Patrick's food inspiration. Maybe you can add this to one of your dishes in your Irish festivities.

The same day last week that we had all that crazy weather I made these potatoes too. Pops and I were going to the local Irish bar to hear to some tunes so I figured I'd make us a nice traditional Irish dinner to get us in the pre St. Patty's spirit. Originally I had planned on making corned beef and cabbage so I went out and bought everything for it. Then I realized the day before I plan to make this it's going to be Friday aka no meat day during lent. I was quite disappointed and I had to do some rethinking but I still got to use my potatoes and cabbage.

Colcannon Potatoes
Yield ~2 8 inch round pans or a casserole dish

9 red potatoes (1 1/2- 2 pounds)
1 cup milk
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 head of cabbage, diced
dash salt
dash pepper
2 tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic, minced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut up potatoes into quarters and place in a pot of water. Bring to boil until potatoes are tender. Meanwhile, cut up onion, cabbage, and garlic and place into a pan with 1 tablespoon of melted butter. Saute with a dash of salt and pepper until vegetables are no longer firm. Once potatoes are finished cooking, drain the water out of the pot then mash your potatoes with milk, 1 tablespoon butter (more if you wish), salt, and pepper. Next fold in your cabbage and onion mixture. Place mixture into baking dishes and bake for 30 minutes or until tops get a nice browning.

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Banana Bread

What do you do when life gives you a ton of bananas going bad? Make banana bread. At least that's what I did. Friday was a great day to be inside baking. It was 50 and raining and I got off work early because one person did something well so the whole division got rewarded. Seems kinda silly but I'm not complaining. I came home and baked this and some Colcannon potatoes which will be on here soon! Meanwhile I had the weather channel (which I normally refuse to watch) on in the background so I could see what was going on with the weather. Yesterday was an epic weather day. Holy ridiculous tornadoes batman! It was unbelievable to look at the radar returns. It just looked like tornadoes could have popped up EVERYWHERE. If this picture below doesn't get you excited you must have serious problems.

Banana Bread
Yield ~1 loaf

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups banana (3 bananas) mashed
1/4 cup butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 tbs vanilla
1/2 cup walnuts
1/3 cup oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together flour, wheat flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl melt the butter and add in the eggs, vanilla, and mashed bananas. Then add the liquid mixture into the dry bowl along with the Greek yogurt. Last fold in the walnuts. Pour the batter into your loaf pan and sprinkle the top with oats. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until firm.

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