Apple Fritters

When I found this recipe from Seemingly Greek I pinned it on pinterest earlier this year because I love getting Apple Fritters from the grocery store. I printed it and put into my recipe binder to make someday. Then a few weeks ago I was again looking on pinterest and found a recipe pinned it on pinterest and printed it out. When I looked through my recipe binder I realized that I printed the recipe twice. I guess that means I should make the recipe. It was actually pretty easy to make and yummy too!

Apple Fritters

Ingredients:

1 heaping cup of flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1-2 teaspoons cinnamon
dash of salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 egg
1/3 cup milk (+ more if needed)
1 - 1 1/2 cups chopped apple, peanut size ore smaller

oil for frying

Glaze: 1 cup powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon milk

Directions:
Mix all dry ingredients together, slowly add the wet ingredients minus the apple. Carefully mix until well combined but not overly beat, gently fold in the apple pieces. The batter should be the consistency of a light cake mix. Once the oil is ready, using a cookie scoop, place a few balls of dough into the oil. Be careful not to overcrowd the balls. watch carefully for the underside to turn golden brown, then gently flip over and continue frying until done. I used a skewer to flip the fritters over. They will cook approximately 45 seconds on each side. I cooked one by itself first to see if it was done in the center and adjusted my time from there. When the fritters are done cooking set them on a paper towel to catch the extra grease. When you are all done cooking the batter, mix the ingredients together for the glaze. Dip each fritter into the glaze and set on a cooling rack with a paper towel underneath to catch any extra glaze that may drip off. Serve and enjoy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn

I'm addicted to flavored popcorn. Enough said! Here is a recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn. 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Popcorn

Ingredients:

12 cups air popped popcorn 

1/2 cup softened butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup marshmallow cream

1/2 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup melted milk chocolate chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Pre Heat oven to 250 degrees F
2. Pop popcorn and set aside.
3. In a large glass bowl combine the butter, brown sugar and marshmallow cream. 
4. Cook mixture in microwave for 3 minutes. Stopping in between each minute to stir. 
5. Stir in peanut butter and mix until smooth.
6. Pour mixture over the popcorn and stir quickly til coated evenly.
7. Pour popcorn into a oven safe pan. (I use a jelly roll pan or a large cake pan) Bake for 45 minutes. Stir every 15 minutes. Take out of oven.
8. Melt milk chocolate chips and then put into a pastry bag and drizzle over the baked popcorn and stir till chocolate is coating the popcorn. 
9. Let cool and store in air tight container.

Fruit Salsa

Sounds weird right? In my church I serve with the Young Women. For one of our combined activities we had a salsa challenge. There was one long table with a lot of ingredients. We divided into our three class groups, then we went to the table and grabbed what ever ingredients that we wanted. The girls grabbed the typical tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, salt, pepper, green bell peppers and onions. I then started to grab the mango, strawberries, pineapple and lime. We brought all of the ingredients to our table and started cutting everything! We made two salsas but could only be judged on one. Not that the traditional salsa was bad but the Fruit Salsa was much better! For the judging it was a tie between our Fruit Salsa and a traditional salsa. The traditional one won by a coin toss! Next time I think we would have three judges instead of two.

The Fruit Salsa was so good that I brought about 2 cups worth home. The next day on the way to work I stopped a bought a bag of tortilla chips to eat the fruit salsa with.  I was in a non sharing kind of mood with this oh so good salsa that I only shared it with one  co-worker and we basically ate  almost the whole thing by ourselves. So of course I had to make more a few days later. I made enough that I wanted to can it. Now you don't have to can it. It taste so good that you would probably use (eat) it all before it goes bad in the refrigerator.  I scoured the internet (looked at a few recipes) to see if there was anything special that I needed to do. I couldn't find anything special to do other that some recipes for Mango Salsa say to use green mango's not ripe ones. I was afraid of the fruit turning colors so I did add some fruit fresh and did use green mango's. Next time I would go ahead and use ripe mango's because I wanted to eat some salsa right away and some bites of mango were hard. No bueno!  Here is a picture of the finished product. 

Fruit Salsa

Yields: 5 1/2 pints 

Ingredients:

2 large Mango's or 4 small/medium Mango's

2 Pineapples

2 lbs of strawberries

2 jalapenos

Cilantro to taste

Juice from 2 limes

1 tablespoon Sea Salt

Gloves

Directions:

1. Cut up fruit (Mango, Pineapple, Strawberries) into small bite size pieces - About a quarter of an inch in size.
2. Using gloves cut up jalapeno into very tiny pieces. You can keep the seeds for more heat or eliminate them. 
3. Finely chop the cilantro. 
4. Mix the fruit, jalapenos, and the cilantro. 
5. Add the juice from two limes. (Before you squeeze them cut them in half then roll them on the counter or cutting board to loosen the juice. It will make it easier to squeeze.)
6. Add the salt.
7. Mix all ingredients well.
8. At this point you can eat it and refrigerate any left overs. If you want to can it you will need to put the ingredients into a pot and cook for 5-10 minutes to get the mixture hot. Ladle hot fruit salsa into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

I tend to make the same kind of muffins and wanted to make a little something different. I really like a lemon cake and I like blueberry muffins so I decided that I could combine the two. Muffins are really easy to make and make for a quick something to grab on the way out the door in the morning.

 

These Lemon Blueberry Muffins are chalked full of blueberries that you get a mouth full in every bite!

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

3 tbls lemon juice

2 tsp grated lemon peel

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

dash of salt

2 cups fresh blueberries

Glaze:

1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 tbls lemon juice

2 tsp butter melted

1/4 tsp vanilla

1 tbls milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
2. Mix butter and sugar together
3. Mix eggs in one at a time, set aside.
4. Mix four, baking powder and salt together.
5. Mix flour mixture into the butter, sugar and eggs mixture.
6. Mix in milk, lemon juice and lemon peel. 
7. Fold the blueberries into the mixture.
8. Fill baking cups 3/4 full. Bake at 400 degrees F for about 25 minutes. Depending on your oven you may need to cook a little less or a little more til golden brown.
9. Mix Glaze ingredients together. 
10. Cool muffins and then drizzle the glaze on top.