While searching for Valentine ideas, I came across a cute one on Leeann Greff's blog. I modified it a bit and came up with this...
What do you think? Super cute and best of all easy. Here's the directions if you would like to make some yourself.
Cut out a 4 1/2 inch square of paper. Score the square at 1 1/2 and 3 inches. Turn the paper and score again at the same measurements. Punch a hole at each corner.
Using square scallop punch, punch out four pieces of paper and adhere to 4 1/2 square.
Cut a 12 inch piece of cordinating ribbon and thread through holes as shown below.
Place a sucker in the middle. I purchased some nice 1 1/2 inch ball shaped suckers at Dollar General for $1 a bag. Tootsie Pops or Blow Pops would work too. This is how I tied mine and it worked great.
Using the circle scallop punch, punch a circle out of cordinating paper and punch as shown below.
Attach stamped image punched out with 1 3/8 inch circle punch and then thread over sucker stick.
Told you it was super easy. :) Now only 24 or so more to make.
Winter is the perfect time to cook up a pot of your favorite soup. I came across a recipe for black bean soup, doctored it up a bit and thought I'd share. I liked it so much, I made two batches this weekend!
Dump the following ingredients into your slow cooker. Cook 6-8 hours on low or 3-4 hours on high.
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups chunky salsa
1 tsp. garlic powder
Top with one or more of the following: cheese, sour cream, avocado, cilantro, etc.
If you're a child of the midwest you've probably enjoyed a bierock at some point in your life. I make a point to enjoy them as often as I can which meant that I needed to find a recipe to make them. Enter my mom's friend Wanda Jane and we have a DELICIOUS bierock recipe that is too good not to share with the world or at least my sister who reads my blog. So, enjoy.
Tupperware Bread
(This is a to die for bread recipe. Easy and yummy!)
375 degree oven, bake time approx. 16-20 minutes for rolls or bierocks
9c. flour
1 1/2 c. warm milk (scalded and cooled by adding the next ingredient...water)
1 1/2 c. water
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. salt
4 eggs
2 sticks butter or margarine
2 pkgs. yeast
Put flour into large tupperware bowl. Make a "well" in the center of the flour. In separate bowl, beat the eggs ans set aside. In a small bowl, place 1/2 c. sugar and add the 2 packages of yeast. Mix gently, set aside. Scald the milk, and add water to cool.
In the bowl with the eggs, add the scalded milk (now cooled). Add salt and mix with fork. To this add the sugar and yeast mix, stir with fork. Pour this mixture into the flour well. Do not mix or stir!! Seal, burp (the bowl, not yourself, unless you feel the need) and set bowl into a sink of warm water for about 30 minutes. The seal should pop off when it's ready.
After 30 minutes, add 2 sticks of melted butter. Now mix the entire bowl of ingredients. Once again, seal, burp and set bowl in a sink of warm water for about 30 minutes. Once again the seal should pop off.
On a floured counter top, knead the dough lightly...roll out and make what you'd like. Proceed as you normally would for any yeast bread recipe...make, let rise, bake and eat!
Bierock Meat
4 lbs. hamburger
4 c. cabbage, chopped
1 c. onion chopped
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper (I like a lot more pepper in mine, so taste test your meat to see if you need more pepper)
Cook hamburger, onion, cabbage, salt and pepper until browned, and cabbage is limp. Roll out dough and cut into large squares. Put 1/2 c. meat mixture in center of dough. Pinch closed. Bake until browned, approx. 16 minutes at 375 degrees. Brush tops of bierocks with melted butter right out of the oven.
For those of you, like me, that need extra directions. Here you go. For the dough...
Divide the dough in half once it's all mixed. This makes it much easier to work with.
Roll the dough into an appox. 16 -24 in square. (or as much of square as you can get, mine generally look like the state of Texas)
The dough needs to be about an 1/8 of an inch thick, maybe even a tad thinner. You don't want it so thin that you can see through it or that it break when you construct your bierocks.
Cut dough into about 4" squares with a pizza cutter.
For the filling...
We put about a 1/2 cup of filling in ours. We used the large cookie scoop from Pampered Chef.
Put the filling into the middle of dough square.
Pull the opposite corners of the square together and pinch the dough together. Do this again for the other corners.
Pinch the seams shut. It should look like a big X on the back.
Put the seam side down on the greased cookie sheet.
Repeat this process for the remaining squares.
Storage and reheating
For easy storage, we place each bierock in a sandwich size Ziploc bag, then place six bierocks in a gallon size bag and into the freezer they go. When you want to enjoy bierock goodness, take a bierock out of the freezer and wrap in a damp paper towel. Place in the microwave oven for about 1 minute depending on your microwave oven.
When we make bierocks, we usually make a lot so we can freeze them. Our latest batch consisted of 3 1/2 batches of bread which made....drum roll please...9 dozen bierocks!!! There was three of working on the project, so we each got three dozen to take home.
Let me know if you make any and how you like them! For even more yummy goodness, we use this same bread recipe for cinnamon rolls.
