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Red, White & Blue Rice Krispies Treats!

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4th july rice krispie treats

My family is addicted to Rice Krispie treats. For the 4th of July I think it darling to add a few M&M’s and a little white chocolate to make them more patriotic!

You will need:

You are going to make just a regular pan of treats, just follow the directions on the box. Once they are set up, just cut them into rectangular sections. Cut them into sections about 2″x 4″

Melt some almond bark (I get mine at Walmart for $3.88) in a narrow cup or bowl. Take a sucker stick, from the craft section at Walmart or Hobby Lobby, and stick it in the middle of the treat. Then dip the top of the treat into the chocolate and decorate with red, white and blue M&M’s.

My little one volunteered to try them out a little early for us! 🙂

She never turned down a chance to be the first one to try something sweet!

It passed! She loved them! Now, if she can just keep the puppy away, she likes them also…

Oh Man!! Looks like the puppy might have stolen an M&M!

* These are great to make ahead of time and keep wrapped up for a few days. They keep really well!.

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Tiffany from MyLitter

 

Crab Salad Roll Recipe

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Crab Roll Slider

 

This is basically a Crab Salad that you are going to put on a roll. Call it a crab roll, crab slider, call it whatever you want, but make sure that you make some!! Don’t be scared either, this is super easy and they are so amazing!

I got my crab legs by accident at Kroger in the clearance section. They had some crab legs marked down, my husband loves crab so I picked them up really cheap. When I got home I searched for some recipes and decided on crab salad, which then ended up between 2 pieces of bread! Now, I look every time I am in the store for crab marked down!

Crab Rolls & Sliders Ingredients

 

The ingredients are very basic and most likely you will have everything on hand.

Fill a large pan with 1 to 2 inches of water. Bring to boil. Add crab legs. Boil for approximately 5 minutes. Remove crab legs from water. Set aside and let cool.

Use hands to break lobster apart at joints. If you can pull crabmeat from shell without breaking further, go ahead. Otherwise, take knife and make one continuous cut down each shell. Pry shell open with fingers and remove crabmeat.

Shredded Crab Meat

Cut crabmeat into various sizes. Place crabmeat in medium mixing bowl. Drizzle 1 tbsp. melted butter over crabmeat. Stir. Add diced green onion, diced tomatoes, mayonnaise, freshly squeezed lemon juice, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Stir. Place in refrigerator.

Dice green onion and tomato into small pieces. Slice lemon in half. Set aside.

crab roll process

Lay 8 slices multi-grain bread on aluminum foil sheet. Take a round drinking glass and press down over each slice. This will create slider size top and bottom buns. Drizzle 1 tbsp. melted butter on top of slices. Place in oven for 3 to 4 minutes or until just crispy (rotating sides halfway through). Remove bread from oven.

Scoop crabmeat mixture onto bottom slices of bread. Add top buns. Plate your crab sliders onto serving dishes and enjoy this seaside staple!

Crab Rolls & Sliders In-Process #10

Crab Salad Roll

Prep: 15 minutes
Cook: 12 minutes
Total: 27 minutes
Servings: 4

Ingredients
4 King Crab Legs
8 Slices Glutino Multi-Grain (gluten-free)
ÂĽ Cup Canola Mayonnaise
ÂĽ Cup Diced Organic Green Onion
ÂĽ Cup Diced Organic Tomatoes
1 tbsp. Fresh Squeeze Organic Lemon Juice
2 tbsp. Melted Organic Butter
½ tsp. Simply Organic Onion Powder
½ tsp. Simply Organic Garlic Powder
Salt & Pepper

Instructions
Fill a large pan with 1 to 2 inches of water. Bring to boil. Add crab legs. Boil for approximately 5 minutes. Remove crab legs from water. Set aside and let cool.
Dice green onion and tomato into small pieces. Slice lemon in half. Set aside.
Add butter to small microwavable bowl. Microwave for 1 to 2 minutes or until butter is melted. Set aside.
Preheat oven at 250 degrees F.
Use hands to break lobster apart at joints. If you can pull crabmeat from shell without breaking further, go ahead. Otherwise, take knife and make one continuous cut down each shell. Pry shell open with fingers and remove crabmeat.
Cut crabmeat into various sizes. Place crabmeat in medium mixing bowl. Drizzle 1 tbsp. melted butter over crabmeat. Stir. Add diced green onion, diced tomatoes, mayonnaise, freshly squeezed lemon juice, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Stir. Place in refrigerator.
Lay 8 slices multi-grain bread on aluminum foil sheet. Take a round drinking glass and press down over each slice. This will create slider size top and bottom buns. Drizzle 1 tbsp. melted butter on top of slices. Place in oven for 3 to 4 minutes or until just crispy (rotating sides halfway through). Remove bread from oven.
Scoop crabmeat mixture onto bottom slices of bread. Add top buns. Plate your crab sliders onto serving dishes and enjoy this seaside staple! Best served with potato chips and an ice-cold beer or orange soda. Cool Tip: You can even use the crab claws as picks through each slider to hold them together.

 

How to make Frosting Carrots + Best Carrot Cake Recipe!

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Carrot cupcakes are just fun, and good to eat! Every year for Easter I always make a 3 layered carrot cake. Carrot cake is one of the things that I forget that I can make all year long and don’t have to wait for Easter. I love it loaded with raisins, pineapple and coconut, but the kids freak over the raisins so I normally leave them out. BUT with cupcakes, I can add in anything I want to a few of them!

The carrots on the top are so cute and so fast to make I wanted to tell you how really quick.

First, either make your own cream cheese frosting or use canned. If you use canned make sure to add some powdered sugar to thicken it a little.

Frost the cupcakes normally. Now divide the rest of the frosting into 2 bowls and color one orange and one green.

I like the Wilton Icing Colors you can get at Walmart. But you can use any kind. Next  you will need both the #9 round frosting tip and the #116 leaf tip. These can be purchased for really chap, around $1 a tip, and you will need a frosting bag.

Load your frosting bag with the orange frosting using the round tip. At the top of the cupcake, make a zig zag motion back and forth getting smaller and smaller as you go making the carrot shape. At the end pull up with the frosting so you get the point of the carrot. Load another bag with the leaf tip and with the green frosting. This time position the tip at the fat part or top of the carrot, use the most pressure and make the widest part of the leaf, tapering off just like the carrot. The leaf tip is AWESOME and basically does the work for you.

This time I made both mini and regular size cupcakes. The small ones I just added a milk chocolate pastel egg, and the regular size ones I added the carrots. I think they turned out really cute!

The BEST carrot cake recipe is the one from Southern Living.

Best Carrot Cake

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour $
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 cups grated carrot $
  • 1 (8-ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained $
  • 1 (3 1/2-ounce) can flaked coconut
  • 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
  • Buttermilk Glaze
  • Cream Cheese Frosting

Preparation

  1. Line 3 (9-inch) round cakepans with wax paper; lightly grease and flour wax paper. Set pans aside.
  2. Stir together first 4 ingredients.
  3. Beat eggs and next 4 ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Add flour mixture, beating at low speed until blended. Fold in carrot and next 3 ingredients. Pour batter into prepared cakepans.
  4. Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Drizzle Buttermilk Glaze evenly over layers; cool in pans on wire racks 15 minutes. Remove from pans, and cool completely on wire racks. Spread Cream Cheese Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake.


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Easter Braided Bread with Colored Easter Eggs Recipe

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Easter Bread with eggs baked

If you have not seen a Easter Bread Braided Wreath at Easter with baked in eggs, you will be amazed the first time you see one. They are SOOOOO beautiful! My Sister in Law made this one for us and it as almost too pretty to eat! There are a lot of different recipes you can use, our favorite is at All Recipes.

Original recipe makes 1 loaf
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 5 whole eggs, dyed if desired
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine 1 cup flour, sugar, salt and yeast; stir well. Combine milk and butter in a small saucepan; heat until milk is warm and butter is softened but not melted.
  2. Gradually add the milk and butter to the flour mixture; stirring constantly. Add two eggs and 1/2 cup flour; beat well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.
  3. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
  4. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into two equal size rounds; cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Roll each round into a long roll about 36 inches long and 1 1/2 inches thick. Using the two long pieces of dough, form a loosely braided ring, leaving spaces for the five colored eggs. Seal the ends of the ring together and use your fingers to slide the eggs between the braids of dough.
  5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place loaf on a buttered baking sheet and cover loosely with a damp towel. Place loaf in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 45 minutes. Brush risen loaf with melted butter.
  6. Bake in preheated oven for 50 to 55 minutes, or until golden.

3 Ingredient Sloppy Joes with McCormick Skillet Sauces

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McCormick Skillet Sauces

 

I made another quick and easy meal last night, 3 Ingredient Sloppy Joes was a hit with my littles! I am in love with the new McCormick Skillet Sauces. Mostly because they taste like homemade and not something that you got because you were trying to just get food on the table. It actually tastes like homemade and that you spent some time making dinner instead of the 5 minutes that this dish took!

3 ingredient sloppy joes

 

My Kroger had the little slider rolls on sale, and my kids love the small size of these, as they can hold them and not loose all the filling out. They also keep the kids from wasting food because they are just the right size. Adults can have 2 if they need something bigger 🙂

easy sloppy joes 2

 

All you do is brown some hamburger and then add the Sloppy Joe skillet sauce to the cooked ground beef. It isn’t just a thin sauce, it is a chunky and thick awesome smelling addition!

easy sloppy joes

 

Then you just spoon the mix onto your buns and eat! My husband added some pickles and mustard to his, but the kids were happy just as it was made.

 

You can find the McCormick Skillet Mixes in Walmart, or any of your grocery stores for about $1.50. This entire meal cost me under $10 for 9 people with my coupons!

easy sloppy joes 2

This was a sponsored post from McCormick, all opinions are my own! 

 

10 Favorite Super Bowl Recipes

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10 Favorite Super Bowl Recipes

Here are 10 Favorite Super Bowl Recipes from the Ivanovsky’s! These are all family favorites, that we make year in and year out!

I would love to know what food you have for Super Bowl parties or any gatherings with a lot of people!

How To Host a Gingerbread House Party!

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How To Host a Gingerbread House Party

I wanted to write up a How To Host a GingerBread House Party post and explain how we hosted our party this year. There are so many ways to do this, there is no right or wrong way to have fun and make gingerbread houses.

It doesn’t make sense to make one gingerbread house, you have to buy so many different kinds of candy, it is better to make many at one time! So why not have your favorite kids or families over to have some fun with you!

This year we hosted the party at our house on a Sunday afternoon. It was open house style, which means come anytime between the set time and stay as long or as short of a time as you like. We had ours from 1:00pm to 5:00pm.

Ahead of time I made 75 bags of royal icing. This was about 10 batches and placed about 1 cup in ziplock bags. Then I tied the corner of each bag so that they were more cone shaped to help frost better. Royal icing is used as the glue to hold the candy on and make the house stick together.

I made the frosting a little thicker than I would have if I was using it right away. Because they are sitting overnight the meringue sometimes separates a little and so thicker makes better glue! I placed them all in a large bucket with a pair of scissors to cut a very small corner off when they are ready to decorate.

You can find the royal icing recipe HERE.

The day before I made about 80 small gingerbread houses. I used graham crackers (not actual gingerbread) as I did not have time to bake that much! Each house used 6 graham crackers, each box of crackers made about 4 houses. Yes, I had to buy about 20 boxes of graham crackers!

I also cheated a bit and used hot glue to assemble them. You typically don’t eat gingerbread houses anyway, and this was much faster then using royal icing. You could use hot glue then go over them a bit with royal icing to cover the edges. Kids put so much on the houses you never see the edges anyway! In Houston it is so humid, even in the winter time, I had a few house collapse because they got soft. Make sure to have the air or heat on to keep the humidity down.

For the candy, we turned our dining room table into a candy buffet! I had candy left over from Halloween, bought cheap candy at Dollar Tree and bought big bags at Sams Club. I found that buying cheaper items like pretzels and marshmallows helped fill up the table and houses cheaper than candy. Plus, they are great items for making the roof and doors! Think outside the box and use items like cereal as well.

We used many containers that we already had and picked up some more from Dollar Tree and the $.99 Store. I used small paper bowls from our local restaurant supply store for people to fill with candy and take to the table.

Making gingerbread houses is a family tradition for us. It was so much fun to have other families over to share this tradition and make memories. Donating the gingerbread houses was a new treat for us, and something we will continue to do for years to come.

Royal Icing Recipe and Instructions for Decorating Sugar Cookies

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Decorating cookies and treats with Royal Icing is a great way to make beautiful, detailed sweets!  It’s not as hard as it may seem if you follow our recipe and simple instructions.

Royal Icing Recipe and InstructionsIngredients:

  • 3 Tbs Meringue Powder
  • 4 cups sifted powdered sugar
  • 5 Tbs warm water +/- (plus additional water for thinning)

 

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients in bowl of stand mixer, beat on low speed for 7-10   minutes or until icing begins to form stiff peaks.

Divide your icing into appropriate portions to color for your project.

Add a small amount of gel food coloring to create each color, stirring until coloring is completely blended.

To create icing for flooding, place a small amount of colored icing into a bowl and begin adding water ½ tsp to a time until you reach the proper consistency.  You want the icing to be thin enough to spread easily but not too watery.  A good test is to drizzle a small amount off the end of your spoon and watch how long it takes for the drizzled icing to blend back into the bowl of icing.  It should blend back in within approximately 10 seconds.

To decorate a simple cookie, you’ll pipe a border around the cookie and fill the inside with the thinned “flooding” icing.

Royal Icing Recipe and Instructions

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Royal Icing Recipe and Instructions for Decorating Sugar Cookies
Author: 
Recipe type: Dessert
 
Perfect royal icing for decorating sugar cookies.
Ingredients
  • 3 Tbs Meringue Powder
  • 4 cups sifted powdered sugar
  • 5 Tbs warm water +/- (plus additional water for thinning)
Instructions
  1. Combine all ingredients in bowl of stand mixer, beat on low speed for 7-10 minutes or until icing begins to form stiff peaks.
  2. Divide your icing into appropriate portions to color for your project.
  3. Add a small amount of gel food coloring to create each color, stirring until coloring is completely blended.
  4. To create icing for flooding, place a small amount of colored icing into a bowl and begin adding water ½ tsp to a time until you reach the proper consistency. You want the icing to be thin enough to spread easily but not too watery. A good test is to drizzle a small amount off the end of your spoon and watch how long it takes for the drizzled icing to blend back into the bowl of icing. It should blend back in within approximately 10 seconds.

 

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