Brown Sugar Walnut Mini Muffins

These were soooo good! If you love brown sugar and walnuts, you’ll absolutely LOVE this muffin. I also found this recipe on The Crepes of Wrath blog (that blog is chock-full of yummy recipes! I want to make the Snickerdoodle cake sometime )

Brown Sugar Walnut Mini Muffins

1/2 cup melted butter
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 – 3/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 375° F. Line your mini muffin tin with mini muffin cups.
2. Beat together the butter, egg, milk, and vanilla.
3. Combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Add slowly to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
4. Mix in the nuts by hand (don’t over mix).
5. Fill the muffin cups 2/3 full and bake for 17-20 minutes, or until the tops are set. Allow to cool in the muffin tins before removing. Makes approximately 48 mini muffins

Apple-Cinnamon Chocolate Chunk Mini Muffins

Our Mary and Martha Women’s Ministry group had a coffee talk meeting this morning, and it was a great opportunity to bake something new. I decided to make 3 different mini muffins, and they were so good that I wanted to share the recipes.

The first one is an Apple-Cinnamon Chocolate Chunk muffin. I found the recipe on The Crepes of Wrath blog:

Apple Cinnamon Muffins with Chocolate Chunks
Adapted from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook

3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
dash of cloves
1 medium apple, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips/chunks

1. Preheat your oven to 400° F. Line the mini muffin tins with mini muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, oil, egg, and sugar until well combined.
3. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves in a medium bowl. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until just moistened (don’t overmix).
4. Fold in the chopped apple and chocolate chunks.
5. Divide the batter amongst your muffin tins and bake for 17-20 minutes, or until the muffins start turning golden brown. Allow to cool in the muffin tins before removing.  Makes approximately 48 mini muffins.

I found these beautiful baskets on clearance at Michaels, along with the decorations, and I also printed up the cards identifying what kind of muffin was in each basket. They looked beautiful! Everyone admired the baskets and loved the muffins

The other two recipes will be posted shortly.

Let Sleeping Cats Lie

Awww, aren’t sleeping cats cute? They always find the most interesting places and positions, and I’m always tempted to hug them

Now I’m tired

You can see other adorable critters at this week’s Camera Critters,

and also more cats at this week’s Carnival of the Cats which will be up on Sunday afternoon.

Also, if you’d like to see some interesting websites related to cats, please visit my most recent Thursday Thirteen edition >^..^<

Oatmeal Carmelitas

Oatmeal Carmelitas

This is a wonderful recipe that always gets requested whenever I bring it to an event.

Note: Use stick margarine or real butter when preparing the crust. Do not substitute reduced-fat spreads, since their high water content often yields less-satisfactory results. The prep time does not include the cool or chill time after bars are baked.

INGREDIENTS:
Crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups quick-cooking oatmeal, uncooked
1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups margarine or butter, softened

Filling:
1 12.5-ounce jar caramel ice cream topping (1 cup)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 6-ounce package semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup)
1/2 cup chopped nuts

INSTRUCTIONS:

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup, level off. In large bowl, combine the flour, oatmeal, brown sugar, baking soda, salt and margarine or butter. Mix at low speed until crumbly. Reserve half of crumb mixture, about 3 cups, for topping. Press remaining crumb mixture in bottom of greased pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

To make the filling: In small bowl, combine caramel topping and 3 tablespoons flour. Remove partially baked crust from oven, sprinkle with chocolate chips and nuts. Drizzle evenly with caramel mixture, sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture. Return to oven, bake an additional 18 to 22 minutes or until golden brown. Cool at least 1 hour at room temperature, then refrigerate 1 to 2 hours or until filling is set. Cut into bars.

Thursday Thirteen – 5th Edition – Cat Related Websites

This week’s TT features cat-related websites. If you like cats, I think you’ll enjoy this list >^..^<

1. Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers – If you also enjoy Celtic music, then this site melds the best of both worlds. Mark Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has rewritten many well-known Celtic favorites with lyrics about cats. You’ll hear great songs like What Shall We Do with a Catnipped Kitty, Lord of the Pounce, Black is the Color (of My Cat’s Fur). You can hear some of these tunes at his website, linked above. Marc’s CDs are available at CDBaby.com. There are two CDs with cat songs, the rest are Celtic and are quite enjoyable. Marc also has a podcast, titled “Cat Lovers Podcast”, available free through iTunes.

2. I Love Cats – This site is a great resource for the cat lover, from breed information to clip art to games, names, funny videos and news.

3. Cats – Orisinal.com has some of the most imaginative games you’ll find on the internet. Cats is one of their best. In this game you have a few rows of cats. All the cats have to follow the action of the leader; if the leader sits, you have to make all the other cats sit. If the leader walks, make the other cats walk. As with all their games, this has wonderful graphics and music, and can be very addicting!

4. Stuff on My Cat – Have you ever been tempted to put stuff on your cat while he’s laying down, sleeping, or just being still? So have many other cat owners as you’ll see on this site. Some of these cats are incredibly patient, or they’re busy plotting their revenge Cats in Sinks – Speaking of sinks, how often do you find your cat in a sink? It seems some people find them in their sinks quite often!

5. Cats.com – The leading site with information about cats. You can learn about cat care, research health information, learn about cat behavior, and more. They also have a great question and answer section.

6. Math Cats – A great way to teach math, with very cute graphics

7. Rate My Kitten – This is another addicting site, where you can rate the photos of cats uploaded by people around the world.

8. The Infinite Cat Project – This is a fascinating premise. There are over 1,500 photos on this site, and each photo is of a cat viewing the photo of the cat watching the cat before it, and on and on until you get back to the cat that began this site, Frankie. Don’t understand? Visit the site, you’ll get it

9. CatsPlay.com – The ultimate shopping website for cat stuff.

10. Cat Coloring Pages – The name says it all…great coloring book pages with images of cats.

11. Mutts & Rose is Rose – Ok, I had to put my two favorite cats in comics on this list, and since they’re both in comics, I think they count as one. In Mutts, Mooch is a cute little black cat who loves pink socks,

Mooch

and Peekaboo is the darling of Rose is Rose

Peekaboo

12. I Can Has Cheezburger – This is probably the best site for cat photos and captions on the internet! You’ll spend your time laughing at these great photos and (often) hysterically funny captions.

13. And just in time for Halloween, Kitty Litter Cake! – This is a great recipe guaranteed to gross out your friends and family, but if they can get past the initial reaction, this tastes great I made it for work one year, and the reactions of my coworkers were very funny Here’s a photo of the one I made (and yes, everything was brand-new, never used, and washed ):

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Thursday Thirteen >^..^< Please feel free to leave links to other great cat sites in the comments, and enjoy other TT sites here

My Husband is Strange

Yep, DSH is a strange one!  Sometimes I call him my absent-minded professor

Yesterday afternoon after I got home from the Donna Partow conference I went into the backyard and noticed this:

Why on earth was there an extension cord crossing the yard and going into the fig tree???

I began following the cord to see where it was going

Something was plugged into it, but what?

Do you notice anything unusual in this photo?  The source of this curiosity is in the photo…isn’t he cute? 

Yep, it’s a desklamp.  In a fig tree!!!

He put it out there so he could have more light after it got dark and he could stay out back longer with the cats.  If you look very closely, you can see Riley on the swing right above the light-colored sheet.  He’s the dark spot.

Here’s a closeup of the lamp at night:

And the blue lights you can see in that photo are the solar LED lights:

Yep, DSH is strange, but I love him that way

Carnival of Thrift Store Addicts – Volume 4

Welcome to the 4th edition of the Carnival of Thrift Store Addicts! Once again I’m the only participant, but I’m going to plug away at this for a minimum of 6 months to see if we can get this carnival rolling along

Today I’m sharing some of the tableware I’ve found at different thrift stores over the last year or so.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little carnival. Please be sure to tell your thrift store addicted friends, and join in the fun!

See you next time

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Thrift Store Addicts using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags:

carnival of thrift store addicts, blog carnival.

I Love Interesting Tableware

Here are some interesting and fun items I’ve found at thrift stores over the last year or so.

This is a gorgeous vase/bowl with bubbles inside the glass. I bought this for $9.99 at Goodwill one day when I needed a bowl for a trifle I was making. The trifle was originally a bundt cake based on a cupcake recipe by Giada De Laurentis but the cake crumbled because I took it out of the bundt pan too soon. To rescue it, I decided to buy some fresh strawberries and some vanilla pudding and use the frosting layered with the cake to make a trifle. it was a hit I’ve included a photo of the trifle at the end of this post.

Here’s the vase I used:

Now here’s a collection of some smaller items I’ve purchased at various thrift stores:

First up we have a small mustard jar from France. I was attracted to the delicacy of the flowers, and also discovered it was brand new. I don’t recall the price I paid, but I’m sure it wasn’t much.

Then there’s a very pretty small dish I use to hold teabags so I can use them again:

Here’s a beautiful small pottery bowl with gorgeous colors. I paid .99 for this because I couldn’t resist the colors

Finally here’s a beautiful small Wedgewood bowl that I bought at Thrifttown yesterday for $1.49

And as I promised, here’s the trifle:

Oh, I almost forgot!  The light sage green cloth you see over the small table in all the photos is a beautiful Indian scarf I purchased at Family Tree Thrift Shoppe a couple of years ago for $6.00

Four Foods On Friday

I found a neat new blog meme called “Four Foods on Friday” and it looks like a fun way to share recipes. This week’s topic is as follows:

• 1. I passed Costco and saw gas at $2.84 and have had Costco on the brain since. Share a cupcake, muffin or cookie recipe.

This is a wonderful seasonal muffin recipe, perfect for autumn:

Pleasant Hill Squash Muffins

1 stick butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup light molasses
1 egg
1 1/4 cups cooked mashed squash
(butternut, acorn or pumpkin squash)
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup chopped pecans

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease twelve 2 1/2″ muffin pan cups.

In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the sugar, molasses, egg and squash until smooth.

Sift the flour, baking soda and salt over the butter mixture. Stir just until combined. Stir in the pecans. Divide the batter among the prepared muffin pan cups.

Bake the muffins about 20 minutes, or until they are lightly browned and the centers spring back when lightly pressed with a fingertip. Cool the muffins in the pan on a wire rack 5 minutes. Remove the muffins from the pan and serve warm.

• 2. Cupcakes, muffins and cookies require something to drink. What do you drink with them?

I usually drink iced tea, with these muffins I’d consider a cup of hot tea or some cold apple juice

• 3. Which do you prefer, mini muffins and cupcakes or full sized ones?

The mini muffins are fun, but I really like the full sized muffins with a big muffin top.

• 4. What type of muffin or cupcake pan do you use? Silicone, disposable, etc

I use the old-fashioned metal cupcake pan, but would like to try a silicone tray as well as a tray that makes big muffins, not the standard sized cupcake ones.

You can read other entries for this meme here at Fun, Crafts and Recipes.

Planet Hollywood’s Captain Crunch Chicken

I had this chicken once a long time ago, and I recall just how good it tasted. I was very surprised to discover one of the main ingredients! I wouldn’t have thought it would taste so good, but it does.

Planet Hollywood’s Captain Crunch Chicken

2 cups Captain Crunch cereal
1-1/2 cups corn flakes
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 lb chicken breast – cut in 1 oz tenders
Vegetable oil for frying

Coarsely grind or crush the two cereals and set aside. Beat the egg with milk and also set aside.

Stir together the flour, onion, garlic powders and black pepper and set this aside as well.

Dip the chicken pieces into the seasoned flour and move around to coat well, then shake off the excess flour

Dip into the egg wash, coating well, then dip into the cereal mixture, coating well.

Heat oil in a large heavy skillet to 325 and drop coated chicken tenders carefully into the hot oil. Cook until golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes depending on size.

Drain and serve.

Please visit the current edition of the Carnival of the Recipes for more chicken recipes.