Category Archives: Recipes

{Sorta} Hamburger Stroganoff

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I made this a few weeks ago for supper and have been meaning to post it. M loves hamburger helper, but it’s not my favorite thing in the world. I was trying to come up with something easy to make after work that he would like. This fit the bill! The reason I called this recipe sorta hamburger stroganoff is because just about all the recipes I’ve seen for stroganoff call for mushrooms and egg noodles. Neither M or I are mushroom fans, and he doesn’t care for egg noodles either. If you want a more traditional stroganoff, you can easily add in mushrooms and serve over noodles instead. This recipe was quick to throw together and delicious!

1 package bow tie pasta, cooked according to package directions
1 lb ground beef
2 tbsp butter
1 onion, chopped
1/3 cup water
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp Paprika
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp lemon juice

1. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a large skillet over medium heat, swirling to cover the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle salt over the butter. Add chunks of ground beef and cover with salt. Don’t stir. Let cook until one side is brown and then flip. Finish browning and remove pieces with a slotted spoon to a paper towel lined plate.
2. Pour off remaining grease from pan. Add 1 tbsp butter and the onion to the pan. Sauté onions until golden brown. Move to one side of the pan. Add water to deglaze. Reduce heat. Scrape up the brown bits while stirring.
3. Remove pan from heat and add milk, cream of chicken soup, lemon juice, paprika, parsely, 1/4 tsp salt, and pint Worcestershire sauce. Stir until smooth. Put back on eye and turn heat back up to medium. Heat until sauce just starts to bubble. Add hamburger meat. Stir. Reduce heat and let simmer. Serve over bow tie pasta.

(Oh, I borrowed the method for browning the ground beef from this Simply Recipes post. It really made a huge difference!)

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One Last Winter Recipe – Pioneer Woman’s Perfect Potato Soup

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Most of us are ready for Spring. Even though I’ve had strawberries and sandals on the brain, it has still been cool around here. I have my standard easy crockpot potato soup recipe I make, but I am always up for trying something new.

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I made the Pioneer Woman’s Perfect Potato Soup for us a couple weeks ago. We didn’t have carrots or potatoes, so I left those out. I also skipped the puree step because I was lazy and didn’t want to clean up the food processor. Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly. I highly recommend this recipe. We loved it! To be honest, I think the bacon is what made it incredible. Doesn’t it always? You can find her recipe for perfect potato soup here if you’re looking for one last soup recipe to say goodbye to winter.

Red Velvet Cupcakes Using Ree’s Recipe!

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I love my grandmother’s cooking. Last year I copied recipes from her recipe box, but I’ve been too intimidated to try them. I just knew they would taste better coming from her kitchen. It’s true, but I am glad I tried one anyway. When I was texting my cousin Allison for advice on making red velvet cupcakes, she suggested I just use Ree’s recipe for red velvet cake but make cupcakes instead. Duh! I hadn’t even thought of that. I only changed the cooking time and temp and left out the nuts from the original cake recipe. I also used butter instead of margarine that her original frosting recipe called for because I only had butter on hand. These turned out to be yummy! It was also my first time to use a piping bag. The photo above was the best I can do. I’ll have to make more cupcakes to get more practice!

  • 1 & 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1 cup butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 bottles (1 oz each) red food coloring
  • 2 & 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon soda
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 teaspoon vinegar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Beat 1 minute after each egg. Carefully mix in food coloring. Sift together flour, cocoa, salt, and soda in a separate mixing bowl. In another bowl, mix buttermilk with vinegar and vanilla. Alternately add the buttermilk mixture and the dry ingredients to the batter. Beat on medium speed until well mixed. Pour into muffin tins lined with lightly greased cupcake lines. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Keep an eye on them so you don’t overbake them! Cool. Spread with the frosting.

Frosting

  • 1 box powdered sugar
  • 1 (8 oz) package cream cheese
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
  • 1 stick butter

Cream together butter and cream cheese. Add powdered sugar a little at a time until blended well. Add vanilla flavoring. Frost when cupcakes are cool.

Thanks, Ree. I love you muches!

Frozen Hot Chocolate

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I love the movie Serendipity. M and I usually watch it together this time of year. I’ve never been to Serendipity in NYC, but I’ve heard about their famous frozen hot chocolate for years and wanted to try it. This year I decided to make some to enjoy while watching the movie Serendipity. It was a great plan until we couldn’t find our copy of the DVD. Oh well. The frozen hot chocolate was delicious anyway! I can see making this every year! It’s perfectly icy and seems like such a fancy treat. The recipe was on the side of a Ghirardelli hot chocolate can. We highly recommend this recipe!

- 4 ounce chocolate bar broken into pieces
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 1 & 1/2 cups milk
- 2 teaspoons hot chocolate mix
- whipped cream and shaved chocolate for garnish

1. Melt chocolate in microwave for 1 minute. Remove and stir. Keep heating for 30 seconds at a time, stirring each time, until melted.
2. Add sugar and hot chocolate mix. Stir constantly until combined. Add 1/2 cup of the milk and stir. Let sit until cooled to room temperature.
3. Add chocolate mixture, ice, and the remaining milk to a blender and blend until combined. Ours was about the consistency of a Frappucino.
4. Serve with whipped cream and enjoy!

This made a little more than 3 glasses worth. So good!

Copycat Cheddar Bay (Red Lobster) Biscuits – Pinterest Inspired

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We’ve all seen the copycat recipes all over the Internet for Red Lobster’s cheddar bay biscuits. On the day after Thanksgiving, we were exhausted from traveling and gearing up for another long road trip. I was hungry and wanted to make something quick and easy that we could snack on while crossing things off our long to do list. Cheese biscuits sounded perfect, and the yummy inspiration of cheddar bay biscuits was a good place to start. There are so many different recipes out there for these delightful biscuits. I had always seen them on Pinterest as well. A pin from The Girl Who Ate Everything led me to this inspirational post.

I started throwing things together, and this is what I came up with… my version of this popular cheese biscuit.

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Buttermilk Garlic Cheese Biscuits

Biscuits
- 2 & 1/2 cups of Bisquick
- 1/2 stick of cold butter cut into cubes
- 3/4 cup of buttermilk
- I heaping cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon (I eyeballed this) cayenne pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Butter for Brushing
- 2 tablespoons melted butter
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley (I also eyeballed this)

1. Preheat oven to 400. Grease a cast iron skillet with Crisco shortening. You can also spray a baking sheet with cooking spray and use that. To me, there’s nothing like cast iron for biscuit baking, though!
2. Pour Bisquick into a large bowl. Cut in the cold butter with a pastry cutter until incorporated. Add cheese, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder. Slowly add in buttermilk and combine with a wooden spoon or other large spoon until dough forms.
3. Using a small cookie scoop, drop dough into skillet or onto baking pan. I placed mine an inch apart. If you don’t want your biscuits to be all squished together like mine, you will want to spread them further apart. Bake for 13-15 minutes or until tops are lightly browned.
4. While biscuits are baking, mix all of the butter topping ingredients. Brush with a pastry brush onto hot biscuits.

Yum! We even took these on our road trip. They are good hot and at room temp!



Once again, I’m linking up to Hey, That’s Pin-tastic on I Love You More Than Carrots. Check out all the Pinterest goodness there today!

Pineapple Casserole

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There was a long recipe drought here on Love You Muches. I kind of gave up on cooking and didn’t try anything new or even old standbys for several months. We were spending way too much money eating out, so I’ve been back in the kitchen. That’s why there have been several recipe posts lately.

I’ve had pineapple casserole at other people’s houses and at fellowship meals, but no one in my family has made it that I’m aware of. Whenever I’ve had this amazing blend of sweet, salty goodness, I’ve always loved it. I saw the recipe in a couple of places recently and that seemed like a good reason to make it.

I love this recipe so much that I even broke my “I don’t cook on Wednesdays” rule because I wanted it so badly! This recipe comes from the always wonderful Paula Deen.

Pineapple Casserole

- 1 cup sugar
- 6 tablespoons all purpose flour
- 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 2 large cans pineapple, drained but with 6 tablespoons of the juice reserved
- 1 cup crumbled Ritz crackers
- 1 stick butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9×13 casserole dish with cooking spray.
2. Mix flour, sugar, and cheddar cheese. Stir in pineapple and spread mixture in casserole dish.
3. In a separate bowl, mix melted butter, reserved pineapple juice, and crackers. Spread topping over pineapple mixture.
4. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy!

(I’m linking up to Show Us Your Life on Kelly’s Korner)

Homemade Soft Pretzel Bites

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AP from I Love You More Than Carrots hosts a Hey, That’s Pin-tastic! Link-Up every Monday. I’ve been wanting to participate, but sadly I never seem to have the time to try any of the fun things I see on Pinterest. This week I finally tried one of the recipes I’ve had my eye on, so I decided to link up.

These homemade pretzel bites were a big hit. I love the ones you get at a mall, and these were very similar.

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You can find the original recipe at Modern Day Moms. The only thing I would do different next time is turning them halfway through the baking process to keep the bottoms from getting so brown. Otherwise, these were really yummy. I served them with pizza sauce for dipping. M was impressed, so that makes a recipe a winner in my book!



Be sure to check out all the other posts linked up to Hey, That’s Pin-tastic!

Try this Recipe – Southern Plate Ground Beef Stew

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Growing up, I was never a big fan of stew. My high school marching band sold chicken stew as a big fundraiser every fall. I have many memories of this time. My parents along with the other band parents worked to make the stew in the school cafeteria while the band students helped transport it to a refrigerated truck for storage. I pushed many a cart of quarts of piping hot stew. The band chicken stew is beloved all over town. My parents stocked our freezer full even before I was in band. I always ate my portion, but it wasn’t my favorite meal.

Now that I’m older, I realize how delicious a hearty bowl of stew can be. One of my favorites is Christy Jordan’s recipe for ground beef stew. The spicy V8 juice gives the broth such a unique flavor. I love this recipe for busy week nights because I can throw it in the crockpot in the morning and not have to worry about it. I don’t even have to make anything to go with it. The stew is full of meat and veggies that make it a one dish meal. I highly recommend this recipe! You can find it here.

Classic Strawberry Cream Trifle

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Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum. To me, this is the perfect Spring dessert. I was especially excited about using my trifle dish for the first time. I love pretty and yummy desserts. You’ve got to try it!

  • 1 container strawberries, washed and sliced
  • banana slices (optional)
  • 1 store bought angel food cake, cut into cubes
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 2 tablespoons powdered sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Vanilla extract
  • 8 ounces of sour cream
  • 1 package vanilla pudding mix
  • 1 cup milk

1. Using a whisk or the whisk for a stand mixer, whip the heavy cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla together. If using a mixer, whip until soft peaks form (about 7 minutes).

2. Add in vanilla pudding mix, milk, and sour cream. Mix until fluffy. Chill mixture until ready to use.

3. In trifle dish, layer the cake, cream mixture, and strawberries (and bananas if using).

Serve cold. So easy!