Photostory Friday and Homemade Pizza

A couple of weeks ago, we had a playdate at a pizza place near our house and the girls fell in looooove with making their own pizzas. So last Saturday, the girls convinced me into looking up a recipe for pizza dough and making our own pizzas at home. The dough was super easy to make and I had all the ingredients on hand.

I set the girls up with their dough and they quickly got to work!

"Whatsa matta wit you mama? My pizza looks great!"

(Alyssa went with the non-traditional blob-shaped pizza.)

Giggles McGee (a.k.a. Makena) attempting to go for the triple-the-cheese pizza

Alyssa's finished product

(She decided to add olives as a topping just to make sure I didn't get her pizza mixed up with the other two)

I forgot to get a picture of Riley's pizza masterpiece which turned out to be just cheesy bread since she didn't want sauce, but I do have photo evidence of the mess she made with the flour. Good thing it was bath night.

Pizza Dough Recipe
1 package active dry yeast (2 teaspoons)

1 cup warm water (105° to 115°, no more)

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little for coating

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Set aside and follow the instructions below for the method you choose.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the olive oil and yeast mixture into it. Stir until it begins to form a ball, then turn it out onto a clean, floured surface and knead for about 4 or 5 minutes.

3. Lightly oil the ball and the inside of a large glass bowl. Place the dough in the bowl, cover, and let it rise in a warm place until doubled, about an hour. For better crust, punch down the dough, reshape into a ball and let it rise again. You can refrigerate or freeze the dough at this point.

4. Divide the dough into 4 equal portions, about 6 ounces each. Roll each portion into a ball, then, working on a lightly floured surface, stretch the dough and work it with your fingers or a rolling pin to form an 8-inch circle. The outer edge of the circle should be a little thicker than the body, forming a rim. Add toppings.

5. Transfer to a pizza pan or pizza stone. Bake in a 500° pre-heated oven until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted, 10 to 13 minutes, or perhaps a little longer if your oven does not reach 500°. (I cooked our pizzas at 450 degrees for 13-15 minutes and it came out perfect).

Now go make some pizza! You can thank me later :)

Hosted by Cecily and Mamarazzi

Photostory Friday and Little cooks in the kitchen

The girls LOVE to make a huge mess in the kitchen cook with me any chance they get! I try to find opportunities for them to help me as much as I can, even if it is just pouring a cup of water into a bowl for me.

So, I thought I would share the recipe for the muffins we will be making this weekend. This is another one of my childhood favorites, Bran Muffins. These aren't your ordinary, dry, extra healthy bran muffins. Think moist and sweet and fattening....Yummy!

Here's what you need.....now this is for a big batch of muffins. My mom must have been feeding an army. You can easily cut this recipe in half.

One 15 ounce box of Raisen Bran (7 cups)

5 cups of flour-wheat or white

3 cups of sugar

5 tsp. baking soda

4 eggs

2 tsp. salt

1 cup canola oil

a quart of buttermilk

2 cups of nuts (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together into a bowl and scoop into muffin pans. Bake for 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Holiday baking

One of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season is bake cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. Before the girls were born, my sister-in-law and I would set aside an entire Saturday and bake all day long. Now that the girls are here, I will bake a batch of cookies at night after they go to bed.

This is one of my favorite memories of my mom. She would bake cookies and package them up on pretty Christmas trays and wrap them in cellophane and give them away to her co-workers or friends. The cookie stash was kept in the freezer so they would last and we always knew where to look if we wanted a treat.

My mom passed away 15 years ago when I was just seventeen years old. She battled Leukemia for a year before having a stroke and leaving us much too early. Christmas was one of her favorite times of the year.

She would have been so proud of her granddaughters.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my mom...her senior picture before she graduated high school.

I've started my Christmas baking this week. Magic cookie bars, sugar cookies and butter spritz cookies have been the first on the list. Makena fussed about going to bed tonight, so she was able to stay up a little later and watch the cookies in the oven.

Magic cookie bars have to be one of my favorite treats. They are SO easy to make and SO tasty. I usually make 2 batches of these every year!

1 stick of butter, melted
1 ½ cups of graham cracker crumbs
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1 cup of chocolate chips
1 cup of flaked coconut
1 cup of chopped nuts

In a 13x9 dish, sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs over the melted butter and mix them together. Press the crumbs into the bottom of the dish for the crust.
Pour can of sweetened condensed milk evenly over crust.
Top with chocolate chips, coconut and nuts.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
Let cool and then cut into bars.

***You can add more chocolate chips if you’d like. I have added peanut butter chips or butterscotch chips to the recipe for even more sugary goodness***

What are your favorite Christmas cookies? I'm always interested to hear what other people bake and love to exchange recipes!

Dinner time

Does anyone find that the hour leading up to dinner is a nightmare? Trying to cook dinner with three 2 year-olds is proving to be a major challenge these days, especially since Steve usually works late and is not home by dinner time. Riley and Makena are usually hanging off of my leg crying/yelling/screaming "Hold you mama" and lately Alyssa has been content to play and keep herself occupied. These roles can change from day-to-day though.

I find myself allowing the girls to do things that I normally wouldn't let them do, just because it keeps them happy and quiet so that I can throw some sort of half-way decent meal together.

I might let them color all over the tile floor and appliances with washable crayons. Or open one of the drawers and let them dump the contents all over the kitchen, while banging spoons against the floor that leave my ears ringing. Or allowing them to toss their diapers all over the front room and then following that up with the container of baby wipes so that they can pull each and every wipe out and litter the floor with those is always fun.

Anything to give me 15 minutes to throw dinner together.

Dinner that will end up thrown on the floor by my darling daughters before they are finished eating.

And then Steve will ask me why I give them food that makes such a mess and is a pain to clean up off of the floor. He tells me that if it was up to him he would feed them dry cereal for every meal.

He might be on to something.

The other dinner time activity that drives me crazy is when the girls take a big mouthful of water or milk and spit it back out onto their plate of food. After they have a sufficient amount pooled in their plate, they'll pick it up and drink it off of their plate while spilling half of it down the front of them.

And let's not forget that they learn from each other. Whatever one does, two and three are right behind her!

Now that I've caught on to their game, their cups are taken away before they make the huge mess.

My plan is to try and start making crockpot meals more often so that I don't have to fight the dinner battle every night. If anyone has some good recipes out there, please send them my way.