Our 4th of July BBQ

I hope everyone had a fun-filled 4th of July Celebration! Wasn't it kin-of awkward that is was right in the middle of a working week? I prefer Holidays almost at weeks end, hello more time off, lol. But we made the most of it and crammed as much in as possible: Shopping, Parade Watching, Movies our yummy BBQ and of course Fireworks. As you know my man likes to grill, and we shared one of our favorite grilling adventures just the other day {BBQ Carnitas Nachos} I found a gingham paper table cloth while grocery shopping for $ 1.99 knowing it mode make the perfect table runner for a future outdoor dinner, I'm glad I bought it! It look so cute hanging out with our all white dinner ware. We kept our BBQ Menu Simple, but tasty. We served up Corn on the Cob with butter & Cotija Cheese, Bake Beans, Red Skin Potato Salad, BBQ ribs and Burgers. We also had fresh fruit, Watermelon and Plums. The Plums are actually from our tree in our backyard! This is the first year they where ripe, and we have a ton. We plan on giving a bunch away to friends and family and I'll be using some in baking recipes :) 

I also picked up a few citronella candles to place on our table, to help keep the bugs away.  

For the past couple of months my favorite cook book is Martha Stewart's Cupcakes, filled with amazing recipes. So far I've made Banana Split Cupcakes, Vanilla Confetti Cupcakes and Strawberry cupcakes. I planned to make cupcakes for 4th of July, but wasn't sure which ones I wanted to bake. I came across a One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcake recipe that looked tasty and easy, a winning combination.

Over the past few weeks, I've starting falling in love with cute cupcake wrappers, when I saw these gingham at Wal-Mart for $1.75 for 75, I couldn't resist. Plus, they matched the gingham table cloth I bought and used as a runner for our table. My new favorite background for taking food pictures is quickly becoming our new counters. 

One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Butter Cream Frosting

Ingredients 

1 1/2 All Purpose Flour

3/4 Cup unsweetened Cocoa Powder

1 1/2 Cups of Sugar

1 1/2 Teaspoons of Baking Soda

3/4 Teaspoon of Baking Powder

3/4 Teaspoon of Salt

2 Large Eggs (room temperature)

3/4 Cup of Buttermilk (I had no Buttermilk on Hand, so I used this substitute)

3 Tablespoon of Vegetable Oil

1 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

3/4 Cup of Water

Bake It

Preheat oven to 350 Degrees, line your cupcake pans with liners. I double lined mine, I wanted to be sure the gingham pattern on the liners would be seen since I was baking chocolate. Shift together flour, cocoa powder, salt, sugar, baking soda, baking powder together in a large bowl. Next add in the eggs one at a time, warm water and buttermilk, oil and vanilla until smooth. I mixed after adding each ingredient one at a time. Pour batter into each liner, filling 2/3 full. Next bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes, insert toothpick to check when they are done. Cool on wire rack. 

Frosting

I found an amazing butter cream frosting recipe from Savory Sweet life. It was simple, just using 6 simple ingredients. Click here for the recipe. I attempted to frost the cupcakes old school Magnolia style {not as cute, but I'll get there, I think!} I topped each cupcake with a M&M and called it a day :)

Hasani said they were amazing, and he couldn't stop eating them an asked me not to make them again since he couldn't resist. To bad his birthday is this month, because I'm making these again, lol. 

How was your 4th of July? Did you BBQ and making any yummy treats for your family and friends?

In Season: Strawberries

I love when Strawberries are in Season in California, because you can find them everywhere and I do mean everywhere! From farmers markets, the local grocery store and even on the street corner. This year I wanted to take advantage of them being in season and so affordable, I decided to try out a few new recipes and put my own simple twist on them. 


Strawberry Lemon Bread

I really like lemon bread, and thought combining fresh lemons (juice) with fresh strawberries would be oh so tasty! One problem, I've never made lemon bread before so I looked on Allrecipes.com for a simple recipe that, I could tweak just a little to make my own strawberry lemon bread recipe, and I'm happy to say my experiment worked! Here's the original recipe I used and my adapted recipe is below. 

Ingredients 

• 1/2 cup unslated butter (room temp)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 large lemons juiced
• 1 cup of fresh strawberrys (diced or sliced) 
• 1 tablespoon of lemon extract 
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract 
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk

Bake It


In a electric mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs on at a time, them lemon juice, lemon extract and vanilla extract. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; stir into creamed mixture alternately with milk. Gently toss strawberries in flour and mix in batter (by hand) By now your batter should smell um-mazing. Pour into a greased & floured 8-in. x 4-in. x 2-in. loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or until bread tests done. My mom taught me if the bread bounces back after you press on it, its done :) Let your bread cool for 5-10 mins in the pan before moving to a wire rack. 

Strawberry Cupcakes 

I've sort of been on a cupcake kick since planning Avery's first birthday party, I made a lot of cupcakes for his party and had so much fun! I wanted to make some yummy cupcakes for my sisters birthday, to take to her and decided to try out Martha Stewart's Strawberry Cupcake Recipe. I cut her recipe in half, and made 14 delicious cupcakes. The recipe below makes 34 cupcakes.


My pictures of the strawberry bread I took in natural light, I'm going to do my best to always take food pics in natural light, its amazing what a huge difference it makes! :) Hopefully your ba able to see how tasty these cupcakes were, my sis loved them! :)

Ingredients  

2 3/4 all purpose flour
1/2 cup of cake flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
1 cup of unsalted butter (two sticks) room temp
2 1/4 cup of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 large eggs, plus one egg white 
1 cup of milk
2 cups of finely chopped strawberries (plus additional of garnish)


Bake It
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together both flours, I shifted 2x. Cream butter and sugar and vanilla together using an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. And eggs, egg white one at a time. On low speed add in half of the flour mixture, then half of milk alternating untill well combined. Fold in chopped strawberries by hand (with a spoon :)) Divide batter until baking cups until 3/4 full. Bake for 25-30 minutes until cake tester comes out clean. Place cupcake tins on wire rack for 15 mins, then carefully remove cupcakes from tin and place on wire rack, let them cool completely before frosting. 


Frosting 
The cupcakes turned out amazing! Seriously this is a good recipe to try out! Instead of making her Strawberry Merange Frosting, which sounded good but to complicated, I made a different strawberry frosting. I made a small batch of cream cheese frosting, again using Martha's recipe and added fresh chopped strawberries and blended my frosting really well then I cut a few larger pumper strawberries in half and squeezed the juice into the frosting. I continued to blend my frosting until it turned the palest shade of pink. Click here for a basic cream cheese frosting recipe.

What's your favorite thing to bake of make when strawberries are in season? If you have a strawberry recipe you'd like me to try out, email me or send me the link :) 


Oh I'm now on Instagram, @Mrsclh so far I'm loving it it:) I only have a few pics but should be fun to share pics of our everyday life :)

BBQ Carnitas Nachos

Right now in Northern California and pretty much everywhere in American its grilling season. This is the time of the year Hasani loves to grill. He grills, ribs (pork & beef) hot links, hot dogs, burgers. I love when he grills too :) He's gotten so so good over the past couple of years. just in case your curious his grill is charcoal. The other weekend we thinking about dinner early, when I suggested we grill nachos on the grill. i'm not a big steak person, so I suggested we make the nachos with pork, and turn the pork into Carnitas ( I love Carnitas!!) For all you newbies out that haven't had Carnitas before, here's the definition of 'Carnitas, literally "little meats," is a type of braised or roasted (often after first being fried) pork in Mexican cuisine' 

BBQ Carnitas Nachos

Slow Cooker Carnitas

I wanted the Carnitas to be tender and tasty, I looked online and found a great slow cooker Carnitas Recipe of Epicurious, click here for the recipe. 

2 pounds boneless country-style pork ribs or pork shoulder (Boston butt)

2 teaspoons salt { I used Kosher }

2 teaspoons ground black pepper

2 teaspoons dried oregano (preferably Mexican)

1/2 large onion, cut into 4 pieces

Fresh cilantro sprigs

1/2 Cup of Water or Chicken Broth

Place the meat in the slower cooker, and then add all ingredients and cover. Fully cooker between 4-6 hours on high. It took about 4 hours on high to cook the Carnitas in our slow cooker. After the pork is cooked, shred the meat. The meat should shred really easy. I like mine a little crispy. So we fried them lightly in Extra Virgin Olive Oil { a little oil on the bottom of the pan } until a little crispy. 

Making Nachos

I prefer using restaurant style tortilla chips, they just taste better. At our local International Market, you can buy a huge bag of freshly made tortilla chips for $1.99. We used our metal BBQ grill basket similar to this one to grill our Nachos in. 

1 Bag of Tortilla Chips

1 Cup of Cheddar Cheese

1 Cup of Monterrey Jack

Fresh Cilantro Sprigs

1 Large Tomato

1 Large Avacado

1 Cup of Sour Cream

1 Can of Re-fried Beans or Black Beans (cook on stove top)

Your Favorite Salsa 

Layer the bottom of the your grill pan with chips, beans, then Carnitas and cheese. Keep layering the chips, beans, meat and cheese. Finally top your nachos with Cilantro. Next carry your precious cargo outside to your already hot grill, place inside your hot grill until the cheese is melted and they tortilla chips looked crisp { about 10-15 mins } Resist the urge to start eating the nachos while still on the grill. 

These Nachos are perfect for parties and sharing with a group. Top with your favorite toppings. our are Avocado, Sour Cream, Southwestern Style Salsa & diced tomato. These nachos were freaking amazing!!! Like super Yumm!!! I loved the smokey flavor the BBQ gave the meat...yumm

Have you even BBQ nachos? What's your favorite food to eat grilled? Do you prefer Gas or Charcoal?  

Mid Week Treat: Key Lime Pie

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a Blogger Favorite Things, where I mailed Summer of my favorite baking books. I sent her the book, Cute Pies by Dani Cone. I blogged about the book when I first bought it, after seeing the author on Martha Stewart. Since then, I made a few of her cutie pies in half pint mason jars so cute! Anyways I suggested to Summer we pick a pie and bake it together. Since she lives in So Cal and I'm in Nor Cal we decided baking and talking on the phone is the next best thing until we meet up. We decided to make a full size Key Lime Pie from scratch!. I was a little nervous about making something so yummy from scratch, what if it didn't turn out? I'm happy to say the pie was amazing and very simple, using all simple ingredients. I will say, next time I make the pie I'll make it early in the morning so we can enjoy it that evening, since there are baking and cooling steps. 


Key Lime Pie
- The measurements below are supposed to make 2 - 9inch single crust pie, I found it only made one pie 


Ingredients


2 tablespoons of finely grated lime zest
4 eggs yolks
1/2 cup of fresh lime juice (I ended up using 4 limes)
plus additional 1/2 teaspoon for whipping cream
1 can 14 oz sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups of heavy whipping cream
3 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Loving my new egg crate Summer sent me

Crust Ingredients

15 Graham Crackers (crushed in crumbs)

2 Tablespoons of sugar

1 Stick of unsalted butter 

For the step my step instructions & great tips on making the crust click here, to visit Summer's blog 

To give the crust extra kick, I added some lime zest

Making the pie, oops I broke one yoke!

For the step my step instructions & great tips on making the key lime pie click here, to visit Summer's blog  

Isn't my pie pretty!! I left the yummy crust exposed :) Make sure you visit Summer's blog to see her pretty pie & read all of her great baking tips along with the step by step instructions. 

The pie was a delicious treat, that I'm looking forward to making again very soon. Hasani summed up the pie in  one word YUM! 

PS. The crust was amazing! Like tha bomb, I love thick crust and this was super thick and good. 

Have you tried any new pie recipes ? Are you a have of Key Lime Pie? What's your favorite pie to make or eat!?! 


Edit: Today is National Pi Day 2012! Click here for more information. Wow I'm so cool and trendy to sahre my Pie to day on Pi day, lol 

Peppermint Bark (Homemade)

My son and I recently made homemade Peppermint Bark its super easy, oh so delicious and a great way to use left over candy canes for Christmas. We actually made bark on Christmas Eve, but we ate it all up before I could take pictures. So we just had to { insert mischievous laughter }  make more to share the recipe with all of you. For the recipe you only need three ingredients: Peppermint Candy Canes, Milk Chocolate or Dark Chocolate { I'm a Milk Chocolate girl }  and White Chocolate. Next grab a small or medium cookie sheet and parchment paper or wax paper for easy cleanup and follow my directions below. 


Directions

1. Line your cookie sheet with Parchment Paper or Wax Paper 
2. In a microwave safe bowl heat 1 cup of chocolate chips for 1 minute, then stir until all the chocolate chips are melted. Then pour the melted chocolate onto your cookie sheet and spread. Repeat with the additional chocolate left in the bag.   
3. Cool the melted chocolate in the fridge for 10 mins 
4. Break your candy canes into chunks. We placed our candy canes inside of a zip lock bag and smashed them with a hammer! :) DIY baby!
5. Removed the chocolate from the fridge
6. Repeat step '2' heating instructions for the white chocolate. Pour the layer of white chocolate over the the milk chocolate. Then layer your candy cane chunks on top of the white chocolate and gently mush chunks into white chocolate using the back a spoon. 
7. Place the bark into the fridge and let chill for 2 hours
8. Grab another cookie sheet and turn the bark upside down. Then break apart chunks with a knife. 
9. Enjoy!!! 

Our Peppermint bark, ready to be broken up in chunks 

Peppermint bark is my new obsession its so delicious!!! I like eat my all by its self or with a cup of hot coca YUM! I stored the bark we made in zip lock bag and kept it in the fridge. Next year we plan on giving Peppermint Bark away as Christmas presents :) Here's how our yummy bark turned out. Tabari just refers to it as 'bark' such a tween :)

See, proof that Peppermint Bark makes kids happy! lol 

Even bigger smile! 

Here's his, 'OK mom can I please eat my Bark already' look :)

Have you made Peppermint Bark before? What new sweets recipe did you and your family make over the holidays? Please feel free to share your recipe link with us! 

Homemade Holiday Drinks

I'm a Huge coffee drinker and usually get the same few types of coffee unless its around the Holidays and there's a few more choices . So just a few weeks ago I decided to get the Caramel Apple Spice . I haven't had It since last year and completely forgot about it and Katrina has never had it, when she had a sip of my she loved it. So it quickly became a big deal at Chic Little House lol . As I was waiting in line I happen to glance over and got a chance to see how simple it was to make at home. I double checked with the Barista to make sure I had it right and now I'm sharing it online lol .


Caramel Apple Spice 


You Will Need

1. Cinnamon Dolce syrup - we use the Starbucks brand
2. Apple Juice
3. Cinnamon and sugar
4. Whip Cream
5. Caramel

In a coffee mug or glass depending on how warm you like your drink first add 1 pump of syrup for every 4oz of apple juice .Then add steamed apple juice (I like to stir the syrup and Apple juice at this point but I think it taste just as good if you don't ) ,whip cream on top then caramel , cinnamon and sugar .And that it .If you have had this drink or try it please let us know what you think .

Katrina likes caramel on in the inside of the of the cup (this is optional) I think its too sweet.

Katrina's cup of Caramel Apple Spice - lots of Caramel

My cup less Caramel, but still good!

Another holiday favorite is the classic EGGNOG . Even before I had "REAL" EGGNOG I loved it but I always just bought it from the store and drank it plain and SOMETIMES added Brandy lol. One day I had a few friends over and one noticed the carton of eggnog I had in the refrigerator . He told me that He makes his own and showed me how, so now I make it every year. 


Classic Eggnog


You Will Need 


4 eggs
1 table spoon of vanilla extract
3/4 cup of sugar
Nutmeg
Pint of milk
2 cups whip cream
1/4 cup rum
1 cup brandy


Stir egg and sugar together in a large saucepan; gradually stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 18 to 20 minutes or until mixture thickens and coats the spoon this is to make sure there's no bacteria from the eggs I heard the alcohol kills the bacteria but I'm over cautious lol . Remove from heat then stir in brandy, rum, and vanilla. Cover and chill for approximately 8 hours. Final step - beat whipping cream at high speed with an electric mixer until soft peaks form; fold into the chilled egg mixture. Garnish with nutmeg or more whip cream (if desired). This should make about 8 cups

Please share with us your favorite Holiday drinks and/or even your recipes for these same drinks. We would love to hear.

Hasani