Say Crack One More Time....CRACK aka Buffalo Chicken Dip

As you know I decided to prepare a few things to take with us on our trip down to GA/FLA.  Amongst the munchies I decided to make was the best dip in the whole world.  It is absolutely addicting and a guaranteed crowd pleaser!  My friends are already asking for more and its only been 3 days!

I followed this recipe, kept it refrigerated and then simple reheated when we were ready to eat it.  I made this with the intention of having it most likely on Friday night after a long but wonderful day on the beach.  However it was decided that we would eat it about 20 minutes after we arrived on Thursday.  So I reheated and served with tostitos scoops!!  I served it to 12 people and it was not nearly enough so I would suggest doubling or even tripling it!!

 Ingredients:

• 1 (8oz) package of cream cheese
• 1/2 cup ranch dressing (blue cheese would work too!)
• 1/2 cup hot sauce
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
• shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheese
• 2 (9.75oz) cans chicken in water, drained
• crackers or chips for dipping

first you will need to preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

spread cream cheese with fork in oven-safe dish.

mix your hot sauce and ranch together then pour mixture over cream cheese.

add layer of blue cheese then sprinkle shredded cheddar and mozzarella evenly on top.

then I added a little bit more hot sauce and ranch to a bowl and lightly tossed the chicken.  then added the chicken as the final layer.

Bake on 350 for 20 minutes.  

Stir before serving.

Us on frat beach in St Simons for GA/FLA weekend!! 

Aint nothin finer in the land!!

#CHECK

#DAWGSWIN

GLORY GLORY TO OLE GEORGIA!!! AND TO HELL WITH FLORIDA!!! DAAAWWWGGGSSS WINNNNN!!!! 24-20!!!

candy corn cupcakes

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! Like I said in my last halloween post I havent celebrated Halloween since I came to college because of Georgia/Florida!  and in case you have been living under a rock DAWGS WIN!! DAWGS WIN!!! and gators win jean shorts!! pretty much making this weekend the most epic of my college career!!!


However this is not a football blog its a cooking blog so here is a Halloween baking recipe for candy corn cupcakes that I found on pinterest and decided to try! Because who doesnt love cupcakes?

 Ingredients:

• 1 box of Duncan Hines White Cake Mix
• Veggetable Oil 
• 3 Eggs
• Icing
• Red and Yellow Food Coloring
• Yellow and Orange

So little side note here.  My beloved grandmother never made anything from a box and never served anything that was store bought, she made absolutely everything from scratch. EXCEPT all of her cakes were Ducan Hines white cake mix because she always said that she could never make it taste quite as good as they could!!  So I will never ever ever use any other cake mix!

 Follow instructions on boxed cake mix.  

Fun little tip when making cupcakes: use an ice cream scoop for a perfectly portioned amount of cake batter.  Doesnt really work here since youre layering colors though!

split batter into 3 equal parts and dye one orange (yellow + red) and another yellow, leave the last one white.

 pour one layer of ornage batter into cupcake cups

then add a layer of yellow batter

then add a layer of white

ice the cupcakes with white icing after they have cooled.

pour sprinkles into bowl and cover cupcakes by dipping them upside down into bowl.

YAY CANDY CORN!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

How To Use An Entire Box of Cereal In Under An Hour...

Seeing as GA/FLA is upon us that can only mean one thing...what is this one thing you ask? Road trippin...check!  partying on the beach with 3000 of your best friends...yup that too! Gators in Jean shorts? definitely! Dawgs win (in my best larry munson voice)? HOPIN FOR IT!! Can you tell I'm just a little bit excited??

these are all fine and dandy (and lets be honest literally some of my favorite things about being a UGA student!!) but one of the major things that we don't think about this weekend is when/where/what we are going to eat.  Having 3000 people flock to one island for 3 days means crazy long lines at all the fast food restaurants and grocery stores, so I thought that I would prepare this year by making some snackage for my crew.

The first thing that came to mind to make was puppy chow...this stuff is literally the messiest but most addictive substance on the planet! OK that's definitely a lie but its really freaking good and so easy to make!

I followed the recipe on the box

Ingredients:

• 9 cups of rice chex
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Add butter, chocolate chips and peanut butter into a large microwaveable bowl.  

 Microwave for 1 minute and stir.  Microwave for another 30 seconds, stir then mix in vanilla.

Pour over cereal and stir until completely coated.

Add cereal into 2 gallon zip lock bag.

 Then add powdered sugar and shake.

YUMMMMMYYYY!!

After the rice krispie treat debacle, I was really not looking forward to getting stuck with another box of cereal considering I don't really like cereal and never have milk unless I need it for a recipe.  So I started to consider just making more puppy chow and quickly decided that was probably not my best move. So I settled on (drum roll please......)classic homemade chex mix!

again I used the recipe on the box but made a few tweaks:

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons of butter
• 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
• 3/4 teaspoon of seasoned salt
• 1/2 teaspoon tonys creole seasoning (makes everything better!)
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 4 cups rice chex
• 1cup cheese its
• 1 cup garlic bagel chips
• 1 cup pretzels

Melt butter then stir in seasoning and Worcestershire sauce.

Combine ingredients for mix in bowl and stir.

Place in pan and pour butter and seasonings over.

Bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 15.

Because Who Doesnt Love Green Onions?

Honestly I really really love my veggies.  My mother might be shocked to hear this since I spent the better first half of my life avoiding vegetables AT ALL COSTS!! But what kid doesnt?

Onions definately make the top of this list! I like them all sweet ones, yellow ones, red ones, and green ones.  Onions are hard to keep, especially when youre cooking for one.  the yellow and the red ones keep for a decent amount of time if you put them in a zip lock baggie.  However the green onions go bad so quickly and you have to buy a ton of them! Every single time I have used green onions I use about 2 or 3 stalks (?no idea what they are called) and then have to throw the rest away a week later.

Well I finally found a solution to this problem.  Of course it is one of many life problems that, yup you guessed it, PINTEREST has solved for me!

so here is what you do: you go about whatever fabulous recipe you are using that calls for green onions but instead of chopping only what you need, chop them all! Then grab an empty water bottle and fill it with the extra green onions and freeze them.  Not going to lie I had to buy a bottle of water and drink it to complete this project..ooops!

Candy Corn Rice Krispie Treats

Back to the Halloween baking! I have not made rice krispie treats probably ever so I thought I'd give it a shot and why not do it Halloween themed! So I decided to make candy corn rice krispie treats!

Ingredients: (I just followed the recipe on the box!)

• 1 bag of mini marshmallows
• 8 cups of rice krispies cereal
• 5 tablespoons butter
• red and yellow food coloring

 melt butter then add marshmallows on low heat

melted marshmallows

once marshmallows are melted add cereal.

split mixture into 3 equal parts, add yellow food coloring to one, yellow and red to another and leave the third plain.  dont get food coloring all over your hands like we did.

then spread evenly into layers

this is what I was going for....

this is what I ended up with.  so they didnt end up as beautiful as I was hoping for but they still tasted delicious! 

Ohhhhh You Like Fried Rice?

I love asian food, and it was always a treat to get to go to a hibachi place in high school.  Then I came to college in Athens and discovered choo choo (fast food hibachi place-literally could solve all the worlds problems).  anywho I really like fried rice but it had never occurred to me to actually try and make it until I found a recipe for Benihana's fried rice on pinterest.  so here goes....it took a lot longer than I thought it would be was well worth it in the end! now if only I could figure out how to make choo choo yellow sauce...

this is my interpretation of this recipe: http://runninginstilettos-hbc.blogspot.com/2011/03/benihana-style-chicken-fried-rice.html


guest photographer: Rebecca Thomas


Ingredients: (makes about 2-3 servings)

• 1 chicken breast (cubed)
• 1 cup rice
• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons of chopped onions
• 3 tablespoons of chopped green onions
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame seed
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon oil
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• salt and pepper

 steam rice according to packaging

chop veggies

 sautee chicken in a little bit of oil and soy sauce

 scramble eggs (chop into small pieces)

 sautee veggies with butter and a little bit of soy sauce

 view of everything thanks Rebecca

 once veggies are cooked add egg and chicken 

 Then add rice.  Next add sesame seed and salt and pepper for taste.  Then add soy sauce (I found that I needed more for the soy sauce to be evenly distributed but thats up to you!)

YUMMMMYYYY!!

Directions:

cook rice

chop veggies

scramble eggs

sautee chicken in oil and soy sauce

sautee veggies

add eggs and chicken 

add rice

add salt and pepper and sesame seeds

add soy sauce, stir well, enjoy!

here are a few outtakes from rebecca's photo shoot haha:

Rebecca's photographer shoes 

so this actually goes with the candy corn rice krispie treat post but Rebecca tried to help cook and snapped one of my wooden spoons in half #notok

Halloween Treats!

Here at UGA Halloween is not a holiday that we celebrate. Well actually we do celebrate it but we dont do it on October 31st like most people. We celebrate in the week or so before because the weekend of the 31st is one of the best weekends of any bulldawg fans life...GA/FLA!!!! Classes are canceled on Friday so basically the entire school goes down to St. Simons for an all day party on what we call "fratbeach" on Friday and then we go to jacksonville for the game on saturday. I like to refer to it as better than christmas...some would agree some might not but it is literally the best weekend of college!

Anywho the point is the next week or so will be all about baking Halloweenish things!! my goal is to get at least 3-4 posts up before next thursday so get excited!!

Tonight some of my best friends and I got together to watch Hocus Pocus (the best Halloween movie ever made-if you havent seen it watch abcfamily this weekend). My friend Amy made caramel apples (yum!) and I really wanted to contribute to the snackage but was running low on time. so I made these treats (idea came from pinterest) which can really be made for any occasion and only take about 10 minutes!!

Ingredients:

• Snaps Square Pretzels
• Hershey's Hugs
• Brach's candy corn (because lets face it the generic brands just arent as good

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with tin foil, and spread pretzels out evenly. Unwrap hugs and place on top of pretzels. Bake for about 5 minutes (until the chocolate looks shiny). then top with candy corn for garnish, cool and serve!

These are soooo easy and super cheap and you will end up with left over candy to snack on!!

An Almost Failure Revitalized...tequila, lime and orange juice chicken fajitas

fajitas are one of the easiest dishes to prepare. you can make it all in on skillet super quickly and they are pretty cheap. I did a marinade this time but its not necessary they are still really good with just salt and pepper on the chicken.

Ingredients:

for the marinade:

• 1 shot tequila
• 1/2 shot orange juice
• squeezed lime juice
• salt and pepper
• a few dashes of chili pepper
• 1 teaspoon of minced garlic

for fajitas:

• 1 chicken breast
• a few slices of onion
• shredded cheese
• salsa
• guacamole
• sour cream
• tortillas

Thaw chicken breast if frozen and place in ziplock baggie. Add marinade ingredients and let sit for an hour or two. (I wasnt sure if I had enough lime juice so I added a few slices just in case).

For the chicken breasts I suggest the purdue individual packages, you can buy them in a variety of flavors and they are great for cooking for 1.

Slice the chicken breast and saute with onions until cooked

warm tortillas in oven or microwave, add all of your toppings and enjoy!

these are great for single serving recipes or just for a snack! you should definitely try them!!