Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese

 Hello Autumn!! I have missed you soo much!

Fall is my favorite season. I love the sights, smells, and tastes, and this macaroni and cheese was a great way to combine the three.  This Martha Stewart recipe was used as the base, but modified to meet my needs. There are two main parts to the recipe, and it takes about 2 hours to make, so I started at 10 a.m. I took this picture when just starting, which perfectly describes our morning- French press coffee and squash.

Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese

Part 1:
1 lb butternut squash (half a medium sized squash)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Sprinkles of salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne (I think I did maybe about 1/4-1/2 teaspoon each)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Peel the butternut squash, scoop seeds, and cut squash into one inch cubes. This is a great tutorial. Place the squash in a metal sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with seasonings. Bake for 20 minutes, stir, and bake for another 10 minutes. Then, reduce oven temp to 375 degrees.

Part 2:
1 lb elbow macaroni or shell pasta
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Cooking spray
Cheddar and mozzarella cheese for sprinkling
3 tablespoons bread crumbs
Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Cook pasta according to package. Meanwhile, put previously baked squash, heavy cream, chicken stock, and cheeses into a bowl and mix. The squash will get squishy and not stay cubed. Stir in cooked pasta. Pour all into a sprayed 9x9 baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheddar and mozzarella cheese and then breadcrumbs. Loosely cover the pan with tin foil. Bake for 20 minutes. Then, remove pan from oven, take off foil, and return to oven uncovered for another 40 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

We ate this with Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale for a super yummy Fall meal. Enjoy!

**Edit on 12/9/13: We have made this meal three more times since the original posting. A roasted sugar pumpkin works in place of the butternut squash (two seed scooped skin-on halves at 325* for 1 hour, then scraped out instead of cubed). This recipe get 10x more delicious when goat cheese is added into the mix. SO GOOD!

**Edit on  9/1/14: Still SO GOOD! I mess around with the flavors each time and it has never not been good. We're growing squash in the garden now too, which my husband lovingly calls the "squash-a-roni plant". He is just as excited as I am. :)

Mini Chocolate Almond Cake

So I took a break from blogging- but now I am back! I can't promise it will be frequent, but I can promise it will be fun.

Over the break, I made a very decadent, very yummy mini chocolate cake with whipped cream and chocolate ganache filling. Oh boy was this thing good. The recipe was followed almost exactly from here. I had been looking for a way to use mini quiche pans and a cute bird mini cake stand, and this was perfect. The recipe ended up making 6 mini cake pieces, which worked out perfectly since the cake stand was only tall enough for a two-stack portion anyway. So, one four-stack cake and one two-stack cake were created. Who can complain about that?

Spring Fireplace Mantle

My fireplace mantle is not new to the blog. I have posted about it's decor possibilities for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now that spring has figuratively sprung (despite all the snow on the ground), we needed a cheery display. A television is now mounted to the wall, which creates a new challenge for a pretty display. Here is what I came up with, sticking to a fresh white, blue, green, and gold color scheme.

The right side has the ever present birdcage to hide the DVD player, with a white porcelain bird, fresh green plant in a bright white pot, and 2 brass candlesticks.

A long twig-y candle holder sits under the TV with green and blue fake floral accents.

  

On the left side is a large blue vase with very real looking fake hydrangeas (thanks Hobby Lobby!), a large intricate brass candlestick, and a small brass candlestick and two white birds to match the right side.  To add height, I have some twisty branches and old windows behind the display. The blue vase got a huge jagged hole in the back when filling it with rocks. Super sad, but I put a piece of clear packing tape over it to keep everything in.

Yay Spring!

I have a few fun projects coming up: a homemade shower curtain, bedroom wall painting, art collage wall, and chalkboard cupboard. Pictures will be posted soon!

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

My dear friend Kristina sent me this recipe for chocolate chip cookies made with bananas from Taste of Home. I was skeptical at first but they turned out really well! The texture was like half cookie, half cake. I could see them going over well at a party where they are eaten quickly, or frozen as an ice cream sandwich (maybe with peanut butter swirl ice cream), as they only stayed fresh for a day or so in a container on the counter. The cookies got oddly sticky and moist by the next day, which was pretty weird.

The recipe is below, but I made a few changes from what is listed on the Taste of Home website. I ended with close to two dozen cookies, instead of the three listed by Taste of Home, so I adjusted the calorie count to reflect.

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 medium mashed ripe banana
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips 

In a small bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, banana and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips. 

Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 9-11 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 2 dozen.

Calories: 125 per cookie 

We ate these for snacks and breakfast. They have a banana in it so they are okay for breakfast, right? :)

Painting the Eat-in Counter

As I mentioned before, we moved into our first house in late September. It is a fairly new house (2009) so there aren't really any necessary or large home improvement projects, only work that makes our house our home, not just a place we live in. The house is full of our stuff, but sometimes I still feel like it isn't really our house because there are signs of the previous owners. One of these areas is the kitchen eat-in counter.

The color isn't my favorite and it has dings and scratches from where their baby's highchair sat.

So, I took some green paint I found in the garage, leftover from the wall behind the fireplace when the house was built, and got to work. The project took about three hours to tape and paint (two coats). The only cost was a new paint roller pad, about $3.00. 

So what do you think of the change? I don't think it matches the counters very well, and I know we need to get bar height stools, but it is now MY counter, not one belonging to the family who lived here before us.

Stuffed French Toast with Caramel Rum Sauce

A good breakfast is the best way to start a weekend! This Saturday it was decadent french toast stuffed with a cream cheese, banana, chocolate mixture, then topped with a smooth caramel rum sauce.

Start with the sauce so it has a chance to thicken while making the french toast. Stirring frequently over medium heat, mix 1/2 stick of butter (4 tablespoons) and 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Continue stirring until the mixture boils. Then stir nearly constantly until the mixture has thickened. Once the mixture can easily coat the back of the spoon without completely dripping off, add 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream, 2 tablespoons milk, 1 tablespoon vanilla and 2 tablespoons rum. Stir until smooth and put back on low heat to keep warm while making the french toast, stirring occasionally.

For the french toast, take four pieces of thick bread and place on a cookie sheet. Place in the oven on 300 degrees for a minute or so, then flip over to toast the other side. Remove from the oven (but keep oven on) and let cool slightly. Put a frying pan on the stove top with a tablespoon of butter and heat on medium, allowing the butter to melt. Meanwhile, mix 2 eggs, 1/4 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg in a flat dish. Dip both side of the bread into the mix and cook in the frying pan until yummy looking. ***Only dip two slices at a time so the bread doesn't get soggy before cooking.*** Repeat with the other two slices and set aside.

To make the filling, mix 4 oz (half block or 1/2 cup) of cream cheese (I used neufchatel cheese), 1/2 banana cut into small chunks, small handful of chocolate chips, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 tablespoon orange juice (I used orange V8), and 1/8 cup sugar. Don't mash the bananas, just mix the ingredients all up. I found it easiest to soften the cheese in the microwave first. (You can also do cream cheese with jam and sugar instead of the banana mixture.)

Then, scoop the mixture evenly between two slices of french toast. Set the other slices on top (like a sandwich) and place on the cookie sheet from earlier. Put back in the oven and cook for about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and drizzle with the warm sauce. This goes great with eggs and bacon expertly made by your husband! :)

Rolling Pin with Silverware Hooks

 

This one is pretty neat! I intended on making curtain hold backs out of silverware to use in our kitchen, but since we don't have a window there that requires curtains, I had a bag of old silverware sitting around, just waiting for a project. I had seen some photos of bent silverware hangers attached to boards floating around Etsy and decided to attempt my own. After creating, my dear husband nailed them to an antique rolling pin, which we mounted to the wall as an apron hanger. Yay!

Each type of silverware required a different process to bend into the right shape. The spoon was the easiest, simply banging flat with a hammer, hooking into a table mounted vise, hooking the handle into a hand-held vise grip and pulling up on the handle to create a hook.

The knife was also pretty easy, but the blade was pretty thick towards the handle, making it hard to control what angle the blade bent at to form the hook. It was also squeezed into the table vise when bending with the hand-held vise grip, but bending the blade, not handle as was done with the spoon.

The fork was definitely the most work. I started by trying to simply bend the tines with a pliers while the fork was hooked into the table vise grip, which was ridiculous. So, Mike taught we how to use a blowtorch- yes, I used blow torch! Each fork tine was heated until red hot and then bent into a curve using pliers. It probably took 6 or so heating sessions to get everything in place. Then, we hit the fork with a hammer until the tines were flat and even with the others, instead of some sticking out and looking silly. The handle was bent into a hook using the same process as the other utensils. 

Mike then drilled a hole into each utensil (careful not to overheat your bit!) and nailed the pieces onto the rolling pin. The silver wall mounted hooks were purchased at Lowe's, for the pin to sit on. We screwed in the Lowe's hooks, set the pin on top and voila!- a vintage, kitchen themed hanger for my aprons!

Some tips if you try this at home- make sure your silverware is all silver, not just silver plated. This will make it easier to bend and have a prettier finish. We scraped off some silver coating when bending the fork, leaving an ugly black finish behind. I colored over it with a silver sharpie to try to hide it! :) Also, we bent the utensils over the curve of the table vise "grabber" area so the hooks had the same size and shape. Make sure to bend the handles backwards, to show off the pretty pattern on the front. (When completed, you see the back of the eating area and the front of the hooks.) Once hung, the rolling pin kept spinning so the hooks were touching the wall due to the weight. This was fixed with a dab of hot glue on both wall hooks to secure the handles and a dab on the inner handle area to secure the large middle rolling part.

What do you think? Worth an hour and $15?