Eggnog Cookie Cups

I didn't use to like eggnog. For some reason, now, I can't get enough of it. I've already gone through about a gallon of it this season, so maybe it's just a grown-up thing. Or maybe it's the rum.

Either way, I found this Taste of Home recipe hiding in my email folder and figured I would channel my new eggnog obsession elsewhere.

Mix together the pudding, milk and eggnog in a small saucepan. Cook and stir until it begins to boil. Add half of the extract to the mixture.

Transfer the hot mixture to a small bowl...

...and cover the top with waxed paper. This will let the pudding set up without forming a skin on the top. Refrigerate overnight.

To make the cookie dough, cream together the butter and brown sugar.

Beat in the egg yolks and the rest of the extract.

Gradually add in the flour and salt.

Okay, this is where I stopped reading the instructions. I added in the sugar, allspice and nutmeg into the cookie dough. It did occur to me that maybe that was a heck of a lot of sugar, but, did not question my non-reading of the actual procedure. You are actually supposed to mix the sugar and spices together and roll cookies in that. Do what you want. Either way, you will come out a winner here.

Roll the dough into small (1 inch) balls and place in a greased mini muffin pan.

Use the end of a wooden spoon to made a small indentation in the middle of the ball of dough. Spread the dough out so it moves up the side of the cup.

Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes. While the cookie cups are still warm, use your wooden spoon again to make a small bowl.

The next day, get your eggnog pudding mixture out of the fridge. I have an electric cookie press my brother gave me that I use to fill these cookies. I have yet to press any cookies, but it is a wonderful tool to add filling to cookies and deviled eggs.

Aren't they pretty?

Not only are they pretty, but they are divinely delicious. The dough by itself could make an incredible cookie all by itself. I am slightly ashamed to admit that I ate these for breakfast one Saturday morning. Although, I dare you to avoid that temptation when you make them.

Click here for Printable Recipe

Eggnog Cookie Cups

1 package (3 ounces) cook-and-serve vanilla pudding mix

1-1/2 cups eggnog

1/3 cup milk

2 teaspoons rum extract, divided

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2 egg yolks

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

In a small saucepan, combine the pudding mix, eggnog and milk. Cook and stir until mixture comes to a boil. Remove from the heat; stir in 1 teaspoon extract. Transfer to a small bowl. Cover surface of pudding with waxed paper; refrigerate until chilled.

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks and remaining extract. Combine flour and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.

In a small bowl, combine sugar and allspice. Shape dough into 1-in. balls; roll in sugar mixture. With floured fingers, press onto the bottom and up the sides of well-greased miniature muffin cups.

Bake at 350° for 10-15 minutes or until light golden brown. Immediately remove from pans to wire racks to cool completely.

Just before serving, pipe or spoon pudding into cups. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Yield: 2-1/2 dozen.

20 Layer Cake

I cleaned my room yesterday. Woohoo! It was getting a bit ridiculous, if I do say so myself. I will, however, mention that a lot of the problem was kid stuff. Now that we finally have The Girl's room painted and put back together, she might be able to move out of mine :)

I found my latest issue of Taste of Home under my bed. Amazingly, I didn't sit down to read it until I had finished my room. I must have a fever or something.

I found a recipe for a Red Velvet Crepe Cake that just looked amazing. Jeff was off golfing with my nephew for his birthday, so I figured that was a good an excuse as any to bake a cake. That and I have been looking for a reason to make this frosting again. Yes, it's that good.

If I would have read the instructions before starting this, I might never have tried it. I was thinking I would bake a cake and slice the cake into layers.

I was wrong.

Gonna warn you here. This is not a relaxing cake to make. It's not difficult, it's just not something you walk away from. All in all it took me probably about an hour and a half to get it all put together. Make sure your counter tops are cleared of any clutter as you will need every inch of space available! You are going to make a lot of little cakes here.

Add 2 3/4 cups milk, 1 cup flour, 3 eggs, 3 egg yolks, 1/4 melted butter and 3 teaspoons vanilla to a red velvet cake mix and beat well. Isn't that gorgeous? I am officially in love with red velvet cake.

Pour 1/3 cup of the batter into a hot, lightly greased 8 inch skillet. The original recipe called for 1/4 cup, but I couldn't get it to spread out enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Also, if you have a pan with short sides, use that. I only had my regular skillet and it made it difficult to get the cooked cake out. Turns out they also make crepe pans. I may have to investigate that further.

**Actually, as an update to this...I have made this cake many times now, and one day it occurred to me that crepes are closely related to pancakes...that I make on the griddle. A griddle is perfect for these layers and greatly decreases the time it takes to make it!

It also says to tilt the pan until the batter all spreads out. That didn't work for me. I used the measuring cup to spread it around.

The batter is a little bit thicker than pancake batter, so it takes a little convincing to get it to coat the entire pan and even then I couldn't get it to spread out evenly.

Cook this until it starts to bubble and appear dry on the top, just like pancakes do. I cooked mine for a little over a minute. Flip it over and cook for about 20 seconds.

Now, if you have never made a crepe before (like me), your first few will not be pretty (unless you have a crepe pan, then you might luck out). It is not easy to flip those suckers. That's okay. The one on the left got eaten by The Kids because it was deemed too ugly to be a part of a cake. The one on the right isn't too pretty, but it was never noticed once it became covered in frosting and other borderline cakes.

Once you have all your batter converted into crepe cakes, start assembling the cake. Put one layer down and frost. Here's a warning. Your layers are not thick. You only want a tiny bit of frosting, maybe a heaping tablespoon, to cover the layer. If you go overboard on the frosting, you won't even notice that there is cake in there when you take a bite. That would be tragic. You might as well save yourself some trouble and just east the frosting out of the bowl.

Add a layer on top and frost again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Just keep going until you run out of layers. The original recipe called for two cakes to be assembled, but I just made one big one. I contemplated trimming up the edges of the cake to make it easier to frost evenly, but ended up just leaving it like this.

 This is a messy endeavor and I didn't even show you the counter by the stove. Just be warned.

 Finish frosting the cake with a generous layer on the outside.

 The Girl insisted on sprinkles.

How incredible does that look? As with the Carrot Cake, this is a LAYER cake. Be careful on the slice sizes!

This cake makes me happy. And it's tasty. I think you could use a white cake mix and tint it any color that you wanted. The Girl wants to make a blue and red one for Independence Day. If I can get my kitchen cleaned back up in time, we might attempt that.

Click here for Printable Recipe.


20 Layer Cake
adapted from Taste of Home
1 package (18-1/4 ounces) red velvet cake mix
2-3/4 cups whole milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup butter, melted
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
Cream Cheese Frosting

In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, milk, flour, eggs, egg yolks, butter and vanilla; beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium for 2 minutes.
Heat a lightly greased 8-in. nonstick skillet over medium heat; pour 1/3 cup batter into center of skillet. Lift and tilt pan to coat bottom evenly. Cook until top appears dry; turn and cook 15-20 seconds longer. Remove to a wire rack. Repeat with remaining batter, greasing skillet as needed. When cool, stack crepes with waxed paper or paper towels in between.
To assemble the cake, place one crepe on a cake plate. Spread the cake with one rounded tablespoon frosting to within 1/2 in. of edges. Repeat layers until all crepes are used. Spread remaining frosting over tops and sides of crepe cake.

Two Day Carrot Cake

I can never remember liking carrot cake when I was younger. It just never seemed to sound appealing. I mean, really, why make a cake with VEGETABLES in it when you can just as easily make one with chocolate.

Curt posted this carrot cake recipe well over a year ago and it just looked so, so good. So I printed it off and just keep setting it aside, because I had a bunch of recipes with chocolate to make.

Last weekend we went to dinner with my Nana and she had carrot cake for dessert. It looked delicious, so I too had carrot cake for dessert. She said it was good carrot cake, but not the best she ever had, which made me think about this recipe.

Never having made carrot cake, I don't really know how this stacks up against any others, or even if it is in any way similar to others. But this is the recipe I have, so I'm going with this.

In a bowl, heat up 3 cups of water. Add in 3 tablespoons of rum. We are not big rum drinkers here, so I just sent Jeff to the liquor store to get a small bottle. Apparently our liquor store has an entire wall dedicated to the different flavors of rum. Dark rum. Light rum. Spiced rum. Strawberry rum. Our rural town has a larger selection of rum than wine. Interesting.

Anyway, add a cup of golden raisins to the diluted rum, cover and let sit.

In another bowl, add 6 (yes, six) cups of shredded carrots. I had no clue how many carrots it would take to make six cups. Turns out if you shred a large carrot, it makes up just about one cup. I ended up using a total of seven carrots.

Add one cup of brown sugar to the shredded carrots. Cover and let this sit for anywhere from 1 to 6 hours.

Now, the scientific among you might assume that this is to let the sugar absorb the juice from the carrots to form a delicious mush that will soon become cake. I now know that it is because after you shred seven carrots, you can't really lift your arm. No problem, just go finish off your bottle of rum to ease the pain.

After you wake up from the rum induced coma, in a large bowl, mix together 3 cups of cake flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg and 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves. Set this aside for a moment.

In a large mixing bowl, whip together 4 eggs and 1 1/2 cup sugar until it's nice and frothy.

Then add in 1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil, 1/2 Cup Applesauce, 2 tsp Vanilla and 1 Cup Crushed Pineapple and mix well. 

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture.

Mix until it is just combined.

Drain the raisins. The Boy didn't really believe me when I said these were raisins. They really plump up.

Add the raisins, carrots and walnuts and gently mix in to the batter.

Divide the batter between three round cake pans and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. The recipe I had said 40-50, but my oven runs a little hot. Stick a toothpick in and test for doneness if you aren't sure.

When they are done, let them cool for 15 minutes, wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate them overnight. 

The next day, mix up some cream cheese frosting. Now, I'm not really a frosting kind of person, and even though cream cheese frosting is my favorite, I didn't have a recipe for it. So I used the recipe supplied. 

Whip 2 blocks of cream cheese with a stick of softened butter, 2 cups of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla until nice and fluffy. 

 Spread in a nice thick layer onto your first cake.

 Don't scrimp. I thought I had a good layer on, but it wasn't near thick enough. If you need to, mix up another batch of frosting.

 Add the second cake on top and repeat with the frosting.

 I am really loving layer cakes right now.

 Even if it means I have to eat more frosting.

 Add that third cake on top. And here is where it gets good. To the remaining frosting, carefully fold in a cup or two of whipped cream. You could use Cool-Whip, but really, go for the real stuff here if you can.

 Use this to frost the top and outside.

Cut the cake.

Here's a tip. When you cut a piece of three layer cake, do not cut it the same size as you would a one layer cake. I totally misjudged the amount of cake in one piece and accidentally ate it all.

 I would hate for that to happen to you.

 I now love carrot cake. 


And cream cheese frosting.


This took a super long time to make, and it was completely worth it. I want to make it again next weekend and invite you over. I want you to make it this weekend and invite me over. Doesn't matter, just find a way to get this on your table.


Click here for Printable Recipe

The Two Day Carrot Cake
by Try It Tuesday
6 Cups Shredded Carrots
1 Cup Brown Sugar
Combine carrots and brown sugar and let stand for 1 to 6 hours.

1 Cup White Raisins
3 Cups Hot Water
3 Tbsp Rum

Combine these three and let them stand with the carrots.

1 Cup Toasted Walnut Halves, Chopped

Spread the walnuts out onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 8 mintues. Watch these carefully.

3 Cups Cake Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
4 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1 tsp Ground Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Ground Cloves

Mix in a bowl with a wire whisk and set aside.

4 Large Eggs
1 1/2 Cup White Sugar

Mix until frothy and add in:
1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil
1/2 Cup Applesauce
2 tsp Vanilla
1 Cup Crushed Pineapple, drained not pressed

Preheat the oven to 350.

Prior to combining the wet and dry ingredients grease and flour three 9 inch baking pans.

Combine The Wet and The Dry till just blended.

Drain the raisins. Add the Raisins, Carrots and Walnuts to the Batter. Don’t over mix…

Add the batter to your prepared pans making sure to make a divot in the center of each cake. This will prevent crowning and minimize the need for any trimming.

Bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes.

Place the cakes on a cooling rack and let them set for about 15 minutes.

Remove the cakes from the pans, wrap them in plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator. Leave them there over night.

Cream Cheese Frosting
3 Packages Cream Cheese
3 Cups of Powdered Sugar
2 tsp Vanilla
1 1/2 Sticks Butter. softened

Whip cream cheese and butter till light add vanilla and whip again till well mixed. Scrape down bowl and mix again.

Add sugar and mix well. Use this mixture to frost between the layers of the cake.

1 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream
1/3 Cup Sugar

Whip till stiff.

Fold whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture by hand. Do this gradually or you will break the whipped cream.

Snow Ice Cream

Snow days are awesome.

Take a day that was originally full of places to go, things to do.

Then Mother Nature comes in and says, "you know, I think you all need to slow down."

And so you are given the perfect excuse to NOT do anything.

Of course, your children will insist on going outside to play in the snow, but you can easily lure them back inside with the promise of Snow Ice Cream. I've had this recipe for a long time and I can't seem to remember where it came from. It is the same one that Paula Deen has on here site, so that could be the original source.

You will need snow. Clean snow. Around 8 cups.

Pour in a can of sweetened condensed milk and a little bit of vanilla.
Get all of the milk.
Every last drop.
For Heaven's sake, someone get her a spoon.
Maybe The Boy can help.

Then stir. Be sure to have this in a really big bowl!
It takes awhile.
But mix it up good and it will start to resemble homemade ice cream.

Of course, we need to taste test to be sure it is up to standard...

Click here for Printable Recipe

Snow Ice Cream

8 Cups Clean Snow

1 Can Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 teaspoon Vanilla

Stir.