Crock Pot Apple Cider Beef Stew

Last weekend I went wedding dress shopping all day on Saturday with my mom, sister, and future mother-in-law. What a wonderful day! And yes, I found a dress. ;) Why am I telling you this? Well, since I knew we were going to be gone all day, I thought it would be the perfect day to have dinner slowly cooking in the crock pot all day so that we could have a yummy meal waiting for us when we got home (and so that the house would smell delicious too!). I figured we'd be much too tired from dress shopping to cook. And I was right; wedding dress shopping is exhausting! But it's also super fun. :-D

I found this recipe for Apple Cider Beef Stew in one of my cookbooks specifically dedicated to slow cooker recipes. Now that the weather is getting colder, I've been thinking about using my crock pot much more often but just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I'm glad I finally did use it with this recipe! It was a great recipe to start off crock pot "season."

Ingredients:

-2 lbs. stew beef

-8 large carrots

-6 medium potatoes (I used red potatoes)

-2 apples (you can use whatever kind you have on hand! I think I used Macintosh)

-1 small onion (I used a yellow onion)

-salt, pepper

-thyme and other herbs you like (I also added herbs de provence)

-2 cups apple cider

Instructions:

Cut the beef into 1/2-inch cubes. Peel and slice the carrots and potatoes (I cut mine into about 1/2-inch pieces - and I actually did not peel my red potatoes). Also cut the apples into 1/2-inch pieces. I left the skins on the apples but you could peel them if you wanted. Finely chop the onion.

Place the carrots, potatoes, and apples in the crock pot. Add the beef, and sprinkle with salt, pepper, thyme, and onions. Pour the cider over top. Cover and cook on low setting for 10 - 12 hours. Makes approximately 8 - 10 servings.

Serve hot and enjoy!

I didn't list an amount for the spices/herbs because I think you can just eyeball how much you add. My guess is that I added about 3 teaspoons total of the various dried herbs and maybe about 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. pepper? Sorry - I didn't measure!

Along with our yummy stew, I served some deeelicious bread from When Pigs Fly, one of my favorite bread bakeries. This particular bread was their baby spinach, onion, and garlic ciabatta. Sooo flavorful! I am lovin' that there's a When Pigs Fly in the town where I live, but my wallet and waistline aren't as happy about it. ;)

Back to the stew... This was a very tasty, hearty, comforting dish - just what you want when it comes to beef stew! The apple cider was detectable and added a unique flavor. And the apples added a bit more nutrition too! All in all, this dish was a winner.

Yay for crock pot cooking!

Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies

Whoopie pies. They seem to be quite trendy right now and rightfully so. Who wouldn't want to eat not one but TWO cookies sandwiched around a delicious, sweet filling? It's like two desserts in one, and if you don't think too much about the fact that you're eating two cookies, you won't feel too guilty, I promise. ;-)

I made these carrot cake whoopie pies in my mom's kitchen last weekend when I was home in upstate NY. On Saturday night, my boyfriend and I were attending a potluck get-together, hosted by one of my good college friends and her fiancé, and I obviously signed up to bring a dessert! I decided to make something simple that wouldn't require me to transport too many ingredients from Boston to NY. I immediately thought of making a cake mix cookie of some sort, and thanks to inspiration from a delicious, recent post over at Eats Well With Others for carrot cake cookies with a cream cheese filling, I had the idea to make carrot cake cookies (with cake mix to keep it simple) into whoopie pies by adding a delicious cream cheese filling. You could easily just conceptualize these as the cookie form of a classic carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (kind of like my Easter cupcakes this year!). :) 

Ingredients:

Cookies

-1 box (18.25 oz.) carrot cake cake mix

-2 eggs

-1/4 to 1/3 cup vegetable oil

Cream Cheese Filling (from Eats Well With Others)

-8 oz. cream cheese

-5 Tbsp. butter (I used unsalted)

-2 tsp. vanilla extract

-2 and 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

-1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Start out by making the filling since it should sit in the fridge for 30 minutes or so before using it. Combine the cream cheese and butter (both of mine were softened before I used them) in a large bowl and beat well with an electric mixer, about 2 - 3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla, and then gradually add in the confectioners' sugar until it's well incorporated and smooth. Lastly, add in the lemon juice and beat well. Let refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease cookie sheets. For the cookies, combine the cake mix, eggs, and oil in a large bowl, and mix well with a spoon or spatula. Drop by spoonfuls of desired size onto cookie sheets and bake for 9 - 11 minutes.

To make the whoopie pies, try to choose two cookies of similar size for each "pie," and spread about one heaping tablespoonful of cream cheese filling on one cookie and then top with its matched cookie. Voilà! You've got yourself a carrot cake whoopie pie.

This particular recipe made 24 cookies overall, which resulted in 12 whoopie pies (aren't my math skills awesome??). My ratio of cookies to filling was slightly off, so I had some leftover filling (there are worse things of which to have left over though ;-)). And by the way, I checked; there are no laws against eating cream cheese filling by itself with a spoon. Just sayin'...

If I had more time while making these cookies, perhaps I would have also added some shredded carrot to enhance the carrot flavor and change the texture of the cookie a bit. You could probably also add raisins or walnuts or whatever else you might typically add to carrot cake when you make it. As is though, these cookies were still great! The tasty cream cheese filling is really what made them awesome though, let's be serious. 

"Bird Nest" Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

Happy Easter!! I'm enjoying a wonderful Easter weekend at home with my family in good ol' upstate NY, and I hope that if you celebrate Easter, you're enjoying the holiday as well! As per usual, my mom asked me to bake a dessert for Easter dinner (hmmmm, I wonder why she asked me to bake something?!). Although I love carrot cake, I have never made it (gasp!), so I thought I'd give it a whirl since it seems like a very spring-like, Easter dessert to me. I mean, carrots & bunnies....they go hand in hand, right?

As you can see, I took these carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting a step further to make them "bird nests." Fun! The family appreciated my efforts to be festive. :)

The recipe I followed was really quite simple. The only step that took a little more time than usual was grating the carrots, but thanks to my food processor, it really didn't add that much time! Oh, and another great point about this recipe? It's Cooking Light! Check out the recipe here.

As you can see, the recipe calls for crushed pineapple and pecans, in addition to the grated carrots. I chose not to add the pecans (simply because I did not want my cupcakes to have a crunch to them). The pineapple is a fabulous addition to this recipe. It definitely makes the cake more moist, I think! Overall, this cake was pretty dense too, and I think that may also be attributed to the pineapple (and possibly the "weight" of the carrots too). The whole fam really enjoyed these cupcakes. They had just the right amount of sweetness to them, and both the carrot and pineapple flavors really came through. I love a moist cupcake, so these were top-notch in my book!

The batter doesn't look all that appetizing, but don't let that fool you. It tastes great, I promise. ;-)

I obviously had to use cute Easter cupcake liners!

I also toasted some coconut to use for the "bird nests," as you'll see shortly... It's super simple to toast coconut!

Mmmm, cream cheese frosting. It's always great to have a classic cream cheese frosting in your repertoire, so if you don't have one yet, I'd recommend this one! It was deeelish. Also of note, I only used about 2.5 cups of powdered sugar although the recipe calls for 3 cups.

Here's my little "decorating station" at my mom's kitchen table. :)

To make the "nests," I simply sprinkled some coconut around the outside of each cupcake and then placed a couple Cadbury mini eggs in the middle! You may recall that Cadbury mini eggs made it to an edition of my Friday Favorites a couple weeks ago. ;-) 

Too darn cute.

 Once again, Happy Easter, friends!

Healthy Carrot Muffins

Carrot muffins! No, it's not carrot cake....sorry! I was thinking about making carrot cake or cupcakes, but I decided against dessert, and instead, I made a breakfast (or snack!) item. Without the typical cream cheese frosting that accompanies a carrot cake, these carrot muffins are not really dessert-ish, but I suppose you could have them for dessert if you wanted to...they do have a bit of a sweetness to them! :)

I had a LOT of carrots on hand, which was essentially my main inspiration behind trying this recipe...I wanted to use some of them! I followed this Cooking Light recipe for Carrot Bread, so rest assured that it is a yummy, healthy, low-calorie option. I love those types of recipes!!

Overall, this was an incredibly easy recipe. It did not require an electric mixer, which made it very simple. The most time consuming part (which really wasn't all that bad!) was preparing the carrots. The recipe calls for boiling the carrots for about 15 minutes on the stove to make them tender, then processing them in a food processor or blender to puree them. Other than that, this was pretty much a no-fuss recipe! I like that it uses only whole wheat flour too...makes it even better. After making these, I thought that it would have been a good idea to make them even healthier by adding flaxseed...but alas, I did not think of that ahead of time! Maybe I'll do that the next time I make this recipe.

Here are a couple pictures of the carrot preparation... And then you have the carrots mashed up and mixed with sugar before adding the remaining liquids. And finally, a picture of the batter all ready to go!

As you can see here, I actually used some Valentine's paper baking cups that I had... It's about a week after Valentine's Day, but I thought it'd be fun to use them still!

I ended up baking the muffins for roughly 16 or 17 minutes at 350 degrees. The actual recipe that is provided in the link above is for bread, so I obviously had to shorten the baking time for muffins! It made exactly 12 muffins too. So, judging by the nutrition information listed for the bread online, since the bread makes 12 servings, one muffin is approximately 151 calories. Not bad at all! I might suggest adding just a few calories though by putting a teeny bit of margarine on your muffin. Delicious! And they are best served warm, I think. I am already looking forward to having a delicious, healthful muffin tomorrow morning with a cup of coffee. Great way to start the day, I'd say. :)