Really great tofu cookies

I know I just scared you by writing the words tofu and cookies in the same sentence. But seriously, these cookies were so delicious, you would never know there was any tofu in them!
I mixed them up with my little girl today to warm us up, it is freeeeezing outside.

Hope you will give these a try!

Tofu Peanut Butter Cookies
12 and 1/3 oz package of firm silken tofu (aseptic Morinu works best)
1/3 cup natural peanut butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 and 1/2 cups regular oats
1/4 cup vegan chocolate chips, you can use any chips you like
Preaheat oven to 350
In a large bowl cream the tofu, the PB, the vanilla and the brown sugar.
Add in the flours, bak powder, and oats to the mixture. Stir thoroughly till well combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. These cookies do not spread out at all, so you do not need to leave space in between. Bake 20-25 minutes till golden brown. Makes about 30 cookies.
Enjoy!

December Craziness

Could December get any crazier?? Seriously??
We have had so much craziness going on I have not had much time to cook.
We celebrated Diane's birthday Monday and then rush rush rush everyday since then.

Today was one of those days where if it could go wrong, it went wrong!
I got a groupon deal for a new local carpet cleaning place. $50 for a regularly $150 cleaning. They promised to clean 5 rooms and a hallway for that price. We set up for them to come between 8 and 10 am. I told them to call my cell phone since I would be at the dentist with 5 kids at 730am and they should let me know exactly what time they would show up. Well of course that did not work. They called my home phone while we were at the dentist and said, well, we will come after you call us back!!!! UGH!
So I called them as soon as we got home at 945 and they said they would be there by 1030.
Can you believe they showed up at 12 noon? OMG
So the guy comes and my friend was sitting at the house waiting since 8am. The guy tells her that our rooms are too big and he would have to charge us for 9 rooms, not for 5. Ok, um, there were no measurements in the deal as listed, and our rooms are not very big!!
So I call the manager of VClean and tell him how unhappy I am so far, the tech was 4 hours late, they called the wrong phone numbers. etc...
So the manager tells me to clean the whole house and get out some stains in 3 rooms, it will be an extra $170, but since he is being nice, it will only be $130.
Plus, he needs me to FAX him my actual credit card so he can charge my card immediately. While I am having this 30 minute conversation with the manager, the tech cannot start any work because they have not charged my card yet!! I go to fax them my credit card(have you ever heard of doing this before?) and I try 4 times and call back. Oh yeah, the fax machine was not on. So the tech was working for the past 4 hours and he is still not done and does not think he can get some of the stains out.
Can today get any longer? I don't think so!
I will leave you with a great easy and totally not healthy recipe but it is fun for my kids to make themselves in December. Enjoy!!
Peppermint Oreo Truffles
1 pkg (8oz) of Philly cream cheese, softened, I have used 1/2 the fat kind and it came out fine
1 pkg (1lb) Oreo cookies, the peppermint ones are really yummy, or use plain ones too, finely crushed
2 pkg(16 squares) of Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate, melted
Mix cream cheese and 3 cups of cookie crumbs until well blended. Kids love to smoosh this part with a spoon.
Shape this mixture into 48 small balls, about 1 inch each. Dip each ball into the Ghirardelli chocolate that you have melted. Let cool on waxed paper covered baking sheet. Roll in remaining oreo crumbs or crushed peppermint candies. Refrigerate 1 hour till firm. Store in tightly covered container in the fridge.

My Baby Girl is 3~

I cannot believe my baby girl is Three! Yesterday we celebrated her birthday and all day long, she kept asking me, "When will it be my birthday Mom?" I kept saying, it is your birthday honey. "No!" she kept arguing. Finally, I asked her, "What will make today your birthday?" and she told me what she was waiting for, her cake!!!

So we made her cake, a delicious chocolate vegan cake with chocolate glaze. This cake is so yummy but more importantly so easy to make. You put all the ingredients right into the pan that you then bake it in! Could that be any easier? The glaze is so easy and makes the cake look pretty and taste great too. I highly recommend this cake when your kids want a chocolatey dessert that is good for them too.

Best Chocolate Cake Ever
1 and 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup hot water
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup oil (I used canola)
1 tsp white or apple cider vinegar
Chocolate Glaze
1/2 cup sugar
4 TB vegan margarine
2 TB any non dairy milk
2 TB cocoa powder
2 tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 350. In an 8x8 pan mix together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt with a fork. Make sure it is well blended. Add in the water, vinegar, vanilla and oil. Mix together again till well blended. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides if needed. Bake for 30 minutes till a knife in the center comes out clean.  Coll for 2 hours.
When it is cool, make the glaze.  In a small saucepan bring sugar, margarine, milk and cocoa to a boil.  Stir frequently. Reduce the heat to a simmer and keep stirring for 2 more minutes. Take off the flame and stir for another 5 minutes, it will be starting to thicken a little. Stir in the vanilla.  After 5 minutes of stirring, pour the delicious glaze over the cake immediately.  Glaze dries really quickly, so spread it immediately and add any sprinkles NOW! Let the cake cool and set, it takes about an hour. ENJOY!
As you can see my little girl loved it.

Pre Thanksgiving Muffins

We love the kids teachers so much that we wanted to bake them a treat for Thanksgiving Week. These muffins are moist, delicious, and great to share with family and friends.

Pumpkin Butterscotch Muffins
1 and 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 TB butter
1/4 cup applesauce
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 6 oz pkg of butterscotch chips
Preheat oven to 350
Grease mini muffin pan or put in mini muffin papers. You can also turn these into regular size muffins and bake them longer.
Stir together flour, brown sugar, white sugar,cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
Whisk together the eggs, melted butter, applesauce and pumpkin in a separate bowl. (Make sure the butter is melted and cooled off or it will cook the eggs.)
Combine both bowls and stir gently. Add in all the butterscotch chips.
Bake each muffin for 12 minutes. Do a toothpick test to make sure they are done.
These muffins were so good.
The teachers gobbled them right up.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Xigo Health, staying healthy for the holidays

Happy Thanksgiving week everybody!!
I was busy making cookies and muffins this past weekend and freezing them for the big day.
We also like to give all the kids teachers a special treat as well. This leads to a lot of baking in our house.
I was asked if I would be able to participate in a staying healthy over the holiday campaign.
I was sent a 30 day sample of Xigo Daily Immune Defense and so far so good. It is easy to take, just chew and swallow 1 tablet a day. I was afraid it would be a chalky or medicinal taste. Boy, was I wrong, it tastes great!!  It tastes very orangey, and who does not like a sweet orange to start off your morning, especially if it will keep you healthy while traveling and enjoy your holiday plans.  I will update after the holiday week craziness and let you know if it is still working!

This is what it looks like and can be purchased in many stores across the US.
Yesterday my 2 year old told me she wanted to make lasagna for dinner. But by herself. Ok, I put out all the ingredients, set her up on her Learning Tower and grabbed my camera.
I think she is pretty impressive.
Watch her video here.

If that link does not work you can watch it on youtube here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U70FwhmWhHA
I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

Been away for a week

I have been away from my brand new blog for the past week.
Why you may ask??
Well as a Mom of 5 kids, illness and sickness is a given.
We had strep, bad colds and coughs, and a banged up knee, but we are doing better now.
My 2 older boys also started basketball after school.
That means everyday they each have practice or a game that requires them to be picked up at school at taken to another building where one has practice from 4:30-6 and then the other one has practice from 6-8. No family dinners in this house for a while.
Both boys made the teams, but boy is this schedule annoying!
We have been busy cooking, just no time to take pictures and post.
We have made some delicious tofu stirfries, pumpkin butterscotch muffins, and vegan chocolate chip cookies.
We have some great recipes to make and post for Thanksgiving next week.
And, I will have a great giveaway for an amazing new product after Thanksgiving.
Thanks for reading!

Easy and Healthy Eggplant Parmesan

I got the most beautiful eggplants at the farmers market last week and I forgot to use them. They were looking a bit sad and I did not have much time, so I created this recipe on the spot. No dipping the eggplant rounds in egg and breadcrumbs, no frying or baking the pieces.
This recipe is soooo easy, you can make it in 5 minutes.

Easy Eggplant Parmesan
Slice your eggplant into fairly thin slices and put into a large dish that has been sprayed with PAM.
I just filled up my 9x13 pan. I would recommend only one layer of eggplant, use two pans if you have a really big eggplant.
Put a little sauce, or a lot if you like a lot, on each round of eggplant and smoosh it around.
Sprinkle your favorite cheese on top.
I made one pan for my vegan hubby with Daiya cheese on top instead of regular cheese.
I covered the pan with foil and baked at 400 for 30 minutes.
Serve it with whole grain pasta or a slice of whole grain bread and some fresh broccoli.
Easy and so delicious!
Enjoy!!


I have 2 photos for you.
The first is the vegan eggplant parmesan made with Daiya cheese and the second is the regular made with Mozzerella cheese. These pictures do not do this recipe justice, it is soooo good, I ate the whole pan.

Kids say the darndest things

My little girl is hilarious. I know I am biased, but seriously, she is so funny.

We were upstairs getting ready for school. The dryer bell went off and I said, "Miss D, can you please quickly take the clothes out of the dryer and put them in the basket for Mommy?" She said,  "Sure Mommy I can do that."  She then started to take out each item one by one, tell me who it belonged to, smoothed it out, started to fold it, was in no rush at all.
"Honey, we are in a rush, can you hurry please?  Just put all the clothes from the dryer into the basket, we can fold them later."
 She responded by saying, "I cant hear you princess!!!" I turned around, tried not to laugh, and she continued, wagging her finger at me, "And yes, I am calling YOU princess!!
Later that day, she stopped by her play makeup table and said she needed to do my makeup. Again, not the right time of day, it was time to pickup her brothers from school and we needed to get going

and she looks at me with love in her eyes and said, "I just wanted to make you beautiful Mommy."
How can you argue with a 2 year old's logic?
I hope she continues to make me laugh till 120!

Mrs Prindable's Dark Chocolate Covered Apple

Last month I was asked if my family would like to review a Mrs Prindable's Dark Chocolate Covered Apple, a new holiday flavor.
Of course we would!! Desserts are huge in this house and a yummy chocolate covered apple was sure to be a big hit.
It was a cold Friday night when the doorbell rang. My 6 yr old ran to see who it was. A small package he explained, but it looks like a good one. Everyone quickly gathered around, a chocolate apple had arrived in a cute white box.

The kids could hardly wait to see what would be inside.

We opened up the white box to find a beautiful purple box tied with a gold ribbon. The kids were starting to get delirious, open the box faster Mom!! We want to eat what is inside!

Inside the pretty purple box was a huge apple wrapped in plastic and a pretty red ribbon around the wooden dowel. It looked amazing and fresh and smelled incredible. I put the apple on a cutting board and put my sharp knife in to make the first cut.

I made one small cut and tons of chocolate fell off. These pieces were quickly eaten up by the 5 waiting kids.  After one more slice we had our first piece cut out.  Again, many pieces of chocolate fell off, but the kids did not care, they just wanted to eat it. Each piece seemed to make more chocolate fall off but the chocolate was yummy on or off the apple as the kids explained to me.

Pretty soon everyone had a piece of sweet, yummy, appley, chocolatey, caramelly goodness. Even the pickiest of eaters loved the apple.

After slicing off 5 nice size pieces this is how much we had left. Each of my kids got 2 large pieces. It was a perfect sized apple for our group. My 6 year old joked as he read the accompanying paper, "This apple will last in your refrigerator up to 3 weeks." Our apple lasted in our house for 20 minutes!!! But I would imagine if you are a smaller group, it might last a little longer, or maybe not!

My 6 year old says it was the best apple he ever had. He loved the combination of the sour apple, the chewy caramel, and the sweet chocolate.

My 12 year old really liked it, he actually ran around collecting all the pieces of chocolate that people were dropping as they ate their apples. He thought a cool idea would be to core the apple and take out the seeds and put some chocolate inside too, or maybe caramel and chocolate inside.  My 2 year old little girl did not like the caramel part, she peeled it off and gave it to me and said it was too sticky for her teeth. She loved the apple and the chocolate pieces the best.

My 9 year old loved it and he is very picky. He does not like much.  He loved the sour apple flavor together with the sweet caramel and chocolate. He did not like how messy he got afterwards though.

Overall this apple was a huge hit. My husband said it would be a great gift to receive at holiday time. He said he would love to open up one of these in his office and surprise everyone.  My 14 yo said it was the best dessert he ever had. Wow, that is high praise. He ate the most apple and he was sad that it was gone so quickly.

My 2 year old little girl woke up this morning and asked for another yummy apple. I pulled out a regular apple from the fridge, and she said, no, I want the yummy apple with the chocolates on it. Sorry baby girl, that is all gone, you will have to wait until someone sends us one again.

My overall thoughts are as follows:
Tons of the chocolate bits fell off with each cut of the knife. But as my teen said, WHO CARES? They are just as good on or off the apple!
The apple was packaged beautifully and I think it would make a great gift.
The apple inside was fresh, juicy, and tart, a great complement to the sweetness of the toppings.
The apple was huge, after sharing with our family of 7 we were all full afterwards, it was plenty of dessert for all of us to share.
I liked that the caramel was not too sticky, which sometimes happens with caramel topping. My teeth are sensitive to that, but I could enjoy this apple fully. It did not get too stuck in my teeth at all.
There you have it, our review. We hope you will consider sending one of these yummy apples to your family and friends this holiday!!

Welcome

Thanks for stopping by my new blog.
I will be posting recipes, funny things my kids do, reviews of foods, products and more.
I would love to connect with you on twitter or facebook
I look forward to getting to know and share some great recipes along the way!
@cookwith5kids