Archives for August 2014

Friday Family Favorite: Simple Homemade Margarita

August 29, 2014 by Chandra Leave a Comment

I have a special treat for you today! This is hands down my favorite party drink. It’s fail proof and delicious. Whenever I make this I always share and there’s never a drop leftover. I’m going to warn you—this is a strong margarita!

To me the secret in this recipe is that there is that you add some lemon juice in with the classic lime juice that you see in many recipes! I highly recommend fresh lemon and lime juice. You will appreciate the fresh squeezed juice in this recipe. It’s worth the extra step.

I prefer a margarita on the rocks but with this recipe is somewhere in between. The recipe adds some ice that is blended to mix the ingredients together.

Try it out and let me know what you think! This is definitely a go to recipe for me and I hope it will become one of yours.

Simple Homemade Margarita

Prep time

15 mins

Total time

15 mins

A perfect refreshing summer drink. Homemade with just a few ingredients!

Author: The Daily Dabble

Recipe type: Drink

Cuisine: Mexican

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

1 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
¼ cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 cups triple sec
1¾ cups white tequila (the cheap stuff is perfect)
5 cups ice
coarse salt for glass rims
lime or lemon slices for glass rims

Instructions

Put all ingredients into blender
Mix until well blended and no ice chunks remain
If salted rim is preferred rub rim of glass with slice of lime or lemon.
Dip glass into coarse salt
Pour margarita into glass and enjoy!

Rainbow Swirl Cupcake

August 28, 2014 by Chandra 1 Comment

These rainbow swirl cupcakes turned out just like I had imagined! I have girly-girls and they love all things pink, purple and yellow. With a little upfront work on the icing preparation these cupcakes come together much easier than you think. The kids go crazy for the added color. One of my favorite things about this is that no two cupcakes are the same. Some have more purple or yellow or pink but they look great together or by themselves on a plate!

If you want to try out your own rainbow swirl icing here are the steps that I took.

Make a batch of your favorite icing and your favorite cupcakes
Divide the icing into bowls for the desired number of finished colors. 2-3 colors work best. If you add more than 3 colors they tend to get too mixed up and you loose the desired impact. Choose colors that are vibrant and contrasting from one another. Opposite colors on the color wheel are a good place to start.
Add gel food colors and stir to completely mix
Insert star tip into piping bag.
With a spatula place first icing color bag leaving space for other colors. The picture below is a visual of the piping bag filled with the 3 icing colors. Notice how the colors start to merge together-that’s OK it helps the colors mix together.
Add additional colors on top.
These colors will merge together but that helps create the swirl
Pipe icing in swirls on cupcake

I hope you will try this out. I’d love to see some new combinations and how they turned out!

Rainbow Swirl Cupcake Icing

Prep time

30 mins

Total time

30 mins

Turn your favorite icing into a masterpiece with a few added steps

Author: The Daily Dabble

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Serves: 12

Ingredients

Your favorite icing-needs to be thick enough to pipe (American buttercream is perfect)
2-3 gel food colors
Favorite piping tip (I used a large star tip)
Piping bag

Instructions

Make a batch of your favorite icing
Divide the icing into bowls for the desired number of finished colors (2-3 works best)
Add gel food colors and stir to completely mix
Insert start tip into piping bag.
With a spatula place first icing color bag leaving space for other colors
Add additional colors on top.
These colors will merge together but that helps create the swirl
Pipe icing in swirls on cupcake

Easy Fondant Cupcake Topper

August 22, 2014 by Chandra Leave a Comment

Do you want to know a little secret? This cupcake topper is quite possibly the easiest cupcake topper and it is so simple that it is almost embarrassing to post!

You only need 2 things-

Fondant
Toothpick

Roll the fondant out to about 1/4″ thickness and use your favorite cookie cutter to stamp out a shape.
Insert a toothpick into each shape.

Now comes the hard part (just kidding) you have to let them dry out. Let them dry on one side and then flip over and let them dry on the other side. I let them dry out for several days and will just flip them over whenever I’m thinking about it.

If you want the toppers to be really hard then either make them out of gum paste or a combination of fondant and gum paste. I find it much easier to roll out the fondant than I do rolling out gum past so my preference is a combination of them!

This is my favorite fondant and gum paste. I LOVE the taste of this fondant and it is very easy to work with. I always have several colors in my pantry!

Kids love that the toppers are editable and if you’ve used fondant or the fondant/gum paste combination they taste better than the pure gum paste. Just remember the more fondant the softer and the more gum paste the harder the toppers will be.

See how simple that was? You can get super creative or just keep it simple like I did here! Try it out and let me know how your’s turned out.

Make your own baby food-It’s easier than you think!

August 21, 2014 by Chandra Leave a Comment

DIY your own baby food

Have you ever thought about making your own baby food? I (briefly) thought about it with my first 2 children and now with our 3rd baby I wonder what I was so afraid of! I have to give credit to my Vitamix blender. Chances are that if I hadn’t gotten this for my birthday this year that I would still be purchasing my baby food instead of making it. I got a Vitamix blender about the same time that Matthew was ready to start eating baby food. My mixer has a fancy “puree” setting and I thought I’d give it a try. It turns out that making baby food couldn’t have been any easier. Matthew is now 10 months old and is transitioning to table food. Nearly all of his baby food has been made in my Vitamix blender. In the early days of baby food you want just one type of food and you want it pureed smooth. If you would normally cook the food then you should cook the food before pureeing. For example, I’d steam peas, carrots, bake sweet potato, butternut squash, and I’d cook apples and pears on the stovetop. Things like strawberries, blueberries (things that you eat uncooked worked fine just pureed) don’t need any cooking.

Baby food ready to puree

Here are my quick tips on making baby food that your little one will love!

Stage 1 baby food (one type of food)

Prep your fruit or vegetable by cleaning and cooking if necessary

Baby food prep
Single type of food in blender and puree until smooth
Pour into individual containers for freezing or eating. Keep enough out for 1-2 days and freeze the rest.
When ready to eat the frozen food defrost in the refrigerator or on the counter.
You will find lots of storage examples on the internet but I stuck with simple plastic disposable containers. These are my favorite and we use them for LOTS of things in our house. I already had these containers in my house and when I started making the food I debated how to store the prepared food. I decided to give these a try and then purchase something later if this didn’t work. Well, Matthew is 10 months old and we are using these containers so they have worked great for us!

Baby food storage

Stage 2 baby food (2 types of food, still pureed)

Stage 2 baby food simply takes 2 or more of the stage 1 baby food and combines them together!
This is where you can get creative and mix a variety of things together. A good way to get ideas is to take a trip to your grocery store and see what the ready made baby food is combining together.
I found that apples and pears really added well to lots of things and Matthew loved it because it made things sweet.
Matthew is a big eater and for most of this baby food I added in a filler–rice, oatmeal, mixed grains. This not only helped in filling up Matthew it made the food thicker and was much easier to spoon feed!

Stage 3 baby food (chunky baby food)

This is the stage that we are in today! We are in the process of transitioning Matthew from baby food to table food.
This stage of baby food had been a little harder for me. I want Matthew to eat what we are eating but prepping baby food everyday is not something that I’m in the habit of doing.
I have 2 basic ways of making food in this stage.

Use the stage 2 baby food and add additional items that are not pureed. Put everything in the blender and pulse until the food is the consistency that your baby can handle
Take whatever you are fixing for dinner and pulse in the blender until desired consistency…this has worked well for spaghetti and meatballs!

That’s about it for now! I hope that you try making your own food. Add a comment for any questions you have and I’ll do my best to help out.

Time flies when you are having fun!

August 19, 2014 by Chandra Leave a Comment

Everyone says that time flies when you are having fun! Well we’ve had a super fun summer and boy does it seem like time flew by. My girls are already back in school (second grade and kindergarten) and I’m having a hard time believing that the fun days of summer are gone. Matthew is missing his sisters during the day but he sure does love going to the bus stop in the afternoon!

We had lots of fun this summer and it seems like every day was pack full of activities. From the beach, to swim team, to camps, and checking out new parks we made the most of our summer break.

I have lots of fun things planned now that we are back to our school days schedule. Check back often and let me know what you thing! Hope to see you soon.