Snow on the Mountain Recipe – Lightened Up

November 23, 2015September 22, 20211 Comment

Snow on the Mountain Recipe Lightened Up

This simple, budget-friendly recipe is a Midwest favorite that combines chicken and rice with fresh veggies and crunchy Chow Mein noodles.

I have to admit, versions of this recipe sat in my cookbook unused for years. This was one of my husband’s favorite meals growing up, and my mother-in-law had provided me all his favorites years ago. However I never made it, mostly because anything that uses coconut as a key ingredient is not edible, in my book.

Recently, however, I relented. We were in a meal rut, and I was looking for ways to lighten up some of my existing recipes. Plus, my mother-in-law had never led me astray before! I’ve seen many versions of this recipe online, and I have to say her’s is the best I’ve found. However, I adjusted the recipe just a bit to suit our tastes and using what we had on hand.

So Fresh; So Clean: A Round-Up of Healthy Recipes my Kids Actually Like! | Five Marigolds

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Halloween Treats Round-Up

October 5, 2015September 22, 20213 Comments

Spooktacular Halloween Recipes

Halloween may not be my favorite holiday in the world, but I do love getting festive with my food! Here is a round-up of some of my Halloween treats and recipes.

Mean, Green Halloween Punch with Spooky Skewers This refreshing punch with fun and spooky drink stirrers is sure to please at your Halloween gathering!

Skeleton guts made with little smokies and your favorite barbecue sauce make a fun Halloween party appetizer.

Monster Mix Simply toss whatever you have on hand: I use popcorn, pretzel sticks, Cheerio’s, M&M’s, candy corn, and a few mini Oreos. Just a little effort goes a long way with this snack. I once brought it to a cross country meet in a ziplock with some plastic cups for serving, and I don’t want to brag here – but phrases like “awesome mom” and “best cook ever” got thrown around by my kids and their friends quite a bit. No need to tell them this took all of 2 minutes to pull together.

Frankenstein Pudding This one is as easy as mixing a few drops of green food coloring in your vanilla cook & serve pudding and crumbling some Oreos on top. Draw a Frankenstein face on the outside of your clear container with a dry erase marker.

Halloween Treat Round-up: Frankenstein Halloween Pudding | Five Marigolds

Mummy Pizzas and Hot Dogs It doesn’t get any easier than wrapping strips of crescent rolls around a hot dog and baking them, or DIY mini pizzas using string cheese for the mummy wraps, but it still gets me some serious street cred with the littles.

Halloween Treat Round-up: Mummy Mini Halloween Pizzas | Five Marigolds

I made the eyeballs for the Mummy Hot Dogs using slices of string cheese and cutting out a hole using a straw. Then, using the same straw to place a perfectly sized olive slice in the hole. I really did that. Should I be ashamed right now?

Halloween Treat Round-up: Mummy Hot Dogs with Mozzerella and Olive Eyeballs| Five Marigolds

Jack-O-Lantern (and Minecraft Creeper) Stuffed peppers are a regular meal on our rotation, so we love to make it a little more festive in October. We sometimes also stuff them with spaghetti when we’re trying to make our monsters a little more gory with guts.

Halloween Treats Round up: Stuffed Pepper Jack-O-Lanterns and Creepers | Five Marigolds

This year, I even made a Creeper Stuffed Pepper for my Minecraft – obsessed son!

Candy Corn Jell-O Parfaits These are as easy as they look. Layer orange Jell-O over cooled, firm lemon Jell-O gelatin. Top with whipped cream and serve!

Monster Cookies First, get these fun Wilton eyeball candies and then follow this recipe.

Halloween Treat Round-up: Monster Halloween Cookies | Five Marigolds

Caramel Apple Bar Okay this one isn’t Halloween, per say, but what a perfect treat for a Halloween Costume party or Autumn gathering? Learn more about how I pulled this together, here.

Even better, make your own to-die-for salted caramel dip!

Three Refreshing Signature Summer Cocktails

July 25, 2015September 22, 2021Leave a comment

A signature drink is a fun and refreshing addition to your summer soiree! We recently had a BBQ and served these three drinks that were a big hit!

Wicked Watermelon Margaritas (4 servings) source: Bedsider.org

Mix the following ingredients in the blender and serve with a wedge of watermelon or slice of lime!

3 cups cubed seedless watermelon, frozen
1/4 C fresh lime juice
1/2 C white tequila
1 cup triple sec
1 T sugar

Moscato Strawberry Lemonade

Mix the following ingredients in a large pitcher and garnish glasses with lemon slices.

1 bottle pink moscato
6 C lemonade (I used Simply Lemonade)
1/4 C strawberry vodka
Frozen Strawberries

Popsicle Moscato

This one is super complicated: pour three parts pink moscato and one part Simply Lemonade into a cup and place an unwrapped popsicle in the glass. Drink once the popsicle has melted!

These are my three favorite tried and true summer cocktails. Do you have a signature drink? Tell me about it in the comments below!

My 3 Favorite Recipes for Homemade Ice Cream

June 14, 2015September 22, 202111 Comments

With the official begin of summer quickly approaching, we’ve been having a lot of fun making homemade ice cream again. We’re huge fans of ice cream, and even made it the central theme for Eve’s birthday party one year! My very favorite homemade ice cream continues to be vanilla ice cream with a drop or two of lemon extract, but the kids have loved creating their own ice cream recipes.

Here are our favorite egg-free ice cream recipes – no ice cream maker required!

Birthday Cake Batter!
Malted Milk Ball
Cookie Dough Frozen Yogurt (my personal favorite of the bunch!)

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? Do any of the above three make your list?

Healthy (ish) Breakfast Cookies

February 16, 2015February 20, 2023Leave a comment

You will love these delicious and healthy breakfast cookies. With wholesome ingredients and honey-sweetened goodness, they are sure to be a hit in your home.

Are you tired of the same old breakfast routine? Want to try something new and healthy, but don’t have the time to cook? Look no further than healthy breakfast cookies!

Healthy Breakfast Cookies featuring Bananas, Oats, Honey, Almond Butter and Chocolate Chips | Five Marigolds

Healthy breakfast cookies are not only easy to make but also packed with nutrients to start your day off right. They are perfect for those busy mornings when you don’t have time for a sit-down breakfast.

The banana and honey combine to give it a natural sweetness, and the almond butter and oats provide a protein boost and loads of fiber. And who doesn’t love chocolate chips, right?

These healthy breakfast cookies are not only great for breakfast, but they are also perfect for a grab-and-go snack on the run as well.

I’ll often mix up the dry ingredients before I go to bed, and in the morning just add the banana, nut butter, and honey and pop them in the oven. So good! Here is the recipe with my preferred ingredients.

Ingredients You Need:

2 1/3 C. quick oats
3/4 t. salt
2 bananas, mashed
1 C. nut butter (I prefer almond butter)
1/4 C. honey
1/3 C. mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Making your Healthy Breakfast Cookies

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Mix all the ingredients together, folding in the chocolate chips at the end.
>Scoop 3 tablespoons per cookie onto a parchment-lined baking sheet – I used my Pampered Chef large scoop> to make easy work of this – and gently flatten to the desired shape.
Bake for 15 minutes and let cool on a baking rack.

I have a serious sweet tooth in the morning, so I’ve long been on the hunt for sweet breakfast recipes that are healthy’ish AND taste good. It’s been a long journey! After a testing a lot of recipes and coming up short, I’ve finally found something that balances a little of both – it’s super yummy, and the ingredients are in the healthy’ish zone that I can feel good about serving my kids. Rich flavor – with no flour, butter or refined sugar.Another thing I love about these cookies is that they are really satisfying. I’m almost always hungry within 30 minutes of breakfast, but not with these. Ladies and Gentleman: I proudly introduce you to Banana Chocolate Chip Breakfast Cookies.

Makes around 15 cookies. These stay good for about three days or can be frozen for later. Be sure to separate cookies with parchment paper in storage.

Are you a fan of breakfast cookies? Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Source: Sally’s Baking Addiction

Apple Pie Bread

January 26, 2015September 22, 20214 Comments

One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is make sweet breads that we can snack on all week long. While they’re not always the healthiest recipes, I like that they’re homemade and a less processed than anything we’d pick up at the store. I always cook sweet breads in an 8×8 square pan. I find that the bread cooks more evenly and we avoid the crispy heels that none of us are a fan of. We pack them in lunch bags for dessert or for an after school snack.

Our favorite is banana bread, but it’s safe to say this Apple Pie Bread is now going into the rotation!

Apple Pie Bread | Five Marigolds

I got the recipe from Pip and Ebby and made a few small modifications:

Ingredients:

BREAD

1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (you could also add 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, but I left this out)
3 large apples, peeled, sliced and cut into small chunks (about the size of diced onions), I used HoneyCrisp and Opal Apples, because that’s what I had on hand.

TOPPING

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9×9-inch glass pan with olive oil spray and set aside.
In a large bowl or stand mixer, combine the butter, brown sugar, milk, eggs and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until mixture is creamy. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Gradually add the flour mixture to the large bowl and mix until fully incorporated. Fold in the apples and pour into the oiled pan.
To make the topping, combine 2 tablespoons of melted butter with 1/2 cup each of flour and brown sugar. Mix with a fork until crumbly and sprinkle evenly over the top of the batter – I used only 1/2 of the mixture, just enough to cover the surface. Bake in the preheated oven for 55 minutes, checking for doneness starting at 45 minutes by inserting a toothpick into the center of the bread.
Cut into 16 squares and serve warm. Want to really go for the “wow” factor? Drizzle just a little ice cream caramel over the top. Oh. Yes. I. Did.

Do you prep snacks and meals? I’d love to hear your tips, below!

Homemade Birthday Cake Ice Cream

July 28, 2014September 22, 20217 Comments

We’ve established that I’m a big fan of ice cream. But, cake. Oh how I love cake, too! Eve chose Birthday Cake ice cream as one of her flavors for our ice cream truck and it didn’t take me any convincing to agree. I set to work researching recipes, but yet again found that most recipes called for eggs, which was not what I was going for.

So took my favorite ideas from the interwebs, then adapted a basic vanilla ice cream recipe to create this fabulous birthday explosion for the tastebuds.

What you’ll need:

1 C. Whole Milk
1/4 C. Granulated Sugar
1 Box Yellow Cake Mix, separated (I used Funfetti)
2 C. Heavy Whipping Cream
1 t. Vanilla Extract
Buttermilk Icing (I made 1/2 of this recipe and used about 1/2 of that. You could also use store bought icing!)
Sprinkles, if desired

What to do:

Reserve half of your cake mix, and prepare the remainder in an 8″ or 9″ round pan. When it’s done, remove it from the pan and place it in your freezer.
Place small drops of buttermilk icing on a small sheet of freezer paper, and then place it in the freezer to set up. I used an icing bag and a small round tip to make mine uniform because I was photographing it, but you don’t need to make these pretty. I also colored my icing to make it festive and pretty.
Mix the milk, sugar, and 1/2 C. cake mix until the sugar and mix are dissolved. Stir in the heavy cream and vanilla, and place the mixture in the fridge.
Cube 1-2 cups of the frozen cake into the size of croutons.
Place the liquid mixture into your ice cream maker* about 20 minutes until it thickens. Then, slowly pour the 1-2 cups of cake cubes and desired sprinkles into the machine until it is lightly mixed.
Place the mixture into a sealed container in the freezer for at least 2 hours or overnight.

*No ice cream maker? No problem. Freeze the chilled liquid mixture for 2-4 hours or until slightly thickened/frozen and then gently stir in the cake cubes and sprinkles. Chill overnight.

YUM! Your kids will beg you to make this recipe again and again. I hope you enjoy this recipe! Please tell me what you think in the comments below.

Sweet Treat: Easy Homemade Candy Buttons

July 24, 2014September 22, 20213 Comments

There’s just something about Candy Buttons. These nostalgic candies are surprisingly easy to make, and are perfect for birthdays, party favors, or just a fun sweet treat.

To make Candy Buttons, all you need to do is prepare a simple royal icing recipe. You can use the recipe listed on the can of Meringue Powder, but I used the following recipe, inspired by Sweet Sugarbelle:

What you’ll need:

1 lb. confectioner’s sugar (4 3/4 cups)
Meringue powder (about 1/4 cup)
1/3-1/2 cup water
1-2 tablespoons flavored extract (I used almond extract because it’s what I had on hand, but there are tons of fruity flavors at the craft store that would be fun to try!)
Food coloring
Electric mixer
Freezer paper
Icing bag and small round tip (or a resealable bag with a tiny corner cut off would work in a pinch)

To prepare:

Whisk the dry ingredients together.
In a separate measuring cup, mix the flavored extract into the water.
Slowly begin pouring the liquid mixture into the powder mixture while it mixes.
Mix the frosting on medium-high speed until the frosting forms stiff peaks (around 7 minutes)
Add food coloring to achieve desired color. (I first made pink frosting, and later added a few drops of blue to make purple to get two colors out of one batch.)

Next, tear off a sheet of freezer paper – large enough that you can fit a large batch of buttons on (you won’t cut the paper until these are dry).

Fill your pastry bag (I used my Pampered Chef Decorator Bottle Set*) with frosting and twist the top, removing excess air. Now, simply pipe evenly sized dots across the paper. If possible, print a template in advance and place it below the freezer paper. Be sure that the design will fit into your final packaging. If you’re using pretzel bags for your packaging, your design will need to be approximately 2.15 x 5″ to fit the pretzel bags I would be placing them in.

Let the Buttons sit overnight to dry. Any excess frosting will keep in a resealable bag refrigerated for two weeks.

Now for the fun! Once the Buttons have set up overnight, you can begin cutting the freezer paper to your desired shapes.

Package your Candy Buttons for the occasion. I placed them in Wilton pretzel bags that I got at JoAnn’s for $1.37 using my 40% off coupon. Think of the possibilities! Birthday party favors, Valentines, and more!

In addition to being featured on the fab blogs listed on the right of this blog, this post was also featured on Huckleberry Love.

Homemade Malted Milk Ball Ice Cream

July 21, 2014September 22, 20211 Comment

I just love the tasted of malted milk powder! As a kid, my mom would often top plain vanilla ice cream with sprinkling of this powder, and our favorite ice cream shop in town had a popular malt with 2x the malt powder. Yum!

I wanted to introduce my kids to the same flavor, so when we came up with the idea to create our own ice cream truck, I went on the search for a good Malted Milk Ball ice cream. Unfortunately every recipe I found included eggs, which I didn’t want to mess with. So, I came up with the following recipe using our Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker*.

What you’ll need:

1/2 C. Malted Milk Powder (I used the chocolate flavor because it was all I could find at the grocery)
1/2 C. Granulated Sugar
1/8 C. Brown Sugar
1 C. Whole Milk
2 C. Heavy Whipping Cream
1 T. Vanilla Extract
2 Cups Malted Milk Balls, chopped + more for garnishing, if desired

What to do:

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
Add the milk and use a mixer or whisk until the sugars are dissolved.
Stir in the cream and vanilla.
Set it in the fridge to cool at least 2 hours or overnight.
Pour the chilled mixture into your ice cream mixer* for 15-20 minutes or until it’s thickened.
Slowly pour the desired amount of Milk Balls into the drum while the ice cream mixes, or fold it in at the end.
Freeze in an airtight container for about 2 hours. Enjoy!

The result? Amaze-~~milk~~balls. Ahem.

What do you think? Are you a fan of Malted Milk Ball ice cream? I’d love to hear your favorite ice cream flavor in the comments below.

*No ice cream maker? No problem. Once you’ve reached step five, simply put the container in the freezer for 2 hours or until it begins to freeze slightly. Stir in the malted milk balls and stir after another hour to evenly distribute, if necessary.

Homemade Cookie Dough Frozen Yogurt

July 17, 2014October 14, 20222 Comments

Dub has the heart of an entrepreneur. And marketer. He’s always saying things like, “I want to open a restaurant and name it ____,” or, “I wish I was old enough to start my own ______ business.” I love this quality about him, so this summer I wanted to show him that he can bring his ideas to life.

We chose to hone his kidpreneurial ambitions through his dream of owning an ice cream truck because, ~~his mom really likes ice cream~~ what better timing than summer? He immediately knew he would name it “The Scoop” and his pitch would be “Get a scoop, double scoop at The Scoop!” I encouraged him and Eve to brainstorm some ice cream flavors. They each came up with two ideas and we’ve been enthusiastically experimenting to finalize our menu.

Today we landed on our first unanimous winner. It’s a frozen yogurt that’s just as tasty as ice cream, with a super-sweet cookie flavor blast for the tastebuds.

What you need:

1/2 C. unsalted butter, softened
1/2 C. packed brown sugar
1/4 C. granulated sugar
2 t. vanilla or almond extract (I’m a huge fan of the almond extract for this recipe!)
1 C. flour
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/2 C. mini chocolate chips
1/2 C. crushed crunchy-style chocolate chip cookies (around 4 Chips Ahoy cookies)
1 C. vanilla yogurt – I highly recommend Dannon Lite & Fit Vanilla yogurt for the best flavor

Directions:

First, mix the butter and sugars with a mixer.
Then, in a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Add chocolate chips and crushed cookies.
Gently fold the flour mixture into the sugar mixture until well combined, then thoroughly mix in the yogurt.
I like to use my CuisinArt Ice Cream maker for this recipe. Make sure to freeze the vessel for at least 48 hours before churning.
If you don’t have an ice cream maker, freeze overnight in a sealed container, then fight the urge to eat it for breakfast.

That’s it! No fancy ice cream maker necessary. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think!

For those of you who have asked where I got the ice cream container, I found it on a clearance shelf at TJ Maxx, but you can also buy it online in several colors on Amazon. I’m going to buy several so I can have several flavors sitting in my freezer at once 🙂

Five Marigolds

Living life colorfully, one DIY at a time.

Category: Food

Snow on the Mountain Recipe – Lightened Up