Valentine's Candy Bouquet

I made this candy bouquet for a raffle prize at a charity event. I am very pleased with how and turned out and now will be making one for my boys for Valentine's Day.

My Latest Addiction

I call this Caprese Toast. It is so very yummy I can't get enough of it. It all started by accident, because I was craving caprese salad, but I didn't have any large tomatoes. This only takes a few minutes to prepare and is very healthy and delicious.

Start out with french bread or italian bread. If you only have sandwich bread, toast it first.

Sprinkle or spray bread with olive oil

Sprinkle bread with balsamic vinegar

Top with sliced tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes

Top tomatoes with pieces of fresh mozzarella. I buy a fresh mozzarella ball, which I could eat like an apple.

Top with fresh basil, sea salt and black pepper.

This photo doesn't show fresh basil, since I live in the arctic north, but it would be very tasty.

I bake these in my toaster oven at 350 until the bread is crispy and the cheese is melted.

ENJOY!

"Little Cherry Pies"

I made these yummy cherry pies today in about 10 minutes. I couldn't find a recipe on-line to (using the ingredients I had on hand), so I winged it. They turned out so good!

My 13 year old son said they were better than McDonald's. Coming from him this was a GREAT compliment!

I only used 4 ingredients:

(1) package of refrigerated store bought pie crust (the kind you roll out)-don't use it cold or it won't roll out with out tearing

(1) can of cherry pie filling

(1) tablespoon of melted butter

(1) crystal decorating sugar

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees

Grease a cookie sheet. I used about a 1/2 tablespoon of butter, since I didn't have baking spray.

Roll out the dough onto a cutting board or counter top. I used a small glass round bowl and pressed it into the dough to cut out crust circles. The circles do not have to be exact, can be somewhat overlapping, and if you don't cut big circles you can get about 5 circles out of one dough sheet. Using both rolls of dough you can get approximatly 10 little pies.

Place a spoonful of cherry pie filling onto the center of each circle. You may have to experiment in order to determine how much filling will work. I used the cherry filling directly from the can without adding anything to it. If you use canned cherries vs. cherry pie filling you will need to add sugar to cherries.

Fold over the dough to make a half circle and crimp the edges with a fork. This is the tricky part. If you have too much filling, you won't be able to do this without the cherries oozing out around the edges. I didn't are too much, since I would rather have too much filling and I didn't care if they were pretty. If you want them to be pretty cut back on the amount of filling you use.

Place the filled pie crusts onto your greased cookie sheet and using a pastry brush cover the entire pie surface with the melted butter. You will only need to do this to the pie tops and around the crimped edges. Sprinkle each pie generously with sugar.

Cook the pies for about 5-7 minutes at 450 until the bottoms of the pies are firm and brown.

When the bottoms look done turn down the oven to about 325-330 degrees and continue to bake for about 10 minutes or until the tops are flaky and golden brown and a tiny bit of filling is bubbling out around the edges.

Since this was successful, use any type of pie filling. I would suggest, if you are going to use apple or peach, add a little bit of cinnamon to the pie filling.

Enjoy!

One Dollar/5 Minute Craft Project

This project was so simple!

It is a simple 8 X 10 picture frame with glass, purchased from Dollar Tree

Chose what ever design you want by using scrapbook paper and cut to fit the frame as you would a picture.

Dollar Tree also has a package of 4 black dry erase pens.

Total cost 1.25