Blueberry Bliss Icebox Dessert

This last week my beautiful parents celebrated thirty-three years of marriage!! Truly, they are a lovely example of a Christ-centered, selfless, strong-and-sweet marriage. I was looking up the traditional and modern gifts for a thirty-third anniversary, and all I kept seeing for year 33 was amethyst.

Great! I'll just go buy an amethyst paperweight . . . not.

Earl Grey Breakfast Biscuits with Lemon Sugar Glaze

My daughter's play group is having a tea party this week, and we get to be the hostesses!!

Isn't it every little girl's dream to have a giant tea party with all her friends? (Okay, maybe not every girl's, but definitely mine!)

Another generous mommy offered to bring the culinary fare, but in the spirit of tea time, I made these breakfast biscuits just for me and Bundle to eat tomorrow morning.

I cannot wait!



...okay...I totally already had two....shhhh.



This recipe calls for both brewed tea and tea leaves, so the flavor is great! The honey lends a sticky texture to the batter, and the lemon gives it a perfect kick.

Enjoy with tea.


Earl Grey Breakfast Biscuits with Lemon Sugar Glaze

Ingredients:

Biscuits

1 cup cooled earl grey tea
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/2 c. melted butter
3/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
2 c. flour
1 regular bag of earl grey tea leaves, dry
1 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Lemon Sugar Glaze

1/2 c. powdered sugar
2 T. lemon juice
1 T. milk


Instructions:

Mix the sugars, butter, salt, vanilla and brewed tea with a hand mixer or stand mixer on high for one minute.

Brewed and cooled tea

Add the egg. Mix again for one minute. Add the flour cup by cup, mixing in between each addition.

Next add the tea leaves (I just cut the bag open, and dumped it into the batter!), lemon juice and honey. Mix again on high for one minute, or until batter is thick, sticky, and all ingredients are incorporated.

Scoop batter into small (about 2 inch) heaps onto a prepared baking sheet. I treated them sort of as a drop biscuit. This recipe makes about 2 dozen, so I placed the biscuits about 1 inch apart, 12 per sheet.

Bake at 325 for ten to twelve minutes, or until golden brown.


While baking, prepare the lemon sugar glaze:

Stir lemon juice, powdered sugar and milk together until it forms a creamy, thick icing.

When biscuits come out of the oven, transfer immediately to a cooling rack or serving platter. Drizzle generously with lemon sugar glaze.


And of course, as usual... taste them immediately!

Bundle tested them out this morning. Result: "More cookie!"

The lemon and earl grey flavors pair perfectly together, and I can't wait to make them again!



Enjoy with life. And tea. <3

Sweet Potato Pumpkin Pie

**Disclaimer** I am not a foodie, nor do I pretend to be {in public}. This recipe probably has a zillion things wrong with it from a gourmet standpoint. However, it's cheap, tastes great, and is fairly simple. Hope you enjoy it for what it is...a fun experiment!



For weeks I've been aching to make a pumpkin pie. This is mostly because I baked up several of our fall pumpkins a couple months ago, pureed them, and froze them. And they've sat patiently waiting for the holiday season to be baked into something delicious!!

Unfortuately, Thanksgiving and Christmas rendered zero extra time, energy or oven space, so alas, the pumpkin puree sat. Finally yesterday evening, {New Year's!}, I had the time, energy AND oven space to tackle a pumpkin pie. I had some sweet potatoes on hand that needed using, so I combined several recipes of mine and created this.

It turned out pretty tasty, even though it's technically not pumpkin pie season anymore!

Sweet Potato Pumpkin Pie {with Crumb Topping}

Ingredients:

Pie Crust:

1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 c. cold margarine
1/4 c. ice water

Pie Filling:

1 c. pumpkin puree (or canned pumpkin will work too! You may have to bake it longer.)
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. orange zest
3/4 c. brown sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
3 eggs
3/4 c. milk

Crumb Topping:

1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. oats
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon


Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt and sugar for the pie crust. Cut in the cold margarine. When thoroughly combined, pour the ice water on the top of the mixture. Knead gently with your hands until you can lift the crust dough with your hands into a greased pie pan.

Using your hands, press the crust into the pan, leaving it about 1/2 inch thick. Press sides of crust as desired.

Next, beat the pumpkin, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, orange zest, brown sugar and salt in a large mixer. When well-combined, add the eggs. Beat again. Add milk, and beat again. The texture of the filling should seem liquidy, but creamy.

Pour the filling into the pie crust. Bake for 45-50 minutes, depending on how hot your oven runs. I baked my pie for exactly 50 minutes. If you are using canned pumpkin, it should only take about 40 minutes. I add lots of water to my pumpkin puree. ;)

Remove from oven and allow at least ten  minutes to cool. I loved this pie warm with cool whip, but I love it even more cold. Store in the fridge for up to one week.

Although if you're like our family, you won't need a whole week to get rid of it!

Enjoy with life, and happy holidays. <3

Pumpkin Pie Truffles

At first when I noticed the sign up in the teachers' lounge to bring treats, I ignored it and was more than tempted to cringe. For several weeks I even ignored the email that asked us to sign up. Treats for an entire week to feed the entire staff and faculty? Yikes...

Then I was browsing food blogs (as per usual) and found the cutest idea: covering pumpkin pie filling with white chocolate. I mean, covering anything with creamy, melted sugar is always a good idea, right? All of a sudden, scrawling my name on that schedule didn't sound so intimidating. I tweaked the recipe a little, and voila! Four dozen office-worthy treats in no time.

{Here's the original idea: http://livlifetoo.blogspot.com/2010/11/white-chocolate-pumpkin-pie-cupts.html}

Well, this week is my week! Hope they all love these little autumn truffles as much as I do.

Ingredients
3/4 c. (or 6 oz.) cream cheese
3/4 c. pureed pumpkin
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
3/4 c. powdered sugar
9 crushed graham crackers
3 squares of almond bark
decorative sprinkles or other edible decorations

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, pumpkin, vanilla, spices and graham cracker crumbs.

Beat on high until well combined. Generously grease a 24 cup mini-muffin pan. Using a small melon-baller, fill each mini-muffin cup.

Bake for ten minutes. The batter will make two pans (48 mini muffins).

While waiting for the pumpkin cups to bake, melt your almond bark on a low setting, stirring often. When pumpkin cakes are done baking, cool them completely.

You don't want to be dipping them in bark while they're still warm! After cooling, coat each cake in melted bark. Decorate with sprinkles immediately after coating.  Allow each cake to cool again on a large sheet of wax paper. (To speed things up, feel free to put them in the freezer!)

Wonderful. Perfectly spiced. Coated in delicious almond bark. If the mood strikes (or if you have almond bark leftover) coat something else in it! Pretzels, cookies, Ritz crackers, you name it!

Definitely enjoy with life.