I was really excited about trying three new recipes for this week’s Freezer Cooking in an Hour session. Sadly, none of them turned out as great as I was hoping. 🙁 But none were disasters, so I guess that’s something to be thankful for. 🙂
The Slow Cooker Pumpkin Butter was really easy to make. It turned out a little more syrupy than I was hoping it would. I’m thinking if I try it again, I’ll add more pumpkin as I think that would fix the issue. (Psst! If you’re looking for a great Crockpot Apple Butter recipe, you must try this one.)
The Iced Pumpkin Coffee Cake turned out decently. The topping was yummy, but I thought the cake wasn’t sweet enough — or just wasn’t the best pumpkin coffee cake I’ve tried. I think it may have been that the recipe didn’t call for eggs and that made the texture a little different than I was expecting.
And the Banana Oatmeal Cups were okay. Not out of this world, but definitely edible.
Last but not least, I made a batch of my favorite Freezer-Friendly Pizza Dough. If you’ve not tried this recipe before, I can’t recommend it highly enough. In fact, you just might give up ever ordering pizza after you see how easy it is to make it yourself!
Recipes made:
Slow Cooker Pumpkin Butter
Banana Oatmeal Cups
Iced Pumpkin Coffee Cake
Freezer-Friendly Pizza Dough
Did you do any freezer cooking this week or attempt any new recipes?
This is the banana oatmeal cups I make (http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2013/01/08/breakfast-oatmeal-cupcakes-to-go/) and they are fantastic. I add chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and cinnamon. They are almost a dessert!
Thanks so much for sharing!
Crystal, I made that pumpkin butter as well. Since I ran out of regular sugar, I used confectioners sugar instead. The result was a nice, thick, spicy and pumkin-y butter.
Hmm, maybe I should try again with powdered sugar! Great idea and I’m so glad it turned out well for you!
I made a double batch of the freezer pizza dough over the weekend. I decided to wrap it in Saran Wrap and put in the freezer. However, about 12 hours later when I opened the freezer, I noticed the dough had expanded and broke through the saran wrap. I hope I salvaged it soon enough. I thought that was weird. The recipe did not say anything about letting it rise??? What did I do wrong?
With the pumpkin butter recipe, you need to “reduce it” once it has cooked for a couple of hours. Keep crockpot on high and turn your lid sideways so steam can vent for maybe about 2 hours. This will thicken it up.
I made slow cooker honey garlic chicken yesterday, which is a new recipe for me from justataste.com. It turned out pretty well. I’m not always thrilled with slow cooker dishes because sometimes the texture bothers me but this had good flavor and the meat held its shape.
http://www.justataste.com/2013/09/slow-cooker-crock-pot-honey-garlic-chicken-recipe/
Sorry but I have a dumb question lol. The pizza dough recipe looks very simple and easy and I am really wanting to try it BUT I wanted to make sure the “flour” in the recipe is all purpose and not self rising. I have recently started baking and made the discovery that when you accidently use the wrong one it doesn’t work! Thanks in advance!
Yes, it’s all purpose flour.
Thanks so much!
I made pizza dough with my bread machine from this recipe: http://www.salad-in-a-jar.com/family-recipes/my-favorite-pizza-dough. For bread machine lovers, this blog is so worth checking out!
Just this weekend I decided to try making little pizzas for my son using the toaster oven and it saved me from heating the oven just for that. They didn’t brown as well on the bottom but he didn’t care! Since he is an extra picky eater I puree carrots and keep ice cubes in the freezer for some “pizza sauce”. 2 ice cubes is enough for a small pizza.
My freezer cooking was chocolate chip brownie bars and turtle brownies. They were both from a box and great deals with coupons. It cost me around $4 to make 30-40 servings.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the recipes and I hope you have a wonderful night~
I attempted a different apple bread recipe, but I have not tried it yet. It certainly smells divine! Sunday nights are shaping up to be my bread making night. Last Sunday it was Italian herb bread (“cheated”though, I used a kit), and the week before that white bread.
I’ve made those banana oatmeal cups and didn’t like them at all. Very weird texture with little taste.
I made the pumpkin coffee cake- we thought it was ok; however, the worst part for me was that it required using three or four pans/bowls….We thought it was a nice treat, but not something I want to whip up all the time.
Those are our FAVORITE muffins (the banana oatmeal cups). In fact, I just made a triple batch!
After remembering this recipe I thought I would also recommend it. The Puffy Pizza in the crockpot. http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2010/05/slow-cooker-puffy-pizza-casserole.html
I made some substitutions to make short cuts and so it didn’t look quite as nice as the photo but it tasted good!
I have tried a few new recipes this week in an attempt to use my slow cooker more often to make things easy. The best new recipe was this Bean and Cheese Casserole in the slow cooker recipe: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2011/05/bean-and-cheese-burrito-casserole-slow.html
I made the beans in the slow cooker too the night before I made this. It’s a great frugal dinner as well. I did substitute corn tortillas for flour.
Last weekend, I grocery shopped for two week’s worth of dinners, so I had to prep a lot of the meals that we’re going to eat this week so the food wouldn’t go bad. I froze: Crockpot BBQ Pork, Crockpot Wedding Soup, Crockpot Peppered Beef & Carrots, Lasagna Roll-ups, and Chicken Pesto Calzones.
It required some extra prep work last week, but this week I won’t have to cook at all! 🙂