Review: Naturally Nora Cake and Frosting Mix

So, after winning a whole lotta these, I thought I'd share my reviews of Naturally Nora Cake and Frosting Mixes. While I think 100% homemade baked from scratch is best, these are the next best thing I have to say. I was also kind enough to share my winnings and spread the word, between family and friends. To find a retailer near you click here.

"Naturally Nora® all-natural cake mixes and frosting mixes are deliciously
fun for the whole family! Made with NO artificial flavors, colors,
preservatives, or hydrogenated oils. Dairy-free, Soy-free, Kosher."

Check this out, compared to the other store bought box mixes out there, which would you rather eat? Take a look below at what I found online! Click the image:




I tried the Sunny Yellow cake and Cheerful Chocolate frosting flavors first. The first thing I noticed when I opened the bag of mix, was how wonderful it smelled! Then how sparkly it was from the sugar, it was pretty. When mixed into batter, you'll notice it wasn't a bright yellow like the other boxed cake mixes. That's because there are no artificial colors in these! They came together nicely and baked so perfectly, with pretty mounds (of course I filled them almost full). The frosting is great too, tastes almost homemade. I particularly liked how easy the cupcake liners came off too, they didn't pull any cake apart.

preBirthday cupcakes: yellow cake with chocolate stars and vanilla frosting

Our little guy turned 2 recently, and we celebrated his party another day, but made him these for his birthday. I didn't have any oil, so I used applesauce instead. They turned out pretty good! I've never swapped the two ingredients before, so wasn't sure really what to expect. I did notice the cupcakes were more of a dense sponge like texture, and I notice a slight taste difference as well. Both in good ways though.

chocolate cake with chocolate peanut butter frosting

I recently met up with old friends for a BBQ, and made some of the Cheerful Chocolate cupcakes and made a peanut butter frosting by mixing in 1/4 C. of Wild Harvest Organic creamy peanut butter I was reviewing. They came out great! I also took 3 cake & frosting boxes with me and did a quick raffle with friends. Now they get to try the cake and frosting too!

bundt cake: chocolate cake with chocolate frosting


enjoy,

Sneak Peek

Found this recipe on the back of Wild Harvest Organic butter flavor microwave popcorn. Caramel Corn. More about this another time. =)

stay tuned,

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Cream Tart

Chocolate lovers head on over to Kim's blog Scrumptious Photography to get this recipe! She chose this weeks TWD Chocolate Cream Tart. I almost passed on this weeks recipe, but decided at the last minute to go ahead with it. I'm so glad I did, it is pure delicious! This is the kind of dessert to serve to company, its decadent and beautiful. Rich, cool and creamy! Who can resist?

It reminds me a little of this recipe I made a while back, but I think Dorie's is sooooo much better and I didn't have any issues with it. I've also overcome my hardships of crust since that post. Of course it helps that Dorie has some spectacular (and super easy!) pie/tart crust recipes in her book!

For my tart, I added some almonds to the crust (just remember if you do this, to omit 1/4 C of flour and replace with 1/4 ground nuts). Then to bring back the flavors of last week's TWD, I used a little hazelnut creamer (I only had 1/4 C left) again for the filling and sprinkled almonds on top. I used a pie dish for mine, since I don't have a tart pan.

Since this is such a rich dessert, you may want to use a mix of melted semi-sweet and milk chocolate, or if you like a richer flavor, use the dark chocolate. I used 60% chocolate. Next time I may use some milk chocolate in it.

Oh also, this uses a fully baked crust, which can be done ahead of time, as well as the filling! It needs lots of chill time to set up, so keep that in mind too.

enjoy,

Sugar Doughnut Muffins

These are reminiscent of my days working in a bakery, let me share with you... Baking doughnuts and rolling them in sugar or icing with chocolate, plain or maple icing at only 5 in the morning! Ahh those were my younger days. lol. After the doughnuts, we'd either start cake orders or get the breads going. I worked in a small town grocery store/deli/bakery. I started in the deli first, where we shared this room (below) and was later promoted to the bakery. We had this huge BOOS block table, and the deli would get just this little corner to use for prep, lol. There were plenty of good times there. The gal I'm with (that's me in the red), is the reason behind my username. We dubbed ourselves Luv Bug, after some old country song by George Strait, "Lovebug" we heard EVERY morning while working. I've since gone on to other jobs, married, had 3 kids and moved a few times. She is still there, doing awesome cakes! When we went back home to visit once, I snuck in to surprise her but it was after hours, so I left her a note that said "Hi Luv Bug!" and she knew I was around!



I love a good sugared doughnut twist just as much as a jelly filled one. It didn't take much decision to want to whip these little gems up, or time at all! They were done baking at 18 minutes. For me it was about 25 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for a weekend morning treat.

3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar, for rolling (I added a little cinnamon too)

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a muffin tin with non stick cooking spray.
In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
Pour into egg mixture and stir to combine.
Pour in oil, milk and vanilla extract.
Divide batter evenly into 10 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
While muffins are baking, melt butter and pour remaining sugar into a small bowl. When muffins are done and still warm, lightly brush the top of each with some melted butter, remove from the pan and roll in sugar. Cool on a wire rack. Makes 10 muffins.

-adapted from Baking Bites

(about the shapes, while baking they began to sink in the middles, then looked like a little hole in the middle (like a doughnut!), but then they puffed up near the end leaving that cute edge.)






enjoy,

Cold Chicken Pasta Salad

For dinner this night, I wanted something easy, cool, and "lighter" nothing heavy. It's been feeling a lot like the end of summer here, so this was the perfect choice for dinner. You can add what ever vegetables, cheese, or meats you like (ham would be great too). I've decided that the next potluck we go to, I'll be bringing this salad.

12 oz tri-color rotini pasta, cooked, drained and cooled
1/2 pd chicken breast, cooked and cubed
8 oz pepper jack cheese, cubed
1 cup tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup sliced black olives
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/2 cup Italian Dressing (I used Wild Harvest Organics)
Parmesan shaker cheese (to taste)

Combine all, tossing to coat with dressing. Refrigerate at least 1 hour. For any leftovers, toss with a little more dressing, since the pasta will soak it up and the salad will seem dry.



enjoy,

April Cookie Carnival: Toasted Almond Lemon Bars

This month's Cookie Carnival cookie is Toasted Almond Lemon Bars and is being guest hosted by Holly of Phemomenon http://phemomenon.blogspot.com/. Yum! Perfect for the start of Spring. They're pretty much a shortbread crust, with a tart and tangy lemony custard like layer on top, then dusted with powdered sugar. I made lemon bars before for my blog, take a look here. These come from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy.

Just up! Go check out the round up and see everyone's lemon bars!

For this recipe I decided to add in the lemon zest too (next time I'll dice it fine, wasn't fun eating a string of zest, lol). They had those bags on sale 2/$3 so I had extra juice and zest, that I froze for a later use. For the crust you add in almonds, which adds a nice subtle nutty flavor and texture.

I've always wondered, Could you use other citrus instead of lemon? Like orange? I think I saw lime bars before -gasp- from a box. Have you had non-lemon bars? I'm curious to try another citrus for these.

enjoy,

Funky Monkey Snack Winners...

Real quick, it's bed time for the little ones...thanks for everyone participating in this giveaway. If you happened to follow along via my sites I linked to, you would've seen my special messages to earn you even more extra bonus entries! *big hint for next time fans!*
I have the 2 winners who will get 4 bags each of these fun fruit snacks. They are:



Winner #1 is #4!
Do-Maura-rigatou said... 4
Their site was pretty cute. I dig the monkeys, don't you? I would love to try these because well, I LOVE DRIED FRUIT! It's such a good food to have as a guilty pleasure. These flavors look so interesting too. I would never think of the combinations.




Winner #2 is #35!

learningtoread said... 35
The site's really cute -- love that the nutritional info is right there, easy to access!Our family has been eating more and more healthily over this past month. I LOVE dried pineapple, so this would be awesome. Found this via the Facebook group -- I'll be checking back often! Thank you!




Congrats!! Please check your emails and respond asap!

enjoy,

Review: Wild Harvest Organic: Dinner Box

I am part of SheKnows 100 mom panelists to test some products from Wild Harvest Orangic and as you may remember my first review was on their lunch box, this time I was sent the Dinner box. This arrived the day before I had a homemade spaghetti dinner, so the dressing came is real handy, but since I had everything else ready to go, we saved the rest for another time.

Wild Harvest Organic Ranch Dressing

I taste tested this next to Kraft's Ranch. We liked Kraft's better. This one tasted more tangy almost tarter sauce flavor like. This sort of lacked in flavors.

Wild Harvest Organic Rustic Italian Dressing

I loved this. It was zesty and flavorful. Italian is my #1 choice for dressings so this was an easy review for me. I taste tested this next to Kraft's Italian. This one won hands down! This one is not as vinegary and has tons of flavor that you can actually see!

*I am using this dressing to go in a cold chicken pasta salad for dinner also. It'll be perfect for our HOT So CA weather we've had all week.

Wild Harvest Organic classic saltines

These come individually packed, which I like for keeping the rest fresh. These are great, except I missed the salted tops like other saltines have. These are delicate to break apart too.

Wild Harvest Organic multi-seed flatbread

I just opened these as I'm typing...These are really good! Most of mine came broken though but I enjoyed them with some cheese and ham to top on them. First off you can taste the sesame seeds, there's also flavors of poppy seeds, garlic powder, caraway seeds and onion flakes.

-My oldest just said, "blech, those taste like bird food on a bagel!" However, another time I caught them eating them with sour cream! sillies! I enjoyed them anyways. These did not come in a resealable bag, but I found them to fit nicely in my Rubbermaid Takealongs container.

Wild Harvest Organic Rosemary and Sesame Saltines

I loved that these came individually wrapped. They are very delicate and won't break on their dotted lines. The flavor is really great to these, but they still seemed plain, and well dry (aren't all saltines?). They have pieces of rosemary and sesame seed in them making them looks great.

Wild Harvest Organic spaghetti

I haven't used this yet, but will soon!

Wild Harvest Organic whole wheat penne

I used this in a chicken and spinach cheesey bake dinner. Nice and hearty!

Wild Harvest Organic whole wheat rotini

Really good pasta, great with the pasta sauce. Kids ate it all up!

Wild Harvest Organic tomato basil pasta sauce

This was great for a quick and easy lunch with the rotini. Great sauce!

Wild Harvest Organic roasted garlic pasta sauce

I served this with a stuffed chicken parmesan I made for dinner. I thought the sauce had lots of yummy garlic flavor.

enjoy,

Tuesdays with Dorie: Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding

there was powdered sugar there when I started these photos

This is a 5 star dessert! I have been waiting for this one! It's just one of the recipes that attracted me to Dorie's book Baking: From My Home to Yours. Please check out Upper East Side Chronicle by Lauren, she chose this week's TWD and she's got the recipe for ya!



I did mine a little differently with a twist on things. I used a loaf of Challah as suggested and a sprayed oval bake ware dish (probably smaller than 9×13 -held all the bread). I used 8 oz of Hershey's 60% dark chocolate, and…I used 2 C milk + 1 C hazelnut flavored liquid creamer plus the heavy cream it called for. Then I added in about 1/4 C sliced almonds and omitted the raisins. Baked it for about 50 minutes in a water bath. I've already noted this in my copy.

*This recipe happened to be a great budget helper for me. A couple of weeks ago, I found the Challah marked down as day old bread for .99 -just tossed it in the freezer for later use, found a few bags of the Hershey squares for $1 mark down, had a $1 off coupon for the creamer already on sale, the eggs were still on Easter sales and of course the nuts are always a deal at Trader Joe's! Oh, and the oval dish, another deal from Linens and Things when they closed down. I guess that makes this a 6****** dessert!

We ♥ this! Go check out the recipe, because I bet you will too! This is one I'd definitely make again! Thank you Dorie!

enjoy,

Review: Funky Monkey Snacks and Something For You!

This giveaway is now closed

The great folks over at Funky Monkey
http://www.funkymonkeysnacks.com/ sent us some samples of their freeze dried fruit snacks! I had never heard of them, so I was really curious to try them. They arrived super fast and just in time for our mid morning snack. I was imagining those snacks like those baby fruit puffs. But no, these are real pieces of fruit!

Funky Monkey are delicious, convenient freeze-dried snacks with the wholesomeness and natural goodness of fresh fruit. They contain 3 servings of fruit in each 1 ounce bag! They are very light weight and come in an easy open bag.

Funky Monkey Snacks have no added colors, flavors, sugars, or preservatives. Their snacks are vegan, gluten free, and certified Kosher. Funky Monkey Bananamon & Purple Funk flavors are certified organic, too!

They come in 4 fantastic funky fun flavors, and we liked them all! I thought the Jivealime were tart and tangy, but liked the Purple Funk best. My oldest liked the Jivealime best. The other 2 kiddos just liked them all. :)

Purple Funk: freeze-dried banana and açai -certified organic
Bananamon: freeze-dried banana and cinnamon -certified organic
Jivealime: freeze-dried pineapple and lime juice
Carnaval Mix: freeze-dried banana, pineapple, apple, papaya, and raisins

the Jivealime was a little tart

But wait! That's not all!! I have a Giveaway for you, my lucky readers! I get to help pick 2 of my readers to receive their own sample of these snacks! You will each get 4 packs, flavors to be chosen by them.

All you have to do to enter is leave 1 comment, visit their site here and

1. tell me what you thought of their site and

2. why you would like to try these snacks.

Please leave your contact info too*!

Earn up to 4 additional entries by:
-Following me on Twitter AND tweet about this giveaway (leave username & your Tweet's URL)
*To get the link to your Twitter post, click under your message where it says "less than _____ ago" and that will take you to a page where you can copy the url of your message.

-Blog about this giveaway with my blog name and URL

-Become a new follower of my blog in my side bar widget

-Become a new follower of my blog via Facebook here

Leave an additional comment for each thing you do. If we already tweet together, just leave the URL of your tweet. Did you see a special message about this? If so, please leave a seperate comment for each bonus time allowed by that msg and where you saw it!

My Giveaway ends: 7 pm pst, Wednesday, April 22, 2009.
Please read the fine print:
-Open to USA residents
-You must leave me a way to contact you, or your comment is invalid*

- I will verify usernames/URLs
-Winner(s) will be emailed, posted on my Blog & Twitter, be sure you follow along
-I will choose my random winner(s) using Random.org

If you don't win, or can't wait to see if you are the lucky 1 of 2 winners, they are available online, or in stores where available. I know Super Target, Whole Foods, Kroger and even here on Amazon sells them. Visit their site http://www.funkymonkeysnacks.com/ to find a place near you!

*Follow along with my blog so you don't miss up coming Recipes, Reviews & Giveaways!

Good luck!