Easy Homemade Garlic Knots

This goes along with my Crockpot Tortellini and Sausage Soup recipe. It went perfectly with it!

I got this recipe online, since I don't have that many recipes I brought with me to school. But this recipe is a KEEPER. I loved it. I had friends coming back for more, and I found it hard to part with them (the rolls--not my friends)! They are so good!

Here is the blog I got this recipe off of: http://therecipecritic.com/2013/04/easy-homemade-garlic-knots/

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 cups warm water

2 Tbsp sugar

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

Garlic Spread:

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 Tbsp garlic powder

1 tsp parsley

drizzle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I just used canola oil--it still works great!)

Directions:

Mix the warm water, sugar and yeast together. Let this sit for 5 minutes.

Add flour and salt to the water, sugar, and yeast. Mix this until smooth and let it raise for 10 minutes. (You can use a Kitchenaid mixer with a dough hook, but since I don't have that, I worked my arm mixing!)

Flour a surface, and roll your dough out to about 1/2 inch thick. Use a pizza cutter to cut the dough in half, and then in strips (about 8-10 inches) for the garlic knots.

Roll the strips in your hands to look like ropes and then tie in knots.

Place the knots on a greased baking sheet and allow them to rise for another 10 minutes. 

Bake at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

While they are baking, melt the butter and mix with garlic powder, parsley, and a drizzle of olive oil. As soon as the garlic knots come out of the oven, brush the tops with the butter garlic mixture. Enjoy!

Crockpot Tortellini and Sausage Soup

It's been a while since I've posted a recipe, but figured it was about time I posted a really great recipe I discovered and tried out a few months back.

I made this recipe with garlic bread rolls and a salad, so watch for those recipes next! Make sure you read the modifications I made to the recipe before making this so you can change what you'd like when you make it yourself!

(Here is the link to the soup website--I've modified a few things, so it won't be quite the same as this page.)
http://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/573551783/crockpot-cheese-tortellini-and-sausage/



Ingredients:

1 (19 oz) bag of frozen cheese tortellini
1 lb sausage
1 bag fresh spinach
2 cans tomato soup
2 cans low-fat chicken broth
1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese, diced into small cubes

Directions:
Brown the sausage in a skillet on the stove top until cooked and crumbled. Drain.

Add sausage and remaining ingredients to a 6-quart slow cooker. Stir to combine.

Cook on LOW for about 5 hours, stirring twice during cooking.

MY MODIFICATIONS:
Tortellini: I bought fresh tortellini (kept by the cold cheeses) because I couldn't find any frozen tortellini and just froze them when I got home. The texture was still great. They just have to be frozen when you put them in the crock pot.

Sausage: I bought turkey sausage. It wasn't as spicy as the intended Italian sausage was for this recipe, but it was still very flavorful, and it made the soup much less oily then Italian would have made it.

Spinach: I only used about 1/2 a bag of spinach. I love spinach in salads, but I'm not a fan of it in soups. I still found 1/2 a bag of spinach to be quite a lot of spinach for this soup. Just eyeball how much spinach you want in your soup. When it's done cooking, you can't really taste the spinach, but it makes the soup really pretty. :)

Tomatoes: I HATE tomatoes, so I used tomato soup instead. It gave this soup a really pretty color instead of a creamy white color. It was a light red, and was really pretty. You can substitute tomato soup for diced tomatoes instead--I just don't like tomatoes.

Cream cheese: Make sure you dice that cream cheese into small cubes! I cut mine into about 1/2 inch cubes, and by the end of cooking, they weren't done melting quite yet, and sometimes you'd get a chunk of cream cheese in your spoon. The smaller you make those cubes, the more they'll dissolve and evenly spread out through cooking!

Enjoy! This is easily one of my new very favorite recipes! I made this for myself and one friend, and we each had two bowls of it. I still had about 4 servings left when we were done, and it's extremely filling.

Pumpkin Pancakes

I know, I know, how typical is this? Pumpkin pancakes in the fall.

But I just made them for the first time in my life, and I am IN LOVE. I was searching through Pinterest for some good recipes, but in better search efforts, I turned to Martha Stewart. Her recipes are pretty good, or so I've heard.

Here is the recipe for these delicious pancakes! Perfect for this time of year! Super easy to make, and they're DELICIOUS!

http://www.marthastewart.com/271839/pumpkin-pancakes
(Here is the link to the actual page itself!)

For a spiced breakfast treat, whisk 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon, ground ginger, and salt; 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg; and a pinch of ground cloves. In a separate bowl, stir together 1 cup milk, 6 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 egg; fold mixture into dry ingredients. Melt some butter in a skillet over medium heat; pour in 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Cook pancakes about 3 minutes per side; serve with butter and syrup.

I put powdered sugar and regular pancake syrup on my pancakes, and they were amazing! I didn't have any cloves, so I didn't use them--but the pancakes were perfect the way they were. Also, if you add a few white chocolate chips to them, they're HEAVENLY. :)

These were seriously so good! I hope you enjoy them as much as I have! Happy fall to everyone! :)

~Brittany

Chicken Broccoli Alfredo & Apple Brownies

This was the first meal that got our recipe loving adventure off with a bang!

It all started when I (Brittany) went over to Robyn's house to make dinner with her. We had a lot of options, but we knew we wanted something with chicken. We finally agreed to make chicken alfredo with broccoli in it. Let me just say beforehand--this meal was absolutely delicious. Quite possibly one of the best meals I have ever had, or at least the best meal I've had in an extremely long time. Really simple ingredients, but put together, it was incredible!

Ingredients:
1 small/medium package of medium shell pasta
1 jar of classic alfredo sauce
Fresh chicken breasts (we used about 1 1/2)
1-2 Tbsp cooking oil
Frozen (or fresh) broccoli, cut up into smaller bite sized pieces
Roasted Garlic and Herb seasoning

Directions:
1) Fill large pot with water, put on high heat. While you are waiting for the water to boil, place oil in a frying pan that is starting to heat up. Cut up the chicken breasts into small cubes (about 1/2 inch wide or so).
2) Once the water is boiling, pour the shell pasta in and quickly stir. Around this time, the oil should be hot enough to put the chicken in to cook. (The oil is hot enough when you start to hear a little pop or see little bubbles.) Place the chicken in the frying pan and stir to coat the chicken with the oil, as well as make sure the chicken doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
3) When the chicken is coated with oil, and almost all of the chicken is starting to turn white, pour desired amount of seasoning on the chicken. This way, the flavors cook in really nicely.
4) Continue to stir the noodles occasionally, as well as watching the chicken for when it is done.
5) When the noodles are about done, this timing worked out nicely to then pour the alfredo sauce over the chicken pieces. Stir the sauce with the chicken, making sure to not let it burn and stick to the bottom of the pan. Strain the noodles.
6) Bring a small pot of water with the broccoli to a boil. Put some salt in the water and on the broccoli to give it just a little more flavor--especially if it is frozen broccoli.
7) By the time the broccoli is done, the sauce has been warmed up thoroughly, but hasn't been brought to a high enough heat to bubble yet. Strain the broccoli, and place it in the sauce and chicken mixture. Stir thoroughly, and wait for the sauce to bubble just a little bit.
8) Dish noodles into bowls or plates, and top with the chicken and broccoli sauce.
9) Enjoy!

This meal was honestly one of the greatest meals I have ever had--Robyn's family thought so as well! Several times throughout the meal, we would hear exclamations from family members of, "Holy cow, this is so good." We were thanked several times, and even asked multiple times to make dinner again for the family. :)

Afterwards, we made something a little different for dessert--apple brownies with caramel topping. Sounds a little strange, I know, but it was extremely delicious. I will post more on that recipe at a later date, even with a picture!

Welcome to Our Kitchen!

Hello all!

This is Brittany and Robyn. We're your typical, average, maybe a little quirky college girls.

And we're on a mission....

...to find the best recipes out there!

Ever since Pinterest has caught our attention (let's be honest, who doesn't get hooked with Pinterest?!), we have decided that throughout our summers, breaks, and even the school year, we are going to test and try recipes. These can be recipes we have used before, new recipes we find, recipes we are asked to try, and simply ones that sound a little like an adventure.

We will post pictures, recipes, tell you which recipes are a keeper, give you links to the site (or the recipe itself), and just give you an overall idea of what the recipe we are trying is like.

If there are any recipe requests from any readers out there, we'd love to hear suggestions!

So without further ado, let's get cooking!

Bon apetite!

Robyn & Brittany