Sawyers-Specialties Blog

Since Memorial Day, we’ve been to quite a few picnics and it’s always a challenge to take something along that’s unique. For the 4th of July, as we arrived at a picnic, my friend’s teenage daughter looked at what I had in my hands and said “Thank goodness you didn’t bring watermelon” (apparently that was a common take-along that year, along with at least 3 trays of brownies). I discovered an awesome recipe for Boston Cream Pie Minis in the Kraft Foods magazine (this is a free quarterly print magazine that I highly recommend, signup at the KraftFoods website)

The cupcakes may look complicated, but they’re actually quite easy, a simple box mix to make the cupcakes, a couple of ingredients whipped together, these are a great cooking project for parents and older children. The cupcakes can be cut with a simple butter knife so there’s no risk to fingers. My only tip is to cut the cupcake, place the bottom half on the tray where you’re going to want it for chilling (I can put all 24 on a large cookie sheet in rows of 4). Put your filling on the bottom, then top it, this reduces the need to move the cupcake before it’s fully set and keeps them looking fluffy and nice.

These cupcakes have been a big hit everywhere they’ve gone (my own teenage son finds them irresistable).

http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/boston-cream-pie-minis-105206.aspx

The Flylady system encourages menu planning for several different reasons. 1) it’s simply more efficient to plan your meals in advance and make sure you have all the ingredients you need 2) it’s cost efficient… use what you have, buy only what you need. No more… I don’t know, what do you want to have, let’s just order out 3) it’s time efficient. Nothing worse than starting dinner only to realize you’re missing a key ingredient and need to run back to the store for rolls.

I’ve been getting tired of having the same couple of meals all the time, so this week I decided to have a “new recipe night”. Double bonus, it was a crockpot meal that didn’t need a lot of attention. This week we tried Slow-Cooker Orange-BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches from the Kraft Food & Family magazine.

To find more recipes like this, you can visit the craft site for an archive of this free quarterly magazine with issues going back to 2002. If you sign up on the site, you can request new issues to be sent to you.

I can’t promise that I’ll be doing new recipe night on a weekly basis but the first experiment went very well.