Bunny Cake

For Easter Sunday I made a special dessert! This cake was much easier than it looks...

Ingredients:
1 box of yellow cake mix (bake in two nine inch round cake pans)
1 tub of vanilla icing
1 tub of orange icing
Red food coloring
Sprinkles
2 peanut M & M's
1 Reese's peanut butter cup
Black liquorish

Directions:

Bake cake then let cool for at least an hour. If the cake is warm when you start icing, you will peel the top layers of the cake off. Leave one round cake as is for the bunny's face. Next, you will cut the second round cake into three piece to create two ears and a bow tie.

Maple Glazed Pork Chops

Tonight I attempted another one of Paula Deen's pork chop recipes. CLICK HERE! for her maple glazed pork chop recipe. I only used three boneless pork chops so I cut her recipe in half. Also, I used Aunt Jemima syrup because I didn't want to buy an entire new bottle. I'm starting to think this may have made a big difference. I would have like them to have had a little more maple flavor than they did, but I had trouble getting the sauce to thicken as the recipe instructs. The chili powder/maple syrup combo seemed a little odd to me, but it actually wasn't at all. Although this recipe was very tasty I think I enjoyed her blackberry pork chop recipe more because the white wine reduction sauce made the pork more moist. As a side I made sweet potatoes which I baked in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes at 400 degrees.

Broccoli & Monterey Jack Fritatta

For a healthy filling breakfast after the gym I made a fritatta. I'm starting to enjoy fritattas because they are a nice alternative to omelets and once you get the basics down you can use whatever veggie/cheese combo you like!

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

Ingredients:

-scramble 2 eggs & 1 egg white (last time I used 2 egg whites & one egg, but this morning I chopped up more broccoli than I needed so I needed enough egg to make it worth while)

-1 cup fresh cut up broccoli

-1/4 cup monterey jack cheese

-ground black pepper

Directions:

-Spray small oven safe pan & on medium/low heat cook broccoli until soft (covered)

-Then add scrambled eggs and pepper

-"wiggle" the pan so the egg is evenly distributed throughout the broccoli

-add cheese

-cook undisturbed for about 3 minutes or until you can see the egg solidifying

-transfer to oven and cook for 6 minutes 

Don't Hate on Oatmeal!

Not many of my friends at school seem to like oatmeal, but it is one of my favorite go to breakfast meals or snacks. I don't use instant though! I always use old fashion or quick cooking oats making them on the stove with water. To make my oatmeal more tasty I add honey, almonds or fresh banana.  Oatmeal is very healthy, filling and easy to make! 

SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise)

Since this is a food blog I thought it would make sense to add in this little bit of information! I am part of an international business club at Marist called SIFE. Right now we are taking part in a project called Let's Can Hunger co-sponsored by Campbell's soup. Let's Can Hunger is an international food drive that allows each SIFE team to collect food for their community. The end goal/first place prize is to collect 5,000 pounds of food. I don't think our club will come close to that goal because we started a little late, but we do have close to 1,000 pounds! Our team members knocked on the doors of every house and dorm room on campus. We also had a group go out into the community. Campbell's statistics state that 50.2 billion American are battling food scarcity. The food we collected will be donated to the Dutchess Outreach Center where it will then be distributed throughout the Marist community. One of the main purposes of SIFE is to allow business students and professionals to extend their business knowledge into local communities. I am also starting Marist's financial literacy program in which I will develop a program about personal finance. Our club will then go into local schools to teach students about the importance of financial literacy. We are hoping this project will be carried out this fall!