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: Life is hard. God is good. We need each other. The Sparrow's Home is a place for gathering and sharing about all things 'home'.
Do you eat seasonally? Whether you really try to or not, you probably do more than you even know. We are naturally drawn to warm, hearty meals in the colder months. I know I pretty much never make things like stroganoff or stew or hot, gooey apple desserts until there’s a chill in the air.
But summer….
Summer recipes are for veggies and grilling. Think fresh.
It’s been causing me some stress to decide whether to call this recipe a cobbler or a crisp. I’m no food historian, and I don’t happen to be up on my precise cobbler vs. crisp definitions. Cobblers have always seemed more ‘cakey’ to me and crisps are more…well, crisp.
That’s where my problem comes in here. The delicious topping for this dessert starts out much like a traditional crisp recipe, but there’s one main difference that makes it almost like a cookie topping.
It’s really delicious. It is crisp. But it’s also kind of chewy. I really love it.
And with that eloquent description, let me tell you how to make it!
What are the lengths to which you will go to enjoy your favorite ice cream? My husband, being from the south, is a big (BIG) Blue Bell Ice Cream fan. We don’t have Blue Bell here in Minnesota. (Boo, Minnesota!) When we visited my mother-in-law in Texas, we toured the Blue Bell factory. And can I say, touring an ice cream factory is a great way to spend a day.
Visiting Tennessee in April allowed us to indulge all week long. (And we did! At one point our freezer had 5 containers.) We even packed a cooler full of ice and Blue Bell to bring home…no kidding. In case you’re wondering, Pecan Praline is our favorite, and the kids would probably say Birthday Cake.
And while it’s no Blue Bell, I’m here to tell you today how you can make homemade ice cream in minutes. Minutes! Well, minutes is all the time it takes to mix it up…of course there are a few hours of freezing time.
Caramel cake. Every year for his birthday. Caramel cake. Then one year my eldest determined he “didn’t like caramel”. So we had “brown sugar cake” for his birthday that year. Same recipe I’d used every other year.
Have I told you my kids are picky?
Sometimes I sneak things in. Like in my super healthy rich and delicious chocolate pancakes, and this chocolate mousse. Other times, I just call something by another name. For a time:
I even had a jar of pureed dates in the fridge that my kids ate for an entire summer because I called it “caramel”. Ahh the power of suggestion.
We’re back to calling caramel cake “caramel cake” again, and it’s still my son’s pick for his birthday cake every year. (He turns 18 this year! Yikes!) Sadly, my husband and I will be out of town at a conference on his birthday, so we’re celebrating early this year.
I’m kind of obsessed.
It was one of those nights. I was just ‘checking a few things’ before going to bed. An hour later…
Well, an hour later, I had watched an hour of videos by the most charming Irish woman, Gemma (who I was pretty sure was going to be my new best friend), and had about a dozen recipes bookmarked and visions of tasty mug meals dancing in my head.
I made it my mission over the next few weeks to try a bunch of her recipes so I could share them with you. There’s a bit of a learning curve, to be sure. After all, cooking in the microwave is quite different. And I did find some ways to tweak her recipes to make them work for me. But all in all…two thumbs up!
Does anything taste more homey than apple pie? YES! This upside down skillet apple pie does. It has all the goodness of an apple pie – tender apples, flakey crust, sweet and spicy–but it has so much more.
The apples are nestled in the most luxurious warm caramel sauce, just begging to be spooned over a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Plus, it’s about 10 times easier than traditional pie.