Fruit Smoothie!

Anthony TV presents the Fruit Smoothie!

Ingredients:

• 1C Strawberries
• 1 Banana
• 1C Milk
• 1/2 C Plain Yogurt
• 1 TBSP Honey

Directions:

• Throw all the ingredents into the blender and blend until smooth.
• Serve!

English Toffee Take 2

Even though our first attempt to make toffee ended so terrible, we were not ready to throw in the towel. We received some insider tips from Mrs. Fowler and other tips from our loyal readers. What we walked away with is that our heat was too low and it should take less than 30 minutes to make. Oh, I almost forgot mention that we were able to sample Mrs. Fowler's toffee. You know how it is, you need a sample so you’ll have a benchmark. This toffee is SOOO O good. I actually had to hide it from myself so that I could save it for Anthony to enjoy! Anyway, armed with this information, we tried again. This time our results were MUCH better. We still need some practice. I think that I got scared and took it off the heat a touch too soon. It’s very yummy and has the right texture but Mrs. Fowler's was still a little more brittle than ours. We’ll try again soon but this batch will go into our bellies and not our trash can, so we’ll count it a success

Mrs. Fowler’s English Toffee.

Ingredients:

• 1lb Real Butter
• 1 T. Water
• ½ t. Vanilla
• 2 C Granulated Sugar
• ½ lb Slivered Almonds (we used Pecans)
  
• Dash of Cinnamon

Directions:

• Melt butter in heavy kettle.
• Add sugar, stirring briskly with a large spoon.
• Add water, cinnamon and almonds, stirring constantly.
• Add Vanilla.
• Mixture will thicken and fall way from the sides of the kettle when nearly done.
• Cook until it turns a toffee tan.
• Pour onto well-buttered tray and spread to a thin layer.
• When cooled, break into pieces

Butter Homemade!

My favorite friend came over yesterday, bringing with her a fun recipe for making homemade butter with the kids. The recipe is incredible easy and very, very fun. I’m not sure who had more fun, the kids or us. We used the buttermilk to make Buttermilk bread.
I hope you give it a try. It is so much fun. If you don’t want to use the jar method as we did with the kids, you can use your mixer instead. We used the mixer on the other half of our quart and it worked the same, although not as much fun.

Recipe from Emeril Lagasse

• 1 pint heavy cream, very cold
• Pinch salt, optional
  

Directions

Find a large jar with a tight-fitting lid that will hold the cream about half full. Refrigerate the jar for at least 1 hour. Pour the cream into the cold jar. Tightly secure the lid and shake as hard as possible until chunks of butter start to form, 15 to 30 minutes. Pour into a strainer set over a bowl. The chunks in the strainer are butter, and the liquid in the bowl is buttermilk.

Pour the buttermilk into a clean container, cover, refrigerate, and reserve for another use. Turn the butter into a clean bowl and cover with very cold water. Pour into a strainer, discarding the liquid. Continue rinsing the butter with very cold water until the water runs clear. (The cloudy water is buttermilk which will make the butter turn sour.) When the butter is clean, work with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to press out any remaining liquid. Discard this liquid. If desired, add salt to the butter. (Salted butter will keep longer.)

Transfer the butter to a clean container for keeping, pressing with a wooden spoon or spatula to dispel any air bubbles. Refrigerate until ready to use.

HELP! English Toffee

Hey all and Happy New Year!

I trust that everyone had as blessed a Christmas as we did. I thought I would share a few of our gifts with you today.

My Brother and Sister in Law gave us a Flip Video Recorder, which we are having loads of fun with. Also our friend, and favorite first grade teacher, gave us a copy of the elementary school’s cookbook, which by the way has her famous English Toffee recipe in it. I thought it would be fun to combine both gifts and to show off our young chef in his first cooking video.

Today we finally made the toffee that Anthony has been begging to make since Christmas morning.

Joy, All I can say is my hat is off to you. After more than an hour of stirring we gave up well… I gave up. Anthony wanted to keep going but my back and my arm gave a strong protest. So in the end we are less a pound of butter and still have not had a taste of the famous toffee.

Mrs. Fowler and all my blogger friends, PLEASE send your toffee hints and tips our way. Did I stir too long, not long enough?? Anthony’s ready to try again and I’ll pump some extra iron at the gym this week to get myself in shape for round two!

Mrs. Fowler’s English Toffee

Ingredients:

• 1lb Real Butter
• 1 T. Water
• ½ t. Vanilla
• 2 C Granulated Sugar
• ½ lb Slivered Almonds
• Dash of Cinnamon
  

Directions:

• Melt butter in heavy kettle.
• Add sugar, stirring briskly with a large spoon.
• Add water, cinnamon and almonds, stirring constantly.
• Add Vanilla.
• Mixture will thicken and fall way from the sides of the kettle when nearly done.
• Cook until it turns a toffee tan.
• Pour onto well-buttered tray and spread to a thin layer.
• When cooled, break into pieces.