day 316: baked cheese balls

baked cheese balls ... or is that sliders ???

day 316 and these baked cheese balls looked like something my boys would love me forever for making so i figured they were worth a go today!  the recipe comes from abbylynn at never trust a skinny cook (such a cute blog name!) and is pinned to my recipes for the boys board on pinterest.

abbylynn has LOTS of useful suggestions to make sure the cheese doesn't melt in the oven while these little babies are baking.  the number one suggestion is fat free cheese, apparently we aren't healthy enough to have fat free cheese in nz (or at least i couldn't find any ANYWHERE) so i went with natural cheese sticks instead.  i did use the freezing before baking trick on my string cheese though because i wanted to make sure i didn't have cheese puddles at the end.

the actual recipe is really easy, you literally cube up the cheese strings, dunk in milk, roll in breadcrumbs, and put in the oven to bake ... so i had high hopes that these would be a winner with my boys ....

the ingredients

cut, dunk, and roll

into the oven they went ....

... five minutes later they were like this!

they were the perfect addition to our dinner :)

outcome: didn't matter about the freezing part, apparently you need fat free cheese to stop these babies from melting!   ok, remember when my oven and i had expanding biscuits on leap day, well the same happened to the cheese balls today ... so maybe it's me and my oven and not that actual recipe.   we renamed our baked cheese balls sliders instead, still tasted superb and they were ALL gone by the end of dinner this evening ... heehee, whether its a ball or a slider there is something about hot cheese that just works!

while we had a small pinterest disaster, in terms of the shape but not the taste, i am really pleased i made these for the family who still loved them with dinner tonight!  so my thanks goes to abbylynn from never trust a skinny cook who came up with this cool recipe and has better cheese choices than i do and also a better oven, apparently :)

day 209: coffee milkshakes

coffee milkshake, why doesn't everyone know about these

day 209 and we have only a few more days before the draw for the my memories software give away ... so keep on commenting!  as many as you like, this is a great chance to get some awesome software for nada ... now lets get on with today's creation!

i wanted to make something special for my sweet husband, just for him to have and enjoy at the tennis ... there is no chance he will get the chocolate and zucchini cake all to himself ;)  last night while i should have been sleeping i was looking on pinterest for inspiration and came across these divine looking coffee milkshakes ... PERFECT, steve loves coffee and adores ice cream, bring the two together and he should be one happy man!  so i pinned the inspiration from the foodie with family website to my recipes for the boys board.

you need two key ingredients (cold coffee, vanilla ice cream) and two ingredients for shear indulgence (chocolate sauce and cream).  i used the two key ingredients and whizzed them together before putting the milkshake into a thermos to take to the tennis.  i opted for chocolate dusting to top the milkshake with as the indulgence part wasn't going to work for a day out!  before it went into the thermos we had a glass of it to share so i could let you know what it was like ...

the key ingredients

mix together with a whiz

the end result

outcome: ... so hard to stop at one and it was a real shame to put the rest into the thermos for steve ;)  i could have happily sat there and drank the lot before we left!  if you remember these awesome iced coffee's i made in singapore but found them too sweet this is the real deal for you.  i think i would be happier drinking these for the shear refreshing, amazing flavour, and i used light ice cream ... as steve said " you can't go wrong with with ice cream and coffee together ".

my biggest thanks to foodie with family for this awesome recipe and for making my husband so happy at the tennis ... treating the guy taking you to the tennis should make for a very happy day ;)