Easy Cheesy Bread Snack

Is your belly grumbling for something tasty to eat? Is your mouth tired of eating the same things all the time? Let’s try a fun but simple way to liven up some bread! We’ll call it Easy Cheesy Bread! Doesn’t this look delicious? 🙂

Let’s start out with some Italian bread, though feel free to try whatever bread you have on hand. I found this little loaf of Italian bread at our local grocery store and it seemed the perfect size for 2 people.

This snack only needs some butter, grated parmesan cheese and maybe garlic powder in addition to the bread. Another item that will make it extra tasty is some pasta sauce…but I’m getting ahead of myself! First cut the bread into slices and place them on a cookie sheet with some parchment paper covering the pan for easy clean up.

Spread some softened butter on each slice of bread.

If you like garlic flavor, sprinkle some garlic powder on each piece of bread next. The Easy Cheesy Bread is still yummy without the garlic powder if garlic is not your thing.

Sprinkle a generous amount of grated parmesan cheese onto each slice of bread.

Pop the tray of bread slices into the oven on broil. Keep a close eye on the bread so it doesn’t burn! The time needed to toast the bread will depend on the broil temperature you use and what type of oven you have. Just watch the bread till it starts to turn brown and smells delicious! It only took a few minutes when I made these.

You can eat the Easy Cheesy Bread just like it is or for an added bonus, heat up some pasta sauce in a cup and dip your bread in it. MMmmm! So tasty!

That’s how simple it is to make Easy Cheesy Bread! Try some and make your mouth AND your stomach happy! 😉

Easy No-Bake Snack for Valentine’s Day

Hello again! Hope you are “enjoying” winter (does anyone enjoy winter?!) and are staying healthy! We have been busy busy bees here! We tore up the old carpet in our living room and hallway and hope to lay down a new floor soon! As most remodeling projects go, we keep running into snags and things that have to be fixed first and the days have been flying by without me getting to chat with you. I am determined to change that today! 🙂 So how about an easy snack idea for Valentine’s Day that you probably have the ingredients for and makes up pretty quickly? It’s called Peanut Butter Energy Bites. There are many ways to make these and I have a couple of suggestions that depend on the age of your children. Here we go!

If your kids are a little older, you can make these with uncooked oatmeal. If your kids are pretty young yet, I would go with crushed graham crackers. The oatmeal makes them more chewy, but blending the oatmeal in a food processor or blender helps with that some. My favorite way is using graham crackers.

You will need 1 Cup oatmeal OR crushed graham crackers, 1/2 Cup peanut butter or your favorite nut butter, 1/3 Cup honey, 1 teaspoon vanilla, a dash of salt and 1/2 Cup mini chocolate chips. To make these a little fancier for Valentine’s Day you might also want to have some sprinkles on hand.

Put all the ingredients into a medium sized bowl.

Mix well. It will be a stiff dough. Take a couple of minutes to make sure all the dry ingredients are completely mixed in. The dough will look different depending on which ingredients you chose. Here’s with the oatmeal…

Here’s with the graham crackers…

Using rounded teaspoon sized portions of dough, make the dough into balls. Place on a cookie sheet on a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper.

To make them pretty for Valentine’s Day, roll them in some sprinkles. Pop them in the refrigerator to make them more firm and easier to handle. No baking required! I also stored mine in the refrigerator.

Whether you choose to use oatmeal…

Or crushed graham crackers…

I think you will find these little snack balls to be very addicting! (We won’t mention how many I may have eaten today!) 😉 You can switch these up by trying different ingredients. Use a nut butter in place of the peanut butter or instead of chocolate chips add raisins, cranberries, white chocolate chips, chopped peanuts, coconut flakes, cinnamon, etc…the sky’s the limit! 🙂 Enjoy!

A Frozen Treat For Hot Days

Are you having some extra warm days? It’s quite warm and toasty here with a “real feel” temperature of 90 degrees. I’m sure other folks are even warmer! These warm days make us all want something cold to eat, right? So today I want to share a yummy suggestion for a frozen snack or dessert…Frozen Banana Bites!

You will need a banana, a cookie sheet or plate, waxed paper or parchment paper, toothpicks and an assortment of chocolate chips or peanut butter chips, sprinkles, crushed cereal, mini M&M’s, chocolate milk powder, etc.

Put a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper onto the cookie sheet. Cut the banana into thick slices.

Put a toothpick through each banana chunk, sideways.

Now it’s time to “decorate” each banana piece. 🙂 Here are some suggestions to try: putting candy sprinkles on both sides.

Crush a few pieces of a favorite cereal and coat the banana chunk with it. I used HoneyNut Cheerios.

Melt a few chocolate or peanut butter chips and stir in a little bit of coconut oil to make it thin enough to coat the banana chunk with it. I just put some on the top and sides of the banana, but you could probably dip the banana in the melted chocolate too.

I dipped this banana piece into Ovaltine which is a powdered chocolate mix for adding to milk,

This one has the melted chocolate and sprinkles on it.

For the last one, I used the melted chocolate and a miniature marshmallow.

Place the cookie sheet with the banana chunks into the freezer for about 1 hour. Then take them out and enjoy! The kids will have fun making them AND eating them! 😉

Stay cool, everyone! 🙂

Great Use for Leftover Frosting

One thing my mom used to do with leftover frosting was always a big hit with my siblings and me. Super simple, but we always enjoyed this treat. All you need is graham crackers and frosting, but sprinkles or colored sugar can make it look even more special.

You can make little “sandwiches” or go with open-faced pieces. Break some graham crackers into the size you like. Maybe in half or into quarter pieces.

Spread frosting on one side of one piece of graham cracker.

Add a matching piece of graham cracker and you have a graham cracker and frosting sandwich. 🙂

As you can probably guess, you can also put frosting on a piece of graham cracker but not add the second top piece.

Sprinkles and colored sugar add to the fun so you might want to add some to your snack.

This can be a fun activity to do with the kids at Christmas time when they are begging to decorate Christmas cookies, but you haven’t had time yet to make them! Think of it as a “warm-up” to decorating Christmas cookies. 😉

And that, my friend, is a fun tip from “way back” during my childhood! 😉 Hope you enjoy making graham cracker and frosting sandwiches!