Dessert Tacos #2 – Banana Split!

We had so much fun last week making Dessert Tacos with apples, that we tried another version of Dessert Tacos. They are very yummy too, but also messy so keep a plate handy when you eat these! 😉 This version of Dessert Tacos is like making a banana split in a taco shell! Let’s go!

Start with heating/baking your taco shells.

Once your shells are heated, allow them a few minutes to cool enough to handle them comfortably. Meanwhile, grab a bag of your favorite chocolate chips. I used milk chocolate.

Add some chocolate chips to a microwave safe container along with a little bit of coconut oil and microwave for 30 seconds and then stir. Microwave for additional time until the chocolate chips are completely melted. Be careful and only microwave for 15-30 second intervals at one time before stirring again.

Take a taco shell and dip it into the melted chocolate.

You can dip the shell in the melted chocolate to suit your preference. Maybe you only want one end dipped in the chocolate or maybe just the top middle area or you can coat the entire taco shell with chocolate. I might have gotten a little carried away and completely covered my shells with chocolate. 😉 Place your chocolate tacos on foil or waxed paper covered tray or cookie sheet.

Place your tray of chocolate covered shells into the refrigerator until the chocolate completely hardens. When the shells are ready, gather your favorite banana split ingredients and get ready to stuff those shells!

I started by putting banana slices in the shells first. I found that leaning the shell on the side of my tray made it easier to put the ingredients inside.

Next came the ice cream…

Then some strawberry and pineapple toppings.

I topped it off with some whipped cream! Mmmm!

Doesn’t that look yummy?!

There is something quite satisfying about the crunch of the taco shell along with the sweetness of the ice cream! 🙂 Now, if that seemed like way too much chocolate for your taste, try this way instead. Bake the taco shells as before, but skip the chocolate dipping part. Start with adding the banana first… (If you noticed the cardboard around the shell, that is the piece of cardboard that comes with the taco shells and keeps the first taco in the line from closing up. It worked nicely to help support the shell while filling it.)

Then the ice cream…

Maybe some tiny marshmallows are next…

Drizzle some delicious chocolate syrup over the top.

And don’t forgot a nice big squirt of whipped cream to finish it off!

In this version, you still get the taste of chocolate, but it’s not completely overwhelming. It just depends on how much chocolate you think your banana split needs! 😉 I hope you’ll give these Dessert Tacos a whirl! 🙂

I’m back and I’m sharing Dessert Tacos today!

Wow, sorry I haven’t posted in ages but life has been happening. We had some lovely company come to stay for a few days and then I got sick with the flu. (Yes, while our company was here. Ugh!) So I’ve been coughing my head off and feeling blah for 2 weeks now. Finally on the mend, though the cough wants to hang on. But I hope to be back to sharing some fun things for you to try! 🙂

Today’s post is about Dessert Tacos! Someone mentioned something the other day and my brain took off and I had to try my idea out. While not all of my ideas are winners, we really liked our Dessert Taco experiment! It’s not an exact recipe so feel free to tweak this to fit your family. I am drooling again just looking at the picture! 😉

You will need some crunchy taco shells…I used these mini shells.

You’ll also need some cooking type apples, butter, white sugar, brown sugar and cinnamon. Some whipped cream makes a great finishing touch too! A word of caution: these are a bit messy to eat, but oh, so delicious! 😉 Begin by placing your taco shells on a cookie sheet and set your oven to preheat to the temperature printed on the taco shell box.

While the oven is preheating, place some butter in the bottom of a large skillet. I used about 4 tablespoons.

Peel and slice 4 large cooking type apples.

Melt the butter in the skillet over a medium heat.

Add the sliced apples and cook on the medium heat.

As the apples start to soften, add some brown sugar and cinnamon. I used 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

Stir together and continue cooking until the apples are as soft as you like them.

After your apples are cooked, pour them into a bowl and cover to keep them warm until the shells are ready.

When your oven has preheated, pop the taco shells in for the suggested time on the taco shells box. The mini shells only need 3-4 minutes. If you are using larger shells, they will take a little longer to bake. While the shells are baking, mix together some white sugar and cinnamon. The suggested ratio is 1 part of cinnamon to 4 parts of white sugar. I used 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and 4 tablespoons of white sugar.

When the taco shells are heated, remove them from the oven and right away use a chunk of butter to rub over one side of each shell.

Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture lightly over the buttered shells.

Turn the shells over and do the same to the other side.

Fill each taco shell with the warm apples. Make sure you have a plate handy to put them on once they are filled.

Add some whipped cream on top of the apples and these Dessert Tacos are ready to be eaten!

We were able to fill 6 mini taco shells and still have some apples leftover. We also had leftover cinnamon sugar and I saved it to use in another recipe later. Or maybe to make some more dessert tacos! 🙂 I hope your family will enjoy these as much as we did!

A Change-up For Lunchtime Fun

Do your kids get tired of eating sandwiches for lunch? Or do your kids not really like bread? Try this fun idea just to change things up a bit. Sometimes all we need is a little something out of the ordinary to cheer us up. Gather up your lunchmeat slices, cheese and condiments and let’s liven up lunch! 🙂

Lay a slice of lunchmeat on a cutting board. Depending on the size it is and the age of the child that will be eating it, you may want to cut the slice in half.

Spread your child’s favorite condiment on the meat. I went with mustard on one half and Ranch dressing on the other half.

Top this with a yummy slice of cheese. I used Swiss cheese and Smoked Cheddar for my example.

Starting at one side, roll the meat and cheese up together.

As you might notice, the right side of my meat slice was pretty thin and so it fell apart as I tried to roll it up. Solution – if your lunchmeat is sliced thin, use 2 pieces of meat together.

You can stop here and have “rollups” for lunch or you can take it a step further and cut the rollup in smaller pieces.

If your child is old enough to safely use toothpicks, stick one toothpick into each piece of sliced rollup to hold it together.

Add a slice of tomato or a few baby carrots or some fruit in the center of the circle and lunch is ready to be served! 🙂

As always, adapt this suggestion to fit your child’s age and your family’s situation. I hope changing up lunch helps to brighten your day! 🙂

Super Easy, Super Fast Snack!

Hello again! 🙂 Sorry I’ve not posted much for a few days! It’s been a rather crazy time here with a few small crisis thrown in lately, but I hope to be back to posting more next week.

So are you ready for a super easy, super fast snack idea? Here it is: tortilla chips and cheese! Bring out of bag of tortilla chips…

Open a jar of cheese dip…

Put some cheese dip in a little bowl and warm it for a few seconds in the microwave.

Put them together and chow down! Yum!!

Are you drooling yet? 😉

If that isn’t flavorful enough for your taste buds, add a little salsa too!

Voila! You’ll have a very yummy snack in a matter of just a couple of minutes! 🙂 Enjoy!

Save Those Bananas!

Do you ever have too many bananas and you don’t have time to use them before they become overripe? Don’t throw them away!

You can freeze bananas to use later and it’s SUPER simple to do! There are 2 ways (at least) to do it. Grab a small freezer bag and write on the outside that it contains a banana and write the date you are freezing it.

You can simply peel the banana, stick it in the freezer bag and put it in the freezer. Doesn’t get much easier than that, right? 🙂

Frozen bananas can be used to make things like banana bread or muffins but my favorite thing to use frozen bananas for is MILKSHAKES! So with that in mind, here is another way to freeze bananas so they are ready to go in the blender to make a milkshake. Lay a piece of wax paper or parchment paper on a cookie sheet, cut the banana into slices and lay them on the cookie sheet so they are not quite touching each other.

Pop the cookie sheet into the freezer and go about doing other things while the banana slices freeze. After the slices are frozen, pick up the edge of the wax paper and quickly peel it back to loosen the banana pieces.

Pop them into the freezer bags and back into the freezer.

Now you have banana slices ready to dump into the blender with your other yummy ingredients at a moment’s notice. 🙂 And you didn’t waste those bananas! 😉

Here is my favorite recipe for using frozen bananas in a milkshake. (Shhh! Don’t tell the kids it’s actually healthy!)

Note: you can use the whole frozen bananas in this recipe or to make your own version of a milkshake. Just break the banana into a few smaller chunks before adding it to the blender. Enjoy! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #76 Ice Cream Cones

A summertime favorite (ok, year-found favorite!) of mine is an ice cream cone with chocolate and vanilla ice cream twisted together in it! OOOOoooo! Drool!

Yes, I know, it’s HUGE!! And that’s only a medium! Wow! But for this Taste Testing Tuesday, let’s think of OTHER things that could be eaten from an ice cream cone! Put on your thinking caps…here we go!!

#1.) Trail mix. Whatever your favorite trail mix ingredients are, I’m pretty sure they would taste great from an ice cream cone.

#2.) Vanilla yogurt and a cut-up banana. Yep, pretty tasty!

#3.) Miniature Marshmallows

#4.) Cereal. Have a bowl handy and you could even try adding some milk. 😉

#5.) Pudding! This is one of my favorite ideas! Chocolate or vanilla or any flavor of pudding is delicious in an ice cream cone. Sprinkles make it beautiful too. 😉

#6.) Crackers. Eat the snack inside the cone and then eat the cone!

#7.) Miniature cookies. These happen to be miniature Oreos but any mini cookies will work great.

#8.) Strawberries or other fresh fruit. This is another YUM! I’m imagining a little whip cream on top would be awesome!

So there are a few ideas to get you started! What can you think of that might work great in an ice cream cone? I’d love to hear your ideas and also hear about what you tried in your ice cream cone! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #75 Blueberries

Warm weather brings on lots of yummy foods! One of my favorites is blueberries! In Ohio, it’s still a little early for fresh from the bush Ohio blueberries, but they are showing up in our grocery stores now from other places in the U.S. What do you like to do with blueberries? Here are a few suggestions you might like to try:

#1.) Just plain blueberries! I love them just like they are with nothing else added. 🙂

#2.) With milk and honey. Mmmm!

#3.) Blueberry muffins, of course! 😉

#4.) In a fruit salad

#5.) Blueberry cobbler. Oohh, yummy!

The list goes on and on! Blueberry smoothies, blueberry sauce, lemon and blueberry scones, blueberry pancakes or waffles, blueberry pie, blueberry jam, blueberries in salads, blueberries on ice cream…you get the idea! Blueberries are wonderful and so versatile! I hope you’ll taste test a new blueberry recipe today! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #74 – Chocolate Dipped Oranges

Sorry to be posting this so late on our Taste Testing Tuesday, but it’s been a long day! Today we tried dipping orange pieces into melted chocolate or melted candy melts and sprinkling on some extra goodies. Don’t they look delicious?

You will need an orange, chocolate chips and/or candy melts and a few things to sprinkle onto the chocolate. Oh, and a piece of wax paper or foil or parchment paper.

You can use lots of things for the yummies you sprinkle on the chocolate. I used candy sprinkles, chopped nuts (cashews), mini M&M’s and mini chocolate chips. You could use coconut flakes, crushed graham crackers, crushed cereal, chopped peanuts, small pieces of freeze-dried fruit, etc.

Peel the orange and separate it into the sections.

Melt some chocolate chips in a microwave safe cup. Microwave for 30 seconds and try to stir the chocolate chips. Microwave for additional 15 second periods until the chocolate is all melted and smooth. Depending on what type of chocolate chips you use, you may also need to add a small amount of coconut oil or Crisco to get the chocolate melted and thin enough for dipping the oranges in.

Dip an orange section about halfway into the chocolate. You may want to use a spoon to help spread the chocolate all around the orange section.

Before the chocolate hardens, sprinkle some of the extra goodies onto the chocolate dipped part of the orange.

Lay each finished orange section on the wax paper and let the chocolate harden. Continue dipping and sprinkling each orange section.

I used white candy melts for half of my orange sections and that is very tasty too!

All that’s left to do is to eat and enjoy! 🙂 It probably works best to eat these right away. I had to leave home as soon as I finished making these, so I put my dipped orange pieces into the refrigerator. They tasted delicious when I returned home, but the white candy melt broke into pieces and fell off the orange section when I bit into it. It tasted the same, but it made more of a mess. 😉 For me, the mini M&M’s and mini chocolate chips were a bit too much sweetness at one time. I preferred the sprinkles and chopped nuts. I hope you will give these a try and see which kind you like best! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #73 – Cauliflower Crust Pizza

Are you looking for a healthier way to make pizza? Maybe someone in your family needs to be gluten-free? Here’s a tasty way to make a delicious pizza while using cauliflower for the crust. If you haven’t tried cauliflower pizza crust yet, this may sound rather weird to you. But I think it’s really quite tasty so I hope you’ll give it a try!

You will need 2 Cups of riced cauliflower (can be fresh or you can use the frozen riced cauliflower), 2 Cups of grated mozzarella cheese and 2 eggs…plus your sauce and pizza toppings. I started out following Dr. Eric Berg’s recipe but I have made a couple of changes. Dr. Berg uses fresh riced cauliflower, but I mostly use the Green Giant frozen Riced Cauliflower because its a big time saver.

One of these bags is enough to make 1 pizza. If you use this kind of cauliflower, let it thaw and place it on paper towels to absorb any extra fluid that shows up in the thawing process.

Next, place the cauliflower, 2 Cups of cheese and 2 eggs into a large bowl. (We have used 1 Cup of mozzarella and 1 cup of parmesan cheese and that works fine too.)

I like to add in some Italian seasoning to give the crust a little extra flavor.

Mix together.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and put the dough mixture onto the baking sheet.

Spread the pizza dough into a thin layer.

Bake the pizza crust in a 450 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes. Do this step BEFORE adding your sauce and toppings. Bake until the crust has turned slightly brown. I’m sorry, but I forgot to take a picture at this step. Remove the pizza crust from the oven and add your favorite pizza sauce, toppings and a little more cheese if desired. Return to the oven and bake again until the cheese on top melts and the pizza is golden. The pizza in the following picture was topped with pizza sauce, mushrooms, cooked bacon and mozzarella cheese. It was delicious!

I hope you will give this cauliflower crust pizza a try! If you would like to watch a video by Dr. Berg, go to YouTube and look up “Healthy Pizza Recipe – How to Make a Keto-Friendly Pizza (Part 2) – Dr. Berg”. Happy eating!! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #72 – Cheerios

Wow! Have you ever stopped to consider how many flavors of Cheerios cereal there are?! There are a LOT of them!! I’ll show you all the flavors I was able to discover and maybe you’ve even seen others. It could be a fun activity to buy a new flavor of Cheerios each time you buy groceries and do a taste test on all the flavors! Draw a chart and keep track of which kind each family member likes, or dislikes. 🙂 These are all the flavors I saw in our grocery store and in my search online.

#1.) Just plain Cheerios. I loved eating these when I was a kid and adding a little sugar to the top or some fresh strawberries or banana.

#2.) Multi Grain Cheerios

#3.) Strawberry Banana Cheerios

#4.) Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch

#5.) Cheerios Oat Crunch Oats ‘N Honey

#6.) Cheerios Oat Crunch Cinnamon

#7.) Cheerios Oat Crunch Almond

#8.) Apple Cinnamon Cheerios

#9.) Very Berry Cheerios

#10.) Honey Nut Cheerios

#11.) Frosted Cheerios

#12.) Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios

#13.) Chocolate Cheerios

#14.) Blueberry Cheerios

#15.) Cinnamon Cheerios

#16.) Multi Grain Cheerios with Real Strawberries

#17.) Maple Cheerios

#18.) Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios

#19.) Team Cheerios Frosted Berry

#20.) Fruity Cheerios

#21.) Pumpkin Spice Cheerios

Whew!! So there are at least 21 flavors of Cheerios!! Do you know of any other flavor that I didn’t list here? How many of these flavors have you tried? There are quite a few we haven’t tried so we have some fun ahead of us! 🙂 Which one is your favorite flavor? If you buy 1 box of a different flavor every other week, you could take almost a year taste testing Cheerios! LOL Have fun! 🙂