Heavenly Homemakers

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Dark Chocolate Espresso Pie

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It’s our 2024 Christmas Brunch: Dark Chocolate Espresso Pie Recipe!

Oh yes, we are doing this!

A few months ago, our family hosted a Neighborhood Pie Party. Everyone from several blocks around was invited and asked to bring a favorite pie to share. It was a wonderful party with over 40 people in attendance!

Someone brought in a Mocha Pie and it was so very good. I decided to try and duplicate it for our 2024 Christmas Brunch!

It’s so easyYum

You know me. I rarely make anything that’s complicated. So I took the easiest chocolate pie recipe ever and turned it into a Dark Chocolate Espresso Pie with very little effort!

This pie includes simple ingredients like dark chocolate chips, whipping cream, and butter. Ah, and ground espresso.

Dark Chocolate Espresso Pie

Dark Chocolate Espresso Pie
 
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Serves: 8-12
Ingredients
  • 10-ounces dark chocolate chips
  • 4 Tablespoons butter
  • 2 cups whipping cream
  • 3 Tablespoons ground espresso
  • 9-inch pie crust (regular, graham cracker, or oreo)
Instructions
  1. In a small saucepan, melt the chocolate chips and butter together.
  2. Once melted, whip the chocolate mixture with cream and ground espresso using beaters or in a high power blender until smooth and thick.
  3. Pour mixture into a prepared pie crust.
  4. Chill pie for at least two hours before serving.

This is the fifth and final 2024 Christmas Brunch recipe, and it’s a perfect one to end on. But we aren’t done yet. Come back tomorrow for our Thank You Gift!

The other four recipes featured in our Christmas Brunch:

Coming up next: A very sweet gift for you!

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Santa’s Big Batch Drop Cookies

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It’s our 2024 Christmas Brunch: Santa’s Big Batch Drop Cookies recipe!

You’ll use four sticks of butter with this one, but it’s worth it. Why? Well, because these are delicious. But even better? You’ll end up with enough cookies to enjoy at home and share with others too.

The best thing about these cookies is that they are a wonderful sugar cookie – but without all the work of rolling out and cutting out dough. We love the tradition of making cut-out cookies too. But when Santa is busy, this is where we turn.

You’ll get about 40 cookies with this recipe!

Santa’s Big Batch Drop CookiesYum

Santa's Big Batch Drop Cookies
 
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Serves: 3-4 dozen
Ingredients
  • 2 cups melted butter
  • 2 cups raw sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 cups flour
Instructions
  1. Cream butter and sugar together.
  2. Stir in baking soda, vanilla, and eggs.
  3. Add flour until well-combined.
  4. Drop scoops of cookie dough onto cookie sheets two inches apart and bake in a 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes.
  5. Remove cookies from pan when they look slightly underdone so that they are soft in the middle.

You can roll balls of dough in colored sugar before baking if you want to make them more festive. We find that a fun Christmas plate offers all we need to fancy these up!

I love that you are a part of our fun 2024 Christmas Brunch! In case you missed them, here are the other recipes we’ve shared so far:

Up next: Dark Chocolate Espresso Pie

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Best Recipe for Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

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Here’s our best recipe for Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker…

Last fall, a friend of mine acquired an extra Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker and gifted it to me! One of my first thoughts was, “FUN! But when will I have time to figure out how to use a new kitchen appliance?” Reading instructions is not my favorite. ;)

Thank goodness the instructions were easy. And shucks, ice cream was the reward for taking time to figure out the new appliance, so that was motivating too. :)

Now that I’ve figured out how easy this is to use, I can’t tell you how many batches of ice cream we’ve made this summer. It is The.Easiest. There is no mess. Please admire my fancy homemade ice cream containers, haha.

People are like, “How do YOU have time to make homemade ice cream??” And they’d be right except that truly, I can put together a batch in three minutes and it’s completed in 20. No rock salt. No ice. No mess.

It’s so much fun treating guests to homemade ice cream!

If you love homemade ice cream but don’t love the mess and time it takes – invest in one of these sweet machines. They aren’t even expensive.

How to use a Cuisinart Ice Cream MakerYum

Step One: FREEZE THE CUISINART CANISTER. It must be completely frozen in order for the ice cream to set up. Once you’re sure it’s ready to go…

I use my blender to mix 1 cup of milk with 1/2 cup of raw sugar or maple syrup.

Then I add in two cups heavy whipping cream, a dash of sea salt, and a teaspoon of vanilla and give that a whirl too.

I get my frozen canister out of the freezer and put it onto the base. I slide in the mixing arm and put on the lid. Then I plug in and turn on the machine. At that point, I pour in my ice cream mixture.

About fifteen minutes later, the ice cream is almost finished!

For vanilla ice cream, I wait another couple of minutes until the machine sounds a bit strained – then I know it’s done! If I’m adding anything to the vanilla ice cream, this is the point the add-in can be poured in.

Two minutes later, it’s mixed in well and the batch is complete!

Here’s a peek at a batch of Vanilla Ice Cream without any add-ins. Once the batch is finished, I use a wooden spoon to transfer the ice cream to a clean plastic container and put it in the freezer. The canister can be washed and put back into the freezer to be ready for the next round!

Great Ice Cream Add-Ins we’ve tried:

  • 2 fresh peaches, blended into a puree
  • 1 cup fresh strawberries, blended into a puree
  • 10 oreo-type cookies, crushed
  • 1-2 large butterfinger candy bars, crushed

Best Recipe for Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

5.0 from 3 reviews
Best Recipe for Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker
 
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Serves: 8 servings
Ingredients
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • ½ cup real maple syrup or raw sugar
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • dash of salt
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
  1. Be sure your Cuisinart Ice Cream Bowl has been in the freezer for at least 8 hours.
  2. Whisk together milk and syrup/sugar.
  3. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.
  4. Set up Ice Cream Maker, getting out the frozen bowl at the last minute.
  5. Turn on the machine and pour ice cream mixture into the cold bowl.
  6. Allow mixture to turn into ice cream - about 15-20 minutes.
  7. *Pour any add-ins into the machine as the ice cream is almost complete and has just a few minutes remaining to process.
  8. Transfer ice cream to a freezer-friendly container.

I love how simple this is and how much fun it is to offer homemade ice cream with so little effort!

Look into a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker here.

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The Easiest No-Bake Cheesecake

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Ready for the Easiest No-Bake Cheesecake recipe?

This cheesecake is always a hit when I serve it and since it’s so easy to make, I can serve it to guests often.

Ingredient Info

I buy cream cheese at Aldi by the case because it is a great price for great cream cheese (not all off-brand cream cheese is good). So there’s my cream cheese recommendation. :)

Meanwhile, I have learned the hard way that higher-quality whipping cream does not work as well in this recipe. :(  When I used Horizon Organic Whipping Cream, I couldn’t get this mixture to thicken and set up. But when I used regular whipping cream from Walmart, it worked like a charm. So there you go. For this recipe, use low-quality whipping cream. Ugh, who even am I anyway??

The Easiest No-Bake CheesecakeYum

The Easiest No-Bake Cheescake
 
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Serves: 15
Ingredients
  • 2 sleeves honey graham crackers
  • 2 sticks butter
  • 2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
  • 1 cup raw sugar
  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
  1. In a gallon sized Ziploc bag, crush graham crackers with a rolling pin.
  2. Melt butter in a small saucepan.
  3. Pour crushed graham crackers and melted butter into a 9 x 13 inch pan.
  4. Stir ingredients together and pat it down to create crust. Set aside.
  5. In a high power blender or using a hand mixer, blend together cream cheese, sugar, whipping cream and vanilla until mixture is combined and thick.
  6. Smooth mixture over the crust. Chill for at least two hours before serving.

This cheesecake is great as-is, but you can also add fresh berries to make it fancier. Or, you can top it with candy bars for a fun treat! (One week, I had a package of a variety of candy bars that I wanted to get rid of so I used them up for a college student lunch. It was a huge hit!)

If you study the above picture, you’ll see that on the left, I used the cheapo whipping cream that actually thickened. On the right, I used good whipping cream and the mixture remained runny. I served it to our guests anyway and it all tasted great. But now you can see what I was talking about regarding whipping cream above. :)

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Easy Applesauce Cake

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This Easy Applesauce Cake is turning into our favorite fall breakfast treat!

Breakfast, you ask? Cake, you wonder? Yes, you know we eat cake for breakfast. The way we make cake, it’s like making muffins in a cake pan. :)

—> My Original Breakfast Cake recipe <—

The beauty of this Applesauce Cake is that if you have some apples that are starting to shrivel, making them not so appealing (<—get it?!), you can grind them up and use them in this cake. This leaves behind delightful little apple chunks in your cake.

But if you (or your kids) don’t want chunks, using applesauce to make this cake will be perfect. Apples or applesauce make this moist and delicious. This truly is a perfect fall breakfast cake.

Easy Applesauce CakeYum

Easy Applesauce Cake
 
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Ingredients
  • 1½ cups whole wheat flour
  • ¾ cup sucanat or ½ cup honey
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 cup applesauce
  • 3 eggs
  • ⅓ cup melted coconut oil
Instructions
  1. Stir all dry ingredients together in a bowl.
  2. Add applesauce, eggs, and oil, stirring until well combined.
  3. Pour batter into a buttered 9x9 inch baking dish.
  4. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

 

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Blueberry Shortcake with Cream Topping

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So, it takes three easy steps to make this Blueberry Shortcake with Cream Topping? It’s worth it!

Usually, I’m a “mix it together and throw it into the oven” kind of treat maker. But in the case of this case, we are making an exception and writing a recipe that takes three steps. THREE. What in the world?

Don’t worry. This is still an easy recipe. I’ll write it all out in the simplest of forms. And you really will see that it’s worth every bit of “effort!”

Blueberry Shortcake with Cream ToppingYum

Blueberry Shortcake with Cream Topping
 
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Ingredients
  • 2⅔ cups flour (I use freshly ground whole wheat)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 4 eggs
  • ½ cup honey or 1 cup sugar
  • ⅔ cup oil (I use coconut oil)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup milk
Instructions
  1. Mix ingredients well.
  2. Pour mixture into a buttered 9x13 inch baking dish.
  3. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. (While it's baking, prepare the blueberry topping.)

Blueberry Topping

Blueberry Topping
 
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Ingredients
  • 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
  • ¼ cup sugar
Instructions
  1. While the shortcake is baking, place blueberries and sugar in a small saucepan.
  2. Cook and stir, uncovered, over low heat for 10 minutes until blueberry syrup has formed.
  3. When the shortcake has finished baking, remove it from the oven and poke holes in the top with a toothpick.
  4. Pour warm blueberry topping over the cake while it is still warm.
  5. Allow cake to cool completely before adding Cream Topping.

Cream Cheese Topping

Blueberry Shortcake with Cream Topping
 
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Ingredients
  • 16-ounces softened cream cheese
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 3 Tablespoons sugar, maple syrup, or honey
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
  1. Whip all ingredients together with a hand mixer or in a high power blender until it is thick and smooth.
  2. Spread topping over cooled cake.

 

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Bake Strawberry Shortcake in the Crock Pot

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Want to learn how to bake strawberry shortcake in the crock pot? It’s an awesome method!

A few weeks ago, I shared how to bake cake in a crock pot. Why would we do this?? After all, it doesn’t save time!

Why it’s nice to know how to bake a cake in the crock pot:

  1. If it’s hot outside and you want to avoid using the oven, this is a great option!
  2. If you don’t have an oven for some reason, it’s fun to know that you can still do some baking in non-traditional ways!

Since this worked, I decided to use the same idea and try making my Strawberry Shortcake Recipe in my crock pot. It turned out amazing!!

In goes the batter:

On goes the funky lid set-up:

Two-ish hours later:

After it cools:

After you’ve eaten a good lunch. This is the rule at our house:

Strawberry Shortcake made in a crock pot is just as delicious, if not more delicious, than cake made in an oven. Try this!!

Bake Strawberry Shortcake in the Crock PotYum

Bake Strawberry Shortcake in the Crock Pot
 
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Serves: 15
Ingredients
  • 2⅔ cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground whole wheat)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 4 eggs
  • ½ cup honey or 1 cup sugar
  • ⅔ cup oil (I use coconut oil)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup milk
  • 4-5 cups of fresh, sliced strawberries
  • Whipped cream (fresh cream whipped to form soft peaks, with a bit of stevia added for sweetness)
Instructions
  1. Mix together flour and baking powder.
  2. Add in eggs, honey, oil, vanilla and milk.
  3. Stir well (or mix well with mixer).
  4. Pour into a well buttered7-8 quart crock pot.
  5. Lay paper towels to cover the top of the crock.
  6. Place a wooden spoon between the paper towels and the crock pot lid to allow for venting.
  7. Cook on Hi for two hours or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
  8. Once completely cooled, gently work the cake out of the crock with a spatula.
  9. Allow cake to cool completely. Top with fresh strawberries and whipped cream.

I have two crock pots; this one is my favorite. I’m loving the ways we can bake in the crock pot and avoid heating up the house!

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How to Bake Cake in a Crock Pot (with spinach, of course)

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Too hot to turn on the oven? Here’s how to bake cake in a crock pot!

I’d like to say there was a day that “we needed cake” but did we actually need cake? Meh. Define “need.”

But on this day that we “needed cake” it was 101 degrees outside. So baking was a silly idea. “I wonder if my spinach in a cake situation would work in a crock pot,” thought I. With this in mind, I looked on the internet a bit and sure enough, it seemed quite doable.

Look at all the spinach that I blended into our cake. So did we need cake? Yes, because of the spinach.

This is what you need to know about adding spinach to cake:

  • You can’t taste it.
  • You can’t see it.
  • It makes the cake extra moist, which is actually better than eating a cake without spinach. True story.

I buttered my crock pot. It looked like this. And now you can see my crock pot stains. This thing is well-used.

I blended the cake ingredients along with the spinach, and poured in the batter which looked like this. See, you can’t tell there’s spinach in there:

Next, we worked a little crock-pot-cake magic. This calls for a paper towel, a wooden spoon to prop the lid, and then a lid placed cock-eyed over the paper towel and spoon. This lets the crock pot vent a bit while it bakes. We all need to vent sometimes.

At one point when I checked on my cake’s progress, my paper towels fell and got chocolatey. I share this picture with you to make you feel better about your messy towels if and when this happens to you:

After about an hour and a half, our house smelled amazing and our cake looked like this. The kitchen was still nice and cool while the oven sat alone and unused.

The babies were up from their naps at this point and it was time for dinner and an outing for the evening. So I left the cake sitting all night in the crock pot (lid on after it cooled). The next morning, I carefully loosened the edges and worked it out of the pot, turning it out like this:

Then I frosted the cake, which made the kids sing “Happy Birthday to Nobody” because why would Mom be making a fancy cake like this since it wasn’t anyone’s birthday?

Would you look at this amazingness? What spinach? I don’t see any spinach.

Listen, you have got to try this! Use a cake mix, use your favorite wholesome cake recipe, just add spinach to cake and then bake it in a crock pot to avoid the oven. We are huge fans! This cake is so moist and good!

How to Bake Cake in a Crock PotYum

How to Bake Cake in a Crock Pot (with spinach, of course)
 
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Serves: 16-24
Ingredients
  • 1 chocolate cake mix
  • 1¼ cups water
  • ½ cup olive oil
  • 3 eggs
  • 3-4 cups fresh spinach
Instructions
  1. Blend everything up in a high power blender.
  2. Pour the batter into a buttered crock pot.
  3. Lay paper towels to cover the top of the crock.
  4. Place a wooden spoon between the paper towels and the crock pot lid to allow for venting.
  5. Cook on Hi for one to one and a half hours or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
  6. Once completely cooled, gently work the cake out of the crock with a spatula.
  7. Frost and serve!

How to frost your cake

I recommend this Chocolate Fudge Frosting (though I no longer make powdered sugar from sucanat like I used to, eeee).

My favorite-favorite is actually Cream Cheese Frosting.

And if you want to cut way back on the sugar, here’s a Stevia Sweetened Cream Cheese Frosting that is really good. Add a pinch of sugar to take away the bitterness without adding much sugar.

Last idea: Simply whip some cream like this and plop it on top. Super good!

But wait, there’s more. What if we topped it with Peanut Butter Cup Whipped Cream??!

Or this Peanut Butter Cream Frosting?!

Let me know which turns out to be your favorite!

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Simple Snack Recipe: 5 Minute Mousse

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We all need this 5 Minute Mousse in our lives. I bet after we’ve made it a dozen times, we can knock our record down to make it in just 4 minutes, yes?

I used to make this all the time when I was young and only had two kids. Then I forgot about it as other fun recipes became more prominent. Also, I have a few more than two kids now.

I recently dug this recipe out again and wow is it a hit with our current tribe!

Here’s a fun photo our almost daughter-in-law snapped one day of me surrounded by five of our current ten kids. Life is a party, and that party calls for 5 Minute Mousse!

5 Minute MousseYum

Simple Snack Recipe: 5 Minute Mousse
 
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Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  • ¼ cup sugar or honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
  1. Whip all ingredients together in a high power blender or with a hand mixer until thick and smooth.
  2. Chill for at least one hour before serving.

 

Usually, I don’t take the time to scoop this into individual serving dishes before I put it into the fridge to chill. I’ve found that a large pyrex bowl with a lid works best. Then I scoop the mousse into small bowls and hand them out.

This dessert is brought to you by the mom who now needs to offer dessert every night.

Why? Because we’ve found that our six and eight-year-olds need some special incentives to eat healthy foods. “No veggies equals no dessert.” They also need reinforcement to be sweet. “If you aren’t sweet you don’t get sweets.”

So I’ve been coming up with desserts a little more regularly to help us as we train this new set of kids. :)

And of course, I add spinach to our cake, so they get to earn their cake and it comes with a full-on salad. That’s a mom-win! :)

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Chocolate Pumpkin SPINACH Cake? Yes.

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Yes, I made a new cake with spinach, a Chocolate Pumpkin Spinach Cake. It’s official. I’m ridiculous. But wait until you try this!

You can think I’m crazy if you want to. You’d be right. But adding spinach to cake? Well, it’s a hilarious way to eat vegetables. Your family will be none the wiser unless they watch you make the cake. Then you have some explaining to do.

Therin lies all the ingredients for a pumpkin chocolate cake, plus a generous amount of fresh spinach. All blended up, it turns into a cake. For Popeye. And everyone else.

Hey, this is a million times better than this fun – but full of sugar and white flour – add spinach to a cake mix idea. I still plan to make that from time to time because it’s fun and truly a good way to get my kids to eat greens.

But this Chocolate Pumpkin SPINACH Cake has both pumpkin and spinach, so it’s basically a health food. Covered in frosting. ;)

Chocolate Pumpkin Spinach CakeYum

4.5 from 2 reviews
Chocolate Pumpkin SPINACH Cake? Yes.
 
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Serves: 15
Ingredients
  • 1 cup melted coconut oil
  • 1 can pumpkin puree (15 ounces)
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ cup water
  • 2-3 cups fresh spinach leaves
  • 4 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1 cup sucanat or brown sugar
  • dash of sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
Instructions
  1. Put all ingredients into a high power blender (like a Blendtec) starting with liquids first.
  2. Blend until well mixed and smooth.
  3. Pour ingredients into a 9x13 inch cake pan.
  4. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
  5. Allow cake to cool completely before frosting.

Want some low-sugar frosting options? Follow this search I did, and find all kinds of fun frosting ideas. Plus, you’ll see more cake recipes, and you know you want to add spinach to all of those!!

Have you tried this idea? Tell me how it went for you!

My family cannot tell there’s spinach in our cake. I love this!

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