Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Low Sugar Chocolate Fudge Cookies

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I didn’t think I could make it happen. Why did I doubt? Cutting down the sugar in chocolate cookies is entirely possible and now we can all enjoy Low Sugar Chocolate Fudge Cookies!

low sugar chocolate cookies

Now, it doesn’t take much for me to think a treat is “plenty sweet” when, according to my boys, it is only “barely sweet” or “not even sweet.” But who was I to argue when Malachi grabbed the spoon to lick it off before it went into the dishwasher? I mean, it did look lickable.

Then when the cookies were done baking and all the boys wanted to try one, who was I to argue? I warned them. I told them the cookies might have more of a dark chocolate taste as opposed to a super sweet chocolate cookie they might be expecting.

You should have heard Malachi when he tried his first cookie. Actually, maybe you did. He was pretty loud. “Mmmm! Mom, these are so good! They taste like a brownie!” The brothers agreed.

Of course then I assumed maybe they’d be too sweet for me. I mean, if my boys thought they were great, that just might mean I’d go straight from one bite to migraine in a matter of minutes. Before trying one myself, I double checked, “Are they going to be too sweet for me? Are you sure I can eat these?” They assured me that the cookies weren’t too sweet, they just tasted good.

They were right.

This is how we know we have a winning recipe: when all the people eating it don’t realize or care that the sugar has been cut drastically and they just happily eat all the cookies like it’s just a “normal” treat.

As always I come back to the question: WHY IS THERE SO MUCH SUGAR IN ALL THE RECIPES???

Not only do we not need it, we don’t even need it. What I mean is: Our bodies don’t need the sugar overload AND treats don’t need as much sugar as we think they need in order to taste good. I’m learning that 1/2 cup of sugar is enough when a recipe calls for 1 1/2 or 2 cups. That’s a drastic cut in sugar without compromising taste.

This calls for a cup of coffee. What better way to celebrate the eating of Low Sugar Chocolate Fudge Cookies?

Low Sugar Chocolate Fudge CookiesYum

Low Sugar Chocolate Fudge Cookies
 
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Serves: 24-30
Ingredients
  • 1 cup melted butter
  • ½ cup sucanat or brown sugar
  • ⅓ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2⅓ cups whole wheat pastry flour (give or take)
Instructions
  1. Stir together melted butter, sucanat, and cocoa powder.
  2. Add eggs, baking powder, and vanilla, mixing well.
  3. Mix in flour until your dough has reached a nice consistency (moist but not runny).
  4. If you've added all the flour and the dough is still too runny, add a little more or chill the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour.
  5. Scoop 1" sized cookie dough balls onto a cookie sheet.
  6. Bake in a 350° oven for about 10 minutes.

Low Sugar Chocolate Fudge Cookies

Now of course you’ll want our other Low Sugar Cookie recipes:

You should also be very excited because I don’t think it will be difficult at all to tweak this a little bit and make Low Sugar Brownies. You can bet I’ll be working on that after these cookies are gone from my house which will likely be sometime in the next couple of minutes.

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Cinnamon Swirl Bread

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It would appear that there is a theme this week in the Stir-and-Pour Bread category. First, a Stir-and-Pour Pizza Crust, now a Stir and Pour Cinnamon Swirl Bread. Hey, I’m just trying to make your lives easier, one recipe at a time.

Stir and Pour Cinnamon Bread Recipe
Or in this case I guess I would have to say that it’s the same recipe over and over made with a few variations. This in and of itself keeps life easy because after a while, you’ll have the basic recipe memorized and the variations will come naturally.

So let’s review.Yum

Get to know this basic and incredibly easy Stir-and-Pour Sandwich Bread recipe. That recipe has forever changed my bread-making life and I will never (probably) knead bread again. Why would I when I can just stir and pour – then take a nap?

With this basic recipe, we’ve learned that we can make Stir-and-Pour Rolls and Stir-and-Pour Pizza Crust. Today we learn that we can make Stir-and-Pour Cinnamon Swirl Bread. If you want, you can add raisins to make Cinnamon Raisin Bread. Or you can add dried cranberries to make Cinnamon Cranberry Bread. Or you can add dried apples to make Cinnamon Apple Bread. Or you can add nuts to make Cinnamon Nut Bread.

Or you can add all of the above to make Cinnamon Apple Raisin Cranberry Nut Bread.

How happy are all of us right now that this recipe offers so many wonderful possibilities? We are all so, so happy.

You might notice that since originally posting the basic recipe, I have ditched the optional cream and egg. They are optional, after all. I’ve found after making the recipe so many times that the egg and cream didn’t make much difference so I skip those steps which cuts out a good 32 seconds in bread making time. Every 32 seconds counts.

Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Cinnamon Swirl Bread

5.0 from 1 reviews
Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Cinnamon Swirl Bread
 
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Author:
Serves: 1 loaf
Ingredients
  • 4 cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground hard white wheat)
  • 2 teaspoons active rise yeast
  • 2 Tablespoons sucanat or sugar or honey
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 2 cups warm water
  • 3 Tablespoons sucanat or brown sugar mixed with 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
  1. Stir together flour, yeast, sucanat, salt, and water.
  2. Cover and allow it to sit for 30 minutes.
  3. Pour ⅓ of the mixture into a well-buttered loaf pan.
  4. Sprinkle ½ of the cinnamon/sugar mixture over the dough.
  5. Spread another ⅓ of the dough over the cinnamon/sugar layer.
  6. Sprinkle remaining ½ of the cinnamon/sugar mixture over the dough.
  7. Spread remaining dough over the top.
  8. Bake in a 350° for 50-60 minutes or until evenly browned.
  9. Allow it to sit in the pan for 15 minutes.
  10. Remove the loaf to let it cool completely before slicing.

As you can see, instead of actually swirling the cinnamon-sugar, we’re actually layering it. This method works great!

Whole Wheat Stir and Pour Cinnamon Swirl Bread

I am super excited about all these great Stir and Pour options! Have you tried any other variations you can let us know about?

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Mockmill Grain Mill Kitchen-Aid Attachment Giveaway!

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Who has a Kitchen Aid?

How nice are they?! I hear nothing but good about Kitchen Aids and guess who doesn’t have one? This girl.

No matter. I’ve gotten along just fine without one all these years and have plenty of other great kitchen appliances that make my life easier. But several months ago, Pleasant Hill Grain contacted me asking if I’d be interested in reviewing their Mockmill Grain Mill Attachment for a Kitchen Aid. I jumped on the idea knowing that many of you have Kitchen Aids and would want to know more about the grain mill attachment.

Enter: My friend Emily. She has a Kitchen Aid.

I gave her my Mockmill Grain Mill attachment in exchange for her experimentation and feedback on the product. How fun to bless a friend with a new toy and to bless you here to with a chance to win one!

Emily was very thorough in her experimentation. She tried both hard and soft wheat. She tested it against my flour that I grind with a Nutrimill. She did blind tests with her husband who didn’t know which flour was which. It was fun to read about her results!

mockmill grain mill

It sounds like overall, Emily liked the Mockmill.

There was a slight difference in the results of grain ground in a Nutrimill and grain ground in a Mockmill. The Mockmill grain was slightly more course – though barely noticeable – especially once stirred into a baked good. She noted that if you’re wanting to switch your family from white flour to whole wheat, you’d probably want to transition them slowly since going straight to whole wheat flour ground in a Mockmill is a pretty drastic change compared to white flour.

Emily read the instructions thoroughly before setting up the Mockmill so that she could use it correctly. She also was careful to clean it correctly – because there are right ways and wrong ways to do this and you never want to get water inside the body. As with anything, there is a learning curve to getting the Mockmill figured out, but it sounds like once you’ve read through the instructions and get used to setting this up and taking it apart, you can do it pretty easily.

Can’t eat wheat? No problem! The Mockmill also grinds non-oily grains, medium-sized beans, corn, and non-oily spices.

And now the fun part!

Pleasant Hill Grain is giving one of you a Mockmill Grain Mill!

If you have a Kitchen Aid and would like to win a free Mockmill Grain Mill, leave a comment here for a chance to win. Want additional chances?

  1. You must leave a comment on this blog post to be entered in the giveaway.
  2. Like Pleasant Hill Grain on Facebook and leave another comment on this post letting us know you did.
  3. Subscribe to our new Homemaker’s Savings Club and leave another comment on this post letting us know you did.

I’ll draw one random winner on Wednesday, March 30. Be sure to check out the Mockmill at Pleasant Hill Grain!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Free Spring Activity Packets – Make Learning Fun!

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I have an awful lot of fun putting together free activity packets for you, and it’s even more rewarding when I get emails like this one from Lindsay:

I wanted to say THANK YOU for the March activity packets that you put together. I have been a regular reader of yours for a couple of years, but have never looked into your Learning Zone until now. The Lord orchestrated it at just the right time too – I was needing a “boost” with my 1st grade daughter (6 yrs old). Homeschool has been like pulling teeth for a few months now – not sure why. I have been asking myself lately, “What can I do differently?”. And then I got your post/e-mail! Perfect! I printed out both packets and used the younger version for my 4-year-old son. We started them today and IT WAS FUN! Woo hoo!

Lindsay even sent pictures of her kids using the packets. I love this soooo much! She gave me permission to show off her kids to you here.

Fun Free March Activity Packets

March is about to go out like a lamb. (Or something like that. I think March got mixed up in Nebraska this year, but it’s still been a great one.) There’s still time to get your FREE March In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb Activity Packets. Click here to sign up and grab the freebies.

Now I have new Spring Activity Packets ready for you too!

Just like the March Packets, there is a Spring Activity Packet for both Pre-K and for K-5. You can download one or both. (I mean, they’re free, right?) They include fun springtime learning activities and a few coloring pages too. I like coloring pages for read-aloud time. I always found that my kids listened better when I was reading if they were doing something to occupy their hands! Plus, your kids can give away their colored pages to someone to offer them some springtime cheer!

Spring Activity Packet Pre-K FREEBIE!

Spring Activity Packet K-5 FREEBIE!

If you’re reading from the daily or weekly newsletter, the Learning Zone sign up form is likely not showing up. You can click here to sign up and grab the freebies!

I’m super excited to share that signing up for these freebies will connect you to our new Heavenly Homemaker’s Learning Zone. It’s free, of course. You can unsubscribe at any time, your info will never be shared or sold, and being on this list means that you’ll be the first to know of the other fun (yes, FUN!) educational tools we’re putting together!

P.S. If you are already subscribed to Heavenly Homemaker’s Learning Zone, you should have received an email yesterday giving you instant access to this freebie. Look in your inbox for the subject: New FREE Spring Activity Packets for You!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Stir-and-Pour Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

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Remember the Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Bread recipe I shared a few months ago? Not too long after I shared that, a reader Shelby, and then others, emailed to let me know they’d been using that recipe to make pizza crust.

Stir and Pour Pizza

Bless you. Bless you all. Now our homemade pizza making lives are easier than ever! Mix the dough, let it sit, spread the dough on baking sheets, let it bake. Your hands won’t even get messy. 

It took a little tweaking for me to get this crust just right. The recipe is the same as the bread, but it took a few tries for me to learn how thick or thin to spread this dough. I’m not a big fan of a thick crust, but the beauty of this recipe is that you can make it as thin or thick as you like!

I spread the dough into two large pizzas and could probably spread it into three if I tried. This recipe goes a long way toward a big pizza meal!

Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Pizza CrustYum

5.0 from 3 reviews
Stir-and-Pour Pizza Crust
 
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Author:
Serves: 2 large pizzas
Ingredients
  • 4 cups whole wheat flour (I use freshly ground hard white wheat)
  • 2 teaspoons active rise yeast
  • 2 Tablespoons sucanat or sugar or honey
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 2 cups warm water
Instructions
  1. Stir all ingredients together.
  2. Cover and allow it to sit for 30 minutes.
  3. Spread dough on two *well-buttered* large pizza pans (three if you want a thinner crust)
  4. Bake in a 375° oven for 10 minutes.
  5. Pull partially baked crust out of the oven and top it however you like.
  6. Bake for 10-15 minutes more or until cheese has melted and becomes bubbly.

Whole Wheat Stir and Pour Pizza Crust

I found that spreading the dough onto my baking pans with a rubber spatula worked best. I always use baking stones (like these) for pizza because I think they turn out the best crust. I’ve not tried them on metal baking sheets, so you may need to adjust the baking time if you don’t use stoneware.

You can definitely make these crusts ahead of time and freeze them until you are ready to bake pizza. This means that the easiness just gets easier. Amen and amen.

Have you tried the Whole Wheat Stir-and-Pour Bread recipe? How about Pizza Crust? Have you tried using it for pizza crust?

Just wait until later this week! I’ve got another great way to use this recipe that I’ll share with you!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market – My New Favorite Grocery Store and Pics of This Week’s Food

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First let me say that sometimes, but not always, when I take pictures on my phone, they upload upside-down to my computer. I edit them to turn them right-side-up, and they appear as such here on my blog. But if you are a subscriber, you will see that they still appear upside-down in the newsletter. This is because I am a professional and always do things professionally.

Some of you are seeing this first picture right-side-up. Others of you are like, “Why are the peppers and avocados spilling out all over the grocery store? Who is going to clean that up? Why did Laura do that? This is not okay.”

groceries 3183

That right-side-up-upside-down picture was taken on Friday when I was introduced to what may now be my favorite grocery store. A brand new Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market just opened up in Lincoln. Since Elias and I had doctor appointments there last week, we stopped in. I decided that this store is a cross between Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, with prices that beat both places. I filled my cart in a way that made the cashier question my sanity (what’s new?) and I left super pumped up.

“Elias!! Wasn’t that so much fun! That is my new favorite store! Didn’t you just love that!?!?!?”

He was like, “It was a store.”

Ok fine. Not everyone geeks out when grocery shopping. But 88¢ for huge and beautiful red peppers, people!!! Chicken for $1.57 a pound! Strawberries for $1.50!

The beauty of this is that while I don’t go to Lincoln very often, I can price-match this store’s produce prices weekly at my local Walmart. I am going to save so much money!

Elias and I hit Aldi while we were in Lincoln, then went to Fresh Thyme, then ran into Walmart when we got back into town. We are well stocked up now. Here’s the breakdown, but as you can see…

Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market was the most fun.

  • Aldi – a case of organic salsa, 4 packages of brown sugar, 1 cantaloupe, and 8 cans of knock-off rotel
  • Fresh Thyme – tons of butter, lots of chicken breasts and thighs, a beef roast, full-fat yogurt (a great treat I can’t find locally), 12 pounds of strawberries, 2 bunches of asparagus, 5 huge red peppers, 4 packages of organic prepped hashbrowns (because they were a great price and will be a fun treat), and 6 kiwi (for a dollar!)
  • Walmart – 5 bottles of 100% apple juice (because I could Price-match them for 98¢ and like to have juice on hand for company/treats), 2 huge blocks of cheese, half-and-half, and 3 buckets of ice cream (not pictured) for our homeschool basketball banquet dinner.

groceries 318

Saturday I was actually home for the entire day – something that hasn’t happened in quite a while! I baked bread and got caught up on some work, made a menu plan, and had my kids help me grate one of those huge hunks of cheese in our food processor. Not that you were asking, but my two favorite ways to use my food processor are:

  • Grate Cheese (It took about 10 minutes from start to clean-up to grate a 5-pound block.)
  • Make Peanut Butter (I also make it this way sometimes to make it more spreadable.)

grated cheese

My kids do not miss grating cheese by hand.

This week we’ll be eating:

With all of this, we will be eating lots of strawberries and other fruit. I have plenty of different veggies and greens on hand. It’s shaping up to be a very tasty week!

Do you have a Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market close-by? I think they are fairly new, and I’m not sure where they build their stores. What is your favorite grocery store?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Weddings, Guns, and Green Fingernails

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gratituesday[2]

Nothing much usually goes on around here, so I always have a hard time knowing what to talk about. Life is so boring. (She says, as she looks at her to-do list and passes out.)

We’ve been running and running and running since the Youth Rally in January. Life is full, life is fun, hard stuff happens, and I am forever behind. While I’ve known this for a while, I am absolutely convinced now that loving relationships are more important than keeping a perfect house or staying ahead of laundry. This is my sweet and precious way of saying, “wow my house is a mess.” Slowly but surely, we’ll get caught up. (You know, since life slowed down and we have nothing to do.)

I thought I’d share some of the fun events of the past couple weeks, and guess what? Thirty or so thousands of years after most everyone else on the planet, I am finally on Instagram! Please come follow me and you’ll be rewarded with something amazing like one photo from my life every month or two.

So what’s been going on in my life? Well, for the past few weeks, our family has been working hard preparing for an annual church event – Leadership Training for Christ. Our boys have been studying for a Bible Bowl, working on some individual projects like photography, speech, and sculpture, and getting together with groups to prep for choirs and dramas. Below you’ll see Malachi (in blue) painting a car for the “Terror 2000” – part of the roller coaster the 3-5 graders are using for their drama.

malachi ltc

All the kids loved how it turned out, though one of the boys came in later and suggested, “It’s okay, but I think it would be better if we painted on a skull.” Yeah. I’ll get right on that.

Two weekends ago our family traveled to Kansas where our middle two boys competed in the NDII Homeschool Basketball Tournament. We spent three days cheering for our kids and having a blast with friends. I went all out and painted my fingers and toes green in support of our team. I felt a little sheepish about it as I pulled out my fingers to show one of the other moms at the first game. She smiled and pulled out her fingers WHICH WERE THE SAME COLOR! #momsofboys #gogreenorgohome

tourney weekend2

My dad and his wife met us at the tournament – such a blessing to have their love and support! Then my brother’s family surprised our boys and came to watch their final game. It was fun to see the boys’ faces when their cousins walked in!

tourney weekend1

tourney weekend3

The very next week, we had not one but two weddings that we were highly involved in. I had our schedule carefully mapped out so we wouldn’t miss anything and we were blessed that both couples worked around our schedule so we could make it work. The craziness began on Thursday with a bachelorette party, then a rehearsal, then a bridal shower.

So the bachelorette party. Who goes to a shooting range to celebrate her upcoming wedding? Only my friend Jen. She loves all things sports and guns. Good friends that we are, we went shooting with her.

What do you think? Do I look almost ready to shoot a gun?

wedding weekend4

There. Is that better?

wedding weekend2

wedding weekend3

I had fun for about 20 minutes, then I announced, “Ok. I totally need to go bake something now.” I don’t know why everyone laughed. I was absolutely serious.

The weekend went fabulously while we celebrated with our whole hearts the marriages of our friends. I have very few pictures so far of either wedding, but what I do have…

We took this picture of Jen to send to her almost hubby just before their ceremony started. Really, Jen we just feeling warm and opening a window to get some air. But it looked like she was scared and making a run for it, so out came the camera. ;)

wedding weekend1
After three full days of running and celebrating, as all events were drawing to a close, I asked a friend to get a picture of my true love and me. I love this picture so much I can’t stop staring at it.

 my heart

This man is my best teammate and serving with him is my greatest blessing and joy in this life.

Thanks for allowing me to share a snippet of my life the past few weeks. I’ve been trying to rest the past few days while catching up on everything I’m behind on. As always, my boys have been rock stars helping me out and in general, putting up with me when I can’t finish my sentences as a result of too many days with too little sleep.

Dare I mention that soccer season began about five minutes after basketball season ended? My life is blessed, full, and God is ever showing me His strength through my weaknesses.

Care to share what you’ve been up to this month? I’d love to hear!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. Sunday after the Saturday wedding, I still had great curls in my hair (and a lot of hairspray). I spent 30 seconds to pull it up in a Flexi-Clip and it looked great! What would I do without my Flexi-Clips?? Which leads me to…

This weekend Lilla Rose is offering 30% Off Select Styles and 10% Off Everything Else!

Lilla Rose Easter Sale
Sale starts Friday, March 18 at 7am PST, and ends Sunday, March 20 at 11:59 pm PST. Get the info here!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Make Your Own “Jiffy” Cornbread Mix (the Healthier Way)

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You get to learn to make cornbread mix! Your day is now complete.

Homemade Cornbread Mix

It’s borderline ridiculous how little time I have to spend on meal prep now. #life with teenagers #workingfromhome Or maybe it’s how little time I want to spend on meal prep. This, from a girl who loves to cook.

The thing is – I love food and I love feeding people. But I also love efficiency and simplicity. I’ve learned to make a hearty main dish, then throw out the simplest fruit and veggie side dishes possible. It’s all nourishing and filling and it takes very little work. I love this so much.

So when it comes to “bread as a side dish,” I very rarely have time or spend time or choose to make it a priority. After all, there are many more nourishing side dishes to choose from (tossed salad anyone?).

Sometimes though, we all just need a good cornbread muffin. Like with chili or soup or well, with chili or soup. To me, that’s when cornbread muffins are the best. I haven’t made cornbread in over a year – not because it’s hard to make – but because it’s just one more thing to do and I don’t have time for one more thing. (I’m almost pitiful. Almost.)

Last week, two things happened:

  1. I ran across this recipe for homemade Jiffy mix.
  2. We shared a meal with some friends in which delicious soup and cornbread was served.

I decided that if I had cornbread mix on hand, it would save me a few minutes of meal prep and simplify my life. Instead of talking myself out of mixing up a batch of cornbread because of the extreme difficulty of getting out and measuring flour and baking powder (the struggle is real) I could just dump the pre-measured ingredients into a bowl and stir in the liquids.

I adapted the recipe (included whole grains and cut out some sugar), multiplied the recipe to make it more efficient, stirred ingredients into a big bowl, and had six jars of muffin mix in less than 10 minutes.

Cornbread Mix

Funny how this simple task of making a mix ahead of time is so helpful. It doesn’t take much, you know?

Cornbread Mix in Jars

Will you save money making this cornbread mix yourself? I don’t know. How much is a box of Jiffy these days? They used to be 33¢ but I haven’t looked at them in several years. I didn’t do the math on this mix (because if I don’t have time to make cornbread I probably don’t have time to break down the cost of cornmeal). But I’m almost sure it only takes a few cents to make this – and I used 100% whole grain flour and organic cornmeal.

Homemade Cornbread MixYum

Homemade "Jiffy" Cornbread Mix (the Healthier Way)
 
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Author:
Serves: 6 mixes
Ingredients
  • 4 cups whole wheat flour
  • 3 cups cornmeal
  • ¼ cup sucanat or sugar
  • ¼ cup baking powder
  • 1 Tablespoon sea salt
Instructions
  1. Mix ingredients well in a large bowl.
  2. Scoop about 1⅓ cups of mix into six pint-sized jars.
  3. Store in the freezer until ready to use.
  4. To make cornbread: Empty contents of jar into a bowl. Add 1 egg, ½ cup milk, and 2 Tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil. Spread batter into an 8x8 inch baking pan or scoop into 6-7 prepared muffin cups. Bake in a 400° oven for 15-20 minutes.

Homemade Cornbread Mix in Jars

Easy as that, you have cornbread.

Are you like me? Do you find that mixing up bread to go with a meal is just a little too much effort (pitiful)? What do you like to serve with cornbread?

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club – Free Memberships for All!

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tablecloth

Frugal Homemakers Unite! (That sounded less cheesy in my head.)

I’ve been a (work outside the home, stay at home mom, or work from home) homemaker for over 21 years. While I recognize the value of investing in quality food and quality products, I also appreciate saving money in any area I can. How else could I afford to buy pants long enough for my ever-growing teenage sons?

tourney food1

The good news:

It is absolutely possible to feed a family well and manage a home well without over-spending. It is also possible to do this without spending hours in the kitchen, hours at the store, and hours online.

I come across many good deals because of the connections I have made with a wonderful online community throughout the past eight years. I pick and choose carefully the deals I choose to share here on my blog because there’s only so much time and space and I prefer to focus more on recipes and encouragement here (not that a good deal on coconut oil isn’t pretty encouraging!).

I’ll continue to share great deals here on my blog as I feel they will be a blessing to you. But now we’ve got something bigger and better to offer: the Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club.

What is it?

When you join Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club, you’ll be privileged to hear about all the great deals I come across but don’t have space to share here on my blog. I’ll compile the best of the best of money saving tips, ideas, and resources – and I’ll send them to you so that you can take advantage of and enjoy them as needed.

Savings Club Free Membership

Savings Club members will enjoy these perks:

  • Infrequent emails that pack a punch. I’m not going to load down your inbox. Neither you nor I have time for that! You can expect to see an email from the Savings Club a couple times each week – sometimes less, sometimes more. It’ll all depend on what great savings tips I come across and how many family activities I’m running off to during the week.
  • Information about great offers on nourishing groceries, non-toxic household and self-care products, and other resources. If I love it and use it and it saves us all money, I’ll let you know about it!
  • Money saving tips. Do you know how many ways I’ve learned to cut costs and save money during the past two decades? (I mean, I don’t have an exact number of ways. That was sort of rhetorical. It’s a lot though.) I don’t plan to stop learning more ways to save, so I’ll share what I know and share what I continue to learn. (Just last year I learned to make Gatorade!)
  • Freebies. You’d be surprised at the amount of free stuff I hear about but have to ignore because I just don’t have space in my blog schedule to share. I want to be able to tell you about these opportunities!

Speaking of Freebies and Deals

Let’s get your membership rolling with some freebies right from the start.

First of all, your membership for the Savings Club is now and forever will be free. Second, I created a free eBooklet for all members, which includes my Top 10 Money Saving Recipes. Plus, within that book, you’ll find a fun surprise coupon (or not so surprise, since I told you about it just now) so you can get another eBook from my shop for just a buck!

Top 10 Money Saving Recipes

I’ve got some great deals and goodies to share with you during the next couple of weeks, so join the club and be in the know!

Click through this link to sign up if the form isn’t showing up for you.

I’m super excited to share that signing up for this freebie will connect you to our new Heavenly Homemaker’s Savings Club. It’s free, of course. You can unsubscribe at any time, your info will never be shared or sold, and being on this list means that you’ll be the first to know any great deals or freebies that will bless your homemaking efforts!

 

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High Five Recipes: Easy Butterscotch Bars

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People can’t get enough of these butterscotch bars. They’re made with whole wheat flour but no one knows. They’re made with only five ingredients that you probably have on hand – so easy!

butterscotch_bars

I originally posted this recipe in 2010, but decided to post it again for you today. Why? Because butterscotch bars. And also because I have only been home 3 of the past 11 days so I’m behinder than ever. While I play catch up and work on new projects (wait till you see!), I wanted to bless you a recipe so you could bless others.

High Five Recipes 2

You’ll be glad to know that this is a High Five Recipe! (High quality recipes + five ingredients or less = High Five Recipe)

This is not a Low Sugar Recipe, however. So make them to share with others, and saver them slowly (as opposed to gobbling down half the pan before you realize what happened).

 

Easy Butterscotch BarsYum

4.3 from 7 reviews
High Five Recipes: Easy Butterscotch Bars
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 cup melted butter
  • 1¾ cups sucanat or brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1½ cups whole wheat flour
Instructions
  1. Stir melted butter and sucanat together.
  2. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing well.
  3. Stir in flour and mix until well combined.
  4. Pour batter into a 9x13 inch baking pan.
  5. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes.

These bars are gooey, rich, and need I remind you to make them to share with friends?

Now that I’ve been making these butterscotch bars for so many years, I get frequent requests for them.

  • “Laura, would it be too much for me to ask you to make a batch of your butterscotch bars for me for my birthday? Like very year for the rest of my life?”
  • “Laura, my friends and I were talking about your butterscotch bars and now we want some. I told them I’d ask…can you make us a batch?”
  • “How much arm twisting would it take for you to make another pan of your butterscotch bars?”

These requests make my day, and since the bars are so easy to make, I almost always say yes! If you haven’t tried these bars yet, do it. They’re crazy easy, but beware: people will beg you to make more. You’ll have more friends than you ever had before and everyone will love you for providing the butterscotch bars. It’s hard, but you can handle it.

Easy Butterscotch Bars - Five Ingredients!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!