Bubble-Up Pizza Casserole

This was one of those recipes I found while browsing Pintrest. It sounded interesting and because pizza is one of our favorite meals in our house, I thought I would give it a try. This was an instant hit. I knew my husband really liked it because he ate the leftovers, which is something he rarely does. Another hint that I had hit upon something amazing was just the next week, he asked when we were going to have it again.

Yes folks, I had on my hands a "Pin Win". This is a great recipe because it doesn't really take a whole lot to prep and it's a fun way for the little ones to eat one of their favorite food. You can also reduce the fat by using reduced-fat biscuits and turkey pepperoni, or even a fully veggie one. Go ahead, make your favorite pizza...in casserole form!

Bubble Up Pizza
(Printable Version)

Ingredients

• 2 cans of canned biscuits (16 biscuits in total)
• 1 (15 oz) jar spaghetti/pizza sauce
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• Your favorite pizza toppings (pepperoni, sausage, black olives, mushrooms, onions, peppers, etc.)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13" baking dish. 
• Cut up biscuits into fourths. Place in a large bowl. Add in the sauce, 1 cup cheese, and toppings. Stir until mixed well. Place mixture into baking dish. 

• Bake for 30 minutes, or until bubbly. Top with remaining cheese and bake for an additional 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted and starting to bubble. 

 My Take


As I said before, this is a huge hit around here. We have it  once a month, at least! There's not really much to it. One thing is that you can either use those baby pepperonis that they have, or, what I like to do, is cut the pepperoni in half. I find that doing this helps distribute the pepperoni more evenly and is more managable to eat.

If there are people that like different toppings, then you can just top the additional toppings before you put the cheese on, like you see with the black olives in the picture above. 

Tie-Dye Fruity Cupcakes

Just in time for the Easter season, here's a fun little cupcake which has a nice spring time twist. I originally found these on Pintrest from the Jell-O website. I originally posted about these last year on my Domestication blog, but since I don't have many desserts on here, and it's now officially springtime, I thought I would re-post them over here. :)


Ingredients

• 1 package (2-layer size) white cake mix
• 1/4 cup dry lemon Jell-O (about half a package)
• 1/4 cup dry lime Jell-O
• 1/4 cup dry strawberry Jell-O
• 1 container (16 oz) ready to spread vanilla frosting

Directions

• Prepare cake batter as directed on package; divide evenly into 3 bowls.
• Stir a different flavor of the Jell-O mix into each bowl.
• Alternatively spoon batters into 24 paper-lined muffin cups, adding about 2 tablespoon of each batter to each cup. Bake as directed on package for cupcakes. Cool completely.
• Frost cupcakes with frosting.

 My Take

These were wonderful. I think when I originally made them, I had a bit too much strawberry, so that was the main flavor that came through. This gave me great ideas as how to flavor cupcakes with other Jell-O flavors. I want to try a triple berry one sometime, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

A suggestion they had on the original post was to use Cool Whip as the frosting and sprinkle a little bit of the dry Jell-O mix on top. I didn't do that. I used whipped vanilla frosting and then colored a little bit of unsweetened dried coconut green and added that on top. I thought they turned out pretty well, so I'm looking forward to making them again this year.

Slow Cooker Mexican Chicken

I found this recipe while perusing Pintrest one day. I was very doubtful of its flavor, as it only has 3 ingredients, but since I had all the ingredients on hand, I decided to try it. Honestly, I will never make chicken for tacos another way! I didn't realize that I hadn't put it on this blog (had actually posted it on my Domestication blog) so here it is for your enjoyment.

Ingredients

• 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 (16 oz) jar salsa
• 1 package taco seasoning OR 3-4 tablespoons homemade taco seasoning

Directions

Everybody into the pool!

•  Dump chicken, salsa, and taco seasoning into your slow cooker. Stir a bit so the taco seasoning and salsa blend together.
• Cook on low for 5 hours. Shred chicken and stir until well mixed.
• Cook on Low for one more hour.

Shredded chicken

My Take

That's it! It's that simple. You can even let it cook a bit longer (6-8 hours) before shredding it, but I highly recommend letting it cook after you shred it for a bit. That way, the shredded chicken will soak up all that flavor. I love to eat these on flour tortillas with tomatoes, shredded lettuce, sour cream, and black olives. I've also used the leftovers to make a taco casserole, which turned out wonderful.

Usually when I make this, I only use 2-3 breasts, as I'm the only one in the house that eats it. I could make more and freeze it, but we don't have a lot of freezer space. So, when I make it, I cut everything in half. And, honestly, I just eyeball how much salsa and taco seasoning to use.

Facebook

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and finally decided to create a page for "Café Strawn" over on Facebook. I felt that this would be good for me to post what I've been doing in the kitchen in between recipe posts over here.

There are a lot of recipes that I've been working on, but I haven't made a lot of them up to my standard yet, so I haven't posted them. I also have made some stuff, but forgot to take pictures (my bad...) Because I know you eat with your eyes first, pictures are very important to recipes. Sadly, many of my first recipes have lack-luster pictures because my equipment wasn't that great. I've upgraded, so when I remake some of those things again, then I'll retake pictures and edit the original post.

In other news, I've created a Pinterest board of all the recipes (that have decent pictures) that I've posted. I feel like this is a good way for me to garner some more traffic. If you are a user of Pinterest and have tried or would like to try one of my recipes, I would highly appreciate it if you could Pin or re-Pin one of my recipes. Thank you!

I think that's all the news for me today. Friday I will be making some homemade lasagna, so be looking for a post about that next week. :)