I know, I know. It’s not spring yet and I could possibly have curbed my craving for something luscious and lemony until the flowers were blooming, like a good girl. Perhaps that would have been more seasonally appropriate. But then I thought…

seasonally appropriate?  What does that even mean? And then a better question would be–and do I care? Hmmm….

Apparently not.

:}

Ingredients:

1 box lemon cake mix

1/3 cup butter-  softened

1 egg

8 oz cream cheese – softened

1 cup powdered sugar

peel from 1/2 lemon – grated

2 Tbsps lemon juice

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, blend dry cake mix, butter, and 1 egg. Press into an ungreased 9 x 13 pan. Beat cream cheese until smooth. Blend in the powdered sugar. Stir in lemon peel and lemon juice until smooth. Set aside 1/2 cup of mixture. Into remaining cream cheese mixture, beat 2 eggs, and vanilla until well blended.  Spread over the cake mixture.
Bake at 350° until set, approximately 25 to 30 minutes. Cool completely. Spread the reserved cream cheese mixture onto the bars. Refrigerate until firm; then cut into squares and serve.

I found this scrumptious bit of loveliness on a pass through Recipe Tips and sincerely couldn’t resist.

Yeah…like I tried.

Yesterday, with a few moments all to myself, I had some of my favorite words in all the universe come chanting through my head…

“What shall I make?”

With a million possibilities swirling through my mind, finally, finally–it landed on “Pepperoni Pizza Puffs,” tweaked a tad from Lick the Bowl Good. Ah, yes. The perfect thing.

Took a whole 20 minutes to whip up, and may I just say…Holy. Cow.

Soft, cheesy biscuits with tons of pepperoni and mozzarella layered through and through. But the magic doesn’t end there. Oh, no. Next you dip them in warm pizza sauce, and trust me–this one will quite likely make your eyes roll back in your head.

Dude. I’m not kidding.

Make them.

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups flour

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

2 Tbsp Italian seasoning

1/2 tsp salt

1-1/2 cups milk

2 eggs

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

2 cups cut up pepperoni slices

1 cup pizza sauce

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease two 12 cup regular muffin tins. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, Italian seasoning and salt. Next whisk in milk and egg–mix well. Stir in cheeses and pepperoni. Allow to sit for about 10 minutes.

Stir the batter then drop by 2 tablespoons into muffin cups. Bake until golden brown–about 20-25 minutes.

Warm the pizza sauce and serve with puffs.

See if you have any better luck than I did at getting them to last more than 5 minutes!

Just…like…

that.

:}

Now, I ask you…

who doesn’t positively LOVE smoothies? Nobody–that’s who!

Around here, it’s getting to where every time I sit down, one of my little sweeties says, “Hey mom–wanna make us some smoothies?” Of course, I don’t mind one little bit–but here’s the thing…it’s kind of a pain to lug all the frozen fruit bags and the yogurt and the juice and whatever else we want in them out all the time. What to do…what to do…

Then, after a quick trip around the Pinterest page I found several clever ways to solve the problem. With a quick little tweak, we came up with this hit.

Load a muffin tin with yogurt–I used peach and strawberry and  put about 4 Tablespoons in each cup. Next freeze them overnight–or until they are frozen solid.

Choose your conglomeration of frozen fruit. You really can make any combination you want–it’s all fabulous. We had raspberries, strawberries, cranberries, blueberries and peaches. Yum-mo.

If you have fresh fruit that you’d like to freeze–like bananas* or canned pineapple, cut it up and spread it, single layer on a cookie sheet, then pop it in the freezer.

*If you dip the banana slices in orange, lemon or pineapple juice–they won’t turn brown.

Scoop 2 cups of frozen fruit into a Ziploc bag.

After the yogurt is frozen, just poke a spoon or table knife in one side and pop them out.

Drop one big or two half sized yogurt “pucks” in each bag and seal them up.

Label the the bags if you like, but we didn’t feel the need. Seriously, any of them are heavenly and you can pretty much see what is in each pack. So it seemed silly to worry about it.

Store in the freezer until someone says, “Hey, wanna make a smoothie?” Then all you have to do is pour a pack in the blender, add 1-2 cups juice or milk and whirl them up.

Best of all, nothing to clean…

except all the empty cups.

Heh.