Boston Cream Pie Minis

I made these delicious cupcakes for our Family Home Evening treat yesterday. If you like Boston Cream Pie like I do, this recipe is for you. It gives you all the flavors of Boston Cream Pie, but in a smaller size and much less effort! You could even do them in mini muffin pans for a cute bite-size version, great on a dessert buffet.

Boston Cream Pie Minis

1 pkg yellow cake mix (2-layer size)
1 cup cold milk
1 pkg (4 serving size) vanilla instant pudding
½ cup Cool Whip
1 can chocolate frosting (I use Duncan Hines classic chocolate)

Preheat oven to 350°. Prepare cake batter and bake in 24 greased medium muffin pan cups as directed on package. Cool 10 minute in pans. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Pour milk into a large bowl. Add dry pudding mix. Beat with a wire whisk 2 minutes, or until well blended. Let stand 5 minutes to thicken. Meanwhile, using a serrated knife, cut cupcakes in half horizontally. Gently stir the Cool Whip into the pudding. Spoon about 1 Tablespoon of pudding mixture onto the bottom half of each cupcake (I use my smallest cookie scoop), cover with top of cupcake.

Microwave frosting for a few seconds to make it easier to spread. Frost each cupcake top with 1 – 1½ Tablespoons frosting. Refrigerate at least 15 minutes before serving. Store leftover cupcakes in the refrigerator.

New Recipe

I am always ready to try a new side dish recipe. I get tired of the same old thing over and over. I found this recipe and tried it this week. It was really good. I served this with ham, but it would be good with chicken or fish, too. Give it a try! I substituted rotisserie chicken seasoning for the paprika.

Paprika Potatoes and Green Beans

1/2 pound red skinned potatoes (cut into 1/2 inch pieces)
2 cups frozen green beans
3 Tablespoons melted butter
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp pepper (I used white)

Cover potatoes with water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and cook 10 - 12 minutes. Add green beans and cook 5 more minutes longer or until potatoes and beans are tender. Drain. (I also returned the potatoes and green beans to the pot and put them on the warm burner and shook the pan to dry the potatoes a little more).

In a small bowl combine melted butter, garlic salt, pepper and paprika. Pour over potatoes and stir gently to coat.

You can adjust the seasonings to you own taste. I actually doubled the seasonings because I did not want it to be bland. It was great! AND it was not corn, our usually standby with a green salad and meat.

Imagine That

We took the girls to see the movie "Imagine That" last night starring Eddie Murphy. It was so cute. It made me think of my imaginary friend days when I was about that age. We all loved it! It is hard to find a good movie for our older girls to watch that is entertaining. This definitely fit for our family. There is also lots of fun things on the official movie website.

Looks Familiar

This would be my brother. Anyone agree?

Hi! Welcome to Blockbuster!

When Jared is away traveling, I get a movie or two and stay up later than usual and watch movies that he would not enjoy. Then the girls like to rent their movies, of course. And then there is just the general quick dinner and a video date while the girls are babysitting. And we often shop the previously viewed movies and buy those, especially kids ones. And we joined the rewards program thing where we get a free rental just about every other week. So, we are in there to the same store "pretty often". It goes in spurts. Lately we have been on one of those spurts. When we go in the manager is often the only one working there and checks us out. He has also recommended other movies to me, which I have rented even if they were weird! Once we rented Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and he was so excited because that was one of his "employee picks" and it had his name "JEREMY" right on it on a little label. We said we thought it would be funny to show our kids a movie we like when we were in high school. (I think I blogged about this previously). The girls liked it so much we rented it again on another occasion. Ok, now I know that we go to Blockbuster WAY too much. Because today he was there and said, "Aren't you the people who liked Bill and Ted?" Oh yeah, we said. So he asked the girls if they had seen the sequel, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. So when we said, oh no, we hadn't, he reaches back to his "private stash" and said, "Here-- this is my personal copy! You can just borrow it from me." WELL, how many of you have had that happen to you in your local blockbuster? I thought not!

Day at the Lake

We spent most of the day today at Lake Ozark and Osage Beach-- and we did not even get wet! I didn't bring my camera, enough pictures yesterday. We stopped at the welcome center first (which is actually a huge log home/lodge type structure that looks out onto the lake). The view was super! We walked through the museum part of it that told the history of the area and how they built Bagnell Dam. We picked up a few coupons/brochures, etc. Then we headed over to Sugar Creek for a game of mini-golf. Jared beat us all, of course. It was so fun though and again, we enjoyed great weather and beautiful scenery. We had Culver's for lunch and then went to do a little outlet shopping. It is fun to get a good bargain, like Aero-postal jeans for the girls for $5.99. We also enjoyed Coldstone today at the outlet mall. So yummy! We drove back home, fixed a quick dinner and the girls played their flutes for everyone tonight. It was another great day with our family!

KC Zoo

We spent a fun day with perfect weather for the Kansas City Zoo. Here are some pictures :
Sorry so many-- I couldn't decide.


























The Kansas City Zoo is a wonderful place to explore. I enjoyed all the walking and the great weather. It wasn't above 75 degrees, there was a nice cool breeze and so much shade. It is divided into regions, so we got to explore Africa, Asia, Australia, the new Tropics exhibit with rain forest, and much much more. That little meerkat sunning himself belly up was too cute! The girls all watched Madagascar 2, Escape to Africa tonight to top off the all day animal adventure. We like to move-it-move-it!