Holiday Recipes | Guru Goddess

Get a Head Start on Holiday Cooking Today

The holidays are coming, and with it, the need to entertain guests and/or feed the kids while they are home from school and usually cooped up indoors due to colder weather in the Northern Hemipshere. The holidays hold enough time and financial pressure, without the constant wail of “Im’ hungry! What is there to eat?”

One of the best ways to handle the holidays and save money at the same time is through Make and Freeze recipes. As the name suggests, you make the recipe and eat it, then freeze the leftovers. Or, you can batch cook, making a week or two of meals all at the same time, which you can then freeze for later use.

Make and freeze recipes made from scratch help ensure that you know exactly what is in the food you and your family are eating. If anyone in your house has food allergies, this is a must. It also saves a lot of money, because properly portioned out make and freeze meals cost pennies on the dollar compared to microwave meals from the supermarket or take away from your local restaurant or fast food joint.

Package up your food into TV dinners with the help of sturdy freezer containers. Color code the lids so that anyone who has allergies or a special diet, such as vegetarian or vegan, can always spot exactly what they can and can’t eat. If you are working and the kids are home all day, there is no need to worry about getting a hot meal on the table. You can rest secure knowing that there is a freezer full of food for the kids to choose from, heat and eat.

If you and the children and your spouse want to spend as much of the holidays together as possible without slaving in the kitchen, cooking make and freeze recipes now, when you are in the kitchen cooking anyway, can help you get well ahead of the game by the time the holidays ever roll around.

Get recipes ready now for holiday pot lucks, covered dish suppers, dessert or cookie swaps, and even gifts that you can make and bake, parcel up, and give as presents.

Do you have guests coming to stay? Feeding them three meals a day plus snacks can be hard work, and expensive too, especially if they want to eat out while there are there. Get organized now and you will be amazed at how easy it is to entertain them this year.

If you dread the holidays because you know how much cooking you are going to have to do, it’s time to end the pattern of slaving over a hot stove just to try to enjoy the holidays. Make and freeze recipes are easy enough to cook each night, and versatile enough to multiply 2 or three times so that you can parcel up and freeze the rest. Or, go shopping, unpack your groceries, roll up your sleeves, and make about a month of meals in a single day.

Packing your freezer with recipes made with the freshest ingredients means you will never have to waste food or eat lame leftovers again. Best of all, they can give you a great head start on your holiday cooking, making Thanksgiving and Christmas entertaining and socializing easier than ever. If you want a more stress-free holiday season, with better budgeting as you spread out the cost of food over 2 or 3 months instead of only a week, make and freeze recipes are the solution you’ve been looking for.

Further Reading

Make and Freeze Recipes: Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze, and Use Quickly and Easily

More Make and Freeze Recipes: More Great Foods You Can Cook, Freeze and Use Quickly and Easily (Eat Better for Less Guides)

Even More Make and Freeze Recipes

Healthy Make Ahead and Freeze Muffins

November 13, 2013By admin Cooking, Holiday Recipes, Make and Freeze make ahead meals, make and freeze recipes, microwave cookingLeave a Comment

Great Halloween Ideas 1

Get great ideas here on how to throw a super Halloween party; costume ideas, recipes and other holiday essentials:

Fast, Fun and Frugal Halloween: A Guide to Great Halloween Costumes, Recipes, Decorations and More (Holiday Entertaining)

October 5, 2013By admin Books, Holiday Recipes halloween, halloween costumes, halloween party, halloween party recipes, halloween recipes, holidaysLeave a Comment

Fun and Easy Halloween Sheet Cake Ideas, Part 2

In the last section, we discussed how to make a fast and easy Tombstone cake. Now we are going to look at how to create one or more attractive pumpkin cakes to add to your holiday buffet spread or potluck.

Your round pans will be perfect for making a pumpkin face. You can then use the wedges left over from the tombstone cake to make stems for two pumpkin cakes by frosting them green and positioning them over the round cakes. (If you have not made a tombstone cake already, not to worry. We will tell you what to do when it comes time to decorate and assemble the cake.)

For the pumpkin faces, once your round layer cakes are completely cool, you will be ready to frost. First dye your white frosting orange, or use ready-made orange frosting. (We recommend trying to make your own natural food colorings rather than buying commercial products. There are many recipes online that can help.)

If you need to create a stem, cut off about an inch of one side of the cake and then cut it in half or into a stem shape and position it on top of the cake. Frost it green and set aside until it is time to assemble the cake.

Frost the whole cake ‘face’ with your orange frosting, and then decide how you wish to create the features of the pumpkin face.

There are a number of options for creating the faces. Again, if you are a green mom, you might want to create these as naturally as possible. If you are calorie or sugar conscious, this will also help you select the right choice for your whole family and any guests you might be serving cake.

You can draw eyes, nose and mouth with frosting gel or make some very dark black frosting with red and blue drops of color and create triangles for the eyes and nose and some jagged ‘teeth’ for the mouth.

You can also make the facial features using a number of pieces of candy corn. Make two triangles pointing downwards for the eyes and one triangle pointing upwards for the nose by positioning the candy corn as needed. The mouth can be as jagged and snaggle-toothed as you like, positioned in the center of the cake under the nose.

You can add the lines of the pumpkin down the cake in slightly curved lines parallel to each other like parentheses, starting on either side of the face, with the left-hand-side lines curving out to the left, and the right-hand side line curving out towards the right like this: ((*^*))

You can also use icing gel, sprinkles and so on to fill in the features. Don’t forget to color green the stems of the ‘pumpkins’ (your leftover cake wedges from the tombstone cake) using some green frosting or green sprinkles or colored green sugar.

These are quick and easy cake ideas that will feed a large number of people for gathering at a school, church hall or other community group . An attractive cake also works very well as the centerpiece for a Halloween buffet table. Best of all, you can use any recipe you like, so you can be sure of how wholesome the ingredients are. You can even make your own buttercream frosting or a festive-colored cake glaze using natural ingredients, without a lot of fat and sugar or food coloring, in order to avoid gaining weight or feeding your family and friends too many unhealthy items.

If you are really in a hurry, you can resort to boxed mixes, pre-prepared frosting, and food color, but remember that one drop of color can go a long way and use it sparingly.

If you make a mistake frosting your cake, just scoop it off and start again. If the worst comes to the worst, you can even cut off one part of the cake and start again or use it for cake pops and bake another one.

And no matter what it looks like, there is no such thing as a bad cake as long as you follow instructions for the recipe you are using or the mix you are making. Don’t burn your cake/s, time everything carefully, and test it for doneness according to the package instructions.

Note to beginner bakers:

Your oven may vary in terms of temperature, so always check for doneness about 5 minutes before the lowest recommended time. For example, if it says Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, check its progress at the end of 25 minutes. Our oven is so good that if it says 350 for 30 minutes, it will be done to perfection in 30 minutes. 35 would be overdone.

We once had an oven that was 100 degrees cooler than it should have been and one that was 75 degrees hotter than it should have been. If you want to save a lot of money and calories by learning to make and decorate cakes yourself, it is a fun hobby the whole family will love, but you might want to invest in an inexpensive oven thermometer just to check your oven so all your cakes will come out great.

Fun and Easy Halloween Sheet Cake Ideas, Part 1

There are many way to make a homemade sheet cake into an attractive and festive one for Halloween. The first thing to consider is the shapes and size of the pans you have. Most of us will own the usual 9” x 13” baking pan and a couple of round cake pans to make a layer cake.

The next thing to consider is how many people you will need to feed if you are having a party, or are contributing to a Halloween potluck or buffet.

In this series of articles, we will teach you how to make a fast and easy Tombstone Cake and a Pumpkin Cake.

Tombstone Cake

A 9” x 13” sized cake can serve at least 12 people, more if you cut into smaller slices rather than squares or rectangles. Make a tombstone cake by positioning the cake on a board that you can use to transport the cake. Hold it so that the shorter edge of the cake is nearest you. With a sharp knife, cut off the top left corner of the cake, working from the center downward in a curve, to create the first curved edge of the top of the tombstone. Repeat with the right corner. Save the cake wedges for more yummy treats later.

Using pure white frosting, frost the cake. Using icing gel in black or blue, write on your tombstone. You can put the initials R.I.P for Rest in Peace to make it look like a gravestone. Or you can write a Halloween sentiment like “Happy Halloween” in ‘spooky’ looking or spidery letters. You can also add a cobweb to one corner of the tombstone, on the top or bottom, using the icing gel, complete with a small spider if you really want to get into the ‘spirit’ of Halloween.

You can also use some of the gel to outline fingers and nails for a hand coming up out of the grave on the bottom of the tombstone cake. Coconut dyed green and some chocolate sprinkles will work well as ‘grass’ and ‘dirt’ for the bottom edge of the tombstone to add to the spooky effect of the hand coming out of the ground.

You can make the hand a little pink or even green with one drop of food coloring added to the white frosting. Create the frosting fingers by placing them in your desired area. Outline them with the gel. You can aim for a scary effect or a funny one. You might want to try the new Neon food colors from McCormick for a ghastly glow in the dark green. Just use one drop to start with. You can always add more if you have to, but it is impossible to remove it if your color ends up too dark.

In the next section of this article, we will look at how to make a fast and easy pumpkin face cake.

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July 16, 2010By pc Holiday RecipesLeave a Comment

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