We’re back to share the recipes for some of the menu items we had at our “Baby It’s Cold Outside” brunch. If you missed it, you can check out all the details in this post. Without further ado, the recipes…

Breakfast Casserole is our family’s “thing”. Christmas morning, birthday breakfasts, when we have people staying with us overnight.. there will be a breakfast casserole (or two) on the table. It’s the breakfast of champions, a total crowd pleaser and oh so easy to make! Like, totally, freakishly easy.

1 Pound Sausage
3 Cups Sharp Cheddar Cheese
6 Eggs (5 if using extra large eggs)
6 Slices White Bread
2 Cups Milk
1 Teaspoon of Dry Mustard

Brown sausage, set aside and let cool. Beat eggs and mix in dry mustard. (I always like to combine these two steps to make sure the dry mustard gets mixed in really well.) Add milk and 2 cups of the cheese. Cut bread into half-inch cubes and add to mixture along with the cooked sausage. Put mixture in a 9×13 greased pan. Put in a cold oven on 350° for 1 hour and top with the rest of the cheddar cheese.. This is a great dish to make the night before (or even two nights before). If you want to make individual ramekins like we did for the brunch, just make sure you have equal amounts of sausage and bread and each ramekin. Also, bake them in a water bath to ensure they cook evenly.

My grandma started using this fruit dip concoction when I was a little girl and it’s always been one of my favorite things to mix together for a special treat. Oddly enough, I’ve never been a Marshmallow Fluff fan, and it’s one of the two ingredients. You can’t go wrong with cream cheese, though, right?! Right.

1, 7 oz container of Marshmallow Fluff (or Marshmallow Creme)
1, 8 oz package of Cream Cheese (room temperature)

Mix. That’s it. It’s so, so yummy – particularly with strawberries and bananas. Oh, and raspberries too. Actually, it’s good with pretty much anything. Including a spoon. haha!

Alone with a pat of butter or made into tiny sandwiches with a few slices of salty ham, these moist little sweet pockets of goodness are the bomb dot com. My mom usually cooks a bunch of batches around Christmas, puts them in large freezer bags, and freezes them. When you pull one out of the freezer and heat it up for a few minutes (or seconds if you’re using a microwave), it miraculously tastes just as good as when they came out of the oven.

2 3/4 Cup Flour
4 Tsp Baking Powder
1 1/4 Tsp Salt
1/2 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp Nutmeg
3/4 Cup Chopped Pecans
2 Cups Mashed Sweet Potatoes (about 2 potatoes)
3/4 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Melted Butter
1 Tsp Vanilla

Bake sweet potatoes in a 400° oven until they are good and mushy inside, mash and set aside to cool. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and nuts. In another bowl, combine mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, butter and vanilla; add flour and mixture and mix well. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface; knead slightly. Roll dough to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut with a 2 1/2 inch biscuit cutter and place on lightly greased baking sheets. Place uncooked biscuits about 2 inches apart from each other. (We like to place a few extra pecans on top of each one to make them look pretty.) Bake at 450° for 12 minutes or until golden brown. They won’t rise much, so don’t freak out that they aren’t turning out right – they’re fine! This makes about 18 to 24 biscuits.

Aren’t these little guys so stinking cute?! I guess you could say these are the Christmas version of our Little Gobblers. My mom made these for my brother’s and my school classes when we were little, and they were always a hit.

Powdered Doughnut Holes (Dunkin Donuts’ Munchkins)
Powdered Sweet Sixteen Donuts
Powdered Doughnuts (Entenmann’s are the perfect size)
Small Pretzel Sticks
Black Decorating Icing (not the gel kind)
Orange Decorating Icing (again, not gel)
Chocolate Cookie Icing
Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers (in the ice cream section)
Chocolate Cordial Cherries (Queen Anne)
Toothpicks

Stack the doughnuts to make the body of the snowman and use toothpicks to hold them together. Place a bit of chocolate cookie icing on top of the head to hold the chocolate wafer in place. If the top of the doughnut hole is too round, just use a small pairing knife to level it out so the wafer sits flat. Use a bit of the chocolate cookie icing to “glue” the chocolate cordial cherries (top of the hat) to the wafer (brim of the hat). Push the pretzel sticks into the middle doughnut for the stick arms and use the icing for the face and buttons. Ta da! You have the cutest little donuts ever.

There’s a 99.9% chance that if you come around our house anytime around Thanksgiving or Christmas, you’ll be given some of these little bad boys. They are so, so good – especially with a ice cold Diet Coke and some honey mustard.

1 Pound Spicy Sausage (we prefer Jimmy Dean around here)
2 Cups Bisquick
3 Cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese
3/4 Cup Water
2 Tsp Salt

Mix all of the ingredients, form into balls and place them on a cookie sheet lightly sprayed with cooking spray. So easy! Bake at 350° for 25-30 minutes or until brown. This recipe makes about 30 sausage balls. Don’t forget the honey mustard. We’ve found that either Ken’s or O’Charley’s Honey Mustard are the best. The sausage balls taste amazing right out of the oven. Store the left overs (if there are any!) in the fridge. Just like the sweet potato biscuits, these freeze really well. To reheat, put them in the oven at 200° for about 10-15 minutes, or pop a couple in the microwave for about 15 seconds.

You can’t have a brunch with comfort food without grits – here in Virginia anyway. For a little twist, we made individual servings by putting them into small juice glasses (I found them at Bed Bath & Beyond for about $1.50 a piece). Grits are yummy, but they are so much more yummy if you tweak the directions a bit. Here’s how we did it…

Quick 5-Minute Grits
Whole Milk
- OR -
A 50/50 mixture of Skim Milk and Heavy Cream
Butter
Salt
Shredded Cheddar Cheese

Prep the grits as directed but substitute whole milk (or half skim milk and half heavy cream) for the water and use more butter than the directions say. If you are making a large batch, you can totally get by with using double the butter (I didn’t say these were “healthy grits”, haha). Salt to taste and top with shredded cheddar cheese.

By now, you can tell from the recipes I’ve shared here on the blog that when it comes to cooking, I like to keep things super simple. Once in a while I like to venture out and try something a little more involved like Coq au Vin or mushroom ravioli from scratch. Okay, maybe not Coq au Vin, but you get my drift. For the most part, keeping it simple it where it’s at for me.

Today’s recipe is the epitome of simple. You literally can’t get anymore simple than this. If you can, let me know! It’s light, perfect for showing off fresh summer fruit and one of our favorite dessert staples around our house. Oh, and for those WW lovers out there, this dessert is 5 points per serving when you use Light Cool Whip!

There are so many possible variations of this concoction, but this is what we fancy…

• Sugar Cookie Dough
• Cool Whip
• Cinnamon
• Kiwi (diced)
• Strawberries (diced)
• Mini Chocolate Chips

Start off by baking the cookies as it says on the package but make the balls of dough a little larger than you ordinarily would – about two cookies worth. Like all of my food, I like mine a little more on the burnt done side and Greg likes his more chewy.

While the cookies are baking, cut up the strawberries and kiwi and set aside. By the way, aren’t those strawberries gorgeous?! It’s strawberry season here in Virginia!

Mix a dash or two of cinnamon in your Cool Whip. This will add an interesting extra layer of flavor to the mix without adding calories. It also makes the dessert taste more complex than it really is — which is a plus if you’re trying to impress your in-laws!

Time for assembly! Top the cookie with some of the cinnamon Cool Whip mixture followed by strawberries, kiwi, and mini chocolate chips.

When we have friends/family over, I like to put the toppings in little bowls and make a little topping bar of sorts. That way people can make whatever combination they prefer. Speaking of combinations, try substituting the Cool Whip for a cream cheese and powdered sugar mixture, mascarpone or even Nutella. Yum!

I’m all about fast and easy meals. On top of that, I’m normally one of those go-by-the-recipe kind of “cooks”. All of that went out the window a few weeks ago when I decided to attempt to recreate Longhorn’s Parmesan Crusted Chicken. Well, I failed on the Longhorn part, but not on the crazy yummy goodness part. Within the last two weeks, Greg and I have had this “mistake” for dinner at least five times. It’s fast, easy and we call it “OMG Chicken”. Greg literally said “Oh my goodness” when he tried it. Yes, it’s that good. Like in a completely-proud-of-myself-I-can-now-call-myself-a-real-cook kind of way. Then my hopes and dreams of becoming the next Giada were shattered because apparently there are a lot of variations of this recipe online (here, here, and here). But oh well, I don’t care. It’s still my and Greg’s OMG Chicken.

Since this is what’s on the menu tonight (along with steamed broccoli and stuffed mushrooms), I thought I’d go ahead, document the process, and share it with you guys. It’s a super easy meal to put together in a flash. To make the easiest chicken dish ever, here’s what you need:

• Chicken Breast Tenderloins
• Garlic Salt
• Plain Panko Bread Crumbs (Not regular breadcrumbs!)
• Parmesan
• Ranch Dressing (I highly recommend Marzetti’s Ranch – regular or Light.)

I didn’t list the ingredient measurements because it will depend on how much and what cut of chicken you use. Plus, this dish is seriously super simple. Beyond simple! You really can’t mess it up. I’ll explain as we go along…

First off, line the tenderloins in a baking dish then season each side of the chicken with garlic salt. Spoon ranch over the chicken and coat both sides. Don’t be stingy – this is where the chicken gets it’s yummy juiciness. We ordnarily use Light Ranch dressing and you really can’t taste the difference.

Then coat the chicken with an even(ish) mixture of Panko breadcrumbs and parmesan. I tend to put a tad more parmesan than Panko – but like I said, you can’t really mess it up. Kick it up a knotch by substituting the plain panko for Chipotle Panko bread crumbs. Tonight, we have some friends coming over for dinner, so I’m making one dish with plain and another with Chipotle.

Pop it in the oven on 375° for about 25 minutes or until it’s golden brown on top, like this:

This is the Chipotle dish, so it looks a little more red than the plain will. It doesn’t look like much but it’s so, so good. Pinky promise.

Have any favorite super fast and easy chicken recipes? We’re always looking for more to add to our box!