Summer produce is like nature’s candy. I don’t mean that in some hippy dippy way or that candy is in any way a bad food group, I just mean that fruits and veggies right now are so delicious when the sun and the rain and the dirt are all working together to create pure awesomeness. Ok, so I’m a little hippy dippy about it.

I bought a couple pounds of peaches and a bag full of sweet cherries on my last grocery trip. Usually we just eat these things straight out of the refrigerator. My kids love having cherries for dessert so I bought this cherry pitter and they eat them as fast as I can pop them through! It’s a necessary tool for this season; you won’t regret buying one for yourself (although you may wonder why no one ever told you about this before! Sorry.)

But, since we were having company over for dinner this weekend, I decided that I would fancy it up and crock pot us a cobbler to enjoy. And as leverage for the delicious vanilla caramel swirl ice cream I had bought as well.

Most cobbler recipes include oatmeal in the topping. Makes sense– it stands up well in the crock pot, gets soft, but not mushy, and you usually have it in the pantry. Except this time, I didn’t. And I didn’t want to go on a grocery store run just for oats.

So, I opened the pantry and just started creating. While you could do this in an oval crock pot, I really liked doing it in my casserole crock pot because it made perfect squares for serving, plus it wasn’t too deep or too crispy on the sides. Literally, the casserole crock pot was the perfect choice.

Turns out– corn flakes make a great cobbler topping, too! I will totally make this recipe again. It’s just the start of blueberry season here locally and I’m thinking about going to do some local picking and then making cobbler again. Mmmmm can you picture the dark purple color as those berries begin to burst in the cobbler and the sweet smell of the caramelizing flavor?! Yeah, me too. Go get some local produce and make a batch for yourself today!

Crock Pot Peach and Cherry Cobbler

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 4 hours

Serves: 8-10 people

2 lbs cherries, pitted

6 peaches, about 2 lbs

1/4 c. corn starch

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. flour

1/2 t. salt

2 c. corn flakes, crushed

1 stick butter (cold or frozen)

 

Put cherries and peaches in crock pot, add corn starch and stir until fruit is coated. In a separate bowl, mix the rest of the dry ingredients and then sprinkle it over the fruit. Slice the stick of butter horizontally (long thin slices) as thin as possible. It’s easiest to cut the butter when it is cold. Place butter over crumbled topping and cover as much surface area as possible.

Cook on high for two hours and then low for two hours. This helps the fruit– especially the cherries– cook all the way through. Serve with a huge scoop of your favorite ice cream or greek yogurt.

Apparently I make corned beef in the crock pot every year and I’ve already posted multiple recipes, so here’s a summary of past years and what I did for 2016. This attempt might be the easiest and my favorite!!

Quick summation of leprechauns past…

First recipe for Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage is a full Saint Patrick’s Day dinner in a pot. It includes the cabbage and the potatoes right in with the meat, making it an easy one-pot meal.

The next Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe is the easiest with very minimal ingredients, but still a great flavor. You can vary the taste by using different beers.

TODAY’S recipe is the most favorite yet, but still only uses three ingredients. You will need to make the Crock Pot Caramelized Onions in advance, but they are delicious to have on hand and use in so many different meals!

I used my Crock Pot Casserole Cooker and it was the perfect shape for the beef– sometimes it’s so frustrating to get a big corned beef and then not have it fit into an oval pot!! This one was exactly the right fit.

Hope you have a fabulous Saint Patrick’s Day celebration this week. No matter if you were born with the luck of the Irish, married into the apostrophe, or are just enjoying being green…. maybe it be a delicious day for all!

 

 

Crock Pot Corned Beef with Guinness

Prep Time: 2 minutes

Cook Time: 7-8 hours

1 5-lb. Corned Beef Brisket

1 pint Guinness beer

1/2 c. Crock Pot Caramelized Onions

Rinse meat before putting into the crock pot to remove the goo. Throw away the seasoning packet, if it was included. Put meat in, fat side up. Pour beer directly onto meat and then put caramelized onions into the liquid and onto the meat. Cook on low for 7-8 hours. Remove from liquid and let sit for 5 minutes, then remove top layer of fat and discard it.  Slice meat against the grain and serve.

If you have leftovers, this meat makes great corned beef hash or reuben sandwiches, too! Enjoy!

This dessert was a huge hit last night at the Dinner Is A Crock Launch Party, showcasing some of my favorite recipes that I like to use in my cooking classes. We had so much fun, ate way too much, and laughed all the calories away.

I’ve made this dish many times before in my oven. When my son was younger, he was allergic to eggs, so it was really hard to make safe desserts for him that we actually all wanted to eat. My friend, Lisa, shared this recipe with me that originated here. I took the oven version and just threw it all in my crock pot instead. It stayed warm and gooey and perfectly warm all night. On the other hand, if I had made it in the oven and served it, it would have been cold and crunchy well before everyone had a chance to eat it. This is one definite benefit of the crock pot!

Let’s be honest, the first two ingredients capture everyone’s interest. Challah. Rolos. What else do you need to know?!

We served the crock pot chocolate bread pudding with both vanilla and chocolate ice cream, but chocolate definitely won last night– only a couple people wanted vanilla ice cream. Good to know for the future– I will buy more chocolate than vanilla. Although I’m tempted to get a coffee or salted caramel next time instead of vanilla!

 

 

Crock Pot Chocolate Bread Pudding

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 3 hours

Serves 12-15

1 loaf challah, cubed (about 8 cups)

1 8 oz. bag mini Rolos, each cut in half (this is easier because they are already unwrapped)

1.4 oz. package cook and serve chocolate pudding

2.5 cups lowfat milk

1 12 oz. jar caramel topping

 

Put challah and Rolos in the crock pot. In a separate bowl, mix milk and pudding until dissolved, then pour into crock pot and mix together until bread cubes are coating evenly. Cook on low for 2 hours. Chocolate pieces will be melted and gooey. Pour caramel topping over everything evenly and then keep on “warm setting” for an hour. Serve with ice cream.

Looking for something easy? This one is fabulous! Hot and sultry and moist. (Why do those three words sounds so naughty together?!?!) It’s a baked apple, people. Calm down.

No need for a grand story or explanation. Baked apples are a great choice because the fruit is easy to find and consistent in taste all year round. I made this batch with opal apples— they are sort of the color of a golden delicious with the texture of a gala. But they cooked up really nicely and held their shape. You can try it with green apples for a more tart finish, macintosh for a sweet crisp taste or any other variety that you want to experiment with for dessert.

Crock Pot Baked Apples

Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 4 hours

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

6 apples

3/4 c. golden raisins

3/4 c. dried pineapple chunks (this brand is allergen-free, too!!)

1/2 c. steel cut oats

3 T. brown sugar

1 T. white sugar

1 t ground cinnamon

1/2 t. ground allspice

1/4 t. white pepper grounds

1/2 c. water

DIRECTIONS

1. Wash and core the apple; core it twice to make a big enough opening for filling
2. Mix all of the dried fruit and dry filling ingredients together in a separate bowl.
3. Stand all of the apples up in the crock pot (oval or casserole sized works best).
4. Carefully fill all of the apples with the filling. Press the filling down into each open core and let the filling mound on top, too.
5. Pour the water into the crock pot around— not on— the apples.
6. Cook on low for 4 hours. Serve with vanilla greek yogurt or ice cream. Crock Pot Dulce de Leche is also an excellent topping!

This was a crazy weekend! School is back in session, the weather is still warm, and my calendar is booked. I love it. It’s this type of crazy that makes me smile– and sleep well! But when I wake up, it feels like I’m set on low for hours. So I decided on Friday night that I would whip up a batch of overnight oatmeal to help brighten up my weekend morning.

When people talk about having a stocked pantry, oatmeal is pretty much a staple. Steel cut, instant, quick oats… there are lots of kinds and they are all pretty basic. I happen to have steel cut oats right now, so that’s what I used, but in other recipes, like my Crock Pot Purple Oatmeal, I use regular oats, too.  Another staple that I keep on hand, are frozen fruits. They work great in smoothies, but also are the perfect addition to overnight crock pot oatmeal.

There are very few ingredients in this recipe, but the combination is well worth waking up for in the morning. You can handle sunrise, too, if you start it with something that tastes like pie.

 

Crock Pot Cherry Pie Oatmeal

Serves 6

1 1/3 c. steel cut oats

2 1/2 c. water

1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

2 c. frozen cherries

Put all ingredients in the crock pot and cook on “KEEP WARM” setting for 8 hours. Serve with greek yogurt and a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar.

I might have found flirty peaches at the weekly Farmer’s Market this morning, but we still need to have dinner, right?! Good thing I decided to make a big ol’ batch of crock pot grits to cook low and slow all day. I mean, come on… it’s three ingredients. That’s barely even a recipe. So let me also tell you about the toppings I made for our grits bar tonight.

After my morning adventure and an afternoon swim, I popped into the kitchen at Ooh La La, our beach house for the week, to whip up some easy toppings for our crock pot grits. Personally, I love a good dish of shrimp and grits with just the right balance of textures and a kick of spice, but not everyone is as big a fan of this southern specialty. So I’ve found that it’s better to make toppings and let people make their own concoction.

I have four tonight: 1. shrimp scampi 2. sauteed spinach 3. shredded cheddar cheese 4. maple syrup (but that last one stands alone for those people–AKA kids– that like their grits to be sweet instead of savory). Oh– and a couple adults added sriracha dribbles on top just to crank it up a notch!

 

This worked out to be a great easy dinner before going to the luau tonight. The what?! Oh yes, there is a luau every Tuesday night at the Koru Village Resort and Spa. It was so much fun to have the kids swashbuckle with pirates, swim with mermaids and party with fire dancers!

So here’s the quick recipe for tonight’s dinner. We shared it with the owners of Ooh La La, our beach house for the week. They are a fabulous local family that have really done an amazing job updating this vacation home! Since I’ve been blogging all week from here, I only thought it right to share some of my cooking! Even the baby enjoyed the grits, and there is nothing better than a gooey grits and toothless grin!

 

Crock Pot Grits

Serves 12

3 cups stone ground grits (white or yellow)

11 cups water

1 t. salt

Put all ingredients in crock pot and give it a good stir. Cook on low for 8 hours– it’s ok to stir it one or twice to make sure it cooks evenly.

Another beautiful day here at Ooh La La, our beach house for the week in the Outer Banks, NC. I woke up early and decided to get out for a run since there are miles of sidewalks down the main road. It was damn hot out even at 8 am, but I managed my attempt to burn off some of last night’s dinner. Remember that Crock Pot Low Country Boil? It was delicious but I was so full after all that food!

The weekly Farmer’s Market here in Avon was more like a farm stand with a couple artists, but it was refreshing to see locals and travelers stopping by the support the event. Even in the heat, the produce looked fresh.

I brought back some interesting varieties of squash and eggplant that I’ll cook up later this week, but I also bought half a dozen glorious juicy peaches that were begging me to buy them. I couldn’t avoid eye contact. Such flirty little fruit. So I carefully selected my drupes and decided that dessert would be the next  crock pot dish to make.

You can make this recipe with lots of different fruits– peach, plums, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries… anything that is juicy and a good texture that will cook down. I wouldn’t recommend trying it with melons or apples since they consistency would be too soft or too hard.  It was interesting coming up with this recipe today since I didn’t have my normal pantry to pick from, but this was a great way of using what I already brought and still making it work out. At home, I might have used flour and corn starch, but my boxed pancake mix worked just fine.

You can eat this crumble straight up while it’s still warm. But those peaches are begging for some sweet company, so I would suggest serving it with ice cream or vanilla greek yogurt. If you want a little kick added to it, try pouring a drizzle of Rumchata on top of it for a really awesome finish.

Looks like I might need another run tomorrow morning after I annihilate this dessert tonight!  Good thing Ooh La La has a pool… an evening swim might just do the trick instead so I can sleep in. It’s a good thing we also brought our bicycles– I might try to take my kids out for a ride tomorrow. I thought it was going to be tough to haul all four bicycles, but my new bike rack actually worked out really well for the long trip.

I talked to the owner today and she mentioned that the house is still available in September and October when it’s still hot here, but the tourist season slows down. It sounds like pure bliss to spend an autumn week down by the ocean with the hot days, but cooler nights. CLICK HERE and reserve your vacation before I beat you to it!

Crock Pot Peach Crumble

Serves 6

6 ripe peaches, sliced and pitted

2 T. maple syrup

1/2 c. pancake mix

1/3 c. steel cut oatmeal

1 stick salted butter, cold and cubed

Put peaches in the crock pot and add maple syrup and pancake mix. Stir together until moist but not gooey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sprinkle oats on top of mixture and then place cubes of butter across top. Cook on low for four hours. Serve with ice cream or greek yogurt.

Who doesn’t love a baked potato with all the toppings?! The problem is, I rarely ever keep baking-sized potatoes in the pantry.  (Although has anyone ever used one of these?!) So this recipe is a great way to fulfill that salty and savory craving with items that you can keep on hand. I used refrigerated shredded potatoes, but you can totally make this dish using the frozen kind instead. The quantity and directions stay the same.

My mother-in-law used to make a potato casserole like this and my recipe is totally inspired by her dish. I remember lots of festive gatherings, summer BBQs, and family dinners with second and third helpings of potato casserole. Some nights, I’d rather just have this as my main dish with a side salad… and save room for dessert! Family recipes are the best– because they satisfy your soul and not just your appetite.

Crock Pot Potato Casserole

Serves 8-12

2 lb. shredded potatoes (just wanted to share… I use THESE)

8 0z. sour cream

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 onion, chopped

1 10.5 oz can Cream of Celery Soup

1 cup bacon crumbles

Put all ingredients in crock pot and give it a stir until everything is combined. Cook on low for 4 hours.

 

Okay fans, it’s April and I’m pretty sure we are all just a bit intimidated by summer swimsuit season being just around the corner. But just in case you’re still holding onto those ideals of a perfect bikini body– or at least an ounce of confidence when you are poolside sipping on an adult beverage and reading a trashy magazine– I’m offering up this recipe.

I’ve had requests for more crockpot desserts and this one is a healthy, low-calorie version of a cross between pumpkin pie and apple pie. It will delight your sweet tooth just like two slices of pie, but to your diet– it’s two servings of fruit instead.

I suggest serving this dish warm with a hearty scoop of salted caramel ice cream or with honey vanilla greek yogurt.

Crock Pot Pumpkin Pie Applesauce

serves 8-12

8 apples, peeled, cored and cubed

1/2 c. Orange juice

1 t. Cinnamon

1/2 t. Nutmeg

1/2 t. Allspice

1/4 c. Maple syrup

15 oz. can pumpkin purée

Add all ingredients to crock pot, stir and cook on high for 3-4 hours.

For years, I’ve been making my crock pot spicy applesauce to serve with my Chanukah latkes, but this year I wanted to try something new.  But I like a little festiveness in my fruit sauce. Today’s recipe is so easy and simple, but creates a smooth mouth feel and just enough twist to raise an eyebrow or two.

Try this on your latkes, but also serve it warm over vanilla ice cream or on a berry cobbler. It has cooked long enough to be tamed down for kids, too, but still keeps true to the spiked flavor. I’m quite certain my family will approve of this dish!

Crock Pot Spiked Pear Sauce

4 ripe bartlett pears, peeled, cored, and chopped into large chunks

1/3 c. Honey Jack Daniels (plus one shot to consume while cooking!)

Put ingredients in crock pot, on low, for 4 hours. After cooking, use immersion blender to puree into a sauce. Enjoy!