Kid-Friendly Tuna Pasta Salad

Isnt it funny how when moms of young children get together, all they do is talk about children? One of the most popular topics, Ive found, is food. My child wont eat vegetables or My child eats anything or My child wont eat anything but sausages or even My child wont eat anything at all!! You really do hear it all. Sometimes the question of what to put in their childs lunch box comes up, as the every-day Vegemite sandwich and apple can get pretty boring. I try to recall all Ive read in kids issues of Donna Hay magazines to give some advice pizza muffins, chicken wraps, frittatas, potato salad. Ive tried a lot of things with my own kids, but they always end up wanting Vegemite or ham and cheese sandwiches (yes, my kids are pretty boring when it comes to food!).

My daughter is the most adventurous. Shell give up her Vegemite sandwich for a tuna, corn and mayonnaise sandwich on occasion. My 5-year-old son though, he wouldnt give up his ham and cheese sandwich for anything.

One of the most successful of Donna Hays lunch box recipes for children, in our experience, was a tuna pasta salad. It is the easiest sort of recipe you can imagine. In fact, your child could basically prepare this recipe for themselves, except for perhaps cooking the pasta. Just to prove this point, I asked my 7-year-old to make it herself, while I cooked the pasta.

All she had to do was slice a few cherry tomatoes and a cucumber (we usually use Lebanese cucumbers). Then whisk together some mayonnaise, lemon juice and seasoning. Once the pasta was cooked, she stirred everything together with a can of tuna.

And she was done! She did a brilliant job and it tasted fantastic.

She loves this in her lunchbox alongside her sandwich. It adds a bit of freshness to her lunch, which she enjoys.

You can use any type of pasta you like; we usually prefer the spiral kind, but we use whatever we have in the pantry. In the case above, we used elbow macaroni.

This pasta salad is super easy and delicious, making a perfect addition to any lunchbox or meal, especially when you dont want to do a lot of cooking. It would be excellent for a picnic, as well.

Just a side note: if you wish to include this in your or your childs lunchbox, be sure to include an ice pack if refrigeration is unavailable. Eat the pasta salad as soon as possible, and dont eat any leftovers from your lunchbox. Although I doubt youd have any leftovers!

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Summertime Tuna Pasta Salad recipe Broccoli, carrots and celery add color and crunch to this creamy tuna and pasta salad flavored with dill weed. It's perfect for a light summer entree. Kid-Friendly Recipes - KitchenDaily - Recipes and Cooking ... Kid-Friendly Recipes with ratings, reviews and menus Tuna And Pasta Salad Recipe - Taste.com.au Tuna and pasta salad recipe - Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling water following packet directions or until al dente. Add the asparagus in the last 2 ... Tuna Pasta Salad recipe Green peas and red onion add vibrant color to this creamy tuna and macaroni salad flavored with dill weed. Storecupboard pasta salad recipe - Recipes - BBC Good Food Dress it up - Griddled tuna salad Mix 200g leftover pasta with juice lemon, bunch chopped parsley, 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 2 chopped spring onions, 1 tbsp ... Tuna Pasta Salad Recipe - Allrecipes.com This delightful salad is a quick and easy toss of delicate sea shell pasta, chopped lettuce, sliced scallions, canned tuna, peas and Cheddar cheese. Pour in your ... Pasta and Tuna Salad (Ensalada de Pasta y Atn) My Colombian ... I love tuna and sometimes when I dont feel like cooking I just open a can of tuna, ad some fresh squeezed lime juice and chopped tomatoes and that is my Cold Macaroni Tuna Salad Recipe - Food.com - 26085 Wow this was good! The only changes I made were taking the peas straight out of the freezer and cooking them with the pasta and upping the amount of black pepper to 1 ... Picnic-Perfect Tuna-and-Macaroni Salad Recipe MyRecipes.com This colorful macaroni salad with tuna features grated carrot, chopped celery and red onion, all tossed in a creamy mayonnaise-yogurt dressing. Serve it chilled as a ... Cold Tuna Macaroni Salad Recipe - Allrecipes.com The ingredients are classic - tuna, macaroni, mayonnaise, celery and tomatoes. But we never seem to get tired of this good old comfort food. Great for a summer meal.

Homemade Ding Dongs

If I were to reminisce about good times with my dad, I would think about him letting me drive his big red tractor, or sitting outside on the swing watching a distant thunderstorm, or sitting on the porch asking him how big airplanes or alligators are. Id also think about how he was very picky (and Im sure he still is!) about how his spaghetti is cooked, which eventually encouraged me to cook perfect al dente pasta. One of the sillier things Id think about, though, is the love we had for Ding Dongs!

Id imagine that a majority of you have just asked, What is a Ding Dong?! Ding Dongs were manufactured by Hostess, which is now no longer operating as of just a few weeks ago; they are a little round chocolate cake coated in chocolate with a marshmallowy center. They may also be known as Ring Dings or King Dons, depending on where in North America you live. Originally, Ding Dongs were wrapped in aluminum foil and sold in a box of 12. More recently however, they were individually wrapped in a white plastic package.

What is it thats so silly about these Ding Dongs, my dad and I? Well, we loved Ding Dongs (and Twinkies and Cupcakes, while were at it!) so we often had a box of them in the kitchen. Because we loved Ding Dongs so much, we also always had lots of foil wrappers (as I mentioned, they were originally individually wrapped in aluminum foil), and those wrappers always ended up being crumpled into little foil balls that my dad and I would throw at each other! Wed always pick up after ourselves, but one day we discovered a large number of those foil balls behind our big old Montgomery Ward television, ones which must have bounced off our heads or off the wall during a foil ball fight! We had a big laugh at the pile of foil balls that we had unknowingly collected over the years!

It was the recent closure of Hostess that made my homemade version of Hostess Cupcakes the most popular recipe on my blog for a few days straight, and it was also the inspiration for me to make a homemade version of Ding Dongs.

This is a relatively easy recipe to prepare. Im not even going to provide a recipe in this post, but Ill walk you through the how-to.

First, choose your favorite chocolate cake recipe (I wouldnt recommend a box mix, as those cakes usually arent sturdy enough to hold their shape when cut). You can prepare your cake in one of two ways; as cupcakes, or as a 913-inch cake. In my case, I prepared them as cupcakes, but used cupcake liners that are flat, rather than pleated (like these). If you chose the 913-inch cake method, use a 3-inch round cutter to cut circles from the cake once it is completely cooled. If your cupcakes (or cake) have a large dome, just slice it off with a knife to get a flat top, then flip it over so that the flat bottom is facing up (so youll have a nice flat top to your faux Ding Dongs).

Next, choose a filling. There are lots of faux Hostess filling recipes; you can choose from a 7-minute frosting, a frosting that uses Marshmallow Creme or Marshmallow Fluff, or take the easy route and simply fill it with plain Marshmallow Creme/Fluff!

Okay, I admit, I did it the easy way and used straight Marshmallow Fluff! I have a special pastry tip to fill cupcakes, which I used to fill these cakes. If you dont have one of these, you can use the cone method, but Id recommend cutting the cone shape out of the bottom of the cakes so that the top of them will stay nice and flat.

Lastly, if youve got 12 cakes like I did, melt around 300g of semi-sweet chocolate (say, maybe around 50% cocoa); if you made more or less cakes, adjust the amount of chocolate accordingly. Other homemade Ding Dong recipes may use some oil or butter in the melted chocolate to soften it a bit, but I remember the chocolate coating on Ding Dongs as being hard (well, not *that* hard, but it did crack when I bit into it) so I opted for just plain chocolate. This part is a little tricky, especially if you want to have a smooth coating of chocolate. If youve cut your cakes, dont dip them into the chocolate as the crumbs will go into the melted chocolate and you wont have a smooth coating. I used a spoon and poured the chocolate on top of the cakes, which I had sitting on a wire cooling rack. After the chocolate had set, I carefully flipped them upside down and used the spoon to spread a layer of melted chocolate on the bottoms of the cakes.

For presentation purposes, I wrapped the cakes up in aluminum foil for that nostalgic feel. It is, however, a good way to store them, as they might stick together if you just place them in a container without being individually wrapped up..

So, are you sad about Hostess having closed down? What was your favorite Hostess snack?

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Homemade Diva Ding Dongs - The Diva Dish So Ive got this thing called a butt. I mean, everyone has them, unless your like my husband, than you have to look real hard for his. But mine, my butt, is very ... Ding Dong Nutrition Facts, Ding Dong Calories, Nutritional Information Ding Dong nutrition facts and nutritional information. Find calories, carbs, and nutritional contents for Ding Dong and over 2,000,000 other foods at MyFitnessPal.com. homemade devil dog, ding dong or hostess cake smitten kitchen A home cooking weblog from a tiny kitchen in New York City. The place to find all of your new favorite things to cook. Chocolate-Glazed Cupcakes with Vanilla Creme Filling Our Best Bites I have to start this post by sharing my amusement of last weeks poll results. Did you notice? Two options were clear stand-outs among the choices and in the end ... Homemade Ding Dongs or Ring Dings or whatever you call them ... Our cooking club theme last month was Gourmet Kids Menu. We were all tasked to "gourmetify" a favorite kids food. We watched the movie Big while chowing down on some ... Homemade Ding Dongs - A Cozy Kitchen Hi! I have a weekend project for you: Ding Dongs. Yeah, its like that. Nothing complicated about themmaybe a little time consumingmaybe just a tad. Nothing ... Homemade Ding Dongs :: www.howtobaker.com Prep Time: 40-45 minutes. Bake Time: 12-14 minutes. Yield: 24-26 Ding Dongs. Recipe inspired by: A How-to Baker Original. Next to Twinkies, Ding Dongs were the ... How to make homemade Ding Dongs - Indianapolis Food Examiner.com According to Hostess, the name ding dong comes from the chiming bells, they once used in their early TV commercials. Ding Dongs are a mouthful of chocolate goo Ding Dong Cake Recipe - Food.com - 107265 My mom used to make this. It's really good in the summer and it won't heat up your kitchen. Let's Dish Recipes: HOMEMADE DING DONGS Welcome to my online recipe collection! I love to cook--and take pictures--and this is where I dish about my favorite foods and how to make them.

Cinnamon French Toast With Citrus Butter

Have you ever given someone a gift that made them so happy that they cried? My dad and I have. Its a wonderful feeling to make someone so happy.

My dad and I gave my mom a present at Christmas, years ago, that made her so happy that she cried. Now that I think about it, the gift wasnt anything so special, it was just a doll, but it was a beautiful porcelain bride doll that she loved. Something you must understand my grandma (moms mom), my mom and I all love dolls!

We were Christmas shopping one day, mom, dad and I, when we came across a Geppeddo kiosk. Geppeddo used to make collectible porcelain dolls. There was a doll in particular that my mom saw and fell in love with, big time! It was rather expensive, at $100, so we knew it wouldnt be something she could have. So on we went down the mall in search of presents for the rest of the family.

Somewhere along the way, dad and I were alone, and I think I initiated the conversation, asking dad if he happened to have $100 to surprise mom and buy that doll. Or maybe it was his idea. I dont quite remember. But somehow, we got that doll without mom knowing, which was quite miraculous.

Christmas morning came, and we opened all of our presents. Except, I saved moms doll for last. She didnt even realize it was there, as it was sitting with the wrapped presents for the rest of the family that we would see later that day. After all of our presents were unwrapped, I said that that was it, there were no more. But wait, whats this one? I dont remember seeing this one here before! Oh, its for mom! From Santa! The look on her face was full of confusion. I could hardly maintain my excitement, while trying to look puzzled myself. She started unwrapping it and saw the Geppeddo logo, and the look of confusion was replaced with tears of joy at seeing this beautiful doll that she wanted but was sure shed never have. She was completely over the moon!

Its one of my biggest Christmas memories and I still feel that same excitement and happiness that I felt on that day when I think about it. Ive tried to find a photo of that doll on the interwebs, but I cant find it anywhere! The only picture I have of it is in my wedding photo album; its in the background of a photo that the photographer took just after I was all ready to walk down the aisle.

The bride doll is just to the left of my head, behind me. Although we havent talked about the doll in years (there are tons of other stuff to talk about these days!), Im sure she still loves the doll just as much as she did when she first saw it at that kiosk in the mall years ago.

Speaking of things my mom loves, Im sure shed also love this cinnamon French toast with citrus butter that I made the other day!

Im the kind of person that loves French toast with a good drizzle of maple syrup, but when I saw this recipe in a Lurpak butter recipe pamphlet, I had to give it a go. Basically, its your average French toast, but instead of maple syrup, you mix a bit of orange and lime zests into butter and place a dollop on the warm toast. Its other-wordly delicious, and I only say that because I thought that there was no other way to enjoy French toast than with maple syrup. This recipe has totally made me rethink the world of French toast.

Yes, Im pretty sure my mom would love this too. Shes in the US, while Im in Australia, so I cant share it with her, but I can only give her the recipe and hope shell try it one day. Shes not much of a cook, but I think she could handle this; its very easy!

Next time youre planning on making French toast, replace the maple syrup with citrus butter. Trust me, youll love it! I wouldnt even be surprised if you cried a little at how delicious it is!

Cinnamon French Toast With Citrus Butter
Adapted from Lurpak
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 thick slices of bread, cut in half diagonally
4 teaspoons sugar, divided
60g spreadable unsalted butter (such as Lurpak)
Zest of 1/2 an orange
Zest of 1/2 a lime
Fresh berries, such as raspberries and blueberries

Method
In a shallow dish whisk together the eggs and milk. Then, whisk in the cinnamon and 3 teaspoons of the sugar until thoroughly combined. Add the bread and turn over in the egg mixture until its all soaked up.

In a bowl beat together 50g of the butter, the zest and the remaining sugar. Set aside.

Heat remaining 10g of butter in a large non-stick frying pan until bubbly. Fry the eggy bread for a couple of minutes on each side until golden.

Once cooked, put 2 pieces of toast on each plate, along with a handful of fresh berries, and top with a spoonful of zesty citrus butter to serve.

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Spiced White Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

Believe it or not, its Christmas time again! That means its time to start planning your Christmas baking. There are so many Christmassy recipes out there that you may be having trouble trying to decide what to bake. Well, let me help with your decision by recommending that you add these spiced white chocolate chip pecan cookies to your baking list!

These unsuspecting-looking shortbread-like cookies have the warm flavors of cinnamon and nutmeg with chunks of pecans and white chocolate. They smell delicious baking in the oven, and taste even more delicious with a hot cup of coffee or tea.

Is there something special that you, or your family, bake each year at Christmas? If not, let these spiced cookies be the start of a new Christmas tradition!

To me, Christmas baking means grandmas delicious pies. She would make the same pies at Thanksgiving and Christmas sugar pie (thats what she called it, but I think it was pecan pie), oatmeal pie and pumpkin pie. Shed also throw in a fruit cake as well, of course. Grandma doesnt make these pies anymore though, as theyre just too much work for her these days, but theyre the first thing I think of when Christmastime comes around.

My family and I (my husband, kids and I, I mean) dont have any Christmas traditions at all, but I aim on starting some this year. I think Ill make a nice lunch for when nana comes over, and well bake and decorate gingerbread men with the kids. Although, Im not sure yet how Ill distract the kids from their new toys long enough to make gingerbread men!?

Anyway, the recipe for these lovely little cookies comes from a Philadelphia Cream Cheese + Cadbury Chocolate recipe book. Here in Australia, they were offering this cookbook for free if you bought 3 Philly products, but I cant find anywhere to actually buy it without buying the Philly products. And yes, there is cream cheese in these cookies! If you dont like cream cheese, dont fret, as you cant taste any cream cheese. In fact, Im not even sure what purpose the cream cheese serves in this recipe, as I cant taste it, and I cant work out if its affected the texture of the cookies, which is a sort of melt-in-your-mouth shortbread texture. Whatever purpose it is, these cookies are really delicious and I highly recommend baking a batch!

Spiced White Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies
Adapted from Simply Heaven: Chocolate
Makes 40-50

Ingredients
200g unsalted butter, softened
125g cream cheese (from a block), softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste (or pure vanilla extract)
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
pinch salt
1/3 pecans, finely chopped
100g white chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/4 cups pecans, extra, finely chopped

Method
Beat butter, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth. Sift in flour, spices and salt and stir until combined. Add the 1/3 cup pecans and chocolate and mix well.

Lightly knead the mixture until smooth, then divide in half. Shape each piece of dough into a 25-cm log. Wrap each log in plastic wrap and freeze for 15-20 minutes to firm before rolling each log in the extra pecans to coat. Cut the log into 1-cm thick slices and place onto baking paper-lined baking tray.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 18-20 minutes or until cooked and lightly golden. Stand for 10 minutes before placing on a wire rack to cool.

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Yoghurt Week: Chocolate, Peanut Butter & Banana Smoothie

Here we are, at the end of yoghurt week already. That really flew by, but I hope youve discovered a new recipe or two along the way.

Ive saved my favorite yoghurt recipe for last. It is originally from Chobani Kitchen (as a lot of my previous yoghurt recipes have been), but as Chobani vanilla Greek yoghurt isnt available in Australia (why!?!) as of yet, I decided to just use regular vanilla yoghurt. In so doing, I also reduced the amount of added sweetener in the recipe. So lets see what our final recipe is

Its a delicious chocolate, peanut butter and banana smoothie! It was absolutely scrumptious, and Ive made it a few times in the past week. Its another simple recipe, as the previous yoghurt recipes have been, and is quite healthy, so you dont have to feel bad about indulging in this yummy smoothie.

To prepare it, you first need to peel and slice a banana into about 1-inch (or thereabouts) thick slices. Place the slices on a plate or tray that is lined with baking paper, and freeze for 1-2 hours. When ready, place the banana, chocolate soy milk (regular chocolate milk would work too), peanut butter, vanilla yoghurt (or Chobanis vanilla Greek yoghurt!) and a touch of honey in a blender and process until smooth. Personally, however, I found that my stick blender (immersion blender, whatever you want to call it) did a brilliant job at completely pureeing that banana; I dont have a blender so on my first go with the recipe I actually used a food processor. With this method, I still had a few chunks of banana that just wouldnt smooth out, which reminded me about my stick blender. Ill be using that from now on.

Just a side note that I used *rounded* tablespoons of peanut butter (you can never have enough peanut butter, am I right?), a rather ripe banana and less than a tablespoon of honey. I thought it was one of the best smoothies Ive ever tasted!

The recipe will serve up two generous helpings, so make sure youve got someone to share it with!

**Previous recipes from Yoghurt Week: Banana Bread Macaroni & Cheese Mint Chocolate Chip Frozen Greek Yoghurt Cold Chobani-Sesame Noodles Mango Popsicles Mashed Potatoes

Chocolate, Peanut Butter & Banana Smoothie
Adapted from Chobani Kitchen
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 cup vanilla yoghurt (Chobani vanilla Greek yoghurt preferred)
1 cup chocolate soy milk, chilled
1 ripe banana, frozen
2 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
2 tablespoons honey (optional)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into two tall glasses and serve immediately.

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