Time Saving Pinterest Tip

I have been on Pinterest for quite awhile now. So I was shocked when I stumbled on this little time saving tip the other day. I'm sharing it because maybe you haven't seen it yet either. (I know a bunch of people already utilize this)
First though, do you follow me on Pinterest? No? Well then click the red button and you can follow along with me. I would love to see what you all are pinning too!
 

Here goes... I even have a few screenshots in case my language isn't clear enough.
Highlight the text you want to use to describe your pin BEFORE you hit the 'Pin It' button on your web browser. Then when the description box pops up the Highlighted text is already there. Boom! Now I can pin like 5 times faster, without all that typing. ;)

1. Highlight the text you want to use. 

2. Next click your Pin It button. Here's what my Pin It button looks like on my tool bar.

3. Boom! The highlighted text is already in the description.

**Here's a little note on pinning. Pinterest is the topic of much debate right now, regarding intellectual property and all that good stuff. I love Pinterest and I love when people pin my projects.  Bloggers, including myself, work hard to create quality content. Please keep that in mind when pinning. Always pin the original source of a recipe/tutorial and never copy the entirety of the post into the description. Thanks for pinning responsibly!

Not on Pinterest yet? Send an email to cuteasafoxcreations@gmail.com and I will send you an invitation.

Sausage Stuffed Jalapenos

I feel justified gushing over how good these stuffed jalapenos are because my sister in law is the one who first introduced me to them. Every time I have made them, they get devoured and I get asked for the recipe by nearly everyone there. I have made them for the kids Winter birthday party and the Arizona Centennial Bunco.
The best part about this recipe is that there is only 4 ingredients.  So print it, bookmark it, Pin it(the handy "Pin it" button is at the bottom of the post), or tattoo it on your arm. I promise you won't be sorry, and neither will anyone you serve it too.

Sausage Stuffed Jalapenos
Ingredients: 
1 lb jalapenos
1 lb bulk sausage
1 8 oz block of softened cream cheese (I prefer the low fat cream cheese also called Neufchatel)
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Cooking Instructions
1.  Prep the jalapenos. Cut the top off each jalapeno, just below the stem. Cut each jalapeno in half lengthwise and remove the seeds*.
2. Make the filling. Brown the sausage in a skillet and drain. Mix in the cream cheese and Parmesan cheese until everything is well incorporated.
3. Fill the jalapenos. Spoon approximately 1 Tbsp of filling into each jalapeno.
4. Cook. Bake stuffed jalapenos at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. You may want to use some non-stick spray on the pan. I never have, but sometimes they stick a little.
5. Serve. Throw these guys on a tray and then duck and cover. You don't want to get crushed in the stampede for stuffed jalapenos.

*Tip: Jalapenos carry their heat in the seeds and the veins. The veins are the lighter colored part on the interior of the jalapeno. If you are worried about the heat level, make sure you scrape the veins out really well. Also, make sure you wash your hands thoroughly after handling jalapenos. Any juice on your hands will sting your eyes.

Here is one more food shot for you. At Bunco, we ate Navajo tacos, which are essentially tacos served on fry bread instead of a tortilla. Yummy! Here's my plate with a few stuffed jalapenos on the side.

The rest of the Arizona Centennial Bunco is coming soon. Don't forget to give my new "Pin It" button a spin. It's on the bottom of each post.

Red Carpet Ready Sugar Cookies and Giveaway

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.
Right now, it's award show season in Hollywood. I love seeing the stars get all glammed up. I may even have my own mini critique sessions. ;) Well, Toast to the Red Carpet – LIVE, presented by I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! is an online red carpet live viewing party on the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! Facebook page on February 26th from 3:00-4:30PST.
From the privacy of your own home you will get to have insider access to the red carpet, an exclusive roundtable of Hollywood stars, and best picture-themed recipes. The roundtable will include some big Hollywood stars and a culinary and entertaining expert. I can't wait to see the themed recipes they come up with. I am a sucker for a good themed recipe.

At the end of this post, I will be giving away a free tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Make sure you read all the way to the end of the post for that. First, I want to show you some delicious sugar cookies perfect for your red carpet viewing party. This sugar cookie recipe is my all time favorite. The cookies come out so soft and moist! I think they are delicious, with or without frosting.

Red Carpet Ready Sugar Cookies 

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups of sugar
3/4 cups I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! cooking sticks
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
6 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk
7 cups flower

Cooking Instructions:
Mix all ingredients well into a dough. Roll dough to 1/4 to 1/2" thick. Cut into your desired shape with a cookie cutter. I kept it simple with circles, but if you had a dress cookie cutter, that would be so cute. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. When the cookies are cool, you can  move onto the icing and decorating.

Decorating Instructions:
Frost one or two cookies at a time with your favorite icing. I used royal icing because I had some made up. Store bought or homemade would be fine too. Dip each cookie, icing side down in a bowl of sanding sugar. I used red, silver, and gold sugar. To finish them off you can give them a spray with Pearl food coloring spray. It's optional, but it gives these red carpet treats a little extra pizzazz!

Now comes the fun giveaway part. Simply leave me a comment on this blog post and tell me why you are going to watch the Toast to the Red Carpet – LIVE online show. One winner will be selected randomly to receive a coupon for a free tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! The giveaway item was provided by I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! per FTC guidelines. Void where prohibited by law.

Cake Pop fondue

It's a bit embarrassing that the winter party was over month ago and I still haven't finished posting about it. Well, today we will be one step closer. This idea is one that translates for any get together.
I saw the idea of cupcake fondue on Pinterest and I thought it would be fun to incorporate something similar into the party. Specifically cake pop "snowballs" to fit the theme, white cake with white icing and lots of fixings!

Photo courtesy of The Sew-er, The Caker, The Copycat Maker

I have been eying the baby cakes cake pop maker, but I just really don't room for another kitchen appliance. Then one day I saw the Bake Pops pan in the "As Seen on TV" section of CVS. It's a pan with 18 circles for batter. You fill the bottom section, clip the top on and bake. It is a specialty item, but at least it's not a whole appliance. Plus it makes 18 cake pops at the time which is a bonus. Before I continue, this is not a paid review, I just want to share my experience with the pan and how I used it.

Here is what it looked like when I pulled the first batch out of the oven. Clearly I overfilled a few of them. The excess breaks right off, so it wasn't a very big deal.

Here is what it looked like when I removed the top of the pan. The directions that come with the pan say to pour the batter in the middle of the pan and spread it around with a spatula. I didn't like the mess that it made, as seen below. For subsequent batches I spooned small amounts of batter into each circle and it worked much better.

After they cooked there was a slight ridge around each cake ball where the top and bottom pieces of the pan meet up. Does the baby cakes maker do this too? To solve the problem I took a small handheld grater and essentially sanded off the ridges. Perfect.

Photo courtesy of The Sew-er, The Caker, The Copycat Maker

Here is the whole Fondue Set-up again.

Photo courtesy of The Sew-er, The Caker, The Copycat Maker

I used canned frosting that I thinned with a little bit of 2% milk. I actually thinned it a little too much. It was a little more like a glaze then a coating, but everyone seemed to love it.

Photo courtesy of The Sew-er, The Caker, The Copycat Maker

Even the adults liked it too. That's my husband, his cousin, and his sister all making up their cake pops.

What topping and flavor combinations would you serve? I can't wait to try this idea out again. It was such a hit.

Thanks for reading!

Arizona Centennial Cookies

Happy Valentine's Day! If you happen to live in Arizona, then happy Arizona Centennial to you too! I am getting ready for Centennial themed bunco tonight, but I wanted to drop in and show you these cookies I made.

It was my very first time making and using royal icing. I can't believe I waited so long. It was not nearly as scary as I thought. I bought the Arizona shaped cookie cutter from ABC Cake Decorating Supplies. They carry all the different states in cookie cutters. I piped the design from the Arizona State flag onto the cookies.

No matter what you are celebrating today, I hope you have a great day!
Update:
Now that I have a few more minutes, I wanted to come back and tell you what resources I used for my cookies.
The royal icing recipe I used came from the The Decorated Cookie. The author, Meaghan Mountford, just came out with a great new book called Sugarlicious. I bought the book and totally loved it. I was referencing it the whole time I made my cookies. I highly recommend her book to anyone. I even wrote an amazon review that says the same.

I opted for the 10 second icing consistency. Over on Sweetopia, you can watch a great video tutorial on getting a good consistency. It's important that it is not stiff, but not too runny either.

Between Sugarlicious and the video on Sweetopia, I felt confident enough to give this new technique a try. I was very happy with the results too!
Here is one more picture of the cookies at the party.

Clipix: Organize your life! (Sponsored Post)

There is a new website that just launched in January of 2012 called Clipix. I have been using it for a few days now and I really like it more and more. clipix is meant to help you organize your life. Clipix is essentially a photo bookmark that you can organize into any type of category you want.
Here's how it works:
You go to the Clipix.com and sign up for an account. Then install a Clip button onto your toolbar. When you see something on the internet that you want to save, you simply press the Clip button. You pick what clipboard you want to clip the picture too, select an image off the page, and edit the description if you like. Here are a few of my clipboards that I got started.

Here is what I love about Clipix and haven't found anywhere else:

• You can set privacy setting for each individual clipboard you set up. You can set it up for you, your Clipix friends, or everyone. If you are wanting to clip gift ideas, you don't need to worry about the recipient seeing them.
• Clipix automatically creates a description of the clip using the page title. If you want to add more, or change it, you can right as you are creating the clip.
• Clipix will also automatically include the price of the item you are clipping. Assuming it is an item for purchase of course. What a time saver! Here is what it looks like when you want to add a Clip. It filled in all that information automatically. I just have to choose the board I want it on and edit the description if I want to.
  
• Clipix has something called multiboards. This makes organizing your clipboard a snap. For instance, I could have a Food multiboard. In the multiboard, I would have clipboards for appetizers, main dish, side dish, desserts, etc. I get almost all of my recipes online, and this is a genius way to organize it.

Here is what that Food multiboard looks like:

 

You can click on the name of the multiboard to see all of the clipboard inside. You can also click directly on the Desserts clipboard and you will be taken to the whole Desserts clipboard. I am big on having categories and sub-categories and I am just geeking out over these multi-boards.
I am a very visual person and I can't wait to use all of these visual clipboards to get me organized. I already mentioned it's great for recipe keeping. There are so many other options like, inspiration boards, wish lists, gift ideas, books to read, and funny videos. The sky is the limit.  I highly encourage you to head over to clipix.com and sign up.
Not sold  yet? You can check you this video that explains what Clipix is all about.

I would love to hear what you plan to use Clipix for? Leave me a comment!
Promoted Post

Arizona Centennial Banner

For everyone that doesn't live in Arizona, you might not know this, but February 14th is Arizona's 100th birthday! So in addition to regular Valentine's day fun, we also have a celebration of our statehood.
Oddly enough my Bunco group is also meeting on that night. We discussed changing it to another night, but we just decided not to. One of my really good friends is hosting Bunco and I talked her into throwing a centennial themed Bunco night. I think it's pretty funny, since we are having Bunco on Valentine's day but focusing on the much smaller "holiday" of the centennial.
My mind is on all things Arizona at the moment. I went ahead and made a Arizona banner that we are going to hang up for the event.
I cut out the silhouette of Arizona and added a heart cut-out where Phoenix is. It's the capitol and also the city we live in.

After I had all my shapes cut out, I sewed right through them. I love this method for making banners. It is so quick and easy. I used turquoise and copper paper because Turquoise is the state gem of Arizona and Copper is something Arizona is known for.
I just threw it up on my wall for pictures, I will try to get some better ones when we put it up for Bunco.

Here is the silhouette of Arizona that I used in case you would like to make a template.

I have also included a SVG file for anyone with a personal cutting machine that can read SVG files. The SVG file includes the heart as well.
DOWNLOAD SVG file: http://www.4shared.com/file/WDeloUXs/Arizona_Silhouette.html

If you are not from Arizona, no worries. You could easily take all the ideas I am going to share and switch things up a bit to fit your own state. I am really excited to use this as a teaching opportunity for my kids.

Thanks for reading!