Recipes | SoCal Savvy Mom

Jul 28
2015

Skinny Paleo Banana Almond Muffins

This is a delicious paleo banana muffin recipe! My husband asked me to make him some muffins for the morning when he is in a rush to get to work and can’t make a full paleo breakfast. I really didn’t know how they would turn out the first time… let’s just say the second and third time were a major improvement. The muffins are peleo, gluten-free, soy-free, grain-free, and there is NO SUGAR! I was most excited that I didn’t have to add any sweetener or butter to make this delicious.

Pre-heat the oven to 350.

4 Ripe Bananas
5 Tablespoons Melted Coconut Oil
1/2 Cup Coconut Flour
1/2 Cup Almond Butter
1/2 Cup Sliced Almonds
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1/8 Teaspoon Himalayan Sea Salt

Mash the bananas in a medium bowl.

Add in eggs, melted coconut oil, almond butter, and vanilla extract. Next add in coconut flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon,half of the almonds and sea salt.

Oil all muffin tin and fill 3/4 full, sprinkle the other half of the almonds on top of the batter. Cook for 20 minutes and let cool before removing, and enjoy!

Jul 15
2015

Avalon Bay Airfryer Review & Giveaway!

by Nicole Connerley

An air what? An air fryer? Yes, instead of frying with oil you can fry with air. Cooking has never been easier and healthier with the Avalon Bay Airfryer AB-AirFryer100R. Why use oil when you can use air and cut out half the calories in the process.

This product is great for making kids meals like french fries, chicken nuggets, grilled cheeses and many many more. My son helped me make chicken nuggets last night and he loved that he could make his own food. Today I was on Fox 5 San Diego and everyone flipped out over the Avalon Bay Air Fryer, and for good reason! They retail at Air & Water.com for $129.94 but are on sale right now for only $99. The airfryer comes in three different colors, red, white and black.

Air & Water is a great site, shipping is FREE! If you did need to send something back there is a money back guarantee, no restocking fee, and no return shipping fees.

Hassle free clean up with dishwasher safe parts
Mesh metal basket helps provide extra crispy results.
Rapid Air Circulation Technology which circulates hot air with speed and precision for perfect results
Safety Element: 30 minute timer
Stainless steel 304 heating element
Temperature control of 200-400°F
1 Year Limited Manufacturers Warranty

To see my full review see below:

abairfryer100r-2-l-1

To enter our GIVEAWAY for the Avalon Bay Airfryer

click here a Rafflecopter giveaway

avalon bay 2

To see the Avalon Bay Airfryer in use see the Fox news segment here http://fox5sandiego.com/2015/07/15/mommys-favorite-things-3/

avalon bay 1

Jul 14
2015

Summer Fun for kids, ice cream in a bag!

by Nicole Connerley

Last year on the last day of school we made ice cream in a bag with my son’s class. The kids loved it, and it was surprisingly very simple to make. If you have younger kids like we did (they were in first grade) you may need to help with the shaking. I would recommend wearing a pair of gloves to avoid frostbite! We loved making ice cream in a bag, it is so easy and delicious!

1/2 cup half & half
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 ziplock freezer bag small
1 ziplock gallon size bag (freezer bag works best)
3 cups crushed ice
1/3 cup rock salt

Put first 3 ingredients in the smaller Ziplock bag and seal bag (Make sure it is closed). Put ice and rock salt in the larger bag and then add the filled small bag. Seal the large bag.
Shake and squeeze bag until ice cream is thickened, about 5-10 minutes.
Remove small bag, unseal, and eat out of the bag, poor into a bowl, or put on a cone.
Add any toppings if you wish and enjoy!

Jul 12
2015

Blue Apron – Dinner ingredients delivered

by Nicole Connerley

Cooking is one of my favorite things to do, I love my kitchen, I love all my kitchen gadgets, it is my happy place. I am however notorious for forgetting one or two of the ingredients needed to make something. It is hard to make chili without chili powder, but I’ve done it on one or more occasion. One of my husbands co-workers had mentioned Blue Apron to us and said she could give us a free week, so we said sign us up! Blue Apron delivers to your home all of the fresh ingredients needed to make a delicious meal for as many people as you wish. My husband and I decided to try the 2-person plan with three meals a week to start.

When you sign up for Blue Apron you are able to choose between six different entrees. I am not sure why but if you choose one entree it may black out another entree and say it is unavailable. For 2 people doing 3 meals a week the cost is $59.94, so it works out to about $20 a meal for two. Blue Apron sends all of the ingredients to you for the week in one big box, so for us we had 6 meals and all the ingredients delivered on a Wednesday. I was so excited to receive my first box, it was like being a kid on Christmas.

The first meal I made was an Almond-Crusted Cod with snap peas & radish-red quinoa salad. It took about 45 minutes from prep to finish and I loved all the new ingredients I’d never used before. I am not a huge fan of fish which is why I wanted to try this dish first. If they could win me over on a fish dish I knew I would love everything else. It won my husband and I over big time! We both ate every bite.
The same co-worker that had offered us a free week also offered free weeks to two of my husbands other co-workers. This is where the competition and food pictures began. Every night around 7 my husband’s phone would start erupting with dinner photos. The picture below was our second meal, Piri-Piri Chicken with coconut smashed plantains and stewed collard greens. I had never cooked with plantains or collard greens before and was hesitant about what it would turn out like. This meal was one of our favorite out of the 9 meals I cooked for us. I believe it may have won best picture that night from my husband’s co-workers. It was so fun to have a competition, a cooking competition at that with all of the men my husband works with. He works for a TV sports company a big TV sports company and to see all these men cooking almost every night and sharing their stories the next day was so funny, but they are men and I suppose can make anything into a competition.

Blue Apron came into my life at a difficult time, my mom’s health was rapidly declining. It truly was a

blessing not to have to go to the store, all of the ingredients needed to make a delicious meal were

delivered to my house. Some nights I wouldn’t even cook them, one of my best friends and co-blogger

Robyn would come over and cook the meals for my husband and I, yes she is that amazing of a friend.

It was pretty comical to watch someone try and cook in your kitchen, not knowing where everything is.

Robyn wanted to prove that she could do it all by herself so much that she didn’t even want to ask me

where anything was. Again it was a blessing to have Blue Apron and to have Robyn in my kitchen for a

few weeks. I would defiantly recommend Blue Apron to anyone wanting to try some new flavors and

delicious meals.

Stay tuned for my review on Plated and Sun Basket, which are very similar to Blue Apron.

Mar 20
2015

We love SusieCakes in La Costa!

by Nicole Connerley

SusieCakes is finally coming to San Diego, they are opening their first ever San Diego location in Carlsbad on March 21st. SusieCakes is an all-American, homestyle bakery specializing in you guessed it cakes! The cakes are all made from scratch with a one-of-a-kind taste without any artificial preservatives and flavors found at most grocery store bakeries. All of the recipes are straight from Susie’s grandmothers original 3×5 recipe cards, and believe me you can taste the difference.

Luscious Lemon Cake

We were lucky enough to get a sneak preview of the new store and all of the amazing treats yesterday. Some of the favorites are of course Susie’s Famous Southern Red Velvet, Carrot Cake and my personal favorite the Tropical Coconut Cake. The Coconut cake is a vanilla cake with layers of pineapple accented with coconut filling, and topped with fluffy coconut buttercream and shredded coconut, there are no words for how delicious it was. My mothers favorite cake was the Luscious Lemon, with layers of vanilla cake filled with smooth and tart lemon curd, topped with vanilla buttercream, it was perfection. The lemon cake was a little much for me (although I’m not a lemon fan to begin with) because chemo has killed some of her taste buds I was so happy to find something she really enjoyed. I’m pretty sure I know which cake I will get her for her birthday! For the full menu of specialty layer cakes, cupcakes, pies, puddings, cheesecakes, cookies, bars and custom layer cakes click here.

Sweetheart Cookies – Two sugar cookies sandwiched together with rich buttercream

This Saturday is the grand opening of SusieCakes in the La Costa Town Square shopping center, located at 7610 Via Campaniele in Carlsbad, CA. The opening celebration will include complimentary desserts, face painting, balloon artists, and kids coloring contest from 1 p.m. to 4 .m. A big reason you will not want to miss this is you could win FREE CAKE FOR A YEAR, yes people, I said a year! This is not some ordinary cake either, it is quite possibly the richest, most mouth-watering cake you will ever have.

Whoopie Pie, Susies Signature Frosting-Filled Cupcake, & Chocolate Chip Cookie all can be customized

If you are unable to make the opening day celebration not to worry SusieCakes has you covered. For the first month of the store opening there will be weekly specials you will not want to miss. On Mondays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. is Cupcake Happy Hour, where if you purchase one cupcake you get another for free. On Wednesdays children 10 and under will receive a free mini cupcake with any purchase. Last but I promise not least on Fridays you can Celebrate Your Sweetie with a buy one slice of cake get another free from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Nicole Hughes Founder SoCalSavvy Mom & Susie Sairch Founder SusieCakes

Don’t forget to stop by SusieCakes this Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. for some great family fun, or stop in anytime at the new Carlsbad location in the La Costa Town Square. #SusieCakes

Mar 9
2015

Easy, DIY, Marshmallow Easter Treats

by Nicole Connerley

We had so much fun making these marshmallow treats last night. Not only are they very easy to make, it is a blast making them!

We used white chocolate chips and melted them in the microwave at 30 second increments until it was melted. I added a tbsp of vegetable oil to make it easier to work with, my son wanted to add food dye. The colors he chose didn’t turn out so pretty, I would recommend just sticking with the white melted chocolate and not adding color.

After putting the marshmallows on sticks, pretty self explanatory there, we dipped them into the melted chocolate. Right after dipping in the chocolate we dipped in the sprinkles. We tried different color sprinkles but because it needs to be fully covered for the finished look none turned out that great.

After dipping into the chocolate and the sprinkles, set on wax paper to dry for about ten to fifteen minutes. Be careful with the finished product because the sprinkles like to fall off.

After the treats have set, and are firm to the touch, wrap in any decorative wrap you may have. I found this really cute duck paper at Michael’s for $0.25 a roll a few years back and was able to grab a few rolls of it. Always check Michael’s clearance area, I believe I found it in the middle of summer.

The perfect finishing touch, put in a basket and add a little rubber ducky to pull it all together. I plan on taking these to my mom’s chemo nurses tomorrow, they loved the Valentine’s Oreo treats so much, I hope they like these too!