_______ **bL0G pArTy**_______

UPDATE: We have extended the giveway!! Yeah! :)

You have until Monday, March 7, 2011 at 12 noon to enter!!

The winner will be announced on Monday evening!

It's our 1st Blog-Aversary!

Today we celebrate a year of delicious posts and lessons learned!

We discovered how to add the printable link to our blog,

to take better pics

{and how important a good pic is!},

be more adventurous with new ingredients,

and how to conquer challenges!!

The Peppered Pantry

thanks all of our drooling and faithful readers;

so we have assembled a unique and exciting prize for one lucky winner!

***

This giveaway was inspired by Food Network-which is

a huge inspiration to us!! The lucky winner

will receive an assortment of

Paula Deen goodies including a

ceramic bread pan, wooden spoon, Cinnamon

Essence spice and onion sea salt spice!!

We also have included a classic oven mitt...just cuz it is cute!!

Another passion of ours is scrap-booking so

we thought a handmade cook book with all the recipes that we

have posted throughout our first year

would be a perfect addition

to the prize package!

To enter the contest just leave a comment stating your favorite

recipe from The Peppered Pantry and

whether you have tried it yet or plan to in the future!

All entries need to be made by 12 noon pst on Thursday, March 3rd!

A winner will be randomly picked by random.org and

announced on Thursday evening!

****

A special thanks to our husbands for all their technical

help, brainstorming, crazy ideas,

moral support and patience.

****

Good luck to everybody!!!

**Contest Closed**

Dark Chocolate Orange Trifle

It is Dessert Wars time again!! This month we had to come up with a recipe using

dark chocolate and hearts in honor of Valentine's Day. We don't love

dark chocolate so this one was a bit of a challenge for us...

but turned out great, you get a bite of the chocolate cake, smooth chocolate glaze

and top it off with a creamy orange mousse!!

We started with a Dark Chocolate Pound Cake from epicurious.com.
The recipes will also be posted on the printable link! Very moist.... if you are a dark chocolate lover, this is a must try!Make the chocolate glaze as well (sorry, I didn't get a picture of that!)to drizzle in the layers of your trifle.

Make your white chocolate orange mousse... whisk together milk and white chocolate
pudding mix. Add cool whip and orange zest! So easy! Love the white chocolate and orange together! Yum!

Starting layering.... cake, broken into chunks, drizzle of chocolate glaze, orange mousse and repeat until you end with mousse.

Top with a chocolate dipped orange and Enjoy!!

The prizes from the sponsors for February are:

Whisk and cupcake necklace from Moon & Star Designs

The Smartshopper Electronic Grocery List Organizer

Beanilla Sampler Pack of Vanilla Beans

Lenox Personalized Musical Cupcake

1,000 ideas for Decorating Cupcakes, Cookies & Cakes

Endless Vanilla and Cinnamon Extract

Unlimited Layers: A Recipe for Turning Your Passion into Profits

Organic Valley $50 Gift Certificate

Organic Prairie $50 Gift Certificate

Theme Kitchen $50 Gift Certificate

BEKA Cookware Crepe Pan

Printable Link

Cilantro-Lime Guacamole

This stuff is seriously yummy!!

I'm a huge fan of Cilantro-Lime, this is one of my favorite savory flavor combos-Yum!

I love how bright and fresh tasting this guacamole is with the addition of the lime:)

I served it with sweet potato fries but I think it would be awesome with chicken nachos too.

First things first-the ingredient rundown:

avocado

lime zest and juice

cilantro

kosher course salt

garlic salt

fresh ground black pepper

cube avocado

zest some lime

squeeze 1/2 a lime

throw in some cilantro

mash and mix;)

should look something like this

Enjoy!!

Printable Recipe

Chicken Bacon Artichoke Bake

Here is a dish fit for the cold weather!

It's comfort food through and through-with chicken, bacon, artichoke AND stuffing-can't go wrong there!!

This was a very easy and fast meal to put together too:)

First up: grill the chicken-this isn't totally necessary it just makes it that much better tasting!

I used my little indoor Foreman grill-worked perfectly:)

My favorite-artichokes!!

Yum!

Chop 'em up

Mix together with the chicken

Stir together the sour cream and cream soup and pour over chicken mixture.

BACON!!!

Need I say more;)

Chop and mix in with the cheese

top with stuffing-mixed according to box instructions.

Deeelish!!

Enjoy:)

~On a side note-our 1 year Blogoversary is coming up next week so to thank all our awesome readers we will be doing a stellar giveaway{!!} so be on the look out for that:) Also don't forget to vote for out Juicy Pomegranate Orange Cupcakes-thanks sooo much for your support it means a lot to us:)

Printable Recipe

Juicy Pomegranate Orange Cupcakes

UPDATE: The Pom website was having problems with their Facebook voting and they have erased all the votes! If you did vote for us, we would love it if you would take the time

and and vote for us once again! :) Just click on the one of the links below and select "Vote"!

Thank you!!

Happy Valentines Day!!

Pomengranate Orange Cupcake with a matching

Buttercream frosting... is there a better word, but yummy?!

The "Juicy" in the title totally describes the frosting, as I was biting

into to it that was the exact word that popped into my mind!

Holly and I created these cupcakes for a cupcake contest we are taking part in

through POM Wonderful!

Click here to vote for our cupcake and select "Like"!!

And to check out our competition! :)

UPDATE: Voting starts at 11:oo am 2/14/11!!

Pom has developed a concentrate that saves a lot of time

from having to reduce the juice yourself!

Pom was gracious enough to offer us a sample and

allow us to enter their Valentines cupcake contest!

We are always up for a new challenge (okay, I won't lie... we wanted to

give up several times!!!)!!

Look at all the nummy frosting piled on top!

Mmmm....total sweetness!

You can also see the layers of Pomegranate and orange in the cupcake!

Hearts...there isn't a better way to celebrate Valentines Day! :)

Thanks for supporting us!!

Printable Recipe

Chocolate Celebration Cake

My sister-in-law first made this cake and sent down a slice and let me tell you I had to have the recipe for it!! Chocolate dipped strawberries are one of my favorite things, so a cake with them piled on top of sounded perfect to me!!

Original recipe is from Taste Of Home-I love their recipes and use them often.

Love, love, love these;)

I can't for the life of me get my frosting to go on smooth-so I used a butter knife to make this design on the sides.

This cake is basically just a boxed mix thats been "enhanced" with extra ingredients added

for moistness.

This recipe makes a lot of frosting and next time I won't make the full amount of ganache either but I will definitely be making it again!

Full recipe available in the printable

The top has a ganache poured over and dripping down the sides a little.

Thats a ton of frosting!!

This would make an excellent Valentine's Day cake:)

Enjoy!!

Printable Recipe

Cookies & Cream Stuffed Chocolate Cookies

Inspired by Picky Palate-LOVE her blog!

She just posted Brownie Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I originally planned on just using her cookie recipe and leaving out the chips.

{above}

They were yummy like that...

but since Valentine's Day is coming right up I threw in some cocoa powder cuz

it's all about the chocolate right:)

Here is the link to here Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe with the original concept-

Oreos!

Here is a little how to-:)

Roll cookie dough into about 24 balls.

I couldn't resist throwing these little sprinkles on top!

The candy centers melted just enough-YUM!

The kiddos were very excited to try them!!

Be sure to check out those scrumptious looking Brownie Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies!!

Enjoy!!!

Printable Recipe

White Chocolate Toffee Bark

Valentine's Day is right around the corner... already!

Crazy!! We have a Christmas Bark recipe (I can't believe we didn't get it posted this year!

Look for it next year! :)) that I wanted to change up for Valentines Day.

Take about 1/2 cup of coconut, throw it on a baking sheet and bake for

about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Set aside for later.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Don't skip this part... it will save you in the end!

Lay saltines on parchment paper in a single layer.

They don't always fit right so you may have to break some in half!

In a medium saucepan, melt butter and brown sugar.

Bring to to a boil for 3 minutes.

Pour toffee mixture onto saltines.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Immediately after removing from the oven, pour white chocolate

chips over toffee layer.

Use a spoon to spread chocolate into even layer.

If you chocolate won't spread nicely, pop the pan back in the oven for

just a minute or two.

Mmmm..... :)



Top with toasted coconut. Don't like coconut?

You could change it up however you like!

But, really, when is the last time you tried it?? :)



Sprinkle with your favorite Valentine's sprinkles!

Wouldn't it be adorable with the little hearts etc that Holly used in her

fun-fetti cupcakes?!

Place in fridge and cool about 1 hour.

Melt chocolate chips with Crisco and drizzle over the top!

Very Festive!!

Printable Recipe