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The Way Home

Traveling through life documenting what matters most to our home.

Categories: Family, Life, Recipes

Homemade Hot Chocolate Bombs

Hot Chocolate Bomb

Move over old fashioned hot cocoa, there is a new modern method of creating the rich and creamy treat with homemade hot chocolate bombs!

Hot Chocolate Bomb

Hot chocolate balls or often called hot chocolate bombs, have taken over my newsfeeds with the satisfying videos of watching them melt in a mug when hot milk is poured over them.

I read and watched a couple tutorial videos and thought this would be a simple project to do with my girls over Christmas Break. My girls love any chance they get to make sweet treats. I’ll share the steps we took to create our hot chocolate bombs.

After realizing the local craft stores have been sold out of the round silicone molds, I ordered a multi size set from Amazon that gave us different size options.

I used chocolate candy melt wafers that you can find at local craft stores. I purchased a milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate to have options for decorating.

How to Make Hot Chocolate Bombs

I thought it would be better to melt the chocolate wafers in a double broiler pan on the stove, but later found out it is easier and creates a smoother chocolate if wafers are melted in the microwave.

Spoon some melted chocolate into the mold and use a spoon to press the chocolate around the edges of the semicircle mold. Make sure to spread enough chocolate up the to edges of the mold to make a sturdy base to attach top ball layer. Place the molds in the freezer for 5 minutes or in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to harden the chocolate in the mold.

We chose to use the large 2″ mold as well as the medium mold to make a variety of hot chocolate bomb sizes.

After the chocolate hardens, pop the half circles out of the mold and onto a pan.

Spoon about a teaspoon of your favorite hot chocolate powder into the medium shells and a tablespoon of hot chocolate powder into the large shells. Add a couple marshmallows to medium shells and a handful to large shells. Reserve an empty shell for the top of each hot chocolate bomb.

To form the round hot chocolate bomb, heat a plate in the microwave for 4-5 minutes. Carefully rub the empty chocolate half on the warm plate to melt the edges and then attach to a filled bottom.

We had to use our finger to seal the edges and add extra chocolate to fill in any cracks.

Melt a complimentary chocolate wafer color to drizzle over finished hot chocolate bombs.

We used a narrow frosting tip to pipe a white chocolate drizzle over the tops of the hot chocolate bombs and finished with a sprinkle of crushed peppermint.

Tips for Success

  • Make sure you give the top edges of the mold a solid coat of chocolate, so they are more sturdy to attached other half.
  • Chocolate wafers melt better in the microwave than on a double broiler.
  • Adding decoration and embellishments hide many of the flaws.

Supplies Needed

Silicone Mold

Chocolate Candy Wafers

Crushed Peppermint

Mini Marshmallows

Powder Hot Chocolate Mix

Narrow Frosting Tip

The Fun Part

Warm 1 cup of your favorite milk. We used oat milk. Drop one large hot chocolate bomb in your mug or 2 medium hot chocolate bombs in your mug. Slowly pour the hot milk over the chocolate bomb and watch it slowly explode releasing the hot chocolate powder and marshmallows.

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A post shared by Elizabeth Bailey (@elizbailey02)

Homemade hot chocolate bombs will make the perfect gift for your friends and family for the holiday season. Package in clear plastic bag tied up with pretty ribbon and pair with a personalized mug.

You can design a mug for about $5 at Walmart.com and have it shipped free to your local store to pick up.

Hot Chocolate Bomb
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Categories: Essential Oils, Life, Recipes, Wellness

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

Do you like cooking with Vitality essential oils? If you are like me, you could use some occasional inspiration for weeknight meals. It is easy for me to the end of the day and not have any ideas of what to feed my family. Recently Young Living sent an amazing collection of Vitality essential oils with our monthly order and I knew it would be just the inspiration I needed to develop some new recipes to feed my family and share with you guys.

I have 5 simple recipes that use Vitality essential oils that you can take and use this week or any week that will have your family raving.

Young Living Vitality essential oils

Sausage Stuffed Acorn Squash

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

Cut acorn squash in 4 horizontal slices.

Drizzle slices of squash with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

While squash is roasting, cook a roll of breakfast sausage in a skillet. Drain grease from pan. Add cut green pepper and sauté with sausage. Add 2 drops Black Pepper Vitality essential oil and 1 drop Mountain Savory Vitality essential oil.

Remove sliced squash from the oven and stuff with the sausage mixture. Put back in the oven to bake for about 10 more minutes. If you prefer cheese, sprinkle with cheese and melt on top in oven.

Guacamole

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

Guacamole is a family favorite at our house, and pretty easy to make!

Cut up 2 medium/large avocados. Dice one Roma tomato. Dice half of a red onion. Chop a handful of fresh cilantro. Mash avocado pieces in a bowl and add chopped tomato, onion and cilantro. Mix well. Add 3 drops Lime Vitality essential oil and 1 drop Coriander essential oil; stir into guacamole.

Serve with your favorite tortilla chip or raw vegetables.

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

Teriyaki Chicken

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

Cook raw chicken breast in a skillet. As chicken is cooking, cut into bite-sized pieces. Mix 2 Tablespoons teriyaki sauce with 3 drops Orange Vitality essential oil. Add teriyaki sauce mixture to skillet to finish cooking chicken.

Pair chicken with steamed broccoli and rice for a complete meal that your whole family will love.

Cauliflower Mash

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

It may look like mashed potatoes, but it is actually mashed cauliflower.

Break a head of cauliflower into pieces and steam cook it. I used the steam feature on an instant pot to cook for 3 minutes. Transfer cooked cauliflower to a food processor to blend smooth. For a creamy cauliflower mash, add 1 8 oz. block of cream cheese and blend in a food processor. Add 1 drop Black Pepper Vitality essential oil and 1-2 drops Parsley Vitality essential oil and blend well.

Optional: blend in chopped fresh parsley

Optional toppings to serve: cheese, bacon, butter, chives

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

Jicama Fries

We had fun with the jicama (HEE-kah-ma) that came in a recent Misfits Market box. This root vegetable that looks like a potato is packed with amazing nutritional benefits without the starch found in potatoes.

First peel the tough outer shell of the jicama off. Cut into thin “fry” size slices. Add slices to a bowl or quart-size storage bag. Drizzle with 1 Tablespoon olive oil, 1 drop Black Pepper Vitality essential oil and 1 drop Thyme Vitality essential oil, and 1 Teaspoon ground Turmeric. Toss pieces in bowl or bag until evenly coated.

Cook in an air fryer for 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Check and flip fries twice during baking process to keep from burning.

Serve with fresh kale and cooked ground beef. Optional: sprinkle with feta cheese.

A Week of Cooking with Vitality Essential Oils

TIPS FOR USING VITALITY ESSENTIAL OILS

  • Start with one drop, and add more if needed.
  • If you want to add a hint of flavor, start by dipping a toothpick into oil and swirling into recipe.
  • I only use Young Living Vitality essential oils for cooking with because I trust their Seed to Seal promise and have seen their processes in action.

Do you have favorite recipes using Vitality essential oils? I would love to hear in the comments if you try any of these recipes!

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Categories: Family, Life, Recipes

Easy Homemade – Sourdough Bread

Easy Homemade Sourdough Bread

I have been baking easy homemade sourdough bread for a number of years, but have taken breaks from it during periods of moving or limiting carbs from our diet. When we were given the “Stay Home” orders in March 2020, it seemed like a good thing to pick back up as we would have more time to devote to keeping up with baking bread and have a reliable bread source as the bread shelves were scarce. The whole family loves fresh bread and it is healthier than bread sold in stores.

My sister has consistently been baking bread from this sourdough starter she got from a friend over 8 years ago. We always love going to her house because she always has something fresh she has baked. She has shared some of her extra sourdough starter several times over the years to help me get into a sourdough bread routine. She shared some of her starter again to start the sourdough bread baking process in March.

My baking sidekick joined me to share the steps we take to baking the most delicious homemade sourdough bread. I want my girls to experiment and be a part of food preparation now, so they will be confident in preparing food for their own families one day.

Sourdough Bread

Remove the starter from refrigerator and “feed” with:

  • 1 cup warm water
  • 1/3 – 1/2 cup sugar
  • 3 Tablespoons potato flakes

Stir. Keep mixture out of refrigerator 8-12 hours. The mixture will bubble. You may stir the mixture with a wooden or plastic spoon. Do not use metal spoons.

I typically activate starter and bake bread every 7-10 days.

I keep starter in a glass jar with a layer of plastic wrap over the top with holes punched to allow the mixture to “breathe”. You should feed the starter at least every 10 days. If you do not bake bread that often you should still feed the starter and let it sit out of the refrigerator 8-12 hours and pour out 1 cup of the starter then place it back in the refrigerator.

Bread Recipe

  • 6 cups flour – bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1/3 – 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cup warm water
  • 1 cup starter
  • 1/2 cup oil

Measure dry ingredients into large mixing bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients until well blended. You may need to use your hands to get ingredients thoroughly mixed. Dough will be rather stiff. Cover with wax or parchment paper.

Let dough rise 8-12 hours or overnight. Dough should be doubled in bulk.

Punch dough down and knead dough a few times on a floured surface. Divide dough into 3 portions. Place extra dough balls into bowl while working with one portion. Roll each portion into a rectangle (about 12″ long and 8″ wide). Roll up jelly roll style, pinch ends and tuck under as you place loaf in greased loaf pan. Make sure the fold side is down.

Cover each loaf with wax or parchment paper and cover with lightweight kitchen towel or cloth.

Let rise 8-12 hours until at least doubled in size.

Bake at 350 degrees for 27 minutes or until golden brown.

Sourdough is an old form of bread leavening. It relies on a mix of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria that are naturally present in flour, rather than baker’s yeast, to leaven the dough.

Sourdough bread contains lower amounts of gluten and its prebiotic- and probiotic-like properties may help improve digestion.

There are many different methods of creating and baking with sourdough starter. This sourdough starter is unlike many starters that you feed flour to keep the cultures active and alive.

Easy Sourdough Bread

When mixing up our sourdough, we typically bake 2 regular size loaves and then with the third part we will experiment with mini loaves, pizza crust, dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, pretzels, pancakes, and even tortillas.

Sourdough Pretzels
Sourdough Pizza Crust
Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
Easy Homemade - Sourdough Bread

Have you ever made homemade bread? Do you use traditional yeast or a sourdough starter to help your bread rise?

If you live in the Birmingham area and would like to get started with this type of easy homemade sourdough bread, reach out to me and I will be happy to share some of my starter with you to get started.

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Categories: Family, Life, Recipes

Homemade – Chocolate Cake

For Mother’s Day 2020, Sarah Beth and I took to the kitchen to make a homemade chocolate cake. After watching Joanna Gaines share her family’s favorite chocolate cake recipe, we wanted to try the recipe for ourself.

We love following the Magnolia story and everything the Magnolia brand represents, so we thought it would be fun to film our own mother-daughter baking adventure. Have you tried any of the recipes in the Magnolia Table Cookbooks? I need to add both of these cookbooks to my wishlist.

Enjoy a behind the scenes look at the recipe in action.

While we normally try to limit our sugar consumption, this cake was a special treat out of the norm for Mother’s Day. We have been spending more time than usual at home and enjoying trying new things in the kitchen. The chocolate cake was a big hit with the family and the fresh strawberries ended up being a fun surprise to cut into and enjoy eating with the cake.

Did you have any special treats that you enjoyed for Mother’s Day?

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Categories: Life, Photography, Printables, Recipes

Galentine’s Party

My girls love hosting parties for their friends, so this year we hosted our first Galentine’s Party! As I mentioned in my previous Share the Love post, I love all things decorating and crafting for Valentine’s Day. This time of year is usually pretty calm on most people’s calendars, so it makes for good timing to get a group together. For several weeks my girls and I have been scouting out Pinterest ideas and brainstorming the perfect food and crafts to have at their Galentine’s Party.

We were inspired with the beautiful Charcuterie Board food craze! It is amazing how simple food can look so pretty when laid out playfully on a board. We went with a variety of kid friendly foods like heart-shaped ham, turkey, cheese, crackers, carrots, strawberries, and heart shaped cookies.

I was walking through Trader Joe’s one day and saw a box of waffle cones and thought it would be cute to make a fruit arrangement. Of course I wasn’t the first to think of this idea as I found plenty of visual inspiration on Pinterest.

After lunch we passed around the tray of what I am calling Girls Affirming Paper Cookies. Each cookie had a life-giving bible verse that each of the girls read out loud to announce their personal affirmation for the day. We were inspired by these paper fortune cookies.

Choose coordinating printed pattern paper. Use a glass cup to trace a 3 inch circle on the back of the paper. Cut out circles. Print the page of affirming bible verses and cut into strips. Fold circle in half with the verse strip inside. Pinch in middle and attach a glue dot or adhesive. Fan the two edges out to look like a fortune cookie.
Download the page of bible verse strips to make your own cookies.
Girls-Affirming-Paper-Cookie-Verses
Download

After lunch the girls broke into their groups with their friends to bake cookies and complete a craft. We made heart-shaped shortbread sandwich cookies. They turned out, oh, so cute, and the girls had blast mixing up the ingredients and cutting out the shapes. Each girl took a baggie of decorated cookies home to their family to enjoy.

SHORTBREAD COOKIES

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup cold butter, cubed
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp cold water
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

  • Mix all the ingredients together in a mixer.
  • Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
  • Roll out dough on a flour covered surface.
  • Cut with desired shape.
  • Bake at 325 degrees for 10 minutes.

While one group was baking their batch of cookies, the other group was constructing soothing rice bags. My mother, Vanessa, taught us to make these in various forms over the years. Instead of hunting down fabric for this project, I had another idea that would be easier for my girls to do the sewing to help their friends put together a soothing rice bag. We pop these soothing rice bags in the microwave for 2 minutes and warm them up and lay them across our next back to soothe tired muscles and relax before bed.

We bought a giant bag of rice from the grocery store and added about 10 drops of Young Living Lavender Essential Oil to a bowl of rice and stirred it up well before scooping into the arm tube.

Moms, as you are cleaning out closets and drawers for consignment sales or donation drop-offs, save long sleeve cotton shirts. They make a great tube shape to fill with rice with an easy stitch on both ends.

Outgrown children’s size long sleeve shirts or toddler size pants are the perfect size for upcycling for this project.

Leave my girls a note in the comments and let them know which of their ideas you would like to try at your next gathering.

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Categories: Essential Oils, Recipes, Wellness

Homemade – Carrot Cake Treats

My friend Danielle Gaynor over at Raising Kale recently shared this yummy recipe with me and I wanted to share it with ya’ll!

The winter months are a great time to load up on extra nutrients with protein found in raw nuts. Carrots are a particularly good source of beta carotene, fiber, vitamin C, potassium, and antioxidants.

These raw, organic, packed full of energy treats would make a great afternoon snack, healthy Valentine Day treat, or a surprise in your child’s school lunch.

If you use Young Living Vitality essential oils, you can spice the recipe up a bit by adding Cinnamon Bark Vitality, Nutmeg Vitality, and Copaiba Vitality.

INGREDIENTS

• 3 cups of dates (pitted, organic if possible)

• 1 cup shredded carrots (organic if possible and press out any excess moisture)

• ½ cup chopped walnuts

• 1 cup chopped pecans (toasting them a bit first really makes it amazing!)

• 2 tbsp chia seeds

• ⅔ cup shredded unsweetened coconut (organic, if possible)

• 2 pinches of salt

• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 4 drops Copaiba Vitality

• 2 drops Cinnamon Bark Vitality or 2 tsp cinnamon

• 1 drop Nutmeg Vitality or ½ tsp nutmeg

DIRECTIONS

Blend all ingredients in a food processor until smooth.

Add oils or spices, pulse once or twice. Should be thick dough-type consistency.

Roll into small balls or press into silicone molds and refrigerate.

You can roll the balls into more coconut or chia seeds or some finely ground nuts.

Delicious! Store in the fridge for later, and for those mid-day pick-me-ups and cravings. 

Leave me a comment below and let me know if you try this snack in your home or make any yummy modifications! 

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Categories: Recipes, Wellness

Homemade – Apple Chips

With each of the major holidays it seems like we are bombarded with opportunities to indulge in unhealthy food options. I struggle with controlling the sugar intake that my girls get and we often talk about making good choices when they are at parties and celebrations. I like to be proactive in providing them with healthy choices now while their lifelong habits are forming.

This Valentine’s Day try making heart shaped apple chips for your children to enjoy in their lunches, for an afternoon snack, or make a large batch to send for a class party.

If you are a member of Young Living, you may have received a free bottle of my absolute favorite vitality essential oil, Cinnamon Bark Vitality during January 2020. Vitality essential oils are simply oils that are great for cooking, flavoring, and using internally. No worries if you don’t have the essential oil, you can use powder cinnamon for the spice.

INGREDIENTS

  • 3 wide firm apples – Honeycrisp, Fuji, Golden Delicious
  • 2 Tablespoons melted coconut oil
  • 3 drops Cinnamon Bark Vitality Essential Oil or Organic Ground Cinnamon
  • Small heart shaped cookie cutter

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Choose 3 large, wide apples. (I made the mistake of using smaller apples that weren’t wide enough for my heart shape and the sides of the apple cut through.) Also the apples will shrink while baking.

Use a sharp knife to slice thin horizontal slices.

Use a heart cutter to cut a heart shape out of the center of each slice and place on a baking pan.

Add 3 drops of Cinnamon Bark Vitality essential oil to 2 tablespoons of melted coconut oil and pour over the tops of your apples. Sprinkle with powdered ground cinnamon.

Bake for 1 hour. Flip the apples, sprinkle more cinnamon, and bake for another hour.

After 2 hours if the slices still feel mushy, bake longer.

Allow to cool before eating.

If you don’t have a set of nesting, multi-size heart cookie cutter you totally need to get yourself a set! You will use them for so many things!

Here are 2 sets that I love.

Plastic Heart Cutters

Metal Heart Cutters

Now I hear you saying, “What if I don’t have 2 hours to wait to dry apple slices?” Well here is a super simple snack that anyone is sure to love.

Take an apple and slice it into rounds. Cut a heart shape out of the center and fill it with your favorite peanut butter, almond butter, or other nut butter of choice.

Or you can kick it up a notch by drizzling honey and sprinkling hemp hearts for a little crunch. You can call this the adult version, because I know you would appreciate healthy snacks also.

A simple heart makes an ordinary snack look so much more appealing to young eyes.

Leave me a comment below and let me know if you try this snack in your home! I can’t wait to here what modifications you make and the reaction of your children.

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The Bailey Family

The Bailey Family

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