Crock Pot Mondays

Welcome back to another edition of Crock Pot Mondays. This week, it is a tale of two recipes -- the one that was a hit and the second that was a total disastrous messy miss.

The hit this week was hamburger stew. I've never made hamburger stew, but it is super easy. Regardless of the concern I had about the amount of canned condensed creamy soups this recipe calls for, I made it anyway. I'm sure you could tweak this recipe to suit your own taste buds and concerns about sodium intake. I can't remember exactly where I got the recipe, but I do believe it was off one of the message boards on Ravelry.

Hamburger stew

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground beef (feel free to use less. I used 1 1/2 pounds).
1 can of cream of celery soup
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1 can of cheddar cheese soup
1 1/2 cups water. (The next time I make this recipe, I'm going to use a bit less).
5 quartered potatoes
1 small bag of baby carrots
1 sliced onion
1 can corn. (The recipe doesn't call for corn, but I tossed some in anyway. I think you could add in frozen veggies if you like, maybe towards the end of your cooking time).

Method:
Brown ground beef and season with salt and pepper. Put veggies in slow cooker Put ground beef on top of veggies Mix soup and water together in a large bowl. Pour into slow cooker. Cook on low for 6-7 hours or high until 3-4 hours or until veggies are tender. I used my family size crock for this.

Last week's total miss was honey cake. This was a mess. The photos below speak for themselves. I've been meaning to make a cake in the crock pot and when I came across this recipe on Stephanie O'Dea's blog, I thought I'd try it. It was a disaster. I followed the directions, but when the surface of the cake hadn't completely cooked in 2/12 hours after I took the lid off the crock pot, I decided to investigate. The top wasn't cooked at all. I had to scrape it off. The bottom of the cake was a completely different story. In fact, it was charred. I basically had to scoop out the cake from the crock pot and then chip the burnt parts off my stoneware. I had to soak my crock pot for two days, scour it, before placing it in the dishwasher for a good scrubbing.

This is what the cake looked like after I scraped off the uncooked surface. Please take note of the crispy edges. While at first I was a bit daunted after the whole honey cake fiasco from baking in my Crock Pot again, I think I'm going to give it a try again in the very near future. Next time I'll be lining the stoneware with aluminum foil as cooking spray wasn't enough.