No photos narration to this recipe, Andrew made it all himself while I was changing in my 80's outfit and crimping my hair. This marks the end of the 80s party series.

2 1/2 cups fresh baby spinach, shredded
1 teaspoon butter or olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 pkg. cream cheese
1 1/2 cups chopped artichoke hearts
1 cup shredded provolone cheese (never find it preshredded and the deli block style is like triple that of the sandwich slices, so we layered it on top, but i would recommend shredding the slices with a knife or rotary shredder, chips lose the battle to the almighty provolone.)
1 roasted red pepper (garnish) (skipped)
salt and pepper, to taste 
paprika (optional) (skipped)
lemon juice or lemon pepper (optional) (skipped)

In a skillet, sauté minced garlic 3-4 minutes over medium heat. Do not brown. Add washed shreds of baby spinach and sauté only until wilted but still a bright green (about 2 minutes) stirring to cook evenly. Remove pan from heat and stir in ricotta cheese and cream cheese, mixing well. Add artichoke hearts. Use artichoke hearts from a jar, drained well, or frozen if available; if using fresh artichoke hearts, steam until tender before using. Stir in salt and pepper to taste.
(This step is what makes this dip so awesome, I think the supervised melding vs. oven melding of all the ingredients really makes this dip awesome.
)
Spread mixture in a shallow baking dish and sprinkle with a thin layer of shredded provolone cheese. Garnish with a light sprinkling of paprika across the center for decoration.

Set baking dish on the center shelf of the oven and set oven to broil. Bake until cheese has melted and top is bubbly with lightly browned edges. Remove and allow to cool. Garnish center with a roasted red pepper cut into slices to resemble a flower for contrast. (Be sure to practice your flower cutting, lmao).

Serve with sliced chips, vegetables, crackers, toasted crusty bread rounds or fingers.

Variation: Sprinkle with lemon pepper and/or lemon juice before adding the layer of cheese for an extra zesty flavor.

Submitted by: CM
I'm sure you've had these before, they're the grape jelly and chili sauce crockpot meatballs, but when looking up the recipe I couldn't find a single photo documentation of them, so here you are.
Since it was a 80s party and I do have an 80s crock pot it was only fitting to use it, and I need a protein appetizer that was budget friendly.
Looking through the million versions of this recipe I went with this 'consensus' of all the different versions.
What you need:



  • Crockpot
  • Frozen Meatballs (About 3 lbs is what filled my crockpot I think)
  • 1 32 oz Jar of Grape Jelly (I went with the super jar of Wal-mart, it's just going to boil down anyway)
  • 2 12 oz jars if Chili Sauce (Again used Wal-mart brand, find it near the ketchup)
This is for a large crockpot and lots of sauce, you can easily half it by just buying a smaller jar of jelly.

What you do:
Dump the chili and jelly in your crock pot. 
It looks nasty... and makes you wonder if there is anyway this will ever taste good.




Stir together to distribute

Dump in your frozen meatballs and kind mix them around.
Turn your crock pot on low for 6 hours.
I'd stop in every once in a while to stir them around.
(Other cooking methods I read were: frozen and high for 1-2 hours, simmering on the stove for 3 hours, or thawing the meatballs and low for a few hours.)

Finished product, they were a hit too! No one believed the ingredients and everyone loved them.
An Alpha Gam Mom made these and brought them to recruitment, let's just say they are dangerous, her's were totally covered in chocolate but to save time I just dipped the ends of mine in chocolate.
These would make a great Halloween treat as they look like witches hats.
 
Once you've tasted one, you'll understand how I came up with the name.



What you need:

 What you do
 
Stuff your bugles with peanut butter or Nutella. The baggy piping method works, but a real piping tip would work better. So I ended up using a spoon.
 
Scoop of peanut butter, then just kinda slide the edge of the bugle up the spoon to shove in the max amount of peanut butter goodness.
Not every bugle has enough of an opening to fill, so you'll need a reject bowl.

All filled and ready to dip, I did the same with the Nutella, Nutella is a little more runny, but the same method still works.

That's the end of the photo documentation, as at this point Andrew asked me "Are you going to be ready to leave in 45 minutes?"

I melted my chocolate chips, they were too thick, so I dumped them and melted some chocolate candy melts which worked much better, i just stuck the end in to the dips on my double boilers and plopped them on wax paper, i then stuck them in the fridge for a few minute to help them set since my kitchen was super hot! You have to be careful with the fridge since you don't want them to get stale.

These stay crispy for almost a week even with the pb inside I'd say so you can safely make them ahead of time and keep in an airtight container, which is good cause they are awesome but time consuming.

The finished product.

Salty, Sweet, and savory all in one!
These rolls are crazy good.
It's probably because they involve obscene amounts of butter and cheese.
Once you taste them you're totally ok with that.
To boot they are really easy.

Recipe from the almighty Pioneer Woman.

 What you need:
  • Sheet Pan with high sides (My cheapie cookie sheets weren't ideal and almost became super messy dripping butter into my oven)
  • Lots of Blue Cheese (4-6 oz. per can of grands. I got a huge tub of it from Costco for under $10 and I still have half of it)
  • Sticks of Salted Butter (1 stick per can of grands)
  • Pillsbury Grands Canned Biscuits (Pioneer Women used the layers kinds, I used traditional, both seem yummy)


Heat your oven to 350 degrees.
Dump a load of cheese and the necessary sticks of butter on the pan like so.



Place the pan in the oven to melt into blue cheese buttery goop.
If your pan isn't flat or your oven isn't level you may want to watch it and stir it around so you don't get cheese crisp.
While the cheese and butter are melting, take your grands and cut them into quarters.Once the butter and cheese are melted take the quarters and roll them around in the goop. Like So. I was making 3 cans of grands with just this pan and a smaller one, so my biscuits are a little crowded.
Watch them bake for 10-15 minutes, you'll just need to keep an eye on them since you cut them up.
Check out that crispy blue cheese and butter.
Saviour and enjoy, your super amazing easy biscuits.
So when I made Best Ever Chocolate Cake it was only fitting to find "That’s the Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had" to go with it, Pioneer Women and her Tasty Kitchen gals had the perfect combo.
I'll warn ya though, this is an out there recipe that works. It however tastes great! It's best the first day due to the odd combo, if you refrigerate it let your piece sit on the counter a bit (I know it's HARD) to warm back up otherwise the frosting has a weird texture due to the flour.

This recipe is from MissyDew of Tasty Kitchen, Pioneer Woman documented making it in this blog post. 


Ingredients:
  • 5 Tablespoons Flour (Be smart and measure and sift this out ahead of time)
  • 1 cup Milk (I used 2% since that's what I had, I bet whole would be tastier, darn fat)
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla
  • 1 cup Butter 
  • 1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar!) (Perhaps my favorite part of this recipe, who else considers powdered sugar a complete messy pain?!)
Directions:
  1. Bake your favorite chocolate cake and let it cool.
  2. In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (If I’m in a hurry, I place the saucepan over ice in the sink for about 10 minutes or so until the mixture cools.) Stir in vanilla.
  3. While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then add the cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.
  4. Grab a spoon and taste this wonderful goodness. If there is any left after your taste test, spread it on a cooled chocolate cake.
  5. Cut yourself a piece and put it on a pretty plate. Grab a fork and prepare to experience the most divine pairing you can imagine. This frosting on chocolate cake is to die for. Sure, the recipe sounds strange — it has flour in it — but it’s sublime. Try it, you’ll see. You’ll love it so much you won’t go back.

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (If I’m in a hurry, I place the saucepan over ice in the sink for about 10 minutes or so until the mixture cools.) Stir in vanilla.If you don't prepare your flour and just dump from your packed table spoon it will look like the sad icky gravy to the left, if you prepare you will make the lovely gravy on the right. I let mine cool naturally since my butter was still rock hard.
While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Then add the cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.(Other benefit of this type of frosting, you get to dump the whole gravy mix into the blender, no slowly adding powdered sugar creating a sugar storm)

It looks super gross at the beginning but just let your mixer do it's thing, and it will transform into a beautiful butterfly. 

Add your color into the mixer to save yourself that annoying mixing step.

Here's PacMan in all his icing glory, look at that 3-d eyeball, sadly this is probably the smoothest icing job I've ever done, I dunno what's wrong with me, hehe

So go make yourself some icing.
In keeping with the theme I created a PacMan cake for the 80's party.

The cake was Pioneer Women's Best Ever Chocolate Sheet Cake, the frosting is from her other site Tasty Kitchen and is called Best I've Ever Tasted Frosting,  sounded like a match made in heaven to me!
The Cake:

  • 2 cups Flour (250g)
  • 2 cups Sugar (450g)
  • ¼ teaspoons Salt
  • 4 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa 
  • 2 sticks Butter 
  • 1 cup Boiling Water
  • ½ cups Buttermilk 
  • 2 whole Beaten Eggs 
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
  • 1 teaspoon Vanilla
  1. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt.
  2. In a saucepan, melt butter. Add cocoa. Stir together. I used VERY heaping tablespoons and it turned out well.
  3. Add boiling water, allow mixture to boil for 30 seconds, then turn off heat. Pour over flour mixture, and stir lightly to cool. This part isn't as bad as it sounds.
  4. In a measuring cup, pour the buttermilk and add beaten eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir buttermilk mixture into butter/chocolate mixture. Pour into sheet cake pan and bake at 350-degrees for 20 minutes. Grease your pan, my two 9 inch rounds took longer than 20 minutes.

I used plain old Nestle cocoa, and LOTS of it.
  
Added to the butter.

Boiling for 30 seconds 

    Adding to the flour mixture that didn't have to be sifted, woot!
    Putting together the buttermilk mixture... You can make Loveless Cafe biscuits with the left over buttermilk... at least that's what I did ;-)
    Now mix that in too.
    See pretty easy for a chocolate cake, no double boiler complication.

    I was pretty distraught though... Pioneer Woman LIED to me! She said I didn't need to grease the pan... but see I did...
    Luckily I frosted it back together enough for it to be the bottom layer, but I suppose I can forgive her since this was suppose to be a sheet cake, I learned for you though, SPRAY your pan!
    I cut out a piece to act as Pacman's mouth / to be able to shove a turner under there to help release the cake from the pan.
    Pepper even helped out in the kitchen, see she's opening the drawer for me, silly girl!

    See the rest in the upcoming frosting post!
In an effort to completely overload the sweet tooth's of our guests I made Bakerella's Congo Bars for our 80's party. These were super simple because they are a bar cookie, which means no scooping!!
They were nice and chewy from the brown sugar and taste great with coffee.
I've added gram conversions to all the ingredients, since I'm now a big fan of weight measuring for the bigger stuff since it's more accurate and I have my nifty Perfect Portions Scale.(I use TraditionalOven.com for my conversions)
Recipe from Bakerella:
Ingredients


  • 2 3/4 cup all purpose flour (343.75g)
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2/3 cup butter, softened (151.2g)
  • 1 lb. light brown sugar (Oh my and thank you!) (453.59g) Learn how to make your own in this post You can MAKE Brown Sugar! 
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 11.5 ounce package milk chocolate chips  I used PB & Chocolate Chips Mixed
  • 1 cup chopped pecans (optional)  Skipped

By mixer:
  1. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Set aside. Use a fine mesh strainer not an annoying squeeze style sifter!
  2. Combine butter and sugar using a mixer until blended. Speed up your softened butter by slicing it up on a plate.
  3. Add eggs, one at a time to sugar mixture, mixing on low in between each addition.
  4. Add vanilla and mix.
  5. Add flour and mix until combined.
  6. Stir in chips and then pecans.
  7. Coat a 13 X 9 pan with non-stick spray and spread batter evenly into dish.
  8. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until top is golden brown. Make sure you don’t over bake.

No more leveling, just using measuring cups to scoop it out now!

Yummy!

Use plastic wrap to press it into the Baker's Joy greased pan so you don't get so sticky!

This was after about 30 minutes in the oven, I shielded it with aluminum foil for the last ten minutes, the bottoms got pretty crispy so I probably could have gone for a little less time.
I threw Beau Andrew an 80's Party to celebrate his birthday last week, and couldn't resist making it blog worthy!
I used Punchbowl for the invites, due to my good experience with the Senior Sleepover,  the graphic was edited and uploaded by me:
The tag line was:  Feel free to don your best aqua net worthy duds, but it's totally rad to remain Total Recall 2010 as well =)
I had tons of fun planning the decor which included lots of fun stuff.
I used  the free site AsciiPoster.com to create ascii versions of photos of Andrew, Pepper, and I. I sized these to my existing frames so I just hung them over top.
 
Before

After

I even opted for the 'window pane' look which saved me lots of cutting, I just lined up the pages and used clear tape to keep them together, plus this way they fold up nice.

Be careful putting them together...
I also created 'slipcovers' for 3 other frames in the room, I just used MS Publisher to create a four page poster and used large images from Google Image Search (Don't you just love the new version?!)

Before & After
I printed out the party 'logo' and taped scrap paper to the back to create this which I taped to the fireplace mirror

I printed 80s sayings and movie quotes in 80s fonts on colored paper, cut out, and taped around the room:

Pantry Door, Powder Room mirror
I also taped them to our mantel frames and the mirror
I made this banner in MS Publisher as well using this  Dot Matrix font, the Ray Ban art is from this coloring site

On to the food table.
Forks were tucked into a flower pot I had around lined with a towel and decorated with a crepe paper bow.

I made Mix Tape sign tents for all my dishes using various 80's style fonts. I found the cassette outline here.
I just cut them out and stuck them on folded card stock in various colors.

I used my Cupcake hole punch and a mini star punch to create confetti from scrap paper to decorate the table

Dressing Up
A few guests dressed up, so did Andrew and I

I donned my Vivienne Westwood Super Girl plastic heels.

A wore his Miami Vice Crockett  costume from a few Halloween's ago. Here he's playing some 80's tunes on his V-Drums.
Here we are at the end of the night, I even used Mom's old Pink Boss Crimper!

My favorite part of my DIY decor, it all reduced to this for storage:

I got the Sunglasses on Amazon here.

I created some printable 80's Goodies for y'all too!

Google Docs Download Links (Free downloads)
80s Mix tape Food Signs 80s Sayings