Easy Crockpot Stuffed Peppers Mexican Style

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, so I wanted to have something red for our dinner. Turns out my favorite grocery store had red bell peppers on sale, two for a dollar, and that is what I chose. I needed to fix something that would be ready when my sweetie got home, and his schedule is very unpredictable these days, so I chose to stuff the peppers and prepare them in my handy-dandy slow cooker. Here's what I did.

Easy Crockpot Stuffed Peppers Mexican Style

two red (or green or yellow) bell peppers
about a pound of lean ground beef
about half of a medium onion, diced
about a cup of frozen cut corn, thawed (or use a can of Mexicorn, drained)
one can enchilada sauce

Wash the peppers and cut them in half; remove seeds and the white membranes. Mix the ground beef, onion, and corn together. Use the mixture to stuff the peppers, then place in the crockpot or slow cooker, setting them upright. Pour the can of enchilada sauce over the peppers. Cover and cook until done. I have a small slow cooker, so I let them cook for about three hours on high then reduced the temperature to low until we were ready to eat (about another half hour). Of course you can increase the number of peppers and use a larger crockpot or slow cooker to feed more people. This was more than enough for the two of us.

With the enchilada sauce I expected this to be rather spicy, so I did not add spice to the meat. We were surprised that it turned out rather mild. Next time, if I'm in a spicy mood, I might add some chili powder to the mixture. Even without the spice, they tasted as good as they looked!

Dump Cake, Our Favorite

I have a dump cake in the oven and it's almost ready. I can tell because it's starting to smell really, really good. It just occurred to me that I hadn't posted the recipe here on the blog and there may be people who don't remember the details of the recipe or others who haven't discovered how easy and good this cake is. So, here's my favorite quick, easy, very tasty dump cake recipe.

Dump Cake

1 can crushed pineapple
1 can cherry pie filling
1 box yellow cake mix
1 stick butter or margarine
chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Open and dump the can of pineapple into a 9 x 13 inch cake pan. Use a spoon to even it out in the pan. Open the can of cherry pie filling and gently use the spoon to dump it evenly on top of the pineapple. Open the box of cake mix and gently distribute the dry mix evenly on top of the fruit. Don't stir. Now, either melt the butter and pour it evenly over the dry cake mix or you can do as I do and cut the butter into little chunks and place the little chunks of butter evenly on top of the cake mix. If using, add the nuts on top. Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes or until the cake is bubbly and golden brown. Serve warm (not hot) or at room temperature with or without a scoop of ice cream on top. I promise, it tastes as good as it smells!

You can use two sticks of butter if you want it to, but one works just fine if you distribute it carefully. That's why I prefer the chunk method to the melt-and-pour method; the "crust" comes out better that way for me.

When 9 x 13 is more than I need, I make a smaller version by using just the pie filling and a one-layer cake mix in a 9 x 9 inch pan, more or less converting the recipe to cherry cobbler.

Mine's done and looks absolutely beautiful. Wish I would have bought the ice cream after all, but even a plain dump cake tastes pretty fancy.