Krista's Crockpot Baked Potatoes and Fixin's

April's Crockpot Challenge! 

(...And my mom's homemade roll recipe)

So...someone came up with this brilliant idea to have a Crockpot Challenge. (Okay, it was me!)

Well, it seemed like a good idea...

My whole point behind it was to get Janet to use a crockpot. Keri, Amy and I use crockpot meals every once in a while, and I have professed to Janet how WONDERFUL it is to do a crockpot meal.

Whenever I make one, I simply get everyone's crockpot in the morning, throw everything in it, and send it back to them to them to plug in and cook. (I would imagine that plugging four crockpots in for a day would somehow effect my electric bill!!) Anyway...on crockpot nights, dinner is done and it is not even lunch time!

Janet, being the incredible cook that she is, has never tried it. (TONIGHT is the night for her!)

Back to Monday night, my night. Over the weekend, I just couldn't come up with an idea I wanted to try.
I looked on all the recipe websites, and nothing was looking appealing...I was not in the mood for pot roast!! I came across many recipes on making baked potatoes in the crockpot.


Sounded easy...clean, poke holes, cover in foil and THROW IN CROCKPOT! Perfect.

So I cleaned the potatoes, poked holes, covered them in oil and some salt and wrapped them in foil. Then, I filled my crockpot...and, I believe this is where I messed up. Most of the recipes didn't indicate how many potatoes to put in.

At 4:15, I was starting to panic when the potatoes were as still hard as rocks. UH-NO!
Quickly, I turned the oven on and started transferring them.

The final verdict on the crockpot cooked baked potatoes: Not great. I do think that they started cooking in the crockpot because once I threw them in the oven, they were done quickly, BUT on a whole, it was a failure!

On a more positive note, I want to share my mom's roll recipe recipe with you. It is so easy and so yummy! (A few weeks ago, I made a salad for The Better Halves and used these rolls to make the croutons! They were a couple days old and made for the perfect croutons.)

Mom's Homemade Roll Recipe

1 cup of warm water between 105 and 115 degrees

2 packages of active dry yeast

1 stick of melted butter

½ c sugar

3 eggs

1 t salt

4 ½ cups of flour

Yields: 2 dozen

Combine water and yeast in large water and let mixture stand until yeast is foamy … 5 minutes

Mix in butter, sugar, eggs, salt on slow speed.

Beat in flour one cup at a time until dough is too stiff to mix.

Cover and refrigerator for 2 hours or up to 4 days.

Grease a 13x9 baking pan. Turn chilled dough out on lightly floured surface.

Divide dough in 24 equal pieces.  Roll each piece into smooth round ball. Place in even rows in pan…4 across.

Cover and allow balls to rise to double size…1 hour.

Preheat oven 375. Bake until rolls are golden brown…15-20 minutes. 

ENJOY!