Cinco de Mayo

So I love Cinco de Mayo! I have a party pretty much every year because it's a great excuse to eat Mexican food, pretend to know how to dance bachata and pretty much just hang out with awesome people. Well I have to say the fiesta this year did not disappoint! We had a bunch of friends over, and the food turned out so amazing I thought I just had to share the recipes with anyone who wanted to try them. Each one is seriously delicious. I was so happy that Levi let me cook and bake by taking two long naps during the day! Yay! PS. He loved being able to hang out in his swing and watch all the action when we had people over. Kept him entertained for quite a while. :)

So yeah. Here were the culinary delights of the night!

http://www.platingsandpairings.com/slow-cooker-carnitas-street-tacos/

These fantastic carnitas. I was a little wary of them at first, having never bought pork shoulder before and not really sure about the idea of using a crockpot to cook them but they turned out sooo good! I am definitely excited for the leftovers I now have in my fridge!

http://ohsodelicioso.com/authentic-mexican-rice/

This Mexican rice. Again, I was going out on a limb a little with this one. It involved using my really pathetic blender as a food processor so I wasn't sure how it would go but it actually worked perfectly fine! Yay crappy blender for the win! Haha. Also I definitely just used regular rice from our 25 pound Costco bag meaning I used a little more water than the recipe calls for. Also I used frozen peas and carrots because why would I chop up carrots into tiny little pieces when I can just open a bag and pour? Haha.

These mini 7 layer dip cups. Ok so I may have accidentally bought tall cups instead of cute short ones so these didn't turn out quite as planned. Whoops! But thankfully we had long chips so it was all good.

http://thedomesticrebel.com/2015/05/01/churro-cupcakes-2/

These churro cupcakes! Seriously amazing. Only we don't have frozen churros in the grocery stores around here so instead of topping them with churros as the recipe calls for I made churro chex mix the night before and used that to top them instead. Soo good!

Here's the chex mix link:
http://sunnydayswithmyloves.blogspot.com/2014/04/churro-chex-mix.html
So really the churro mix recipe was just an inspiration for the churro chex mix because my store also doesn't have cinnamon chips. So I looked online as to how to make your own cinnamon chips and kind of followed one of those recipes with modifications.

Here's what I did:
1) Melt 1 stick of butter in saucepan with 1/3 cup of sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tbsp of corn syrup.
2) Pour over 8 cups of rice chex.
3) Mix 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar with 2 tbsp of cinnamon and pour onto chex. Shake it all up.
4) Pour 1/2 c granulated sugar onto chex. Shake it all up again.

For beverages, we had jarritos and a friend of mine brought horchata. With the super yummy food and drinks, and the excellent company it was a wonderful night!