A Math Equation Fer Ya:

What do you get when you take an oatmeal cookie:

With pair it with a luscious, creamy filling?

Answer: You get what Little Debbie only WISHES she could be!

I made these Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies to take to a friend's house for dinner.

This is a Taste of Home recipe, and the website says that they would be great for bake sales - I agree! When I was putting them out at my friend's house, her husband, Bob, stopped mid-sentence and said "Are those.....homemade Little Debbies?" Needless to say, he was intrigued! And they were very tasty. The filling is light and not overpowering, complimenting nicely with the cookies. Bob (and Jennifer, too, I'm sure!) was happy to keep the leftovers I brought!

Oh and by the way, when I searched for this recipe on the Taste of Home website, I also came across a recipe for Chocolate Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies........hmmmmm......

Bad Dog!!!

Mollie is such a michevious little dog! I am not used to having to put food out of reach of the animals, because Sophie would have never dreamed of snatching even the most tempting foods off the table or counter. Not so with Miss Mollie! I turned my back for two seconds and she managed to wolf down two of my homemade chocolate chip cookies.

"It was totally worth it!!"

I can't believe I've never posted about these cookies! They are an all-time family favorite and my go-to cookie recipe. They have instant pudding mix added to the batter, which makes them the ultimate soft cookie. It's also not a very fussy recipe - none of this mixing the dry and wet ingredients seperately! I should have known to double this recipe in order to feed both boys!

Grilled Shrimp Kebobs

Nils made these grilled shrimp kebobs for Sunday dinner - he did a great job! He used wooden skewers and paired the shrimp with zucchini. He also threw on some red potatoes. Everything was delicious!!

Have you ever had grilled pineapple? It is one of the best desserts out there! We just brushed on a sauce of bourbon and brown sugar and let them cook while we ate dinner.
We enjoyed them plain this time, but it's also delicious with vanilla ice cream!

Valentine's Day Dinner

We kicked Nils out of the house for the night and took a special trip to the Fresh Market for some free-range beef, salad greens, and herbed yeast rolls. We've been so busy lately that it was nice just to go shopping and make dinner together.

The final product: steaks cooked on the Big Green Egg, mashed potatoes, salad, and those yummy yeast rolls!


For dessert I made Homemade Chocolate Pudding, a Taste of Home recipe that I've been meaning to try for a loooong time. It was good with the strawberries and whipped cream on top, but since it was a lower-fat recipe it wasn't very good the next day.

It made for a pretty picture, though! And we enjoyed the time spent together. Hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

I saved this recipe from a Taste of Home magazine a while back and finally decided to give it a try when my mom asked me to bring a dessert to a family dinner. I made sure the butter was room temperature before I started - I'm always glad when I do that! It makes the batter even lighter and more fluffy. Adding the sour cream only makes it more so!


I used dark chocolate cocoa powder for the cake - go big or go home, right?!?

I almost decided to make a cream cheese icing (my favorite!), but since this cake has three layers I was concerned about having enough to cover the whole cake. I made the icing that the recipe called for and had just enough. It was mild, which went well with the rich taste of the cake.
I thought that the icing went on beautifully - I covered it first with a very thin layer, then let it harden in the fridge. This seals in all the crumbs so the second layer goes on nicely.

Three layers of chocolate-y goodness!

White Cupcakes

Blogger has been misbehaving for the last several days, but we appear to be back to normal. I have a lot to catch up on! First, I made another Lemon-Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries to bring to a friend's house for dessert, which only uses egg yolks. Well, the cheapskate in me can't stand to waste anything, so I had to find a use for all those egg whites...enter Taste of Home's Berry-Topped White Cupcakes! Using only egg whites creates a very delicate, smooth tasting, yummy cupcake that goes perfectly with the cream cheese icing.


I got REALLY adventurous and decided to try making some of them in my new mini-bundt cake pan. As you can see, they rose quite a bit, which was great for the regular cupcakes, but I had to trim it off the mini bundts so they would sit flat.

I piped icing right into the middle of the mini bundts, and since I already had the pipe bag out, I did the regular cupcakes, too. The cream cheese icing was the perfect consistency to do this! I have absolutely no experience with piping, whatever I do is the result of me plodding my way through figuring it out.
I think it makes the cupcakes so special looking! It really was worth the extra time, plus it was a lot easier than it looks! You just have to go slow and turn the cupcake in your hand, not the pipe bag.
I decided to top the mini bundts with blueberries at the last minute because I thought they needed a little extra something, but the cupcakes were so pretty as they were I decided to leave them alone. I think I liked the cupcakes a little better than the mini bundts, but that's just because they had more icing and I LOVE me some icing! If you're not a big icing fan, using mini bundts would be a great way to enjoy more of the cake with less icing.

I love this recipe - it's so unlike any other cupcake! Nery said it was the best cupcake she's ever had....I don't know about THAT, but they are very tasty!!

Lemon Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries

For the Fourth of July I tried Tyler Florence's Lemon Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries. It turned out delicious, but it did take awhile. However, if you can find a lemon pound cake (which I was not able to do), this recipe would not require any baking, which would cut down on your kitchen time.

I found that the bowl to my Kitchen Aid mixer worked perfectly to prepare the curd over a pot of simmering water. Then I could stick it straight in the fridge to chill and whip the Cool Whip in without changing bowls!

The recipe called for sweeted Whipped Cream, but I used Light Cool Whip with delicious results. Using real whipped cream MAY have made the curd easier to build the trifle with, but I was going for slightly less fat :)

As mentioned before, I could not find a lemon pound cake for purchase, so I decided to make one from a regular pound cake mix and replace about 2/3 of the water in the cake with lemon juice. I also made one other change to the cake: you're supposed to drizzle Lemoncello over the cake after cutting it into cubes, but I used Jim Bean bourbon. It produced a different taste, but it was very good in my opinion. Lemoncello just isn't something I keep handy!

As far as actually building the trifle, the first challenge I faced was the fact that I don't own a trifle bowl, which has straight sides to show off all the pretty layers. But I DO have a tall, cylindrical vase, so I decided to be adventerous and try that. This was my first real attempt at building a trifle, and I learned one thing: the curd spread out a LOT once it sits for a few minutes! It didn't make for a very pretty trifle, but we all agreed that it tasted good!

Mike and I had some after lunch today, and it tasted even better than yesterday. When I make this again (and I plan on it!) I'm going to make it the day before. The lemon and the berries went perfectly with the bourbon-drizzled pound cake. A perfect summer dessert!!

Heaven on an Egg...

The grocery store had a steak sale last week, and I took it as a sign. You see, ever since we got the Big Green Egg, I've been wanting to try a filet mignon. However, I'm just too darn cheap to buy them full price...really I'm too cheap to buy ANYTHING full price, but that's another story. But they were cheap enough for us to indulge, so indulge we did! I found these directions at Naked Whiz's web site, who is kind of a hero in the Egg world.

On the Egg.

This is after the searing, which seals in all the juices. After a rest, you're supposed to roast the steaks to get them to the done-ness you want.

This just might be my new favorite picture of Mike. We also had the first sweet corn on the season, also on the Egg.

The finished product. Along with the steak and corn, we had some mashed red potatoes and the carrots from our garden.

The steak was good. REALLY good. But I gotta say that this meal as a whole was really satisfying, too. Everything was very high-quality - home-grown carrots, potatoes from St. Augustine (3 hours away), corn from Zellwood (1/2 hour away). I LOVED this meal.

Everything except this disaster. We got some locally grown peaches from an employee, and I decided to make a mouth-watering cobbler in a Dutch Oven to try on the Egg.

Beautiful, isn't it? You should have seen it once it came off the Egg! It was burned almost completely black. We forgot (okay, I forgot) to put the Dutch Oven on what is called the Indirect Method. Kinda important. Oh well...live and learn.

Mint Julep Ice Cream

I recently checked a book out of the library called Crescent City Cooking by Susan Spicer, a restauranteer in New Orleans. I thought I didn't care much for Creole cuisine, but this book intrigued me, and I was pleasantly surprised. So far I've tried two recipes, both of which I've been happy with. This is called Mint Julep Ice Cream, and I decided to make it in honor of the (rather depressing) Kentucky Derby this past weekend.


First, we start with fresh mint from the porch. This is already an improvement on the Fresh Mint Ice Cream recipe I tried before, because it doesn't call for stemming the leaves, which saves a LOT of time. Plus, I didn't have to steam and cool multiple times - only once. I must say that there was slightly less mint taste to this recipe than the other one

While the mint and cream/half-and-half mixture is cooling, I whisked the sugar and egg yolks together.

Here's the mint and cream mixture, ready to be strained and have the sugar concontion added.

Now the hardest part: you have to cook the custard until it coats the back of a wooden spoon, watching it carefully to make sure you don't overcook and wind up with minty scrambled eggs.

Ready to go in the ice cream freezer...almost there!

The finished product, with shaved semi-sweet chocolate mixed in the last few minutes.

The recipe description states, "My rule of thumb is, 'If something tastes good, it will taste even beter if you turn it into ice cream.'" I tend to agree! Homemade ice cream tends to get even better as it ripens in the freezer, but I'm afraid it will disappear before it reaches its' peak! The bourbon gives it a wonderful flavor and keeps the ice cream soft, but next time I may reduce it just a bit to make it firm up a little more. And I should also mention that I halved this recipe to make 1 quart, because I don't know anyone who has a home ice cream maker that makes 2 quarts. Mmmmmm...

Did You Know...

How easy it is to make your own whipped cream? I had no idea. I feel embarrased admitting that, because it identifies me as part of the generation of convenience foods. I think I grew up with a better awareness of where food comes from than most kids, but this was one of those things that slipped under the radar. But last week, I took out my whisk attachment, poured some heavy cream into my trusty stand mixer, added a pinch of salt, and watched it turn into this:


It was really neat to watch. I was tempted to keep letting it go and watch it make butter!

Glorious.

Even more glorious when there is homemade chocolate cheesecake under it.

Fresh Berry Tarts

I tore this recipe out of my Penzey's catalog a long time ago - long enough ago that I don't remember exactly when and the recipe isn't on their website anymore. The berry harvest was incredibly disappointing last year, so if I did have this recipe last year, I didn't get to use it. This year, however, the strawberries have hit the stores just how I like them - cheap and sweet - so I decided to give this recipe a try. It features a crust that is similar to sugar cookie dough, and although it is a bit complicated, the result was so pretty and elegant that it was worth it:

The recipe calls for rolling out the dough and cutting it with a biscuit cutter, but the only thing I had was a wide-mouthed jar, which I believe was not quite as wide. But that worked out perfectly, because about halfway through baking them I realized that I could use my mini-muffin pans rather than the standard-size the recipe calls for, which made things go a LOT faster. You can see in the picture below the size difference:


Like I said, this recipe took some time to make: you have to mix and chill the dough, then roll it out and cut the circles of dough, drop the circles into the pan, top with the filling (cream cheese-based), bake, arrange the berries on top, make the berry topping, and drizzle that on top...whew! However, no part of the directions is incredibly complicated, and you can work on one part of the recipe while you're waiting for other parts to chill or bake. I used mostly strawberries for the top, because that's what I had fresh. The other berries are from the frozen medley that I mentioned in my last post, and as you can see they look fresh.

These tarts were SO good! I plan on making more for a get-together we're hosting Thursday. I recommend making these the day before you plan serving them, because they get even better when they sit in the fridge overnight!

Oreo Cookie Cake

I made this cake for Mike yesterday. He's been working really hard on the yard and house, and hey, it was a great excuse to make a cake! I've made this cake before, and it is so good! I love this recipe because it's a great way to start with a boxed cake mix and end up with something that looks really elaborate and tastes wonderful.

The actual cake is a devil's food cake mix, the middle is made of cream cheese, Cool Whip, and crushed oreos (is there any more heavenly combination?), and the glaze basically melted chocolate. The recipe called for making the glaze out of chocolate baking squares, but I decided to use coating chocolate, which is used for things like chocolate-covered strawberries. I don't think I'll do it next time, because it made cutting a bit of a challenge. It would crack all over the place, not where I wanted it to! This cake is awesome because it tastes even better the next day!

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

After my last fat-ridden use of my ice cream freezer, I wanted to try something a little lighter. I tried this recipe, using the first of the strawberries from this season.


Here they are after macerating in a half sugar-half Splenda mixture and some clear vodka. Let me tell ya, it was hard to stop myself from snatching berries from the bowl at this point!

The finished product. It is delicious, but it turned out very hard. I was lazy and just eyeballed how much yogurt to put in, and I think that was my mistake. Still, it was sweet and slightly tart and very good. I may try this with other berries, and next time I think I will use all Splenda (I was afraid Splenda would not macerate the berries) and try bourbon as the alcohol. Strawberries and bourbon are like peas and carrots!

Fresh Mint Ice Cream

I decided to try my hand at making a custard-base ice cream. I don't think I've ever had one before (with having egg yolks in them, I don't think this is the type you can get in ice cream shops), and my peppermint plant on the porch has been growing like crazy, so this seemed like the answer for a lazy Sunday afternoon. The newest Star Wars book came out recently, so Mike was occupied while I spent most of the afternoon making ice cream :)

The recipe entailed steaming cream, milk, and the fresh mint (which was a pain to pick apart!) and letting it cool several times, then straining out the peppermint and cooking the cream/milk mixture into a custard:

In my ice cream freezer, calling my name. I'm so glad to be using my ice cream maker again...in the apartment, I didn't have the storage to make the box easily accesible, and I most definitely didn't have the room in my freezer to store the part that needs to be in there. Now, we have lots of cabinets, a chest freezer...life is good!

I decided to use chopped dark chocolate, but once I got it all chopped up, I was about two ounces short. The remainder of the Andes Candies baking pieces leftover from Christmas baking fixed that :)

Ohhhhh la la..........

I don't think I had quite the amount of mint the recipe calls for, so I'm glad the Andes candies lent a little more mintiness to the ice cream-y goodness. The custard base made it taste a little different than regular ice cream, but man, it was indulgently good! It took a long time, and I don't know how soon I'll do this again, but it was a new experience.