Another pinterest recipe roundup

Some good, some bad, all made and rated by me......

B made these eggs and spicy beans for dinner last week. Incredibly easy weeknight meal and really, really good. I love the fact that these can be altered for a variety of diets (dairy free, vegetarian) when you have guests who have a more restricted diet. We added a little more red pepper and a little more goat cheese than what was called for. We put in 5 eggs for the three of us. It's pretty much a one skillet meal (besides the cutting board for chopping), so clean up is easy as well. This is definitely going on our weeknight rotation.

Jessica posted  this recipe a few years ago and when I went to make it this winter, the site was gone (it was her other blog). I freaked out and flew onto facebook to find out if she could email it to me. We were headed to a party and I knew this was "the" dessert I wanted to take. I have pinned the trifle I make with the poundcake. It's beyond rich, is utterly delish, and looks so pretty at a party. Don't you just think that trifles just scream elegance and effort? What's awesome about them is that they aren't hard, they just look that way :)

We have made this salad twice in the last three weeks. The first time we also threw some chicken on top. Tonight we added apples and celery for added crunch. It's a fabulous recipe and holds up well (even with the dressing on it) for the next day's lunch. Highly recommended. Also, Madison (the blogger) is a real sweetheart, so add her to your blog roll!

This peach smoothie is just okay. It calls for a teaspoon of nutmeg and that really, really overpowered the taste (and, to be honest, I used less than that). A touch of nutmeg would have been good but what she calls for is just too much.

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, I have to bring these cookies to your attention. They are a little involved with the piping into heart shapes but definitely worth it! I've made them the past three years and they get rave reviews every time. The red velvet is delish and cream cheese frosting is always good, right? Annie is always spot on, so if you are ever looking for something to bake, I would always suggest her site first!

For Spencer's class this year, I am going to have him help me make these rice krispie treat pops (scroll down) for his classmates. We're going to make a big, thick pan of rice krispie treats, cut them out with cookie cutters, place them on sticks, and then pipe pink and red frosting on the top around the edge or write words on them like conversation hearts. I still need to pick up the bags and ribbon to go overtop. I'm hoping they'll turn out cute! I'm going to take them to the infant room teachers as well.

For Thanksgiving, I was in charge of the rolls as well as the apple pie. I used this recipe for the rolls. Honestly, they were, by far, the best rolls I've ever made and probably the best I've ever had. They were puffy and buttery and just melted in your mouth. Yes, they are styled after Pillsbury Crescent rolls, but these are 1,000,000,000 times better. Spencer loved helping to roll them up too!

What new recipes have you tried? I'm always looking for good recipes for dinner and love to bake pretty much anything!!

Pinterest recipes

I love Pinterest. I could not ask for a better place to organize my ideas. I think the problem I have with Pinterest is that when you go back to update your board, your followers don't see your updates. This, to me, only becomes a problem with recipes. I want the followers of my food board to know if I liked a recipe, if I hated a recipe, if I tweaked a recipe, etc. I have tried a LOT of my pins (and have deleted the ones we'll never eat again) and wish there was an easier way to let people know that certain ones are really good IRL.

I've decided to post a few of my favorites here, so at least all of you will be able to check out these, knowing that they're tested and delish!!

Gazpacho Chicken Salad- amazing. We've made it 3 times already in the past month. I add one can of cannelini beans (rinsed and drained) and use about half of the tomatoes (we're not huge tomato fans around here). This makes a great dinner and is wonderful for lunches throughout the week. Serve it with Naan or Ciabatta bread and a great white wine. Would also be wonderful for a ladies lunch on a bed of lettuce.

Honey Lime Chicken Skewers and Black bean, corn and avocado salad- Easy weeknight dishes that work well together but also delicious enough to serve to company. You wouldn't even have to do the skewers- just grill the chicken breasts instead of cutting and skewering. You could then serve the chicken over a bed of cilantro lime rice with black beans if you don't want to make the avocado salad (but you should make it- it's so good!). Again, both of these make great leftovers- the chicken is great chopped small and added to the salad.

Penne with vodka cream sauce- B and I make this every Valentine's day. If there were a recipe that shaped our relationship, this would be it. Amazing "date night in" meal. This year, we're going to try it with homemade pasta. I cannot wait!!!!

Baked spaghetti with cream cheese- A great dinner for a cold winter's weeknight. Really easy, very kid friendly, easy to sneak extra veggies into. We added spinach (I will add spinach to practically everything I can) as well as a few chopped bell peppers.

Monogolian beef- I don't really like Chinese food, so I wasn't expecting much from this dish; however, B loves it, so I made it to make him happy. It was much better than I expected, and it will definitely go into our regular rotation. I served it with stir-fried veggies and put the beef and the veggies over white rice. I did think it was a little too sweet, so I will cut back on the sugar next time. I'm sure it's much healthier than any restaurants version of Mongolian Beef!!

Slow Cooker Tiki Masala- This recipe (and the butter chicken recipe in the post) are our favorites that I have pinned so far. They are both better than any Indian food here in GR, and I love that they're crockpot recipes. I use boneless skinless chicken breasts in both recipes as it cuts down on the grease and the fat. Spencer loves both, too, so I would consider them kid friendly. I throw a bunch of peas into the Tiki Masala for color and nutrition!

Grilled brussel sprouts- If you haven't tried brussel sprouts in awhile, give them a try. They really are quite good if done well. Prior to this recipe we had never grilled them. We always roasted them with balsalmic. I didn't skewer them as we forgot to soak the skewers while we were at work, so we just did them in the grill basket instead. Worked like a charm.

Dairy free double chocolate granola bars- . I found out that our local grocery store does sell the Enjoy Life brand of dairy free chocolate chips and this has pretty much changed my world. I have made these granola bars twice in the past two weeks and take one of these every day in my lunch as my treat. If you aren't dairy free, just use whatever chocolate chips you like, but definitely still make these. I don't use the other weird flaxseed cereal, I have just crushed up frosted mini wheats instead, but I would also sub corn flakes, wheat chex, crispix, rice krispies, or another plain cereal. B loves these, and he is the first to criticize "fake" things that I make when I am dairy free. Trust me, you will be glad these are in your freezer/fridge when you need an easy snack that is full of fiber and delicious! The granola is amazing on it's own, and, if I could, I would eat it with vanilla yogurt every single morning!!

Bananas, peanut butter, and nilla wafer sniacks- I made these for a church picnic this spring and the kids liked them a lot. I thought they were just okay. I had hoped they would be better. If you do make them for a birthday party or playdate, know that they cannot sit longer than a few hours without getting the nilla wafers mushy from the banana. Definitely not something you can make the night before.

Buckeye bark- I adore chocolate and peanut butter so I thought these would be my favorite thing ever. I definitely do not think they are as good as regular buckeyes (though they were a lot easier than rolling out the balls). B liked it and the friends we gave our Christmas goodie packages too said they really liked it, but I didn't love it and I'm not sure if I would make it again. I have too many other favorite sweets to make something that is just "okay" in my opinion.

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes- You NEED to make these. Not even a question. Your husband/boyfriend/fiancee/girlfriend/roommate will love you, and your children will think you are the best mommy ever. We made them for a Friday night in one night last winter and just about died at the deliciousness. These would be a wond erful Saturday after Thanksgiving breakfast when the whole family is together and you are getting into the holiday spirit. I think they would also be lovely as a birthday morning surprise. I promise you that you and everyone you serve them to will love them. PROMISE!!

Frozen banana "ice cream"- This is currently my dessert of choice since I can't eat real ice cream right now. I do bananas, peanut butter, cocoa powder and vanilla- it's fabulous and quite a bit less fattening than regular ice cream even with the peanut butter. You can definitely still taste banana pretty strongly, so if you aren't a banana person, don't bother trying this. I also add a bit of almond milk during the food processing process to make it creamier.

Carmelitas- Hands down, the BEST recipe I have pinned. I have gotten repeated requests to make these again and again and again. In fact, they're so good that I've already blogged about them! I cannot tell you the joy I felt when one of our church friends brought over dinner for us two weeks after Peter was born and she brought a whole container of these. I literally called B at work screaming with joy that Alyssa had brought us carmelitas. Just watch the faces of people you serve these too- I promise they'll be just as excited as I was!!

I hope this run down gives you a few new recipes to try! Please let me know if you do. Also, if you have pinned recipes that you love, please let me know. I am always looking for new ideas!!  Happy cooking!

Carmelitas

Sunday night we had 7 adults over for dinner.  It was a delish dinner- brisket, pulled pork, cornbread, cabbage salad, mac and cheese, and green beans.  Everyone seemed to enjoy their meal immensely.  The best part came afterwards.............

(photo from Lulu the Baker)

This frickin phenomenal desssert.  Caramel, chocolate, oatmeal, brown sugar, butter- pure, pure, pure awesomeness.  Are there a few changes I would make?  Sure.  I would cut the caramel to 3/4s of what it calls for and I would increase the chocolate by 1/3.  But, overall, these are one of the best, easiest, most delicious desserts that I have made in a long time.  They are very rich, so you can cut them pretty small and serve a lot of people even with an 8x8 pan. 

If you are looking for a great Super Bowl dessert, a dessert to take to new parents, or a fun new dessert for your hubby, I would highly recommend these!!

Holiday Baking

My holiday baking is VERY limited this season with the move, but I am going to have some time this weekend to make a few things.  However, I do not have any of my cookbooks or recipe cards with me.  I know I can peruse a few of my favorite online sites to look for things, but I wondered if any of you had any tried-and-true recipes that I should try.  I have already made my peppermint bark brownies (huge hit every year) and I don't have any of my cookie cutters here for my traditional butter cookies, but any other ideas would be GREAT.  Feel free to just comment that I should email you if you don't want to post the whole thing in the comments or just link me to the recipe online!

Thanks in advance for your help.  I definitely appreciate it (and the recipients of my baking thank you as well!!)

Homemade apple sauce

photo found on flickr- forgot to take my own!

I made bbq ribs the other night in our stovetop smoker (AMAZING registry gift!), and I decided that a homemade applesauce would be a perfect accompaniament to the ribs.  Little did I know that we should all be making homemade applesauce all the time.  Ladies, it's so frickin easy, and so much better than the canned variety in the store.  The hardest part is peeling the apples.  I did just read on a website that many people leave some of the skin on because it allows the sauce to have even more flavor and color, so that'll save me time this week when I make this again.

I used Jonathan apples for my sauce, and they were delish.  They are a sweeter apple so it required using much less sugar than some of the recipes on the web called for.  According to www.pickyourown.org/apples, the varieties they recommend for sauce include

Gala

McIntosh

Jonathan

Golden Delicious

Jonagold

Jonalicious

Melrose

Winesap

Fuji

I wouldn't use my beloved Honeycrisp for this purpose as I've used them in other baking projects, and I thought they ended up mushy, watery, and just not good.  I'm going to combine a few different apples this week to see how that changes the flavor.

I peeled 6 smaller sized apples, cut them into wedges and put them into a sauce pan with 1/4 c water, 1/4 c sugar, 1 1/2 tbsps butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves (to taste).  Many recipes I saw called for at least 1/2 c sugar, but this would have made the sauce way too sweet, in my opinion.  I would definitely start out on the lower end of the sugar spectrum and add more if you need it.  One of the reasons to pick the apples above is that they are all sweeter apples and the flavor is brought out even more when reduced. 

Place the heat on medium and reduce the ingredients for 15- 30 minutes or until soft.  I used a potato masher to mash mine, but you could just as easily use a food processor.  You'll want to leave some texture to the sauce, so don't purree it too finely.  If you do leave the skins on, make sure any of the larger pieces of skin are processed or discarded before serving as a huge piece of apple skin isn't the most appealing on a plate.  When I make it again this week, I'll be using a much larger bunch of apples, as our sauce didn't even make it to leftovers!   

If you do make a big batch, there are many, many uses for leftovers:  on top of oatmeal for breakfast, as a sauce for pancakes or waffles, over vanilla ice cream for dessert,  as baby food, for lunch the next day, as a topping for Greek yogurt, as an accompniament to pork tenderloin, as a filling for apple turnovers (yum!) etc.  I'm sure you guys can fill me in on any other ways you think it sounds good! 

Let me know if you make some!  I'd love to know which apples you used and if you liked it or not.  Also for those of you out there who love using the slow cooker, I found a few recipes out there when I was searching.  They sounded good, and if you have a fall party of some sort, this would be a great way to get at least one thing off the stovetop!

Cupcakes!!

I know many of you out there are cupcake lovers. I've seen you blog about them multiple times, and I know how good they can be when done well. I also know that they are perfect for parties- already individualized, no knives needed, and so much fun. So, for today, here are two fun cupcakes items!

1. When we hosted our party two weeks ago, I decided to finally try these cupcakes that I've had starred in my google reader for forever. They did NOT disappoint. So far I have yet to try a recipe from Annie's blog that isn't good. She picks great recipes, and she lets you know what to do differently if the recipe doesn't work for her the first (or second) time. Mine didn't look exactly like this (my piping was a little more uneven), but all the guests loved the flavor and B and I definitely could channel Sonic while eating them.

Photo courtesy of Annie's Eats

These, these, and these are next on my list. Any preferences out there? I'll make a batch and post pics and a review if anyone is interested?

Also, next week on Martha it is cupcake week! If you are a devotee, make sure you DVR the week for tips, tricks, and recipes. This would be a great week to DVR if you are a mom and planning any birthday parties in the foreseeable future!

Off to study. Boards in two days. Sorry if my commenting leaves much to be desired this week. I absolutely have to pass this test, or I just spent three years of my life in school for naught. Hopefully that won't be the case though :)