Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Yes, that's a cheesecake layer in the chocolate chip cookie bars. 

Does it look delicious? 

It is. Believe me. 

Like the stuffed bell peppers, this is a recipe that my mom and I made together when she was visiting.

Unlike the stuffed bell peppers, this isn't healthy at all. 

I think they balance each other out, though.

Except that I eat them in equal proportions.

You should, too. They're every bit as delicious as they look. 

Cheesecake Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

By HeatOvenTo350 Published 04/30/2011

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup butter flavored vegetable shortening
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, at room temp
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter, shortening, sugars, vanilla, salt and vinegar. Beat in the egg, then the baking soda and flour. Stir in the chocolate chips. Divide the dough into two equal portions and set aside.
2. In a medium mixing bowl cream the cream cheese with the sugar until thoroughly combined. Beat in the egg and vanilla.
3. In a 9x13 pan, spread 1/2 of the cookie dough mixture evenly across the bottom. (This is somewhat tricky to do. I find it easier to add dollops of cookie dough throughout the pan and then spread all the dollops together. Spread the cream cheese mixture on the top of the cookie dough. With the remaining cookie dough, flatten chunks of dough between your hands into discs, and then place on top of the cream cheese mixture. (The dough discs don't have to touch, just place them near each other so they cover the surface as well as possible.)
4. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes, or until the top is brown and cooked through. Cool completely and store in the refrigerator.

(To make this in a sheet pan like pictured in this post, double the recipe and press into a 12x17" sheet pan. The cooking time is slightly shorter.)

Yield: 20 servings
Prep Time: 20 min
Cook time: 45 min

Recipe source: adapted from King Arthur Flour and my mom's friend Jill

Getting Dinner on the Table - Chicken Edition

I have a pretty hefty commute to and from work each day. I'm lucky enough that my work provides me with a free bus pass, so most of that commute is on public transportation and I can sit and read or sleep or even knit on occasion. (Don't judge me, it's cool to knit. You're just jealous.) With the time traveling home from work, though, I usually don't get there until late and I'm completely starving. Dinner prep has to be as fast as possible so I don't go crazy eating almond Snickers and Symphony bars. (Don't judge me, you know you love almond Snickers, too.)


Since I'm guessing that you probably need to get dinner on the table pretty quickly, too, I thought I'd share some of the ways I've found to help me save time when serving chicken dishes. They're also good ways to save money because you can buy chicken when it is one sale and prep it for later in the month.


Pre-chop Raw Chicken

Cashew Chicken Curry

Broccoli Skillet Chicken Pasta

Chicken Lime Tacos

The first way is to cut your chicken up ahead of time and then freeze it. I have a few recipes I like that use chicken that has been cut into 1 inch pieces. (Some of which are pictured above this paragraph.) I buy a family-sized pack of chicken breasts (a package sized to feed a family, not a package the size of an actual family.) and then chop all of it into pieces. Yes it's a little bit tedious chopping it all at once, but the good part is that you only have to do it once.  I don't know about you, but once I have icky chicken juice hands and icky chicken juice counter, I just want to do whatever I need to do with the chicken and get it over with so I only have to clean up once. 


I hate icky chicken juice hands.

Once the chicken is all chopped, I then pull out my trusty kitchen scale and weigh out a pound of chicken pieces onto a clean piece of saran wrap. Slide the saran off the scale, replace with another piece of saran (Pre-cut these pieces of saran so you don't get your saran wrap box all yucky with your icky chicken juice hands.) and repeat. If I end up with a little extra chicken I make a 1/2 pound pile on another piece of saran wrap because sometimes you need a pound and a half of chicken. 


If you don't have a trusty kitchen scale, just divide the package into even portions based on the number of pounds you bought. 


Just so you know, though, kitchen scales are way awesome. You should ask for one for your next birthday.

Wrap up the pile of chopped chicken chunks with the piece of saran it is sitting on, wrap it again with another piece of saran wrap, then put it in a freezer bag with the date on it. Pop it in the freezer and you're done. No more chopping up chicken at night when you need to use it. I usually pull out however many pounds of chicken I need the night before and let them thaw in the fridge for a day. (In a bowl so they don't leak icky chicken juice all over the fridge. I hate icky chicken juice leaking in my fridge.) When I cook with them, I pat the pieces dry with a paper towel because they release water in the freeze/thaw and won't brown as well unless they are dried off. It's amazing how much faster food can come together once you take out the time for cutting up the chicken and cleaning up afterward.



Pre-Cook Chicken

Artichoke Heart Chicken Pasta

The other method I use with chicken is for recipes that call for pre-cooked chicken. There's a number of different ways to get cooked chicken - leftovers, rotisserie chickens, baking, poaching, begging from your mom, etc. You can cook the chicken however you like best or using whatever is on sale. Lately I've been putting chicken breasts in the pressure cooker in some broth for 8-10 minutes and calling it good. It stays moist this way and gets a little bit of flavor from the broth. Sometimes I roast a chicken in the oven, or if I don't want to heat up the house I put the bird in the crock pot for 5-6 hours, breast side down. Let rest for 15 minutes after cooking and pull off the meat. Whatever your preferred way of cooking chicken, use it. 

Once you have the cooked chicken, chop it up into chunks (you can also pull it into pieces, but I usually don't have enough patience for this and I really like using my big chef's knife.) and then load it into a 1 cup measuring cup lined with saran wrap. Most recipes seem to call for 1 cup increments of cooked chicken so that's how I portion it out. 

I twist the saran up around the cooked chicken and then put all the little balls of cooked chicken into a freezer bag and freeze them. (If your chicken was warm when you started cutting it up, put the chicken balls in the fridge to cool off first.) Once again, when I know I'm making a recipe with cooked chicken in it, I just take out what I need and let it thaw in the fridge overnight.


Those are my couple little tips to help get chicken dishes on the table faster. It takes time on a Saturday or weeknight to get the chicken ready, but I am always glad to have the prepared chicken when I get home from work and I start making dinner.


Do you have any chicken preparation tips that make dinner faster to prepare?

Brussels Sprout Salad

I had a friend in college who loved Brussels sprouts. She was always talking about how wonderful they were, and if anyone would disagree she'd ask them "How can you hate them? They're like little cabbages!" I don't know if anyone broke the news to her that a lot of people hate cabbage, too, but I still think of Brussels sprouts as little cabbages every time I eat them. I also learned from her that often the reason people dislike the "little cabbages" is that they've always had some overcooked ones. Cook Brussels sprouts too long and they do get gross - mushy and smelly and a weird green/brown color. But if you cook them briefly, they really are wonderful. 

I never once thought to not cook them at all, though, until I was reading an interview with Giada di Laurentiis. The Food Network star is always associated with great food, (also: cleavage. Seriously, do a google image search of her some time.) and when she mentioned one of her favorite salads was a Brussels sprout salad at an LA restaurant I was interested. Especially when I saw the recipe for said salad on the next page. I read through the ingredients and knew I'd have to make it. Soon.

It turns out, of course, that Giada is right about this dish. The salad is wonderful. It's hearty and filling, with a great mix of flavors from the dried fruit, almonds and cheese. Served raw, the Brussels sprouts have a great crunchiness and a mild flavor that really isn't overpowering. The only downside to the salad is actually cutting them up for it. It takes a little while to peel apart all the little Brussels sprout leaves. Luckily, it makes a good sized salad that lasts very well without dressing on it. The dressing itself is very minimal - just enough to enhance the flavors of the salad.

In all, it's one of my new favorite salads. I can't wait for summer farmer's markets to have fresh Brussels sprouts on sale, because I've got a feeling this is going to be a favorite summer meal. 

Don't worry, I'll cook my veggie-hating husband a hot dog.

Brussels Sprout Salad

For the dressing:

1/4 cup plus 2 T vegetable oil
2T extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 T honey
1 T apple cider vinegar
3/4 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/8 tsp grated lemon zest
1/2 tsp whole-grain mustard
1/2 small clove garlic, minced
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

For the salad

1 pound Brussels sprouts, leaves only, (7 cups leaves)
2 T dried blueberries
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup smoked almonds
1 ounce shaved manchego cheese (or Jarlsberg)
Bagel chips, for serving (optional)

1. Make the dressing: Whisk the vegetable oil and olive oil in a small bowl. In a large bowl, whisk the honey, vinegar, lemon juice, lemon zest, mustard, garlic, 1/2 tsp salt and a pinch of pepper.

2. Slowly whisk the oil mixture and vinegar mixture until combined. Add additional salt to taste. (Don't skip this step because the dressing isn't great without enough salt.) Refrigerate at least 1 hour; store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

3. Make the salad: Toss the Brussels sprout leaves, dried blueberries and cranberries, almonds in a large bowl. Add dressing to taste and toss. Pile the salad onto a plate. Top with the cheese and season with pepper. Serve with bagel chips, if desired.

Recipe Source: La Grande Orange, feature in The Food Network Magazine

Ham and Cheddar Scones

Ham is almost a strictly Easter meal for me. I rarely think to buy or prepare it other times of the year, but it's tradition in my family to have ham on Easter. (Although this weekend I talked to my parents and they said they were making ribs this year instead. Why do parents always decide to break tradition once their kids get set in their ways about them? Don't even get me started on what they've done to Christmas.) 

One thing I love about ham is how versatile the leftovers are. They can jazz up omelets, be built into sandwiches, mix in a casserole, or star in this soft and buttery scone. Scones are generally sweet, not salty, but these savory scones are some of my favorites. They are little triangles of buttery bread goodness, packed with the salty flavor of ham and cheddar cheese and the mild flavor of green onion. They're easy to prepare and work as either a side dish or a breakfast. 

If you are not a fan of ham, you can always leave it out and the scones are still delicious without it. If you're on the other end of the spectrum about ham and can't get enough of it, you can always make the scones without ham and use them as bread for a thick ham sandwich. 

Not sure it gets much better than that.

Ham and Cheddar Scones

2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) All-Purpose Flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick, 2 ounces) cold  butter
1 cup (4 ounces) very coarsely grated or  diced cheddar cheese
1/3 cup (about 1/2 ounce) snipped fresh chives, or finely diced scallion tops (the  green part, 3/4 ounce)
1 cup diced cooked ham
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons (7 ounces) heavy cream or whipping cream, or enough to make the dough cohesive

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease a baking sheet, or line it with parchment.

1) Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.

2) Work the butter into the flour until the mixture is unevenly crumbly.

3) Mix in the cheese, chives, and ham till evenly distributed.

4) Add ¾ cup of the cream, stirring to combine. Try squeezing the dough together; if it’s crumbly and won’t hang together, or if there are crumbs remaining in the bottom of the bowl, add cream until the dough comes together. Transfer the shaggy dough to a well-floured work surface.

5) Pat the dough into a smooth 7" disk about ¾" thick. Transfer the disk to the prepared baking sheet.

6) Use a knife or bench knife to cut the disk into 8 wedges, spreading the wedges apart a bit on the pan.

7) Brush the scones with a bit of cream; this will help their crust brown.

8) Bake the scones for 15-17 minutes, until they’re golden brown. Remove them from the oven, and cool right on the pan. Serve warm, or at room temperature.
Yield: 8 large scones 

Recipe Source: adapted from King Arthur Flour

Stuffed Bell Peppers

With all the decadent things I've been posting lately, you might start to think that we eat dessert all the time at our house. While that might not meet with any complaints from my husband, that's hardly the case. I'd say most of the time we try to be fairly healthy. My mom is the same way, so she and I love sharing recipes back and forth when we find good ones. When she was here visiting she told me we had to make these stuffed bell peppers that she loves. She said, with an emphatic nod, that they were from Dr. Oz. Do you know who Dr. Oz is? I had no idea. I just smiled and said, "Oh!" and then jumped on my computer as soon as possible to google him. It's embarrassing when your mom is more in the know about things than you are, isn't it? Apparently Dr. Oz is a medical doctor who has a TV show. (Also, judging by the picture on Wikipedia, I wonder if female viewers watch his show for more than just medical advice.)

Anyway, we made the bell peppers for dinner while my parents were here and they were delicious! Also easy! Also healthy! It was a good meal trifecta. The filling is flavorful and tastes great with the bell pepper shell. My mom cuts her bell peppers sideways so there is a larger filling-to-pepper ratio, but either way was delicious. The chili powder and cumin give the meal a great Southwestern flavor that's wonderful with a little avocado and sour cream on top. It's easily modified to include ingredients that you might want to add, like replacing the rice with brown rice or adding cilantro, and could be made vegetarian by substituting black beans for the ground turkey. It's a dinner that you can eat and feel good about, which helps makes up for the cheesecake stuffed chocolate chip cookie bars my mom also showed me how to make while she was here. 

Somewhat.

Stuffed Bell Peppers

By HeatOvenTo350 Published 04/20/2011

Ingredients

• 3 large red bell peppers
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 16 oz lean ground turkey
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon chili powder (decrease by half if you don't like spicy food)
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 16 oz jar salsa (your favorite flavor)
• 1 cup cooked rice
• 1 cup shredded low-fat cheddar cheese
• 2 cups baby spinach
• sour cream
• avocado

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds.
2. In a large skillet over medium heat, brown turkey with onions. Add minced garlic, chili powder and cumin and stir and cook 1 minute. Stir in salsa and rice.
3. Place cut bell peppers on a cookie sheet and divide turkey mixture evenly among them. Top with cheddar cheese and bake for 7-10 minutes.
4. Serve with sour cream, avocado and spinach on top.

Yield: 6 servings
Prep Time: 2 min
Cook time: 15 min

Recipe Source: Dr. Oz

Apple Rosemary Grilled Cheese

Did you know that it's National Grilled Cheese Month? Me neither, until I read it on What's Katie Baking. I have her to thank for reminding me to post this recipe before it gets passed over yet again by some strawberry recipe that I'm excited to share. Right now, there's not much that competes with strawberries in my mind, but this sandwich really deserves to be shared. It is such an easy recipe, but tastes so gourmet. It takes grilled cheese from something you make when there's nothing else in the house to something you look forward to. The apple butter and sharp cheddar cheese taste wonderful together, and I love the flavor that rosemary adds. It's in my top ten favorite sandwiches. 

Apple Rosemary Grilled Cheese

Ingredients:

2 slices of bread

1 tsp butter

1 T apple butter

Scant 1/4 tsp dried rosemary leaves

1 ounce extra-sharp white cheddar cheese (Cabot is my favorite)

Spread butter over one side of each piece of bread. On the other side of one slice, spread the apple butter, then sprinkle with rosemary. Top with cheese and then the second slice of bread, buttered side out. Cook in a large skillet over medium heat for 1-2 minutes on each side or until both sides are golden brown. Serve immediately. 

Recipe Source: adapted from The Professional Palate

Versatile Blogger Award 

I also have Katie to thank for giving our blog the Versatile Blogger Award last week. I've been busy cooking with my mom until today, so I haven't had a chance to accept it formally. Anyway, I'm so flattered that she would think of our little blog. Thank you, Katie! The rules of the award stipulate that you share seven random facts about yourself and pass the award on to 15 new found bloggers. Since I share this blog with my good friend Trisha, I thought I'd share some random facts about both of us. 

1. Trisha and I both love baseball. We have different teams, though. She loves the Yankees because she lived in New York when she was younger. I love the Red Sox, because I grew up in Vermont. Yes, we're still friends.

2. We both got married in the same place, had our hair done by the same person for our wedding and bought our wedding cakes from the same bakery. (We both got almond with raspberry filling, even.) Why mess with a good thing? (Especially when the hairdresser is my awesomely talented sister.) 

3. We are both older than our husbands. I think it's the way to go. (Except the whole putting your husband through school part.)

4. Trisha is double jointed. It's hilarious when she uses it to freak out people that don't know.

5. I play the piano and organ. Trisha plays the violin and piano.

6. We were both Barker's Beauties in a "The Price Is Right" activity at church. No, it wasn't assigned to us. We volunteered. Yes, we're both super cheesy and we love it. 

7. We both went to college in Utah. I went to Brigham Young University, and Trisha went to Southern Utah University. 

I am supposed to pass this on to 15 other new found bloggers, which is tough because I read many great blogs and it is hard to narrow it down to 15. I left out Grain Crazy and Jenna Laughs because I've already shared my love for those blogs in past posts. Here are 15 blogs that I have found recently that I enjoy reading:

Apples and Twinkies

Baking Serendipity

Claire Cooks

Cooking Gallery

Dainty Chef

Diethood

Elephant Eats

Kitchen Runway

The Lean Green Bean

Life As A Lofthouse

Meeshie's Mom

My Kitchen Adventures

One Lovely Life

The Sweets Life

Tracey's Culinary Adventures

Ladies, I love your blogs. Keep up the good work. Feel free to accept the award and pass it on, just accept it, or just pass on it. Just make sure you keep posting your great recipes. 

Chocolate Cadbury Egg Cookies

It was just about last year around this time when I started to discover the wonderful world of food blogs, and here a year later and I have at least 40 blogs that I check out on a regular basis and at least a thousand more to discover! Some of you may be thinking, "wow, she must have a lot of time on her hands..." I have a busy 2 year old that keeps me busy during the day times but at night after he's in bed and my husband is back to studying (he's in law school right now) I crack open the computer and scour the internet for yummy recipes and drool over all of your spectacular pictures!

One of the websites that is a favorite and I'm sure a lot of you know of it and would agree with me is ourbestbites.com...amazing! One of the first websites that I looked at and it had this chocolate Cadbury egg cookie recipe that looked like it would be OUT OF THIS WORLD!! Sometimes looks can be deceiving, but not in this case. I made these cookies to take to our Easter dinner and they were gone before dessert even rolled around. The Cadbury eggs are made from a higher quality cocoa then your tollhouse chocolate chips (not that I don't love you tollhouse, I buy the gallon size bags of you at least once a month!) so when you are eating the cookie and part of the egg melts in your mouth you'll look down to see that your socks are no longer on, because they've been knocked off due to the extreme yumminess of the Cadbury cookie! So enjoy!

Chocolate Cadbury Egg Cookies

1/2 cup Crisco Shortening (butter flavor)

1/2 cup Unsalted Butter, softened

1 cup Brown Sugar

1 cup Granulated Sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1/2 teaspoon Salt

2 1/2 cups Flour

6 Tablespoons unsweetened Cocoa Powder

1 bag Cadbury miniature eggs (10 oz bag) (NOT the creme eggs)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Place Cadbury eggs in a heavy duty plastic storage bag and, using a wooden rolling pin or meat tenderizer, (this is a chance to get out some aggression!) break up the Cadbury eggs into smaller chunks. You can put them in whole which is still yummy but the I like to get a little piece of the Cadbury chocolate in every bite!

3. In a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer, cream the butter and both sugars until they are light and fluffy, then mix in eggs and vanilla until smooth.

5. In a separate bowl, mix together baking powder, baking soda, salt, flour and cocoa powder. Add to the wet ingredients and mix. 

6. Add the Cadbury eggs and stir just until they are fully incorporated.

7. Drop 2" size balls onto an ungreased (or parchment paper lined) cookie sheet and bake for 8 minutes.

Do NOT overbake these cookies, they are meant to be soft and slightly doughy, kind of like a brownie!

Recipe Source: Our Best Bites

Bucketelle

What kind of a name is bucketelle? Let me tell you. 

My mom's family is French Canadian, and my great-parents only spoke French, even though they moved to Vermont when my grandma was growing up. We inherited some great traditions from my mom's side of the family, and one of them is this trifle dessert with sponge cake, pudding, bananas, strawberries, walnuts and whipped cream. My grandma always called it "buck-a-tel", and that's what we always called it growing up. I never thought much about the name until this week when my mom was visiting because I showed her some changes that I had made to the recipe. 

I don't know about your family, but in my family traditions are traditions, and we rarely change things around. When I told my mom I had replaced the bananas with mangoes and added some coconut cream pudding, she wasn't resistant to the change, but told me it was a different dessert and would have to rename it. (You'll have to understand, my mom and her cousins have eaten this dessert on Christmas for years and who wants to say they messed with something like that? In fact, when my mom gave me the recipe, she told me that my great-grandmother used to make everything in it by hand. We've slowly replaced the homemade sponge cake with bought angel food cake and used jarred strawberry jam, but she told me if I ever used instant pudding my great-grandma would come back and haunt me. Pretty scary to tell a five year old, huh? )

Anyway, the idea of having to find a new name for this "different" dessert made us start to discuss the real name. What kind of name for a dessert has the word "bucket" in it? It's not the most appetizing word in the world. You might as well put the word "feedbag" in there, too. Since my grandma and great-aunts always said the word with a heavy French accent, we started to wonder if we had just completely butchered the name into some English word. After a little google searching, we realized that was true. The French world for a trifle dessert is called a bagatelle, not "bucket-el". Yep, totally slaughtered. It meant, though, that when it came time to name my "different" dessert, I could pick bucketelle, which I did. It may not be the most appetizing sounding, but it's what my immediate family has been calling it for years. 

Sometimes traditions just shouldn't be broken, you know.

Bucketelle

1 package cook and serve coconut creme pudding
1 package cook and serve vanilla pudding
2 pounds strawberries, hulled and sliced
1/2 cup strawberry jam
1 angel food cake
3 mangoes, diced
1 pint whipping cream
2 T sugar
1 tsp vanilla

1. Cook puddings according to package directions and refrigerate until cool.

2. In a large bowl, layer angel food cake (broken into pieces), strawberry mixture, mangoes and pudding. Repeat until all ingredients are gone. Refrigerate.

3. Whip cream with sugar and vanilla until stiff peaks form. Dollop on top of the trifle and serve.

Recipe Source: Marie Anne Boivin Fortier

Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips

I think Winter has finally given up in our area. It fought hard right at the end with a couple snow storms the past few weekends, but it's finally feeling like Spring has won. The grass is green, the plants in my garden are popping up, and when I feel the sun on my face it has some heat behind it. I find myself  daydreaming of barbecues and ladder golf games in the back yard, forgetting a little about the weeding and mowing that I'll have to do in the summer, too. I'm already craving fruits and fresh foods more. Do you just love fruit in the summer? It seems like I can't get enough of it. 

The grocery stores near us have had some big, beautiful strawberries lately, and I thought a perfect way to use some and fill my craving for fruit would be to make some fruit salsa and cinnamon chips. Fruit salsa is just as amazing as it sounds - chopped bits of apple, strawberries and kiwis tossed with a little raspberry jam. I could eat it with a spoon, and may have been known to do so in the past. The cinnamon chips are also delicious on their own, with their almost-fried taste and just enough sweetness and cinnamon. The only bad part about this recipe is that it disappears too fast. It's something you make for when friends come over, but then wish you had all to yourself. 

Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips

Cinnamon Chips:

10 (10 inch) flour tortillas

melted butter

1 cup sugar

2T cinnamon

Fruit Salsa : 

2 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 Fuji apples, cored and diced
1 pound strawberries, diced
1 T brown sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
3 T fruit preserves, any kind

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and brush both sides of a flour tortilla with melted butter. Mix sugar with cinnamon and pour mixture over tortilla until it is completely covered. Lift tortilla and shake off excess, then cut into 8 wedges with a pizza cutter. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining tortillas. Bake at 350 for 9-10 minutes, or until cinnamon chips are crispy and just starting to brown. Remove from oven and let cool.

2. In a large bowl, mix kiwis, strawberries, brown sugar and preserves. Add apples and stir to mix. Serve immediately.

Recipe Source: adapted from allrecipes.com

Angel Food Cake French Toast

My mom coming this week to visit. You know what that means?

Cleaning. Deep cleaning. The vacuum-under-the-couch, clean-out-the-cupboards, wash-the-windows kind of cleaning. 

Let me make some things clear before you start to think my mom is some kind of dictator-like cleaning fiend that walks through my house with a white glove. My mom is awesome. (I'd better think that, because the older I get the more I realize that I'm turning into her.) For her, keeping a house is like fighting a war with dirt and chaos. When she sees something dirty, she goes into battle mode and doesn't rest until the enemy has been eradicated. This war most often occurs at her own house, but she has fought many a battle at other houses. She's the type of friend you want to have when you need something to be done, because she's tireless and thorough. 

Knowing this, you'd think I'd be building up a list of things to be cleaned so my mom can help me when she's here. Believe me, I'm tempted. I love working with my mom. It makes cleaning fun to have her around, plus things get done so much faster. (Did I mention the woman is tireless? I'm not joking.) But this is supposed to be her vacation, so I'm trying to get rid of any potential cleaning battles. 

So far, I'm in a pretty good shape. I dusted all the baseboards last week, and wiped down the cupboard doors. (If you follow the facebook page, you know how that turned out.) I washed the bathmats already and organized the food closet. Things were looking good. So good, in fact, that I took Saturday morning off. Part of the reason for the morning off was this:

I've had an angel food cake kicking around for a week, waiting for me to stop cleaning and use it. I bought it to make the recipe I'm sharing today - angel food cake french toast. I had made it a couple weeks ago and I'm still thinking about it now. It's delicious. Amazing, really. It's just what it sounds like - angel food cake dipped in an egg mixture and cooked in a pan until golden and delicious. The taste, though, is so different from regular french toast. It tastes almost like a custard, but still has the light and fluffy texture of angel food cake. It's wonderful, and hardly needs any syrup at all. A little whipped cream and some strawberries is perfect on top. 

So, I took decided to take Saturday morning off. I took a break from cleaning and ate some of this french toast, relaxing for a little while and watching it snow peacefully outside. 

I decided that I'll save just a couple things for my mom to do with me while she's here. 

After all, it's pretty fun working with my mom. 

Angel Food Cake French Toast

1 7-8 inch angel food cake

6 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups milk

3 T sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 T butter

Whipped cream or creme fraiche

Maple syrup

Cut-up strawberries

1. Slice the cake into 10 to 12 1-inch think wedges. In a shallow dish, whisk together eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla. Soak wedges in egg mixture for 1 minute per side. (Note: I tried this with a homemade angel food cake and it was much more delicate than the store-bought one. If you've got fragile slices, soak for half the time and make sure you have penty of non-stick spray or butter in the skillet before cooking.) In a nonstick skillet or griddle, melt butter over medium heat. Cook 4 wedges at a time for 1 to 2 minutes per side or until golden brown. To serve, top with whipped cream and drizzle with maple syrup, Garnish with strawberries.  

Makes 5-6 servings

Recipe Source: Every Meal Easy Cookbook

Quinoa with Blueberries, Feta and Almonds

Before I forget - we're on Facebook now! If you would like to be a fan, click on the "Like" button on the right hand column. Also, if you have a food blog with a facebook page, please let us know in the comments below so that we can be a fan of your page, too. I love having another source to find other great recipes, and I love using that "like" button. The internet is just amazing, isn't it?

Thanks for listening to that brief announcement. Onto the quinoa.

I've mentioned before that quinoa is a protein powerhouse, and I love finding ways to include it in our diet. It has such a great, mild flavor and fluffy texture. I love it as a change from regular rice side dishes. Its nutty flavor goes well with fruit, fresh and dried, and in this recipe the blueberries provide just enough sweetness. Feta gives some salty flavor and almonds contribute texture and more nuttiness. Add in a little lemon juice for some acidity and you've got a healthy side dish that you can feel good about taking a second helping of. 

Quinoa with Blueberries, Feta and Almonds

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed (be sure to do this - it can have a bitter taste if you don't.)

1/4 cup roughly chopped almonds, toasted

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup dried blueberries

1T lemon juice

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

Directions:

1. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add quinoa and return to a boil. Cover and reduce the heat to low and simmer until quinoa is tender, but still chewy, about 15 minutes. Fluff quinoa 

with a fork.

2. Stir in almonds, salt, blueberries and lemon juice. Top with feta and serve.

Yield: 6-8 side dish servings

Recipe Source: HeatOvenTo350

Pesto Breadsticks

I've mentioned before that I really got serious about learning to cook when I was living in my first apartment in college. My roommate Emily and I learned to cook from great teachers like Sara Moulton, Emeril and Martha Stewart. With all our time watching the Food Network, we kept hearing about this stuff called "pesto". It sounded amazing and the TV chefs put it on all types of food. We searched through several grocery stores and could never find it. I don't know why it never occurred to us to try and make it. We had attempted just about everything else we heard of - even pierogis. But making pesto never even crossed our minds and we finally decided that it would be impossible to find.

One Christmas when I was home in Vermont, I was grocery shopping with my mom and finally saw it on a shelf near the pasta sauces - a little jar of pesto. I convinced my mom that it was worth the ridiculous $5 that it cost, and I carefully tucked it in my luggage to bring back. The pesto and I both arrived safely back in Utah after that Christmas break and one of the first things I did was show Emily my score. We were so excited to finally get a taste of the elusive pesto. We weren't disappointed. It was incredible to us. Basil has to be my favorite herb, and pesto is a great way to show off its flavor. We enjoyed it on all kinds of food and we were so sad when the jar ran out.

Now I just laugh when I think about how mysterious pesto was, because it seems to be in all kinds of food and it is so easy to find. I've even made it myself, and I'll share my favorite low-fat recipe for it this summer when there's basil aplenty. (Right now, I don't think the little plant in my windowsill could provide enough. It's looking pretty stick-like from being harvested for a recipe I'll share next week.) Despite becoming a more regular part of my diet, I still think pesto is amazingly delicious and love to try its flavor on all kinds of foods. These breadsticks are a natural place to use it. I just love the flavor of pesto and bread. The breadsticks are soft, yet chewy, and filled with a pesto and parmesan. I'm not kidding when I say that my husband and I ate them for dinner one night. We liked them so much we just didn't feel like getting around to the main dish. Every once in a while, I think an unbalanced meal is okay. 

Especially when it has pesto in it.

Pesto Breadsticks

Dough:

2 cups + 2 T bread flour, plus extra for kneading

1 1/8 tsp instant or rapid rise yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1 T olive oil

3/4 cup + 2 T water, warm

For Breadsticks

1/4 cup prepared pesto

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Food Processor Method: 

1. Pulse 2 cups of the flour, yeast, and salt in a food processor (fitted with a dough blade if possible) to combine. With the processor running, pour the oil, then the water through the feed tube and process until a rough ball forms, 30-40 seconds. Let the dough rest for 2 minutes, then process for 30 seconds longer.

2. Turn the dough out onto lightly floured counter and knead by hand to form a smooth, round ball, about 5 minutes, adding the remaining 2 T of flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking to the counter. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Hand-Mixing Method:

Whisk 2 cups of the flour, the yeast and salt together in a large bowl. Add the oil and water and stir with a rubber spatula until the dough comes together and looks shaggy. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counted and knead by hand for form a smooth round ball, about 10 minutes, adding remaining flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking to the counter. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise as directed in step 2.

Shaping:

Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased work surface. Pat, then roll it into a 20" x 10" rectangle.

Spread the dough with the pesto, leaving 1/2" free of filling along the long edges. I find it easiest to do this by dotting bits of pesto all over the dough and spreading it out from there. Sprinkle with the shredded Parmesan.

Fold the dough in half so the long sides (free of filling) meet. Press together by rolling over the dough with a rolling pin. Cut into twenty 1" slices.

Place the slices about 1" apart on the prepared pan, twisting them as you lay them down. Brush with olive oil or garlic oil.

Cover and let rise for about 30 minutes, or until puffy. (If you are in a hurry, I've skipped this step and the breadsticks aren't that much smaller.) Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 375°F.

Bake the twists for 20 to 25 minutes, or until they're light golden brown. Remove them from the oven, and serve warm with pizza sauce or marinara, if desired. Recipe Source: Dough adapted from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.