Cheesecake Pops — April’s Daring Baker’s Challenge April 27, 2008

I have folders and folders of recipes that I eventually want to make, and of those folders I have one recipe for Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Cheesecake Pops, and now I have a reason to make them, or at least something similar!  Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms & Deborah from Taste and Tell were the lucky ones to decide on the recipe for this month.  I really enjoyed this challenge.  I made my pops into squares (I got the idea from the PB pops I mentioned above), it didn’t involve digging the hands into the cheesecake and dipped the cheesecake in Wilton Chocolate Melts (I used these also in my Chocolate Shots and loved working with them).  I dipped some of the pops in ground peanuts and some I left alone for those with braces (my little bro who ended up digging the cheesecake out of the chocolate mold with the sucker stick and then eating the mold on its own, he always comes up with creative ideas to eat his food). 

I find that if I make something and eat it the same day, the flavors don’t come out and I don’t enjoy it as much as I do if I eat it the next day or a few days later.  This could be because of working with all the ingredients and sometimes, yes I’ll admit, lickin’ up the remaining batter from the bowl or spat.  I wonder if I’m on my own with this…even cookies, cake, pretty much any baked good!  I thought about this because about a week after I made them, I took one out of the freezer, brought it to room temp and enjoyed every small bite of it, more than I did when I ate one the night I made them.  I was surprised at how smooth and creamy the cheesecake was and thought that it didn’t even need the chocolate, but the choc sure made them look pretty :)

For the recipe and to see how other Daring Baker’s cheesecake pops turned out, check out Feeding My Enthusiasms & Taste and Tell.

     

 

Mini Banana Oat Breakfast Muffins April 22, 2008

These muffins turned out good.  I added a bit less oatmeal and would probably leave another 1/8 cup out next time.  I also added some cinnamin and nutmeg for flavor.  This is a good grab-on-the-go breakfast.  Throw some in a bag and you are all set.

Mini Banana Oat Muffins

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 tsp vegetable oil

1 egg, beaten

2 egg whites, beaten

2 large bananas

3/4 cup quick cooking oats (org recipe asked for 1 cup)

1 tsp cinnamin

dash of nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients together.  Add the oil and eggs and mix well.  Mash bananas in a small bowl and then add them to the batter along with the oats. 

Spray a mini-muffin pan with cooking spray.  Fill tin 1/2 to 3/4 full (thanks to my brother in law I recieved a batter dispenser for Christmas which worked beatuifully for filling the muffin tin) and bake about 12 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Cool on wire rack.

Strawberry Margarita Freeze April 15, 2008

This dessert would be great on a warm summer day, but it can also be enjoyed on a colder, not quite spring-like, night at about 10 p.m., which it was last night!  My mom and I headed over to the salon in our friends house to get new hairdos and I brought a dessert just because. :)  It was a late night for me considering it was a Monday, but worth it!  My mom and I both love our new dos (I’m sure we could use some styling practice yet) and dessert was icily refreshing.  Next time I would crush the pretzels up a bit more, run them through a food processor so they it is more of a crumb, but other than that I don’t think I would have changed a thing!  I left it in the fridge last night to see if it would hold up, it did sink around the edges, but I think it will still taste good.  If you are not a strawberry fan, I’m sure this recipe would work great swapping out the strawberries with raspberries or blueberries or any other creative flavors you come up with!  Maybe even chocolate…maybe…I’d have to think through that one.

Strawberry Margarita Freeze

1 1/2 cups crushed pretzels

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 pkg cream cheese (1/3 less fat)

3/4 cup sugar (a bit less)

1 1/3 cups orange juice

1 cup crushed strawberries

1 8 oz tub cool whip, thawed (cool whip free)

Mixpretzels and butter;press firmly onto bottom of 9-inch spring-form pan.

Beat cream cheese and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended.  Gradually add orange juice, beating well after each addition.  Stir in crushed strawberries.  Add whipped topping; stir with wire whisk until well blended.  Poor over crust.

Freeze several hours or until firm.  Remove from freezer; let stand in refrigerator about 15 minutes before cutting into slices to serve.  Store leftover dessert in freezer.  

I should have tried to shave off that little bubble to make it more attractive huh?

Berry Ricotta Dessert April 9, 2008

 

I made lasagna the other day and ended up with leftover ricotta cheese so I went on a search, like usual, to find something to make with the leftovers.  There are always other Italian dishes that I could have made but I wanted something people don’t think of making ricotta cheese with often.  I found this recipe on DK’s Culinary Bazaar, thought it looked good and decided to give it a whirl.  This was a very nice light dessert with just the right amount of sweetness from the honey.  Instead of adding more honey to the berry sauce, I added sugar free syrup which minimized the tartness.

Berry Ricotta Dessert

(Recipe from:  DK’s Culinary Bazaar)

• 1 generous cup ricotta cheese ( I used fat free)
• 2 egg whites, beaten
• 4 tbsp honey, plus extra to taste
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 cups mixed fresh/frozen berries

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Place the ricotta cheese in a bowl and break it with a spoon.  Add the beaten egg, honey and vanilla extract and mix till the mixture is smooth.

 

Lightly grease 4 ramekins.  Spoon the mixture into the ramekins and level the top.

 

Bake them for 20 minutes (mine took 30-40) or until ricotta are risen and golden. 

 

While you are waiting for them to bake, place the fruits in a saucepan with a little water (no water if you are using frozen) and heat it gently until softened.  Add honey or syrup to taste and let cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pizza Night! April 5, 2008

Homemade pizza that is.  I’ve been wanting to make homemade pizza for so long!  We planned a pizza night with some friends of ours in early March.  Stuff came up, such is life, and we couldn’t make it work out until last weekend.  So, we decided on who was going to bring what, meet up and went at it!  We all agreed that the pizza turned out great and we will definitly be going back to the pizza dough and pizza sauce recipes we used again.  Doing this with another couple also worked well so one of us didn’t have to prepare all the ingredients.

Both the recipes came from Melanie at My Kitchen Cafe.  She says this is her tried and true recipe for slow-rise pizza dough.  She also has another one on her site for a quick dough that doesn’t need time to rest overnight.  Thanks for the awesome recipes Melanie!

Slow-Rize Pizza Dough

(Recipe from:  My Kitchen Cafe)

Serves 4

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
1 1/3 cup water
3 1/2 to 4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt.

24 hours before making the pizza, throw the above ingredients together to a desired consistency (still soft but not too sticky), place it in a greased bowl, cover with suran wrap and put it in the fridge.  Take the dough out 2-3 hours before making the pizza to let the dough come to room temp and relax.

Homemade Pizza Sauce

 

(Recipe from:  My Kitchen Cafe)

 

Enough to cover two pizza’s made with one batch of the slow-rize pizza dough.

 

1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes

1 small can tomato paste

1 tablespoon sugar

Oregano

Garlic powder

Italian seasoning

Crushed red pepper (optional)

 

Combine all ingredients in food processor/blender or use a hand blender, blend all ingredients until smooth unless you like your sauce a bit chunky.  Add seasoning to taste.  

 

Putting it all together!

 

(Some of these tips also came from My Kitchen Cafe)

 

*Preheat oven with pizza stone to 450-500 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

*Get all ingredients together:  sauce, toppings (sausage, peperoni, mushroom, green pepper, etc. unless you just want cheese!).  Grate cheese (can use shredded but results won’t be as good.) and fling dough in the air a few times to make the crust the thickness you want. 

*Take stone out of oven (careful, it’s extremely hot!) and as quickly as you can lay the crust down, spread the sauce, top with cheese and then toppings or toppings then

cheese, it’s your pizza, make it how you like it and slide the stone back in the oven.  (We used a floured pizza paddle for the first pizza, it did not slide easily off the paddle when trying to get the pizza on the stone so this is the way we did it for the second, which seemed to work good!)

*Bake for 7-10 minutes until the cheese is melted, slightly bubbly and a bit browned. 

*If you’d rather not have your crust continue to get crispy, take the pizza off the stone after you take the pizza out of the oven.

 

Sit, eat and enjoy! 

 

 

 

TOFU Chocolate Chip Cookies??? April 3, 2008

Did I get your attention?  That’s right, chocolate chip cookies that have tofu in them.  I actually made two different kinds of CCC.  (I was in the mood to bake and why only make only 1 batch of cookies?)  The first recipe is nothing too different than a normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, we call them ‘babies’.  Very tasty, chewy and mouth watering.  The second, is a healthier twist to the chocolate chip cookie that call for tofu.  Those who know me may think I’m quire for trying this recipe…but if you try them, you would be surprised!  They turned out tastier than I thought considering there was no butter/margarine in them.  I hope I haven’t scared anyone off yet, hear me out, please keep reading!   (especially you women out there:)  I’ve researched tofu a bit and found this list of benefits you can get from eating the stuff:

• Tofu can lower the risk of heart diseases by lowering the level of bad cholesterol
• Tofu can lower the risk of osteoporosis
• Can lower the risks of prostate cancer and breast cancer
• Decreased menopausal symptoms which include mood swings and hot flashes (http://www.oohoi.com/natural%20remedy/everyday_food/benefits-of-tofu.htm)

See, I told you it would be worth it.  The tofu cookie is cakeier than the other chocolate chip cookie and if you don’t know anything about tofu, you can’t taste it at all in the cookie (it really doesn’t even taste like much by itself either, I made myself eat a little bit straight before adding it to the cookie batter.  It’s not something I could eat by the spoonful, but mixing it in with other foods/dishes I could handle…my husband is probably freaking out right now…)  He actually had one of the tofu cookies not knowing that they had tofu in them and he said they were different (probably b/c they have the texture of a cake rather than a cookie), but good and I kept finding him going back to the cookie jar for another one, although once he reads this post, he may not too much anymore. 

Now that this recipe was a success, the next recipe I’d like to try is the Amazing Black Bean Brownies.  Amazing????  We’ll see about that.

Tofu Chocolate Chip Cookie

(Recipe from:  Sunday Nite Dinner)

My changes are in parenthesis & italics.

Ingredients:
7 ounces soft tofu (1/2 a square), roughly chopped
1/3 cup (3 ounces) cream cheese
1/3 cup (3 ounces) natural or organic salted, creamy peanut butter (natural chunky but would like to try Better’n Peanut Butter next time)
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
4 large egg whites
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
A touch of almond extract (optional)
2 1/2 cups oat flour or white whole wheat flour (whole wheat flour)
1/4 cup semolina flour or cornmeal (cornmeal)
1 teaspoon baking soda
8-10 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips/chunks

Directions:
1) Adjust the oven racks to the upper- and lower-middle positions and heat the oven to 375°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper or spray them with nonstick cooking spray.

2) Whisk the flour, semolina and baking soda in a medium bowl; set aside.

3) With an electric mixer, mix the tofu until smooth, about 1-2 minutes. Add cream cheese and peanut butter and beat until thoroughly blended. Add the sugars; mix until combined, about 2-3 minutes. Beat in the egg whites and vanilla until combined. Add the dry ingredients and beat at a low speed just until combined. Stir in chocolate chips to taste. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.  (It was pretty gooey!  I had to flour my hands each time making the balls.)

4) Roll a scant 1/4 cup of the dough into a ball. Hold the dough ball with the fingertips of both hands and pull into 2 equal halves. Rotate the halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, join the halves together at the base, again forming a single ball, being careful not to smooth the dough’s uneven surface. (Instead of putting the halves together, I placed the two separate halves on the baking sheet and the cookies were still pretty big!) Place the formed dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, jagged surface up, spacing them 1 1/2 inches apart.

5) Bake the cookies until light golden brown 13 to 16 minutes, rotating the baking sheets from to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking time. Cool the cookies on the sheets. Remove the cooled cookies from the baking sheets with a wide metal spatula.

Makes 28-30 cookies

Babies

(Recipe from:  PR Christian School Ladies Auxiliary)

1 cup white sugar

1 cup margarine

1 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup oil

Cream above ingredients together until very light and smooth.

Add:

1 egg

1Tbsp milk

2 tsp baking powder (or 1 tsp cream of tartar)*

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

3 3/4 cup flour

12 oz pkg chocolate chips

Mix thoroughly and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes until they just start to have a touch of brown.  Don’t overbake if you want soft chewy cookies! 

Bocalicious Chili April 1, 2008

I’ve been getting daily e-mails from Hungry Girl with tips and recipes on eating healthier.  It’s been good and I’ve been learning alot about foods I’d probably never try.  This recipe is from their site.  I bought some Boca burgers a while ago and decided that I’m not a big fan of eating them on a bun, burger style, so I decided to throw the rest in this chili, ground up.  I loved it!  This will be my go-to Chili on those cold snowy days here in Chicago.  (I’m hoping their won’t be too many more of those this year!)

Bocalicious Chili

(Recipe from http://www.hungrygirl.com/)

Yield:  4 servings

2 Packets of Meatless Ground Boca OR 4 Original Vegan Boca Burger Patties (I used 3)

2 Cans Mexican Style Stewed Tomatoes (I used 1 original plus 1 no salt and 1/4 cup salsa b/c I couldn’t find Mexican style at the store)

1 small onion

1 can kidney beans (I know realized I used black beans…shows how much I pay attention to recipe ingredients)

Cumin, salt, pepper, chili powder

(I also added mushrooms which I had on hand)

Spray frying pan with nonstick cooking spray.  Heat pan, saute onion, and add ground Boca when onion start to brown.  Saute Boca and onions.  Season to taste with cumin, onion powder, salt, pepper chili powder.  Add stewed tomatoes and continue to cook over medium flame for about 8 minutes.  Add beans for the last three minutes or so.

188 Calories, 1 g of fat, 15 g protein, 26.5 carbs, 9g fiber (3 WW points)