Impromptu Dessert

Tonight we had friends over for dinner and it was decided that they would provide appetizers or dessert. We didn't really plan anything for either and they brought appetizers. As dinner came to a close, Leif mentioned how good it would be if we had something for dessert. So I set about to find something. I remembered that we had some heavy cream, so I started with that. I pulled out my trusty book of recipes from my mom and discovered that our recipe for Cappuccino Truffles calls for heavy cream. So that's what I set out to make.

I melted the ingredients together, hoping they'd cool in time for us to eat them before the kids' bedtime (aka 'party over' time). While I was waiting for the truffle mix to cool in the freezer, I started making some almond bark cups, using a mold I've had, but never used before. I knew it would come in handy some day! The cups took no time at all to cool, so I filled them with the still-soft-and-runny truffle mix, which was more like a ganache since I was too impatient to wait until I could roll it into balls. =D I topped the filled cups with some fresh whipped cream and some coffee ground sprinkles. Here's the bite-sized end result:

They were rich and decadent, and not bad for dessert on the fly, if you ask me! We had all the ingredients on hand and they took about 20-30 minutes to make, which was enough time for dinner to settle and coffee to steep. Yum! Here's the recipe I used. The rest of the mix I will make into "proper" truffles for a party tomorrow night. =D

Cappuccino Truffles

12 oz. chocolate chips (I used semisweet)
1 1/2 T. instant coffee granules
6 T. butter
3 T. heavy cream

Melt all ingredients together. Refrigerate until firm enough to roll into balls. (This is the step I was too impatient to wait for, so I just poured the cooled, but not yet stiff, mixture into almond bark cups.) Coat balls with powdered cocoa, crushed nuts, powdered sugar, etc. I coat the truffles with almond bark in a candy mold.

Angel Eggs...

It's not a Martha Stewart recipe, but it's cute, and one I want to try...

The Best Deviled Eggs (from Home Made Simple)
Set this traditional party appetizer apart at your next gathering with a combination of chives, bacon, lemon and tarragon, along with our inspired take on presenting these delicious deviled eggs.

Serves 6-8
Total time: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS
1 dozen hard-boiled eggs, peeled
3 heaping tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh chives, finely chopped (plus more for garnish)
4 slices of cooked bacon, finely chopped (or bacon bits)
2 teaspoons dried tarragon
1/2 teaspoon dried mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper, to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Take each of your peeled hard-boiled eggs and slice off the bottom (wide) end to expose the yolk. Cut a small sliver off of the top (pointed) end to help it sit up straight.
2. Scoop out the yolks into a medium-sized bowl and place the whites carefully into an empty egg carton with the hole-end up for filling purposes.
3. In your bowl, mash the yolks with a fork and add mayonnaise, lemon juice, chives, bacon, tarragon and mustard, then stir well. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Use a pastry bag with a piping tip or a zip top plastic bag with a corner snipped at an angle to fill your egg whites with the yolk mixture. Add more mayo if the mixture is too thick to pass through. Garnish with chopped fresh chives.

Tip: You can buy piping tips in the cake decorating section of the grocery store. Try attaching one to your zip top bag for more precise and decorative filling.

I made these yesterday....

.... and they are SO GOOD. Pumpkin biscotti. I got the recipe here. I dipped mine in chocolate. Mmmm.... My Inner Martha is full on FALL this week!

Tonight's Class....

So tonight I'm teaching another class at the LSS. It's a recipe album using the new Theresa Collins recipe pages. I pretty much love all thing TC, so I am really excited about this one! I made mine a Thanksgiving recipe album so I have all my favorite Thanksgiving recipes in one place. The recipe cards pull out (with the exception of 2 of them in mine - class attendees will be able to do the cards however they want to, so I added a variety of ways to do it in mine for example) and I think it will be a fun keepsake to have all my holiday recipes in an album! If I'm really feeling ambitious come Thanksgiving I'd like to take pictures of some of the dishes and incorporate them somehow. But that will have to wait until later. In the meantime, here's a peek at the album!

Elizabeth Manley's Apple Pie

This is the best apple pie. It's easy, it's pretty, and it's delicious. I could have sworn I posted the recipe on here before, but apparently I had not. It's time to remedy that!

Elizabeth Manley’s Apple Pie

Filling:

• 6 Cups sliced Apples (about 6/7 apples)

In small bowl combine:

• ¾ C sugar
• 4 Tbl flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Add mixture to apples. Place in unbaked crust.

Topping:

Mix together:

• 2/3 C flour
• 1/3 C brown sugar

Add:

• 1/3 C melted butter
• ¼ tsp cinnamon

Crumble evenly over pie. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 min. Reduce heat to 375 degrees and continue baking for 30 minutes.

Recipe Album

A woman in our church has Leukemia and a few weeks ago there was a fundraiser to help. Our women's Bible study, of which she was part, put together a kitchen themed basket for the silent auction and my contribution was a recipe album. I wanted to make something different than I'd done before, and the papers reminded me of vintage aprons for some reason, so I went with large circles for the text. I really like how it turned out! My biggest challenge was trying to figure out what to do with the front of the album, and I finally settled on this. I still think it is a little lacking, but it works with the rest of the album. I used my Purple Onion Designs cutlery set for the window. Here's a look at the whole album...

Perhaps one of my favorite features is the tabs across the top... I just thought those were fun, printed on matching paper.

I am thinking of adding these as a custom item in my (empty!) etsy shop. My mom made me a recipe book of all the recipes she made for us when we were growing up and I love it. I love having all my childhood favorites in one place, easy to use. And I use that book more than I use any of my other cook books. I love it. So I was thinking that it might be fun to offer these albums in my shop, complete with the buyer's recipes. What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? What should such a thing be sold for? I'd love any and all feedback... Thanks!

Green Bean Surprise!

What happens when you go digging in the big freezer to find tortillas and you pull everything out only to learn that there are no tortillas in your freezer? If you're like me you go back into the house to tell your husband that there are no tortillas and he tells you that dinner is ready and you sit down to eat and forget all about the food in the garage (which was once in the freezer and now is not) until the next morning when you go out to the car to get something and notice all that food sitting about, outside of the freezer. OOPS.

Yeah, that is sort of what happened last week. Well, more than sort of. That's pretty much exactly what happened last week. Thankfully it had been a cool week, so the food was still cold (a lot of the food was still mostly frozen) and we mostly had things like flour, bread, and cheese that could survive a little thawing and re-freezing without too much harm. I think the ice cream sandwiches suffered the worst of it, but I haven't had the heart to open up the box to see how they fared. I guess we'll find out when I go craving an ice cream sandwich next time.

There were, however, a few items that we chose to use immediately instead of toss back into the freezer, so it was a day of processing and cooking. We had a giant bag of green beans from Costco that I bought a long time ago and had never used, we had a ham that I'd made a couple months ago and frozen half of, there was some chopped vidalia onion waiting to be used, and a couple large bags of blueberries. I made some green bean casserole (my way- not the traditional fried onion and mushroomy way), some fried green beans (which are pretty good!) and I started making some stew with the remainder of the green beans. Leif made 3 batches of homemade blueberry ice cream. Mmm.

I wasn't sure what sort of stew to make with the green beans, but we had some carrots in the fridge, too, so I figured I could make some sort of stew. I dumped the green beans and onions into the crock pot, then saw the ham and decided to chop that up and toss it in too. At this point I decided against the carrots, since I didn't think carrots and ham go together. So I had a crock pot full of green beans, chopped onion, and ham (with a little bit of pineapple, since that is what the ham had originally been cooked in). I added some chicken broth and turned the crock pot on low, hoping to have some yummy stew at the end of the day.

It didn't magically turn into stew.

But it DID turn into some of the best green beans I've ever had! SURPRISE! It was really good! I don't usually eat onion, but this was a good way to eat them. We had them with dinner that night (we ended up having dinner with the neighbors who brought over smoked chicken and baked potatoes) along with some blueberry ice cream. I liked them so much I ate them for breakfast the morning after that! Mmmm.... good green beans.

So there you have it. THAT's what happens when you accidentally let your food thaw out and decide to use it right away. I don't recommend it, but at least the story has a happy ending.

Low Fat Spinach Lasagna Recipe...

Tonight I made a new variation of our traditional lasagna. We dropped the meat from the lasagna a couple years ago, but tonight I did a few other things differently, too. It was definitely different from our usual cheese-laden dish, but it was really good! Here's the recipe...

Ingredients:
2 C. Cottage Cheese (pureed to get all the curds smooth)
2 C. Shredded Parmesan Cheese
2 C. Fresh Spinach
3 Egg Whites
------------------------------
2 C. Diced Tomatoes
4 C. Tomato Sauce
1 T. Fiber Powder
Season to taste
------------------------------
6 Lasagna Noodles

Directions:
Combine cheeses, eggs, and spinach together in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine tomatoes, tomato sauce, and fiber powder.

In a glass 9x13 baking dish, place a layer of sauce, then a layer (3) of DRY noodles, then a layer (1/2) of the cheese mixture. Repeat, then finish the top with a layer of sauce.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 1 hour. Uncover and sprinkle with additional cheese (parmesan or mozzarella, according to your liking) and bake uncovered for 15 minutes more.

Let cool for about 15 minutes before serving. Makes 8 servings.

The best part about this lasagna is that it's only 5 ww points for a pretty generous serving. AND it only has 275 calories, 7 g. fat, 4 g. fiber, and 22 g. protein! Very filling!

The Shower...

... is over and I'm calling it a success! People had fun (even though I made them scrapbook!), Taylor got some nice gifts, and everybody complimented me on the cheesecake and punch. =D So without further ado, here are some pictures of the shower decorations:

Flower arrangement

I love getting flowers from Costco. They always have the best, and you can't beat 2 dozen longstem roses for $14! When I brought them home, I looked at my compote and got a brilliant idea... with a little florist's foam, I could probably do a lovely arrangement in the compote! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I had enough roses left over for 5 smaller arrangements in custard cups and small vases to place around the house, too! I was a little nervous about doing the flower arrangement after the cake fiasco, but I think it turned out beautifully! This arrangement restored my hope for a wonderful shower!

Cheesecake

Here's the backup cheesecake, plus my own frosting decorations. I'm pretty happy with it, especially since my other cake decided to be so ill-behaved!! And it turns out that most of the shower attendees didn't even know you could buy fresh cheesecakes at Costco, so I could have even gotten away with claiming it was my own!! Of course, when they asked if I made it I did 'fess up and tell them the truth about its origin...

Set Up

It's hard to see from the picture, but this was the set up I used for the shower. I wish I'd thought to move the chairs and take a better picture, but this is the one I have, so this is the one I'm sharing! The table was decorated with an album (which we filled with scrapbook pages instead of playing cheesy shower games) and two rose vases. The counters were covered with table cloths (I'll do that again, too! I thought it made the presentation much better and it looked less like my kitchen and more like two buffet lines...) and serving dishes, and flowers. I used "the pink stuff" (as it is called around here), otherwise known as rose-colored depression glass. I thought it would make for a perfect baby girl shower. =D And since I don't actually own a punch bowl or glasses, but have 13 depression ware stemware glasses that are the perfect size for punch, it worked out well. From the pink stuff I also used a cake plate, pitcher, serving round for veggies, little dish for dip, and serving plate for mini quiche. I used a big frosted glass bowl for the punch with a silver ladle and it worked nicely for a punch bowl! I'll have to remember that for the future. Oh, and I served vanilla punch, which is always a hit. We had it at our wedding. It's super easy and elegant as can be. Here's the recipe if you're interested:

• 4 liters Sprite
• 1 C vanilla syrup (like you put in coffee)

That's it! Like I said... super easy and if you use the yellowish syrup (instead of the clear - it all depends on the brand you buy, but they all taste the same and just differ in color) it has a sort of champagne look to it, which is really elegant. This recipe serves about 24 punch sized glasses, and halves (or doubles) well.

Oh yes, and I forgot to mention that this is a secret family recipe. I think this is its internet debut, and all the credit goes to my mom. She made it up for my wedding! =D

Spinach Craisin Salad

I could have titled this post "Oh, How I Love Oil & Vinegar..." because really, that's what it's all about. I went to refill some of our O&V bottles today while I was out running errands. Leif was working from home while Ellie napped, so I had a few precious moments in town by myself! I forgot how wonderful it is to go into a store like Oil & Vinegar without little toddler hands trying to grab every breakable item in sight! I also forgot how wonderfully relaxing it is to sample the oils and vinegars there.

While the lady was filling my 3 bottles, I sampled yet another vinegar and asked her what it would be used for. Her answer sounded so marvelously delicious that I ran back out to the car to collect 2 more bottles to be filled! (We had 7 or 8 total, but I didn't get them all filled... only most of them!) So I tried her suggestion with dinner. It was amazing! Here's how it works:

Soak craisins in spiced pecan vinegar and microwave for 30 seconds, until craisins have plumped slightly. Sprinkle craisins over a spinach salad and drizzle with roasted walnut oil.

That's it! Super easy and REALLY good. I might just start eating salads again....

And that is why I love Oil & Vinegar today. (Oh - that and because she told me today how to package up the bottles so they'll go through checked luggage next time I go to Texas!)

Peppernuts!

Christmas is just not the same without peppernuts. They're little German spice cookies my grandmother always used to make. They're perfect for dunking in coffee and great by the handful. And Christmas is just not the same without them. So... today is Peppernut Day! I started making them yesterday, let them freeze overnight, and baked them this morning. Well, I baked half of them. The other half will have to wait until later because I have plans in a little over an hour and I don't want to pull out the other pan of frozen dough. There are dozens of recipes for peppernuts, and it seems that every Mennonite family has their own version. I've tried a couple other varieties, but nothing beats what *I* know to be peppernuts: 1 C. shortening 1 C. white sugar 1 C. butter 1 C. evaporated milk 2 C. brown sugar 1 egg Mix ingredients together. Add in: 1 tsp each: salt black pepper cinnamon nutmeg ginger baking powder baking soda 1/2 tsp each: allspice cloves anise oil 6-7 C. flour The dough will be thick, kind of like gingerbread. Refrigerate dough until chilled through. Roll chilled dough into long 3/4 inch diameter ropes. Freeze. Cut ropes into 1/4 inch cookies and place on baking sheets. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Makes a few hundred cookies... That are perfect for gift giving!! Wrap them up in the cutest way you can think of and hand out to everyone you know!!

CJ Recipes

I finally got the next CJs in the mail today! Yippee!! I'm so excited about getting them and sending them on. Anyway- as requested, here are the recipes from my Comfort Food LO.