Ramblings and late recipes

I posted a few weeks ago about my misadventures learning to cook from scratch and kind of blew off posting the recipes...


Sorry!

Fresh Tomato sauce

4 lbs of ripe fresh tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped or 1 small onion chopped
2 sprigs fresh sweet basil chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste

Cut tomatoes into small wedges and cook in stainless steel or enamel pan for 10 mins over medium fire until tomatoes are soft (I scored the bottoms to make the skin easier to come off). Cool and rub through a strainer. Brown garlic in hot oil until golden brown. And add tomato puree and seasonings. Cook uncovered until thick about 1 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally. Enough for 1 lb of pasta. Serves 6.

I had much left over! I think it came out a little too salty for my taste. I also like a sweeter sauce but the gang seemed to like it. I had dried basil and did add an onion for good measure. It went well as our pizza sauce as well! Pretty easy peasy. The hardest part was that I don't have a metal colander anymore. I have one of those fold-able plastic ones. And I did break out our smoothie maker, I don't have a blender, pitiful I know but it did the job!

A few days back I was puzzled at what to do with my spinach, cherry tomatoes, green peppers and pineapple and I found this on here: http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Stir_fry-Spinach-Salad-Allrecipes
I will definitely go back to this website!

Stir-Fry Spinach Salad

Ingredients         Serves 6 servings            

8 ozs pineapple chunks

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast halves (julienned)

2 tbsps cooking oil

1 green pepper (julienned)

3 tbsps brown sugar

1 tbsp cornstarch            

14 cup ketchup

3 tbsps soy sauce

6 cups spinach (torn fresh)

1 cup cherry tomato (halves)

Drain pineapple, reserving 3 tablespoons juice in a small bowl; set pineapple aside. (Discard remaining juice or save for another use.)

 In a skillet or wok, stir-fry chicken in oil for 5 minutes or until no longer pink. Add green pepper; stir-fry for 2-4 minutes or until crisp-tender.

Meanwhile, add brown sugar and cornstarch to pineapple juice; mix well. Stir in ketchup, vinegar and soy sauce until smooth; add to skillet and cook until thickened.

On a large serving platter, arrange spinach, pineapple and tomatoes. Top with chicken and green pepper; serve immediately.

IT WAS SUPER YUMMY! I wish I took a picture! Oh my goodness! The girls are picky and sadly didn't want to try it, but Terry and I made much it all gone... 

Then I was on the search for the recipe for those wonderful Biscoff cookies. I figure it may take me a bit to find a good recipe and sadly the first one I tried is not quite them. BUT! They are still good!
 http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2010/07/biscoff-cookies-from-scratch-recipe.html
 

The Biscoff Cookie Recipe

Here is my reprinted version of Matzo & Rice's Biscoff (speculoos) cookie recipe with a few notes.  The only change I made was to omit sprinkling sugar on top of the cookies.  I didn't think that was necessary.

• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 C unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 C sugar
• 1/4 C firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, mix together flour, spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves), baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
3. In a separate large bowl, cream together butter, sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer on low speed. Mix in the vanilla extract.
4. Gradually blend the flour mixture into the butter mixture until it is well combined.
5. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. From here, you can either bake it as a large sheet of cookies to cut later, or, you can use cookie cutters to make cookie shapes. (I used my awesome Williams-Sonoma cookie cutters!  I had a bit of trouble rolling the dough and found that if I chilled it for a bit, rolling was easier.)
6. If you choose to bake it as a large sheet, bake for 20-25 minutes. Cut out cookies to shape as desired.
7. If you choose to bake it as shapes, place dough shapes onto parchment paper and bake for 12-15 minutes.
8. Cool on cooling rack before serving. These are best once they have cooled.

BISCOFF COOKIES OR LOTUS SPEDULOOS

(Belgian cookies)

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups (packed) dark brown sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 large egg

Combine flour, spices, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl; set aside.

Using electric mixer, beat brown sugar and butter in large bowl until light.Add egg and beat until fluffy. Gradually add dry ingredients and beat just until combined. Divide dough in half. Flatten each half into rectangle. Wrap with plastic; chill 1 hour.

WHEN READY TO BAKE:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly butter 2 large baking sheets.

Remove one dough piece from the refrigerator and roll on lightly floured work surface to 13x9-inch rectangle. Trim edges to form 12x8-inch rectangle. Cut into 24 (4x1-inch) rectangles. Lightly press miniature cookie cutter into each rectangle to make imprints (do not cut through dough). Arrange cookies on prepared baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart.

Bake until edges begin to darken, about 8 minutes. Transfer cookies to rack and cool. Repeat with remaining dough piece.

Gotta run have visitors!

Peach pie! MMMM!!

My whole intention was to make this for Terry before he left last weekend, but dang it, time just slipped away from me. So I have about 12 peaches staring at me and pie tins empty. It was cool and rainy yesterday, PIE TIME! That was my first time making one from scratch! I'm pretty anxious to see how it will come out... I froze it until my Love comes home again. Yes, I'm totally sappy!

I had gotten the instructions from- http://www.skiptomylou.org/?s=peach+pie&x=0&y=0

I measured and mixed.
I peeled and sliced.

I totally made a mess! But that's how I roll!

I tried to blanch my peaches to make the skin easier to come off. I didn't do it long enough so I ended up peeling them the old fashioned way.

I used butter instead of shortening!

 I did have enough left over filling to make another, less filled pie! After freezing my other delicious looking creation I decided to make another. But lo, an behold, I ran out of flour! GRRFACE! I was just at the store the other day! SIGH!




SO! I improvised! Crescent rolls to the rescue! I added a dash of sugar to my floured area to sweeten the dough as I rolled it out. It was so tasty that I had 3 pieces (dinner)! I had to give the rest to our adopted family, Lee and Al otherwise I would have eaten the rest. Depending on how the homemade pie turns out I just may use crescent rolls instead of making a pie crust. I really like how nice and brown it gotten. I can't wait to try the other!

Minions! BOOHAHAHAHA!

Let me start off by saying I am not a cake decorator. LOL! I saw a site that had adorable Minions- Despicable Me http://www.thepartyanimal-blog.org/despicable-minion-twinkie-cakes/. I was hooked! Alex and Kalven's party was coming up so I had the brain child that I could do this! I have maybe 2 self taught cake classes and I have had a handful of sucessful cakes- a campfire cake for Scouts that brought in $35 at their auction!

So there I go off the store to get everything I needed. I have no patience to run around all over the place and like one stop shop outing. I couldn't find several things and ended up either omitting or trying to wing it.

I decided on using the 3 tier cake pans. Well, let me tell you it turns out the Minions were HUGE on this. SIGH! I improvised again. Poor Minions never had a chance! I cut one in half and tooth picked 2 others to the cake after I noticed they slowly were falling off the first and second tier.

AGH! Soon arms and legs from these poor little guys were falling off. I swear it was looking like a horror flick! Then I was so hyped that I failed to remember that I didn't have a cover for this monstrosity, which meant I needed to leave it out over night.

Sour worms for arms and legs!

I thought about buying a box of Twinkies but I worried I would eat the left overs!

 I threw them in the freezer to make it easier to frosting, I also put them back in the freezer for about an hour while the cake was cooling.

White Smarties for the little guys eyes. BUT the black for the glasses oozed and so did the dot in their eyes. I had to mix up some black (which turned out grey) frosting with food coloring since I could not find any at the grocery store.

Notice some arm and leg slippage! LOL!

I couldn't fit him on the cake. SAD FACE!

The next day we had cake! Oh it was yummy and despite how sad my poor Minions turned out Terry and Alex ate a bunch and commented that it was pretty tasty! YEA ME!

Turns out the cake was super moist, the Minions had hard heads from being left out all night, but that was ok, the Baby dug in and without haste!

Happy Birthday Alex & Kalven! Next year... No Minons and I have a year to fine tune my decorating skills! In the mean time "Let them eat cake!"

Broccoli Cheese soup!

It's a wonderful time for soup! Nothing beats something warm when it is cold outside!

Broccoli and Cheese soup

1 Tbsp Butter melted
1/2 Med onion
1/4 c Melted butter
1/4 c Flour
2 c 1/2 and 1/2
2 c Chicken stock
1/2 lb Broccoli
1 c Julienned carrots
1/4 nutmeg (I have used Allspice and I have also omitted both and it came still came out tasty!)
8 oz of Cheddar

Saute onion in butter

Whisk and cook melted butter and flour over med heat for 3 to 5 mins. Stir constantly

Slowly add 1/2 and 1/2 and chicken stock whisk whole time

Add broccoli, carrots and sauted onion

Cook low until veggies are tender

Add salt and pepper to taste

Blend soup to puree

Add cheese and stir in nutmeg (optional)

YUM! Great with fresh baked bread but that recipe is for another day!