Mango Avocado Smoothie
This is from a recipe card I got in the mail from Smiths. It is pretty good, but rather tart. We added a stevia powder to it and then it was great.
1/4 ripe avocado, peeled and diced
1/2 cup fresh or frozen mango cubes
1/3 cup plain, nonfat yogurt
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 cup water
1 cup ice cubes
Combine all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Serve immediately. Serves 2. Per serving: 90 Cal, 3.5 g total fat, 0g saturated fat, 25mg sodium, 13g carbs, 2g fiber,9g sugar, 5g protein.
Soft Pretzels - We made these for the girls cooking club. They are yummy! Genna and Adria have the recipe if you want it. Or I have it somewhere on my computer too.
Ashlee's Cowboy Salsa - I don't think I made any changes- Maybe added more cilantro and definitely the avocado!
Ryan's birthday was this past month- I wanted to try some of the other recipes from the same class where I got the Princess Torte. So I tried the Black Forest Cake- I used cherry flavor instead of kirschwasser. I don't think I will make it again- It was good enough, but not our favorite. The cherry filling is cinnamon flavored. I actually used the extra second cake that the recipe makes and the extra filling and made a second cake with chocolate frosting.
Of course I had to make Ryan's Princess Cake! It had leftovers too- So I tried making some cake balls out of it. They weren't fabulous. So while I intended to make a recipe out of them, it wasn't worth it.
I discovered a delicious recipe from Our Best Bites for Strawberry Rice Crispy Treats. I made them a couple of times - Once for the Valentine's Day Party Adria and I had for all the girl cousins and the next door neighbors. I only made a couple of changes- Left out the almond extract (mostly because I forgot it both times!) and I put them in a 9x13 pan instead of the smaller pan. The bigger pan was a perfect size!
6 tablespoons butter
6 cups Strawberry Rice Krispies (Yes they do make these! Found them at Smiths!)
1 16oz bag mini marshmallows (about 10 cups)
1oz freeze-dried strawberries
1 teaspoon almond extract (skipped it)
Line an 8×8 (or 9×9) pan with parchment, if desired. (Use a 9x13!)
Place butter in a large pot on the stove top. While it’s melting, place Krispie Cereal in a separate large bowl and add 1 1/2 cups marshmallows. Use your hands to gently crush the freeze-dried berries as you add them to the bowl with the cereal. You don’t need to pulverize them, just crush them into smaller pieces.
When butter is melted, add remainder of marshmallow bag and stir until completely melted and smooth. Remove from heat and add almond extract. Use a rubber spatula to scrape out all marshmallow mixture and pour over cereal mixture. Gently stir until cereal is completely coated and transfer mixture into pan.
Coat hands with a little butter (I use wet hands instead) and then gently press down (DON’T pack it down, gently press!) and let sit until cooled and set. Cut into squares to serve.
Saturday White Bread is a recipe from a cookbook called Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish. It's an entire book about how to make bread! It is very educational. Maybe a little too much. I don't own it, but I do keep checking it out from the library! I have only made 1 recipe out of it- the one that takes the least amount of time- 5 hours! HA HA HA! But it is DELICIOUS! Adria has a peasant bread recipe we really like that is much faster. BUT the extra time this one takes makes is taste LOTS better! I took photos of the recipe - all four pages! And it refers to other pages as well.
For Valentine's Day I made Crème Brûlée. I used the kitchen torch I got for my birthday from Andrea - I did have to go buy the fuel for it and some crème brûlée dishes. Amazingly enough it was cheaper to buy both of those things at Smiths than at Amazon. So that was my Valentine's day gift to myself. :-) I used the recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction. I didn't make any changes. I even added the ESPRESSO POWDER! I know! What a shock. I have read about it a lot and how it is added to all chocolate cakes to make them taste better. I found some on clearance at Smith's a few weeks before I decided to make these. And then when I got the email with the recipe it seemed like the perfect time to try it out. It really does make a difference! It doesn't take like coffee at all.
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon espresso powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla paste
Preheat oven to 325°F. Whisk the egg yolks and 1/2 cup of granulated sugar together. Set aside. Bring a small pot of water to a boil.
Heat the heavy cream, espresso powder, and salt together in a medium saucepan over medium heat. As soon as it begins to simmer, remove from heat. Stir in the vanilla paste. Remove about 1/2 cup of warm heavy cream and, in a slow and steady stream, whisk into the egg yolks. Keep those egg yolks moving so they don’t scramble. In a slow and steady stream, pour and whisk the egg yolk mixture into the warm heavy cream.
Place 6 ramekins in a large baking pan - I used a half sheet baking pan. Divide custard between each, filling to the top. Carefully fill the pan with about a 1/2 inch of the hot water. The baking pan will be hot so use an oven mitt to carefully transfer the pan to the oven.
Bake until the edges are set and centers are a little jiggly- 30 to 35 min. The time depends on the depth of your ramekins. Begin checking them at 30 minutes. For a more accurate sign, they’re done when an instant read thermometer registers 170°F (Mine never seemed to get this hot- not sure why but I didn't want to over cook them and they seemed done! And I read it's really easy to over cook them!- More likely than under cooking them.)
Remove pan from the oven and, using an oven mitt, remove the ramekins from the pan. Place on a wire rack to cool for at least 1 hour. Place in the refrigerator, loosely covered, and chill for at least 4 hours and up to 2 days before topping.
Using the remaining granulated sugar, sprinkle a thin layer all over the surface of the chilled custards. Caramelize the sugar with a kitchen torch and serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to 1 hour before serving. (Caramelized topping is best enjoyed right away.- it get's soggy later.)
I don't know why but I wanted to make a Strawberry Trifle. Probably because I thought it would be a great way to use up the rest of the extra chiffon cake I had in the freezer from Ryan's birthday cake (I had to remake that part of it because my cake kept falling - I discovered a bunch about baking powder doing this - but that's another story.) I had a recipe I got for my wedding from Kelly Kline- She was in my ward growing up. She gave us a trifle bowl with the recipe. I took the bowl back, but kept the recipe. So when I decided to make it I had to go to Walmart and buy a new trifle bowl. BUT the recipe was too big for the bowl! So I had to dump it in another bowl. I took it to Mom's house Sunday when everyone came and they all said it was great! It's an easy recipe. I did have to check a few other recipes on the internet to figure out exactly what she meant because her recipe wasn't clearly written. And I did have to make some extra cake- but it worked out great because I had extra egg whites from the crème brûlée so I made half an angel food cake.
1 package Strawberry Danish Dessert
2 pounds frozen strawberries
1 pt whipping cream
1/2 c sugar
1 t vanilla
1 large (5oz) package vanilla pudding.
Slightly thaw the strawberries so they can be cut in half or into bite size pieces. Make the Danish dessert as directed with 1 and 1/2 cups cold water. (I think that's what I used... might have been 1 and 3/4 cup). After the Danish dessert has thickened, remove from heat and stir in the strawberries. Put in fridge to cool. Prepare the pudding as directed. Whip the cream with the sugar and vanilla. Tear cake into bite size pieces and put a layer in the bottom of the bowl. Add half the strawberry mixture on top and then half the pudding and half the cream. Repeat the layers (I had to dump mine into a bowl before I repeated the layers so the strawberries ended up on the bottom and the layers a messy- but it tasted good.) The recipe suggested topping with shaved chocolate and hiding a nut somewhere in the trifle, but I didn't do that.
For Ryan's birthday (a week late) I found several recipes for dinner and then bought all the ingredients for them. I was thinking I could do the cooking too- BUT that didn't work out. Work really takes a chunk out of your day! So I only made one of the recipes and he made the rest of them. I made Quick Baked Chicken Parmesan. It turned out alright. Ryan likes the recipe he made last year for Valentines day- I think I posted it, but I'm not sure. It's a Parmesan crusted chicken with creamy bacon sauce or something like that. And it's good! This recipe is good too- but maybe not as fabulous. The kids all ate it though, so that was a win! I did learn that chicken cutlets are just chicken breast cut in half horizontally to make 2 thinner slices.
