Frog-Eye Salad

So I mentioned on my blog a little while ago a dessert salad: frog-eye salad. An unfortunate name, I know, but I didn’t name it. It’s deceptively delicious and it kind of grows on you. I’m considering changing the name to “white cloud of happiness salad.”

16 oz acini di pepe pasta (This is a small round pasta about the size of a peppercorn. I found some at Wal-Mart made by Da Vinci. I assume this is what gives the salad its name, but if you can’t find it I recommend orzo).

1 small box vanilla pudding

1 1/2+ cups milk

1 pint whipping cream

1/4 – 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

3+ cups mini marshmallows

2 cans mandarin oranges, drained

1 large (28oz?) can of pineapple tidbits, drained

 

1. Cook pasta according to package directions, cool pasta under cold water in strainer and set aside.

2. While cooking pasta, make vanilla pudding with 1 1/2 cups milk instead of the recommended 2 cups. Once set, combine with cool pasta. Add fruit and marshmallows.

3. Whip cream with sugar and vanilla till very stiff. Fold into salad. For best results, let rest overnight. (or enjoy right away). This makes A LOT of salad, so you may want to half this recipe on your first try. That way, if you hate it, you have less of it.

Now, the recipe I used to make this calls for a container of cool whip. I did not have success. It made the salad very very gooey, so I went for the real thing, but feel free to give it a try. Just make sure the cool whip is thawed before folding into the rest of salad.

 

For as many times as I’ve made this, this is the only picture I have of it. We just eat it too fast.

Rollo Cookies!

A coworker of Dana’s made these and brought them in to work. Dana brought one to me and asked me to make them for him. Hooray for the internet and its searchable contents! I found a recipe quickly and made these delicious cookies.

1 cup of butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp soda

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

48 Rollo candies*

1. cream sugars and butter together. Add eggs and vanilla.

2. Combine dry ingredients and add slowly to egg mixture. Transfer dough to dry ingredients bowl and press in slightly. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours. (I don’t usually go through the trouble of combining the dry ingredients separately, but I did this time. And if you put the dough into the dry ingredients bowl to chill, when you remove it from the bowl, it comes out readily.)

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Separate dough into 48 balls (Just keep halving the batch of dough till you get 16 sections, then split each of those into 3rds. Or feel free to eyeball it; that works too.) Wrap each ball of dough around 1 Rollo candy. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven when done, but let sit on the cookie sheet 4 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

Here are my cookies cooling deliciously. Feel free to eat them warm; they’re kind of amazing that way.

 

*Did you follow the asterix? You really do have to use Rollo candies. The caramel is nice and soft and already chocolate coated, which helps keep it from making a mess. You may ask how I know this. It is because I foolishly tried to use caramels. The hard cube-ish kind you melt to cover apples with: that kind. This is what I got…

Are you thinking about the picture that the man drew of a snake eating an elephant? Because I am. These caramels aren’t in the oven long enough to get all nice and gooey. They just stay shaped like caramels. Then when the cookies cool, you have a nice soft cookie with a hard, yucky caramel in the middle. Go ahead and spring for the Rollos, you’ll be happy you did.

Stuffed Peppers

I made stuffed peppers once in college and filled them with my own mixture of mostly rice and some ground beef and vegetables.

We had our own early Thanksgiving a few weeks ago and had the inevitable leftover turkey. I don’t like leftover turkey. Every year I search for another thing to do with leftover turkey that will make it yummy. And this year I finally found one!

This recipe comes from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

3 large stuffed peppers halved and seeded

3 Tbl olive oil

1 onion, chopped fine

1 lb. ground cooked or uncooked beef, pork, veal or lamb (or cooked, chopped turkey!)

2 tomatoes peeled and chopped (I used 1 15oz can of stewed tomatoes, drained

2 Tbl minced parsley

1 1/2 tsp dried basil

salt and pepper to taste

1 cup bread crumbs

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a shallow baking dish. Cook the pepper halves in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Heat oil in the skillet and add chopped onion. Cook, stirring until soft. If using uncooked or cold meat, add and cook until done or heated through. Add tomatoes, parsley, basil, and salt and pepper to taste. Lightly fill each pepper half with some of the mixture. Top with breadcrumbs (I put some parmesan cheese on first). Bake for 30-40 minutes.

These are super yummy and I’m definitely making them again.

And one fuzzy picture, sorry guys.

The Cake

Ever heard of a video game called “Portal”? In the game you are helping a company test this portal gun. You use the gun to solve puzzles that GLADOS gives you and the promised reward is cake.

At the end of the game GLADOS sings a song (written by Jonathan Coulton) and mentions the cake and that it is delicious and moist. There is even a picture of it.

So one year for Dana’s birthday I made him The Cake. I used this recipe that always gives me something delicious and moist (if some times more structurally sound than others).

Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolaty Cake and Frosting (from the Unsweetened Cocoa box).

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cups flour

3/4 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup boiling water (yes, for realz).

 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Combine dry ingredients. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla; beat 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water – batter will be thin.

3. Pour into 2, nine inch round (greased) pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Remove when a toothpick comes out clean, but the tops of the cakes should still look moist.

While the cake is cooking, you can make the frosting:

1/2 cup butter or margarine

2/3 cup cocoa

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Melt butter and mix with coca. Once well mixed – no lumps – add the other ingredients and mix until thick and creamy.

To assemble The Cake: let the cakes cool to room temperature before removing from pans. Place one round, flat-side down, on a plate. (Some cakes end up with too much cake and have bulgy middles: store bought cake mixes, for example. This cake tends to sink a bit in the middle. So you might need to use some frosting to make the middle even). Frost with a thin layer of chocolate frosting. Fill with some sweetened fresh berries (I think I used raspberries for this, but strawberries would be good too) or jam. Or just put some more frosting in the middle and use that as the filling. Place the next layer, flat-side up, onto the frosting. Cover the outside with frosting till it looks good to you. (I was taught to do a thin, crumb layer and let that dry a little bit before putting on the “show” layer of frosting.

With either whipped cream or some white frosting (whipped cream from a can would be super easy to do this with, but you’ll have to eat it right away. I used cream cheese frosting before I had some on hand) make 8 rosettes around the edge of the cake. Place gummy raspberries or cherry sours in the middle of each white rosette. To make it really authentic, press chocolate shavings into the outside of the cake and place one candle at the center of the cake.

The cake is not a lie!

Cream Puffs

I got this recipe from an old roommate of mine whose mother used to make these for weddings professionally. They are super easy to make and very delicious. I used this recipe to make cream puffs for my own wedding. I know now that the cream puffs were undercooked and probably not up to her standards (she claims that making these cream puffs correctly in her family is a sign of arrival into womanhood). But she never said anything about them, so we’ll just leave it be.

Choux Pastry:

4 Eggs

1 cup water

1/2 cup butter cut into 8 pieces

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt

1. Place butter and water into saucepan. Bring to a full boil over med heat. Boil till butter is melted. (I think my butter is usually melted long before the full boil arrives.)

2. Add flour and salt all at once. Stir vigorously until a ball forms. Remove from heat.

3. Add eggs ONE AT A TIME mixing THOUROUGHLY after each addition. It sometimes seems that the eggs won’t incorporate: be patient and keep stirring. Mix 30 more seconds.

4. Shape as desired (I scoop spoonfuls of desired size onto a cookie sheet). Bake 425 degrees (in a preheated oven) for 10-15 minutes, until dry looking. And here is where My Mistakes came in. No oven I have used has cooked them right at 425 for 15 minutes. You can take them out at this point and eat them filled or unfilled; they are delicious. But you are supposed to wait until the butter bubbles stop bubbling off the top of the puffs. They stop glistening. So I recommend putting them in a 400 degree oven for closer to 20 minutes (and don’t be afraid to give them more time). These freeze well but only if you cook them dry. Otherwise when they come out of the freezer they are kind of grainy and gross. And make sure to open the puff and take out what extra pastry is inside before freezing them. This makes thaw and prep much quicker.

For the filling my friend recommends using 1 small box of instant vanilla pudding, 2 envelopes of powdered whipped cream (brand name: Dream Whip) and a cup of milk. Mix it at a high speed till the color changes and it gets very stiff.

I tried the filling and it was OK. I’d much rather just use real whipped cream. Or to save time, chocolate or vanilla pudding. To serve, dust your filled puffs with powdered sugar.

The pastry is delicious and reminds me a lot of popovers, which I love. Consequently, I have been tempted to try filling these puffs with a savory meat filling, but have not tried it yet. I’ll let you know it that ever happens.

The funny thing is that as I write this, I am also playing Scrabble.

String Cheese Meatballs or Making Stuff Up Out of What’s in My Fridge

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Dana brought me home some ground beef today from work and I decided fresh ground beef should be meatballs. My sis-in-law Elina found this recipe for meatballs that was really good. I thought I took it from her, but I couldn’t find it (sensing a trend?) So I made up a recipe out of stuff in my fridge. Like the spinach-artichoke dip, I just had on hand, and the artichokes added a nice surprise crunch amidst the meat and cheese. 

1 lb. ground beef

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1 egg

2 cloves minced garlic

2 Tbls fresh parsley

2 Tbls spinach-artichoke dip

salt and pepper to taste

3 string cheeses each cut into 6 pieces

1. Combine all ingredients except cheese into a nice gooey, well-combined mass. Separate into 16 equally sized pieces. Wrap each piece around a lump of string cheese. (Or  you can use those medium sized lumps of fresh mozzarella).

2. Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 375 degrees. Bake for 10-15 minutes, then turn each one over and cook the opposite side until meat is no longer pink.

I served these ones with short noodles (farfalle, if you want to know) and a jar of red sauce. Again, this was short-notice dinner, so the presentation was not pristine, but the result was delicious.

Philly Cheesesteak!!!

I believe the Philly Cheesesteak sandwich has to be on the list of World’s Most Perfect Sandwiches: delicious beef, sautéed onions, and thick cheese sauce – what’s not to love? I am a fan of Rachel Ray’s version, utilizing sliced tenderloin and provolone cheese. But I decided to try something a little different, with delicious results…

2.5 lbs beef brisket

1-2 bell peppers (I like the orange or red ones for this)

1/2 a large, sweet onion

6 hoagie rolls

cheese sauce (recipe to follow)

Brisket, it turns out, is super easy to cook in a crockpot. When I imagined this meal in my mind, it involved microwavable brisket, like the way you can buy pulled pork. But the grocery store I was at didn’t have any (that I could find) and I wasn’t going to another store – I have a new baby, there’s no time or energy for that. So I found the real thing and figured I could make it work in the slow cooker.

And I can! I found a recipe for a meat rub and instructions on how to cook brisket in a crockpot.

2 tsp salt

2 tsp dry mustard

2 tsp paprika

1/8 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp garlic powder

Trim fat. rub in seasoning. place meat with fat side up. cover, coon on low for apx. 6 hours.

 

All you do is put the brisket in the slow cooker on high for 6 or so hours, with the layer of fat on top. Mine turned out perfectly tender. And it was just as easy as microwaving – I just had to start it earlier.

I sautéed the peppers and onions, after cutting them in strips, in some olive oil, a la Rachel Ray. Then I piled them with the meat onto the hoagie roll.

This is the fun part: the cheese sauce.

The basic recipe comes from Fannie Farmer, the recipe for White Sauce. I have used it over and over for any number of things. It is quite versatile. It goes a little something like this:

2 Tbls butter

2 Tbls flour

1 and 1/4 cups milk, heated

salt and pepper to taste.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. When it is melted, add the flour and let it bubble (but not brown) for a minute. Then add the milk. Make sure to stir it so you don’t get clumps on the bottom. And I leave the temperature around medium. After a few minutes the milk will start to bubble and thicken. This is when you’d season with salt and pepper and have a white sauce. For the cheese sauce, this is when you add your cheese. I added a little of whatever I had on hand: some Monterey Jack, mozzarella, and parmesan – 1/4- 1/2 cup of each. You’ll end up with quite a cheesy sauce.

I top my meat and peppers with a liberal amount of sauce and enjoy!

Divinity or Ruth complains about America’s favorite mixer

 

Homemade candy can be the best stuff ever, and divinity is no exception. It’s fluffy and delicious and loaded with sugar. What’s not to love? My recipe comes from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

2 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup light corn syrup

2 egg whites at room temperature (1 white weighs approximately 1 oz.)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup chopped nuts of choice (I always use walnuts.)

1. In a 2-quart heavy saucepan, combine sugar, water and corn syrup. Cook and stir over medium-high heat until mixture boils. Clip on candy thermometer. Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking without stirring until mixture reaches 260 degrees (hardball stage?) then remove mixture from heat.

2. While the syrup rests, beat egg whites till stiff peaks form. If the whites get too dry, add a TBL warm water and mix again. Once the tips stand straight, GRADUALLY pour the hot syrup in a thin stream over the whites, beating on high. Scrape sides occasionally. Try not to hit the beaters or else you’ll get sticky syrup strings all over the side of the mixer and not in the candy.

3. Once the syrup is added, turn the mixer on full blast if it’s not there already. Add the vanilla and food coloring if that’s your thing. The book says to stop beating when “the beaters are lifted and the candy falls in a ribbon that mounds on itself.” I did that the first time I made divinity and ended up with little puddles of white goo. A better marker is when the candy starts to lose its gloss, or when it starts to look like divinity. If you mix it too long you’ll just have a hard time scooping it out of the bowl; the flavor of the candy will not suffer. If the candy starts breaking as it mixes, stop mixing – that was too long. The book says if you over mix you can add a few drops of hot water and keep mixing, but I’ve never tried this.

4. Once you’re done mixing, fold in the chopped nuts in right away. Drop candy in teaspoon sized blobs onto wax paper and let cool. Or (this works better for me, and is more successful if you’ve mixed the candy a little too long) press the candy lightly into a parchment lined 8x8 pan. Let the candy cool before cutting. Keeps tightly covered up to a week (but I bet that won’t be a problem.)

So that’s the recipe. The rest of this post is me complaining about my mixer. So you can stop here if you like.

I have a KitchenAid mixer. It’s Imperial Red. It’s the Professional HD model – super nice with a bowl-lift lever. I got it as a present and was very excited to get it. I registered for the bottom of the line model when I got married and didn’t get it, and Dana and I decided not to use our gift cards to buy one; it was just too expensive. So when someone gave us this one (never been used), I was pretty ecstatic. All my mixer needs and wants met and exceeded!

But I have noticed this flaw and it has started to bother me: the mixer does not mix the matter directly below the beater. This can be remedied if you stop the mixer every so often and scoop up the stuff that has collected, unmixed, down there. But the design of the mixer and the size of the beater makes it awkward and time consuming to do so. Not only that, but I know there are mixers out there that do not have this problem; I shouldn’t have to stop a mixer to help it by stirring. Stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl I understand (but this, too, is tricky with this mixer).

Also, if there is so little in the bowl that the beater can’t reach it, you’re out of luck. For example, two egg whites are not very much liquid. The whisk does not reach them. So, I have to put the whites in my mixer bowl and then beat them to stiff peaks with my hand mixer. Only then can I put the bowl on the mixer and use it as I pour the syrup in. However, since I have to avoid the beater with the syrup, I end up pouring the syrup down the side of the bowl. In and of itself, not a problem, but inevitably some of that syrup ends up collecting in the unreachable pool at the bottom of the bowl. Divinity being what it is – time sensitive – I cannot be stopping every 30 seconds to rescue the lost syrup and incorporate it into the mixture. So I end up losing about a quarter cup of syrup in this whole process. It just cools into a solid, sugary rock at the bottom, smooshed against the side of the bowl by the force from the beater as it whirls around. Part of me wonders if I added the syrup sooner, not letting it rest before pouring it over the egg whites, if the result will be better. But I don’t know. I’ll have to try that.

What I can say is that the mixer can work at full speed for the 10 or so minutes in the viscous mixture without batting an eye. The engine is powerful. But wonder if I wouldn’t be happier with a different machine.

Ratatouille (Not Rat-Patootie)

Growing up as a more or less normal child, I was not keen on vegetables in general. I made exceptions for anything I could slather in butter and just about anything present in soup (I loved alphabet soup because it had lima beans in it. Like I said, I was only more or less normal). So when my mom made ratatouille from the fresh vegetables out of our garden, I would not try it (Sam-I-am). As I think about it now, I wonder what kind of crazy I would have to be to turn it down: fresh tomatoes and zucchini with eggplant and garlic, what’s not to love? But we all do inexplicable things as children, not eating my mom’s ratatouille was just one of many, unfortunately.

That said, I have since tried some ratatouille and like it a lot. Here is the recipe I use: cooked in a pot on the stove, not baked in the oven, but still yummy-delicious.

Canada Family Ratatouille:

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 medium eggplant, pared and cubed (about 4-6 cups). (I like nice big hunks of eggplant because they tend to wilt in the cooking. Also, I must not know what a “medium eggplant” is because I only ever use half an eggplant in this recipe, freezing the remainder, also cubed).

2 small zucchini cut into 1/2 inch slices (I like mine cut somewhere between 1/2 and 1/4 of an inch).

1 large sweet onion, thinly sliced

1 medium green bell pepper, cut into 1/4 inch strips

1 8 oz can stewed tomatoes (I always use at least a 15 oz can, sometimes 2 of them. I like tomatoes).

2 Tbl chopped fresh parsley (or 1 mounded Tbl dried)

4 tsp beef bullion (I only have chicken on hand, so that’s what I use, and I don’t think I’ve ever used 4 tsp… maybe 2.)

1 Tbl flour

1 tsp each of basil and oregano

 

1. Combine garlic and oil in a large saucepan. Cook garlic over medium heat in oil until lightly browned.

2. Add all other ingredients and stir to combine. Cover and simmer 15 minutes.

3. Uncover and and stir. Cook 10 minutes longer or until vegetables are tender.

 

It says it serves 6, but Dana and I take care of one pot all by ourselves. However, this recipe is also considered a side dish, so you make your own decisions. I like mine with cheese on top, parmesan or grated cheddar.

Sugar Cookies

I love the sugar cookie recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookie Book. However, the two recipes they put in the 2002 edition of the cookbook are not as good as the recipe from the 1982 edition (but they have their place. The 2002 edition has a yummy lemon sugar cookie recipe that Dana LOVES) But here is the recipe from the 1982 edition:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup margarine or butter softened

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond extract

2 1/2 cups all purpose or whole wheat flour (if I use whole wheat, I make it half whole wheat, half white and I add an extra 1/2 tsp of vanilla flavoring)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cream of tartar

1. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and the vanilla and almond extracts. Stir in soda and cream of tartar. Add flour a bit at a time so you don’t make a mess as you mix.

The book says to refrigerate this mixture for at least 3 hours. I often make this one afternoon and put in a plastic bag in the freezer and use it later that week. Either way, you have to have chilled dough to be able to roll out and cut out your shapes.

Bake at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes. Let rest before removing from the cookie sheet (so they don’t fall apart). Cover in your favorite frosting or decorate as desired.

Olive tapenade!

There were many leftover olives from the holidays this year and we ended up with most of them. Dana wanted to try making “something like pesto” with the olives. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and tweaked it a little.

• 1 (10 ounce) can black olives
• 3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Place olives, Parmesan cheese, and garlic (if using) in a food processor. Add olive oil slowly while running. Process until smooth.

The Tweaking: We had twice as many olives, so I doubled everything. Then instead of parmesan cheese, I used 3/4 of a brick of feta because I like the bite of it. I also put in a little black pepper. The finished product looks like mortar, but it tastes really good. We had ours on toasted French baguette, but it would have been good on crackers or fresh bread too.