Mexican Stuffed Peppers or Mexican Skillet meal

Here we are January 2011… Another year starts.. The years sure are flying by these days. I moved to KY 6 years ago and met D. Insane!


D and I are back to our normally scheduled eating habits, but this time D is also tracking his food. This week we started the second unit of The Revolution at the gym (a morning boot camp like class). This is my 2nd time doing it and the first for D. 4:30am wake up calls are insane enough, but add to that 1 hr 15 min workout and it is incredibly insane!



After the run of incredibly NOT GOOD for you desserts that I’ve shared, here is an awesome dinner idea that is really good!! You can use any type of ground meat.. We had some lean ground turkey around. It also features the "grain" (really a seed) quinoa. I highly recommend it as a substitute for rice. It is really good and has protein!! Check our Wikipedia to learn more about Quinoa.



A picture of the ground turkey prior to browning. (D was making fun of this picture).

Add some onions and brown.

Once its brown, add these ingredients, diced tomatoes, water, quinoa (we had some red left and then had to use the white kind.) (NOTICE: NO salt added tomatoes spend the extra $$ and get these… The rest have insane amounts of sodium)

Bring pan to simmer. Allow to simmer for about 20-25 minutes.

This could be the end of making this meal. We’ve ate it like this before. But this time, we wanted more veggies. So we halved some green peppers.

Then stuffed them with 200 grams of the meat mixture (approx 225 calories for the meat). (Obsessively clean up counter after each pepper, ughh this part was a mess!)

Stick them in the oven at 350. I forgot to cover for the first 12 mins. SO COVER THEM! Leave them in there about 20 minutes, then top with cheese if you’d like. Mine is the one with cheese. (Fat free cheese to be exact) D didn’t want extra sodium.

Now, here is the link to the full recipe for the meat mixture. ENJOY!!!

The first 3-layer cake becomes CUPCAKES!

I raved about this chocolate cake so much that when I told my dad the Sky High cake book came in the mail.. he requested a birthday cake!  I didn't make him a birthday cake for his actual birthday because its 2 days after Christmas and we had tons of cookies, Christmas pound cake, and pumpkin pie leftover.  Also, the cake either would have been quite a few days old or I would have had to make it at my parents (when was I going to do that???  The visit was short enough as it was...)  Yes, I am trying to justify not making my own father a birthday cake for his birthday...  the poor guy didn't even have a store bought birthday cake.   Now, I have the chance to redeem myself since we are going to see my parents again this weekend.  

My dad loves chocolate cake so I knew I had to make triple chocolate cake again.  We (yes D helped) halved the recipe and it made 18 cupcakes.  I also made some other changes.. I didn't want to go to the store so I used semi-sweet chocolate chips in place of the unsweetened chocolate.  I cut back on the sugar just a tad to make up for it.


Some action shots of mixing up the batter..  Don't forget the cake recipe was featured in an earlier post..

Action shot of the mixer.

This batter is really thin.. Unlike any cake batter I've ever seen.. It is best poured using a measuring cup, to prevent messes!

 

Remember to only fill cupcakes 3/4 of the way full...

Now we have to wait for them to cool...  Time to start thinking frosting...

Since we didn't make the trip to the grocery store we had to change up the frosting.. this time it is the peanut butter frosting also from Sky High.


Peanut Butter Frosting from Sky High (This is the original recipe.. I only had 4 oz of cream cheese so I had to bust out some math to cut this to 2/5 the recipe. )


10 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
5 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
2/3 cup smooth peanut butter

1. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar 1 cup at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl often. Continue to beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes.

2. Add the peanut butter and beat until thoroughly blended




Waiting for ingredients to come to room temperature..

Sifting in the powdered sugar.

Mmmm frosting..

I used a cookie press to frost these cupcakes.. I don't recommend it, it is too inconsistent.  For a first try they did come out cute!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!  Even if you didn't get these cupcakes until New Years Day (5 days late)!

I forgot to frost a few cupcakes.. So these were just done with a knife.  We had some mini chocolate chips that I thought would look cute..

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust... YUMMM

D and I were both craving pizza awhile ago, but we try to eat as healthy as possible and have been trying to not eat out... We were stuck trying to make the pizza at home.  Mind you neither of us have ever worked with yeast.  I had such little knowledge about yeast that I actually searched the grocery store for it (I really thought I remembered seeing it in the fridge section like by cheese??  Apparently, its in the baking aisle, why would I look there?).  I wish I had a picture of the first dough we tried!  It was awful, we used a recipe that had oat bran and wheat bran in addition to the whole wheat flour.. BIG FAILURE!!   Luckily when you buy yeast you have 3 packets!  So it was on to trial #2.... (had I known we were going to start a food blog there would have been more pictures).  This dough is perfect and the pictures below are actually from the 2nd time we made the pizza.  

The dough before we spread it out.  Notice extra flour everywhere!

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust from Wheat Foods Council

Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 package active dry yeast/instant yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup hot tap water (120 - 125°F)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tablespoon honey or granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 425°F

To prepare pizza dough, stir whole wheat flour; lightly spoon into a measuring cup and level flour.

In large mixing bowl, combine whole wheat flour, yeast and salt. Blend in water, oil and honey or sugar. Stir by hand vigorously until all ingredients are well mixed; about 3 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise to desired size.

Place dough in greased 15 x 10 x 1-inch jelly-roll pan or 12 to 14-inch pizza pan. Press dough to cover bottom of pan and up sides to form a rim.
Add pizza sauce of your choice and your favorite pizza toppings; bake in oven 15 to 20 minutes or until crust is golden brown and toppings are done.

Before we pre-baked the crust.

NOTES:

• The dough is very sticky we've had to up the flour both times.
• We used a cooking stone so no grease for us.
• When shaping the dough more flour is required.
• We cut the oil and honey in half.
• After the first pizza we also decided to bake the crust for about 5 minutes prior to topping..  The first pizza was a little soggy in the center.

After the pre-bake with all the toppings..

This pizza was topped with an olive oil and garlic sauce and fat free mozzarella, spinach and artichokes.

The first 3-layer cake!

As soon as I heard I had a special event to bake for I asked if I could bake the cake!  Guess what?  The answer was yes and I had no clue what kind of cake to make and had never made a layer cake completely from scratch.. frosting, filling and all!  

After asking D's sister what kind of cake she'd like she told me chocolate... From there I searched food blog after food blog for the perfect cake... A bunch of blogs had different recipes from the book, Sky High Cakes: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes, I knew the cake had to be from this book!  (PS- I ordered the book this past weekend and just got it in the mail last night!!)  I read the recipe and kept thinking Mayo??  MAYO??  In a cake??  Trust me it works!  This was the most moist and amazing chocolate cake I've ever eaten.. and I DESPISE chocolate cake!  Also, if you don't like coffee you won't even know its in this cake, I didn't even taste a hint of coffee.

Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake from Sky High Cakes

• 2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 ¼ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 ½ ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 1 cup milk
• 1 ¼ cups hot, strongly brewed coffee
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mayonnaise (not low fat or fat free)
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2 ¼ cups sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the bottoms and sides of three 9 inch round cake pans. Line the base of each pan with parchment.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside.

Put the chocolate in a large heatproof bowl. Bring the milk to a simmer. Pour the hot coffee and milk over the chocolate. Let stand for a minute, then whisk until smooth. Let the mocha liquid cool slightly.

In a mixer bowl, beat together the eggs, mayonnaise and vanilla until well blended. Gradually beat in the sugar. Add the dry ingredients and mocha liquid alternately in 2 or 3 additions, beating until smooth and well blended. Divide the batter among the 3 prepared pans.

Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the centre comes out almost clean. Let the cakes cool in their pans for 10-15 minutes before un-molding onto a wire rack and carefully peeling off the paper. Leave to cool completely.

NOTE: Do not use salad dressing, Miracle Whip or Lite Mayo. I used Hellman's or Best Foods Real Mayonnaise.

Here is what one of the layers looked like prior to filling and frosting...

Speaking of filling and frosting....After finding the perfect cake I was at a loss for what type of filling and frosting...  After asking K what she liked I went with an Oreo filling.

Oreo Butter cream Frosting

• 2 sticks butter
• 2 t. vanilla
• 1-4 Tbs.  Milk or cream
• ~4 cups Powdered Sugar
• Crushed Oreos

Beat butter and vanilla until smooth.  Add powdered sugar until combined.  Add milk until frosting is right consistency.  Add in crushed Oreos (I used half a bag because I wanted it to be really OREO).

MMM.. Oreo frosting... Nothing could be better!  I used the Oreo filling between the layers and also used it to crumb coat my cake.

Finally, I needed a frosting for the outside of the cake... I decided to stick with the frosting featured with the Chocolate cake..  The frosting was a Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting.. 

Sour Cream Chocolate Icing

• 12 ounces bittersweet or semi sweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp light corn syrup
• ¼ cup half-and-half at room temperature
• ½ cup sour cream, at room temperature

Melt the chocolate with the butter and corn syrup in a double boiler over barely simmering water. Remove from the heat and whisk until smooth.

Whisk in the half-and-half and sour cream. Use while still soft.

I used a lot of tips from Smitten Kitchen when assembling my cake.  This cake took a long time from beginning to calling it done, but most of that time the cake spent in the freezer or fridge.  I wanted to pipe frosting along the bottom of the cake but I ran out of frosting!  I also had left over crushed Oreos so I patted them onto the sides of the cake so everyone would know Oreos were inside!   AND NOW FOR THE FINAL PRODUCT!!  WARNING:  This cake is not for the faint of heart... or stomach... It is insanely rich!

Christmas Baking Part 2: Cranberry Bliss Bars

I love dried cranberries and I love white chocolate.  Combined they are even better!!  I also love the Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bars.. however, I haven't had them in years.  I can't justify the cost of the little bar you get! 

Anyway... I had been contemplating what cookies to take home with us to Michigan while doing my nightly cooking/baking blog surfing, when I came across the Cranberry Bliss Bar copy cat recipe.  This started my search to find the exact recipe I wanted to use.. After searching and searching and finding only small differences between the various recipes I decided on this one from Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats.

Here are my notes:

• I only used the vanilla extract in the cake.. Other websites said to use both vanilla and orange extract.  This recipe says "or"..  I didn't have any orange extract...
• After trying to find candied ginger at 2 stores I gave up and decided not to add it.
• For the cake I used white chocolate chips instead of cutting up a bar
• Frosting-  I used the lemon juice.. at first I thought it tasted too Lemony... but as these bars sat in fridge the tasted mellowed out.
• Drizzle Icing-  I used the white chocolate chips melted because this is how I remember the actual bar from Starbucks..  This makes these bars pretty difficult to cut... so you  may want to cut them before the chocolate is completely hard.
• Also I used the trick of melting the white chocolate and shortening in the Ziplock that you are going to use to drizzle.. AMAZING!  Never thought of it before!!

• The recipe says 16 servings.. I got way way more!!  I cut these rather small.. they are really rich!

Christmas Baking Part 1: Molasses Softies

After a year of healthy cooking and dedicated gym attendance, a baking extravaganza was in order!  This Holiday season began with an over the top Thanksgiving meal and continued with every baking session that took place.. Thinking back I can't even count the pounds of butter that made it through this house!  Let alone the amount of sugar and flour.  It makes me slightly ill thinking about all the baking we did.. but we both enjoyed every second of it!  Expect to see a few posts over the next few days about our Holiday baking, because there was too much for just one post!

We had some leftover Molasses from Thanksgiving (I will post about that later...) so I really wanted to make some sort of Molasses or Gingerbread cookie.  I searched the internet for what felt like hours for the perfect recipe to constantly realize I was missing an ingredient (I had already been in a grocery store 3 times that day and was not going to head out again).  Finally I remembered I had received a collection of Christmas Cookie Exchange recipes at my wedding shower.  This book is amazing it was made by a group of friends (one of which was a student of my moms when she first started teaching) that have a cookie exchange every year.  These are tried and true recipes!  The book had exactly what I was looking for...... Molasses Softies.  These cookies were perfectly tender and soft and chewy!  Yumm...  

Now finally for the recipe!

Molasses Softies  (from Sweet Traditions)

1 cup Butter (room temperature)

1 1/3 cup Sugar

1 egg

1/3 cup Molasses

3 T Light Corn Syrup

2 T Milk

4 C.  All-purpose Flour  

2 tsp Baking Soda

2 tsp Ground Cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp Ground Ginger

1 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves

Sugar for Coating

Preheat oven to 350.  In large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, and egg until light and fluffy.  Beat in molasses, corn syrup, and milk until blended.  Add flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, beating until well blended.  It will be a very stiff dough.  Shape into 1-inch balls.  Roll balls in sugar to lightly coat.  Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, leaving some space between cookies for them to spread as they bake.   Bake 12-14 minutes or until golden.  Do NOT over-bake.  Cool 1-2 minutes on baking sheets and then remove to racks to cool.

NOTES:

• The cookies spread quite a bit, make sure to leave more space then you expect.
• Do NOT flatten the cookies (like you would peanut butter cookies)  they spread out enough. See picture below of my cookies in the oven to see how they started before they spread. 

New Year.... Baking and Cooking Challenge

After enjoying a Holiday season full of cooking and baking, D and I have decided we needed a cooking & baking challenge for the new year!  This challenge was going to be to cook a something new out of the cookbooks we had around the house each month... Then I discovered the Daring Kitchen.  A cooking group that all follow the same recipe for a dish and post the results..  There are two cooking groups Daring Cooks and Daring Bakers.  We've decided to join both groups!  A double challenge!  Twice a month we will be cooking and baking a new item along the other members and posting our pictures and our experience with the recipe on this blog.  We look forward to the success of these 24 new dishes!  Check out Daring Kitchen to see the past challenges for both Daring Cooks & Daring Bakers and to learn more about the cooking challenge!