Spiced Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

My mom's recipe for cheesecake has been widely request from friends and family over the years. It is her go-to dessert when she wants to impress. And it's no surprise, because it is amazing!

This past weekend, when I volunteered to bring a dessert to our friends Christmas party, I knew this cheesecake would be perfect!

Instead of using sugar cookie dough, like my mom, I used gingersnap cookie crumbs for the crust to make it a little more "Christmas-y". I also added some spices to the batter to compliment the crust.

One new thing I tried was baking the cheesecake in a shallow pan with a little water. This is a trick I learned from Martha Stewart to prevent the cake from cracking on the top, like it is prone to do.

The result is an extra creamy, and a tad bit spicy, cheesecake. And a little bit goes a long way! One small slice is perfectly decadent, so an 8 to 9 inch pan can serve well over 10 people.

Unless you are serving a large crowd of cheesecake lovers, in which case, you may want to make 2.

What is your go-to recipe for the holidays?

Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

 

Are you going to a cookie swap party this holiday season? Why don't you break out of the sugar cookie rut and make something a little out of the ordinary like these Mexican hot chocolate cookies, which are spiced with cinnamon and a hint of cayenne pepper and topped with roasted marshmallow. Is your mouth watering yet?

My original plan was to bake the marshmallows IN the cookie, but guess what. Marshmallows melt when baked. Who woulda thunk? So instead, my brilliant husband suggested I top the already baked cookies with marshmallow and then broil them to get them nice and toasty. 

I knew I married him for a reason.

The marshmallow on top is gooey and crispy like a s'more, and the cookie beneath is rich, like your favorite cup of cocoa. You can only hardly taste the espresso powder and the cinnamon. The espresso just makes the cocoa flavor that much more rich and the cinnamon adds a hint of spice. The cayenne pepper is optional, but I can assure you it doesn't make these cookies hot-spicey. You just barely get that kick at the back of your throat.

What do you think? Have I inspired you to break out of the cookie-mold this year?

Protein Power Pancakes

Pancakes are one of my favorite things to make on the weekend. All week, I try to have a healthy breakfast - a protein smoothie with berries and spinach or Greek yogurt. On the weekends (especially now that the wedding is behind us) I like to do something slightly indulgent. Or at least pretend to be indulgent.

Truth be told, these pancakes are hardly indulgent (except for the chocolate chips I snuck in some of them). The secret, protein packed, ingredient is quinoa. But instead of whole, cooked, quinoa like I used in these muffins, I ground the dried quinoa into a flour. Genius, right? I can't take credit. I got the idea off of Pinterest (of course).

And making quinoa into a flour couldn't be easier as long as you have a blender or food processor. I used our Magic Bullet blender and it took only 15 seconds. 

Once the quinoa is ground, it can be used in place of flour for almost anything. The very nutty and distinct quinoa flavor is still there, so if you are not a fan of the quinoa flavor, then I wouldn't recommend these. However, if you like quinoa and are in the mood for a hearty and healthy pre-workout breakfast, these are for you!

Enjoy!

Crowd Pleasers

This past Sunday we had our small group over for bible study. The first time I hosted, I did it all wrong. I made 3 different kinds of pizzas and had a ton of little appetizers for people to nibble on, which meant that I was in the kitchen all day and through half of the bible study. This time around I wanted to give myself a break. So I made two types chili (we have vegetarians in our group) and apple turnovers, all of which were super easy to make and I could either prep ahead of time, throw in the slow-cooker, or whip up in a few minutes.

The vegetarian chili I made is a recipe I have adapted from a vegan chili recipe over on Oh She Glows over the years. It is hearty and delicious, and you don't miss the meat at all.

The main ingredients are black beans and sweet potato, and filled out with lentils, onion, and bell pepper. Taking note from OSG, I flavor it will barbeque sauce and some liquid smoke so it has a nice, rich flavor.

The beef chili recipe was a new recipe B and I sort of came up with together,and let me tell you, it was freaking delicious. I have to give the credit to B, because it was his idea to use bacon, and what isn't made better with a little bacon?

I cooked up some bacon first, then cooked the beef in some of the bacon grease. After the meat was all cooked, I cooked the veggies in the bacony-meaty goodness left in the pan, then added everything to the slow cooker to just melt together.

Instead of making 8 different types of deserts like last time (I get excited when I have an excuse to bake), I made 1 - an extremely easy apple turnover. Of course I still had apples to use, so I whatever I made was going to involve apples.

I loved this recipe, adapted from Taste of Home, because I basically just cooked up the apples, spooned them into store-bought puff pastry sheets, and baked them. Could not be easier, and they were a huge hit!

To view and print the Black Bean Sweet Potato Chili recipe, click here.
To view and print the Smokey Bacon Chili recipe, click here.
To view and print the Apple Turnover recipe, click here.

A Bushel and a Peck and a Recipe

This past weekend, with no wedding planning to do, I wanted to get out of town and do something B and I have never done before: apple picking!

I had no idea what to expect. Like, how long it would take, how much it would cost, how much effort I would have to put into actually picking apples, etc. And not that I didn't think it would be fun (it was my idea after all), but B and I just had such a fun time walking through the orchards, picking apples, taking pictures, drinking cider...the whole bit. It definitely helped that the scenery was gorgeous!

The result of all that fun was about 15 pounds of apples! I have no idea what to do with all those apples. There is only so much cider and apple pie you can make.

 

Well, I did get busy making muffins (of course) with some of my many many apples. Unfortunately, that only used 3 apples. So I have about 40 more apples to use up before they go bad.

Can you recommend anything else I should make with all my apples? If you have any good recipes, send them my way!

P.S. Do you notice anything different around here?? I have a new design by the lovely and talented Sarah of A Smitten Design! I absolutely love it and would recommend Sarah to anyone looking to spice up their blog design!

Chai Spiced Pumpkin White Chocolate Muffins

I have noticed recently that my pumpkin muffin recipe that I posted last year has been getting some renewed interest on Pinterest. So I thought I would update and jazz up my pumpkin muffin for this Fall with a few extra spices and some white chocolate chips.

I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin spiced things (which I have mentioned here before). But ironically, I LOVE chai spice, which is really pumpkin spice with a few extra spices - cardamom and all spice. The chai spice isn't overwhelming and definitely compliments the pumpkin flavor.

One reason I love using pumpkin in baked goods, despite my aversion to pumpkin spice, is because it helps make things a wee bit healthier. The pumpkin adds a lot of moisture without having to add any oil or butter (like I use in my other muffin recipes). I also used almond milk and Greek yogurt (a staple in my standard muffin recipe), which also eliminates any additional fat. Of course, you could make these even healthier by eliminating the chocolate chips, but if you do so, I would suggest adding 1/4 cup extra sugar to the batter, as the batter itself is not overly sweet.

The muffins are perfectly moist and delicious, with just the right amount of spice and flavor!

Chicken Pita Burger

Sometimes, not very often, I head to the grocery store with no plan. No list. Nothing. This happens very very rarely. As much as I find meal planning to be a chore, I hate having to come up with a meal on the fly during the week when all I have in the fridge/pantry is hummus, some spinach, and black beans.

That's what happened this week.

But, thank goodness I had more than just hummus, spinach, and black beans around the kitchen. Thanks to the ground chicken I didn't use last week, left over mini pita pockets, Greek yogurt I always have in the fridge, and all the random veggies in the fridge I came up with the idea for a Greek-inspired chicken burger.

Despite the lack of planning and preparation, these burgers turned out so well! B went back for seconds, which is not all that common (I know it's a good recipe when he goes back for more). And as a bride to be, I really appreciated that these burgers were pretty light, especially since I used extra lean chicken and pitas instead of buns.

Have you ever made something amazing just trying to use up things in your fridge?

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Cupcakes

Friday was B's birthday, which I missed since I was in San Diego. I felt obligated to try and make it up to him. I had big plans to take him to all his favorite places in Charlotte on Saturday when I got back. That didn't happen either. I was exhausted from my overnight flight back that I pretty much slept all day. Which meant that Sunday I had to do something extra special. While, B doesn't normally like sweets, he does love cookies and cream ice cream and ice cream cake. We do not need an entire ice cream cake sitting in our freezer, so I scaled it down and made little ice cream cupcakes!

I used Trader Joes vanilla cake mix that my cousin raved about this past week. And she was not kidding! It is the best cake mix I have ever tried. For this recipe, I added some crushed up Oreos, so that the batter was also "cookies and cream".

Since I wanted to leave plenty of room for ice cream, I only filled the muffin tin about half way up. I only made half of the cake mix, and ended up with 12 cupcakes. If I had made the entire box, I probably would have had 24. 

Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I froze them and then let the ice cream sit out to soften. It is a lot easier to top the cupcakes with soft ice cream than hard. But it also means I had to work quickly so that the ice cream didn't melt everywhere. I put the cupcakes back in the freezer for about an hour so that the ice cream could harden back up.

While a little messy if left out too long, these were the perfect portion of ice cream cake and would be a great dessert to make for a kids birthday party or any old get together. Plus, you could mix up the ice cream and cake flavors and really get crazy with it!

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Lemon Squash Muffins

 

These muffins were inspired by a recipe I saw in a recent Women's Health magazine for lemon zucchini bars. I had obviously heard of zucchini used in baked goods before - in breads, muffins, even brownies. But it was always green zucchini, and it was always paired with chocolate.

A light bulb went off in my head and I immediately felt the need to translate the lemon bar recipe into a muffin recipe.

The grated squash not only replaces the need for some of the flour and sugar, but it keeps the muffins very moist. It does not add much flavor or texture, which is great if you are weirded out by having a vegetable in your muffin.

Other than the squash, the recipe I used was fairly close to my standard muffin recipe. I used egg whites instead of a whole egg to cut down on the fat. Because of the added moisture from the squash, the extra fat isn't needed. I also cut back on some of the sugar even though I was using a pretty tart fruit like lemon. If you prefer your lemon baked goods on the tarter or sweeter side, you can adjust your recipe accordingly.

As usual, feel free to use whole wheat flour, almond milk, or sugar substitute in your recipe. Just bare in mind, it may change the flavor or consistency of your muffins slightly.

What other ways would you use a vegetable in a baked good?

Linking up with Weekend Shenanigans, This Weekend I, The GFC Collective, Less Laundry More Linking, Share It Link Party, Taste of Tuesday, Google Friend Conect, The Pin It Party, Pinterest Power Party, Style Sessions, Trend Spin Linkup, I Feel Pretty, What I Wore Wednesday, Random Wednesday, Wildcard Wednesday, Three-fer Thursday, Tucker Up, GYB Networking Party H54F, That Friday Blog Hop, #backthatazzup 

Whole Wheat Crepes

For some reason, crepes have always intimidated me. To me, they were the high maintenance and delicate sibling of the pancake. Maybe it's because they are French. The French are high maintenance and delicate, right?

 

(Sorry if you are French and I offended you. If it makes you feel better, Americans are fat jerks.)

As usual though, I have to try to make crepes a little bit healthier. I did find one recipe that was SUPER healthy. Like it used bananas and oats and agave. I am not going that far. I just used whole wheat flour, egg whites, and almond milk. It definitely made them a bit lighter, but not taste like grainy bananas. Unless you like grainy bananas.

 

What I found in making crepes, is that you really want your batter to be pretty thin. If it is the consistency of pancake batter, then it needs to be thined out. Other than that, its really not that easy to mess up crepes.

 

It also helped me to watch a couple YouTube videos. Seeing other people make them helped my confidence and lessened the intimidation. I also didn't try to be fancy and flip them like a pro. I used my fingers and flipped them over. There was no one around to judge my lack of flair and none of my crepes ended up on the floor.

 

 

The amazing thing about crepes is that they can be filled with anything. I love crepes filled with Neutella and strawberries. These crepes are filled with vanilla Greek yogurt, strawberries, and bananas then topped with blueberries. If B were around when I made these, I would have filled his with eggs, bacon, and cheese...like a little crepe breakfast burrito.

And if you are wondering, the plate featured above can easily serve 2 people. But I ate all four because I am a fat jerk.

What is your favorite crepe filling??

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Cherry Almond Quinoa Granola

While browsing the cereal aisle at the grocery store I stumbled upon quinoa granola by Kind. Quinoa granola? Mind = blown.

I did a bit more researched and realized that quinoa granola isn't all the different from normal granola, except that there is quinoa instead of, or in addition to, oats. So this recipe was a pretty easy adaptation of my normal granola recipe.

I replaced half of the oats in my normal recipe with uncooked quinoa. I minimized the use of sugar, by using maple syrup in addition to honey.  And to increase the almond flavor, I added in almond extract.

Once everything is good and mixed up, I dumped the mixture onto a baking sheet and packed everything down. I baked the granola at 300 degrees for 15 minutes, and then lowered the temperature to 250 and baked for another 20 minutes. I also like to just leave the granola in the oven after I turn it off so that it dries out a little bit more.

Once it cooled, I broke it into chunks and stored it in a plastic bag. That's when I added the cherries. I didn't want to bake the cherries, so if you add in any fruit, do so at the end.

I spent most of the past weekend snacking on this granola. Either on it's own or on top of Greek yogurt for breakfast. I feel like granola can sometimes a bit calorie dense, and store bought varieties have a ton of sugar, so this is a fairly good alternative. The quinoa also provides a different textural dimension, as well as a nutty flavor.

If you are adamantly opposed to the taste of quinoa, then this is not for you. But if you still want to make this recipe, just 3 cups of oats instead.

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