Blueberry Peach Crisp

I think I may have found the crisp recipie I will use from now on. I made a peach crisp a few weeks ago and it was good, but it wasn't spectacular. Well, last weekend I came across another crisp recipe that looked really good and tried it the same day, although I adapted the recipe for our tastes. I had some peaches cut and frozed, but not enough to actually make the crisp. So, I decided to use half blueberries (also needed to use up some of those) and half peaches. Todd has declared this my best crisp yet and this should be my go-to recipe for fruit crisps. So, I guess it has been blessed. :) It was gone so fast, I didn' get a chance to take a picture.

Fruit Crisp

Topping:

½ cup cold butter, cut into small pieces

¾ cup brown sugar

¾ cup all purpose flour

¾ cup old fashioned oats

¼ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Filling:
About 2 lbs. (4-5 cups) fruit (I used 2 cups peaches and 2 cups blueberries)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/3 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 heaping tablespoon cornstarch

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium size bowl, mix together brown sugar, flour, oats, baking powder and cold butter with your hands, until mixture is well combined and crumbly Lightly toss almonds into mixture. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together cinnamon, brown sugar and cornstarch. Set aside. In a 8x8 dish sprayed lightly with cooking spray, combine your fruit. Drizzle with lemon juice and almond extract. Stir in cinnamon/sugar/cornstarch mixture and combine. Crumble crisp topping over the peaches. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve warm or cold with whipped cream or ice cream.

Hobbies Prioritized

So, I haven't been baking as much lately, or maybe I am just making the same old standby recipes. But, I did try a few news things in the last few weeks and I bookmarked like 50 new recipes to try. If only I had more time to spend on my second favorite hobby...

First, I made a peach crisp adapted from allrecipes.com. I bought a 5-lb box of peaches, definitely way more than we could eat. So, I decided to try my hand at a peach dessert. I am not a huge peach fan, but they are okay. I mean, given the choice, I would choose apple or some other fruit over peach. But, the crisp turned out pretty well. Todd says it was better the next day, so it probably needs to sit and gel for awhile. But, we ate it hot out of the oven with vanilla ice cream. Next time I will add some sugar to the peaches since I used fresh instead of canned.

Second, I made Little Blueberry Upside Down Cakes. These were a hit with Todd. The recipe made eight "cakes" and I think they were all gone within 24 hours of when I baked them. I got one, maybe two. Again, I bought way too many blueberries for us to eat and wanted to use them in something really yummy. This recipes caught my attention right away. I had to cook a little longer than the recipe said, but they turned out great. This is on our list of new favorites.

I didn't take any pictures of my creations. While I love recipe blogs and would love to have my own someday, I am not good at pictures of food. Some people are so good at it, but I have never been that great a photography and I don't really have the time to spend practicing on something that doesn't fully interest me. However, several blogs I follow have amazing pictures and some even have tutorials on food photography. Maybe one day I will get a decent camera and take up photographing our baked goods. But for now, I am happy to have running as my main hobby to burn off all the calories for my second hobby and the photography can wait until another day.

Homemade Weekend

Last weekend was the first weekend in a long time that I didn't have anything planned. No races, no-out-of-town trips, no events to attend. Since the spring running season is pretty much over, I am not training for anything either. It was both refreshing to have no obligations and weird to not be out running. So, I started working on my to-do list. I did knock several things off the list, including a couple of recipes I have been really wanting to try. So, over the weekend, I made cinnamon banana cake, 2 loaves of cinnamon swirl bread, and homemade pizza dough from scratch (yeast and all). The bread is something I make often, but the cake and dough were new. Both turned out amazing. Definitely keepers (well, usually only the keepers make the blog)!

The banana cinnamon chip cake is sooooo good and good for you! I have been wanting to try this one for months. Seriously! I hunted around town and could not find cinnamon chips anywhere. So, I ordered them online. It felt really weird to be ordering baking goods online, but it turned out perfect (although I may have ordered a few too many bags of cinnamon chips if anyone needs to borrow some). I made two changes to make it healthier: I substituted egg beaters for the eggs and used whole wheat flour. It was amazing. There is no oil in the cake and it stayed moist for days. I ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The best was heated up in the microwave for 30 seconds paired with some vanilla ice cream. Oh, so good! I highly recommend this recipe. I think I will be making it as often!

My other endeavor was a new pizza dough recipe. Much like sugar cookies, I am on a quest to find a really good pizza dough. This recipe tops the list by far. I have tried many dough recipes and this was really good and really easy to make. Making dough from scratch can be time consuming. This went quickly and didn't require much work or kneading. I followed the recipe as stated, but I used my KitchenAid mixer with dough hook. I will say I used a little more flour than mentioned in the recipe. The bottom was crisp, and the sides were soft, not chewy. I want to make this again and see if it works as a calzone crust. We baked one pizza on a pizza stone and one in a cast iron pan. I think it turned out better on the stone, but that was "my" pizza. I will also be trying this one again! It is highly recommended as well!

Sunday = Bakeday

This past Sunday was cold and overcast, which is a perfect day to spend baking in the kitchen! Outside of a short run, I spent most of the day in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of my creations. I'll have to remember for next time!

I started by making my grandma's Special K Bars. I've heard a lot of other people refer to these a Scotch-A-Roos or Special Cereal Bars. However, in our family we prefer to use Special K as the base cereal for these bar cookies because it turns out better than using any other kind. The recipe is online here. I do make a few changes to make these come out just perfect! I use butterscotch chips instead of peanut butter ones. I also use 1-1/4 cup of chocolate chips and 1-1/4 cup butterscotch chips to coat the top so there is enough (or a little extra) for coverage. Finally, I increase the amount of cereal used to 8 cups so the bars are firmer! It it best to let these stand and set-up for an hour or so before cutting into them.

Then, I moved on to making homemade bread with yeast and actual kneading. We have a bread maker, but I have been wanting to use my new Kitchenaid stand mixer to make some real dough. I found a great recipe for Earl's Home Made Bread online. The bread turned out great, although it took a lot of time to make. I kept letting it rise and kneading over and over. I was also a little nervous letting my mixer run for several minutes at a time, but it seemed to work just fine - no mixer engine overheating. The loaves tasted best the day of and got a little less soft each day. Oh well, it was a good experiment and a bread I will definitely make again! I'll probably half the recipe in the future because we can't really eat two loaves in one week.

After running with my friend Mandy, I helped her make an apply crisp to take to a dinner party. She was in a crunch for time and I had spare time to help cut up apples. I always get nervous recommending recipes I have never tried but she needed one with no corn-based ingredients, eggs, or milk. I found this apple crisp that seemed to fit the bill and she decided to make it! Although I did not get to taste this, she did get rave reviews for the dessert! This is now next on my list to make!

I finished up the day making a vegetarian pasta bake. I sauteed fresh veggies - mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, zucchini - and some minced garlic in olive oil. Then, I added spaghetti sauce (just the jar kind from the store) and stirred in some basil, oregano, and parmesan to give it some flavor. I let that cook up for a few minutes before I mixed in cooked pasta. I put it in a 9x11 pan, topped with shredded cheese, and baked for about 25 mins at 350 degrees. It turned out awesome! I make a lot of different pasta bakes (usually with whatever we have around) and this one takes the prize! Not only was it great tasting, it was meatless! I think my new trick will be to add some parmesan to the the sauce before baking. It really gave it some flavor.

It was definitely a relaxing Sunday in the kitchen. I love being in the kitchen when I have time. I just wish I had more time to be there more often!

Seasoned Oyster Crackers

Seasoned Oyster Crackers are one of our favorites. I meant to make them at Christmas time, but never got around to it. I had already had all the ingredients on hand, so last weekend I decided to make them and checked into some recipes. It is amazing how one pretty common snack food has so many variations in recipes. Anyway, I combined a few recipes to come up with my own concoction. I must say the crackers were quite tasty! Definitely not too oily or too seasoned, but a good mix of flavors coated each cracker. This one is a keeper!

• 14-160z bag oyster crackers
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 pkg Hidden Valley ranch dressing mix
• 1/2 tsp dill weed
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder

Mix oil, dressing mix, and spices together. Pour over crackers and mix in large bowl until crackers are coated. Heat in over for 10 minutes and 300 degrees.

So easy and so good!

Chocolate Cake!!!

I found a really great and super easy chocolate cake recipe that I made for dinner tonight. It is adapted from Iowa Farmer Today, which is a weekly newspaper Todd gets. Anyway, I lightened up as much as I could by using light sour cream and egg substitute. It turned out so awesome. It is definitely better frosted. I just used a container of Betty Crocker Vanilla, as that is what I had on hand.

• 1 C. light sour cream
• 1 C. sugar
• 1 C. egg substitute
• 4 T. cocoa
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 C. flour

Mix ingredients together. Bake in a greased 8x8-inch pan at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Frost, if desired.

Blueberry Zucchini Bread

Since I got my awesome KitchenAid mixer for Christmas, I have been baking different things. Some are better than others, but you have to weed out the good recipes from the bad. Of course, only the best recipes make the blog. (We won't go into the new sugar cookie recipe that failed miserably - the cookies didn't even make it to the oven and I threw out all the batter!)

Anyway, one new bread you have to try is Blueberry Zucchini Bread. I needed to use up some blueberries and zucchini, and this was the perfect combination. I only had about 1.5 cups of zucchini, so I threw in some extra blueberries. As always, to make my baking a little healthier, I used 1 cup applesauce in place of the oil and also used egg substitute to replace all the eggs. It turned out so moist, we couldn't stop eating it! This recipe is a keeper! Thank goodness we have a few loaves in the freezer to have later.

Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake

I made this awesome Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake last night. It is so good it is almost gone! The problem with sweets is that my husband can't help himself (although I am no saint, either). Anyway, this cheesecake is so easy and I made it lighter using a reduced fat graham cracker crust, reduced fat cream cheese, and egg substitute. I also doubled the spices - I love the cinnamon and cloves flavor coming through. This is a definite keeper!

Domestic Diva

This past weekend was spent in the kitchen! With the summer semester over, I now have some time back to do a few of the things that I enjoy. One of these semi-hobbies is trying new recipes. I am not a great cook by any means. In fact, a fair share of what I have attempted to make has ended up in the garbage. However, our garden is overflowing with vegetables and since I hate to waste anything, I figured I would try a few new recipes. Heck, it cost next to nothing for most of the ingredients, so time was the only potential loss.

Most of what I did turned out great. I am now dubbing myself a Domestic Diva. Not only did I make all of the recipes below using mostly ingredients from our garden, I also did four loads of laundry, tons of errands, and went running. We also had neighbors over Saturday night. Outside of catching up on personal email and blogging (which I am still working on), I did a heck of a lot of stuff in two days!

On Saturday, I used up all of our old frozen bananas to make three loaves of Banana Chocolate Chip Bread. I highly recommend this recipe. It was so good! I think Todd liked it, too, since we ate 1.5 loaves in three days!

I also boiled, peeled, and cut up about four dozen tomatoes. We have so many in our garden and I wanted to be able to use them. So, I decided to make homemade marinara sauce. I looked around for a recipe I liked, but didn't find just the right one. So, I combined two different recipes to come up with my own creation. It was pretty good. Todd loved it because it was sort of a spicy marinara.

Christan's Spicy Marinara

• 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 6 tablespoons crushed garlic cloves
• 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper powder or chilli flakes
• ~2 pounds ripe tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 1 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoons dried basil

In a large pot, bring 2-3 L of water to boil. Place the washed tomatoes with cross slits in the water. Bring to a boil. After 5 minutes, switch off the gas. Remove tomatoes from water and let cool. Once cool enough to handle, peel of the tomatoes and quarter them.

In a saucepan, heat the olive oil and saute the chopped garlic for a few seconds. Do not brown. Put the chilli flakes/powder in the oil and immediately put in the quartered tomatoes. Season with remaining ingredients. Stir around the contents of the pan until the moisture has evaporated and continue to cook until the tomatoes make a nice thick sauce. If it is too runny, you can add tomato paste. This recipe doubles well. You can add other ingredients to taste if you like. Examples might be mushrooms, onions, meat, etc.

And then I made even more stuff...

Sunday night for dinner, I made Stuffed Green Peppers using more vegetables from our garden. Todd wanted them without meat, so filled them with chopped mushrooms and tomatoes instead of meat. The turned out okay, but not great. If we make this as part of a meal again, I would definitely try a different recipe. Below is a mixture of the stuffed pepper before they were baked. I added the marinara and some cheese just before putting them in the oven.

On Sunday night, I boiled, peeled, and cut up even more tomatoes to make salsa. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but it is freaking awesome. I feel like I could sell this stuff to the local Mexican restaurants. We made tacos for dinner this past Monday and had chips and salsa, too. Between the two of us, we ate almost 3 cups of salsa. I highly recommend the recipe for D's Famous Salsa and if you don't want to use fresh tomatoes, you can even buy the canned kind to make this.

Rhubarb Pie

We still have rhubarb coming out of our ears. In fact, I got even more from my grandmother's yard last weekend. So, I took my first attempt at rhubarb pie this weekend. I made my own version of a good recipe I found online. The difference was that instead of using a pie crust on the top, I used my favorite crumb topping for pies. It turned out pretty well! The rhubarb is really tart, but the crumble on the top is very sweet, so it balances out for a good flavor. I will definitely try this one again, although I still prefer apple pie as my fruit pie of choice!

Rhubarb Bread

In order to use up some of the rhubarb we brought home from Iowa, I decided to make rhubarb bread. It is awesome! I like it much better than the rhubarb cake. I think Todd agrees, even though he had his share of both. So far I have made four loaves of bread and put three in the freezer for later. I still have some some frozen rhubarb to bake with at a later date, too.

I read through some of the reviews and made some changes based on that and my own preference. I used egg substitute, skim milk, light butter, and replaced half of the oil with applesauce. It turned out well and I will save this recipe for the future!

Rhubarb Cake

Last weekend we went to visit family (more on that later) and brought back a ton of rhubarb from Todd's parent's garden. It was literally taking up the whole refrigerator, so I decided it was time to cut up the rhubarb last night. Two hours and 13 cups of rhubarb later, I tried my hand at my first rhubarb recipe ever - rhubarb cake. I did some research online and found a recipe that had a lot of good reviews. The cake turned out pretty well. The flavor is perfect - not too sweet and not to sour. It was a lot like a cobbler when I first took it out of the oven, but once it cooled overnight it was very much like a cake. It is best served with ice cream! Next up is rhubarb bread. I'll also freeze some to use later. Heck, I doubt anyone could use up 13 cups of rhubarb at once!

(As a side note, I don't recommend cutting up 13 cups of rhubarb in one evening. My wrist is still sore and I probably now have carpal tunnel syndrome.)