Christmas, New Year, Cheesecake, and Hunting

Where well the heck did we go right? I know. We are not the type of bloggers that have an abundance of things to share over the holidays as we were hither and yon and back again due to family events etc.

So, what have we been up to, well I will start off with food, as in Cheesecake - REAL New York style cheesecake. No graham crackers involved. I hear those gasps out there, yes, I make cheesecake WITHOUT graham crackers, you are allowed to do that you know. Especially if you are going for more authenticity than simplicity.

You can look up traditional New York style cheesecake and it has a shortbread type crust with a standard cheesecake filling with or without the sour cream topping. Mine does not have the topping but still tastes pretty awesome. I like to pair it with cherries on top or strawberries, though this is a cheesecake that can be eaten plain as well. It has a hint of lemon to offset the fact that this recipe has 4 packages of cream cheese in it.

So, to the cheesecake:

Yes a REAL New York style cheesecake :) That's how I put it in the home cookbook with mom and Gramma's recipe. 

4 eggs for the filling, yes 4. There is also almost one entire lemon with rind and juice in the crust and in the filling, this is what cuts the richness of the cake.

Making the filling you have to have 3 packages of cream cheese with sugar, eggs, vanilla, a touch of flour, and some lemon juice and rind.

Of course it's not a cheesecake unless you have a spring form pan. This beauty I obtained through Mike's grandmother. I have this and my 3 small muffin tins from her. 

So to start this cheesecake we had to start with the crust, this is a shortbread crust made with butter AND cream cheese to help make it blend a little better but still be more traditional. 1 pkg of cream cheese, 1 stick of butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, and lemon rind. You can also just make the crust and turn them into cutout cookies much like sugar cookies.You can also take a little bit of the crust and make decorations for the top of the cheesecake after you've put topping on it, makes it "fancy."

So we start by par baking the base of the crust, so this went into a 375 degree F oven for about 20 minutes, or until lightly browned, much like a perfectly toasted marshmallow.

So next we have a prepared filling, after the crust cooled, I placed the crust up on the sides of the pan to create the side of the cake.

Once I had the sides put in I made sure to seal the seam around the bottom and side of the crust to ensure that the cheesecake didn't leach through, not that it would through the spring form but I like to have things done all the way for this.

Next, if you do not have one of these puppies in your oven, GO BUY ONE AND PUT IT THERE! I'm serious, this thing has corrected me on numerous occasions. Having a gas oven can sometimes cause things to be a bit inaccurate with the dial that comes with the oven. So to have an oven thermometer always in the oven it ensures I have the correct temperature. As you see here, it's at 300 degrees F, perfect for baking a cheesecake.

This pan here if filled with water, putting this pan under the cake will ensure that the cheesecake doesn't crack. You can leave this out if you were putting the sour cream topping on it or if you were just going to top before serving and didn't care but this makes the cheesecake look prettier when it's pulled from the oven.

As you can see, this is going to be a tasty cake. :)

Beautiful cake no? My plate is pretty cute too - polar bear plate with matching bowl (not pictured). Perfect for Christmas and winter time. Speaking of Christmas (you can find the recipe below for the cake). Here is my tree in front of my picture window - lights off of course.

I'm one of those people who has the random ornaments that all mean something to me, I don't do a matchy matchy or color schemed tree and my tree topper is an angel that my mom made with yarn and the plastic canvas. It's old but it means a lot that she gave it to me.

I didn't really bake cookies this Christmas season like I normally do, when doing foodie pen pal in November I received dark chocolate covered pretzel thins topped with crushed up peppermint. Can I just say, DELISH. Also, it gave me an idea, instead of taking cookies to the local fire dept I would take chocolate pretzels. I ended up making chocolate chip cookies (store bough dough) and made those real quick. It's a Christmas tradition in my family to take cookies and/or candies to the local fire dept and/or police dept to say thank you to the people that don't get to go home for Christmas. Of course, police tend to look at you funny when you hand them cookies, thinking they must be drugged or something. So it's generally our fire departments that get cookies because they don't care and want to show you around the station anyway. :)

So to make these pretzels is really super super simple. I went to Sam's Club and purchased a large bag of those pretzel thins. Then bought a large bag of chocolate chips, I got milk chocolate so to satisfy 90% of people. Then I went to Aldi and picked up about 2 packages of candy canes to pulverize with my meat tenderizing mallet. Hehe, I think my neighbor upstairs thinks I'm insane. Between the indoor bike and pounding on my counters, I guess I do make a bit of noise.

So you melt the chocolate down, a double boiler method works best because it keeps the chocolate warm while you dip. My mother had given me a giant bundle of Chinese restaurant chopsticks (she has an elderly Japanese lady at her church that hoards everything), so I used a couple chop sticks to dip each pretzel without leaving any marks on the backs or fronts after dipping. Then after they were dipped I took a pinch of the peppermints and sprinkled them atop the pretzels. I think they turned out quite well. They tasted divine too. I took a small amount to Mike's parents house for the Christmas in St. Louis and his Gramma ate it up and loved them. The fire dept was thankful too.

I didn't go the entire Christmas season without baking homemade cookies, on the left there I have fluffy snickerdoodles, that's another recipe for another time (you can look them up too, I can't remember who I got the recipe from though). Then on the right we have my mom's peanut butter cookies, which I have tweaked by using all butter instead of shortening. I like the chewiness that they have with butter better. I also received for Christmas these silicone cookie stamps that I am eager to try out for Valentine's day. It came with a heart, a snowflake and a jack-o-lantern. Can't wait to experiment.

We spent Christmas day at my folks place after spending 4 days with Mike's parents the week before. The time in St. Louis was fun because his dad will take us to the gun range to shoot in the pits as well as at the skeet range. Love it. It was a nice early Christmas with them, his sister and her hubby and his parents and Gramma. Cozy and I got more presents than expected quite honestly. Was fun.

Christmas day we were at my parents place at 9:30 am and opened presents and lounged around until dinner time. My aunt was supposed to be in Hawaii but due to snow storms all her flights were grounded :( I know she had been excited about that but at least got to spend the day with her, I think the last time we did Christmas with her was years ago. It went well and everyone had plenty to eat. Even after we left Mike was able to be a Good Samaritan and help out at a wreck, he keeps a med bag in his truck for such things. I'm quite proud of him.

Recently we made burritos, seen above there. Hyvee makes their own tortillas from scratch so we picked up some whole wheat tortillas, used the last 1/4 lb of lean ground beef, black refried beans, green pepper, onion, and salsa con queso to create a delicious and surprisingly lower calorie dinner than expected. It really hit the spot that night. Inside the burrito it had about 1 oz of ground beef, 1 Tbsp black refried beans, a few strips of onion and pepper with about a tablespoon of cheese, we then topped with cheese and the remaining beef and sided it with the remaining beans (refried beans made with black beans instead of pinto) and the I topped with avocado and tomato. 

Amazing what you can just piece together sometimes when you are just wandering around the store.

Earlier this year, in October, we had a dear friend take some pictures (no not engagement photos, just photos for the hell of it). I had some of just me for some Christmas cards I sent out as well as some of Mike and I for closer relatives. These are two of my favorites. She is such a great friend and we had a great time at the park that day.

So on to January, I found this picture above online and decided to do it, so I have a jar on my counter for things that make me happy and good things that happen. Mike has already gone and made fun of my midnight kiss for New Year's Eve and hearing "I love you" from Mike. Corny, yes. Still makes me smile and is good.

New Year's Eve our original plans were changed due to a snow storm headed into the city. Well, it was a terrible storm but enough to make us leery about venturing too far into the city on a night where drunk drivers abound. Top that with slick roads and no thank you. So we went to one of our favorite local bars and spent the evening there, free shuttle to and from (though I ended up calling a friend to pick us up because the bar failed miserably on the FROM part) and free pizza bar for anyone with a pre-sale ticket (we got ours that morning). So we people watched and enjoyed that thoroughly since we saw a couple argue about their affair, a lady turn a young buck down with the line "You're not even a man." And Mike saw a man pass out at the bar. It was quite the entertaining night, we even made friends.

So after the holidays were over I had purchased a delightful thing from Cabela's with birthday and Christmas money. (My birthday is the week before Christmas - Mike took me to dinner and we shared a large peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream - delicious but absolutely HUGE). I bought my first really warm coat in a long time. Yes, it's duck blind Mossy Oat and a "hunting" coat but it's warm and I love it. 

So today Mike went hunting. Headed out around 6 and was done by 11am. He and his buddy got their limit (3 geese) each and they got to take the dog (his name is Goose) out too. It was a good day for the mighty hunters. As you can see Mike is happy with the days kill.

He even used his Christmas present from me, face paint. I got him this cool new kind that comes in a mini deodorant like container. Pretty cool and he said it worked great and he liked it. That makes me happy. So as you can see we have been busy busy busy but we are back now. We have a post for tomorrow to, we will show you what we did with the days kill.

Here is the promised recipe though, I'm sure you just skipped down and came straight to this. :)

REAL Cheesecake *New York Style* (Mom's recipe)

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Crust:
1 (8oz) pkg cream cheese, room temperate (DO NOT FAT FREE CREAM CHEESE)
1/2 cup butter/margarine (1 stick), room temperature
1 1/2 cups flour, all purpose
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp grated lemon rind

Combine soft cream cheese and butter. Mixing until well blended. Add flour, sugar, and rind. Mix well. Form into a ball. Chill dough thoroughly.

Cookies: On a lightly floured surface, roll 1/4 cup dough into 1/8 inch thickness. Cut with assorted 1-inch cookie cutters of your choice. Sprinkle with sugar and bake at 375 degrees F for 8 to 10 min or until lightly browned.

Crust: Spread TWO THIRDS of remaining dough onto the bottom of a 9-inch spring form pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes or until crust is very lightly brown. Cool. Press remaining dough around sides of pan.

Drop oven to 300 degrees F.

Filling:
3 (8oz) pkgs cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp lemon juice (fresh is best)
2 tsp lemon rind, grated
4 eggs

Combine soft cream cheese, sugar, flour, lemon juice, and rind. Mix at medium speed, using an electric mixer. Mix until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Pour filling into crust. Bake at 300 degrees F for 1 hour 15 minutes. Or until center is set.

Loose cake from rim of pan; cool completely before removing rim and cutting.

If you wish, spoon pie filling over the top of cake and top with small cookies made earlier.
**Cherry, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, apple, chocolate, etc - let your imagination run wild.

Go out and experiment, take chances, enjoy cooking.

Go out and cook, or bake ;)

National Cookie Day Celebration - with Peanut Butter of Course

Well, duh, if you're gonna celebrate National Cookie Day you have to have peanut butter. But I did not make just plain old boring peanut butter cookies. I made "fancy" peanut butter cookies.

Thing is I love peanut butter, if you haven't figured this out yet. I mean, LOVE peanut butter. Mike tells me I eat it too much and I'll go through a jar a week if I'm not careful. Seriously I love it that much. I've been trying to buy better for you PB that doesn't contain added sugars or hydrogenated oils. I don't do a lot of health food but when I do, I pick and choose carefully. This means I decide upon foods that I truly enjoy and deserve higher quality - some things just need to be held to a higher standard.

So the peanut butter I used today DOES have added sugar, cane juice and molasses - I wasn't terribly thrilled but I was at Walmart and was limited - I can't say I care for the Smucker's natural peanut butter. That has a taste that is, to me, off putting and burnt. It is fine to use in recipes but I can't say it makes the best sandwich or spoon-able snack.

I also did not desire to go to two stores after work, so I was stuck with Walmart's pathetic and commercial selection of nut butters. Next time I'm definitely making the trip to Whole Foods. It is worth the time and effort to get a higher quality nut butter.

I digress. The peanut butter I purchased is called "Naturally More." I have had the almond version of this when I was at Costco.Delicious! The peanut version is about the same, this is 80% peanuts with an ingredient list of the following (more ingredients than I care for - typically I want to see only two, perhaps three dependent upon brand): Roasted Peanuts, Soy Protein, Flax Seed, Evaporated Cane Syrup, Salt, and Molasses.

The problem I have is with the soy protein and the cane syrup - pick molasses or cane syrup - you don't need both - and what is the purpose of the soy protein? Makes the protein content go up, yes but necessary? No.

For me there is no reason for sugar in peanut butter - but I prefer it that way. I say salt and peanuts is all you need - peanuts have plenty of oil on their own. Anyway..TO THE RECIPEEEE, CHARGE! *tosses on warrior dash hat - has horns mind you - and rushes to the kitchen for the recipe, arm out and proud like a Roman soldier* (Yes that just happened - things are weird when I'm by myself sometimes.)

I've wearied you enough with my nutritional rant.

So, I made these cookies, modified my mothers recipe ever so slightly to achieve the desired result. I've been toying with this recipe a little each time to find out the best way to make these and when they taste their best.

You can see my homemade white bread back there ;)

 To start with what I have altered from my mothers original recipe is to use natural peanut butter rather than a commercial brand. I prefer Whole Foods brand, has the perfect balance I think. Of course I have used others like Maranatha. Second I use all butter instead of shortening. I just like the flavor better. I also feel they tend to give the cookies a chewier consistency - my type of cookie (crunchy edges with soft centers).

And lastly, I like to dust with powdered sugar when they cool (obviously the below cookies have not made it that far).

So here is my mother's fabulous PB cookie recipe (by the way, this makes a lot of cookies, so halve the recipe if you don't plan to feed a classroom of small children or the office).

Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup shortening (butter in my case), room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups flour (I used bread flour this time, will see how that goes over - they taste fine to me)
1/2 cup peanuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cream butter/shortening, peanut butter, and sugars. Beat in eggs. Add dry ingredients. Mix well. Place small amounts of dough on an ungreased baking sheet. Flatten cookies with a fork dipped in sugar.

Bake for 10-12 minutes, dependent upon your oven. **I have a gas oven and had to go with 9 1/2 minutes**

Go crazy, modify and change the peanut butter to almond butter or Nutella. Add chocolate chips or butterscotch chips. Use your imagination. That's the great thing about cookies. Once you have a great base you can play around a little and make it into something completely different or more amazing than what you started with. This is how greatness happens. How do you think our Gooey Butter Cupcakes came into existence? Exactly!

Now go out and cook and bake!!

3-D Pumpkin Cookies Filled with Candy Corn

So here we go into Autumn/Fall. The leaves are changing (and not due to the overwhelming heat) and the temperatures are dropping. It's feeling good outside, my windows are open and the AC/Heat is off. I have no use for it currently. I'm loving the smells and the flavors of the season. Crunchy leaves, cool mornings, cinnamon and spices. Mmmm, making me hungry now.

So pumpkin, let's talk pumpkin. I love pumpkins in general. Great decoration, great food, and just all around fun. You can decorate them, use them as a craft, and cook with them. Or you can emulate them in your cooking/baking. Much as I have done here. I made these for a co-workers birthday. I just thought they were too cute and couldn't pass up the opportunity with an October birthday to boot. (A #1 excuse to bake - it's for someone's birthday).

I found this recipe from Glorious Treats. These were just too cute of an idea to pass up. So here I go. I changed things a little bit and used a few of my own recipes. My mom's "Christmas Cutout Cookies" and a basic "Royal Icing" recipe.

Use any roll out sugar cookie recipe you like. You can use Glorious Treats recipe or one that you like from your own recipe box.

For the royal icing, super simple.

3 egg whites
1 tsp cream of tartar
3 3/4 cup powdered sugar (give or take - roughly 1 lb/16 oz)

Place egg whites and cream of tartar in mixing bowl with whisk attachment - whisk until frothy.

Add powdered sugar gradually and mix until frosting forms stiff peaks and is glossy (about 5-7 min on medium high speed). Store covered with plastic wrap until ready to use. (can cover and place in fridge)

Easy no?

So for the dough, you need to color it. Take about a baseball size amount after you have made your dough. Maybe a tennis ball size. Set that dough aside. Color the remaining dough orange, you can either purchase orange food coloring or do what I do and add red and yellow together (see the color layers?)

Now take the small tennis ball sized dough and color a nice green color (sorry no pics of that).

Now you need to chill the dough for about 30 min. Then roll out on a lightly floured surface. You will need to cut out, with round or scalloped cookie cutters, 2 medium rounds with a hole cut out of the center and two solid rounds cut with a slightly smaller cookie cutter. Basically have a large, medium and small set of cutters (I obviously used just circles in three descending sizes. I would call them medium, small and tiny.) Once you have all your orange pieces cut out, place on sheet and bake. Make sure to keep an eye on them so they don't brown too much. If you have excess flour on your cookies take a brush and brush it off or dab a little water from a paper towel to get rid of that.

Now you will need that tennis ball you've dyed green. Roll it out and cut out with a small round cutter, smaller than the solid rounds. Then you will need a straw to cut a hole out in the center for the stem. Just blow the dough out of the straw and bake and it works great for the stem.

You can bake the stem right in the top or you can do what I did and just "glue" it on with the royal icing.

Once your cookies are baked and cooled, make your royal icing. You can color it orange or leave as is. I left it white because I was too lazy last night to color it orange, and it didn't bother me to have a little sticking out.

Once your icing is done, pack a bit in a zip top bag, snip off one corner and pipe a little on the top, around the edges, of 1 solid orange circle  Place a orange ring on top, pipe frosting on the orange ring, then place the second orange ring on top of that. Now, take the green tops and put a dab of icing on the bottom of your leaf top and place on last solid circle. Let everything dry. DO NOT CAP OFF YOUR PUMPKINS YET!!! 

Once your icing has hardened, give it 10-30 min, fill your pumpkins with candy of choice. I did candy corn. Glorious Treats did mini M&M's. Be creative, use your favorite candy bits.

NOW pipe a small bit around the edge of the top ring and place your pumpkin caps on. Let set overnight and voila! You have cute as a button pumpkin 3-D cookies.

Easy no? I enjoyed making these, I wish they had turned out a bit cuter but I think part of that was making some of my rings and circles too thin. Try to stay at about 1/4 inch thickness at the thinnest. I need to get rings for my rolling pin so I can keep track of this. I have one of those solid wooden dowel-esque rolling pins. The kind that could seriously injure an intruder.

So go out and cook. Get creative and make something cute today. Enjoy Fall and all it's glory. Windows opened, pumpkin cookies baking, and candy corn in abundance (and all mine I might add since Mike detests the stuff he he. More for me.)

Fudge and Cookies and a few dinner things :)

So this weekend I have the weekend to myself and have been kind of lazy, took this week to use up some random ingredients to make some actual dinner for myself. (Yes I too can cook, not just bake). So having had onion left over, given cans of asparagus, artichoke hearts and mushrooms I threw a few things together and created a dinner with it.

Found out that red onions WILL stain your hands temporarily. Oh well, just looked like I took a hammer to my hand. Haha, but the onion tasted good in my noodle pan stir fry thingy.

 My dinner consisted of ground turkey *80/20

Whole grain pasta - rotini

Artichoke hearts, red onion, sprouts and canned asparagus.

For a sauce I used the KC Masterpiece Honey Teriyaki sauce - quite delicious as a sauce not just a marinade.

I ended up with this while it was in the pan. Mmmmm delicious.

I then added the sauce on top as a garnish. Mmmmmm. Can I just say this was a stroke of genius? Delicious canned foods turned into a delicious and wonderfully simple dinner. If you're watching your sodium look for low sodium canned goods. I also used frozen ground turkey. My local grocer was having a hell of a deal on ground turkey and ground chicken. Of course today I go to the store and for 59 cents a lb I got two GIGANTIC chicken leg quarters (3.33 lbs) for $2. WOO SALES!!!

So mid week I decided to try this super simple fudge recipe I found. I didn't use white sugar like it said to since I was running low. I used brown instead.

The brown sugar peanut butter fudge tasted good but had a slight burnt after taste. So I made more last night and used white sugar, added some oats and topped with crushed graham crackers. And of course I forget to take a picture and give it away before I remembered for the blog :(

The fudge made with the white sugar tasted WAY better, less burnt and the add ins worked marvelously. Now if only I had had some cashews or peanuts (a suggestion from Mike) to add some crunch then drizzle with some chocolate. Mmmm, now we are talking.

This fudge recipe is soooo easy and simple that you can even help a kid make this. I would say about 8-10. You could even double the recipe to spread out in a 9x11 pan and cut out fun shapes once cooled (I place in freezer after cooking up to cool faster.)

Super Easy Fudge:

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk (I used skim - use whatever you have on hand)
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup peanut butter
** add in whatever you like that would go with PB - cashews, peanuts, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, oats, Oreo bits - use your imagination.

Directions:
Boil milk and sugar, once boiling boil for 2.5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter, vanilla and any add ins you like.

Let set or place in freezer to set a bit faster. (I let mine sit for about an hour in the freezer before thinking about cutting.

YUM! See, easy and all ingredients on hand.

So today I spent the first half of the day in bed. I have my reasons, so around 1pm I decided it was time to get up and actually do a few things. I needed to run to the store so I could have pizza for lunch, which became dinner. I also actually shopped for food for more than just a day - that's unusual for me.

So I came home, unloaded groceries, cleaned the kitchen and then checked out knives on eBay that Mike told me I needed to see. Bid on a good chefs knife too :)

So then I made pizza. Turkey, mozzarella, Parmesan, onion, mushrooms, and red bell pepper. As you can see, fresh and oh so yum looking. Makes your mouth water doesn't it? (I did not make the crust, had that in the freezer - didn't feel like making crust.)

Pre baking

Post baking, and pre eating

 I enjoyed this pizza thoroughly. It was about 254 calories per 1/8th of a 12 inch pizza. Not too shabby.


So after that I got bored again and decided that to ward off cramps I would bake and feel less lazy that way.

I can only do so much lazy before I get antsy.

So off to the kitchen sauna to make "The End All for Chocolate Cookie Recipes."

I was curious about the name and wondered if it was as great as it was advertised. So off I went. I didn't have shortening - and also did not feel like going and getting shortening - honestly I hate working with the stuff and would rather use butter. I used oil and hoped for the best. Probably should have used butter but oh well.

Mixing dough

Flower shapes cut out and ready to bake

So after sweating my little tushie off in the kitchen just heating up the oven and cutting out flower shaped cookies I decided that peanut butter frosting would be best with a chocolate cookie. I mean, come on, peanut butter and chocolate just go together like bread and butter.

Peanut butter frosting before sugar is added\

Mixed peanut butter frosting

Frosted cookies

I must say I was having issues with my peanut butter frosting. Too thick and too oily I think. Probably could have left out the butter and just made with peanut butter and a little milk. Oh well, it's almost able to be rolled out and cut to be layed on the cookie, I think I'll do that with the remaining frosting and cookies. I had to stop after these four cookies because I was melting away in my kitchen.

The cookies have a fudgey brownie consistency in the dough. The cookie itself is the perfect texture but I find the chocolate flavor to be a bit chalky. Not a bad cookie but it will need a sweet frosting to accompany it. I think I'll try the vanilla cookies next time.

So this is what I do with alone time haha, I should get the girls together tomorrow but I"m in no mood for company really. Having me time is a good thing too. Though I will be ready for human contact again come Monday.

Enjoy your weekend guys - cheers!