Strawberry!

I had a bunch of strawberries that I needed to use up so I experimented with a couple things.  First, I made a dough, basically butter, flour, a little sugar.  I wish I remembered the proportions because this dough actually turned out well!  But I don't.  D'oh!

Ok got the dough, now what?  I made this "rustic" pie.  Yum! Basically sliced strawberries and a little sugar.  That's powdered sugar on top.  This was actually pretty tasty!  I ate it for dinner. Ruchir got mad.  Ha!

And then I made these, little turnovers!  The color looks weird in this picture (all these pics on this blog are from my phone because I'm too lazy to actually upload pictures from my camera) but they were really good!  Just a dollop of homemade strawberry jam in the center.  They made a really good grab and go breakfast.  

Creme brûlée

I whipped these up for a dinner party that we were going to.  The recipe was pretty easy, 1 pint of cream, 4 egg yolks, 4 tbs sugar (I used two white and two brown), and 1 tsp of vanilla.  I scalded the cream with the sugar, then slowly tempered it with the egg yolks and then the vanilla at the end.  Bake in a water bath for about 40 minutes.  

This is a a version that I made for me and Ruchir using the leftover mix.  I added a bunch of mango puree to it, hence the orange-y color.  Unfortunately these did not turn out as good as the ones above because the puree made everything too liquidy and they never really set up.  Plus the crunchy top didn't really turn out on these - not sure why on that one.

But no worries, the ones that I took to the party set up great and turned out wonderfully!  The crunchy top was so good and topped with strawberries they looked very impressive! (Didn't hurt that they tasted great too!)

Hot Diggity Dog!

Well I just came back from an AMAZING weekend in Indiana where Mom made soo much good food that it makes my head spin. Seriously, I dream about that butter chicken! I didn't take any pictures of her food, but the tastiness of it all reminded me that I need to update this more often. Here are two different hotdogs they seemed to scream "America" so I felt like it was appropriate for a post July 4th weekend.

And some warmed up brownies and ice cream seems pretty American to me too!

Super Dessert

Ok, it sure has been awhile since I last posted.  I knew I would start fading on the posting, I am actually surprised I made it 6 months.  But I have been cooking and taking pictures still, there is a big back log that I am planning to upload.  Especially since the month of June contained some delicious food adventures including a trip to Google and out 1st Anniversary Cook Off (which I won, of course:).  So more to come, but for now I will leave you with this.  Words are not necessary.

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies

Ok here's a recipe I made a few weeks ago. I wanted to bring snacks for my discussion/seminar class on the last day of classes. Unfortunately I forgot about my plan until half an hour before I had to leave that day! To make things worse, one of my students has celiac disease and can't eat gluten. Yikes, talk about asking for trouble. Luckily I found this recipe which I whipped up in 15 minutes and which baked in 10. I was out the door with 5 minutes to spare! They are delicious even for people that can eat gluten and they are fast and easy!

Recipe adapted from:
http://simplygluten-free.blogspot.com/2009/07/gluten-free-peanut-butter-cookies.html

1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg – lightly beaten with a fork
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix together and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. I used chunky peanut butter because that's all I had. I also mixed in chocolate chips - highly recommended! And I didn't use quite as much baking powder which is why these are a little flatter/less puffier than normal peanut butter cookies. (I like them that way). Everyone loved them and so I later I made a batch for my friend who also has celiac. This time I used mostly brown sugar instead of white and they were even tastier in my opinion!

Berry Crumble Cake

Mom asked me about how to make a crumble so I thought this was a good time to post this masterpiece! Berry crumble with a pound cake style cake on the bottom. Man, was it goooood! I combined a variety of recipes and made a bunch of subsitutions since I didn't have all the ingredients on hand. But basically the cake part is flour, an egg, sugar, butter, a little sour cream, some cream cheese, and some vanilla. The crumble part is the the same - except before the sour cream, cream cheese, and egg. I randomly added in the cream cheese because I didn't have quite enough butter. And I was originally just going to make this with strawberries so I did that and then a layer of crumble topping but then realized it looked too empty. So then I added a layer of frozen berries from Trader Joes (blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries) and then more crumble topping.

Here it is before...

And after! Look how it's grown!

YUM!!!

Gotta add ice cream to really make it sing!