Recipes

August 25, 2009 · 3 comments

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Appetizers

Bacon Wrapped Sweet & Sour Meatballs
I unabashedly still love bacon, especially when it’s paired with something sweet. The combination of the bacon with the pineapple-based sweet and sour sauce is what had me popping several of these little meatballs right before dinner the other day.

Citrus Salsa
The salsa is wonderfully refreshing and a little bit tangy with a touch of heat. It tastes fantastic with some salty blue corn chips.

Holiday Cheese Log with Cranberries & Pecans
Feta, cream cheese, Swiss cheese and honey, rolled in dried cranberries and pecans. It’s a combo that’s super tangy and a little bit sweet. And it made me abandon my prior judgment against cheese logs!

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Breads & Muffins

Banana Berry Muffins
As someone who tends to prefer muffins that are nearly like cupcakes I was not expecting to enjoy these “healthier” muffins as much as I did. Between the bananas, berries and orange juice they’re loaded with flavor.

Cheddar-Stuffed Crusty Loaves
Crusty rolls oozing with cheddar cheese. Mine came with “handles”! They gave me easy access to the cheesy center of the bread, which is the best part of it anyway.

Chocolate Chunk Zucchini Bread
This particular recipe, from inside the wrapper of a Ghirardelli chocolate baking bar, makes an incredibly moist zucchini bread. Any qualms I had about the fair amount of oil it called for were put at bay once I tasted its light texture and gently crisp top crust.

Classic Cornbread
Cornbread is the quickest bread I know how to make, start to finish in under 30 minutes. Plus, I always have all the ingredients on hand. This one is moist and mildly sweet with a crumbly corn texture.

Cornbread Muffins
Everyone likes their cornbread a little bit different. For me, the best kind is on the sweet side and definitely not dry. This recipe, from a box of corn meal, is just that. It comes together so fast that I actually made a second batch while the first was in the oven.

Cranberry Nut Bread
This is a cake-like quick bread, bursting with tart cranberries. At least the way I made it. I assumed the recipe used the entire bag of cranberries, whole. Turns out the Ocean Spray folks actually suggest you use less than the entire bag of berries and to chop them. Oh well!

Honey Oatmeal Bread
The whole wheat flour and oats make the bread hearty, with a texture that is actually lighter than I’d expected. The gentle sweetness from the honey gives the bread great flavor on its own, but I’ve been topping it with a little honey cinnamon butter anyway.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Muffins
I especially love the cinnamon, clove and nutmeg flavors that we often pair with pumpkin. Those flavors also happen to taste really great with chocolate, which is why I added it to these moist, tender muffins!

White Whole Wheat Walnut Bread
If you love to bake bread, have at this one – you’ll absolutely love the nutty flavor and texture. It’s a perfect accompaniment for a cheese plate or with jam or some honey butter. It’s easy enough for bread-baking novices too!

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Breakfast & Brunch

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes
Is there anything better than sleeping in on a Saturday morning and waking up to a stack of fluffy, buttermilk pancakes, fresh off of the griddle, dripping with maple syrup and butter? We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to whomever invented cake for breakfast.

Crab, Scallion & Tomato Quiche
This Crab, Scallion & Tomato Quiche ranks among the top three recipes I’ve tried on this blog. It features a generous amount of lump crab meat and the flavor is further enhanced by the Old Bay-seasoned custard.

Crispy French Toast
The best way I can think of to describe the taste is “donut-like”. You get the crispy corn flake coating on the outside and on the inside it’s spongy, sweet and cinnamony. It was pretty fantastic.

Maple Cinnamon Granola
It’s the cup of maple syrup that makes this granola so sweet, crunchy and irresistible. Suffice it to say that toasting oats and nuts with maple syrup, brown sugar and cinnamon resulted in ridiculously amazing aromas in my kitchen.

Multigrain Pancakes
The name “Multigrain Pancakes” makes them sound like they’d be heavy or dense, but they’re actually really fluffy with lots of great texture from the grains and pecans.

Panettone French Toast
Delicious French Toast made from panettone, the Italian specialty cake that is traditionally eaten and gifted around the winter holidays.

Quiche Lorraine
This Quiche Lorraine recipe calls for ham as well as the traditional bacon for even more flavor. They’re both, of course, fabulous with nutty Gruyère.

Sausage Breakfast Casserole
The hot sausage and pepper jack cheese give the casserole a little kick of heat without being overly spicy. With the custard soaked into cubes of country bread the dish is very much like a savory bread pudding, or strata.

Sour Cream Pecan Coffee Cake
If I didn’t already know that today’s Sour Cream Pecan Coffee Cake recipe came from a box of dark brown sugar I probably could have guessed it. It has very pronounced brown sugar flavor and, with the help of the sour cream in the mix, the texture is melt-in-your mouth.

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Desserts

Baileys Irish Cream Ice Cream
A rich, vanilla custard base with a shot of Baileys for good measure. Since the Baileys goes in after the cooking process there is alcohol, so this isn’t really one for the kids. But it’s just as well, because that means more for you!

Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies
It wasn’t without trepidation that I decided to try out the Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from inside the Land O Lakes Butter box. I thought they were terrific – soft, chewy, buttery with lightly crisp edges.

Chocolate Chip Rugelach
This recipe uses a prepared chocolate filling rather than nuts, jam or other traditional fillings – but the end result was delightful nonetheless. In lieu of glaze, as some rugelach recipes call for, the chocolate chips added a nice amount of sweetness to the dough.

Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake
This cake is incredibly moist and chocolate-forward, if that’s a real term. It’s actually Ghirardelli’s Grand Fudge Cake and Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipes, along with a layer of raspberry preserves for the filling.

Chocolate-Layered No-Bake Cheesecake Bars
Without question, they’re rich. But at least in bar form you feel a little less guilt since they’re small. Plus you don’t even have to turn on the oven!

Chocolate Snowswirl Fudge
This recipe adds a swirly layer of marshmallow to the top of classic rich, chocolate and walnut fudge. It stays perfectly creamy in the fridge for weeks.

Classic Apple Pie
Pillsbury calls this recipe the “Perfect Apple Pie”. I’ll say this, it was absolutely everything I look for and enjoy in an apple pie: the apples were sweet and tart, just enough sugar and spice and a flaky pie crust.

Classic Pecan Pie
It takes all of five minutes to combine the filling ingredients, pour them into a pie shell and pop the pie in the oven. After that, you get an hour of olfactory enjoyment as the pecans and sugar slowly but surely caramelize away.

Classic Pumpkin Pie with Maple Cream
For me, it’s just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. I’d say that Libby’s pumpkin pie is my favorite recipe out there – but there’s a distinct possibility that it might be the only pumpkin pie I’ve ever eaten.

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies
These days we food-types like to jazz up our chocolate chip cookes with bacon, Jacques Torres disks and sea salt. Those are tasty variations, but I don’t know anyone who would dare pass up a big plate of the good ol’ Toll House original. It’s a true American icon.

Coffee Fudge Brownies
If only I’d had this brownie recipe back when I was in college. Staying up late to finish a paper or cram for an exam would have been – quite literally – a piece of cake. Make no mistake: these Coffee Fudge Brownies pack a jolt!

Cookies and Cream Cheesecake
It’s pretty straightforward – your typical tangy cheesecake, studded with Oreo cookies. My toddler thought it was ice cream. And she’s right, it’s very much like eating Oreo ice cream. Especially when you enjoy it cold, right out of the fridge.

Dulce de Leche
You don’t have to use canned milk to make Dulce de Leche, but it’s definitely the common way to do it. The oven method I used involved simply baking the milk in a dish with a water bath for an hour. It came out of the oven golden brown, creamy, caramelized and positively addictive.

French Apple Pie
The next time you feel your inner June Cleaver demanding to emerge, you’ll find that pulling together this incredibly easy apple pie with its irresistible crumbly streusel topping will satisfy the urge.

Gingerbread Biscotti with Apricots
Most of the biscotti I’ve had in the past have been tasty but not especially noteworthy on their own. But these spices within these Gingerbread Biscotti, along with the fresh ginger and dried apricots mixed in, have wonderful flavor all on their own.

Gooey Brownies
If brownies brimming with a pound of brown sugar and half a pound of butter aren’t on your diet, you can at least look at them and it won’t cost you any calories.

Jacques Pepin’s Chocolate Chunk Cookies
These are sandy, rich, slice-and-bake chocolate sables. Pépin has you roll the cookie dough in sugar before slicing so the cookies have a wonderful sugary rim.

Maple Pumpkin Cheesecake
I was thrilled with the results I achieved using the cheesecake tips I found. More importantly, it tasted divine. The maple pecan glaze on top is like candy, I found myself snacking away on bits that “fell off”.

Milk Chocolate Truffles
The best part about a basic truffle recipe like this is that you can customize it however you like – rolling them in nuts, adding spices, drizzling more chocolate. I kept mine super simple, with just a dusting of unsweetened cocoa.

Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
I find oatmeal cookies with dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks especially irresistible. This recipe makes a good number of cookies which makes it possible to save a few to have around the house and still have enough left over to freeze and share later.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Oatmeal raisin cookies really deserve more of the spotlight. What’s not to love? The oatmeal gives them that great nutty flavor and texture and the raisins appear at just the right time to provide a spark of chewy sweetness.

Peanut Butter Bars
With peanut butter in both the crust and the filling – along with a pretty impressive amount of sugar – these bars are for serious peanut butter lovers. As you might imagine they’re incredibly rich and decadent with a nice crumbly texture. And sweet.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookie & Gelato Sliders
Peanut butter oatmeal cookies sandwiched slider-style with rich, decadent chocolate gelato. As you can see by the glistening gelato in the photos, this is a dessert you’ll want to consume promptly. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.

Pecan & Caramel Chocolate Clusters
To me, pecans, caramel and milk chocolate is the holy trinity of candy. Biting into one of these clusters and tasting that silky caramel stretch out from under the chocolate… it just doesn’t get any better.

Pecan Praline Cookies
No eggs, no leavening agents – these cookies owe their rich flavor and light texture largely to good ol’ butter and brown sugar, much like a traditional New Orleans praline.

Pumpkin Spice Cake
The cake is beyond moist and the pumpkin and spice flavors are just right. You can see in the photos that the cream cheese frosting has a bit of an orangish hue as well – that’s because there’s pumpkin mixed in there as well.

Roll-Out Sugar Cookies
Until I sat down to decorate these sugar cookies last weekend I’d forgotten how relaxing and enjoyable punching shapes out of dough and creating little royal icing designs can be. True to their name, these cookies are indeed sugary. Buttery too. Works for me!

Snickerdoodles
These crispy, chewy, cinnamon-sugar coated cookies melt in your mouth just like the ones my mom used to make for us after school.

The Best Fudge Brownies Ever
The folks at King Arthur Flour call these their “Best Fudge Brownies Ever”. Pretty big talk, don’t you think? As one who enjoys a good brownie I was definitely game to bake up a batch and see for myself. Did they live up to all the hype?

Toffee
Making toffee is incredibly easy. You just heat a few basic ingredients – butter and sugar, for the most part – to a hard boil, spread it out on a pan, wait for it to cool and harden and break it up into rich, decadent little pieces.

Toffee Almond Shortbread
Shortbread is rich and sweet enough on its own, and this one with the toffee bits was no exception. But the chocolate makes it just a little bit more special and I think it looks especially nice with the star shapes.

Valentine Heart Cookies
Conversation heart-inspired cookies, with one subtle little twist – these are actually made with animal cracker dough. The difference? They’ve got a lot more crunch to them as well as a hint of spice from dashes of nutmeg and mace.

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Drinks

Margaritas
Everyone has their preference when it comes to the refreshing cocktail: frozen or on the rocks. I tried a margarita recipe I found on a bottle of Triple Sec both frozen and on the rocks (yes, I am willing to sample multiple drinks for your benefit) and I determined my true margarita preference: sweet.
¡Salud!

Red Tea Sangria
I do love to relax with an icy tumbler of sangria, it’s so fruity and refreshing. This Red Tea Sangria recipe has wonderful herbal notes as well from – you guessed it – the addition of brewed red tea.

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Main Dishes

Broccoli Cheese Pasta Casserole
I’d describe this casserole as “mac & cheese with broccoli”. Steamed broccoli is tossed with spiral-y fusilli pasta in a creamy cheddar cheese sauce, topped with Parmesan and baked to bubbly deliciousness.

Carnitas Soft Tacos
This carnitas recipe calls for braising pork with onions, garlic and green chiles in chicken broth. While you give up the crispy strands that slow-cooking in lard yields, you still get very moist, flavorful chunks of pork that taste wonderful in a soft taco.

Chili
Everyone in my house thoroughly enjoyed this chili. There was a good amount of heat without it being overly spicy (no lip burning here), a hint of sweetness from the ketchup and – best of all – it came together in under an hour.

Classic Meat Loaf
This recipe, from a package of bread crumbs, had great flavor. Especially with the marinara it reminded me a lot of spaghetti and meatballs (without the spaghetti).

Crispy Baked Chicken
The aromas of the seasonings I mixed in with the corn flake crumbs taunted us for the full hour while the chicken was baking. A drizzle of melted butter on top made the crumbs extra crispy and savory.

Crispy Fried Shrimp
Start to finish, it took me less than 30 minutes (including peeling!) to make a pound of these shrimp. They’re incredibly simple – you just bread them in panko and drop them in hot oil for about a minute. What a fabulous crunch!

Fettucine Carbonara
The first time I made this I didn’t know the heat from the just-boiled noodles actually cooks the eggs in the sauce. They don’t just stay raw. It’s such a fabulously creamy and savory sauce and is the perfect complement for the salty pancetta.

Garlic-Lime Cornish Game Hens
When I found a recipe for what sounded like a zesty, flavorful garlic-lime chicken marinade on the side of a garlic powder bottle, I immediately nixed the boneless, skinless chicken breasts it called for in favor of Cornish Game hens.

Grilled Steak Tabbouleh Salad
Aside from the overnight marinade it was a relatively quick, flavorful dish to put together. I was enticed by the fact that the steak would be set atop fresh and zesty tabbouleh, rather than greens, as it seemed a bit more substantial than some other salads.

Herb-Crusted Roast Chicken
Ina Garten (aka, the Barefoot Contessa) roasts a chicken every Friday night for her husband Jeffrey when he makes the long drive out to their home in the Hamptons. How homey and inviting that sounds!

Lamb, Goat Cheese & Rosemary Pizza
This pizza is definitely loaded, with fresh Roma tomatoes lining the bottom, as well as sundried tomatoes mixed in with seasoned ground lamb, crumbled goat cheese and, of course, red and green bell peppers on top.

Red Beans and Rice
We had a little taste of Mardi Gras at our house as I tried out this recipe from a package of dried beans. Hearty and flavorful, with a good amount of heat from the Andouille sausage, it might be more “inspired by” the traditional recipe rather than strictly authentic.

Rosemary Roasted Turkey
It may be the symbol of Thanksgiving, but the pursuit of a juicy roasted turkey is also the bane of many a cook’s existence. This recipe, from the outside of an organic turkey package, is for a straightforward herb-roasted bird and is quite tasty.

Shrimp with Orzo
I’ve found that few dishes transport, freeze or reheat as well as baked pasta. This recipe comes from inside the wrapper of a can of crushed tomatoes. I couldn’t get enough of that salty, creamy feta on top! It worked so well with the shrimp, spinach and tomatoes.

Spinach-Bacon Macaroni & Cheese
Rich, golden spinach-bacon macaroni and cheese is kind of like having a little angel and a little devil on each shoulder. It’s decadent for sure, but the spinach relieves just a touch of the guilt. This was a rather simple recipe, but the flavors were anything but basic.

Spinach-Pesto Lasagna
This recipe uses no-boil noodles so it was actually easy to prepare on a weeknight. The pesto is prominent throughout the lasagna layers and full of flavor, plus there’s a fair amount of spinach in there so you can feel good about getting your veggies in.

Sweet & Spicy Grilled Steak with Tomato Relish
Besides the steak itself, the other star of this dish is its spice rub. The recipe comes from McCormick and it’s designed to showcase its roasted cumin.

Teriyaki Burgers
Teriyaki burgers. Sweet onions. Spicy mayo. Hawaiian rolls. Pineapple. Is your mouth watering yet? This is my kind of burger: medium-rare, grass-fed, eighty-five percent lean beef bathed in homemade teriyaki marinade.

Three-Layer Lasagna
A classic recipe from Barilla, with layers of sweet Italian sausage, and ricotta, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. It’s a somewhat cheesier version than what I grew up with, but I like it. A dish that’s as enjoyable to make as it is to eat – it freezes well too!

Whole Grain Spaghetti with Cherry Tomatoes and Pecorino Romano
Each flavor in this dish complemented the others so well, from the gentle sweetness of the onions and tomatoes to the nuttiness of the pasta to the salty bite of the hard cheese. It’s a recipe for onion lovers and haters alike.

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Salads

Caesar Salad with Sugar Snap Peas
It had never before occurred to me to add snap peas – or, really, any vegetable – to a Caesar salad. But it was a fantastic addition. I should have known that something sweet and crunchy would be a terrific complement to something garlicky like a Caesar dressing.

Chilled Dill Carrot Salad
The salad is incredibly simple – the carrots are sliced, blanched, tossed in a dill-red wine vinaigrette and chilled to blend the flavors. Even if you can’t find the multicolor carrots in your area this still would make a great healthy side dish with the conventional variety.

Spinach Pear Salad
Baby spinach leaves, along with rosemary and parsley, are tossed in a red wine vinaigrette and topped with fresh sliced pears, toasted pecans and crumbled blue cheese. The inclusion of the herbs is a bit unexpected and works really well here.

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Sauces & Condiments

Basil Pesto
Even though I had to shell out the big bucks (not really, like five) for a big pack of organic basil it was all worth it to blend up my own fresh pesto. It’s so versatile, adding intense herby, garlicky flavor to everything from panini to pasta.

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Side Dishes

Bacon, Sour Cream & Chive Mashed Potatoes
Swanson’s calls these potatoes their “Ultimate Mashed Potatoes” and it’s no overstatement. They incorporate cream, sour cream and butter, along with crumbled bacon and chopped fresh chives. They’re over-the-top amazing!

Cranberry Sauce
Cranberries, sugar and water – that’s all you need to make traditional cranberry sauce. Yet while it may be the simplest dish on your Thanksgiving table, it’s definitely no wallflower. Just look at that gorgeous color!

Green Bean Casserole
It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving at my house without Green Bean Casserole. To be fair, is this the best vegetable side dish I’ve ever had? No, not really. But it’s loaded with tradition and nostalgia – and on Thanksgiving, that counts for a whole lot.

Green Beans with Feta and Dill
With the salty bite of the fresh feta on top, this was a dish that not only presented well on a serving plate but it had such great flavor. The refrigerated leftovers, having had the chance to absorb all of the flavors for hours, were even better.

Vanilla Glazed Baby Carrots
If the carrots of my childhood had been prepared with a sweet vanilla glaze like these ones, you can be sure I would have eaten them much more willingly than I did! Even with the glaze, the natural sweetness of the carrots still shines through.

Zucchini with Walnuts & Chives
Especially in late summer when zucchini is plentiful, Zucchini with Walnuts & Chives is a super-easy, flavorful side dish, with a pleasant crunch from the bread crumbs and walnuts.

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Snacks

Cocoa Rice Krispies Football Treats
This concoction of marshmallows, peanut butter and rice cereal is the absolute stickiest I have ever encountered in my life. Oh but they taste really good, you should definitely make them. Just get ready for sticky.

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Soups

Creamy Broccoli Soup
Carrots and celery add to the fresh flavor. There’s no heavy cream involved here, but there is a bit of butter. Embrace it – the gentle buttery-ness is what really makes the soup especially savory and appealing.

Matzo Ball Soup
I have to confess, I was initially a bit intimidated by matzo balls. You hear all the horror stories of really bad ones – thick, dense, spongy. I am incredibly proud to report that I actually made tasty matzo balls that float!

Minestrone Soup
I’m not usually a big vegetable soup person but this one ate almost like a pasta dish – a hearty, flavorful one at that. If I hadn’t made my own pasta, the whole thing would have easily been done in under 30 minutes (even with my super-slow chopping skills!).

Quick Fiesta Chicken Soup
Here’s an incredibly quick, easy and tasty recipe that comes from a carton of chicken broth. I suppose it’s called “Fiesta” as it’s similar to a Mexican chicken tortilla soup, with the zing of lime juice in the broth along with the flavors of jalapeño, cilantro and avocado.

Split Pea Soup with Ham
You go in for the first spoonful and your tastebuds are surprised to be hit with rich, earthy, smoky flavors with a hint of sweetness – the result of having been simmered with smoked ham hocks for upwards of four hours.