Recipes Discovered

Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake Recipe

I absolutely love peanut butter, so when I saw this recipe for peanut butter cheesecake, I had to try it. And what’s not to like about peanut butter, chocolate, and cheesecake?

For the record, I made a few changes to this recipe, but all the basics are the same. To make the crust, I crushed up a whole package of Oreo cookies and mixed the cookie crumbs with crushed peanuts and melted butter. I pressed the mixture onto the bottom and sides of a 9 inch spring-form pan. It forms a pretty thick crust, but still make sure it’s firmly packed. >> Read more

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe

I tried making banana bread a couple weeks ago, but that didn’t work out so well. I had some very ripe bananas that needed to be used though, so I thought I would find another recipe and try again. Since banana cake is one of Seth’s favorites and I found a Paula Dean recipe that got really great reviews, I figured I would try that.

For the cake, I mixed together a lot of flour and sugar along with some baking soda and salt. I didn’t add the cinnamon because that just didn’t seem to go with the bananas in my mind. When the dry ingredients were well mixed, I added beaten eggs and oil. The recipe said to do this by hand, which seemed odd, but that’s what I did. It took awhile to moisten the dry ingredients, but eventually it all come together into a mass of dough. At that point I added mashed bananas and vanilla (I skipped the nuts for this one). >> Read more

Summer Rolls Recipe

When Seth and I eat at a Vietnamese restaurant, we always get summer rolls. Summer rolls are similar to spring rolls, but they aren’t fried and are served at room temperature. Shrimp, vegetables, herbs, and rice vermicelli (a very thin Asian rice noodle) are wrapped inside an unfried rice wrapper. They are often served with fish sauce or peanut dipping sauce. I don’t really care for fried spring rolls, but there is something about the combination of the chewy rice wrapper and the filling of the summer rolls that I love.

I decided I would make 3 dipping sauces for the summer rolls. The first was the traditional chili fish sauce, which consists of fish sauce, lime juice, garlic, sugar, garlic chili sauce and water. I whisked the ingredients together until the sugar dissolved. The second sauce was peanut sauce, which is another traditional sauce served with summer rolls. >> Read more

Fried Cabbage and Onions Recipe

I needed to use the cabbage that was left over from the summer rolls, and the only thing I could think of was my mom making haluski. Haluski is sauteed noodles and cabbage, but I didn’t have the noodles, so I just went with savoy cabbage and sweet onions. I also didn’t want to use a lot of butter to fry the cabbage, so I used about 3/4 of a cup of chicken stock with a tablespoon of butter. The cabbage and onions wilt down and get really sweet and caramelized after about 20 minutes. It’s a quick, tasty, and very cheap side dish.

Pecan Pie Recipe

Shoo Fly Pie Recipe

My dad loved desserts, so for Father’s Day, I wanted to make him a pie. He couldn’t decide what his favorite pie was though, so I ended up making both a Pecan Pie and a Shoo Fly Pie. I had never made either of these pies before, which probably should have concerned me, but I wanted to make something impressive for my Dad. Impressive is one way to describe it.

I’ll start with the pecan pie, since that was the less adventurous of the two. I love pecan pie and it’s actually a fairly simple pie to make. I just mixed corn syrup, sugar, eggs, butter, salt, and vanilla together and poured it over an unbaked pie shell lined with pecans. The recipe said it should bake 45 to 50 minutes, but mine took well over an hour – probably close to an hour and 15 minutes. It turned out beautifully though. The pecans rose to the top and were nice and golden, and beneath was a gooey layer of carmely goodness. It was luscious and sweet, the essence of what Pecan Pie is supposed to be. >> Read more