Recipes Discovered

Almond Joy Oatmeal Cookies

I like Almond Joy candy bars. What’s not to like? Chocolate, coconut, almonds – all very good things. I decided to try to turn the taste of an Almond Joy into a cookie. I found a few recipes, but I really wanted to create the chewiness of the candy bar, so I settled on an oatmeal version. Essentially, the recipe is an oatmeal cookie with the addition of dark chocolate, coconut, and toasted almonds. I had to chill the cookie dough for about 20 minutes so the cookies kept their shape, but other than that, I pretty much just followed the recipe. The cookies turned out good – like an oatmeal cookies with chocolate, coconut, and almonds. It’s not exactly like an eating an Almond Joy, but it’s like eating a really good oatmeal cookie.

Black Bean Chilaquiles Recipe

There is a Mexican restaurants down the street from our apartment that is always crowded and always smells really good. When looking for a Mexican dish to make for dinner, I found this recipe for chilaquiles, which I have never heard of before. After a quick wiki search, I discovered that chilaquiles are typically served at breakfast, topped with eggs. Obviously this recipe is a twist on the traditional, which is simply fried tortillas mixed with salsa and topped with cheese and eggs. That being said, I really enjoyed the dish. The salsa has a great flavor that wasn’t too spicy and it went well with the sweet corn and beans. I wasn’t sure about baking the tortillas just to put them in a casserole, but by baking them, they didn’t too get soggy and they stayed together. The dish had a lot of different flavors going on, but they all come together, and it turned out to be a great dinner.

Smith Island Ten-Layer Cake Recipe

I picked up the Washington Post yesterday and on the front page (of the Food Section) was a picture of a beautiful cake. I swear the cake was taunting me – not just because it happened to be 10 layers, but because it just looked so perfect and was 10 layers. I have a hard time getting 4 layers to come out looking half decent. This cake is unusual though. Instead of making 3 or 4 cakes and cutting them into layers, this recipe actually calls for making 10 separately baked cake layers. It’s done that way so each layer has a crust and it doesn’t dry out. The cake originated from a place called Smith Island, a little island off of Maryland with a population of about 360 people. The ingredients and number of layers vary from baker to baker, but the cake should stand no more than 3 inches high when completed. I decided to tackle this cake recipe. >> Read more

Sweet and Sour Pork

Seth and I were watching a recent episode of Good Eats titled Down and Out in Paradise. It was about basic Island food – mangoes, coconuts, papayas, and pineapple – but the recipe that stood out for me was for sweet and sour pork. Although I ended up changing the recipe slightly, it turned out to be outstanding. Marinating the pork overnight is a must because it really tenderizes the meat and gives it amazing flavor ginger/garlic flavor, not salty like I thought it would be. The sauce was a little sweet for my taste, but cutting down on the sugar would solve that problem. I can’t really think of any other criticism for the dish. It had a ton of flavor, and was seriously Good Eats! (haha)

Whoopie Pie Recipe

Seth and I were making one of our many drives between State College and Virginia a couple days ago when we stopped at a small mini mart. At the counter, they were selling whoopie pies, which is made with two small chocolate cakes with a creamy white filling. It’s a very traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dessert that I had a lot growing up, and just seeing them brought back a ton of memories. It also made me very hungry, but there was no way I would pay two bucks for one when I could easily make my own. I first had to call my mom for the recipe and then call her again and verify it was the correct recipe, which she assured me that as odd as it sounds, it was correct. The chocolate batter is similar to chocolate cake, but thicker. It needs to be thick enough to keep its shape when dished onto a cookie sheet. I had to add about 2 tablespoons of flour to get the right consistency. The filling was the strange part. The recipe calls for mixing egg whites, vanilla, powdered sugar, and flour together first before adding more powdered sugar and shortening. As my mom said, it sounds odd, but it came out perfectly. At the mini mart, they also sold whoopie pies with peanut butter filling. I was curious, so I mixed some peanut butter into half of my filling. Although it was good, it was too much like a chocolate peanut butter cupcake and not enough like a whoopie pie. Traditional is definitely the way to go with these. And on a side note – apparently whoopie pies are also known as gobs and black-and-whites. Seth claims he knows them as moon pies, but I told him that’s a different thing all together.