Category: Recipes

Recipes, Mary

salted caramel apple galette with pink pearl and cortland heirloom apples

Fall makes me think of things like falling leaves and pumpkins and warm soups and apples.

Apples! Sure, we can get apples year round but we don’t always get apples like these. I was recently given a few apples to experiment with from Frieda’s – two different varieties that I had never heard of!

The Pink Pearl (left) and the Cortland (right).

Pink Pearls were developed in the 1940’s by a Northern California breeder while the Cortland was developed at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva in 1898.

As you can see, the Pink Pearl has pink overtones within the flesh of the apple. It’s got a slightly tart taste. It’s not like “Granny Smith OMG tart” either – a bit more mild with a touch of sweetness. The cortland is very white and crisp and much sweeter than it’s counterpart.

These unique heirloom apples will be available at local Sprouts stores starting October 17th, so you can get some of these beautiful apples for yourself!

I decided to take these beautiful apples to produce this: a salted caramel apple galette.

Want to go on a apple galette making journey with me?

Of course you do!

First things first… we need salted caramel sauce.

Oh, I suppose you could just cheat and buy a jar of sauce. They do make a really wonderful one at Trader Joe’s. But I was feeling rather down in the dumps that day due the radiator in my car bursting and causing my car to break down that I wanted to do something therapeutic: like baking and making caramel sauce from scratch.

Caramel sauce it actually quite easy. Sugar and water, into a pan, set it to shimmer. And don’t touch it! No stirring!

Okay, maybe I swirl it around a little… but that’s just to see how amber it’s getting.

All of those crazy bubbles get in the way, I tell you.

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Mary, Recipes

caramel cracker cookies (make your own candy, put it in a cookie, woohoo)

I’ve made these chocolate caramel cracker things a lot – usually around Christmas time when I decorate them all up and give them away as desserts. Then one day I day a thought… what if I put that crazy candy inside of a cookie? So I did it. And then I immediately gave away a bunch of the cookies because it was too much to have that deliciousness just sitting in my house. If you need some deliciousness in your house though, might I suggest making these? You might want to give some away, too. Or hey, keep ’em for yourself. I won’t tell.

First things first! We gotta make the candy. It’s easy, I swear. Don’t be frightened of the word “candy”. We won’t even use those scary candy thermometers or anything! Promise.

Brown sugar, butter, and condensed milk is what you need for the caramel goo. The chocolate chips are for later.

Get a tray and put your fancy silpat mat on it – or just aluminum foil. You’ll want this – it’ll make it easier to remove the candy and you’ll thank your stars you did that step.

For the goo, you just melt the butter and sugar with about half a can of sweetened condensed milk. Sit around and watch this on the stove and stir it every so often. You want to cook it until it starts to bubble and thicken up. From there, you’ll want it cook it for another 2 minutes. It’ll look all frothy and lovely, like below:

Pour the goo over your saltines.

Mmm, goo.

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Mary, Recipes

grilled hot wings and homemade ranch dressing

The only thing I find interesting about football is football food. The  sport doesn’t hold my interest at all, while thoughts of delicious appetizers make me excited.

Jake wanted to watch a Chargers game and asked if I would make hot wings. Pfft, you barely have to ask me to do such things. “Make something delicious!” he says. “Okay!” I say. That might be the basis for our relationship.

Maybe.

[butter and hot sauce mixture]

I made a hot sauce mixture from scratch and took it to Jake’s house to pour over the wings.

This is the hot sauce mixture inside of butter. Looks kind of gloopy and weird, doesn’t it? It also seems like a hefty amount of butter, but I did prepare four pounds of chicken wings…

Also, it’s only a half a stick of butter. I’m not Paula Deen, y’all.

[pouring the hot sauce]

I want you to know that in retrospect, I would not have not poured the sauce over the wings first. I should have put this sauce on after the grilling since the sauce pretty much evaporated into thin air while cooking.

So basically, don’t do this. I’m showing you an image of what not to do. Just sprinkle some salt and pepper over those wings and don’t do what I did. Or you can try it if you want. I won’t judge you and the recipe police aren’t going to take you way or anything.

You know why? Because they don’t exist! Woo hoo!

My idea was that I was marinading the wings, so I put the wings back into the bag they came and ported these over for grilling at my house. No sense in dirtying up another bag of plastic, right?

I decided that grilled was the best option. It was hella hot that weekend (like, triple digit record breaking hot) and turning on the oven was out of the question. My dad already had the grill on for some ribs he was making, so we just threw my wings on.

Best idea ever!

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Recipes, Products, Mary

banana cream pie with caramelized walnuts and grow bananas

I have a weird aversion to bananas. I think their texture is kind of weird. But I like them when they’re in stuff, so I’m not opposed to things like banana bread, or banana muffins or things like that. When I was contacted recently by a rep who offered me bananas, I thought, “Huh? Really? Bananas?”

I accepted the offer though and was able to learn more about the company behind Organics Unlimited and their program called GROW (Giving Resources and Opportunities to Workers). GROW helps fund programs for farm workers and their families in the areas where Organics Unlimited bananas are grown (in Mexico and Ecuador). These programs include scholarships, study groups, dental programs and vision exams. A portion of each purchased GROW box is donated to the GROW fund to help support these programs to bring educational and health care programs to these underdeveloped banana growing regions.

The bananas I received were from this GROW box – you can tell by the sticker placed on the bananas! GROW bananas are available at Jimbo’s Naturally stores and can sometimes be found in Sprouts, Ralphs, and OB People’s Food Store.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the bananas. So many ideas ran through my head; I got suggestions on Twitter and Facebook. Bread? Cookies? Pie? What?

I decided on making a pie. A banana cream pie. With caramelized walnuts.

Want a make a pie, too? Follow my instructions below.

Take photos of bananas in the yard.

Hope no one else is watching you take photos of bananas in the yard.

Proceed to bake a pie shell without properly tucking it into the pan.

Lament about how ugly your pie is going to look.

Sigh dramatically. Notice that no one else is around to hear you sigh dramatically. Repeat.

Make delicious vanilla custard stuff from scratch and feel slightly better about the ugly pie crust.

Slice the bananas. Think to yourself, “Organic bananas look just like regular bananas!” Laugh at self.

Decide to cut the bananas on a bias. Decide you should use the word “bias” more often.

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Mary, Cooking with Jake, Products

“calzone” pita bread and mini naan pizzas with bonsavor flatbreads

Flatbreads, naan, pita breads, tortillas and more arrived at my doorstep in a big old box not too long ago. One look at it made me think, “Oh god, will I be able to use all of this before it goes bad? What am I going to make?!” I took a bunch of it over to Jake’s so his family could partake in the goodness from BonSavor. And then… something strange happened. The stars, the moon, the planets and the sun all aligned and Jake volunteered to cook and to make something with the flatbreads!

Oh my stars.

[BonSavor Pita Bread]

Jake has cooked instead of me maybe a handful times in our whole five year relationship. Once he made sloppy joe with ground pork and well… let’s just say that I still rib him about it from time to time.

Funny thing is that he was the first one of us to cook for the other. He made me a chicken dinner and I remember being impressed that he wanted to cook for me in the first place. I had never had a boy cook for me before!

The other funny thing? The first thing I ever made for him was some awful pasta salad and I absolutely hated it. Was embarrassed by it. Was convinced he only ate it to make me feel better. I had never made the recipe before and the flavors came out all weird.

To this day he still insists that it was good. Bless him.

[BonSavor Naan]

Imagine my surprise then when Jake not only wanted to cook but he didn’t want my help at all.

He was getting all serious on me. It was so cute!

He got the idea to use the pita bread as like an open faced “calzone”. He wanted to do something else with the naan, but at the last minute decided to use them to make mini pizzas since he couldn’t think of anything else. No problem with me!

[mini meatball pizzas on naan flatbread]

Jake made his own from scratch sauce and made little meatballs. He did a few variations – one with just cheese and meatballs (ricotta and mozzarella), one with both cheeses, sauce and meatballs, and one without ricotta.

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Mary, Recipes

strawberry delight for a hot summer’s day

The first time I ever had a dessert like this I was in the Midwest and it was made with blueberries instead. It was referred to as “Blueberry Delight” and I remember being a bit blown away by such a simple dessert. This is a layered dessert, something very well known in the South but I had never had it out here in California before… It’s got a cookie-like crust, a sweet cream cheese layer, your fruit, and then whipped cream or whipped topping and nuts to top it all off. It’s simple, easy to make, and deliciously creamy.

I had picked up a fresh basket of locally grown strawberries and I thought, “Well, I bet I can turn Blueberry Delight into Strawberry Delight!”. Any mixture of berries will do for this dessert, really, and I think fresher is better for this one. The dessert starts to look kind of droopy after a day or two, so it’s best to try and gobble this one up quick and all leftovers need to go into the fridge.

[beautiful, ripe strawberries]

I picked up these beautiful strawberries at The Fruit Stand off Morena Blvd. They had some fine looking fruits and I could not resist getting this basket.

To prep, I just washed the strawberries and sliced them. I added about two tablespoons of sugar to macerate the strawberries.

[pecan shortbread-like crust]

After finishing the berries, I prepped the crust. It’s a very simple mixture of flour, sugar, pecans and softened butter. The mixture comes together quickly and spreads out easily in the pan. I pushed it with my fingers to spread the crust out evenly. This is the only thing you’ve got the bake! 15 minutes and you’re done. This is also something you should do ahead since a cooled crust is necessary.

This crust seriously tastes like those pecan sandies cookies they sell in the store.

[trying to quickly defrost my whipped topping]

I forgotten to tell Jake to leave the whipped topping out for me on the counter, so when I realized that my topping was still frozen I grimaced a little and then figured I’d try this.

The crust had just come out of the oven so I put the two tubs on top of the crust.

Hey, it sort of worked! It did at least speed up the process a little bit so I was able to work with it to make my sweet cream cheese layer.

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Mary, Recipes

all you need is (mango) love – mango granita

It’s been hot. The heat has made me thankful for tank tops, ice cold water, air conditioned movie theaters, and delicious frozen treats. And while it is super fun to go out and get some ice cream at a shop, sometimes it’s nice to try making it yourself at home, too.

I was at Jake’s again for the weekend and Jake has been wanting me to try making a mango sorbet for quite some time. We had it at Khan’s Cave for my Dad’s birthday back in April and liked it so much that we wanted to try making it at home. We finally got our hands on some ripe mangoes so I could experiment and try making this frozen treat.

Just about every sorbet recipe I read talked about using an ice cream maker to chill the sorbet. I didn’t have one of those on hand so I decided to try making a granita instead, which is sort of a cross between a sorbet and an Italian ice. You don’t need much to make this! Just a few ingredients, a long pan, a fork, a freezer and some time to kill.

[the cast of characters]

You need three things: ripe mangoes, lime juice, and sugar. That’s it!

[cubed mango]

Jake and I were able to pick up a couple of ripe mangoes for fairly cheap at the Farmer’s Market in Lemon Grove. Mangoes are kind of a bitch to cube. They’ve got that crazy, fibery pit in the middle making them hard to cut through. I managed to just slice around it in pieces and cut off the peel as I went. I used both mangoes for this.

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Miscellaneous, Mary, Recipes, Baking

snowcone cupcakes + lemon bars

The best thing about these cupcakes is that my co-workers all thought they were really snow cones.

How awesome is that?!

I saw the idea for this on justJENN’s blog and just tweaked it a little for my liking! I only used two colors and I didn’t add the straws – the spoons were good enough! The trickiest part of these cupcakes were trying to find the little styrofoam containers – I ended up getting them at Smart & Final for less than $2! You need the 4oz food container size – the cupcakes will fit in there perfectly after you bake them. The wooden spoons I just bought on Etsy from the Lemon Drop Shop.

Recipes I used: white chocolate strawberry mousse (skipping the last two steps) and these vanilla cupcakes.

Okay, onto decorating!

I used the same “cut a hole in it” technique that I used for the caramel cupcakes. Nothing fancy. Just use a knife to cut out a good sized hole.

Then stick the filling in! These were vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate strawberry mousse.

Yes. It is as delicious as it sounds.

Stuff the tops back on and then place the cupcakes in the styrofoam cups.

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Mary, Recipes

fresh corn salad

For the Fourth of July this year, I made a few things – including my standby, go-to potluck side dish, the pesto pasta salad. With summer in full swing, I wanted to do a fresh salad with one of summer’s best vegetables – corn on the cob! I whipped up this fresh corn salad in a jiffy – doesn’t take too much to put it together and the taste of fresh, crunchy corn is always a welcome to my tastebuds.

Before I give you this magically delicious recipe, want some tips on how to cut off that corn from the cob?

Sure you do!

I’m pretty sure I saw this on an episode of 30 Minute Meals, back when I used to watch that show all of the time.

Basically, you put a smaller bowl upside inside of a bigger bowl. You stand the cob on top of the little bowl.

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Recipes, Baking, Mary

caramel cupcakes with honey sea salt

At the end of June, our friend Chris flew into town from Tampa to spend a couple of weeks with us. For some reason that I don’t remember, I promised him baked goods on his first night in town. I was going to make red velvet cupcakes since I had some leftover buttermilk but then I thought I should try something else. I stumbled upon this recipe for triple caramel cupcakes and was instantly smitten. Had to make them! Stat!

These. Are. The. Bestest. Cupcakes. Ever.

The cake base uses a ton of brown sugar in it to give the cake a sort of caramel flavor to it. Then it has caramel stuffed inside of it. Then there’s caramel frosting on top!#!@!

Swoon.

It’s dangerous to make these. But you can bet that I will be making them again soon.

Kind of looks like a little hat, doesn’t it?

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Mary, Recipes

crispy creamy 5 cheese macaroni and cheese

I know it’s summer and you probably don’t want to turn the oven on.

But if you do, then I can promise you that this macaroni and cheese it totally worth it.

I’d endure hot kitchens over and over again for another creamy bite.

Our out of town friend (Hi Chris!) wanted me to make this again.

I didn’t though. Only because I wanted him to try other, new things!

I’m all about trying new experiences here, people.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to make macaroni and cheese. Each attempt was frustrating since I had bought a bunch of wonderful cheese only to get dried out macaroni and cheese. Or a cheese sauce that broke and so it looked kind of like scrambled eggs. Or just didn’t taste cheesy enough. I’m glad to have finally figured out my cheesy problems! This recipe is based on Martha Stewart’s version, but with a few tweaks of my own.

You probably don’t need to use five cheeses. But why would you not? It’s cheese, for heaven’s sake. Beautiful, glorious, delicious cheese. I got the idea for the brie because it’s one of the cheeses added in for the mac n cheese at Urban Eats. Splendid idea, I thought!

Oh, Cheese. I love you so much.

I need to also be in a good mood to make this, as it requires a serious arm workout grating all of that cheese.

You could, of course, buy the already grated cheese. I won’t judge you if you do. You can avoid the arm workout.

But grating it yourself is a bit satisfying. You worked hard for this delicious meal!

I also cook pancetta into my macaroni and cheese. It gives a bit of a salty porky delicious flavor to the whole dish.

Also: this make a lot of sauce so it looks soupy and runny. This is what you want!

Soupy = extra creamy macaroni and cheese.

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Recipes, Mary

frozen butterfinger pie

Need a quick and easy dessert for Fourth of July today? I got the hook up for you!

Last week I was planning on making dinner (macaroni and cheese — oh, I’ll have to post that one next week) and was asking Jake if he thought I should make dessert, too. He’s not a dessert person so he just kind of shrugged his shoulders at me. I decided it was better to ask Chris, our out of town friend, what he thought. He was much more receptive to the idea. Chris mentioned something about butterfingers and Jake then mentioned a pie, so butterfinger pie came up to the plate. See, I don’t even think of these things myself sometimes.

[The cast of characters]

This is a pretty simple no bake pie. You don’t have to freeze it – you can just leave it in the fridge – but freezing it gives it an almost ice cream like texture, perfect for a warm summer day. As you can see, you also don’t need a whole lot of ingredients to make this pie!

[Crush the vanilla wafers – bang, bang, bang!]

I decided I wanted to do this pie with vanilla wafers. You can also do an Oreo crust, graham cracker crust, or buy a premade shell. I put the wafers in a plastic bag and started to bang away on them until they were smooth crumbs.

[Melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar melds the vanilla wafers together to form a crust]

Add a tablespoon of sugar and six tablespoons of melted butter. Press it into a pie pan. I decided to bake mine for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees just to set it up a little, but you don’t really need to do that.

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