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Those Reeces Cookies

ReecesCookiesThis recipe is another payment in the “family cookbook” series. I’ve been collecting recipes for years and I publish and share them on this blog. A few years ago, I started designating some as “family recipes.” To garner this status the recipe must have been cooked by us at least a handful of times and judged to be superior in every way.

My efforts redoubled when a few months ago, my then-five-year-old daughter asked me how she would know how to cook all of her favorite things when she left for home. I was pleased that she asked the question and that even at her age, she has a special connection to cooking with us. It makes me feel like I’m doing my job right, that’s for sure.

These cookies were found on the internets (probably pinterest) and they are something else. They are in most ways a normal chocolate chip cookie, but the batter contains both peanut butter and pudding mix and that seems to make them a bit softer and more tender than your average chocolate chip cookie and very very tasty, especially with milk.

Those Reeces Cookies

adapted from Sweet Pea’s Kitchen

Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 C all purpose flour
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 1 3.4 oz box instant vanilla pudding mix
  • 3/4 C unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/2 C creamy peanut butter
  • 1/2 C sugar
  • 1/2 C brown sugar
  • 2 lg eggs
  • 1 t vanilla extract
  • 1 T honey
  • 1 C Reece’s Pieces candy
  • 1/2 C chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350 and prepare two cookie sheets. Original instructions use parchment paper, but I don’t find this necessary. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and pudding mix. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter, sugars and peanut butter until smooth. Add the eggs one at a time, making sure they are thoroughly combined after both additions. Add the honey and vanilla extract and scrape down the sides of the bowl if necessary. On low speed, add the flour and mix to combine. Again, scrape the sides of the bowl if necessary. Add Reece’s Pieces and chocolate chips and mix to combine.

Roll dough 1.5 inch balls and place a couple of inches apart on your cookie sheets. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Cookies will be starting to look just a little brown on top, but go ahead and take them out and let them cool on the cookie sheets for a couple of minutes and they will set. You don’t want to over cook them or they can become dry. VERY important!

They are incredibly wonderful with milk. mmmmmm

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Crockpot Green Curry Chicken

greencurryThere is little I like better than coming home from work and having dinner waiting. And if it’s healthy, delicious food that the whole family likes? Purrrrfect. This meal really hits the sweet spot for us. I adapted theoriginal recipe comes from this post and it has quickly become a family favorite, especially for Miss Tabby, the impetus of this whole project.

Crockpot Green Curry Chicken

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
  • 2 medium onions roughly chopped
  • one head of garlic, minced
  • 2 15 oz cans lite coconut milk
  • juice of 2 limes
  • 4 oz green curry paste (we use Thai kitchen)
  • 1/4 C brown sugar
  • 2 t salt
  • 1 t black pepper
  • 2 T cornstarch
  • 32 oz frozen stirfry vegetables
  • rice to serve if desired

Directions

This is a great spot to use the food processor if you’re so inclined. I take both onions, quarter them and toss them in the food processor with the cloves of garlic and pulse a few times. That makes prep pretty darn quick. Otherwise, chop, mince like normal.

Place the chicken in the bottom of the crockpot and throw the salt and pepper on it. Mix it up a bit. Then mix up the coconut milk, lime juice, curry paste, and brown sugar and pour it over the chicken. Cook on high for 4-5 hours.

About 30 minutes before you want to eat, stir in the frozen veggies. Also, this is a great time to start your rice!  Then mix the cornstarch with about 2 T water and then mix that into the curry. Continue to cook until the vegetables are warmed and the sauce thickens.

Serve yummy veggies and meat over a little rice. Mmmmmm

 

This has a little kick to it, kind of on the back side, but it’s not really spicy (i.e. both kids like it). You could definitely spice it up with some thai chiles if desired. In any case, it is

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Sizzling Asian Steak Salad

sizzlingsteakI haven’t been great about posting recipes lately. It’s because I’ve been busy, not because I haven’t been cooking. We cook all the time. I think we have some sort of bizarre street cred at Ben’s school because he is always bringing semi-“bizarre” lunches. But I have resolved to continue putting up the recipes that our family enjoys the most for one little reason. Tabby asked me to.

Well she didn’t ask my specifically, but she said something to me a couple of weeks ago about teaching her how to cook and her being about to make food for herself when she leaves our house (she sometimes has strangely long-range planning for an almost-six-year-old). So I resolved to make sure I post the recipes that have caught our fancy and someday, I will make them into a book for the kids.

This recipe has been on our radar for a few months now. It comes to us from one of my favorite food bloggers, Iowa Girl Eats. It is changed VERY little because it is basically perfect as conceived, but I will adjust quantities and some instructions to reflect how we make it.

Sizzling Asian Steak Salad

Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the steak marinade:
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
1/4 C  low-sodium soy sauce
2 T mirin (sweet Japanese cooking wine)
1 heaping T brown sugar
4 cloves garlic
24 oz strip steak, cut into bite-sized pieces

For the salad dressing:
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
1/4 C low-sodium soy sauce
3 T honey
2 T lime juice
4 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons fresh ginger

For the salad:
1 small red onion, quartered and thinly sliced
12-16 cups baby spinach (or other lettuce)
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
2 green onions, chopped

Directions:

This is a recipe made for the immersion blender! We stick all the ingredients for the marinade (except the steak, obviously) in a bowl and blend until smooth. It makes things super simple. But if you don’t have an iBlender, you can just grate or mince the garlic. Then you place the steak in a bag or a shallow dish and pour the marinade over it. 30 minutes or up to 2 hrs to marinate, stir halfway through. To make the dressing, you can do the same routine as the marinade. Place all ingredients in a bowl and iBlend or you will need to grate or mince the garlic and ginger and then whisk together or shake in a jar.

Once the steak is done marinating, heat a fry pan to medium high and then add the marinaded steak and onions. Saute for about 3-4 min per side (flank gets tough if you over-cook, so don’t!). Remove from pan and set aside. Combine salad greens, tomatoes and dressing (you will probably need less than 1/2 – just save the rest for next time) and toss until coated. Divide evenly amongst 4 plates, top with steak and green onions and ENJOY!

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5 Spot Pancakes

Since we’re camping this weekend I thought I’d FINALLY share my favorite pancake recipe with you. This came up in a search last year when I was looking for camping recipes. We made it on our first camping trip in our pop-up and it was an instant hit. And we’ve been making it ever since. We’ve made it times other than camping as well, but I cannot imagine a camping trip without it and I’m pretty sure it will make an appearance each time we go.

When we go camping, I take the dry ingredients and measure them out and mix them up (and store them in a plastic container. I pre-measure the buttermilk into a jar and keep that in the cooler or camper fridge until ready to use. An egg and a little butter and some bananas is all that’s left – and of course some syrup. These come out super light and fluffy and amazingly tasty!

One recipe should do well for a family of four if two of the four are light eaters or small children, but any more than that and you’ll probably want a double recipe. Worst case scenario you can feed your fellow campers. I have also found it unnecessary to oil the griddle when I make these (presumably because of the butter in the batter) but if you find them sticking, obviously Pam it up.

5 Spot Pancakes (with Bananas)

adapted from Sunset Magazine

Ingredients

  • 3/4 C all-purpose flour
  • 6 T whole-wheat flour
  • 1 1/4 t baking powder
  • 3/4 t baking soda
  • 1 1/2 t sugar
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 1/2 C buttermilk
  • About 3 T melted butter or margarine
  • 2 ripe bananas, peeled and thinly sliced or other toppings of your choice (blueberries!)

In a bowl, mix all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt. In another bowl, whisk to blend eggs, buttermilk, and 3 tablespoons butter. Add to dry ingredients and stir just until batter is evenly moistened.

Ladle batter, 1/4 cup at a time, onto a medium-hot (350°) griddle or 10- to 12-inch nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Put 3 to 5 banana slices onto each pancake and cook until edges of the cake look dry, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn with a wide spatula and cook until browned on the bottom, 3 or 4 minutes longer. Serve pancakes immediately!

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Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps

Well April is almost done and so is my fourth cookbook, Great Food Fast. I have nothing but praise for this cookbook. I loved the full-color photos of EVERY recipe. I love the organization (by season!) and I loved the food. I actually tried EIGHT recipes from this (yay, made it!) book.

and for the finale … Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps. Continue reading “Chicken Stirfry Lettuce Wraps”

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Pasta with Salmon, Peas and Mint

I frequently get a surprised reaction when I reveal that my kids like fish, but they do, like a LOT. We are met with squeals of delight when we mention fish is on the menu. I like this kind of weird! So I knew it was a pretty done deal when I selected this recipe from Great Food Fast to try out. Salmon is instantly popular and add pasta to it? Slam dunk. That’s the right basketball metaphor isn’t it? I’m more sure of football: TOUCH DOWN!

As an added bonus, we got to use the fresh mint from our garden and I am always a fan of that. Matt is constantly threatening to eradicate my precious mint before it takes over the neighborhood, but I say he’s a spoil sport. But I figure I better use it while I can and it grows so fast I can harvest virtually all the mint I want and still have tons left over.

Pasta with Salmon, Peas and Mint
adapted from Great Food Fast

Ingredients

  • 1 pound short pasta (rotini, farfalle, cavatappi, elbow macaroni?)
  • 1.5 lbs salmon (skin removed)
  • juice and zest of 2 lemons
  • 10 oz frozen peas, defrosted
  • 2 T unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint plus more for serving

Cook pasta according to al dente. Reserve 1 C pasta water and return to pot. Meanwhile, season salmon with S&P and place in a large skillet. Add a 1/4 cup of water and the lemon juice and zest. Bring to a boil over medium high heat and steam for 10 minutes. Add peas and steam until they are tender, 2-3 more minutes.

Combine salmon, peas and cooking water with the pasta. Add butter, mint and season with S&P to taste. Stir gently breaking the salmon into large flakes. Add reserved pasta water for desired consistency. Serve topped with a little extra mint if you like.

 

This was a great recipe and just as tasty leftover as it was the evening we first made it. The kids devoured it and asked for seconds. I would like next time to add just a little cheese, perhaps Parmesan or Romano or maybe feta? just to see how it would be.

Pasta with Salmon, Peas and Mint

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Broccamole!

Man, this week is kicking my butt. Long days at the office. Plenty of training to do (next race is in 12 days), kids have been … a bit on the frustrating side, house is a total mess. I don’t like feeling like this … under water, stressed. I like all my ducks in a row, all my plates spinning and it isn’t that way this week.

Well anyhow, enough of my whining. I’ve been wanting to share this recipe with you. A while back, I pinned and later tried a recipe for Crack Broccoli. It’s basically roasted broccoli with a little dressing and it is YUMMY. We’ve made it almost once a week since we first discovered it and it was Ben who came up with the name which we now use to refer to it: Broccamole! “Guacamole!” (presumably from “Holy Guacamole” is one of his favorite interjections and he charmingly bungled it into Broccamole! one night when we had this, and so now it is.

Broccamole

Ingredients

  • 1 large head broccoli
  • 3 Textra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 t kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
  • 1/2 t sugar

Line a cookie sheet with foil and place it in the oven. Heat the oven to 500 degrees. Cut broccoli into smallish florets and lightly peel the stems. Drizzle with the olive oil, sprinkle with salt and sugar and toss to combine. When the cookie sheet and oven are heated, remove the sheet from the oven. Work quickly and place all pieces of broccoli in a single layer on the sheet. Place as much of the surface area on the sheet as possible – this is where it will brown and be real tasty!

Put the sheet back in the oven and roast 9-10 minutes until broccoli is tender and lightly browned. Serve immediately with a drizzle of lemon juice if you’ve got a bit on hand.

Even if you don’t like broccoli you should really try this. Everyone in our house loves it!!

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Halfway Cookies

I knew when I pinned this recipe for Halfway Cookies that I would have to try it. I almost overlooked it on Friday when we were trying to figure out a dessert when we were having my family to dinner but I noticed it at the last moment and I am SO SO glad I did. It is by far one of the best desserts I’ve ever tried … a little salty in with the sweet, a delightful crunch with the meringue and very much like a chocolate chip cookie in other ways. WONDERFUL. I am sure I will be making these regularly for a long time to come.

Halfway Cookies

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 cup brown sugar, divided
  • 2 eggs, separated
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350°. Cut two pieces of aluminum foil and fold them to match the width of the pan. Criss cross them each direction of the pan so that the bars will be easily lifted out. Spray aluminum foil with non-stick spray. Whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a small bowl. In a mixer, cream together the butter, the granulated sugar and just 1/2 cup of the brown sugar until it looks like smooth frosting. Separate the eggs, reserving the whites. Mix the yolks into the butter-sugar mixture one at a time until they are completely absorbed, then mix in the water and vanilla. With the mixer at a low speed, add the flour mixture and beat gently until all the flour has been absorbed and the dough looks crumbly.

Press the cookie dough gently into the pan with your hands, making sure the surface is even. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top of the cookie dough and press them slightly into the dough. This will help keep them from moving when you add the meringue.

Using a mixer with a clean bowl and a whisk attachment, start whisking the egg whites. Gradually increase speed to medium-high. When the egg whites are very frothy and look like loose foam, start adding the remaining cup of brown sugar a little at a time. Continue increasing speed to the highest setting. When all the sugar has been added, continue whipping the meringue until it it comes to soft peaks. It should look like “glossy, soft-serve ice cream.”

Spread the meringue down the middle of the pan. It is really sticky and pretty hard to work with. Use a spatula to gently spread the meringue from the middle to the edges. When you get it too thin it disturbs the chocolate chips, so be careful. I think it might be worth it to add another egg white and maybe a bit more brown sugar to make just a little more meringue.

Cover pan with parchment paper to prevent scorching and bake for 20 minutes, then remove the parchment. Continue baking for an additional 5-10 minutes, until the edges look toasted and are pulling away from the sides of the pan. Cool completely, lift out and cut into bars.

Ooh, ahh, drool and ENJOY. With milk, if you please! The recipe says you can replace the chocolate chip layer with lots of other things like butterscotch chips, jam, dried fruit, maybe coconut??

Nannersp
Check out everyone’s great Pinteractive Posts on Nanette’s site!
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Po’ Boy Sandwiches

We have been having a great time trying out the recipes from Moosewood Simple Suppers. This one was one I probably wouldn’t have tried on my own, but a friend from work who I first pointed towards Moosewood cookbooks, tried this one out and was raving, so I gave it a go. It was like so many things Moosewood. Simple, but so so tasty.

Po’ Boy Sandwiches

  • 4-6 filets of firm white fish (we used tilapia)
  • 1/4 C corn meal
  • 1 T butter or olive oil
  • 1 tsp old bay or other seafood seasoning
  • 4-6 rolls
  • mayo and ketchup or tartar sauce
  • lettuce and tomatoes
  • thinly sliced onions

Directions

Mix together the cornmeal and seasoning. Pat dry the fish fillets and dredge them in the cornmeal mixture. Heat the butter or olive oil over medium high heat in a large skillet. Place the fish in the skillet in a single layer and cook for about three minutes per side flipping only once, until cooked through and flaking when piereced with a fork.

Serve the fish on the rolls spread with tartar sauce or a mixture of mayo and ketchup. Garnish with lettuce, tomatoes and onions. We had our homemade pickles on the side and these would be great with some potato chips or something similar.

Everyone in the family loved this, though only Matt and I ate these as sandwiches. The kids just dug into the fillets and the two extra I’d made for leftovers wound up in happy little bellies.

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Strawberry Limeade Smoothie and Feb Cookbook Wrap-up

Well February has just about come and gone, and with it my plans to review eight recipes from The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook. I didn’t quite make all of them this go-around, but I gave it a good shot! Hopefully we’ll do a bit better next go around. The good news is that I did enjoy most of the recipes we made and I would like to try the few that we missed and maybe some more. Continue reading “Strawberry Limeade Smoothie and Feb Cookbook Wrap-up”