Asian Noodle Salad

This week I went to a Summer Salad Soirée and I wanted to bring a salad that was new to me and my friends. I was feeling like maybe a pasta salad, something with noodles and vegetables. I had been wanted to make an Asian salad, I just needed to find a dressing. So I searched around and ended up using the dressing from Pioneer Woman's Asian Noodle Salad. I included a lot of the same vegetables as she did, but in fewer quantities. I had read a lot of her comments and everyone said the salad made a ton! I wasn't looking for quite that much so I cut back on my vegetables and left some of hers out. You could definitely add more of whatever you like and less of what you don't. There are very few vegetables I think wouldn't be good in this salad. I tried to think of the most colorful ones! My produce department didn't have orange bell peppers, so I used green instead. I cut the original dressing recipe in half because, like I said, I didn't want to make mass amounts of salad. Double what I listed below for more, but I had plenty of dressing to generously coat the salad. A quick tip on the ginger for the dressing: to peel the ginger, just scrape it with a spoon. The skin comes right off. I used my Microplane to grate the ginger, super easy! In the end I thought it was a delightful, light, perfect summer salad. This is the kind of salad my mom would love, so I'll have to make it for her next time she's in town! Enjoy.

Asian Noodle Salad

Salad Ingredients:
1 package Linguine Noodles, Cooked, Rinsed, And Cooled
1 cup sliced purple cabbage
1 whole red bell pepper, sliced thin
1 whole yellow bell pepper, sliced thin
1 whole green bell pepper, sliced thin
1/2 bag bean sprouts
3 whole green onions
1 whole cucumber, peeled and sliced
Handful of pea pods
1/2 bunch chopped cilantro

Dressing Ingredients:
1 whole lime, juiced
4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Sesame Oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons fresh grated ginger
1 large clove garlic, chopped
chopped cilantro, to taste

Mix salad ingredients together. Wish dressing ingredients together and pour over salad. Mix well with tongs. Note: Dressing will keep for up to three days in fridge before serving, without cilantro.

Source: Adapted from Pioneer Woman

Butter Toffee

 

As it is two days before Christmas, I should be sitting on my couch writing this by the glow of my tree, Hallmark Christmas movies playing it the background and the house smelling of every kind of Christmas goodies. Notice I said should, not am. Instead, I'm sitting at my kitchen table, which is piled with junk, listening to a loud carpet cleaner and smelling the strong stench of cleaners that are trying to undo the musty smell coming from my wet, soggy carpets. Crazy, right? Turns out, not only do Southern Californians not know how to deal with the rain, but apparently my house wasn't build for it either. We've had a week of straight rain, and it all decided to somehow get under our house, through cracks in the cement, and soak our carpet and pads, creating a nice moldy/musty smell. I'm not surprised, as this same thing happened last year, but I'm quite mad that my landlord didn't fix it all the way last year. Anyway, hopefully it will all be taken care of by today, temporary fix anyway, and Brian and I can have a cozy Christmas morning here.

{Thanks Eduardo for helping me with this mess!}

Now that I got that out of my system, on to the butter toffee. I did a majority of my Christmas baking on Monday, before my house was torn apart. I was for sure making caramel, but thought why not give toffee a chance too? After all I already kind of did it once when I was experimenting with caramel, and this recipe made it look super easy. It totally was a no brainer. As long as you have a candy thermometer that works (see caramel post for my sad story) and a strong hand to stir with I'm sure you can make this work. I actually made this right before the caramel, and my thermometer managed to stay attached to the pot.

This is called butter toffee, I'm assuming, because of the 16 ounces of butter it calls for. That's four cubes! And the only other ingredients are water and sugar. The recipe is written in weight, and because I don't have a food scale (I know! Shame on me!) I did some research and some calculations to figure out how to measure using measuring cups and spoons. My toffee turned out amazing, so I'm thinking these measurements worked out just fine. (Listed below)

For the chocolate I used the Wilton baking chips, my go to chocolate. I would have loved to use some good quality candy making chocolate, but I already had these, so I figured I'd just use them and they worked out great. And they are so easy to melt, you don't really have to temper them. But they key to melting these is to not let them melt entirely in the microwave. Take them out every ten seconds or so and stir, and then remove them when there are still chunks of chocolate. Continue to stir and the hot chocolate will melt the rest of it. That way you don't get white, streaky chocolate. It tastes the same, just doesn't look so pretty.

I poured the toffee onto parchment paper in a cookie sheet. I had enough to do one full sheet and maybe half of another. I couldn't spread it as thin as the recipe says to because I didn't know it would fill the pan so much. But it didn't matter. One pan I put chocolate on the top and bottom, and the other just on the top. And I topped some of it with chopped walnuts.

Everyone I've given this too has loved it. I'm putting the rest of the toffee on my cookie platters for Christmas day dessert. It's going to look really pretty!

Butter Toffee Recipe from Pioneer Woman

Butter Toffee Recipe
(My measurements based on measuring cups and spoons, not weight)
4 cubes of butter,
2 cups + 4 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar
1/4 cup + 1/8 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 bags Wilton baking chips, dark chocolate

*Necessary Equipment: Candy Thermometer*
Combine butter, sugar, water, and salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.
Cook over moderate heat, stirring gently, until candy thermometer registers 298 degrees.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla until well combined.
Pour the mixture onto a silicone baking mat or good parchment paper. Use a heatproof rubber spatula or offset spatula to spread quickly before the toffee sets. Spread thin.
Allow toffee to cool completely. Blot to remove excess oil from the surface. Coat surface with half of the melted chocolate and immediately sprinkle with topping.
When chocolate has totally set, carefully flip over (it’s okay if it falls apart a bit) and coat other side with the rest of the chocolate. Sprinkle on topping.
Allow to set, then break into bite-size pieces.
Store in an airtight container.

Pumpkin Cream Pie

Last week Garrett and I started watching the Throwdown Thanksgiving episode with Bobby Flay vs. Pioneer Woman. While watching it I was browsing through her site looking for a dessert to make for a dinner party, we were attending on Sunday, and I came across her version of Pumpkin Pie. It's a pumpkin pie of sorts made with pudding and whipped cream in a graham cracker crust, and it is amazing.

On The Pioneer Woman site she gives her beautifully photographed step by step instructions, so I'll just let you go there to check it out. But you start with vanilla cook and serve pudding and make it with half and half and heavy whipping cream, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves. (I omitted the cloves because I didn't have any. We didn't miss them.) You cook the pudding until it thickens then add in pumpkin puree. I could have stopped right here and ate this as a pumpkin pudding. It was so delicious. I had to stop myself if I wanted to have any left to put in the actual pie. To the pudding mixture you add whipping cream that has been whipped up with brown sugar, hence the name pumpkin cream pie. You place all this in your crust and chill, chill, chill. It definitely needs to be cold.

This dessert went over very well at the dinner party. I didn't leave with any leftovers. I was a little sad about that, so tonight I was feeding a few people dinner and Brian and I both decided that we would be more than ok eating pumpkin cream pie again for dessert. So I whipped up another one this morning. On round two, when I went to the store I couldn't find the small pack of pudding, so I used the bigger box. I used a little eighth grade math and set up a few proportions to adjust the cream, half and half and pumpkin to account for a larger amount of pudding. It turned out just as good as the first. I might consider using the larger box instead, it filled the pie crust a little better.

Another difference between making round one and round two was the length of time I cooked the crust. The first time I cooked it for eight minutes and the crust was very crumbly when I tried to serve it. So round two I cooked it for ten minutes and the crust was very hard to cut making it equally hard to serve. So take your pick, I think I prefer the softer crust to the harder. But do note that they tasted exactly the same.

Brian and I are finishing the Throwdown episode as I type this, so I don't know if Pioneer Woman won, but I'd be willing to bet if she used this pie as her dessert she would have it in the bag!

Pumpkin Cream Pie

Pineapple Zucchini Cake

Our generous friends Jennifer and Andy, who gave us the tomatoes to make salsa, also gave us a very large zucchini they grew in their garden. They are currently remodeling their house and do not have a kitchen. So I thought I'd put my kitchen and their zucchinis to good use and whipped up a zucchini cake. I started searching around for zucchini recipes and was amazed at how many recipes there were for sweet treats made with zucchini. And most of them incorporated some kind of cream cheese frosting, which is a total bonus in my book. I found a lot of good looking recipes on the Tasty Kitchen Blog, and one endorsed by The Pioneer Woman, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I followed the recipe almost as written except I used vegetable oil instead of canola oil, it's just what I had on hand. I think I might add some nuts next time, and there will be a next time. I cut the recipe for the frosting in half, I just wanted a thin layer, and half a recipe was more than enough. As she suggested I put some pineapple juice in the frosting, it was a great addition! Definitely add this recipe to your zucchini collection.

Pineapple Zucchini Cake Recipe
Pioneer Woman step by step instructions

Strawberry Shortcake Cake

Sunday was my mother-in-law Kathleen's birthday. I was a little burnt out from all the cookie baking to do anything fancy for her birthday dinner. So Brian volunteered to make her a it and all I had to do was make a cake. So I wanted it to be something special, since it was her birthday and all! I had a cake recipe I found on Pioneer Woman that I had wanted to make, and this was the perfect occasion.

The cake is an 8 inch round, sliced in half (I did not do good on the slicing part) and filled with two layers of sweetened strawberries and iced with a cream cheese frosting. This is a real treat, looks impressive and has amazing flavor. I made the frosting and kept it at room temperature until it was time to frost, but that made the frosting too runny. It could have been due to the fact that it was another warm day in my kitchen. Next time I might put it in the fridge for a few minutes to firm it up. It was a little tricky to ice over the strawberries. It was messy at first, but it all turned out perfect.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake Recipe

Tres Leches

I've only had tres leches cake a handful of times, but have been dying to try one of my own. The tres leche name comes from the three milks that are poured onto and soaked up into the cake: evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and cream. I love cake that gets soggy from ice cream, or soaked up in a nice syrup or sauce, so this cake is right up my alley. Toped with some home made whipped cream, and tres leches is a melt in your mouth kind of cake. I took this to my father-in-law's father's day dinner last week and it was a huge hit. Everyone wanted the recipe. I got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman, so I'll send you over there to look at her step by step pictures (especially since I didn't have my camera during the first half of the cake making).

I found, after making the cake, that you don't need to turn the cake out on to a platter to pour the milk in. I didn't have a square platter that would fit the cake, so I just used a larger ceramic pan. But you could easily just keep it in the original pan, poke holes in the top, pour the milk onto the cake, and then frost. It probably looks a little better on the platter, but the taste will be exactly be the same, delicious! And this cake is pretty easy to make, but you do use your mixer a lot, to beat egg whites, egg yokes and again for the whip cream. This is one of those recipes that I wish I had a second bowl for my stand mixer. (Found out it's on sale at Macy's I'm headed over there today!) If you think you will would like this cake, give it a try, you will!

Tres Leches Recipe

Coconut and Chocolate Fudge Bars

So the no posting thing has been because of the no cooking thing! And oh how I've missed it. I've had my eye on the school year ending and looking forward to summer where I can devote more time to cooking, baking and other things I love. This week was the last week of school, and while my students were being entertained by projects I would not be grading, I had some time to search around the internet for new food blogs and recipes. I happened upon The Pioneer Woman's blog and her Tasty Kitchen blog. Both of these are filled with recipes and pictures that will want to make you drop everything and get in the kitchen. If you're not familiar with these two blogs, just real quick, The Pioneer Woman is quite amazing. She blogs daily about food, photography, her daily life and homeschooling. The Tasty Kitchen is a separate page, she created, where anyone can post up a recipe to share. (But I'm sure most of you know who she is, she's wildly popular.)

So I happened upon a recipe for coconut and chocolate bars over at the Tasty Kitchen. In the introduction to the recipe the author compares to them to Almond Joy candy bars. Sold! And lately Brian and I have been loving us some coconut. The recipe is simple to follow. It only makes a 8x8 pan, so not a huge serving. But that's ok because they are really rich. I cut them into pretty small pieces and they go well with a tall glass of milk or water. Also, it says prep time is 20 minutes, and cook time is 45 minutes. But in there you have to wait about an hour for the crust to cool and another two hours to cool after baking the fudge, before cutting, so be advised. (I actually made some other bars while I was waiting. I'll post those tomorrow!) I made these Saturday afternoon and we didn't cut into them until about midnight. We were out and about for a while, but mmmmm, what a great late night snack!

Here are some pictures from my baking, and a link to the recipe. Try these, I'm pretty sure you'll be thanking me! I've got rave reviews from everyone who has.

Making the crust:




Making the chocolate fudge:




Chocolate & Coconut Fudge Bar Recipe