Easy lemon bars

I wanted something sweet and I had a lot of cake mixes and cream cheese, so I did a search on All Recipes, and found a bunch of recipes for lemon bars. I ended up looking at a few and mixing them into 1 recipe and they turned out really good, so here it is.

What you need:

• lemon cake mix
• egg
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• lemon juice
• lemon zest

What you do:

• Mix the cake mix, egg and oil together. It'll be dough like, not cake batter like. I added zest of one lemon and a tablespoon of lemon juice because it didn't smell lemony enough to me. Put aside about a cup of this mix and pat the rest of it into an ungreased 9X13 pan.
• Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.
• Let it cool.
• This is very important, let it cool.
• Beat the cream cheese, sugar and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice till smooth. It should be spreadable.
• Make sure the bottom layer is cool before you try spreading the cream cheese mixture on top.
• Spread the cream cheese mixture on top.
• Take the dough you'd put aside and sprinkle evenly on top of the cream cheese mixture.
• Bake for another 15 minutes.

Cut into squares, diamonds, octagons, however you like them best. They are delicious. If cut into squares, they make 24 servings and each serving is a 3 points plus value, for my Weight Watchers friends.

My favorite salsa

Is one I make at home. It's so simple to customize to your own tastes, why would you ever buy a jarred salsa form the store? This is what I used:

• 1 medium onion
• 2 medium tomatoes
• 2 Serrano chilies (I usually use habanero but I didn't have any)
• 1 mango
• a few cilantro leaves
• salt, garlic powder and lemon juice to taste

Peel, chop into small pieces and mix it all together in a bowl. Add the salt, garlic powder and lemon juice to your taste. Enjoy with your favorite chips!

and it looks lovely with all the bright colors of the fresh fruits.

White chicken chili for the winter

When the sun is shining bright, but there's a chill in the air, chili is the food I crave. Jeff found a recipe at our new grocery store, Green Valley Marketplace. I made some changes but it turned out really good. Good enough that there aren't any leftovers.

What you need:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped (I used a red one and it added a nice color)
1 jalapeño, chopped (I skipped this so Oli could eat it)
1 can creamed corn
1 can green chillies
1 can beans, any white ones (I used great white north, you can use navy)
2 cups milk (recipe called for whole, I only had 2%, it turned out fine)
2 cans cooked, shredded chicken
Your favorite shredded cheese in your favorite quantity
Salt & pepper to taste
I also added garlic

What you do:

Put the olive oil in your favorite deep cooking pan/skillet/wok, heat it. Add onions, bell pepper and jalapeño to the oil. Stir for a few minutes till the onions look opaque.

Add corn, beans and canned chillies to the mix and stir well. Add milk and let it come to a boil.

Add chicken and lower to a simmer. Add salt, pepper and garlic to your taste. Let it simmer for 10 minutes or so to let the favors mix.

Ladle into your favorite chili bowl, sprinkle some shredded cheese and enjoy!

I also added some chopped up serranos into my bowl and it was delicious! The non-spicy version also got two thumbs up from Oli and Jeff.

It makes 6 cups. Serving wise, I'd say that's 4 servings because I had a cup and a half and it was enough for dinner.

Since I'm n Weight Watchers right now, I also calculated the points plus and it's 5 per cup.

Cornbread recipe

I need to type this out because I have made this a gazillion times but never recorded it and I forgot some items today as I was telling a friend what to do.

Ingredients:

• 2 packages corn muffin mix
• 1 cup butter
• 2 cans creamed corn
• 2 cans any other kinda corn
• 2 cups shredded cheese
• 2 cups sour cream
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 4 eggs
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 4 chopped jalapeno peppers

Melt butter slightly in microwave. Add everything else and mix well. Pour into a greased 9X13 pan. Bake at 375 for 50-60 minutes. Keep an eye on the top so it doesn't burn. The middle will be slightly wobbly, let it sit for 10ish minutes to let it set.

Enjoy!

Salvaging a baking disaster

I wanted to make mini cupcakes for a fundraiser at work. I had a box of orange cranberry muffins, that I decided to go with. But, after they came out of the oven, they were just stuck to the little paper cup thing and I hated that wouldn't come away clean. So, I took them and did this:

Then, I got a container of cream cheese frosting and some Wilton melting chocolate and did this:

 

Then, I got the mini cupcake holders and did this:

They sold out at the fundraiser. So, something yummy and good came out of my baking disaster.

Re-organization

So, our Super Fresh declared bankruptcy and closed down (I think all of them in MD did). Very sad, because one, the store was right across the street from us and well do I really need a 2?

But, during their closeout sales, I went a little crazy in their baking aisle. And my pantry went a little crazy trying to accommodate all of my purchases, and I went crazy with not having an organized pantry.

So, I remembered something I read on somebody's bog a long, long time ago and got myself to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought one of those hanging plastic shoe organizers.

And, voila! Behold what is now a usable, easily identifiable set of ingredients and not getting on nerves-falling out of the pantry when I open the door stuff:

Another step forward in the cake pop making

As you can see, I got my dipping technique down pat. I used lollipop sticks and used baking chocolate bars instead of chips.

Now, my problem is how do I get the chocolate to not pool at the bottom?

This recipe was: carrot cake mixed with walnut coconut frosting covered in white chocolate.

As I love everything in these pops, I thought they tasted delicious!

Second attempt at cake pops

Banana nut cake with cream cheese frosting

covered in peanut butter chocolate

And I am ready to buy a dipper, something like this. Because my microwave melting is not really helping with the dipping. I made some more cake balls/pops (I want to call them balls since I haven't put the lollipop sticks in them) yesterday. This flavors this time were banana nut cake with cream cheese frosting covered in a chocolate and peanut butter mix. They are delicious and I don't even like banana bread. But, the dipping once again sucked. It actually came out looking worse than before. I used chocolate chips this time which was what was used in many recipes I saw online. As you can see in the photo, it's not a smooth covering. (Sorry about the sucky iPhone photo, am at work or I'd use my Nikon for a better photo). I think I'll stick with bark or baking chocolate bars in the future and use a small fondue pot to do the dipping.

I am trying another flavor this weekend: carrot cake with walnut coconut frosting covered in white chocolate. Wish me luck.

Cake Pops

Ingredients

I have been fascinated by cake pops, ever since I had the Tiramisu ones at Starbucks. I saw some simple recipes online and decided to try my hand at it last weekend. I used Butter yellow cake, baked as the box suggested, mixed with a whole box of strawberry frosting.

Rolled into balls and refrigerated for a few hours.

Rolled and cooled

 Then, I microwaved the chocolate bark and rolled the cake balls in it. I need to get better at this, as you can see.

Dipped in melted chocolate

They might not have looked good but they tasted yummy. Pardon the terrible photos!

 I'm already thinking of the next flavor combination: carrot cake mixed with a walnut coconut frosting, covered with white chocolate.

Kheer

What you need:

• Gallon whole milk
• 1 cup white rice
• 1 can condensed milk
• raisins
• blanched almonds
• pressure cooker

What you do:

• Rinse rice really well and place in pressure cooker
• Add about 3/4ths of the milk
• Cover and cook for an hour (or till the pressure cooker starts whistling milk is coming out the top - that's what I wait for)
• Uncover, make sure the rice is cooked. It's probably gotten thicker, so add more milk till the consistency is what you like
• Add the condensed milk, raisins and almonds
• Let it cook on low heat for another 30-45 minutes till the almonds are soft, the raisins are plump and the house smells yummy

If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can use a regular pot, you just have to keep an eye on the rice while it's cooking or you could have a huge mess on your hands. It is important to not use cooked rice and milk. You want the milk to cook the rice so it tastes cohesive and not separate from each other.

Chicken tortilla casserole

Cooking, what't that? I could count on 2 hands how many times I've cooked from scratch in the last month. I cannot stand to look at another pizza slice or hamburger so yesterday, I looked up an easy recipe involving cream cheese, chicken and tortillas.

What you need:
3 tortillas - 8-10 inch rounds
shredded chicken - about 3 cups (I used 2 cans of cooked chicken total 25 ounces)

1 can diced tomatoes drained

1 can black beans rinsed and drained

the recipe asked for 2 green onions chopped but I didn't have any so I used 1 medium white onion chopped

1 container Kraft Philly cooking creme (for future, I think cream cheese blended with some sour cream, salt, pepper, and any spices you like would be good too)

3/4 cups shredded Mexican blend cheese

What you do:
Mix the chicken, beans, tomatoes and onion well. Add 3/4 of the spread to the mix.

Spread 1/3 of the mix into a pie pan, cover with 1 tortilla.

Spread another 1/3rd of the mix on top of the tortilla and then spread 1/ cup of the shredded cheese and cover with 1 tortilla. Repeat this step again.

Cover with remaining Philly creme and then the cheese.

Bake at 375, covered, for 20 minutes and then uncovered for 5 minutes.

Cut into pie wedges and enjoy!

You can see their image at the site; here are mine. It tasted pretty good, I would have added hot peppers to the mix. A salad would have been nice because the meal itself is very rich ad heavy.