Eggnog Cheesecake

Okay, so, this is literally still baking as I write this. Hence, the OK picture. It's still in the oven :] BUT I knew I had to get this up before I forgot, and then it would disappear (into tummies)... I have no idea how this tastes yet, but if the batter and the smell of my house is any indication, it's going to be DELICIOUS. I'm making this to bring over to a friends house tomorrow for Christmas Eve dinner. I do believe it will be a hit!

The original recipe can be found here. Of course, I tweaked it, as I do to most recipes I come across.

Ingredients needed:

(Crust)

1 cup crushed graham crackers

3 tablespoons melted butter

2 tablespoons sugar

A dash of: Ground cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon

(Filling)

3 (8oz) blocks cream cheese, at room temperature

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup eggnog

1 tablespoon vanilla (okay, this is all I had!)

2 eggs

A dash of: Ground cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground ginger

Preheat oven to 325.

In a small bowl, mix together crust ingredients. Press into bottom of springform pan, and bake for 10 minutes. Pull from oven and let cool.

Crank up oven heat to 425.

I used my kitchen aid stand mixer, but you can also use a food processor or a hand mixer. Add cream cheese, sugar, flour, and eggnog and beat until smooth (this takes AWHILE). Add eggs, vanilla, and a dash of the spices.

Pour filling into crust, and if you like, sprinkle more spices on top. Bake for 10 minutes at 425. Reduce heat to 250, and cook for 45 more minutes.

During the duration of cooking the cheesecake, I added a "water bath"... All this was, was a cake pan full of water sitting on the bottom rack of the oven. The cheesecake sat on the middle rack. Also, there are many ways to take a cheesecake out of the oven. What I do is turn off the heat in the oven, crack it open, and let the cheesecake sit inside the oven to cool off for a few hours before taking it out.

Slow Cooked Cranberry Chicken

I found the recipe awhile ago, and stacked it into my food bookmarks. It looked so easy, and the ingredients were a little weird, so I wanted to see if they would really work. I finally had a half bag of Craisans that weren't being used, and the rest of the ingredients were on hand as well, so decided to try this. It was so easy, and SO yummy. The chicken just fell apart, I actually think that if you shredded the chicken, and put it on a bun with the sauce you would have a really awesome chicken sandwich.

Anyway, the original recipe is here. I tweaked it a bit and it turned out really wonderful.

Ingredients needed:

3 Boneless chicken breasts

1/2 bag of Craisans

1 cup BBQ sauce

1/2 onion (chopped)

2 stalks celery (chopped)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

3/4 cup water

Put all ingredients into slow cooker and cook on low for 7-8 hours. I always prefer to cook things on low unless I'm in a hurry.

Rainbow Cake

Well, I haven't been here in awhile! Yikes!! I do want to share a few new recipes though...

My first is one that I came across from another food blog, La Petit Pierogi. She had a recipe for a Rainbow Cake, and I thought it was so great I had to try it! It was so easy to make, and turned out SO great looking. I swear, the hardest part was finding a grocery store that had the gel food coloring in stock. Two out of three of the stores I went to were out of it...

More detailed instructions may be found here. Try it, I promise you'll like it. I won't go into detail on how to make it, but will list the ingredients I used.

Also, for the frosting of the cake, all I did was swirled Strawberry and White icing in the middle of the cake, and for the top, I frosted the whole cake with white icing, then dropped food coloring randomly on the icing and swirled it in.

Ingredients needed:

2 Boxes White cake mix

24 oz clear soda (sprite or ginger ale)

Gel food coloring

2 containers WHITE frosting

1 container Strawberry frosting

Head over HERE for directions.

By the way, sorry those pictures are so crappy. I took them with my iPhone!

Baklava

I've been wanting to make this for a LONG time. Baklava always reminds of me going to the Souvlaki cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska at Pioneer Park (It will ALWAYS be Alaskaland though). I love love love everything they create in that tiny cabin. Tonight I was making Gyros (find recipe under must make), and decided to make another Greek food to go along with Gyros. Baklava immediately came to mind. I found the recipe here and went to town. I was amazed at how easy it was. Peyton and I just finished up our first pieces, and almost melted. It was delicious.

You will need:

1 package phyllo dough

16 oz chopped nuts (I used finely diced walnuts)

1 cup butter, melted

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup honey

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease a 9x13 inch pan.

Toss diced/chopped nuts with cinnamon in bowl. Set aside.

Place two sheets of phyllo dough on pan, spread butter on top. Repeat this until have 8 sheets of phyllo dough in pan. Sprinkle a thin layer of nuts on top of phyllo dough. Cover with 2 sheets of phyllo, butter, sprinkle with nuts. Repeat this until you have approximately 8 layers of phyllo/butter/nuts. Make sure the top layer is 8 sheets of phyllo dough with butter layering every two sheets. Cut into 9-12 pieces.

Bake for 50 minues, or until golden and crispy.

While it's baking, bring sugar and water to a boil until sugar is dissolved. Add honey and vanilla and simmer for 20 minutes.

When baklava is done, pour water/sugar mixture over top and let cool.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

I know, I haven't updated in awhile. I don't know why, I just haven't been super motivated to blog. Shame on me!! I will say, that off the top of my head, in the last month or so I've also made pumpkin bread, chicken noodle soup, a few varieties of baked chicken, and some delicious crock pot recipes. Sadly, I have no pictures and they probably won't make it to the blog.

Luckily, I snapped pictures of these, they were delicious. The recipe didn't call for chocolate chips, but I figured I'd add a bag and see what happened. Oh. My. Goodness. AMAZING.

The original recipe can be found here. I omitted the icing and added the chocolate chips.

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 bag semisweet chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 350.

In stand mixer, I combined butter and sugar and creamed. I then added pumpkin, egg and vanilla. I added the remaining ingredients, other than the chocolate chips. When everything when mixed together, I added the bag of chocolate chips and mixed together with a spatula.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto cookie sheet, bake for 15 minutes or until fluffy.

Crock-Pot Clam Chowder

I've been wanting to make this forever... Well, clam chowder at least. Fall always reminds me of soups/stews and crock pot food. Even in Florida, where our "fall" weather right now hovers around 85. If anyone out there does ever make this, please let me know how it turns out. This wasn't very "thick" and so we referred it more like Clam Soup, rather than chowder. It was still really really good! My only advice, I cooked it on high for 4 hours and the potatoes were still a little "al dente" so you may want to increase the time. Enjoy!

2 cans whole baby clams (20 oz)

8 pieces pre-cooked bacon- chopped

1 large onion- chopped

6 large potates- peeled and cut into chunks

3 cups water

Salt & Pepper to taste

4 cups half and half

3 tablespoons cornstarch

Mix first 6 ingredients into crock pot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for about 5. During last hour of cooking, combine half and half and cornstarch, then mix into crock pot.

Original recipe can be found here.

Shrimp Tacos

WOW. These were amazing, easy, and... AMAZING. I loved them. Peyton and I ate a few, had some people come over, and the second they left we were back in the kitchen eating more of them. It took no time to throw together. My tip? Buy shrimp in a bag from the frozen section of your grocery store. These are usually precooked, with the tails already off, and they are already deveined.

Original recipe can be found here.

1/4 cup orange juice

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (I used the juice of 2 limes)

2 tablespoons sour cream

salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

8 oz of shredded cabbage (about 1/4 cabbage)

1 cup corn kernels

1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 lb shrimp

Small flour tortillas

Sour cream

In large bowl, mix together orange juice, lime juice, sour cream. Add cabbage, corn and jalapeno. Set aside, tossing every few minutes.

In a skillet over medium heat, add olive oil and heat through. Add shrimp to skillet. If shrimp is precooked, just heat shrimp and season with salt, pepper and garlic to taste. If shrimp is not pre-cooked, cook shrimp through.

Heat tortillas, spread a thin layer of sour cream on one side, add a bit of cabbage mixture and shrimp, and roll like a taco.

Spicy Sun Dried Tomato Pasta with Chicken

Word of advice with this one. Do not be afraid to use the red pepper! I was, so only added about half of what it asked for, and ended up adding more after I served it. I'm not usually a spicy fan, but the pepper in this was great. I think the spice with the cream was a great flavor combination! The original recipe didn't add chicken, but I threw some in there and it was great!

Original recipe can be found here.

4 thin sliced chicken breasts

• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1 small jar roasted red peppers, drained, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper

1/2 box penne pasta

Salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

Bring pot of water to boil. Add pasta and cook per instruction on box.

Heat 1 tblsp olive oil over medium heat in skillet. Add chicken to pan and season both sides with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Once chicken is cooked through, remove from pan and cut into strips.

Meanwhile, in another skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add garlic and saute for about one minute. Add tomatoes, cream, red peppers, and red peppers. Simmer until sauce starts to thicken. Add chicken.

Once pasta is boiled through and drained, add sauce to pot of pasta. Serve.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

This was so good. Oh my goodness! It was really fun to make, I enjoy making pizza. The flavors were awesome together! The original recipe called for gorgonzola cheese, but I used feta and don't think I could have liked it better.

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 red onion, sliced
• 6 slices bacon
• 1 (10 ounce) container refrigerated pizza crust
• 3/4 cup barbeque sauce
• 1 cup pre-cooked chicken strips (found in lunchmeat section)
• 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and diced, or to taste (optional)
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the onion; cook and stir until the onion has softened, continue cooking and stirring until the onion is very tender and dark brown, 15 to 20 minutes more.

Place the bacon in a large, deep skillet, and cook over medium-high heat, turning occasionally, until evenly browned, about 10 minutes. Drain the bacon slices on a paper towel-lined plate; crumble when cool.

Preheat an oven to 425 degrees. Grease a baking sheet.

Press the refrigerated pizza crust onto the baking sheet to fit the size of the pan. Spread the barbeque sauce evenly over the dough, and sprinkle with the shredded chicken, caramelized onion, bacon, Gorgonzola cheese, and diced jalapeno pepper. Season with paprika and garlic powder. Top with the shredded mozzarella cheese.

Bake in the preheated oven, for about 15 to 17 minutes.

Shepherd's Pie

I've never had this stuff before. Peyton absolutely loves it, and I think this might have been one of the first foods he ever asked me if I knew how to make. I came across this recipe while browsing the Food Network website, and decided to give it it a try. I didn't like it so much. I'm just not a fan of mashing a ton of food together... I'm not much of a casserole, one dish sort of girl. Peyton loved it though! I tweaked the recipe to use ground turkey instead of beef and it was great! My only advice? Spice up the potatoes on top a bit, they were a little bland.

Original recipe can be found here.

2 lbs potatoes (I used red), peeled and cubed

2 tablespoons sour cream

1 large egg yolk

1/2 cup vegetable broth

Salt & Pepper to taste

1 tblsp EVOO

1 lb ground turkey

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 tblsp butter

2 tblsp flour

1 cup beef stock

2 tsp worcestershire

1/2 cup frozen peas

1 tsp paprika

Boil potatoes in salted water until tender, about 12 minutes. In stand up mixer (or large bowl) mix together sour cream, egg yolk, and vegetable broth. When potatoes are boiled, add potatoes to mix and beat to make mashed potatoes.

While potatoes are boiling, add oil to skillet and heat over medium heat. Add ground turkey and cook through. Add chopped carrot and onion. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. In another small skillet, whisk together flour and butter and heat for 2 or so minutes. Add beef broth and worcestershire, whisk. Let heat until thickened.

Add peas and gravy mixture to ground turkey, mix together.

In a casserole dish, add ground turkey/veggie mixture. Top with potatoes. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and paprika.

Broil dish in oven for 4-7 minutes, or until potatoes are browned.