I made this salad a few weeks ago to take to a friends 4th of July barbeque (I’m really late, I know). I love basil, it is so tasty. I’ve got three plants growing in my back yard and I have more than I know what to do with!
I’ve always wanted to make my own pesto, and now I finally have enough fresh basil to do so! The recipe consists of a creamy buttermilk based dressing with garlic and pesto, mixed with noodles, fresh veggies and real mozzarella cheese chunks. Its really easy and really tasty.
I came up with this recipe by taking bits and pieces from all over the internet, and mixing in some of my own tastes! It has quite a few steps, but that’s only because I made my own pesto, but its relatively simple.
Ingredients
Dressing:
1 large garlic clove, minced
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoons rice vinegar
Pesto:
(or use 1 cup pre-made jarred pesto)
(this part is from simply recipes)
2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Romano cheese
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts or chopped walnuts
3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Salad:
1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup green beans
1 cup chopped zucchini (about one squash)
(if you prefer different veggies, use whatever you want!)
1/2 cup shredded fresh Parmesan cheese
1 big ball of fresh mozzarella, cubed (or a bunch of the little balls, shredded if that’s all you’ve got!)
16 oz your choices of pasta (I used fusilli, but was seriously contemplating some bowtie)
Boil the pasta according to the box directions, drain, and allow to cool.
Mix together the buttermilk, sour cream, mayonnaise and garlic, set aside to let those flavors meld.
Prepare the pesto.
Combine the basil in with the pine nuts, pulse a few times in a food processor. Add the garlic, pulse a few times more.
Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream while the food processor is on. Stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula. Add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended. Add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Set aside.
If you don’t like crispy veggies, lightly steam the zucchini and green beans. Don’t let them turn to mush though, it’ll just make the salad a mess
Toss together the pasta, and other salad ingredients, reserving a handful of Parmesan, mozzarella and tomatoes to top the salad.
Just before serving mix together everything but the reserved ingredients. Top the salad with the reserved ingredients and a few whole basil leaves to make everything look pretty.
This cheesecake is only brought out during the holiday season. Mostly because it uses crushed candy canes and those are a little hard to find in the middle of July (starlight mints, the red and white ones, work but don’t tint the cheesecake as pink). Peppermint flavor screams winter and the holidays as well.
This recipe is so good, I’m just going to get to the point and let you try it for yourself.
(Please excuse the not-so-great photography this time, I’m dog sitting and the lighting in their kitchen isn’t so great for photos.)
Ingredients:
Oreo Cookies (or chocolate crumbs)
Butter or margarine, melted
1 envelope (or 1 tbsp) unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
16-oz cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup crushed peppermint candies
1 cup whipping cream
2 1.05 oz milk chocolate candy bars
1 9-inch round spring-form pan.
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Crush the cookies. I used a blender/food processor to crush the cookies. Make sure the crumbs don’t become too fine, otherwise the crust will be too hard. The original recipe called for 1 cup, but thats never enough to cover the bottom of the pan.
Mix between 2 and 3 tablespoons of butter for each 1 cup of cookie crumbs you use.
Start with a little butter, only adding more butter if the crumbs aren’t sticking together well. Adding too much butter makes the crust really hard. Press the crumb/butter mixture into the bottom of a spring-form pan.
Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven (350 degrees F). Cool.
Crush the peppermints or candy canes. I used starlight mints this time because for some weird reason the grocery store didn’t have any (its two days before Christmas people!). I used about 25 mints (usually about 3 candy canes).
The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup of crushed peppermints, I like using a little more about 1/3 to 1/2 cup. Adjust the amount to your taste, if you really like mint use more. If you don’t like mint, or are making this for someone else, use the original amount.
Soften gelatin in the 1/4 cup cold water. Stir over low heat until the gelatin is dissolved.
Combine the cream cheese and sugar together until well blended.
Add the melted and cooled gelatin.
Gradually add the milk, doing your best to keep the mixture as smooth as possible.
Fold in the crushed peppermints.
Chop the chocolate into small chunks. (I use about half a 5 oz hershey’s symphony bar, I like extra chocolate.)
Whip the cream.
Fold in the whipped cream and chocolate pieces.
Pour the mixture over the cooled crust.
Chill in the refrigerator until firm.
Slide a knife around the edge of the cheesecake to help release it from the pan. Slice and serve. (Pictures of that tomorrow.)
Oreo Cookies (or chocolate crumbs)
Butter or margarine, melted
1 envelope (or 1 tbsp) unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
16-oz cream cheese
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup crushed peppermint candies
1 cup whipping cream
2 1.05 oz milk chocolate candy bars, chopped
1 9-inch round spring-form pan.
Directions
Crush cookies into crumbs. Create a mixture of 2-3 tablespoons of melted butter to 1 cup of crumbs, increasing amount if needed to cover the bottom of the springform pan. Press mixture into the bottom of the pan and bake at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes. Cool.
Soften gelatin in cold water, then heat on low until dissolved. Combine cream cheese and sugar, mixing until well blended. Add in the dissolved gelatin. Gradually add in the milk mixing until smooth. Fold in crushed peppermint.
Whip the whipping cream. Fold in the whipped cream and chopped chocolate. Pour over the crust and refrigerate until firm.
Last night I went and hung out with Amy. She has been busy, busy, busy making chocolates for gifts for Christmas. She was already in the middle of finishing up the cherry cordials when I got there.
Cherry cordials are something you have to pay attention to while you’re making them, so I left her to her chocolatey ways. Instead I helped her mom dismember some retarded quilt squares that were put together backwards. We also decided the menu for dinner on Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve Menu:
Honey Baked Ham
Green Beans
Summer Corn
Twice baked potatoes
Pizza wreath
Cranberry Mint Punch
Corn Bread
And dessert provided by me, Peppermint Cheesecake (and its no-bake!). I’ll be making this Sunday night so if you would like to make one too here is a list of things you will need:
Oreo Cookies (or chocolate cookie crumbs), butter, unflavored gelatin, 16 oz cream cheese, sugar, water, milk, peppermint candy, heavy cream, and milk chocolate candy bars, some beaters, and a springform pan.
about 12 oz of crushed peppermint candies (candy canes or starlight mints, or other hard peppermint candy)
a 9 × 13 pan lined with wax paper.
Melt 1 lb of the brown melting chocolate until smooth.
Spread into the bottom of the lined pan so it is a uniform thickness. Work quickly before the chocolate sets.
Place pan into the refrigerator until the chocolate has hardened.
While the chocolate is cooling in the fridge, melt the white chocolate.
Take the pan of brown chocolate out of the fridge and spread the white chocolate ontop of the brown chocolate.
Sprinkle the crushed peppermint candies ontop of the white chocolate before it hardens, using your hands to press the crushed candy into the chocolate if needed.
Place in the refrigerator until cooled.
Remove from the refrigerator and peel away the wax paper. Break the large sheet of peppermint park into smaller manageable pieces.
Here is a simple recipe version of Amy’s Cordials, the amounts are not exact, you kind of just go along as you’re making them until you’re out of one ingredient or another, or have made as many as you want to (at least thats how we’ve done it).
Sorry I do not know what types of molds she had or what brand fondant she used. All of her supplies came from the Hartville Chocolate Factory though, so I’m sure if you call them they can give you the details! (I’ll also update this with a link to the information when I get it from amy later.) When you initially mix the fondant, it looks like a thick powdered sugar/water mixture. When it sets up with the cherries inside the chocolates though, it turns into a delicious cherry flavored liquid.
Ingredients:
Melting Chocolate
Fondant
Maraschino Cherries
Drain the maraschino cherries, reserving the juice. Slice the cherries into halfs or quarters (depending on the size of the cherries). Dry them the best you can with a tea towel or paper towels (be careful of towel fuzz!).
The fondant that Amy had was a 1 to 5 ratio of cherry juice to fondant, so for each 5 teaspoons of fondant powder, she added 1 teaspoon of cherry juice.
Melt the chocolate. Spoon a small amount of chocolate into each mold. Using a paintbrush brush the chocolate up the sides of each mold. Set in the freezer a minute or two to quickly set the chocolate. If the shell on the sides of the mold is too thin for your liking, add another layer of melted chocolate, and quickly freeze again.
Place a piece or two of cherry into each hardened cherry cordial mold. Top carefully with a small amount of fondant and allow the fondant to flow to the bottom of the cups.
When the fondant has settled, top with melted chocolate. Set in refrigerator to cool until solid.
I am a cookie making machine. This is the fourth type of cookie I have made in the past week (Chocolate Mint Snappers, Jelly Thumbprints, and some Peanutbutter cookies that are coming soon).
These are light, citrus-y, with just the right amount of crunch to them while still being delightfully chewy. The flavor is reminiscent of fresh squeezed orange juice that tickles your tongue. They’re just the thing to perk you up in the middle of a dreary, dark, cold winter.
Ingredients
Cookies:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
zest of 2 oranges
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Rolling Sugar:
1/4 cup sugar
red and yellow food coloring (or orange)
(or 1/4 c orange colored sugar)
Orange Glaze:
1/2 c powdered sugar
2 tbsp orange juice
Directions
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the egg and orange zest.
Combine the flour, salt and baking soda in a small bowl, and add in parts to the wet mix. Mix until just combined.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth (but work quickly and don’t add too much four or the cookies will be tough).
Cut the dough in half and shape into 2 rolls about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in waxed paper and chill the dough logs in the refrigerator over night, or at least 4 hours, until very firm.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix together the powdered sugar and orange juice to make a glaze.
Add a couple drops of food coloring to the 1/4 c of sugar, and stir, stir, stir, stir. Stir until there are no blobules of food coloring left and the sugar is orange in color. (It works really!)
Retrieve the dough from the refrigerator. It should have flattened a little into an oval shape on its own. If it hasn’t, thats ok too. Carefully unwrap from the waxed paper and roll in the colored sugar. Don’t be afraid to pat the sugar into the dough.
Slice the dough 1/4 inch thick, and arrange on a cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes until the bottoms of the cookies are very lightly browned.
If at any point the dough is difficult to slice, stick it in the freezer for a minute to re-firm it.
Transfer the cookies to cooling racks while still hot, and brush with the orange icing you prepared earlier. (Slide some wax paper under the rack to catch drips.)
These cookies are a holiday staple in my family. I can’t think of a year that someone didn’t make at least one batch of these cookies.
The original recipe calls for apricot jam or preserves to fill the cookies, but any flavor can work. I have found in the past that jam or preserves are best, jelly is too runny and has too much sugar in it. Last time I used grape jelly the fruity dots caramelized or escaped the cookie and ran all over the baking sheet. My favorite is raspberry and strawberry preserves.
This recipe makes about 7 dozen cookies.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon juice (I used the juice from half a lemon)
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest (I used the zest from one whole lemon)
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup apricot preserves (or strawberry, or raspberry, or peach, or …)
Directions
Start by zesting and juicing your lemon (if you’re using the real stuff).
Add the butter, sugar, and cream cheese to the mixing bowl. To soften the butter and cream cheese, I zap each for 30 seconds on high in the microwave (watch them so they don’t melt!).
Cream these three ingredients together until smooth and creamy (and tasty!)
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the lemon juice and lemon zest.
Mix until smooth and liquid looking. There will be a few blobs of cream cheese left, but it should be mostly uniform looking.
Combine the flour and baking powder.
Stir into the cream cheese mixture about 1/3 at a time, until just combined.
You’ll have to switch over from the mixer to a spoon and man power towards the end of adding the flour.
Cover and stick in the refrigerator or freezer until firm (it depends on how much time you have to make these). Do not skip this! You’ll be covered in sticky dough if you do.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Roll level tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, and place them 2 inches apart on a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick spray. The original directions say to use ungreased sheets, but my cookies stuck. Keep the dough in the fridge or freezer while the cookies are baking. This keeps the dough firm and easy to roll into balls.
Make an indentation in the center of each ball. I used a handy coffee scoop lightly greased to do this, but your fingers work well too.
They should look something like this:
Fill with 1/2 teaspoon of your chosen jelly or preserves.
The directions say to bake the cookies for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. The cookies become a little dry and too crumbly for my liking and I found that 10 minutes works just fine. The insides of the cookies are baked through, but are still soft and moist (the way a cookie should be).
Allow to cool for two minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Be careful if the jelly centers are runny, hot jam burns.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
2 tablespoons lemon juice (I used the juice from half a lemon)
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest (I used the zest from one whole lemon)
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup apricot preserves (or strawberry, or raspberry, or peach, or …)
Directions
Zest and juice the lemon (if using real lemon juice). Combine the butter, sugar and cream cheese. Mix until well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, than the lemon juice and zest.
In a separate bowl combine the flour and baking powder. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients slowly, in parts. Mix well.
Put the dough in the refrigerator or freezer until chilled (about an hour in the refrigerator half hour in the freezer).
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Shape level tablespoonfuls of the dough into balls. Place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Using your finger, thumb, or other implement make an indentation in the center to fill with jam/preserves.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until set and very lightly browned.
Need something to “spruce” up your holiday table? (Yes, that was a horrible Christmas tree pun.) Like playing with your vegetables more than you like eating them? Is the everyday veggie platter getting you down?
Build it up into a Holiday tree instead!
The production of this was sort of trial and error for my mom and I. When we first started the cone was about a foot and a half high (46cm). Halfway through decorating it we realized that it was way too tall and had to take all the vegetables off, saw off about 6 inches, and stick everything back on. Even a cone shorter than 12 inches will impress your guests.
We also realized that the cone was very unstable (no…I didn’t fold the tinfoil underneath the cone..). We ended up hot gluing it to the plate after we sawed a few inches off. Sticking the cone on a piece of wood with a stake attached to it would probably work well also. (We were going to have my dad do some last minute Yankee workshop style wood-fu until we realized hot glue would work).
If Christmas trees aren’t your thing, then try using other shapes instead of a cone. Styrofoam comes in all shapes and sizes, make a holiday topiary with a ball and wooden stake for the trunk/stem of the plant. Or make a holiday bush.
To embark on this project you will need:
1 Styrofoam cone from the craft store about 12 inches (30 cm) tall
at least 2 bunches (4 stalks or crowns) of broccoli to cover one side of the cone
at least 1 box of sturdy toothpicks
random other vegetables like cauliflower, cherry/grape tomatos, carrots, radishes, maybe even some fruit would work
random cheeses for spiffy shapes, if desired
cookie cutters to cut out said spiffy shapes
a paring knife
tinfoil
a glass serving plate/bowl that the cone will fit into with 3inches clearance around the base (or a plastic one that won’t melt with hot glue)
some decorative stones (or if your guests are young, or stupid enough to eat said decorative stones, some small round vegetables like radishes) These aren’t completely needed, but help make it look pretty
and a hot glue gun
Step 1:
Plug in hot glue gun, or create a wooden stake to stick the cone on (see intro above).
Step 2:
Tear off a few sheets of tinfoil and wrap the angled sides of the cone up so the food isn’t directly on the cone. The tinfoil should stay on the cone by itself pretty easily, if not, use a piece or two of clear tape. DO NOT fold the foil under the flat base, it makes a wobbly tree. Either trim or leave loose and flatten away from the cone (a little tricky, but can be done).
Step 3:
Working quickly and accurately pump out a blob of hot glue onto the plate and stick the cone on it before it cools! Make sure the cone is centered too. If you are using a glass plate you should be able to scrape the hot glue off when you’re done eating your masterpiece (it came off our glass dish). If you’re using plastic, test it first, or use a plastic dish you don’t care about too much. Don’t use a cheap throw away serving tray though, the hot glue will melt right through that (which is bad).
Step 4:
Flatten the foil so that it looks like a pretty tree skirt around the cone. Prepare your tree making station with all of your vegetables, your cutting utensils and toothpicks. (Oh its a good idea to rinse all your veggies before assembling as well.)
Step 5 Assembly:
Begin with the broccoli (and cauliflower if you want to mix things up). Cut the florets off of the really big stem leaving smaller stems of about 1-1.5 inches long (3-4 cm). It usually worked best by sticking the toothpick into the broccoli, than sticking it into the cone. Broccoli has a really woody stem and only occasionally (usually with smaller florets with skinny stems) did the toothpick slide through. (I don’t know how this works with cauliflower, I contemplated getting some, but they were $4 a head, and the broccoli was buy one, get one free for $2).
Start with the florets with the thickest stems first. Take the floret and stick it artistically into the cone, starting at the bottom and working your way up. (We started closer to the top in this picture, I wasn’t sure we had enough broccoli for the whole cone, which we didn’t)
Leave some space between the florets. You actually do not use a toothpick in each and every floret. After you have a good base, the broccoli starts to hold itself up, and you can just set the florets that are too small for toothpicks into the empty space.
You can see how the florets are more spaced out closer to the bottom in this picture:
Also in the picture above there is some white goo near the top of the tree that could be mistaken for flash glare off of the tinfoil. Its actually cream cheese. I thought it would be a good idea and help the little broccolis stick better. It wasn’t really, and just made a mess when we had to take it apart to make it shorter. You can try the cream cheese glue, but it gets messy. (Just call it snow if your guests wonder what all the white goo all over your tree is…)
When the cone is adequately covered in broccoli begin the decoration. The cone doesn’t have to be tightly packed covered in broccoli. Heck, we actually only covered half of our cone. Mom was like “but where are we gonna put it! Its only half covered!” Thats what walls are for! It helps to leave some space for sticking toothpicks in for other veggies for decoration.
Step 6 Decoration:
It works best in this case, to stick the toothpick in the cone, then place the decorating item onto the toothpick (tomatoes and cheese are much squishier than broccoli).
On my tree we used small pieces of carrot we just randomly stuck between the broccoli florets without any toothpicks. They only fell out a couple times.
For the tomatoes we stuck the toothpick into the cone leaving about 1/4 inch (.5-1cm) sticking out to which we stuck tiny grape tomatoes (these really were the tiniest grape tomatoes I’d ever seen!) and cheese animals.
Go crazy with your decorating! I thought about peeling off long strands of carrot with a peeler and wrapping it around the tree like tinsel. This could also work really well with different colors of bell pepper. If you know how to peel vegetables into ornate flowers like radish roses, go for it!
Use tiny cookie cutters to cut different shapes out of cheese or broader vegetable slices.
I used a big cheddar cheese star on top of the tree, but you can use whatever you want to!
Step 7 Finishing up:
When your tree is decorated to your liking, you can fill the base with those decorative stones, or with veggie dip. We were actually going to use dip, but we didn’t want to clean up that much stuff, so we put marbles in the base to decorate and help stabilize the tree, just in case.
(This is still missing a few cheese animals.)
Next time I’m going to try to find a super-mini strand of Christmas lights and electrify my display :-D. It will take much work, and effort to find strands without lead warning on them these days, but it’ll be awesome! I would have tried it this year, but I think that would have been pushing my luck with my mom…
Coming up soon, all those recipes for cookies people keep asking for, as well as tasty savory party bites from the big shindig!
How many dozen cookies did you say you need? Seven? Thats how many cookies? 84? And why didn’t you mention this earlier, like Sunday, when I loafed around the house with nothing better to do than catch up on my movie watching?
Last night I spent three hours making 9 dozen chocolate mint snappers – for my Mom. She has a cookie trade today with 14 other people. Fourteen people multiplied by six cookies each = 7 dozen cookies. The last two dozen we’re keeping. The recipe makes 3 dozen cookies, so two batches wouldn’t be enough, so three it was.
These cookies are rolled into balls then coated with sugar before being baked. They flatten out as they cool into a flat crispy crunchy cookie.
Of course I’m the brainiac who thinks, why yes, I can make all three batches at one time!
After making three batches in one bowl at the same time, I don’t recommend it. I had added about 2 cups of the flour when I realized my brand new kitchenaid wasn’t going to make it through the last three cups.
I ended up sitting on the floor so I could get a tight enough grip on the bowl to mix all of the ingredients together (don’t worry, no floor related ickness or dirt entered the cookie making process, i just needed the stability of the floor).
Finally the dough was mixed, I then spent the next two hours forming balls, rolling them in sugar and baking them for fifteen minutes. Not the most enthralling way to spend an evening, but definitely tasty, and I helped my Mom.
Chocolate Mint Snappers
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips (about 1 cup)
1 3/4 cups unsifted flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
sugar for coating
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt the chocolate chips over hot (not boiling) water. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl combine shortening, sugar and egg; beat until creamy.
Mix in corn syrup, peppermint extract and melted chocolate.
Gradually blend in flour.
Shape dough into balls using 1 level tablespoon dough for each.
Roll in sugar.
Place 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Makes 3 dozen cookies.
The holidays just aren’t the holidays with this tasty
Cocktail Weenies
Currant Jelly
Yellow Mustard
Mix equal parts mustard and jelly, enough to cover the cocktail weenies (but don’t add them yet!). Warm in a small crock pot until jelly blobs are gone. Add weenies and cook until warm.
(You can also slowly microwave the sauce instead of using the crock pot.)
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