Thursday, May 13, 2010

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 cup oat flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup nonfat milk
  • 5 oz. Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips (or your favorite bittersweet chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, stir together flours, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then the milk. Stir in the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto cookie sheets. Bake 12-14 minutes or until browned around the edges.

Makes 36 cookies.

Wheat Thins

Recipe from http://everydayfoodstorage.net/2009/05/10/wheat-thins-whole-wheat-food-storage-recipes/food-storage-recipes

In a medium bowl, whisk together:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour (whole white wheat flour is my personal preference)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 T. brown sugar
1 1/2 T. dry buttermilk powder*
2 T seeds (sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or a mixture of the two is good), optional

*although buttermilk powder is a somewhat unusual ingredient, it can be found in most grocery stores in the baking isle. I use it all the time in place of fresh buttermilk in recipes. It’s quite handy and has a long shelf life. If you’d rather use fresh buttermilk, leave out the powder and use 1/2 cup buttermilk in place of the water later.



“Now here’s the really cool thing you can do with this. You can mix up a whole bunch of batches of these crackers up to this point and bag them up in Ziplocs and put them in the freezer where they will sit just waiting for your next cracker emergency. I like to keep several cracker mixes in my freezer, labeled with the ingredients I need to add.” *Note from Crystal…I love it! She’s a woman after my own heart, making mixes to save time and make less of a mess and it makes the process so DO-ABLE!*

And those ingredients are:

1/2 cup water
3 T. oil or melted butter

Add these to the ingredients in your bowl (either freshly mixed, or dumped out of the bag from your freezer) This is olive oil I’m using here, but use whatever you have.


Stir together to make a soft dough. It will be very soft and sticky.

“Don’t over-mix the dough. It should be stirred just until the flour is all absorbed, and not kneaded at all. Once it’s all incorporated, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for about 10 minutes. This lets the whole wheat flour absorb all the liquid that it wants.

After you let it rest, divide the dough in half (eyeball it) and plop half of it on the bottom of a regular baking sheet that has been greased or sprayed well with Pam. You can also use a silicone liner, which is what I usually do, but for these pictures I showed just a plain old baking pan because not everyone has silicone liners. If you do have one, by all means, use it. If you do, you don’t need to grease it at all.”

“Once your blob is on the pan, cut a piece of saran wrap the size of your pan. Place the saran wrap over the dough and begin rolling with a rolling pin right over the saran wrap.”

“If your pans are kind of warped like mine, you may not get too far rolling with a rolling pin, but this is a really soft dough, and you can just press it and smooth it with your hands. This is where the silicon liners really come in handy– you can have the silicone liner flat on your counter, roll the dough and THEN put it on your warped pan to bake! :) But if you have just a pan to work with, smooth it out the best you can with your hands.”


“One half of the dough will cover the sheet pan entirely. It will be very thin. When you have it all smoothed out, remove the saran wrap. It will come right off.”


“We’re almost there! Now just the finishing touches. I use a pizza cutter to score the dough into cracker squares. You don’t have to cut all the way through the dough, but you can. Just don’t press too hard because I don’t want you to scratch your pan or damage your silpat because then you’ll be mad at me. Just lightly score so that you can break the crackers apart easily after they’re baked.”


“After you do several lines vertically, turn the pan to make some horizontal cuts. Finally, sprinkle the dough with a generous sprinkling of salt (table salt, sea salt, kosher salt, whatever you have), and you can sprinkle it with some extra seeds or whatever floats your boat. I used some extra sesame seeds here. You can get creative here with garlic salt, onion salt, etc.”

“There they are, all beautiful and ready for the oven. See how my edges aren’t straight, and some of the dough has oozed over the side of the pan? Doesn’t matter. People will eat them anyway. If you want to get really picky you can trim the edges with your pizza cutter, but why?”

“Oh, and don’t tell your 6-year-old daughter that pricking with a fork is not necessary. She thinks it’s an important job!” *Note from Crystal-YEAH, get you kids involved! They’ll love making their own crackers!*

“Now Bake at 350 for 14-15 minutes or until golden brown and crisp. They might be slightly soft right out of the oven, but they’ll most likely crisp up as they sit. If they don’t, you can always stick them back in the oven to crisp for a few minutes.”

“See, I couldn’t even get the picture taken before there were two crackers swiped from the bottom corner! The kids had these taken care of in no time. I was lucky to have some to take a picture of after they were broken apart into individual crackers. Here’s a really blurry picture for you!”




Monday, May 3, 2010

Yummy Spinach salad!!

Chicken Poppy Seed Salad
Resubmitted by Mindy (Originally submitted by Brittany)
www.sisterscafe.blogspot.com
Salad:
Spinach leaves
Romaine leaves
Grilled chicken, sliced (Best if marinated in Lemon Grilled Chicken Marinade*, but if you don't have time then grill with lots of lemon pepper seasoning)
Red onion, sliced thinly
Crispy bacon, crumbled
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Toasted almonds (or you can sugar the almonds. Put sliced almonds in a pan with lots of granulated sugar (about equal amounts). Cook on medium heat until sugar melts, coating the almonds as they brown.)

*Lemon Grilled Chicken:
Juice of one lemon (~3 Tb lemon juice)
3 Tb oil
1 tsp minced garlic (~2 large cloves)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp oregano
1 lb chicken breasts

Marinate the chicken overnight. For salad, dice the raw chicken and marinate it that way so there is more surface area to marinate. You can get away with marinating for a shorter amount of time this way. Grilling is best, but cooking in a skillet is great, too.


The best part... The Dressing**:

1 1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp dry mustard
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
3 Tb Maui or Vidalia onion, chopped
2 cups canola oil
3 Tb poppy seeds

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a blender, then slowly add the oil, blending until thick. Stir in poppy seeds. Toss all ingredients together with generous amount of dressing before serving.

**This makes a lot of dressing! If you need a really big salad for a party then start with a large bunch of spinach, large head of romaine, 4 chicken breasts, 1 lb bacon, etc. I rarely make a salad that big so that is why there are no "amounts". So have fun with it - you're going to love it!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Zucchini Casserole

Zucchini Casserole

¼ c. chopped onion (add more if desired)

This recipe comes from a girl in my ward. It's really yummy, and I got some zucchini this weekend, so I am excited about dinner tonight. I didn't know if this would fill and satisfy since there is no meat, but the boys at my house loved it, and requested it again.

1 c. sour cream

1 pkg. Stove Top Dressing

6 c. thick sliced zucchini

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 c. shredded cheese

1 cube butter, melted

Cook onion and zucchini in boiling water for 5 min and then drain. Combine soup, sour cream, cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Add drained zucchini to the cheese mixture. Mix well. Combine stuffing mix w/ butter. Spread ½ in bottom of casserole dish; put zucchini mixture on top of stuffing then top w/ remaining stuffing. Bake 30 min. at 350 degrees.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup... so good.

I love this recipe. It is like the Lion House Chicken Noodle Soup. My kids loved it, and Griffin even broke his yogurt diet to give it a try!

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp. chicken soup base
6 cups canned chicken stock (broth
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups chopped celery
3/4 cup chopped onion
2 cans (10 1/2 oz. each) cream of chicken soup
1/4 cup evaporated milk or 1/2 cup whole milk
Roux (equal amounts of flour and butter used to thicken). (I don't even use roux. It is thick enough without it.)
2 cups cooked diced chicken (sometimes I use a can of chicken)
2 1/2 oz. (about 4 cups) cooked noodles ( "Country Pasta, homemade style egg pasta" from Costco is good. It's like homemade.) or
I make my own, and it's pretty easy.
1 Tbsp. cold water
1 egg
Mix together and add about 1 cup of flour. Roll out on floured surface and cut into strips. Dry overnight, or just make sure and boil them good if you make them just before.

Heat chicken soup base (or bouillon cubes) and stock together. Add carrots, celery, and onion, and simmer until vegetables are tender. If noodles are not already cooked, I add them now as well.
Add cream of chicken soup and milk. Thicken with roux as desired, then add cooked chicken and noodles. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Makes about 2 1/2 quarts or 10 one cup servings.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Easy Sunday Dinner

We had a relaxing day, and realized we didn't have a plan for dinner at about 5 o'clock. I tried a recipe for German pancakes with buttermilk syrup and it was like dinner and dessert in one! We added some sausage patties and filled ourselves nicely! Enjoy.

Ingredients

  • 6 eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
  • BUTTERMILK SYRUP:
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 cup butter or margarine
  • 2 tablespoons corn syrup
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • confectioners' sugar

Directions

  1. Place the eggs, milk, flour and salt in a blender; cover and process until smooth. Pour the butter into an ungreased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish; add the batter. Bake, uncovered, at 400 degrees F for 20 minutes.
  2. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the first five syrup ingredients; bring to a boil. Boil for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in vanilla. Dust pancake with confectioners' sugar; serve immediately with the syrup.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

lemon bars

I brought these lemon bars up to Pocatello when we were there for Thanksgiving so I thought you all might want the recipe so you can make them too!

Ingredients:

-1 box of lemon cake mix
-1/3 cup of butter or margarine, softened
-3 eggs
-1 package of cream cheese, softened (8 oz.)
-1 cup of powdered sugar
-2 tablespoons lemon juice
-optional: 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 (or 325 for dark or nonstick pans). In large bowl, beat cake mix, butter and 1 of the eggs with electric mixer on low speed until crumbly. Press in bottom of ungreased 13x9-inch pan.

2. In medium bowl, beat cream cheese on medium speed until smooth. On low speed, gradually beat in powdered sugar. Stir in lemon peel and lemon juice until smooth. Reserve 1/2 cup topping; refrigerate. Into remaining cream cheese mixture beat remaining 2 eggs on medium speed until blended. Spread over cake mixture.

3. Bake 25-28 minutes or until set. Cool completely, about 1 hour. Spread with reserved cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate about 3 hours or until firm.

I baked them for 25 minutes. They may still look a little gooey but thats ok! You dont want the edges looking too brown.

enjoy the yummyness!! :)