She Who Cooks A Lot

I have decided to resurrect this little blog.  It's been idle for so long, I sort of feel like I'm starting from scratch with it.  :0)  So here goes.  I'm 37 years old, a stay at home wife and mom.  I have two teens that I homeschool (and currently trying to ttc #3!  Yes, I know that means we'll be starting all over.  :0)  My husband works in IT and works from his home office 4 out of 5 days.  So, this means that on almost every single day for every single meal...I have got a house full of hungry people to feed!  I will also admit that my family snacks a lot more than (or at least what I think is a lot more than) your average family.  My husband has a high metabolism and is constantly hungry.  That is not an exaggeration.  Throw two teens and a few of their friends into the mix and there is never a day that I don't spend a good portion of it in my kitchen.  So I'm going to share what's cooking in my kitchen on this blog.  Some days I may ramble about my life in general and other days I might slap up a recipe and call it good.  :0)

So on that note, here we go!!

Buttermilk Salad (pictured above)

This is an old (old, old, old) recipe that has been in my family for decades.  I much prefer old recipes.  I trust them.  Their reputation proceeds them.  They are like old friends.

1 large can of crushed pineapple

1 small box of strawberry jello

2 C. buttermilk

1 C. chopped pecans

8 oz. tub of Cool Whip

Drain about three quarters of the liquid from the pineapple.  Pour the pineapple and the rest of the liquid into a small pot and warm up.  Mix in the jello.  Now stir in the buttermilk.  Refrigerate overnight.  Gently fold the cool whip and pecans into the mixture and place in your serving bowl.  

 Enjoy!!

Tuesdays with Dorie ~ Tarte Tatin

*apples soaking in pinapple juice while waiting to be cooked

Laurie from Slush hosted Jan. 5th's Tuesdays with Dorie. (Yes, I'm painfully late. But better late than never right?)

It was a choice between two recipes and I chose to do the Tarte Tatin. It's sort of Dorie's take on a rustic farmhouse apple tart. It was so easy and sooo good. She says that if you make it once you will never need a recipe to make it again and I can see that that is true.

The only changes I made were using my own puff pastry for the crust and sprinkling the apples with a bit of cinnamon while cooking on the stovetop.

It did get a bit messy on me when I flipped it upside down after baking per the recipe. So I probably should have let the apples cook longer before baking. But it turned out soooooo delicious. I didn't expect to love this recipe as much as I did. This will definitely get made again. My husband loved it too. But maybe next time, I'll forgo the whole flip-it-upside-down part. I think it's pretty as can be straight out of the oven.

Homemade Bladerdeeg * better known as Puff Pastry

I've always wanted to try a puff pastry from scratch but, quite honestly, have been too intimidated to do so. So for my first attempt, I searched for a recipe that looked fairly easy and straight forward. This particular one got very good reviews so I chose it as my starting point.

Bladerdeeg

**********

1 1/2 C. flour

1 C. butter (*I know the pic only shows 1/2 C. but the whole cup's worth made it into the recipe.)

1/2 C. sour cream

Cut butter into flour until it resembles crumbs.

Stir in sour cream. Turn onto a floured board and knead until it just holds together.

Form it into a ball, flatten it just a bit and then wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours to overnight.

Cut dough in half, working with one half at a time while keeping the other half in the refrigerator.

Pound the dough with a heavy rolling pin to make it pliable.

Yield: 2 puff pastry

I know this isn't a 100% traditional puff pastry, but it was easy, it did puff up prettily, and the flavor was sooo good! It didn't puff up in quite the same way a store bought one does but it still puffed none the less. I'm quite happy with it and this will be a keeper recipe. It is now my go-to-guy for puff pastry.

TWD

Taking care of a sick child ~ so no TWD today. I hope to be back with bells on next week!

Creamiest Lime Cream Pie

This week's TWD was picked by Linda at Tender Crumb. I tweaked a few things in this recipe to make it more to our liking. First of all, I cut the amount of butter used. The recipe called for 2 1/2 sticks of butter to go in the cream. Holy. Cow. I remember just how buttery the buttercream frosting tasted in the Perfect Party Cake and I didn't want to repeat that. So I used 1 1/2 sticks of butter instead. It tasted just fine with that and, truth be told, I could have gotten away with just one stick.

I also supplemented the fresh squeezed lime juice with bottled because my 3 limes only gave half the amount needed. No biggie. Instead of using a regular pie crust or a graham cracker one, I made my own from pecan sandies. Have you ever had a pie with a pecan sandie crust? Oh my you must try it. Those little cookies translate perfectly into a cookie crumb crust.

Very pretty.

I also didn't do the meringue. I'm not a fan. So I just topped it with Cool Whip instead.

This was a good pie and got the thumbs up around here, but it was a little more labor intensive than I had thought, what with all the whisking for such a long time while making the cream. I have another recipe for a "Creamy Lemon Pie" that I've been making for years that tastes very similar to this one and is a breeze to make. Considering the flavors are so similar and the work involved is so drastically different, I think I'll stick with my old favorite. :-)

Classic Banana Bundt Cake -- with a twist

This week's submission was pretty much a straight forward banana bundt cake. But since a friend had gifted me with a large bag of zucchini, I decided to use half zucchini and half bananas. This turned out to be perfect because while I like banana cakes and breads, I'm not too fond of an overly strong banana flavor. This cut the banana flavor a bit and made for one very moist cake. I used 2 cups total of banana/zucchini mixture.

There was no need for icing or glaze because it was so moist and had a good flavor all on it's own.

This week's host is Mary at the Food Librarian. She has the recipe posted on her blog if you want to give it a try. ~~~

TWD - Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies

I actually made these brownies twice. The first time I followed the recipe to the T with the exception of the nuts. I left them out because we have someone here who is allergic. The first batch...well, quite honestly we are not big fans of coffee flavoring in our chocolate. Chocolate? We love it. Coffee? We love that too. We just don't like it together.

Also, that first batch turned out rather runny. I'm not sure why. I know they were supposed to be rich and gooey, but this was just waaaay more gooey than anyone could have intended them.

So, I made a second batch. I made a few changes and made them in a more traditional way. I left out the coffee and the cinnamon and I used semi-sweet chocolate.

And you know what? They were wonderful. They were thin, ooey gooey and rich just like others have said.

Batch #1 - no so good

Batch #2 - Yum ~~~~~

Head on over to this week's host blog, Surviving Oz, if you want the recipe.