Chocolate Flourless Cake for Passover

I always thought it would be hard to make this chocolate flourless cake, but then I realized that the ingredients that go into it are surprisingly simple.  Just Chocolate, Eggs, Vanilla and Sugar!  Sure, you have to separate the eggs and whip them up so they are light and airy, but even that was easier than I ever expected. 

Corned beef sandwiches.

What are a few of my favorite things to cook? Challah and Corned Beef! I thought it would be fun to pair the two together for a delicious dinner.

I cooked the corned beef according to the package directions. Each sandwich had two slices. The meat is so good that I didn't add any sauces to my sandwich, there was enough delicious moisture!

I have made this challah dough dozens of times. Normally I split the dough in two to make two loafs, or make one big loaf. This time I pulled out little pieces of the dough to make knots. I let these knots rise a bit before putting them in the oven. I made 6 knots this time, but there was enough dough to make 10-12 rolls.

I cooked these for 20 min at 350 degrees. I skipped the egg wash because I didn't want to waste the excess egg. A lot of the definition was lost when the rolls cooked up, but they had a shape that was perfect for mini corned beef sliders. Yum!

Fauxagna

It is no secret that Keith and I really like Lasagna. It is easy, fun to make, and there are plenty of leftovers. Now that I have a pasta press, it seems silly to me to purchase dry lasagna noodles (I still have to write up my post on my first lasagna from scratch.) Instead, I decided to make a faux lasagna with layers of pasta.

I love caramelized onions, and putting some into baked pasta dishes gives them a wonderful sweet twist. In the pictures above, I am caramelizing two whole onions because I wanted to save some for another dish I would make later this week. I wish that I had used a little less butter, not because of taste but because of health and there was plenty of liquid.

Keith loves garlic bread, and sometimes I'll make it from scratch. Today, I decided to just make some fresh bread to dip in the leftover tomato sauce.

The Francesco Rinaldi Chunky Garden tomato sauce is my favorite. I have no idea why I love it so much, but it really holds up well with a lot of cheese, so it is perfect for baked pasta dishes.

I cooked the pasta for 8 minutes, not the 10-12 recommended on the package because I knew it would cook more in the oven. I layered sauce, noodles and the cheeses. I used whole milk ricotta cheese (yes, I am bad), shredded mozzarella, and some spices.

The caramelized onions were sprinkled on top under the final layer of mozzarella. I only cooked it at 350 for 10-15 minutes since I just wanted to warm things up and let the cheeses melt.

I think the fauxagna was a complete success. Keith had 3 helpings!

Talapia

Whole Foods date nights are a lot of fun. Rather than going to a restaurant, we'll go to a nice market and pick up ingredients that are a little pricier than we may choose normally. We found a coconut lime marinade, decided to pair it with some talapia.

We marinated the fish in the fridge for one hour and then lightly sprinkled it with plain bread crumbs. . We baked it at 400 degrees for 13 minutes

The fish was light creamy and yummy. We still have plenty of the marinade for more dinners. We served the fish over some plain white rice and with a small salad. What a yummy date night!

Pasta Medley - Yum!

I had a bit of a dilemma when it came time for dinner. I had a lot of different kinds of pasta, but none of them were enough to make a complete meal. I therefore decided to combine a bunch and make a pasta medley.

The sauce had some stir fried kilbasa sausage, peas and tomato sauce.

I got really excited about this meal, and decided to take advantage of some more leftovers I had laying around. I had some homemade pizza dough in my fridge, but there wasn't enough for a pizza big enough for both me and Keith. (I had considered making an individual pizza for lunch, but had never gotten around to it.) I shaped the dough into stitcks, brushed them with olive oil and then sprinkled them with garlic salt.

I baked these breadsticks at 350 until they were solid (around 10 min). This meal that was just thrown together ended up being quite amazing! I will definitely make these breadsticks again.

Croutons

What do you do with stale bread? Well I decided to take advantage of my French Bread ends that were hard as a rock by turning them into croutons.

I chopped up the end of a stale loaf of French bread, drizzled them with olive oil and then sprinkled on garlic salt and oregano. Apparently I should have brushed the sides with oil first before cutting, since tossing the bread in oil didn't work as well as I had expected (it wasn't very even.)

I put the bread pieces in the oven at 400 degrees (F) until they started to brown. Voila! Simple and fast croutons... what an easy salad solution.

The croutons, just out of the oven.

My salad.

"Black Cat" Cookies 2

I still had a lot of baking coco and flour around, so I decided to remake the chocolate cookies I made last Halloween.

My notes from the first time I made this dish.

I made a few adjustments to the recipes. I used 1 cup 50% splendor + 1 cup sugar, and substituted 1 cup Crisco for the cup of butter.

The dry ingredients, unmixed and mixed.

The dough turned out super crumbly. I wondered if I added 4 cups of flour instead of 3... but the cookies came out so well in the end that I don't think it was a problem if I did.

The dough.

The balls of dough - before pressing

The balls of dough - after pressing with a glass dipped in sugar.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Recipe

In part of my quest to use up my pantry ingredients, I am trying to avoid buying cereal for breakfast. I decided to turn some plain oatmeal into cookies. I started off with a "Oatmeal Raisin Cookies I" recipe (of which there are many), but decided to tweak the recipe slightly.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Ingredients

• 3/4 cup Crisco
• 1/3 Cup Splenda Sugar Blend for Cooking
• 2.5 cups Shaws brand Quick Oats
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup raisins

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Cream together Crisco, sugars until smooth, then add eggs and vanilla.
3. Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl (flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda) and slowly mix into the wet mixture.
4. Stir in oats and raisins.
5. Drop large spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes* or until browned. (*Because the cookies are so thick)
   

Makes 18 large cookies.

The cookies didn't flatten that much. Maybe next time I make them I'll press the cookies to get a flatter, disk-like shape.

They’re thick and warm and delicious. Maybe I needed a bit more liquid because they didn't seem to be spreading out too much and stayed very thick. That being said, they made great breakfast bars!

We ate a few as they came out of the oven, so I couldn't get a picture of them all!

Bisquick Biscuits

A while ago I made my own batch of bisquick, which actually was really good. This is something that I will do more in the future, but in the period before my defense I decided to buy a batch of real bisquick so that I would be able to have biscuits whenever I wanted.

This biscuits are so easy, just mix and milk, and they are delicious and fresh. These aren't close to buttery southern biscuits, but they serve a different craving.

Sometimes I'll add chocolate chips to them. This time I added a little bit of salt and honey to a single batch. Since there are no raw eggs, I add these ingredients to taste to the dough.

What a yummy and easy breakfast!

Keith's Defense Cake

I wanted to make a fun cake for Keith, and we had a ton of cake mixes at home. I decided to mix Party rainbow Chip and Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mixes to create a CRAZY marbled cake.

The cake mixes for this epic cake

To create the marbled layers, I slowly poured the "white" cake batter out of the mixing bowl on top of the chocolate batter. This will spread pretty evenly on its own. I did some small twists and mixes to combined the layers a bit, and then pulled the spoon through side to side. And this is my marble cake batter.

The chocolate cake layer and then the white funfetti layer on top of it


After the marbling

Now this is a double cake batch, so I expected it to take around an hour to bake. The toothpick came out clean after 40 minutes, around the time that you would expect for a box cake anyway! The pan I used is the largest that I own, at 10.5"x15".

The cake after it was baked.

For Sarah and Marie's graduation cakes, we drew molecules, something that I'm experienced with drawing (I'll share those cakes at a later date). For Keith's cake I decided that it was prudent to first practice on a piece of paper to get the layout the way I wanted it to be. I took pictures of each step along the decoration because I wanted to have a good image of it for Keith in case I messed some of it up. I was amazed how adding a simple black border cleaned up the edge a lot and made the whole cake look very professional.

I am so proud of you, Keith! Congratulations!