Lemon Cream Cheese Crumble Bars

I came up with this recipe after my 2-year-old found the cinnamon-sugar graham crackers in my pantry. Unfortunately, he tried to 'open' one of the three smaller packages inside. He didn't succeed in getting to the crackers (which is great, I don't like having sugared-up kids), but he did crush them inside the package pretty thoroughly. Not wanting to toss out perfectly good food, I came up with this recipe, which is a variation of the Lemon Cheese Bars in Cake Mix Doctor by Ann Byrn.

I used a large round spring-form pan, but you can use a 9 x 13 baking pan instead. It doesn't need to be greased.

1/3 box cinnamon sugar graham crackers, crushed to fine pieces
1 pkg. yellow cake mix (15.25 oz.)
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
1 pkg. cream cheese (8 oz.)
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 tbsp. lemon juice
4 whole cloves, ground
1 tbsp. dried orange peel

1) You'll be toasting the crust and then baking it again once the filling is done, so preheat oven to 350°F

2) Mix crushed graham crackers, cake mix, oil, and 1 egg in large mixing bowl until mixture is crumbly. Reserve 1 1/2 cup for topping. Use the rest to make a crust in the bottom of your pan. Just press it with your fingers get an even coating on the bottom
.

3) Bake crust in oven for 13 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside, but keep the oven on.

4) For the filling, beat the cream cheese until fluffy (about 30 seconds if the cream cheese isn't too cold). Then add the rest of the ingredients - sugar, lemon juice, remaining egg, cloves, and orange peel. Then spread the filling in the crust with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle with reserved filling.

Use a rubber spatula to spread the filling
over the pre-toasted crust.

5) Bake until the crust is golden and the filling just starts to set (won't jiggle freely). In a glass 9 x 13 inch baking pan, this will take about 15 minutes. It took me a bit longer in my round metal springform pan.

6) Let it cool for about 30 minutes before you cut and serve. I garnished mine with fresh strawberry.

Almost anything made with spice-infused cream cheese seems to taste better the next day if left in the fridge overnight, so this is a great recipe to prepare well in advance of guests.

Lime Cake

I believe in having a well-stocked pantry. I have a spice collection that includes ingredients that some people have never even heard of, more or less used (including my husband before I married him). At a previous address, I'd taken over portions of our laundry closet, our front entry closet, and our cabinets to store various sundry ingredients. Usually, the only thing that I really need to pick up from the store to make a particular dish is fresh produce. I like having a wide variety of base ingredients so I can easily make what I want. It is a great asset to my kitchen.

However, when you need to move, it becomes a great liability.

I originally came up with this recipe while I was trying to eat through my stockpile of food in preparation of an upcoming move. I was on a search & destroy mission to use as many citrus ingredients from my kitchen as possible. This resulted in delicious lime cake. I came across the recipe again recently and decided to share.

This cake tastes best if you can make the frosting the day before and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight to let the lime taste sink into the cream-cheese frosting.

Lime Cake 
Oil & flour for dusting the pan
1 pkg (18.25 oz.) Lemon Cake Mix
1 cup whole milk
1 stick butter, melted (I used real, unsalted butter)
3 eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon extract
1 pkg (0.3 oz.) lime Jell-O

Preheat oven to 350°F. You will want to get out some butter & cream cheese to come to room temperature if you haven't done so already. (BTW trying to speed the process by warming cream cheese and butter up in the microwave does not produce the same results.)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Pour into pan. Bake until golden brown & springs back lightly when pressed. I used two 9-inch round spring-form pans, and it took a little over 21 minutes.

Frosting
1 pkg (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temp.
1 stick (8 tbsp.) butter, at room temp. (NEVER use margarine for frosting, it just doesn't work)
Lime zest, the more the merrier (I used 1/2 of a lime, but should have used more)
1/2 box (1 lbs. box) powdered sugar, or just under 2 cups (you could use as much as 3 3/4 cup powdered sugar, but that's too sweet for me & it provides more frosting than I' prefer)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon extract

Blend cream cheese, butter, & zest with electric mixer. Gradually add powdered sugar. Add vanilla and lemon extract, then beat until fluffy (about a minute). Frost cake once it has cooled enough that it won't melt the frosting.

I need to start cooking in this apron...

Yes, this might sound weird with the Jell-O & all, but it's quite good (and it allowed me to use up the Jell-o, which I'd probably never use otherwise because gelatin is not my favorite food item). The cake is even better the next day because the zest gets a chance to seep into the frosting overnight. It's also a lovely - though unusual - chartreuse color on the inside. Feel free to add some lime zest in the cake itself for even more citrus flavor.

As a side note, a part of me is sorely tempted to throw my son a Mad Scientist Birthday Party. If I do, I might use this cake, just because it has such an unusual color for a cake.

Does anyone else ever feel like a mad scientist when they cook?

Ginger Peach Berry Cobbler

I'm not normally a peach person - at least not a fresh peach person. I've never cared for the fuzzy texture. However, sometimes peaches are on sale at the grocery store for far cheaper than anything else. When they do, I try to make them into lovely peach cobbler.

The following recipe is my own variation off of the Peach Raspberry Cobbler from Joy of Cooking:

6 ripe peaches (1 1/2 - 1 3/4 lbs.)
1 cup frozen raspberry/blueberry/blackberry mixture
1 cup frozen wild blueberries
*1 tbsp. tapioca
2/3 cup sugar, divided
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tbsp. ginger
1 stick butter, softened
1 egg
1/4 cup sour cream


I used a large, round corningware dish (9" diameter), but you could use anything with a 2-qt. capacity. Just so long as it's enameled or glass, there's no need to butter it.

1) Preheat Oven to 350°F

2) Slice up the peaches and place on the bottom of your baking dish. Top with the frozen berries.

3) Sprinkle berries with HALF of the sugar (1/3 cup sugar) and the tapioca. You'll use the other half later for the batter. Set the fruit aside to macerate while you prepare the batter for the top. (BTW, macerating fruit refers to when you use sugar to draws the moisture out of the fruit, creating a syrupy liquid around the fruit.)

4) Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and ginger together.

5) In a separate bowl, beat together the butter and remaining 1/3 cup sugar.

Part-way through the process: adding the
topping over the fruit. This photo was taken
before I spread it around.

6) Beat in the egg.

7) Beat in the dry ingredients. Fold in sour cream.

8) Spread the batter over the top of the fruit. Leave about 1/4 inch of space between the topping and the edge of the pan so the topping can expand a bit during cooking.

Note: if you use a spatula to spread the topping, you will end up with a smooth-topped cobbler. If you want a cobbler with a nubbly, irregular texture on the top, drop spoonfuls of batter over the fruit.

9) Bake at 350° for about 40-45 minutes - it's done when the top is golden brown and the fruit is fork tender.

Cool for 15 minutes before serving. Consider serving with whipped cream or ice cream.

*I didn't include tapioca when I made this recipe for this photo and it came out a bit soupy because I used frozen rather than fresh berries. If I were to make it again, I would include the tapioca to absorb some of the water from the frozen berries. It's not needed if you're only using fresh fruit.

Easy Strawberry Cheesecake

One of my husband's co-workers specifically asked me for this recipe after I sent a bunch of it with my husband to the barracks work. One of his co-workers commented that it was better than the cheesecake served at the Cheesecake Factory.

This surprisingly easy strawberry cheesecake is a variation off of the New York-Style Cheesecake recipe found in The Cake Mix Doctor. I used fresh strawberries that were starting to dry out just a little bit, which probably reduces the amount of moisture in the finished cake. I wouldn't recommend using frozen berries as they just produce too much water.

Easy Strawberry Cheesecake
1 pkg. yellow cake mix
4 Tbsp butter, melted (1/2 a stick)
4 eggs
2 pkg. cream cheese (total of 16 oz.), at room temperature
1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup vanilla Greek yogurt
2 1/2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups fresh strawberries, sliced

1) Heat oven to 325° Lightly grease a pan. I used two 9" round springform pans, but you could also use a 13 x 9 inch baking dish.

2) Set aside 1/2 cup of the cake mix for the filling. Place the rest of the mix (most of the box), melted butter, and 1 egg in a mixing bowl to make the crust. Mix until the batter makes a ball, then transfer it to your pan and spread evenly on the bottom and up the sides.

3) For the filling, mix the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk in a mixing bowl. (The beauty of this recipe is that you don't need to clean the bowl and beaters you used to make the crust.) Blend until just combined, then add the 1/2 cup of reserved cake mix, remaining 3 eggs, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. Beat for a minute.

4) Stir in the fresh strawberries, then pour into the crust. Spread the filling around so that it's an even layer inside the crust.

5) Bake at 325° until the center doesn't jiggle when pan is shaken and top is kind of shiny. This will take at least 40 minutes. When it's done, transfer it into the fridge and let it cool there for at least an hour. Anything made with cream cheese seems to taste better the next day, and this is especially true for cheesecake. I try to let mine sit in the fridge a full day (or at least overnight) before serving.

Pomegranate Molasses Apple Pear Cake

Have you ever encountered pomegranate molasses at an ethnic market? It's a syrup entirely from pomegranate juice, so it's an interesting way to incorporate the nutrients from this superfood into your baking. Although it has molasses in the name, it's not terribly sweet.

I managed to find some recently at a Pakistani/Indian food market, so I threw on an apron and got to work on an easy-to-make cake. The following has been adapted from the Old-Fashioned Pear and Ginger Cake recipe found in The Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn:

3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 stick butter (6 tbsp), melted
1 sm.can pear halves, sliced thickly
1 cooking apple (such as granny smith), sliced thinly
1pkg. yellow cake mix
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup pomegranate molasses
1/3 oil
3 eggs
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Rack should be in the middle of the oven.

2. Spread the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan with an even coating of melted butter and brown sugar. Arrange the bottom of the pan with sliced fruit. I sliced the pear thickly and the apple thinly to even out the cooking times (the pears were already cooked until soft during the canning process).

3. Mix remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl until well combined. Pour over the fruit.

4. Bake 43-46 minutes - until the cake springs back lightly when pressed and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan.  Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Serving Suggestion: Flip the cake upside down so that the fruit slices are visible on top.

Squash Soup in a Crockpot

I've used this recipe for a variety of winter squash, including pumpkin, butternut, and hubbard  It's a great recipe for when you see squash at reasonable prices. For example, I traditionally make it each fall right after Halloween or Thanksgiving (I see no reason to toss the uncarved pumpkins I place on my porch for fall decor). I made it today after I found some calabaza squash at the grocery store.

The great thing about this recipe is that you can make it in the crock pot and the proportions are extremely forgivable. 

 * Onion - diced

* Garlic - minced

* Winter Squash - peeled and cut into pieces 

* 1 can diced tomatoes

* Chicken Stock - enough to cover the squash in the crock pot

* Salt, to taste

* Pepper, to taste

* 1 1/2 cup cooked rice (optional)

* 8 oz. Sour Cream

* Coriander, garnish

1. Cut up the squash. If you do not plan to blend the soup later, be sure to cut the pieces into bite-size chunks. Otherwise, you can get away with relatively large pieces. 

2. Add onion, garlic, tomatoes, and squash to crock pot. Add enough chicken stock (or water and bullion cubes) to barely cover the vegetables. Since it's a crock-pot recipe, the soup will not reduce significantly during cooking. 

3. Cook until the squash is tender. This will depend, in part, on how big the squash chunks are. 3-4 hours on high is definitely enough time even if you use large chunks. You can also cook it on low for longer periods of time. 

4. Add salt and pepper to taste. If desired, blend the soup into an even consistency using an immersion blender, or process it in batches using a food processor. 

5. Stir in rice. Toast a bit of crushed coriander. Add sour cream and coriander (either as a garnish or stirred into the soup).

6. Serve.