Ginger Lime Sorbet

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If you are looking for a refreshing kick in the mouth this is the sorbet for you ha.  It really is quite delicious and perfect for a hot summer day.  Don't let the ginger part scare you.  You can leave it out if you really want and you'll still be left with a yummy lime sorbet, but I think the ginger is a nice little flavor to have and isn't overwhelming at all.  It's a really simple recipe and not that difficult to make at all - the hardest part is juicing the limes.  The only downside is that if you don't have an ice cream maker, you'll have to be home the majority of the day so you can scrape the pan (more on that later).

Recipe
2 Cups Sugar
2 Cups Water
1 Tbs. Lime zest
1/2 - 1 tsp. Freshly grated ginger
1 Cup Fresh lime juice

Put the sugar, water, lime zest and freshly grated ginger into a saucepan (use a microplane for your zest and grated ginger so the pieces are nice and fine).

Boil until the sugar is completely dissolved.

It will look like this when the sugar is dissolved - nice and clear.

Pour the simple syrup into a glass cake pan.  Now for the hardest part of the whole recipe - juice limes until you get 1 cup of fresh lime juice.  A trick with limes is pop them in the microwave for 10-15 seconds before you juice them, it will help you get a lot more juice from each lime.  Once you get 1 cup of lime juice, straight out the pulp and pour that into the cake pan, stir until everything is combined.  Place the dish in your refrigerator for 1 hour so it will get a little chilled.

 If you have an ice cream maker, after the hour of chilling in the fridge, you'd put the mixture in your maker and in no time you'd have a lovely sorbet.  If you don't have an ice cream maker, place the pan in your freezer.  Come back every hour or so and scrape/stir with a fork.

 Continue to do this for several hours, until your sorbet is nice and frozen and the consistency you're wanting.  If you have some big chunks, you can always pop in in the blender to get it smooth again.

 Make sure to serve it right out of the freezer.  It tends to melt quickly.  And honestly, since it's so flavorful, you really only need one big scoop.

If you want to store it for a few days, I'd store it in a container with an airtight lid.  It won't store for more than a week or so because it will get really hard and frostbitten.

Brownie Fruit Pizza

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For Mother's Day I wanted to make my mom a special dessert.  I thought a fruit pizza would be delicious, and then I was told that they had fruit pizza two weeks ago.  So it was back to the drawing board.  I wanted to do something with fresh fruit and possibly chocolate.  I considered doing molten chocolate cakes, but changed my mind because we wouldn't really want a warm dessert on a warm day.  Then it came to me.....fruit pizza with a brownie crust rather than the cookie dough crust.  Let's just say it was deliciously decedent yet refreshing.  Here's what I did.

I baked 2 packages of Ghiradelli chocolate chunk brownies on a well greased cookie sheet.  You can use any type of brownie mix you want.  You may or may not need to use two packages depending on the amount of brownie mix comes in your box.  You want your cookie sheet filled about 1/2 way or higher, I wouldn't really go thinner than that.  It took 1 hour at 325 for my brownies to bake.

I then spread my cream cheese frosting layer on the cooled brownies.  And layered it with strawberries, raspberries and black berries.

 I warmed up some seedless raspberry jam and drizzled it over the fruit pizza (I put it in a zip lock bag and cut the corner a tad in order to drizzle it because it wasn't thin enough to just use a spoon.

 I then drizzled semi-sweet and white chocolate over the top.  I then put it in the refrigerator until we were ready to serve the dessert.

Here's the recipe - Enjoy!

Brownie Crust

- 2 packages ghirdelli brownie mix (from the Costco box) - You can use whichever type of brownie mix you want.

- Eggs, oil and water that your brownie mix calls for

Cream Cheese Layer

- 2, 8 ounce packages reduced fat cream cheese, softened

- 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

- 1 tsp. Vanilla

Toppings

- Strawberries

- Raspberries

- Blackberries

- Seedless Raspberry Jam

- Semi-sweet chocolate

- White chocolate

Baby Food Jar Spice Jars

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How many of your spice drawers look like the one below?  I hope I'm not the only one ha.

Well I was sick and tired of digging through my spices every time I needed one.  I would spend forever trying to find the right container in the pile.  I decided it was time to do something about it.  I've actually  been planning on doing this for a while, but finally got around to doing it and I'm so glad I did it!

I simply took old baby food jars and washed them.  Then I spray painted the lids black.

After the lids were dry, I wrote the different spices on top using Elmer's Painters Pen.  I will warn you to test your pen somewhere before writing on your lids.  At first my pen oozed out a TON of paint.

 Then I put the spices in the jars and put them in my drawer.  I love it!!!

Thumbprint Cookies

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I had a recipe exchange party last night.  I tried out a new recipe, and people seemed to like it, so I thought I'd share it with you!  The one nice thing about them is that they aren't a super sweet cookie, though that could also be a negative because you can trick yourself into eating too many of them haha.


Ingredients (will make about 12 - 18 cookies)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg, separated

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

2/3 cup any flavor fruit jam

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Grease cookie sheets. Separate egg, reserving egg white. Cream butter or margarine, sugar, and egg yolk. Add vanilla, flour and salt, mix well. Shape dough into balls. Roll in slightly whipped (I whipped them for about 30 seconds with a fork) egg white, then walnuts. Place on cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake for 5 minutes. Remove cookies from oven. With thumb or spoon, dent each cookie. Put jelly or preserves in each thumbprint. Bake for another 10-12 minutes.

Broccoli Potato Cheese Soup

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Well it's starting to be that time of year where you look outside and just want to stay in and eat some nice warm soup.  This is one of my favorite soups.  This recipe makes a fair amount of soup, but it makes for good leftovers. It is pretty easy to half. I had a recipe that is similar, but I revamped it to my liking and added potatoes enjoy!

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 tsp salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 2 Pinches nutmeg
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme leaves – or 1/4 - 1/3 tsp dried thyme leaves
• 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 6 cups chicken broth (or 6 cups of water with 3 bouillon cubes)
• 1 - 2, 12 oz packages frozen broccoli, thawed
• 3 medium potatoes quartered then sliced - boiled until tender
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 8 oz sharp cheddar cheese – grated

Directions 

In a medium pot, melt the 6 tablespoons butter over medium-high heat. Add onions, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and cook, stirring, until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and thyme cook, stirring, until fragrant, for 20 seconds. Add the flour and cook, stirring until the mixture is well blended and smells fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Slowly add the broths, whisking constantly, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes, or until it begins to thicken. Add one package of broccoli and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.  

Remove the pot from the heat and puree with a hand-held immersion blender or normal blender. 

Add the cream and bring to a simmer add the remaining ½ - 1 package of broccoli depending on how chunky you want your soup and simmer for 7 minutes (if you don't want chunks of broccoli, don't add the extra package, it is still very delicious!). Add cooked potatoes and once the broccoli is tender, add the cheese and cook over low heat, stirring, until melted.

Serve and top with grated cheese.

Jack-O-Lantern Veggie Tray

Pin It I made this for a little get together we had last Halloween.  However, I didn't really do any Halloween themed posts because my husband had blown out his knee a few days before the 31st and I was busy taking care of him.  SO I thought I'd post it for you this year :)  It's super easy to do and fun for a Halloween party.

Deliciously Easy Banana Bread

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I love banana bread and when I found that our bananas had gotten a little to ripe to just eat, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them.  I looked up a few banana bread recipes and then came up with my own version.  Here's the recipe!

Banana Bread

1/2 Cup Butter, softened
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
3/4 Cup Ripened Mashed Bananas (approx. 2 bananas)
1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 1/4 Cup Flour
Pinch of Cinnamon

Directions

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar. With the mixer running on medium speed, add the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla and bananas and mix well. In a separate bowl add baking soda, salt, flour, and cinnamon.  Using a fork or whisk, stir the dry ingredients together.  Add the flour mixture to the mixing bowl.  Mix thoroughly, but do not over mix.  Pour the dough into a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for 45 - 60 minutes.

Cherry Almond Cake

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We celebrated my brother's birthday yesterday and I made the cake.  We have a dessert that my family loves called cherry bars so I based his cake off of that dessert.  I used  doctored up white cake recipe which is pretty delicious.  It makes a ridiculous amount of batter though and it's a bit dense for my liking.  Does anyone here have a nice fluffy cake recipe?  I'd love for you to share it with me!

The white cake has a bit of almond extract in it which pairs nicely with the cherry pie filling.  I used Wilton's buttercream frosting recipe, but rather than using crisco, I used butter.  I think butter just tastes better!  I'm looking for other buttercream recipes right now as well.  I don't hate that recipe, but I don't want to just stick to that one in case there's a better frosting out there.

Which reminds me - does anyone have a yummy fluffy frosting for cupcakes??  I don't want a super heavy frosting because it just get's to be too much sugar for me.  I usually take off most of the frosting when eating my cupcake haha.

Back to the cake.  With my cake batter recipe, I was able to make 3 layers - if you only have 2 layers - it will be totally fine!  I used the canned cherry pie filling as my center.  I first made a dam with medium consistency frosting to keep the filling from oozing out the sides.  You do this by using tip 12.

 

Go around the outside of your cake layer leaving about 1/2 - 1/4'' around the outside of the cake since the frosting will be pushed out a little bit.  After you have made your dam, put your filling on the cake.  I made a little diagram to show you what it would look like if you were looking straight down on your cake layer.

 

If you have multiple layers, repeat the steps I explained above, if you only have tow, then place your top layer on your filled layer and you're set to frost the outside.  Don't look at my frosting job too closely.  I just started a cake decorating class and as you can see - I need some work haha.  BUT I do recommend that make a white almond cake and have a cherry filling.  It is delicious!!!!

Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Pin It Last night I did a taste testing session with my husband and sister-in-law to try and figure out the best chicken salad sandwich recipe.  This is the recipe we came up with.

- 1/4 Cup Mayo
- 1/2 tsp (or a bit less) Curry Powder
- 1 Tbs or so lemon juice

Whisk together  those ingredients.  Then add:

- 12.5 ounces of canned chicken - break up into small pieces
- halved red grapes
- handful of craisins
- 1 granny smith apple chopped up
- Cashews
- Salt & Pepper to taste

You should try it out and let me know what you think.  Obviously if you used freshly cooked chicken breasts, it'd probably be even better.   Oh and don't forget to have it on a delicious croissant :)

I refrigerated the mayo mixture with the chicken, grapes and craisins so it would get cold and then just before serving I added the apples and cashews so they would stay crunchy.

This makes 3-4 sandwiches.