Now that I’m officially on winter break, I was ready for at least one day of relaxation before taking on all of the last minute Christmas errands. This was a good recipe for a lazy Sunday. I wish I would have made spätzle to go with this, but I had already bought the fancy paprika for the recipe so I wasn’t wanting to spend money on the spätzle making tool. Supposedly you can use a colander instead of the special tool, but in all honesty I just wasn’t feeling that adventurous. Instead of spätzle, we served this with mashed potatoes (a kid favorite).

This turned out pretty good and was easy to make. I’d like to try it again with spätzle.

Rating 7/10

The weeks leading up to the holidays have been nuts so I had to squeeze this one on the Saturday of the week to stay consistent.
Another challenge was converting all of the different measurements from grams. I’m really hoping google didn’t lead me astray.
It was looking really good while sautéing, but I think I let it go about 5 minutes too long (distracted by the kids) and my caramel sauce broke/burned. I tried to improvise with adding some balsamic glaze over the onions in the pan before covering with the shortcrust, but I’m sure I altered what the taste would have been. The shortcrust seemed thick too, so I let it cook about 15 minutes longer than the stated 30 minutes.
The came time for the flip out of the pan onto a plate. I was real worried I was going to get burned by the sauce, but it went relatively smoothly. I topped it with goat cheese crumbles and it was pretty tasty. I think had I not screwed up the caramelized sauce it would have been better (it had more of a balsamic taste) but it was still pretty and tasted nice. I would try this again with smaller onions.

Rating: 7/10

I made the mistake of not reading the recipe before Saturday and realizing that it needed to set for 12 hours. So I had to start the cheesecake after a few game day beers. This led to not reducing the strawberry purée as long as I probably should have. I also had to mix it all after my daughter was trying to go to bed and requested I “keep it down”! This all led to my cheesecake being a bit loose. It was still undeniably tasty though! It reminds me of the strawberry crunch ice creams that I love! I would definitely make again, but be far more careful when creating.

Rating 9/10

I have to admit that I kind of went completely off recipe after making the stuffing. It seemed like the recipe went half into Mexican and half into Italian but with the black beans I felt like I wanted to swing more to the Mexican flavors. I threw some fire roasted tomatoes and taco seasoning in, but next time I would add some chipotle chili powder or cayenne pepper.

The recipe called for adding a cup and a half of water to the pan before baking, which I thought was odd, but it softened the peppers up nicely. I think I would broil it at the end next time to crisp up the peppers and the cheese though because the peppers tasted a little watery. I do love orange peppers flavor so much more than green though, so the pumpkin look definitely helped the flavor.

Rating 6/10

For the same latitude I went with the 45th parallel and found that it runs through France. I haven’t really done any French cooking so I was excited to try a French recipe.
I am so glad I tried this one! The recipe author admitted that it is not an authentic coq au vin (which can take up to 4 hours), so maybe I’ll try the authentic recipe one day, but for me this recipe was delicious! I would 100% make this again.

Rating 10/10

Soup Sunday wasn’t as appealing with the super hot weather that moved in, but I figured a healthy meal would be a good idea to start the 2nd week of school (and the impending cold my daughter seems to already be getting).
This was a super easy recipe, but I feel like it was lacking a lot of flavor. I added lime and then tahine in hopes that it would be more flavorful, but not much luck. I followed the recipe seasoning amounts but I just wasn’t getting much flavor. All the reviews were rave reviews so maybe I missed something. If I were to make it again, I would add more salt and maybe some cayenne pepper.

Rating 3/10

So this week’s theme was cutthroat kitchen. I feel like I have seen the show, but I couldn’t really remember it. After reading the summaries it might turn into a guilty pleasure show with the writers strike going on.
I just got hired on at a new job so I took the easy route of interpreting the theme. I chose a recipe by Alton Brown (the host of the show), rather than following the show’s typical theme and sabotages. However, I did have a few sabotages. My 4 year old “helper” who chose to blast Kidz Bop throughout baking. These were enough to distract me while putting together the dough (I started mixing in the flour mixture before adding the egg and milk, whoops!). Instead of restarting, I just hoped that it wouldn’t matter too much.
I got a little nervous when I took the dough out of the fridge because it was hard as a rock! It took a little muscle but I managed to roll it out. To add another sabotage, I decided it would be a great time to start sleep training my one year old while I was trying to do this. So in the midst of Ferber method check in times and screaming from my one year old, my four year old and I managed to roll out and cut shapes of the dough. My four year old didn’t get the idea of trying to get as many cookie cuts in per roll out, so there was a lot of re-rolling the dough.
We took a quick Mario kart break and then got to icing. I put the four year old in charge of sprinkles which was a huge mistake. Plus I got food coloring everywhere, but overall not terrible!

They turned out delicious!

Rating 8/10

For this challenge I wanted to try to use up the ridiculous amount of Hershey kisses I had gotten from students over this school year. I ended up having to buy a little more (totally defeating the purpose of using something I already had) because this recipe called for 93 kisses and I only had 75, but whatever.
I also used this as an activity to keep my daughter busy on the super hot day where we couldn’t be outside. Cooking/baking with her is always a wildcard situation, but I figured with this few of ingredients and steps that it wouldn’t get to stressful. Minus her trying to sneak three kisses to eat while we were unwrapping, this was a relatively easy baking experience with her.
These kids turned out pretty damn good for how easy they were! I would make again! I think this would be amazing over ice cream!

Rating 8/10

This recipe was similar to a recipe I did last year that I liked last year. Plus as a bonus, it gave me an excuse to use the Scotch Bonnet sauce I bought for a challenge earlier this year! I was short a few ingredients, so I used some dry herbs rather than fresh but the flavors still turned out really good! I wish I would have let my beef get a little more tender and I would have made jollof rice instead of white rice, but I’ll definitely try this recipe again!

Rating: 7/10

I was really excited about this recipe as my husband always requests pasta salads, but I’m not a huge fan. I love elote so I was hoping I finally found my go to pasta salad. As always I ran into some hiccups like my avocado wasn’t ripe yet and I forgot the black beans, but overall this was pretty damn good. Next time I’ll be sure to add both the beans and avocado and I would use roasted corn.

Rating 8/10

What an absolute nightmare to make! I don’t know if it was just the recipe or just the end of the long weekend about to go back to work frustration. First, My food processor fell open spilling half the ground onion straws. Then the recipe called for 2 cups flour divided but I initially didn’t see the second time flour was used in a step, and the first step just called for flour so I used all 2 cups. That made the batter waaaaay too thick so I was trying to add more milk (I was out of buttermilk) and it didn’t go well. Then chopping frozen fries was treacherous. The batter wasn’t sticking to the hotdogs. It kept falling off and splashing the burning hot oil all over me. The Korean ketchup turned out pretty good, but I ended up substituting garlic powder and ginger powder for paste because I honestly just couldn’t be bothered at that point. I still can’t believe there was one review that said these were fun to make! Either we have very different ideas of fun or that person is a sociopath. They tasted okay but no where near the effort required.

Rating 0/10

I’m not the biggest fan of olives, so for this week’s challenge I took the olive oil route. I had never heard of olive oil cake. This was incredibly simple to put together and I got to use the family olive oil. I was out of powdered sugar so I tried a tip I saw online to blend up regular sugar, but it did not have the desired result. This still turned out delicious and incredibly moist!

Rating 8/10

I love Philly cheesesteaks so I was pumped for an excuse to make one. I added mama lils peppers because I love adding those to anything! The bread to meat ratio was way off, so next time I would double the amount of meat. Overall, flavors were good!

Rating: 7/10

This tastes so much better than it looks! I got on autopilot and roasted the sweet potatoes instead of baking them which led to some charring and the darker color than the original recipe. Next time I will double the amount of sweet potatoes to make a thicker layer topping!

Rating: 9/10

I love top chef! I loved Kwame on his season and as a judge on Top Chef Portland. I had to buy Green Seasoning and Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce for this but with how good this turned out, I am pumped to find other recipes to use them in. This recipe was so simple, I am definitely adding it to the rotation.

I usually hate mustard (aside from a very select few honey mustards), so I was not looking forward to this challenge. This recipe was easy to make and surprisingly I really liked it! I would definitely add this to the weeknight dinner rotation.

7/10 Rating

I have been wanting to make a mole sauce for a long time, so I was excited about this one! I had made shortcut Mole sauce recipes before, but have really wanted to try something closer to authentic. Beware: this recipe did take me about 3 hours to put together, but it was totally worth it! It made a double batch of sauce, so freezing the second half to try over smoked pulled pork.

Rating: 9/10