Strawberry Lemonade

What a fun way to treat your friends to a nice cold lemonade.  Puree some strawberries (frozen or fresh); add a touch of sugar depending on how tart your strawberries are.  Make sure your tray is on a perforated baking sheet, then fill the tray with the strawberries (any shape will do, but you want the shapes to be small), and freeze.  Tada!  It's that simple.  Put a few strawberry-cubes (or hearts, in this case) in a glass and fill with lemonade.  As the strawberries melt, you end up with a wonderful strawberry lemonade drink.

The Pizza Bowl!

Here it is!  The pizza bowl.  These are simple and tasty and good for you!

Have you tried the Demarle herbed pizza dough?  I think I've talked about it before.  It's so, so yummy!  That's what I used for these pizza bowls, but you can use whatever pizza dough you usually use (but seriously, you need to try the Demarle dough!)  I used the Round Tray here, but you can use the small, medium, large, or the new grande mold (or hey - use the muffin or mini muffin and make amazing little hors d'oeuvres - brilliant!).  Just use whatever size of mold you want your pizza to be.  Roll out your dough so it's about 2-3 inches wider in diameter than the bottom of the mold you'll be using.  You want your dough to drape over the sides about an inch all the way around.  Put your mold or tray upside down on your perforated baking sheet.  Roll out the dough pretty thin - about 1/4 inch thick, and drape over the bottom of your mold/tray.  Like this:

Bake these beauties at 350 for about 15 minutes or until they start to turn golden.

In the meantime, choose your filling.  I used a variety of veggies and cut or diced them into small pieces. Use whatever you'd like.  If you must know what I used, here's my list:  red, yellow and orange bell pepper, asparagus, yellow squash, red onion, tomato, spinach, basil, olives and salami.  It was a veggie party.  And the salami wanted in too.  Gotta get that protein - HA!  I put all my cut up veggies in the Large Round mold, sprinkled them with some Demarle Rosemary, Basil and Thyme herb blend, and baked them til they were tender-ish.

Fill your bowl with some of your veggies, top with mozzarella cheese, drizzle with some Demarle balsamic vinegar (yum!) and there you have it.

These are great because you can personalize the pizzas with whatever you want.  Instead of baking all the veggies together, put the chopped veggies out and let your kids fill a cup in the muffin tray with their choice of "toppings".  Bake them all at once and scoop the veggies from their muffin cup into their pizza bowl.  Kids love this concept of the pizza bowl.  My son had a blast helping me roll out the dough and bake it on an upside down tray!  My nieces and nephews couldn't contain themselves choosing their toppings and filling the muffin tray.  They loved making these and eating them too!  And it's all veggies!

Don't stop at pizza!  Use pie crust and make something fruity for dessert.  Get creative and let me know how it goes!

Banana Bread

One of my friends told me she made her banana bread in the bundt mold and it was fabulous.  It took me awhile, but I finally tried it!  The bundt mold doesn't have to be tucked away and used for cakes only!  

What have you made in your bundt mold?

Twix Bars

I just realized I didn't take a pic of the individual bars - oops, sorry.  I got this recipe from my fantabulous friend's blog.  As soon as I saw it I knew I had to make it!!  I had to make a couple minor changes because I'm lame in the kitchen and didn't have corn syrup or shortening, but I'm not convinced that changed the taste much (I used sugar and water for the corn syrup and butter for the shortening).  They turned out great!  I used my checkerboard mold and, of course, didn't bother with the buttering, foiling, buttering, and watch what happened...

 

Boink!  Out they popped!  This is after I refrigerated them for faster cooling, but we were too impatient and started digging in to them before giving them time to cool (I cut that part off the picture - haha!), and I still had no trouble getting them out of the mold - even with sticky caramel!  

I took some pics for you to enjoy...

Pressed the cookie crust down into the mold and baked.

Poured the hot caramel sauce over the baked cookie crust.

Gently spread the chocolate over the caramel.

I transferred the mold onto the small
perforated baking sheet to it would
fit in my fridge better for cooling.

Kettle Corn!

I love kettle corn!  I made up a batch of this kettle corn and snuck it into the movie theater the other night.  Don't tell.

This recipe is on page 41 of the Beginnings & Endings cookbook.

Pour 3 Tbsp water and 1/3 cup raw sugar in the Large Round mold and swirl around until it's mixed together.  Microwave for about 2 minutes.  Add 1/3 cup popcorn kernels and swirl around to coat the kernels with the hot sugar syrup. 

Cover with the Octagonal silpat and microwave for about 4 minutes - just be sure to listen for the popping to slow.  

Remove right away and quickly sprinkle with salt while mixing with a spatula.  Yum!

Tasty Spaghetti Sauce

I found this recipe for Tomato & Mascarpone Pasta and it looked easy enough to try.  ;)  Her blog is amazing, by the way!  I found it by way of purchasing "YummySoup" - anyone heard of that?  It's a recipe organizing "app" for Mac.  It's changed my life!

Anyway, the pasta and garlic bread were fantastic and so easy!  Instead of the Italian herbs and basil that she suggests adding to the sauce, I used Demarle's Rosemary Basil & Thyme Herb blend.  MmmMmm!  I also made my own mascarpone, which was simple.  I'd tell you how, but I'd have to find it.  Just do a search for "mascarpone substitute" and you'll find what you need.  Or if you can find it in your grocery store, even better.

Easy Dinner

Chicken thighs seasoned with Herbes de Provence and Lemon Dill green beans

At a recent cooking show, one of the guests was very excited to find out that Demarle at Home sells "Herbes de Provence".  She shared with me a "recipe" for yummy chicken that I had to try.  I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs and simply sprinkled the herbs directly on the chicken.  Demarle at Home actually has a recipe (right on the front of the Herbes de Provence packet... I guess I missed that before) that says to make a paste out of the herbs and olive oil and rub generously on the chicken, so you could do that too.  I baked the chicken on my Silpat, but I definitely should have used my Deep Flexipat.  There was more juice that cooked out of the chicken than I was expecting and I made a mess of my oven.  The chicken tasted great and you can't get any simpler than that for dinner!

I also made up some Lemon Dill green beans easy as pie (well, a lot easier than pie, actually).  Wash and trim your fresh green beans and place them in a mold (I used my Large Round, but any mold will do).  Add 2 Tbsp. of water to the mold and cover using a Silpat (like the octagonal).  Microwave for 3-5 minutes until tender but not overcooked (aka mushy).  Sprinkle with olive oil, Lemon Dill herb blend, and Sel Gris French Grey Sea Salt to taste.  Toss gently and serve immediately.