Slice of Pink

Whip It Up II: Week Five

This can only mean one thing.

S'mores!

Well, S'more Cookies to be precise.

I found the recipe at The Pioneer Woman's new Tasty Kitchen website.

Which is also where I got this photo:

I forgot to take a photo of the finished product because I was too busy EATING IT.

These cookies are fun and delicious and pretty easy, even though they do contain more than two ingredients.

A great thing about Tasty Kitchen is the ability to plug in the number of servings you want to make and then let the computer do the math to figure out the correct amounts of ingredients. You could actually say that you would like just one serving and the computer would tell you how to make a single cookie.

But, trust me, you wouldn't want to do that. You'd have to figure out how to get one-eighth of an egg, plus then you'd only have one cookie.

The recipe is after the jump and also available here.

Whip It Up II: Week Four

This week, I'm making pocket pies.

You can create pocket pies one of two ways: you can cut them out by hand and crimp the edges together with the tines of a fork OR you can purchase a handy device from Williams-Sonoma that does the work for you. Go on and guess which route I took.

You can also make your own pie crust OR buy the pre-made stuff.

Same with the filling: make it your self OR buy a can of the pre-made.

It's all about options here!

Of course, I used the pre-made stuff, but I think that the adorable-ness of the pies makes up for it.

After the jump is the recipe I used to make these cute pies. A full-on make-it-yourself-from-scratch recipe is here.

Whip It Up II: Week Three

So, this might be the easiest recipe on earth as it contains only two ingredients, with one of the ingredients being water. But, it's so good. I'm on my third batch this week, already.

Cold-Brewed Ice Coffee

Yield: Two drinks

1/3 cup ground coffee (medium-coarse grind is best)
Water

1. In a jar, stir together coffee and 1 1/2 cups water. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight or 12 hours.

2. Strain twice through a coffee filter, a fine-mesh sieve or a sieve lined with cheesecloth. In a tall glass filled with ice, mix equal parts coffee concentrate and water, or to taste. If desired, add milk.

By the way, this is totally considered "cooking" in my house.

Whip It Up II: Week Two

Here's how we started Whip It Up Week Two: we went and picked fresh peaches and raspberries at the local orchard, Impossible Acres.

This is some serious baking, people. It's like I'm living in a little house on the prairie.

The recipe that resulted from the two boxes of peaches and berries, Raspberry Peach Crisp, was incredibly simple, except for the peeling of the sticky, ripe peaches part. But, even that was sort of fun.

The five of us--Will's family is visiting--all agree that the dessert is fresh and delicious, summery and, according to Will's mom, Scrumdiddlyumptious. Ten thumbs up.

The recipe is after the jump.

Whip It Up II: Week One

It's the second annual Whip It Up Challenge and, for my first attempt at summer cooking, I put together the incredibly simple Confetti Potato Salad. I was looking for a mayonnaise-less potato salad that we could mix up and haul down to the big 4th of July spectacular in the park.

This recipe is basically vegetables coated in light ranch dressing, so it is neither complicated nor sophisticated. In fact, I would say that it is pretty much the exact opposite of complicated and sophisticated. It's quick and easy and pretty tasty as far as salads that only take 10 minutes to prepare go.

The recipe is after the jump.

Whip It Up: Week Eight

I purchased this cookbook off the sale rack at Borders last week. Will and I actually visited Peanut Butter & Co. in Greenwich Village several years ago, where we ate fancy peanut butter sandwiches and drank milk from curly straws. I bought the book mostly to reminisce about the place, but also because there are some fun recipes for things like Peanut Butter and Jelly French Toast and Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie. Yum.

I decided to choose a recipe from the book for my final Whip It Up Challenge Recipe. Shockingly, I made it to Week 8 of the challenge. Only one recipe left to Whip Up and disaster struck.

You see, I bought all the ingredients to make a peanut butter recipe--Cold Sesame Noodles--and made it home with four hours until the Whip It Up deadline. Plenty of time.

Only problem? The gas was out. In all of South Davis. No stove, no oven.

It was a shame really, because I had purchased all these ingredients, including a big hunk of ginger.

But I face adversity well and can overcome any challenge! I am invincible! No gas? No Problem!

(Also, my husband got on Google and researched cooking spaghetti noodles in the microwave. Turns out? You can cook spaghetti noodles in the microwave.)

I would like my mom to note the cleanliness of the microwave. I would like everyone else to notice the time: 9:27 pm. With the deadline fast approaching, there was no time to clean as we cooked. There were important things to do! Julienning! Chopping! Measuring! Drinking orange juice with vodka!

Three jars of peanut butter? I don't know why.

Note: electricity was not a problem.

Crisis diverted. We ate dinner at 10 but, I tell you, it was totally worth the wait. Totally worth the wait.

My Peanut Butter book  indicates that west-coasters like their peanut butter chunky and east-coasters like it smooth. Is this true? Where are you from and how do you like it?

Whip It Up: Week Seven

Last week, I ate at my favorite Mediterranean place in Davis, Café Méditerranée, but since I am vegetarian now and trying to avoid dairy products, I did not order the yogurt-based tzatziki. Instead, I ordered the hummus and muhummarah and, while they were both delicious, I kind of missed the tzatziki.

Which is why I was so pumped on making this:

I know, I know. Making something from a box doesn't seem like the point of the Whip It Up Challenge. But, actually, I made the recipe on the back of the box, which required ingredients and everything.

You'll notice a tub of yogurt there, in all its  dairy goodness. I swear to you, I tried to purchase soy yogurt. I was in the soy yogurt section of the store. I put a soy yogurt in my basket. I then traded the small soy yogurt for what I thought was a slightly larger soy yogurt, but which was not a soy yogurt at all.

So, I followed all the instructions, whipping up a delicious tzatziki and a not-so-delicious batch of falafel. They were okay, I guess, but the boxed falafel had an ultra-strong flavor and they made my house stink.

In the end, I just licked the tzatziki off everything and then we went downtown for French toast.

The recipe is after the jump, although I suggest skipping the Fantastic Falafel step and just making the yogurt sauce. You can dip vegetables in it or just eat it by the spoonful.

Whip It Up: Week 6

The worst part about this recipe--this delicious, refreshing summer cocktail recipe--is that I am telling it to you at the end of the summer. I actually only just discovered this drink when I was at Rye last month, otherwise I swear I would have shared it sooner. I also would not have spent June drinking Jose Cuervo pre-mixed margaritas.

I don't have an exact recipe for this drink, but I watched the bartender very closely. I'm not going to give you precise measurements, because I don't know any precise measurements. And, also, I think once you get the basic idea you can add more sugar or more lime juice or more vodka to make it sweeter, tarter, or, um, more alcoholic to your liking.  I'll also provide a link at the end for a real recipe with actual measurements for those of you who are, like, WTF? I NEED preciseness! I NEED unambiguous instructions! I NEED exact details! To which I say: WHOA, you definetely NEED this drink. Maybe three or four of them. And maybe some therapy.

Here's what you are going to need: limes, fresh basil, simple syrup, vodka, ice.

Let's make two drinks. You'll want to make four, but only two fit in the shaker so start with two.

Squeeze three limes into a cocktail shaker. Add four or five fresh basil leaves and some simple syrup. Maybe 1/8 cup of the simple syrup, give or take. Mash the ingredients together to release the basil flavor. This will also create itty bitty bits of basil that will make the drink pretty.

Add two (or three) generous shots of vodka and a bunch of ice to the lime-basil-sugar mixture and shake. Shake, shake, shake.

Strain into a glass, garnish with a sprig of basil if you want to be fancy, and enjoy!

If you don't like basil, you could try it with mint leaves instead, which I guess would be a sort of vodka twist on the mojito. If you run out of simple syrup, just pour some granulated sugar into the shaker and add a bit of water.

There's a "real" recipe for a Basil Vodka Gimlet at Epicurious, although it's not quite the same and uses lemon instead of limes. Go with the limes, people. Go with the limes.

Whip It Up: Week Five

This week I am going to be whipping up a vegan pasta dish for y'all. My original plan was to whip up a fancy cocktail for you but, seriously, I have been extra-drunk all week so I can't even think about having another basil vodka gimlet at this point. Maybe next week.

So, I am making vegan pasta. Not just vegan pasta, but vegan pasta with whole wheat penne. Like, the ultra-healthy crap. What has gotten in to us?

All this stuff is going to be made into a sauce.

Simply dump all the ingredients into the Magic Bullet and bullet it until creamyish. You should definitely chop the sun-dried tomatoes a bit before trying to bullet them. I speak from experience.

Voila! Sauce! Add it to the drained pasta, put some artichokes on top, garnish with some basil.

This recipe is quite easy, quite good, and quite vegan. If you like that sort of thing. If not, come back next week for a cocktail.

Whip It Up: Week Four

It is week four of the Whip It Up Challenge and I am reporting live from my mom's house this week.  Last night, my sister and I searched the Food Network website for recipes involving berries because there were two huge bags of berries in my mom's freezer just begging to be made into some sort of berry pie or cobbler.

We had plans to visit a photography exhibit and go out for lunch, however, so we were looking for something that would be super quick and easy as pie. Turns out that pie? Not so easy. Slow Berry Cobbler? Easy.

So, we put mixed some berries, some sugar, and some baking mix in a bowl and poured it all into the Crockpot.

My mom then reminded us that we needed to spray the insert of the slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray, which we had failed to read in the recipe instructions (and there seems to be some dispute about who was actually relaying the directions when we were on STEP ONE of the recipe), so we dumped the mixture back into the bowl, cleaned out the insert, sprayed the insert, and poured the berry mix back in.

Then we made some sort of topping mixture, using baking mix, butter, a bit of milk, and some sugar. We put that mixture on top of the berries.  There was an incident involving the sugar, which seriously involved breaking out the vacuum to get it cleaned up, but there was enough sugar leftover to sprinkle the whole shebang with more sugar and cinnamon. 

The cobbler cooked while we were out on the town, with my sister calling my mom each hour to get a progress report on our concoction. When my mom reported that the topping was browned and the berries were bubbly, we hurried home from shopping at Target to dish it up.

Everyone agreed: the recipe was delicious.

Whip It Up: Week Three

That, there, would be a device called a Crock Pot.

Now, the only thing we ever use a Crock Pot for is to cook a big batch of meatballs for a party. Since this is a recipe post, I might as well pause for a moment and tell you that my meatball recipe consists of a bag of Costco meatballs, two jars of chili sauce, and a big jar of grape jelly. Party meatball recipes are pretty easy. Basically, there is a list of party meatball ingredients--grape jelly, Coca-Cola, ketchup, chili sauce, apricot jam--and you choose two that sound really weird together, pour them in a Crock Pot with the balls, and you have a party appetizer in four to six hours.

But today we are not going to be making meatballs because a) we have been very good vegetarians, mostly; b) there are only three ingredients involved in the meatball recipe which would be a total cop out (the lower limit is four ingredients); and c) meatballs should be reserved for parties.  We need that last rule or I just might eat party meatballs everyday.

So, instead, we are making vegetarian chili. This requires a boatload of ingredients.

And a boatload of chopping.

I only cut up one mushroom and then Will took over the chopping. Am I still completing the Whip It Up Challenge if my husband does all the work? I was managing the whole production so I totally think it counts.

Also, you have to open a boatload of cans. I would suggest getting one of those electric can openers for this recipe. Or maybe do some push-ups to get ready for all that manual can opening. It's hard work.

The Official Whip It Up Apron from Sara keepin' me clean.

You have to cook some stuff up in a fryin' pan and then you dump all the cans and vegetables and some other things I can't remember because I think by this point I was over on the couch reading a magazine while Will took over (upper management is the way to go, folks) and then you dump it into the Crock Pot and cook it forever (i.e. 6 hours). Clearly, you must know you are going to want to eat this, like, way in advance. Who does that?

So, the chili was pretty good, although, I think "chili" is a bit of a misnomer. It does not taste like Hormel or Cattle Drive, is what I mean, and if that is what you are looking for, well, this is probably not the way to go.  But it is loaded with good-for-you things and way better for you than a tub full o' meatballs.

The recipe, adapted from Seprah who adapted it from Delicious Delicious (so, basically, it is totally not the same recipe anymore), is after the jump.

Whip It Up: Week Two

It is week two of the Whip It Up Challenge and, true to my word, I made something that did not require the oven or stove top. I selected a recipe called Raspberry Summer Sensation, a layer-type concoction involving sorbet, pudding mix, and Cool Whip.

I walked over to the market to pick up the ingredients--milk, pudding mix, raspberry sorbet, Cool Whip, and raspberries--and I had located the first four when I discovered that the store was out of fresh raspberries. I returned to the frozen aisle to look at my options and made an executive decision to go peach. There were about fourteen tons of peaches in the produce section.

I bought the sorbet that saves the honeybees.

I walked home in the sweltering heat so the sorbet and the Cool Whip were nice and softened. I spread the pint of sorbet in the bottom of a bread pan lined with some parchment paper. By the way, how great is parchment paper? Love it.

In a large bowl, I Whipped Up some milk and pudding mix, folded in a tub of Cool Whip, and layered that on top of the sorbet. And then it had to freeze for a very long time.

Now, one of the items that I am supposed to address is whether I would make this recipe again. And the answer is no, at least not the peach version. Not because it didn't taste good--it really did--but it was not very aesthetically pleasing. This flesh-colored peach sorbet, while quite tasty, just wasn't pretty. It was a fine color, but there was no contrast between the pudding mixture and the sorbet. The fruit didn't really match. It didn't look summer sensationy.  And isn't that what it's all about? Looks?

I "cook" with Cool Whip, people, pretty is all I've got going on. And this ain't cutting it.
 

 I did try to brighten it up with some blueberries.

If you like Cool Whip, pudding, and sorbet type recipes, you should check out the original recipe for Raspberry Summer Sensation.  It has the potential to be quite lovely, don't you think?  I would totally make it again with raspberry sorbet, strawberry sorbet, chocolate sorbet. I admit it: I only like the pretty sorbets.

Whip It Up: Week One

It's week one of the Whip It Up Challenge. I decided to make a dish from Everyday Food, Creamy Goat Cheese Pasta with Roasted Asparagus. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? Yet, it was so simple. 

I washed up some asparagus, placed it on a baking sheet, dotted it with some margarine, sprinkled it with some salt and pepper, and placed it in a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes, tossing occasionally. Honestly, I only tossed once because hot damn, was it burning up in the kitchen and opening the oven was so not helping.

Meanwhile, I was boiling some pasta on the stovetop, adding to the rising kitchen temperature. The recipe called for cavatappi, but I didn't see that at the market, so I went with campanelle. The words look similar enough.  

I put some goat cheese, some margarine, and some of the pasta water in a bowl and I Whipped It Up! Obviously, while wearing my Official Whip It Up Apron from Sara. 

After cutting up the asparagus into 2-inch-ish pieces, I combined the drained pasta, the cheese sauce, and the asparagus bits.

Voila! Easy-yet-fancy Creamy Goat Cheese Pasta with Roasted Asparagus. I was supposed to garnish with chives, but we were out, so I added some black pepper and called it good. 

It was quite tasty and paired nicely with white wine. I have no idea what that even means, really, but that's what I drank it with. I'd totally make it again, and maybe try it with red. 

The recipe is here, if you can stand the heat in the kitchen. Up next week: something not involving the oven or stovetop.