Go Green- FREE!! Check out my friend's blog!!

http://mandikaake.blogspot.com/2010/03/passing-along-good-deal.html

Decadent Dessert Contest? Who Me???

I will definitely be adding pics to this blog. But I don't know what I'll be making so far. In the past, I was always the odd ball with my dessert. There is usually 5 cheesecakes, 2-3 cookies, and a jello mold entered. I want something DIFFERENT, yet it's so hard to choose.

One thought: 7 Layer Italian Cookies. These bad boys are chocolate coated with layers of Strawberry Preserves between almond flavored yumminess..






Another suggestion is my favorite chocolate cake recipe. All from scratch. See http://joodiepatooties.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-did-you-put-in-this-cake.html
The recipe includes coffee!! I normally make these
with a cinnamon cream cheese frosting. I just love cream cheese.
**PHOTO is courtesy of www.recipezaar.com, "NewMomKate"**


Next contender is my ultimate Carrot Cake. See blog, http://joodiepatooties.blogspot.com/2009/07/whats-more-american-than.html I've definately improved my frosting skills since last year. I think I'd make carrot cupcakes instead and copy "NewMomKate"s" frosting technique.

What do you all think? Leave me a comment!

Change of pace... Money Savers!!

My new addiction, aside from cooking and baking, has now become clipping coupons. How else can I afford the ingredients I use? I've been scouring sites and found some great blogs that I'm going to link to this section of my blog page. Check back often to see if there's something new.

Shelley's Swag is great! Lots of giveaways on her blog and plenty of ways to enter.

Gosh, I hate letting food go to waste.

GRAPES- my kids beg and beg for me to buy grapes. So, of course I do thinking that they're gonna eat them all up. Nope. They ate some here and there, but there is still quite a few left from our grocery shopping trip a week ago. You know grapes don't last THAT long after their purchased.

I figured I'd turn these suckers into raisins. I've done it before. So, why not? The hard part will be figuring what to do with the raisins. The kids do not eat raisins.

Here's the beginning of the grape-raisin transformation (5:00PM).

I had to turn the oven off at 10PM to go to bed. I started it back up again around noon the next day. Then off again at 8PM. Here are the results.

So much plumper than the ones bought in a can!! Now I need to make something with them.

What's more American than......

A good ol' Carrot Cake?

It's the 4th of July and we're heading out to another side of Maryland for a potluck/bbq shindig with some friends and their families. (For real.., it's my friend's husband's mother's house that we're going to.) The carrot cake was a big hit at Christmas- same folks were together celebrating Jesus' birthday, so I figured this was a safe bet to bring. It was either that or some fried cream cheese wontons that would have been soggy by the time we arrived. Couldn't represent like dat!

Onto the cake.. that has required not one, but two trips to the store this lovely morning. Trip 1,

Carrots-- check

Sugar-- check

Cans of cream cheese frosting- ick.. but CHECK (I'm not a fan of pre-made frosting. It's too sweet and just weird and full of CRAP that we do not need in our bodies, but that's for another blog..)

And what was required for the 2nd trip? Baking powder.. ugh, the baking powder. An ingredient that could ruin any number of baked goods if not used. I couldn't risk it, so I'm sending the hubby out to the store.

So why is my carrot cake so American? It contains ingredients from all 50 states! Okay, maybe not Alaska, but can we count the whitish colored frosting as snow? LOL Here comes the list of ingredients:

Flour, Sugar, Baking Powder, Eggs, Oil, Carrots, Nuts, Pineapple, Saigon Cinnamon, Allspice Powder. And I did throw in an infamous zucchini from my backyard garden.

Believe it or not, I sifted the dry ingredients together. All the carrots and the zucchini were peeled/grated by hand. My food processor bit the dust 2 months ago. The nuts are from a can of Planter's Nutrition Energy mix. I had to pick the nuts out, rinse off the sweet/salty stuff, and roast 'em in a pan for a bit. Talk about a labor of love....

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

Onto frosting.. I hate hate hate pre-made canned frosting. But when they're 2 for $3 vs. $3 for cream cheese + $2 for powdered sugar + $2 for butter + $1 for cream... yeah.. the canned stuff won.

But, I can't leave well enough alone. I have to doctor up the canned stuff to make it less sweet and less pre-made tasting. Just whip some air into it and a dash of saigon cinnamon. ;)

WARNING: I SUCK AT FROSTING/DECORATING CAKES. But I did get a few oohs and aahs and the party for the cute factor of this cake. But the taste is what really sets this cake off. One try, even if you don't like carrot cake, and you'll be hooked!!

And YES- those are real little carrots on top. I've been growing baby-type carrots in my backyard and these are two that I plucked, washed, and peeled to adorn the cake.

**for the actual recipe, send me a comment.

What did you put in this cake??

2 cups flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 cup coffee

1 cup milk

1/4 cup oil

1 tsp. Saigon Cinnamon

And the secret ingredient: 1/2 cup grated zucchini

There you go. That's my top secret luscious, rich, super-moist Chocolate Cake recipe.

I was outside with E-bomb and noticed that I had some zucchini read for picking. I couldn't wait to use them. I spent months sprouting, planting, and growing these zucchini, it was about time I could use the fruits of my labor.

I already had my recipe for Chocolate Cake in my head and wanted to substitute a few things here and there and add a bit more spice. I used the zucchini in place of most of the oil in the original recipe. And instead of vanilla (a staple in all baked goods it seems...) I used Saigon Cinnamon. Oh.. if you haven't used Saigon Cinnamon- go get some! You will never ever use that stuff in plastic bottle, with the yellow label and red lid, again!

I make my own brown sugar using white sugar and molasses.

This takes a a few minutes, but for today it saved me a trip to the grocery store.

The Kitchenaid is a great piece of machinery, but some things can't replace doing tasks by hand. Here I am getting the lumps out of the batter.

Flour should really be sifted- but I don't bother.

Baked at 350 for 25 minutes.

And let cool for a full hour before frosting.

I'm usually a cream cheese frosting kinda gal, but once again I wanted to use up some stuff in the house so it didn't go to waste. I had some bananas and strawberries on hand. And what goes really well with nanners and berries?? What else- CHOCOLATE! So, I made a chocolate ganache to put between the layers and on top to make the fruit stick.

I put a layer of ganache and bananas in between the layered cakes and then anotoher layer of ganache on top. Then adorned my creation with strawberries.

Filipino Mongo (Semi-Veggie Stew) w/Rice

On Monday, I was perusing the International aisle in our local base commissary (Ft. Meade if anyone is familiar) and came across a package of "Quality Mung Beans". Really, the package did specify that these were of "quality". Memories and emotions ran high of my mom's cooking and how much we all loved her Mongo (Mung Bean Filipino stew).

Come to today, Thursday, it's now 9:16AM and I have half of the package of "Quality Mung Beans" soaking on the stove. From online recipes, they say to soak for 4 hours- I want to eat around 2, so I figured I'd start early. Another thing I can prep is the frozen spinach that I'm gonna add to it. This dish is served over white jasamine rice (and lots of it is cooked in this house). Might as well get some sort of nutritional value in there. Other num nummy goodness that goes into the stew is a lil' pan fried PORK, onions, garlic, and the oh so famous Patis- aka fish sauce. I could do without the pork since I'm trying not to eat 4 legged animals, but I already have chops in the fridge, thawed, and I hate wasting food. So, I'm just cookin' a little of that for flavor.

I've been tempted to throw these beans in a crockpot to get them going, but perhaps patience, in this case, is a virtue.

It's now 4:52PM and I finished cooking my Mongo. I had a few casualties in the kitchen. #1 being the Pork chops. Had to throw those out. Didn't want to get anyone the funny tummy time. #2my bamboo cutting board. It called it quits.

Without the pork, the recipe had to change a bit. And with what better than Turkey Hot Dogs! Us Filipinos like hot dogs in our spaghetti. So, why the heck not??

Other contributors to this recipe are onions, garlic, salt, pepper, fish sauce, garlic powder, and spinach.

Here's everything sauteed together. Then it's all added to the pot with the mung beans that have been soaked for 4 hours (okay it was really 7 hours since I took the kids to the beach) and then boiled for 20 minutes.