Pasta Carbonara with Brussels Sprouts

I think bacon and brussels sprouts are a perfect combination.  I thought about bacon with the brussels sprouts, then I thought about pasta carbonara with bacon and decided to just combine them.  It was a total win.  I wanted to eat this whole pan of pasta.

Pasta carbonara should not have cream in it.  You see it listed at restaurants a lot and the description says it's pasta with bacon or pancetta and a cream sauce.  Call me a snob, but real carbonara should not have any cream in it.  The creaminess comes from eggs and parmesan mixed with the hot pasta.  It's like magic.  You pour the beaten eggs and parmesan in and it turns to this creamy delicious but not super heavy pasta dish.

Pasta Carbonara with Brussels Sprouts
Adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything


1 lb. pasta (I would have used linguine, but all we had was penne and twisties, so I mixed them together.  Whatever you have will work)
2/3 - 1 lb brussels sprouts, ends cut off and sliced into quarters
3 slices bacon, diced into small 1/2 inch pieces
3 eggs
1/2 cup parmesan
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1. At the same time the water for the pasta is coming to a boil, add 1 tbsp olive oil to a large skillet, turn to medium heat, and add quartered brussels sprouts.  Brown the brussels sprouts slightly and then cover and cook for about 5 minutes.

2. While the brussels sprouts are covered and cooking, beat 3 eggs in a small bowl and add the parmesan and black pepper.

2. Uncover brussel sprouts and add diced bacon.  Saute for a few minutes on medium-high heat until bacon is slightly crispy.

3. Reserve about 1/2 cup of the hot pasta water. Drain cooked pasta and dump back into pan.  While it's still very hot, add egg mixture and start stirring immediately.  Don't let the egg mixture sit without stirring or the egg will start cooking and you'll have scrambled eggs in your pasta.  If the pasta mixture looks thick and a little gloopy, add some of the pasta water and stir until it's creamy and smooth.

4. Add in bacon and brussel sprouts and stir to combine.  Enjoy!

Whopper Blondies

I loooove malted things.  Chocolate malt milkshakes, Whoppers malted milk balls, even malt powder in hot chocolate.  So, when I saw this recipe for Whopper Blondies I had to try it.  It helps that, aside from the Whoppers, I had all the ingredients at home already.

Make sure to not overcook these.  The dark brown sugar makes them super chewy, so you don't want to cook them too long and have them turn out hard or dry.


Whopper Blondies
From Baking Junkie

2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups dark brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp malted milk powder
1 1/2 - 2 cups malted milk ball candies

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a medium sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and malt powder and set aside.

2. Put candies in a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.  Or you could do it in a food processor, just be careful not to turn them totally into dust.  You don't want huge pieces here, no more than about 1/4 inch wide pieces.

3. With a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together brown sugar and butter until smooth.  Add eggs and vanilla and mix until smooth again.

4. Slowly add flour mixture and mix until combine, then add crushed candies.

5. Spread batter in a greased 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350 for 25 - 30 minutes.

Homemade Pop Tarts

Saying that I made homemade pop tarts sounds impressive.  People say "oooh!  Send me the recipe!"  I thought to make them because I saw them mentioned on a few blogs and in the Flour Bakery cookbook, but really it's just pie crust with whatever you want to put in the middle.  Cinnamon and sugar, Nutella, strawberry jam, whatever floats your boat.

I made some brown sugar and cinnamon ones and Nutella ones.  Nutella was definitely the favorite.  If I made cinnamon and sugar again, I'd probably add some apple slices because even if you put a good pile of cinnamon/sugar on the dough, it melts down in the oven and you end up with a pretty high ratio of crust to filling.  Next time I'd also make them rectangular rather than circles, then there's more surface area for the filling.  These round ones were pretty crust heavy.

I keep thinking about different combinations to try for these: make a graham cracker crust and fill it with nutella and fluff, a gingersnap crust with a cinnamon filling, chocolate crust with fluff in the middle.  You could use a lemon or key lime curd for filling, different jams/marmalades.

Pate Brisee
From Flour

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
2 sticks cold butter, cut into 12 pieces
2 egg yolks
3 tbsp cold milk

1 egg plus 1 tbsp water for egg wash on dough

1. With a paddle attachment on your standmixer, mix together flour, sugar and salt for a few seconds.  Add pats of butter to flour mixture and mix until roughly combined, with pea sized (or slightly larger) lumps of butter.

2.  In a separate bowl,  mix together egg yolks and milk,  Add to flour mixture and mix until just combined.  The dough will be shaggy.

3. Dump dough out onto a floured counter.  Knead the dough until smooth.  Press the dough into a circle about 1 inch thick, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

5. Take half of the refrigerated dough and place on a floured counter.  Sprinkle flour on top of the dough too and take a rolling pin to roll it out to about 1/8"-1/4" thick.

6. Cut the dough into large circles or rectangles about 4"x5".  Take scraps of dough, knead them together and re-roll them out until you've used as much of the dough as possible.

7. Brush egg wash mixture onto one dough piece, spoon filling on, take another dough piece and press the edges together.  Seal the edges together with a fork and place on a cookie sheet.  Continue with the other pieces of dough.

8. Bake at 350 for 25-40 minutes depending on the size/shape of the pop tarts.  Mine were about 3 inch circles and took just about 25 minutes to bake.

Tomato Black Bean Soup

Poor Tom.  I swear almost every time I cook a big meal there's something that I forget or that I run out of in the middle of cooking.  Then, I look at him, bat my eyes, and say "Tom?  Would you mind running out for ..."  And he's the best husband ever, so he usually will do it.  I don't know why I thought one small can of beans would be enough to make black bean soup.  Well, it wasn't.  So, this dinner is courtesy of Tom running to the store to get 2 more cans for me.

I didn't really consult a recipe for this soup.  I just figured I'd throw together some tomatoes, black beans, onion, garlic, etc and it would work out.  And it did.  I also had just made a big pot of homemade chicken stock, so that had me thinking about soup.  This is a good weekday meal because you can used canned beans and tomatoes and throw it together in about a half hour.

Tomato Black Bean Soup


1 large can diced or crushed tomatoes
3 small cans of black beans, NOT drained or rinsed
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 jalapeno, chopped (you can also leave the seeds in if you want a little more kick)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
4-6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

Shredded cheddar cheese and/or sour cream for garnish

1. In a large saucepan, heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil on medium heat.  Add chopped onion and garlic.  Cook until softened, about 3 minutes.

2. Add jalapeno and saute for another couple minutes.

3. Add tomatoes and black beans.  Do not rinse or drain any of the cans of tomatoes or beans, just add everything in.

4. Add 3-4 cups of chicken stock, until it is soup like consistency.  Stir everything together.  Add spices and stir again.  Bring to a slight boil, then turn down the heat to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes to let the flavors mix together.

5. Once everything has simmered for a bit, you can blend some of the soup to thicken it.  If you have an immersion blender, you can blend it until it's a consistency you like.  If you want it all totally blended smooth, that's fine, or if you want some beans and tomato chunks left, that's fine too.  If you don't have an immersion blender, transfer the soup to a blender in batches and blend until smooth.

6. Taste the soup once you've blended to the consistency you want.   If you want it a bit spicier, add some cayenne pepper (a LITTLE at a time!), if you want a smokier flavor, add a little more cumin and chili powder, or if it's not salty enough, add a little salt.  Salt will depend on the stock you're using.  If you're using canned stock, chances are you won't need much salt.  If you're using homemade stock, you may need to add a little salt.

7. To serve, add a little shredded cheddar cheese and/or a dollop of sour cream on top of the soup.  And spinkle some fresh copped cilantro too if you're feeling fancy.

Pizza!

(this is not the prettiest pizza I've ever made)

We looove homemade pizza.  Seriously, we eat it at least once a week.  If I don't make pizza for a while, Tom starts to go into withdrawal.  A lot of times it's an uncreative pizza like pepperoni or something, but it's almost always with homemade pizza dough.

I've tried a few different pizza dough recipes and this one from the Pioneer Woman's cookbook is my favorite thus far.  What I like about it is that it's very stretchy.  It's easy to stretch the dough out to a 12-16" circle without ripping holes in it like some other dough recipes I've tried.  This is probably because of the good amount of olive oil in the recipe.

I've tried this recipe with white flour, wheat flour, half white half wheat, and with white whole wheat flour (King Arthur Flour makes this, it's not as heavy and grainy as regular wheat flour but still has some of the whole grain value).  I've found that to keep it pliable and stretchy, it's best to use all white flour, or half white and half whole wheat white flour.

I also like using King Arthur Flour's pizza seasoning.  It's a blend of spices that adds a lot of flavor either to the dough or sauce you're using.  I always add about a teaspoon of this to dough when I make it.

Now...toppings.  Again, a lot of times we end up doing pretty normal toppings on our pizzas.  But here's some pizzas we've made in the past or ones that are on my list to try:

• Chicken sausage and ricotta: Precooked chicken sausages are great on pizza.  That with dollops of ricotta is one of our favorite pizzas.
• BBQ chicken pizza: spread BBQ sauce instead of pizza sauce, add some caramelized onions, pieces of cooked chicken or chicken sausage, and mix cheddar and mozzarella cheese to top it.  
• Buffalo chicken pizza (what's pictured here): mix buffalo sauce with blue cheese dressing (I used ranch because we were out of blue cheese), top with chicken and a mix of cheddar and mozzarella cheese.  You could also add some crumbles of blue cheese and some scallions.  
• Or you could go sauceless and try a baked potato pizza.  Cook some potatoes, chop into small pieces, scatter on pizza dough with bacon bits, scallions, cheddar cheese and whatever else you like on baked potatoes.

Ok, enough blabber, you probably just want the dough recipe.

Pizza Dough

From The Pioneer Woman

Makes 2 crusts (wrap the extra in saran wrap then in a plastic bag and freeze it for later)

1 tsp yeast (active dry or instant...either is fine)

1 1/4 cups warm water 

4 cups all purpose flour (or half white/half wheat)

1 tsp Kosher salt

1/3 cup olive oil

1. Sprinkle yeast over warm water and let sit for a minute.  Attach dough hook to your mixer.  You can also mix this by hand with a wood spoon, it'll just take a little more manpower.

2. Mix flour and salt in bowl of mixer.  Slowly drizzle in the olive oil until combined.  Then stir the bowl/cup with the water and yeast and slowly add to the flour with the mixer on low.  Mix until combined and the dough forms a ball.  If the dough looks very sticky, add a bit more flour.

3. Coat a bowl with a thin layer of oil, add the dough back in, and cover lightly either with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel.  Put in a warm spot in your kitchen and let the dough rise for about an hour.  

4. Once the dough has risen, preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Split the ball in half and wrap up half to save for later or to make a second pizza.  Stretch the dough out to a 12-16" circle (or rectangle or whatever shape floats your boat).  We have a pizza pan that's metal with lots of small holes in the bottom.  It's worked pretty well for us, but you can also use a regular sheet pan, or a pizza stone.

5.  Add your toppings and put in the hot oven.  Baking time depends on how you like your pizza.  If you like it doughy, you'll cook it for 10-12 minutes.  If you like it crisper, you'll go for about 15.  Once the pizza's done, let it cool for a few minutes before cutting it.

Cranberry Scones

I made these mini scones for a breakfast at work the other day.  Scones have a bad reputation of being hard, dry, and really unappetizing.  Good scones are flaky and buttery.  They have heavy ingredients like butter and cream in them, but they shouldn't feel heavy.

The trick with these is to use really cold ingredients.  The butter, cream, buttermilk, and eggs should all be straight out of the fridge so they're as cold as possible.  And don't overknead the dough for these or you'll get hard bricks!

I had made the ginger lemon scones that were in the Flour cookbook, but I wanted to make something different this time so I just left out the ginger, added some dried cranberries  and did a lime glaze instead of a lemon one.  You can make these in any size that you want.  I have a set of different sized biscuit cutters, so I made these ones small since I was feeding a bunch of people at work.

Cranberry Scones with Lime Glaze
Adapted from Flour

For the scones:
2 3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped into small pieces
14 tbsp cold butter, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup cold buttermilk
1/2 cup cold heavy cream
1 cold egg

For the glaze:
1 cup confectioner's sugar
2-3 tbsp lime juice


Instructions:


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and cranberries until combined with paddle attachment of stand mixer.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together buttermilk, cream, and egg.  On low speed, pour into flour mixture and mix until just combined, 20-30 seconds.  It's ok if there's some flour in the bottom of the bowl.

4. Turn bowl over onto lightly floured counter surface.  Turn dough over lightly a few times until loose flour is combined.  Don't knead the dough hard, just press the flour in lightly.

5. Press the dough out until it's about 1 inch thick all around.  Use biscuit cutter (3 inch for regular size scones, 1 inch for mini bite size ones) to cut out scones.  Gather dough scrapes together and press out more until all the dough has been used.

6. Bake for 40-45 minutes for large scones, 15-20 minutes for small ones.  Bake until golden brown on top/edges.  Put on wire rack to cool.  Cool completely before putting the glaze on or it will just melt off the top.

7. Mix the confectioner's sugar and lime juice in a small bowl.  Drizzle glaze over tops of the scones.  Let the glaze solidify for a few minutes before eating.

Baked Potato Soup

We are currently getting slammed by not one, but two back-to-back snowstorms that are piling on another 12-18 inches on top of the feet of snow we already had.  It's crazy out there, our snowbanks are taller than we are.  I was playing queen of the mountain climbing up our snowbank by our house tonight just to shovel off the top so we can add more to it tomorrow.  Our dog doesn't know where to do her business when we go outside.  Our backyard is totally blocked off until spring at this point.  Weather like this always makes me want soup.  This soup is heavy, in a good stick-to-your-ribs kind of way.  A medium sized bowl of it with a piece of bread to mop it up is definitely filling enough for dinner.  Or a small cup of this with a salad would be perfect if you want to lighten things up a bit.

I listed crushed red pepper flakes in the recipe.  I like this soup with a little zip to it.  This time, I skipped this because I had habanero flavored cheddar cheese that was spicy enough on its own.  If you don't like spice, just leave the pepper flakes out.

I started making this soup from a recipe I found online but even from the first time I made it I adapted it heavily.  Now it doesn't really even resemble the original recipe enough to credit it.  This time I added some chopped up bacon bits and scallion to it as well which I haven't done in the past but I think they're both good additions.

Baked Potato Soup


6 large baking potatoes
6-8 cups of low sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup of milk or cream
1/4 sour cream (you can skip this if you're using cream instead of milk)
1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 - 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
4 slices of bacon, cooked and chopped into small pieces
3 scallions (green and white/green parts) finely chopped

1. Pour chicken broth into large stockpot.  While it's coming to a boil, peel the potatoes and chop into small 1 inch pieces.  Add to boiling broth.  Boil until soft, about 15-20 minutes.  The pieces should kind of fall apart when you stick them with a fork.

2. While the potatoes are boiling, cook the bacon until fairly crispy.  Once done, pat with a paper towel and chop up into small bits.

2. I don't have an immersion blender, so once the potatoes are done, I scoop cups of the potatoes with the broth into a blender and mix until smooth.  This part is cool, the starchiness of the potatoes makes the mixture really thick and kind of gluey.  Do this in batches until all of the potatoes have been blended smooth.  If you had an immersion blender, you could just stick it right in the pot and blend until smooth.

3. Put the blended mixture back on the stove on low.  Mix in grated cheese, milk or cream, sour cream, and red pepper flakes.  Let the flavors mix together for at least 5 minutes, then taste it.  The red pepper flakes are pretty spicy, and they get spicier the longer they're simmered, so don't taste it right after you add them and then add more thinking it's not spicy enough.  And if the soup is too thick, add a little more milk or chicken broth.  If it's too thin, add some more grated cheese.

4. Towards the end, add the bacon bits and scallions.  Let it simmer about 5 minutes more and then serve, preferably with crusty bread.