Easy Truffles!

I got this recipe off the amazing blog Bakerella! That woman has the cutest baking ideas and almost all of her ideas seem so easy to make!

Ingredients:

1 package of Oreos or Nutter Butter cookies

1 8 oz. package of cream cheese, brought to room temperature

baking/candy coating chocolate (We used white chocolate for the Oreo truffles and milk chocolate for the Nutter Butter truffles.)

Crush up all the cookies but 5 in a food processor to a powder. Combine with the cream cheese to form a dough. Roll the dough into little 1 inch balls and place on foil or wax paper. Melt the chocolate as per directions and dip each ball into the chocolate to coat, wipe to bottom to get the excess chocolate off and place onto a wax paper-lined or greased cookie sheet. Place the truffles in the fridge for about a half hour to harden and enjoy! These are soo yummy! I want to try making these with thin mints! :)

Magic Cookie Bars

My cousin, Farah, used to make these all the time in Atlanta and they were soooo good! I recently saw Paula Deen making them on her show on the food network and was surprised at how easy they are to make and only take like 5 minutes to prep.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of Graham Crackers crumbs (I mashed them up in a food processor)

1 stick of butter, melted

a couple handfuls of the following:

• semi-sweet chocolate chips
• butterscotch chips
• peanut butter chips
• chopped pecans (or whatever nut you would like to use)
• shredded coconut

one can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk

You can really add or take away any toppings you like with this, cranberries, raisins, all sorts of nuts, bite-sized candies, mini halal marshmallows, caramel, etc. The above are just the most typical toppings, and the ones I used.

Mix together the graham cracker crumbs and the melted butter to form a sort of dough. Press the crumb-butter mixture down into a greased/non-stick sprayed baking dish (I used 13x9 inch dish). Sprinkle on the toppings, one by one, and then drizzle on the entire can of condensed milk until the surface is covered with it. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Let cool completely and enjoy!

Indo-Chinese Chicken Pakoray

This is a knock-off of Hot Wok's famous chicken pakoray recipe. It's super easy, turns out really good, almost exactly like the real thing, and has been a hit every time I've made them.

Ingredients:

1 lb chicken kheema/ground chicken

2-3 tbsp ginger-garlic paste

about 1 cup chopped green onions

about 1 cup chopped green garlic 

minced green chilies, according to your spice preference

1-2 tbsp black pepper

3-4 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp vinegar or rice vinegar if you have

1/3 cup corn starch

1/4 cup all purpose flour

Mix all ingredients except the flours. When time to fry, add the corn starch and flour and mix thoroughly. Rub a bit of oil between your hands and form the mixture into small, 1-inch balls and deep fry until golden-brown. Serve with Sambal/hot sauce, Sriracha, or green chillies mixed with sugar and vinegar.

Beef Stew

This is a great hearty one-dish meal and it's another one of my favorite comfort foods. It's a pretty versatile dish so you can add any veggies you like and even some kind of pasta. I serve this with Sal's cheddar biscuits!

Ingredients:

1/2 lb to 1 lb boneless beef bite-sized cubes

1 large onion, diced

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 carrot sliced thick

1-2 stalks celery, sliced thick

1 large potato, diced

1-2 handfuls green beans. cut into 1/2 inch pieces

tomato, diced (optional)

beef broth or 1 cube beef bouillon

1 packet Knorr/Lipton onion soup mix

pinch of paprika

1-2 tbsp Italian seasonings

salt and black pepper to taste

1-2 tbsp tomato paste

shopped cilantro to garnish

I pressure cook the beef first. If you don't pressure cook your meat, proceed to the next steps.

Sautee the onion in olive oil over medium heat until translucent. Add garlic and sautee for another minute. (For non-pressure-cooker-users, add meat here, brown, add water, cover and cook until tender.) Add veggies, bouillon cube dissolved in one or two cups of water, onion soup mix, paprika, Italian seasonings, salt, pepper, cover and cook. After about 7-10 minutes, add the beef and tomato paste and stir. You can adjust the consistency to your liking by adding more water or more tomato paste. Cook covered over low heat for about 10 minutes. Garnish with cilantro and serve.

Aldi Brand Cake & Homemade Frosting

I was at Aldi one day and picked up a Bakers Corner brand Deluxe Moist Devil's Food Cake Mix. I cooked it per box instructions (adding 3 eggs, some oil, and water) at 325 degrees for close to an hour. I baked the cake the night before a party. Also the night before, I removed an 8oz container of cream cheese and a stick of butter from the fridge to become room temperature by morning.

Materials

Aldi's Bakers Corner Brand Cake Mix (chocolate...mmm)
3 eggs
Water
Oil

Frosting Ingredients

8oz can cream cheese (use around 6oz)
6tbps butter (almost the entire stick)
1-2 cups powdered sugar
2tsp milk

Bake cake. Let cool completely. Mix cream cheese and butter with a whisk until smooth. Add milk and powdered sugar. Mix until frosting becomes slightly firm but still smooth. Pour onto cake and smooth out. I frosted the cake a few minutes after guests arrived and by the time we got to dessert, it had settled nicely onto the cake. The homemade factor played a huge role because the cake was from a box and the frosting was a lot more enjoyable than something out of a can. Props to Sal for Google-ing a last minute recipe for me. She said that the powdered sugar amount you use shouldn't depend on the recipe but how sugary you want the frosting to be.

Baked Potatoes with Homemade Salsa

Ingredients

3 medium size potatoes
Kosher Salt
Olive Oil or Canola Oil

Salsa:

2 tomatoes cut into cubes
1 can of kidney beans (or beans of preference)
1 medium sized onion chopped
Chilies if desired
Seasoning to taste (I used Indian Masalas & Salt)

Cilantro as garnish. Additional toppings listed below.

Scrub potatoes clean and keep the skin on. Poke 4 times with a fork on each side so potatoes don't explode while baking and release steam. Place on baking sheet and drizzle oil and kosher salt on both sides. Bake potatoes in a baking tray at 350 degrees for an hour. The skin should feel crispy and the inside slightly tender.

While potatoes are baking, make salsa by putting the onions, chilies, tomatoes, and kidney beans in a small pot and cooking it with seasoning. Depending on the texture, you may want to add some water or wait for the tomatoes to become soft and release their own juice. Season as desired and cook until all ingredients are hot/tender/tasty.

Remove potatoes from oven and carefully slice open. Watch out for steam. Spoon salsa mixture into the potatoes and garnish with cilantro.

Additional toppings include sour cream, shredded cheese, and butter. Without these, the meal is very wholesome, fiber-rich, and filled with limited healthy calories.

To make it into a bigger, more filling meal, I had chicken corn soup and a salad on the side.

Baked Salmon

Ingredients

1lb fillet of Salmon (skinned)
1 can mandarin oranges
1 medium potato cut into cubes (with skin)
1 small onion sliced thinly
1tsp coriander seeds
1tsp fennel seeds
2tsp olive oil/canola oil
Handful of asparagus stalks


Directions

Remove salmon from packaging (completely thawed) and place into a small baking tray (lined with aluminum foil). The salmon should be in the middle. Sprinkle salmon with a bit of oil. Spread the potato cubes around the salmon. Lay asparagus stalks flat alongside salmon (depending on the size of your baking tray, on top of each other is fine). Sprinkle generous amounts of Seasoned Salt over potatoes, asparagus, and salmon. Sprinkle small onion slices onto salmon, along with the coriander seeds and fennel seeds. Drain the can of mandarin oranges and layer over salmon, generously. Cover with foil and set aside to marinate for at least 15 minutes.

Set oven to 450 degrees. Let it warm completely to that temperature before playing tray inside. Cook salmon until it's an opaque pink and solidified inside, but not too dry. This will depend on your oven but it should take around 30 minutes, sometimes longer.

I tried this dish out with brown rice on the side and it was DELICIOUS. I initially set the oven to 350 but it wasn't working out - so I googled and found that 450 is an ideal temperature for cooking salmon. The vegetables can be substituted but the potatoes are delicious after seasoning and soaking in the salmon flavor. The asparagus were too cooked to my liking so you can potentially put those in when the salmon is close to being cooked so they will become cooked, but still retain a crunch. The mandarin oranges were PERFECT with the salmon and cooked well, flavoring the fish and adding a zest to each bite (re: be generous, one can of mandarins seems like a lot but it will be worth it). I'm going to try this recipe out again a few more times. I didn't find it in any particular place but took bits and pieces of other salmon recipes. Feel free to experiment and post adjustments!

1lb of salmon was only enough for a tasting quantity for the family. Ideally you'd have to have a lot more rice, a nice salad, and at least 2lbs of salmon for a larger household. Increase ingredient measurements to fit the fillet. This would have been more than enough for a full meal of 2 people.

Chicken Manchurian

For those of you who aren't familiar with this dish, Chicken Manchurian is a super yummy Indian-style Chinese dish from Bombay and I love it! I've tried a few different recipes and never really liked any of them but I found this one today and gave it a whirl, with a few of my own adjustments, and actually really like how it turned out!

Ingredients:

1 large chicken breast, cut into small strips or cubes OR cauliflower florets

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup corn starch

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste

1-2 green chilies (According to your taste) minced

a handful of cilantro, chopped

1 cup of chicken stock

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp ketchup (optional) 

salt to taste

1 tsp corn starch in cold water

Mix the first set of ingredients into a nice thick batter, coat chicken in batter and deep fry until golden brown. Set aside.

Over medium-low heat, fry ginger-garlic paste for about a minute then add the green chilies and cilantro and fry for about another minute. You should be able to smell the stuff frying up by now. Add chicken stock, soy sauce, sugar, salt and ketchup and cook for about 2-5 minutes. NOTE: I didn't really use exact measurements when I was making this, so do a lil taste-test right about now. Add the corn starch dissolved in water and stir until the sauce thickens. Throw in the fried chicken chunks and enjoy with rice!