Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

Your eyes do not deceive you, this is a whole wheat pizookie. Even though I accidentally dumped in 1/2 a cup of flax seed it still ended up being very moist and delicious. This is a great way to use your cast iron skillet by the way! My skillet is on its way to being very well seasoned so I'm excited to use it for a dessert recipe.

This was good even a week later, toasted briefly in the oven. The texture is a bit cake-y so I guess you can't really call it a cookie, maybe a cookie bar? But it's easy to make, goes in one pan and you can pretend it's healthy because it uses whole wheat flour. Win, win solution!

Indian Turkey Meatballs

These indian turkey meatballs are a great variation of the ginger pork meatballs. But because it's turkey instead of pork (and I used a white meat blend), it can be rather dry. The onions + tomatoes + cilantro are really good in here, as well as the blend of spices. I'm kinda feeling confident enough to start experimenting with my own meatballs recipes.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies

check out the silpat! I love it.

Another whoopie pie, this time chocolate with a peanut butter filling. I really love chocolate + peanut butter. I'm so excited every time a recipe calls for cocoa because instead of Kroger's cocoa, I have VALRHONA COCOA. YES! If you're going to make this- use less butter in the frosting, maybe 3/4 less or even maybe 1/2 the amount- you really don't need it. The full amount makes it too buttery and rich. The cookies are so fluffy and not-too-sweet.

Pizza & Home made ricotta

Oh yes, it's pizza time. Again. The last time I made pizza it was a disaster and made me seriously doubt my (few) pizza making skills. My pizza love was piqued by buying a pizza stone and a peel. I've read that you can use an unglazed quarry stone instead of buying a pizza stone, but I'm still worry about using a non-food grade material for baking so I decided to spend the extra money and not worry about lead poisoning. This time I went with a recipe from Serious Eats for a NY style pizza.

I tried out a different dough stretching technique and I think it really helped. I think a longer resting time will really benefit the dough too. I used a mix of APF and corn meal to dust the peel, not sure if I like cornmeal on it. Many more ideas to test out and more dough recipes. For now, at least, I know I can make okay pizza.


I also had some extra whole milk so I decided to make some ricotta. Turns out it is crazy easy to make. But it doesn't make that much- that one recipe made only about 1/4 cup of ricotta. I wanted to have it on my pizza in lumps so I let it dry out overnight.

Chicken Pot Pie

This recipe for chicken pot pie is a creamier, less chicken-y version of this chicken pot pie. I don't know which one I like better. I'm really stuck. Do I like a super chicken-y more soupy pot pie? Or do I like a creamy simple (as in there is only 1 or 2 herbs) flavor? AAHHH


It can't hurt to like more than one chicken pot pie. They are a very delicious comfort food.

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

So.... remember that German Chocolate Cake? I forgot to mention that I dropped my camera into the whipped egg whites and sugar so my camera's been a little... wonky. Most photos turn out clear though- but the lenses don't fully close now. I guess it's time to get a new camera. Anyways I had a TON of buttermilk left over from that cake (and blueberries) so I decided to finally make blueberry pancakes! I'm a devoted Buttermilk pancake mix user, but these have them beat. They're incredibly fluffy and soft and really easy to make. You could make your own pancake mix by measuring out all the dry ingredients and storing it in a jar.

Of course you can sub in chocolate for blueberries or I don't know... put some peanut butter + syrup on top? That's my preferred way of eating them though it's usually so sweet that I can only eat half.

Pesce al Sale

Sounds and looks fancy, but it's really so simple. This is a fish baked in salt crust. This is me trying to learn to make new things. I do not really know to make fish that isn't smoked, canned or already cut in a steak. The prospect of cooking a WHOLE fish was really frightening. This was made bearable by the fact that Whole Foods will fillet and de-scale a fish for you. But then you still have to take it home, unwrap and face it's bloody body and bulging eyeballs... all in the name of culinary learning. I'm sorry fish!


Guilt aside, it was good. Also 3 pounds of salt ends up being a LOT of salt- I used my entire box of Kosher salt. It was surprisingly not overly salty! I decided to make some aioli with the leftover egg yolks. Ah, yes another fear: RAW EGGS. But the fear is quelled by the lovely jar full of aioli. I ate some with the fish, but it turned out to be an unpleasant combination... I'll save it for french fries and roast beef sandwiches.

Roast Chicken with Dijon sauce

Another attempt to master roasting chicken, this time it's with a dijon suace. It was delicious, but a bit bland when compared to the Chicken Adobo. It was very dijon-y and sort of soupy, not sure what happened there. Also I poured the sauce over the chicken so it wasn't very crispy any more. (go look at the blogger's photos, her chicken looks amazing) I paired it with roasted green beans and potatoes as suggested by the original blogger.

Castella or Kasutera Cake

This is a really good cake. I first had it a few years ago when a family friend made it- I got the recipe from her, but I was never able to really duplicate it. I found this recipe online and it magically worked. The cake is really light, like a spongecake, and only slightly sweet from the honey. I'm not sure why it's so light considering the amount of eggs and oil... but it was really good and maybe the small amount of sugar makes up for the amount of eggs?

Funny thing is that this is actually a Portuguese cake. It was brought to Japan in the 16th century by Portuguese merchants (according to wikipedia).

Roasted Garlic Soup

yummy roasted garlic

I was supposed to make this roasted garlic soup with chorizo, but by the end it was italian sausage, potato, rosemary and roasted garlic soup. It was still delicious, but not exactly what I meant to make. The roasted garlic smells so good, you'll have to stop yourself from eating it. I only roasted 2 cloves because I thought 4 cloves would be overkill, but 2 wasn't enough! I normally roast garlic by the head in the oven, wrapped in foil, but this was faster- you just have to be careful not to burn the garlic.

Like I said, I used chopped spicy italian sausage because I didn't have chorizo and then I added diced potatoes because I have way too many potatoes. Delicious, yes, but maybe I'll actually follow the recipe next time.

Chinese Almond Cookies

Happy (belated) Chinese New Year! I decided to celebrate by making some almond cookies. I used Marcona almonds to top the cookies. I had these for the first time around a year ago and I'm HOOKED. They're a bit softer than regular almonds and normally served lightly coated in oil and crunchy salt. Get them at Trader Joe's!

For some reason my cookies didn't quite have the crunchiness of a regular almond cookie, but I'm guessing thats because I used a mish mash of flour. A bit of leftover cake flour, a bit of whole wheat, a bit of all purpose and almond meal (not almond flour).

Chocolate Chip Muffins

It took me awhile to find a good recipe for chocolate chip muffins. This one fulfills all the criteria: oil based cake recipe, not too much chocolate, not too sweet. I added whole wheat flour, flax seed, and used 60% cacao chocolate chips. Delicious, although by the 2nd day they were quite dry so eat them quickly!