Sausage, Sundried Tomato and Spinach Pasta Stack-Ups

Hi Everyone!  Just got back from a visit to Madison where I finally got a chance to celebrate Valentine’s Day.  We opted to stay in and cook rather than eating out because we wanted to have some fun leisurely cooking, eating and drinking wine.  For the candlelit dinner we enjoyed a cheese course (cave aged cardona, brie and Ader Kase blue cheese) served with a warmed crusty baguette, followed by sausage, sundried tomato and spinach pasta stack ups and roasted asparagus for the entrée and finished with apple cinnamon clafouti.  To go with dinner we had some Warres Otima 20 year-old tawny port and Wollershiem’s white port.  While the other one is in love with the Warres port, I was super excited for the Wollershiem port because only a limited quantity is made each year.  This year since I have been in Madison, I hadn’t been able to track any down.  Now the hard part will be to actually bring myself to drink it, rather than stash it away for safe keeping.

While this dinner sounds incredibly time consuming, it the opposite!  I will definitely be posting the different parts of our dinner, for today I wanted to share with you the pasta stack ups.  I can not emphasize how simple, quick AND delicious these were.  The sweet tanginess from the sundried tomatoes complements the spices in the sausage and garlic.  The next time you want to try out a new recipe this is one you should reach for.  The only tricky part may be locating the sun dried tomatoes that are not packed in oil.  As luck would have it, we stumbled upon some at a gourmet food store.  However, I found out today that you can get at least three different varieties at Whole Foods. Continue reading

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Russian Tea Cookies

For awhile there I didn’t even look at my own blog because I knew it was so out of date but hopefully I can keep the posts coming.  One recipe I have wanted to post for awhile is for Russian tea cookies.  Most recently I made these for a holiday party for my new group.  Because it had been a few years since the last group party I kind of went crazy with the amount of food I prepared, to those who know me…this is not a surprise.  We ended up with pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting, lemon drop cookies, dark chocolate and mint chip cookies, oatmeal with butterscotch and chocolate chip cookies and Russian tea cookies, for dessert for 11 people.  Oops.  Actually, I think the first time I had made these cookies was about 3 years ago when one of my friends asked me to make them for the holiday baskets.

These cookies are delightfully light, buttery and crumbly.  They are really quick to make and addictive.  I am pretty sure I ate at least 4 while the cookies were still warm.  If you would like some quick goodies to quench the sugar cravings, I would suggest baking a batch of these cookies. Continue reading

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Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

Hi Everyone!  Sorry it has been a really long time since my last post.  Unfortunately, my life hasn’t really slowed down since I arrived in Evanston and for the last few months my camera battery charger was MIA.  Right as I announced that I was going to break down and buy another charger, I made one last ditch effort to find it.  Of course, there it was in the exact drawer that it was supposed to be in, just the previous 30 times I looked in that drawer I was not able to find it.  That is kind of a bummer because during the last two months I have made Nutella cheesecake bars, chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies, homemade Oreos (yum!), pulled pork and buffalo wings.  The good news is that I found the charger in time for my next baking endeavor: mint chocolate cupcakes with a mint swiss meringue buttercream.

These cupcakes were made for my friend/labmate’s birthday this week.  He gave me two options for his birthday treat, either mint and chocolate or butterscotch.  Since it had been a little while since I last busted out the swiss meringue buttercream frosting I opted to make cupcakes.  Despite, what seemed like my best efforts to ruin the cupcakes, they turned out super delicious.  The cupcakes were moist and fluffy while packing a nice chocolate punch and a delicate mint flavor.  I used my go-to chocolate sour cream cake recipe because it is essentially fool proof and an easy one bowl recipe. Continue reading

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Candy Cane Cupcakes

Hi everyone, things have not really slowed down yet.  In fact, life just keeps picking up the pace.  For Thanksgiving, I did manage to bake an apple cake for my new labmates but forgot to take some pictures of the final product so that recipe will have to wait.  Fortunately, I have another recipe that I have been waiting all year to post!  It is candy cane cupcakes with a peppermint swiss meringue buttercream frosting.  I have never personally been a lover of plain candy canes, always opting for a fruit flavored one instead or skipping the candy cane altogether for some chocolate.  However, I have memories of Kiki doing some heavy damage to large candy cane sticks.  These cupcakes strike a nice balance because they have the candy cane flavor but there is a creaminess from the frosting.  The cupcakes are also beautiful with the red swirls through out the cake.  Though I have to admit my “swirling” needs some work.  The tops of the cupcakes looked nicely swirled but the centers were just globs or red and white batter.  The worse part of it all was that the frosting covered up the only portion that got swirled…Either way, these cupcakes were moist, fluffy and delicious.  They are a perfect dessert for the holiday season! Continue reading

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Sea Salt Brownies

Today, I am sitting in my family’s relatively new house in Minnesota!  This is the first time I have been in the state since they bought it last spring and it is great to finally see it.  After catching a little flack from my dad about the lack of posting lately, I decided to take the few minutes to update and post some recipes that I have been waiting to share.  The lack of posting has been the result of finishing up my PhD and starting a post doc at Northwestern.  Life has been crazy and I have only in the last few days gotten my kitchen together in my new apartment.  While my apartment is pretty large, it is pretty old so I have been trying to adjust to the whistling of the radiators.  Good thing I am pretty much a narcoleptic.

Today’s tastiness is my favorite brownie recipe.  Oh man, this is what I would submit for a brownie bake off.  The name is Sea Salt Brownies, but I just call them deliciousness.  These brownies are gooey, crispy, chocolaty and indulgent with a hint of saltiness.  You can eat them straight out of the oven (an intense chocolate experience) or if you can leave them for a day, the sea salt flavor is more prominent.  Either way, they are great and really simple.  Because the first time I made them was for Valentines day, surprisingly not for a special someone, I used pink Himalayan sea salt from Trader Joe’s.  But flake sea salt or course ground sea salt will also work just fine. Continue reading

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