Snickerdoodle Blondies

Once upon a time some years ago, as in probably 5 or so years ago, my sister introduced me to snickerdoodle cookies. They were absolutely delicious and I fell in love... as did some of my friends. I was on Pinterest the other day and I found a recipe for snickerdoodle blondies! For those of you who don't know what blondies are, they are basically brownies without chocolate. I used to be a huge fan of the store bought two-bite blondies from the grocery store, so I thought why not combine two things I love?

Rosalie doesn't like chocolate so she was down to make these with me. While we started to get the ingredients together we noticed we didn't have enough butter or flour, so we cut the entire recipe in half. It is still in the oven right now so I can't vouch for how it will taste yet, but it smells delicious. At first we anticipated that because we cut the recipe in half, the time would be cut in half as well... but that is not true.

The cinnamon chips were omitted because we obviously didn't have those lying around the house. I've also never even seen/heard of cinnamon chips before.

Also, yup. Delicious.

Spaghetti Squash with a Tomato Sauce

I like pasta... a lot. My sister messaged me the other day however and told me about a 'healthy alternative' to pasta. Once you manage to actually cut the spaghetti squash open (I struggled big time), it is quite easy to work with!

Cut it length wise (if you can, I had to chop mine width wise and then length wise) and gut it. It is sort of like a pumpkin. Remove the seeds and mushy stuff. Put the cleaned out pieces face down on a plate. Put it in the microwave for 8-10 minutes (I did 9!). Once it is cool enough to work with, it will be very hot, take a fork and just scrape and it should fall apart into little spaghetti looking strands!

I topped it with a homemade tomato sauce, but you can top it with a store bought one too! My tomato sauce consisted of:
1. Fry up some sausage. I did it out of its casing, but if you want little sausage rounds instead of crumbles cook the sausage in casings and then cut up after. Once cooked set aside.
2. Chop up onions, mushrooms, yellow peppers and garlic. In the same pan, put the vegetables and some butter. Fry until softened.
3. Add the sausage back. Sprinkle in some tarragon, thyme and hot pepper flakes.
4. Add a dash of wine (white or red).
5. Pour in the tomato sauce (I use something called Passata). Technically the sauce is now done, but the longer you let it mix together, the better it will taste!

Bacon Pancake Bites

Good morning world! On the menu this morning is Bacon Pancake Bites. Basically they are just pancakes made in muffin tins. Seems a little pointless when you first think about it... why not just make normal pancakes? WRONG! These were great. Rosalie and I really enjoyed them.

First off, they were so fluffy! I find sometimes normal pancakes get kind of thinned out. Also, when you make them this way all the 'pancakes' are ready at once. Whereas if you make them in a pan, you've got batches of pancakes being made. I am also just a huge fan of bacon, so it was fun to have little surprise bites of bacon throughout.

These can be made with just about any 'topping' or ingredients. If you're a fan of chocolate (which Rosalie is not so we avoided it), you can put chocolate chips instead. Any sort of fruit or nut would work as well!

For the Bacon Pancake Bites:
1. Start by frying some bacon - you want it cooked, but not too crispy. Put to the side.
2. Preheat the oven to 350. Grease muffin tins - make sure you get the sides as well as bottom.
3. Either make your own pancake mix from scratch (a quick google search will give you some good ones, I used this one) or use store bought pancake mix. For some added flavour I incorporated a few squirts of maple syrup into the pancake mixture.
4. Once the pancake ingredients are mixed together, break up/cut up your bacon and add to mixture. I left a piece and a half out of the mixture so I could put the pieces on top after the muffin tins were filled.
5. Fill the muffin tins 3/4 of the way with the mixture and top with extra bacon.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes. To test if they're cooked take them out of the oven and insert a toothpick into the center. If it comes out clean then they are ready.
7. Cover with maple syrup and enjoy!

Recipe was inspired by: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en_sVVjWFKk
(I apologize for getting this stuck in your head if you watch it).

Chickpea, Coconut, and Cashew Curry

My sister made this curry over the break, but I was out for dinner that night so only got a little taste when I got home. One of my housemates is a vegetarian so I cooked this for dinner tonight for us.

As the note at the top of the page says, you can use 1 tablespoon of curry power or garam masala to replace the spice mix. When my sister made it she used garam masala, but I only had curry powder on hand. Even though I knew this was an option, when I went to add the curry powder my mind blocked out the '1 tablespoon' so I counted how many teaspoons were in the spice mixture list and therefore put 4 teaspoons of curry powder in (which is a little over the 1 tablespoon asked for).

I didn't have any 'red or green chili' and was unclear about the kind of chili wanted so I just used red pepper flakes (as suggested by my sister).

I was apparently out of it while cooking and when I read 'add salt and lime juice to taste' I thought it meant as a garnish on the dish... so after I sprinkled a little on top of our dishes and we tried a bite we decided it was good, but a little on the bland side. I then re-read the directions and realized you were actually supposed to incorporate in the curry. I've since fixed it and imagine the left overs will be even more delicious than dinner was tonight!

Not going to lie, the carnivore in me wanted chicken in this... even my (recently) vegetarian housemate said it'd be delicious with chicken. Next time I make it perhaps I will either incorporate chicken into it or make some for the side if i've got vegetarians to serve!

Tonight I served the curry on top of some rice and extra spinach.

Risotto Stuffed Peppers

Had a ladies night last night and my girlfriends are hard to please! One is a vegetarian, an other can't eat gluten, and the other two are just kinda picky sometimes! I some how managed to please everybody! I used this recipe as a starting point. I've only ever made one other type of stuffed pepper that I liked, but this one was very good as well!

Instead of using water to cook the arborio rice, I used chicken broth and a splash of wine. (The vegetarian didn't end up coming for dinner). This gave the rice a nice flavour. I was chatting while cooking, so i'm not completely sure about timing, but I think the rice took 5-10 minutes less then it said it would.

I used butter to fry up the ingredients instead of oil. I also added garlic, mushrooms, and spinach. I didn't have any 'italian seasoning' so i just mixed up some thyme, oregano and basil.  I also used orange, yellow and red peppers instead of green... because green are yucky. Just kidding, they're fine. But I don't like them as much.

Sided it with some baked chicken for all the non-veggies.