Open Source Cook

So my mother (and grandmother) make this absolutely great macaroni salad that I love. However, my husband isn’t too crazy about it since they add tuna fish to it and he can’t stand seafood (woe is me). So I decided to come up with my own recipe with the family recipe as a base. I’ll add the family recipe in all it’s glory later after I get a complete copy from the family.

So this recipe is coming completely out of my head, so all of the measurements could drastically change. At the moment, I was just cutting up vegetables and stopping when I thought I had enough. I’m not sure if the peppers will over power the salad or not, or whether the dill pickles are a bad idea, but we’ll find out when everyone tries it. If you’re wondering why I added the pickles, I should say that I love the pickles in my mom’s recipe. However, how it will taste without the meat is another thing.

One variation that could be done with this recipe is adding meat to it. My mother’s recipe includes tuna fish, but she has also used shredded chicken (just like the tuna fish, but it’s chicken).  Edited 9/25/08: Jesse does not like it with the chicken included.  I made this recently for dinner and he said the texture was all off.  I will admit that it’s generally better with tuna, but it’s good without meat as well.  I actually like it without the meat.

After trying the salad, it actually out really well. According to Jesse, the peppers weren’t overpowering and he didn’t always get some in a bite. However, I was kind of the exact opposite; it seemed like I had peppers in every bite and I wasn’t crazy about that. The onions were a little on the light, and I really didn’t notice them at all. So I increased the onions from 1-1/2 cups to 2 cups. The same goes with the celery and carrots. There were there, I could see them, but I didn’t taste them. (edited 9/25/08: Meijer, a local grocery store, has this section in their produce department that has pre-cut veggies.  I actually get a 14oz container that has both celery and carrots in it.  Another thing I thought of, I diced all the veggies but the carrots and celery, so I’m going to try dicing them next time and see if that helps) So this is what I’m thinking. Of whatever vegetables you add to the mix, make sure they are all the same measurements. I.e. all 2 cups of carrots, celery, peppers, onions, etc or 1-1/2 cups of everything. Do not mix the measurement amounts.

Edited on 9/25/08: After thinking about it,  felt there was too many peppers in the salad, so I decreased the original amount of 2 cups mixed to 1-1/2 cups.  I’m not a huge pepper fan, so that’s why I changed the amount.  However, all of my measurements are completely to my tastes, so if you like peppers, add as many as you like.  This recipe is really easy to do that with.  In total, I use about 4 cups of veggies once you measure everything together.

Ingredients:
Miracle Whip
32 oz of macaroni
1-2 cups died dill pickles (about 4 spears)
1-1/2 cups of a mixture of diced green, red, yellow, and orange bell peppers
1 cups diced carrots
1 cups diced celery
1-1/2 to 2 cups diced onions

Directions:

1. Prepare macaroni according to directions and refrigerate.
2. Chop all vegetables and mix together.
3. After the macaroni has cooled completely, mix the veggies in with the macaroni until thoroughly blended.  Add Miracle Whip until salad is sufficiently covered to desired effect.
4. Refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.

This is my third attempt at finding a chocolate cheesecake recipe and I think I found the right one. After trying two previous types, Jesse and I have decided to create our own by merging things we liked from both recipes and try to come up with one really good one. And I have to say, it worked out really well.

Here’s the recipe with my few changes…

Chocolate Graham Cracker Pie Crust:
This time, for the graham cracker crust, we’re using the recipe from Terri’s cheesecake.

Ingredients:
8 tbsp butter
1-1/2 cups crumbs (about 21 squares)
4-1/2 tbsp sugar
2-1/4 tsp heaping cocoa

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Mix all ingredients together and pour into spring form pan. Bake at 375 F for 8 minutes.

Chocolate Cheesecake:
The first time around, the raspberry extract was barely there. So this time, I doubled the amount. Also, the two previous cheesecakes I tried used different kinds of chocolate and some people did prefer one over the other. With that thought in mind, we’re mixing the chocolate. The first attempt used baking chocolate bars and the second used semi-sweet chocolate chips. This time around, I’m using half the chocolate bars and half of the chips, so we’ll still end up with the same amount of chocolate.

I don’t know how much 8oz of chocolate chip actually is, but I used about 2 cups and that seemed to make the cheesecake a little too brittle.  So it’s definitely 2 cups.  If anyone finds out, let me know.

We still haven’t figured out how to stop the top from cracking while it’s cooling down.  If there’s a way to prevent this, we would like to know so please drop us an email.

Ingredients:
8oz semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
8oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 - 8oz pkgs cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/3 cup milk
4 tbsp raspberry extract
4 eggs
1 egg yolk
Sifted powdered sugar (optional)
Sifted unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)
Fresh berries (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Melt 1 pound chocolate in a heavy saucepan over very low heat, stirring constantly; cool. For tips on melting chocolate, I would check out Hershey’s guide, it’s the one I use.
3. Beat melted chocolate, cream cheese, the 1/2 cup butter or margarine, 1/3 cup milk, and extract in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium to high speed until combined. Add whole eggs and egg yolk all at once. Beat on low speed just until combined.
4. Pour filling into the springform pan. Place the pan in a shallow baking pan on the oven rack. Bake in a 350 degree F oven about 55 minutes or until 1 to 2 inches of outside edge appear set when shaken gently.
5. Remove springform pan from baking pan. Cool cheesecake in pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes. Use a small metal spatula to loosen cheesecake from sides of pan. Cool 30 minutes more. Remove sides of pan. Cool 1 hour; cover and chill at least 4 hours.

Raspberry/Strawberry Sauce:
We actually made both types of sauces and we cam to a realization, the strawberry topping is better than the raspberry.  We did the mashing right this time and Jesse smashed all the raspberries and strawberries through a strainer.  However, Jesse really doesn’t like the raspberry topping and much preferred the strawberry.

Ingredients:
12 oz. pkg. frozen raspberries or strawberries in syrup
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. cornstarch
3 tsp. cold water

Directions:
Mash raspberries through strainer, throwing away seeds. Add sugar to raspberries and heat in saucepan to almost boiling. Mix cornstarch with cold water. Add cornstarch mixture little bit at a time to raspberries, stirring constantly, until mixture starts to thicken. Cool in refrigerator and serve with just about anything.

My pan size is a little bigger than what most would us. I have this lasagna pan that is bigger than a standard 9×13 that I tend to use since I get a bigger cake, but thinner layers. It works really well and I finally found a cake carrier that the cake will fit in. Since the pan is bigger, I bake the cakes for about 30 minutes and then I add minutes as needed. There are times when I have had to add a few minutes and others when I haven’t.

On the raspberry mousse, I did increase the whipped cream by A LOT. Originally, the recipe only called for 4 cups, but after looking at the amount it gave me, I wasn’t really satisfied with it. So I added more whipped cream and I added a dash of raspberry extract so the flavor wouldn’t get overpowered by the cream. Something else I did was to double the raspberries. Well, I shouldn’t say I doubled it, but I added more raspberries after the mousse had been sitting in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. It had time to firm up a little and the added raspberries gave it more color and a strong raspberry flavor. This step is completely optional, but I think it will come out better since I doubled the whipped cream.

After everything was said and done, this cake came out being awesome. The raspberry favoring wasn’t overpowering and there was enough of a contrast that really made the cake.

Ingredients:
2 packages of Dark Chocolate cake mix
3 packages of whipped chocolate frosting
24 oz frozen raspberries
1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
1 tablespoon lemon juice
28oz whipped cream
1/4 cup sugar
raspberry extract

Directions:

1. Prepare cake batter according to package directions, however, add a little raspberry extract to the batter. Then bake both cakes according to box directions. Cool completely.
2. Take one cake and level the top off, making it flat. Layer the raspberry mousse lavishly onto cake. Once completed, gently add the second cake on top of mousse.
3. Frost all sides of the cake.
4. Raspberry Mousse - In a saucepan combine 12 oz of raspberries and sugar. Heat and stir over medium heat until the mixture turn to liquid. Stir in gelatin. Remove from heat and scrape into a large bowl. Let cool for 5 minutes. Remove chilled whipped cream from refrigerator. Mix 1 cup of whipped cream into raspberry mixture until well combined. Fold in remaining whipped cream. Refrigerate mousse overnight.
5. After the mousse has been sitting in the refrigerator for an hour or two, pull it out and fold in 12 oz of frozen raspberries, juice and all.
   

It’s was moving day at the job, so Jesse and his colleagues needed some uplifting and since we just got his Aunt Terry’s chocolate cheesecake recipe, we figured why not. However, I’m adding a strawberry topping to it instead of the raspberry I’ve been experimenting with.  We already know the cheesecake is good, or in Jesse’s words “a chocolate elemental”.  However, now we’re going to see if I can make it and still have it be just as good.  But just so that everything is in one post, here’s the complete recipe.

GRAHAM CRACKER CRUST
Ingredients:
8 tbsp butter
1-1/2 cups crumbs (about 21 squares)
4-1/2 tbsp sugar
2-1/4 tsp heaping cocoa

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Mix all ingredients together and pour into spring form pan. Bake at 375 F for 8 minutes.

CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE
Ingredients:
16oz soft cream cheese
1 cup mayo (real Hellman’s)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips melted
2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Beat cheese and mayo at medium speed until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in chocolate and vanilla until smooth. Pour into crust, place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 F for 50 to 55 minutes.

STRAWBERRY TOPPING
Ingredients:
12 oz. pkg. frozen strawberries
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. cornstarch
3 tsp. cold water

Directions:
Mash strawberries through strainer, throwing away seeds. Add sugar to strawberries and heat in saucepan to almost boiling. Mix cornstarch with cold water. Add cornstarch mixture little bit at a time to strawberries, stirring constantly, until mixture starts to thicken. Cool in refrigerator and serve with just about anything.

This recipe originally came from Relish and while it sounded good, I had to make a few adjustments since I don’t have a food processor. Here’s the description from the original article:

Seasoning grilled meat with garlic and a sugary marinade produces a Thai-style barbecue that works well with pork loin or chops. Adapted from The Barbecue Bible by Steven Raichlen (Workman, 1998).

So, the changes I made….one of the first instructions was to use the food processor on the garlic and sugar to form a paste. Well, I completely skipped this step. Instead, I put all the ingredients (minus the pork chops obviously) into a blender instead and just liquidized it. The garlic didn’t get mashed up as much as it would have in a food processor, but I also didn’t add as much garlic as they did either. We’re also giving this to our son, who’s only 18 months, so we didn’t want it too garlicky; but we still wanted the flavor, so I added about half of what is recommended.

I think we only marinated it for about 45 minutes and it still came out pretty good. I’m not a fan of pork, so I really didn’t have much, but the bite I did have was pretty good. I’ll let Jesse give an accounting for the taste, so check for his comment.

Ingredients:
4 (1-inch thick) or 8 (1/2–inch thick) pork chops (2 pounds total)
1 head garlic, broken into cloves and peeled
3 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons rice wine
2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

1. Make 1 or 2 cuts in fat side of each chop to prevent curling.
2. In a blender, combine garlic, sugar, soy sauce, honey, wine, sesame oil, ginger, salt and pepper. Spread over both sides of chops, place chops in baking dish, cover and marinate in refrigerator 1 to 2 hours.
3. Preheat grill to high. Brush and oil grill grate. Place chops on grate and grill until brown 6 to 8 minutes per side for thick chops and half that time for thin, or until temperature on an instant-read thermometer is 160F. Serves

This recipe actually belongs to Jesse’s Aunt Terri and it’s one that his entire family loves. Terri usually makes it for Thanksgiving every year and I do have to say that it is tasty….and rich. Jesse has been after me to try and make it for awhile now and with the Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake experiments, he wants me to use this recipe when I make it again (which, according to him, is going to be twice this week - once to see if I can do it and one more time after that). The first cheesecake came out pretty good, so hopefully I’ll be able to master this one as well.

One thing I was told was that I have to use Hellman’s real mayo, not Mircle Whip or any other kind. It has to be the Hellman’s since it’s actually mayo and not the lab generated stuff. Plus, it can’t be the light version either. The reasoning is the Hellman’s has actually eggs in it and all the others don’t.

Ingredients:
16oz soft cream cheese
1 cup mayo (real Hellman’s)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips melted
2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Beat cheese and mayo at medium speed until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in chocolate and vanilla until smooth. Pour into crust, place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 F for 50 to 55 minutes.

GRAHAM CRACKER CRUST
Ingredients:
8 tbsp butter
1-1/2 cups crumbs (about 21 squares)
4-1/2 tbsp sugar
2-1/4 tsp heaping cocoa

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.
2. Mix all ingredients together and pour into spring form pan. Bake at 375 F for 8 minutes.

This really isn’t a recipe, but something we’ve been experiementing with for awhile now and I thought I would share our results. Basically, we tend to have pancakes a lot (it’s a great last minute dinner) and we’ve been trying different fruits in the batter to see what we can come up with. We’ve tried the standard blueberry, but we didn’t stop there.

When I add fruit to pancakes, I don’t throw all the fruit into the batter and then pour into a pan. My father does that and I’m not crazy with the end results. You can end up with fruit cooking straight on the pan instead of in the pancakes and it can taste a little funny. Instead, I will pour the pancake batter into the pan and then put the fruit on the pancake after a couple of seconds sitting in the pan. Once the fruit is in the batter, I’ll take more batter (usually using either a fork or whisk) and dab it on top of the fruit, making sure all the fruit is covered. This way, when I flip the pancake, none of the fruit is touching the pan and it’s being cooked from the inside.

Anyway, here’s what we’ve found with the following fruit:

Raspberries:
It’s not bad, but it can be a weird combination with maple syrup. Something I found that works out really well is smashing the raspberries before putting them in the batter. The first pancake I tried, I didn’t smash the berries and when Jesse cut into it, he found molten areas of raspberries that wasn’t all that fun to be burned with. The second time around, I smashed them and they came out great. It took fewer raspberries for each pancake and you did get overpowered in a single bit. Instead, it was spread out a lot more.

Jesse wasn’t crazy about the raspberries in the pancakes, but he only had that first pancake where I didn’t smash them up. So that may make a difference.

Peaches:
This was really good. The peaches added a sweetness that worked well with powdered sugar and even maple syrup. I made sure I cut the peaches up into small tidbits and sprinkled them all over the pancake and it cooked really beautifully. The flavor wasn’t overpowering and it added something a little fun.

Bananas:
Ian loves bananas and we had a couple sitting around, so I thought I would throw a couple into the batter for a change. I thought they were really good, but Jesse doesn’t think he liked it to well. The bananas did add a strange texture and taste to the pancakes, but it was a good contrast in my opinion. Again, I cut the bananas into small tidbits and sprinkled around the batter.

Apples:
This was also a surprise. I can’t remember what type of apple I used, but again, I cut them into tiny tidbits and they came out really good. I want to say I used a macintosh, but don’t quote me on that since I remember the apples adding a bitterness to the pancake that counterbalanced the sweetness of the maple syrup. I’m not a fan of maple syrup, it’s too sweet for me, but with apple pancakes, it was actually really good.

These are really really good, i love them right out of the oven.

Ingredients:
3 cans of grand biscuits
2 pk cream cheese
1 pk sharp shredded cheese (16 oz)
1 pk of ham lunch meat - diced or sliced (if sliced, chop ham into bite size pieces)

Directions:
Bring cream cheese to room temperature. Combine cream cheese, shredded cheese and ham. Flatten grand biscuits and place into muffin pan. fill biscuit with cream cheese mixture. Bake in oven at 375 for 15-18 min (or according to pk directions)

Serves 24

This is what you get when you think of something and it starts sounding really good. Bananas and chocolate just seem to go so well in my head, and after making Ian’s cake, I didn’t see why I couldn’t do the same thing with Bananas. So here is a variation on the Dark Chocolate Oreo Cake.

Ingredients:
2 packages of Dark Chocolate cake mix
3 packages of whipped chocolate frosting
2 packages of Jell-O banana pudding mix
2 cups of cool whip
3 cups milk
bananas (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine 3 cups cold milk and 2 packages of banana pudding mix in medium bowl. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended. Stir in 2 cups thawed cool whip. Refrigerate at least 1 hour or until set.
2. Prepare and bake both cakes according to box directions. Cool completely.
3. Take one cake and level the top off, making it flat. Layer banana mousse lavishly onto cake. Once completed, gently add the second cake on top of mousse.
4. Frost all sides of the cake.

One of Jesse’s favorites. The fajita marinade can be substituted with any kind of seasoning desired. This is one I tend to make a lot and it’s actually really nice to make when you’re taking a dish to someone. I just found this out recently and it worked out really nice. Basically, I did all of the steps leading up to putting it in the oven for the 30 minutes. That way, when I took it over, all they had to do was bake it for 30 minutes and it was done. They still had a hot homemade dish and they didn’t have to prepare it at all.

I’ve made this a lot in the past too. This is one of those recipes that works really nice with the Salsa recipe and everyone seems to enjoy it.

Ingredients:
1 pkg of Fajita Marinade Mix
1/4 cup Water
2 tbsp canola oil
1 lb chicken breasts
1 pkg of original country gravy mix
2-1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup salsa
2 cups colby jack cheese
6 (10in) burrito style flour tortillas
1/4 cup green onions (optional)
shredded lettuce (optional)
tomatoes (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine Seasoning, water and oil in a self-closing plastic bag. Add cubed chicken. Close bag and turn to coat chicken. Refrigerate 15 minutes, or longer for stronger flavor.
2. Prepare gravy according to package directions, except use 2 1/4 cups milk instead of water. Remove from heat; stir in salsa. Pour 1 cup gravy mixture into a 9×13-inch baking dish. Set aside.
3. In a large skillet add chicken and marinade. Sauté over medium-high heat 7-8 minutes.
4. Place 1/4 cup chicken in center of each tortilla. Top with 2 tablespoons of cheese. Fold over edges of tortilla and roll tightly. Arrange rolled tortillas in a single layer in prepared dish. Pour remaining gravy mixture over tortillas and top with remaining cheese. Bake 25-30 minutes or until heated through. Garnish with black olives and green onion. Serve with lettuce and tomato, if desired.