Turtle Pie

The other day we went to dinner at the Hays House. This is a local restaurant in our small town and one of the oldest continually operating taverns in the US. Great atmosphere and even better food. If you ever travel along the Santa Fe Trail, stop in here for lunch. And always, always, save room for dessert. They have the most amazing pies. This is actually what got me hooked on real whipped cream. I will never be the same.

The Girl wanted dessert. She always wants dessert. So do I, but I try not to give in that much. Anyway, my only requirement was that she share.

She picked the Turtle Pie.

All I can tell you is that it was so amazing that we came home and immediately set about creating our own recipe.

Cream a package of cream cheese with 3/4 cup powdered sugar and 1/4 cup powdered cocoa.

 Fold in 2 cups of whipped cream.

 Add a layer of toasted pecan to the bottom of a baked pie crust.

 Cover those pecans with caramel sauce. I used homemade, but you could use ice cream topping, too.

 Pour the cream cheese mixture over the caramel. Chill for about an hour until it all sets up.

 I had quite a bit of filling left over, so I made popsicles.

The pie was amazing. The popsicles were amazing. Everything just melts in your mouth. This could possibly be my favorite dessert ever. And I like a LOT of desserts.


Click here for Printable Recipe

Turtle Pie

1 Baked Pie Crust

8 ounces Cream Cheese

3/4 Cup Powdered Sugar
1/4 Cup Cocoa Powder

2 Tablespoons Milk

2 Cups Heavy Cream, whipped with a little sugar to sweeten

1/4 Cup Roasted Pecans

1 Cup Caramel Sauce

Beat the cream cheese, cocoa powder and powdered sugar until smooth. Add the milk. Beat the mixture until smooth. Fold in the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture. Set aside the remaining whipped cream in the refrigerator. Add pecans in a layer at the bottom of the baked pie crust. Pour caramel sauce over pecans. Pour cheese mixture over the caramel. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until the pie is set.

Spicy Chocolate Cake

Pinterest seems to have taken over any semblance of free time that I may have had. It's like StumbleUpon for people with ADHD.

But that does not make it a bad thing. If you actually go back to your board and find something that you truly want to create, then I think it is totally worth it.

Take this recipe. I found this pinned on Tuesday and had, had, had to make it. It originally came from this site and I can't seem to find a name to attribute it to. What you may notice if you click on that link is that the blog is in another language. According to Google Translator, it is Polish. Thank goodness Google has a translator.

You must make this cake.

If for no other reason than to smell it baking.

It is that divine.

Mix the yogurt, oil, vanilla and eggs and orange zest together in a bowl.

 In a separate bowl sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa. Add the sugar and salt, spice gingerbread spices.

 Don't know what gingerbread spices are? I didn't either. It is apparently a European thing because I went to two different grocery stores and no one had ever heard of them. Even the three little old ladies in the baking aisle. They were intrigued, though. So a quick Google search turned up a mix that sounded pretty good from food.com. I just added that mixture to the recipe below, but the site suggests adding it to pretty much everything so I might have to experiment with that.

Add the flour mixture slowly to the liquid mixture and then add in 1 cup of Coca Cola. The original recipe called for freshly brewed coffee. I didn't have any and I wasn't about to make any. I did have some Coke, so I substituted that in.

 Pour into prepared pans and bake for about 35 minutes.

 Layer and frost with the greatest cream cheese frosting ever created.

Now you may have noticed something a little bit different in the very first picture.

A few years ago, my kids received a giant pad of Christmas themed hidden picture pages. Every night for the past month, before going to bed, we complete a page. Hidden things are huge in my house. So this hidden Christmas tree cake fit in perfectly with our nightly routine.

Even better, this was super easy to achieve.While your layers are cooling, mix up any white or yellow cake. I used the Eggnog Cupcakes. You are going to use the same procedure that you would to make cake balls. If you have missed out on this craze, don't worry. I made them once and to be honest, I do not believe for one second that they are worth the trouble. Anyway, crumble up about a dozen cupcakes. If I were to plan ahead on this, I wouldn't use cupcakes. There are too many edges and they do not crumble well.

 Mix in about a half a cup of green tinted mascarpone cheese. I used about 40 drops of food coloring. I also did not use actual mascarpone. Our little grocery store does not carry it, but you can make your own or just substitute in cream cheese or even frosting. Mix this well to form a nice dough. About the consistency of play-doh.

 Turn one of your layers over so the bottom is facing up. To make a Christmas tree, you need to cut out a cone. This is a triangular circle, and I am pretty sure there is no more difficult shape to try to cut out of a cake layer. It helps to have some kind of pattern. You probably have a cup that will fit just right. Mine ended up being about 8 cm (3 inches) in diameter.

Slice in at an angle. 

 

It is better to go too shallow at first. You can always go in and make it steeper later.

 Remove the cone and smooth out the edges so you have a nice neat depression in the bottom of your cake.

Take a little piece of the green dough and form a cone that fits into your cut part.

Then form a pancake from the green dough that is a little bit bigger than your first one and press it down on top. 

 Repeat this step.

 Once more until the dough becomes even with the bottom of your cake layer. Flip this over onto your serving plate so the dough is on the bottom.

 Now you are going to make a cut out in the second layer that is a little smaller than the first. Mine ended up being about 6 cm (2 inches) in diameter.

 Repeat with the green dough.

 You will have quite a bit of dough left over. Make some cute little Christmas trees. Just form a tree from the dough. Take a pair of scissors and snip around to make it look like leaves.

 Sprinkle with powdered sugar because, you know, it is snowing.

 Layer and frost with the greatest cream cheese frosting ever created.

 When you cut into the cake, your little cones look just like a Christmas tree.

This was such a hit at supper time. I told The Kids that we had to find four Christmas trees. They found the first three on top immediately (my kids are so smart, you know) and were completely delighted when we cut into the cake to find the last one. I realize my tree isn't as pretty as it could have been, but to tell the truth, it came out so much better than I thought it would.

This really is a pretty simple cake to put together. I actually did it on a Tuesday night in a couple hours that included bake time. You could use any cake recipe, but I highly recommend you try this one at least once. It is super moist and the spices are to die for.

So go ahead, make a "fancy" cake for the holidays. Just try not to puff up too much with all the oohs and ahhs.


Click here for Printable Recipe


Spicy Chocolate Cake
1 and 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup baking cocoa dark
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup coca cola
Zest of 1 orange
2-3 teaspoons of the gingerbread spices
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa. Add the sugar and salt, spice gingerbread spices. In a separate bowl mix the yogurt, oil, vanilla and eggs and orange zest. For the wet ingredients gradually add the flour mixture. Blend, adding in coca cola. Mix only just combined. Pour into two prepared round cake pans. Bake about 35-40 minutes, until a knife comes out clean. After baking, wait 15-20 minutes before removing. Baked layers allowed to stand until completely cool.

No Bake Cookies

This year we had three incredible exchange students. They were here for less than a year, but they were so involved and easy to get along with that it felt like they have been a part of our school forever. Roxy (Poland) and Alona (Russia) became members of our track team this spring. It took quite a bit of convincing to keep them out. That first week, none of them could even make it completely around the track. By the end of the season, we had them running competitively in the 1600m and 800m. With smiles! I am so proud of those girls and am going to miss them now that they are back home. 

At one of our track meets, we had a series of unfortunate events that left us missing one leg of our 4x400 relay. Roxy was our last hope. It took a little bit, but somewhere in the convincing, the idea of no bake cookies came up. So I promised Roxy that I would make a batch if she would run the relay. 

There are a lot of ways you can make no bake cookies, but this is always what I think of when I hear the name. This version comes out of a 4-H cookbook that my home county printed in 2000. These always seem to be the best recipes, don't they?

Combine 1 stick of butter, 1/2 cup cocoa, 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup peanut butter and a pinch of salt in a large saucepan. 

Cook and stir until the mixture melts together and starts to boil.

Boil hard for 1 minute. This is important! If you don't boil for at least one minute, the cookies won't set up and you will be left with soup. Not bad, but not a cookie, either.

Stir in 3 cups quick oats and a teaspoon of vanilla.

Stir this all together.

Drop by spoonful onto waxed paper.

I have tried several versions of this cookie, but this is by far my favorite. I think it's the peanut butter. I probably make these once a month and never seem to get tired of them.

Click here for Printable Recipe

No Bake Cookies
1/2 Cup Butter
1/2 Cup Cocoa
2 Cups Sugar
1/2 Cup Milk
Pinch of Salt
1/2 Cup Peanut Butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla
3 Cups Quick Cooking Oats
Combine butter, cocoa, sugar, milk, peanut butter and salt. Cook until the mixture reaches a full boil and boil hard for 1 minute. Take off stove and add oats and vanilla. Stir together and then drop by spoonful on waxed paper. Cool.

Nutella Pizza

Since we have been making every version of pizza known to man and Cici's (macaroni and cheese topping anyone?), we figured we might as well double that dough recipe and make dessert to go along with it.

Robin Sue posted this ages ago and I am just now getting around to making it. If you listen carefully, you will hear crying in the background.

Mix up your dough. Go with the No Rise Dough recipe. It will never fail you.

Have The Girl spread it out into an approximate circle.
Bake this until it's nice and crispy. Mine took about 8 minutes.

Spread on the Nutella. I used about half a cup. I heated the Nutella for about 30 seconds in the microwave so it would spread a little easier.
Sprinkle on a chopped up apple. Granny Smith is my favorite and really gives this a nice bite. I luckily had some leftover toffee bits from the Toffee Rolls so I sprinkled those on, along with a few chopped walnuts on one half. The Kids don't really care for nuts, so I left some nut free.
Allow the 'ooohs' and 'aaahhs'
Slice it up and have it for dessert. And a snack. And breakfast if it lasts that long.

Nutella is one of those hidden gems that people in my part of the country just now seem to be discovering. One of my kids had a jar at a track meet the other day and was dipping peanut butter crackers in it. Yum! The Boy likes it on his toast with banana slices. You can make a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich.

But this is by far my favorite way to use it.

Click here for Printable Recipe

Nutella Pizza

Nutella

one apple finely diced

2/3 cup toasted walnut pieces

2/3 cup toffee bits

Spread on as much slightly heated Nutella as you want onto your baked pizza crust. Add apple, toffee and walnut pieces. Slice and enjoy.

Hot Fudge Cake

When my computer crashed (again) a couple months ago, my dear brother recovered all my files (again) for me. He probably keeps that equipment just for me.

Hidden away in my Documents was a file dated somewhere in 2009, simply named "recipes." Not sure what to expect there, I opened it up to find thirty-two pages of recipes.

Yes.

Thirty-two pages.

Holy Cow!

Apparently one day a few summers ago, I had gone on some type of recipe copying rampage.

This Hot Fudge Cake was one of them. Like nearly all of the recipes in the file, it did not come with the source. A quick Google turned up several amazing new desserts that I simply must try, but I couldn't find anything that looked like this one.

Bake a yellow cake in a 9 x 13 pan. It can be your favorite from-scratch recipe or from a mix. Who am I to judge?

This is a spin on the poke cake, so use the handle of a wooden spoon to poke holes into the cake about every inch or so.

In a saucepan, melt a can of sweetened condensed milk with a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Pour this over the yellow cake. Spread it out and let it cool down a bit.
Spread a container of Cool-Whip over the top.
Doesn't that look incredible?

It is.

I'm going to go make it again.

Click here for Printable Recipe

Hot Fudge Cake

1 Yellow Cake Mix, baked

1 Can Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

1 Carton Cool-Whip

Poke holes in the cooled cake with the handle of a wooden spoon. Melt the chocolate chips and milk in a saucepan and spread over the cake. Let cool. Spread Cool-Whip over chocolate.