Springtime Luncheon Sandwich

I made Blue Cheese-Walnut sandwiches this weekend. This recipe is perfect to service at Spring lunches and get-togethers. The recipe was in the March 2009 issue of Southern Living.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
• 1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
• 5 oz. package of blue cheese
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
• loaf of bread
• 1/4 cup fig, cherry, or apricot preserves
  

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Bake walnuts in a single layer in a shallow pan 6 to 8 minutes or until toasted and fragrant, stirring after 5 minutes. Cool completely (about 20 minutes).


2. Stir together walnuts and next 3 ingredients. Spread on 1 side of each bread slice. Spread fig preserves on half of bread slices; top with remaining bread slices, cheese sides down. Chill sandwiches in airtight zip-top plastic bags up to 24 hours, if desired.

Instead of making finger sandwiches like what the article suggests, I made halved sandwiches, because this was not for a special occasion, just lunch at home. I also added apple slices to the recipe just to have that extra crunch!

Spring is in the Air

After spending the past week discussing Christmas, I thought it was time to move forward a few months and focus on the season that is upon us: SPRING! I love spring. I love the colors associated with Spring, the flowers, warm (yet not humid) weather. Pretty much everything except the pollen.

To celebrate the beginning of Spring and a beautiful Little Rock weekend (got up to 80 degrees!) I wanted to bake a cake. But I wanted to do something I had never done before, because variety is important!

I made a lemon flavored cake with cream cheese icing that I gradually added 3-4 drops of yellow food coloring to in order to create a pastel yellow. I made a 9" round cake and an 8" round cake (even though the 8" pan looked more like a 7" pan, which was good, because I wanted it to be different sized layers). After letting the 2 cakes cool on a rack for 45 min-1 hour I put them on a pink plate which was on my rotating cake stand. I iced the top of the 9" cake then centered the 8" cake on top of it and iced the top.

Then I began icing the sides of the cakes. For the tops of the cake I used my large icing spatula and for the sides I used my small icing spatula.

For the larger pearl border, I used Wilton's tip #12 and for the smaller pearl border I used Wilton's tip #5. I decided to to the larger border for the top of the 8" cake and the bottom of the 9" cake around the plate. Then the #5 for the smaller pearls around the base of the 8" cake.

To add that extra Spring touch, I sliced a lemon and arranged it on top of the cake with some bright green leaves from a lemon tree we have in our backyard.

Not the hardest cake to make, but it was a lot of fun. I opted out of using lemon icing, because I thought that might be too much lemon. Ben found that squeezing the lemon juice on the individual slices of cake made it taste even more delicious! Be looking for more Spring goodies later this week!

Christmas Party Menu

This post is about the menu Ben and I planned for my parents' Christmas party. Not to brag, but I think it was a nice variety of food. This is also the party where the gingerbread men and Christmas tree cookies were served. I'll add pictures of the food and table decorations later when I find where I saved them. Without further ado, here's the menu:

Festive Sausage Balls with Mustard-Mayo Dip

Ingredients

• 1 pound bulk breakfast sausage
• 8 ounces finely shredded Cheddar cheese
• 3 cups biscuit baking mix
• 1/2 cup finely minced green onion
• 1/4 cup finely minced red bell pepper

Preparation
Combine all ingredients and mix well. This can be done by hand, with a heavy duty mixer, or in a large food processor. Shape into small balls and place on a baking sheet (with sides). Bake at 350° for 12 to 15 minutes, until browned on bottoms. If desired, serve with Mustard-Mayo Dip. Link here.

Mustard-Mayo Dip

Ingredients

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 2 to 3 teaspoons prepared yellow mustard
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/4 teaspoon dillweed

Preparation

Combine all ingredients. Serve with sausage balls. Makes about 1 cup of dip. Link here.

Applelicious Sandwiches

Prep: 20 min., Cook: 21 min. Makes 14 appetizer sandwiches

Ingredients

• 2 gala apples
  
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
  
• 1 (8-oz.) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (4.4-oz.) container blue cheese crumbles
• 1 tablespoon honey
• Freshly ground pepper to taste
• thin bread slices
• 1 (5-oz.) package arugula, thoroughly washed
• 2 tablespoons butter

Preparation

Thinly slice apples. Heat chopped walnuts in a small nonstick skillet over medium heat, stirring often, 3 to 5 minutes or until toasted and fragrant. Combine cream cheese, blue cheese crumbles, honey, and toasted walnuts until blended. Add freshly ground pepper to taste. Spread 1 side of each of 28 thin bread slices with 1 Tbsp. cream cheese mixture. Divide 1/2 of the arugula among 14 bread slices. Top with apple slices and remaining 14 bread slices, cream cheese mixture sides down. Melt 1 Tbsp. butter on a griddle over medium heat. Cook 7 sandwiches 3 to 4 minutes on each side until golden and cheese is melted. Repeat procedure with 1 Tbsp. butter and remaining sandwiches.

Tip: If you don't have a griddle, omit butter, and cook sandwiches, in batches, in a lightly greased large nonstick skillet 3 to 4 minutes on each side or until golden and cheese is melted. Link here.

Tortellini Kebabs

Ingredients

• red and green dyed, cheese stuffed tortellini noodles
  
• whole black olives
• cherry tomatoes
  
• Italian dressing
  
• wooden kebab sticks cut in half
  

Preparation

Prepare the noodles as directed on the package. Put noodles in a bowl and add Italian dressing until desired taste. Arrange kebab sticks alternating between tortellini, olive, tortellini, tomato, tortellini. Refrigerate until time to serve.

Olive Pecan Spread

Ingredients

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 (5 oz.) jar sliced green olives, drained
• 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• baguette or other type of bread to serve with the spread

Preparation
Mix together the cream cheese, mayonnaise, olives and pecans in a bowl. Refrigerate at least 1 hour before serving. Slice the bread. Link here.

Hot Crab Spread

Ingredients

• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
• 1 can (approx. 7 oz.) crab, drained, cartilage removed
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dry sherry
• 1 tablespoons lemon juice
• dash cayenne pepper
• 1/3 cup silvered almonds
  

Preparation
Heat oven to 350°. In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, crab, sherry, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce. Mix to blend well. Spoon crab mixture into a small shallow baking dish; sprinkle almonds evenly over top. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Serve with a sliced baguette. Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups. Link here.

This menu was definitely fun to prepare, but sometimes a challenge because of a lack of oven space. I tried to prepare what I could the night before (noodles, dips, olive spread, etc.) then preparing the rest the night of the party. I used Southern Living, a Southern Appetizers website, and just googled for ideas and pulled everything together. I hope this has all made sense and is easy enough to follow.

Decorating for Christmas

My parents built a vacation home on a mountain in Arkansas and that's where we spent Christmas this year, so we needed to figure out what kind of decorations/theme we were going to go with since it would be our first Christmas at the mountain house. Since the house is on a mountain, in the woods, the most obvious theme was nature/woodsy and that's what we went with.

I know this post has nothing to do with baking, but it has to do with Christmas and that's what this week is all about!

I tried not buy a whole lot for this tree, because I wanted to make things from limbs and pine cones to make it more authentic, but some stores have great nature items for Christmas trees that were just too good to pass up. I bought fake birds (yes, fake birds) to hang in the tree. They went really well with the nature theme. I also bought plaid ribbon with wire in it so it's easier to shape around the tree branches. I found large (very large) plastic acorns and scattered them throughout the tree. Red berries were also very prevalent on the branches and the fireplace mantle in the house. I found that I could buy fewer berry branches if I fanned them out as much as possible.

The homemade decorations consisted of large pine cones with red ribbon hot-glued on them so they could hang from the tree. Also, Ben and I made wooden stars out of small sticks. We broke the sticks so that we could have 6" pieces. First we made a cross, then put 2 sticks on the diagonals and hot-glued them together and put a small pine cone over the hot-glued center just to add a little extra flair (does that make sense?). I think that the cutest homemade decoration was the bundle of cinnamon sticks tied together with a gold or red ribbon. We added small fake berries and branches to make them look more nature-like.

At the top of the tree, instead of putting a star or angel, we put a large rooster, and then added these sticks with feather-covered styrofoam balls on them (which my sister hated, but I loved).

I bought the decorations at either Hobby Lobby or Garden Ridge. Both had 50% sales before Christmas, which is always a plus!

For the dinner table, my mom and I bought 3 birch wood vases from Pottery Barn. I put small styrofoam blocks in the bottom of them so I could stick pine needles, berries, and other things in the vase and they would stay. The 2 table runners were also from Pottery Barn and we decided to use 2 shorter runners, instead of 1 long runner just to add a different element to the table.

Ben and I went on a walk around the house and we saw the perfect Charlie Brown tree! We decided that it was absolutely necessary to cut it down and bring it back to the house and have our own Charlie Brown tree outside on the porch. So cute!

Gingerbread Cookies

During the Christmas Season, I also made gingerbread men cookies. I purchased the cookie cutter at Eggshells Kitchen Co. in Little Rock. At that time they only had a gingerbread man cookie cutter, but I was in there recently and they had a gingerbread woman, so of course I had to get one! I really like these cookie cutters because they are a good size, not too small but not too big.

The recipe I used I found on cooks.com. It's probably the simplest gingerbread cookie recipe I've ever seen.

GINGERBREAD MEN COOKIES

2 3/4 cup of flour
1/2 tsp. of soda
1 tsp. of ginger
1/2 tsp. of cinnamon
1/2 tsp. of salt
1/2 cup of shortening
1/4 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of molasses
1 beaten egg
1 tsp. of hot water
1 tsp. of vinegar

Mix all ingredients. Roll onto a well floured surface. Cut into gingerbread men. Place on a well greased cookie sheet dusted with flour. Bake at 350 degrees until brown, about 8 minutes or so, depending on the oven.

After letting the gingerbread men cool on a cooling rack I began to ice them. I didn't really ice them like I did the Christmas trees, because gingerbread cookies are not covered in icing (much to the disappointment of some people). Instead, I used a round tip and icing bag with vanilla icing and outlined the cookies and put icing dots down the middle in order to make sure that the redhots could stick. You can't have gingerbread cookies without redhots!

Make sure you use plenty of flour when you are rolling out the dough and putting the cookies onto the baking sheet, because this dough becomes sticky very quickly. As you can tell, some of these gingerbread men are not perfect. Some look like they are leaping through the air or doing a weird dance move. That's because when I was transferring them to the baking sheet their arms or legs landed differently (if that makes any sense). But I kind of like it. It makes them unique. Next year keep an eye out for the most adorable gingerbread women! I wish I had had that cookie cutter this year, but I couldn't find the perfect one and I didn't want to settle for a cookie cutter that was not the same size as the gingerbread man, because that just wouldn't be right.

Christmas Cookies

About a week before Christmas we had a snow/ice day and I did not have to come into work (woo!). After sleeping in a couple of hours, I decided it was time to get up and do something with my day and since my parents were having a Christmas party that weekend, it was obvious that I should make something for that. I decided to make Christmas cookies. They were shaped like trees and stars, but I only have a picture of the trees.

I used the sugar cookie recipe from this post and the icing recipe from this post. For the tree decorations I use pre-made icing, because the icing that you use to ice the cookies would be too runny for the details. You can do the tree decorations in whatever color you want, but I chose colors that would stand out on the cookie. For the stars, I made yellow icing and used a star tip. For icing the trees, I found it went faster if you use a sponge brush. So I used a 1" brush. This was a great project for a cold, icy day!

Festivus for the Rest of Us

For the past couple of years, Ben's dad's side of the family has started to celebrate Festivus. For those of you who are not fans of Seinfeld, here's a link to Wikipedia's definition of Festivus. This year, I made a Festivus cake, but since the holiday does not have certain colors or a theme really, I had to be creative. I thought about what actually happens on Festivus: the airing of grievances, feats of strength, the presence of a steel pole (or the Festivus pole). Then I began to think how I could incorporate those into a cake. Let me tell you, that was difficult.

The cake ended up looking like (or is supposed to look like) a sheet of white paper on which a person has written their grievances. Then I tried to make a Festivus pole. With the help of Ben's mom, we figured out that by wrapping aluminum foil around the cardboard pole-like-thing that comes on a hanger (removing it from the hanger, of course) it would resemble a pole.

The grievances I picked were just general ones: bad grammar/spelling, littering. Also, I found that when writing with icing it's best to keep it to 1-2 words. I believe the cake was yellow cake and cream cheese icing (I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record with the cake/icing combination, but people request it, honestly).

Just for kicks, I'm including a picture of Ben's Granddad doing his feat of strength. Pretty amazing, huh?