Back in Action!

Some of these recipes we cooked while my mom was still pregnant, but most of them have been in the past four weeks since the baby was born. And we've gone back to using some of our favorite ingredients from last spring. Can you guess what spring ingredient might be coming up???? If you look back to last spring, I rheally think that you can figure it out!!!!!

But one of the other ingredients that we went back to is fresh strawberries. These ones just came from the grocery store, but this Baked Strawberry and Cream Stuffed Croissant French Toast was unbelievably good. Plus it was fun to make! We slit the top of stale croissants open and stuffed them with a mix of cream cheese and strawberry jam. Then we dipped the croissants in an egg batter and baked them on a cookie sheet. The recipe had us make a sauce with butter, brown sugar and maple syrup and pour it over the croissants. Unfortunately this just ended up making a mess in the oven. So if you make this recipe, DEFINITELY bake the croissants in a baking dish to catch all the sauce when you pour it over.

It was my idea to use the injector that we got when we were making twinkies!

Then you top the croissants with fresh berries.

I thought that this recipe was beautiful and delicious!

We've done a lot with strawberries, because they're in season in the spring. This Glazed Strawberry Bread was another popular breakfast. I don't really like strawberries raw, but I do like them cooked.

We served this bread completely cooled, which I liked, but it was hard to wait.

I liked how the glaze looked dripping down. My brother liked the texture that the glaze added once it hardened.

The bits of strawberry in the bread had lots of flavor and the bread itself was soft and sweet, but it all blended together well.

We've actually made a few other quick breads recently. A quick bread is a bread that is leavened with baking soda or baking powder, rather than yeast. Their texture is usually more like cake than bread. But one that we made that was fantastic was Coconut Bread. Our friend Grazzy LOVES coconut, and she said this was the best coconut bread she'd ever had.

This bread made the house smell amazing while it was baking!

The recipe recommended cooling the bread completely and then toasting thick slices and serving them with butter, so we tried broiling slices and buttering them. This was my favorite way to have it!

But my brother liked it better just sliced and served at room temperature. The truth is that this bread is great both ways!!

Another quick bread recipe that we made and liked was called Depression Era Peanut Butter Bread. The Great Depression happened a long time ago, before my grandparents were born, but it was a time when lots of people didn't have a lot of money. Kit Kittredge is an American Girl doll who grew up in the Great Depression and her dad lost his job and their family had a hard time. This bread would have been good for their family because it doesn't have expensive ingredients! We all loved it though, especially my sister. She asked for five slices, one after another, but eventually my mom made her stop!! The interesting thing about this recipe though, is that it really isn't very sweet. Most peanut butter baked goods are pretty sugary, but this one isn't at all.

This bread looks simple, but it has a lot of flavor!

When my new sister was born, she had to spend a few weeks in the NICU because she was premature. My mom would go every day very early to be with her, but tried to make us a special breakfast before she left, since she was sad that she couldn't be with us too. We couldn't even visit because of covid. Some mornings I would be up early to help her though.

Her first morning home she made us these Lemon Puff Pancakes with Fresh Berries. These were very light and similar to a dutch baby. She doubled the recipe, and I would recommend doing that, because one of these isn't enough for very many people.

I thought that these looked super cool and wavy when they came out of the oven, but they collapsed quickly, just like a dutch baby.

We had them warm with berries for breakfast, but my mom also put them in our lunch boxes for school the next day and they were also great plain at room temperature!

Another morning we had Dark Chocolate Chunk Raspberry Crumb Muffins. I never thought that I would say this about a recipe, but all of us agreed that we would like these more without the chocolate!! I think it might have been because my mom used extremely dark chocolate, and it was too bitter for us. It was even too bitter for my brother, and he doesn't like sweet chocolate! So I would try making these again, but I'd either leave the chocolate out or use semisweet.

The crumb topping on these was excellent though!

A muffin that we made that was more popular was Bakery Style Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins. These were interesting because they get drizzled with a lemon syrup after baking. My sister said that these were the best muffins that we'd ever baked!

Unfortunately we lost the stick part of our pastry brush and so my mom had to glaze them with just the brush part! She wouldn't let me do it because she was worried that I would burn my fingers.

Then we sprinkled sanding sugar on top, which I LOVED!!

Probably the overall favorite muffin that we've made recently was these Coffee Cake Muffins. I was interested in learning about the history of coffee cake, since it isn't made with coffee! Although actually my mom told me that she DOES have a coffee cake recipe that is made with coffee and we can try making that soon! But generally it turns out that coffee cake is any cake that is meant to be served with coffee. There are different variations in different countries. It turns out that in the UK, it is usually a sponge cake that actually is flavored with the coffee. And in the US, it is a single layer sweet cake.

These muffins aren't actual coffee cakes, but they have coffee cake flavor.

The topping on these ran together, but we just cut through it and they still came out great.

I actually liked how the topping sticking off the top looked in the end. And of course I liked how it tasted!

These Blackberry Muffins were another big hit! The recipe was simple, but wow were these good! Everybody loved them!!

Don't hesitate to make these just because they don't look fancy. They are definitely worth baking! And they freeze really well (which my mom loves!).

Another not fancy but good breakfast was this Sausage Egg and Cheese Breakfast Casserole. The only change that we would make, is next time we would break up sausage patties. We sliced links for this, but we think that patties that are more like ground meat would be better.

I think this would be a good breakfast before skiing.

Another really good breakfast was French Toast Casserole. A nice thing about this recipe is that you can make it in advance, but you don't have to. My Grammy Marcia makes the best Caramel French Toast casserole, but you have to make that one in advance. Sometimes that's good, but my mom was happy to just be able to make this one really early in the morning.

This ends up with both crispy edges and a soft middle and I liked having both.

We ended up making the strawberry syrup that we blogged about using on lemon ricotta pancakes and cheesecake again. We actually made it to use on cheesecake jars, which we talk more about below. But we had extra, so my mom served it on top of waffles. These waffles are easy to make, and come out light and delicious.

This waffle ended up a funny shape though because we needed to use a little more batter.

We made Twisty Cinnamon Buns, which was a very special breakfast for Father's Day. We've made a lot of cinnamon rolls in the past year or so, and my mom thought that these were the very best ones. My dad loved them too and thought that they had great frosting.

First you have to roll out a very long log. The sunlight kind of messed up this picture, but we definitely could not move that dough. Or the sun!!

Then we cut the log lengthwise, and made the twists.

They puff up as they bake.

And then we sliced and frosted them. They were delectable!

And now friends, the moment you've all been waiting for, our welcome back to our beloved friend RHUBARB!!!! These Rhubarb Streusel Muffins were excellent. The sweet streusel on top balances the tart rhubarb perfectly.

All muffin pictures look kind of similar, but this streusel had nice crumbs.

We also made a Streusel Rhubarb Bread. This recipe actually gives you two loaves, which is great because it freezes well and everybody liked it a lot.

This streusel topping didn't have flour or nuts in it, so it came out as more of a crackly sugar topping, which I really liked.

This bread has nuts in it which adds nice texture.

We also made a Rhubarb Snacking Cake and Rachel said that this was her favorite of all the rhubarb recipes we've made (and that's A LOT of recipes!!). Everybody loved this one. And you could actually probably make it with another kind of fruit, if rhubarb isn't your thing (although if that's true, you might not be very into this blog!). This cake is also very forgiving. My mom didn't hear the timer and overcooked it by at least ten minutes and it was still incredible!

This cake might not look very different from lots of other things we've baked, but it really was special and we'll definitely make it again.

We also made Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp Bars. These look similar to the snacking cake, but have more of a shortbread bottom. These weren't very sweet and so we actually had them for breakfast. A great thing about this recipe is that you just mix the ingredients for the crust right in the baking pan, save some of it to use as the topping, and then press the rest of it in for the crust. It's very easy.

I loved the color of these!

An unusual rhubarb recipe that we tried was Frosted Rhubarb Cookies. My mom was worried that these would be weird, but actually they turned out great. They're made with shortening, which gave them a fantastic texture. And even though cookies made with butter have better flavor, the rhubarb and frosting added enough flavor that using shortening for the cookies was totally worth it. My dad especially liked the frosting. He said that it reminded him of a frosting that my Grammy Marcia used to make.

These cookies are almost like little tea cakes. They're a perfect afternoon treat!

One of my mom's favorite lunches that we've ever made was Cauliflower and Chickpea Pitas. She LOVED these and so did my sister and so did I. Even my dad, who is sometimes skeptical of vegetarian dishes, thought it was great. My mom had seen another similar recipe that included an Avocado Dip and so we made that, instead of the yogurt dip that came with the first recipe. I actually ate leftovers of this for dinner the night that my mom ended up going to the hospital to have my sister, and even though we'd made it a few days earlier, the avocado cream lasted really well, which doesn't happen a lot with avocado.

The chickpeas get crispy roasted, which is really delicious.

Everything tastes amazing together blended in the pita. We use these thick and fluffy pitas, which are really good, but sometime I want to try and make our own!

I know that it's a pretty common chicken preparation, but we made Chicken Piccata for the first time recently. This has a very strong lemon flavor. I thought it was too lemony, but my dad liked how lemony it was, so I guess you'll probably like this if you really like lemon. We both enjoyed the capers though. My parents like white meat, but my brother and I prefer dark. I think maybe we would like it more if we tried it again with thighs.

I did think that the cooked lemons looked pretty, but I didn't like eating them, even though my parents did.

One of our greatest hits was lobster tails that my dad made on the grill. My mom thought it was one of the best things we'd ever made, and it was actually really easy. We just split the shell on the tails to grill them and put in skewers to hold them flat. Then we made a chive butter that my dad brushed on while grilling. There's no recipe, that's it! If you like lobster, you should definitely try cooking it this way. It was awesome!

I think that the red shells and green chives looked colorful and pretty together!

One of the times that we made the lobster tails, we had them with this Spring Asparagus Galette. It was a very spring-y menu! The amount of asparagus and crust in this galette was very well balanced. There's a filling with ricotta cheese and gruyere and the entire combination is heavenly.

When my mom was preparing this, she said that she was absolutely never making it again, because cutting the asparagus so thinly was such a pain. But once she tasted it, she changed her mind and said it was totally worth it!

I thought that the slices looked great on a platter.

My mom really likes doing sheet pan dinners during the week because they're easy to clean up from. One that we all loved was Sheet Pan Kielbasa with Cabbage and Beans. Kielbasa is a Polish meat sausage and is the only kind of sausage that my mom even likes. We made this with pork kielbasa for my dad and turkey kielbasa for the rest of us. The first time we made this dish, we sliced the sausage thin and it got a bit overcooked. So we cut it in bigger pieces the next time and that worked much better. We served this to my Grandma Linda and Papa Richard and every single one of us really liked this dinner, which doesn't always happen!

The soft cabbage and the crispy sausage go really well together.

Another very popular dinner was Jerk Chicken Meatballs with Barbecue Pineapple Glaze. These were sweet and spicy and awesome! My brother actually thought they were too sweet and my sister thought that they were too spicy, but you could always reduce the sugar or the red pepper flakes if you agree with them. I thought that they were perfect!

The glaze is really thick and rich and flavorful.

You already know that we did a lot of strawberry breakfasts lately, but we also got into using strawberries in desserts. A really fun dessert that we made is No-Bake Cheesecake Jars. And of course we topped them with our favorite Strawberry Syrup, that we got from this recipe (we've actually never even made the angel cake french toast that the syrup is supposed to go on!). My dad thought that these were the perfect portion size.

These were great because the jars made them easy to give away to other people!

Another super popular strawberry dessert that we made was Summer Strawberry Cake. We served this as part of brunch for our friends Dave & Sophie. They're having a baby girl soon and I think she's going to be best friends with my newest little sister!!! The very bottom of this cake was almost sticky and chewy, which I loved.

Can you see where we started cutting it before we remembered to take the picture? We seem to do that a lot!!

Of course we served it with whipped cream!

We made a couple of good peanut butter desserts lately. One of them was Star Crunch Cookies. These were very easy to make and I could definitely make them by myself because they don't need to be baked. They're more like chocolate peanut butter rice krispie treats than actual cookies.

A good thing about these cookies is that they keep in the fridge for a really long time.

Another very easy no-bake recipe that we made lately was Triple Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites. This recipe was one of my mom's favorites ever. She said if she could only eat one dessert, this would definitely be a contender. I loved these too. If you like peanut butter, you should make them right now!!

First you melt white chocolate for the bottom layer and then you make a peanut butter layer. This is my sister and me pressing the peanut butter layer over the white chocolate.

After that we added mini peanut butter cups, a chocolate layer and chocolate and peanut butter chips. The combination is amazing!

One of our very favorite things to make is sandwich cookies and our latest version was Brownie Cookie Sandwiches with Cookie Dough Buttercream. These cookies were very good. You have to cook flour in the oven to kill any bacteria to make it safe to eat in the cookie dough buttercream. I thought that was interesting and I'd never done that before. We all liked these cookies a lot, but we didn't think that this buttercream tasted that much like cookie dough. It did a little bit, but I'm not sure that I would have noticed if I hadn't known what it was supposed to be.

The brownie cookies were soft and fudgy and delicious.

We've actually been very busy lately working on a top secret project. It's something new and exciting that we've never done before, and it's taking us an entire month. I can't wait to tell you all about it soon!