I don’t live in cherry country.  I never seem them at my local farmer’s market.  They are expensive in stores.  I’d imagine Louisiana’s climate just isn’t quite right for cherries (or that’s what I assume).  It’s for these reasons that it is a real treat to find cherries on sale at a grocery store.  To me, $1.99 a pound is a steal, and one I’m going to indulge in when I can.  This summer, Whole Foods ran bing cherries on sale all through the months of June and July.  And I purchased my fair share of pounds and pounds of cherries to enjoy.

I can’t have that many cherries in my house and not want to attempt a cherry pie.  The problem?  Everything I read stated that bing cherries were a no-no on the cherry pie front.  “Too sweet,” the cookbooks declared.  Hmmm…. What’s a girl to do?  Well, if the cherries are too sweet, is there a way to tart them up?  I looked at the limes in my refrigerator and gave it a go.  Here’s what I did.  I must say, this “recipe” is more of a process than a true recipe.

What we have here are 1 pound of pitted bing cherries, a lime, cornstarch, and a wee bit of sugar (just a tablespoon or two).   I had the sugar available in case I needed it.

The first thing I did was zest a lime.  I was looking for about a 1 1/2 tablespoons of lime zest.

Half of the lime was juice, and the juice was added to the cherries.  Then about a tablespoon of sugar was added.

I was considered if I’d have that wonderful juiciness of a cherry pie as well.  I couple tablspoon and a half (or so) of cornstarch went into the mix.  I just added cornstarch until things looked like it would make a nice, thick cherry type sauce in the filling.

Everything was placed into a handmade pie crust.  But a pack of frozen pie shells would work too. You’d just need both of them.  Follow the directions (I think you’re supposed to thaw them first), and place the cherries into one of the shells.  The other shell you’ll use in the next step.

Then, the rest of the pie crust dough was added to the top of the pie.   If using a thawed frozen shell, you want to remove the remaining shell to a really lightly floured surface (just enough flour for it not to stick), and roll it out to an even thickness.

Use a pair of clean kitchen shears to cut your pie crust. Even all around the edge.  You can use your fingers or a fork to pinch the edges of the crust closed.

I knew I needed to vent the pie so the sides wouldn’t explode while baking.  Usually, I just prick it with a fork.  This time, I used my seldom thought about mini-cookie cutters.  I bought a small set of cookie cutters when I first began bento.  Then quickly realized I just had not inspiration to use them.  Maybe I ought to make some mini cookies.  Hmmm….

I baked this pie using directions for many other pies I’ve tried in the past.  25 minutes at 425 degrees, then 30 minutes (or so) at 350 degrees.  Cover the edges of the pie crust if they look like they are browning too quickly.

While really tasty, this pie didn’t stand up on it’s own.  Until I refrigerated it. Then, it solidified and looked nice.  Either way, it was tasty.  I’m half tempted to purchase frozen sweet cherries and give this a try.  I love cherry pie.  This turned out really well without alot of added sugar.  The only other thing I’d like to do is try a different recipe for the crust.  This crust was TOO buttery (yes, it is true.  That can actually happen).

  Happy cooking this weekend everyone.  Hopefully, I’ll see you Monday with a bento!

For this recipe you’ll need: cookie dough, little rectangles of chocolate (Hershey’s bars would work great),  an egg white or two (depending on how many cookies you plan to make), and chopped nuts.

Ever have an idea that pops in your head and you just HAVE to make it to see how it would work.  That is what happened to me with these cookies.  I’m a chocolate fiend.  I’m a sweets lover.  If I could, I’d bake cakes and pies and cookies all the time.  Mainly, I don’t because it’s just me.  I don’t need that many sweets in the house.  Even before I started this “let’s teach myself to cook” journey, I baked.  I’ve always done pretty decently at it.  Not stupendous, but compared to my cooking it was usually edible and tasty.

Having a big sweet tooth, especially one for chocolate, I’ve also gotten into the habit of looking at chocolate alot.  I’ve tried a fair amount of chocolate too.  And I’m always intrigued by the multitudes of chocolate I haven’t tried yet.  Take Sharffen Berger chocolate for instance.  I see it in all sorts of specialty stores but haven’t been willing to pay the price for it.  I never did understand why it costs what it does.  In the grocery the other day, I was shopping and ran across it again.  After reading Feisty Foodie’s recent post about an Sharffen Berger press event, I came really, really close to purchasing a bag.  I wanted a cookie with chocolate in it something fierce.  Then in a flash of inspiration, I thought of some chocolate I already had at home.

These are delicious for their $2.99 box price.  Just as soon as I thought of them, the cookie above flashed in my head.  An experiment was born.  If you want to make these cookies, just find a bit of flat chocolate.  A thin Hershey’s chocolate bar will do as well.

I made a really simple cookie dough.  It’s basically a type of butter cookie.  A sugar cookie dough would work as well.  Heck, if you have a roll of cookie dough from the supermarket, use that.  Press it into a flat ovalish type shape.  Wrap it in a bit of plastic food wrap, and place it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.  You want to firm it up.

Once chilled, make slices of your cookie dough.  You’ll have these long oval sort of things.  Cut them a wee bit thicker than this.  Some of the ones I cut were a wee bit too small.

Press down on the slice with you finger to flatten and widen it a bit.

Now pretend this piece of chocolate is on a little slice.  At first, I was rolling out the dough.  I quickly realized that was a bit silly when the dough was practically the shape I needed.  Place your piece of chocolate on the slice.

Using a butter knife or cheese spreader (which is what that is up there), cut away the excess.   Place excess cookie dough to the side underneath a towel.

Lift up your dough slice/chocolate and flip it over onto the other dough slice.  Cut away the excess.

If you are so inclined and not allergic, you can top your cookies with some well chopped nuts.  I used walnuts.  Pecans would be a delight as well.

Brush the top of your cookie with a bit of egg white and then sprinkle on the chopped nuts.

Look how beautiful!  It’s time to get them ready for baking.  Line them all up on a cookie sheet and bake according to the instructions for the type of cookie dough you are using.  My cookies baked at 375 for 8 minutes or until slightly browned on top.

Once finished baking, take them out and admire them.

Aren’t they cute?

Though a few had a slight problem.  Some dough slices I cut fairly thinly to see how it would work out.  When the chocolate melted a bit in the oven, it caused these cookies to crumble a bit.  However, once cooled, they held together well.

Those that were cut a bit thicker worked better.  They looked mroe like I wanted them to look: a stacked cookie.

Have a great Tuesday and Wednesday everyone.  Be the bento!  See you Thursday.

All week on NEB, I’ve shown off these carrot & pineapple cupcakes as part of my bento box lunch.  These were fairly simple to make, way tasty and in the long run, not so bad for me (or so I hope, more on that at the end of the post).  I used this Recipezaar recipe, with a few omissions, to make these cupcakes.

The ingredients I had to split into two pictures.  The ingredients shown above are 2 cups all purpose flour, 2 cups shredded carrots, 1 cup sugar, canola oil (1 cup needed).  A Note about the Oil: When I first made these cupcakes, I followed the recipe and used the oil mentioned.  However, I noticed that you could substitute applesauce for the oil.  I made a second, smaller batch using applesauce.  The cupcakes came out well both ways.  However, using applesauce will cut your calories pretty much in half.

The rest of the ingredients include: 1 8-ounce can of crushed pineapples, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Before you start the recipe, preheat your oven. These cupcakes will bake at 350°F.

Shred two cups of fresh, raw carrots.  I peeled about 3 average sized carrots to get 2 cups.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.

With a whisk, combine and sift these ingredients together well.

Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the cup of sugar.

Next add your applesauce (or oil), eggs, and vanilla. This picture shows oil. I do recommend using the applesauce.

With a wooden or silicone spoon, mix these ingredients together.

Mix the ingredients until everything is well blended. The batter will be a dark brown color and quite thick.

Now add the shredded carrots and pineapple. Be sure your can of pineapple is well drained.

Now mix these ingredients together until well blended. The addition of the pineapple will help loosen up your batter. The batter will seem more “cake-like” and not so thick.

Using a mini muffin pan, fill the pan to where each cupcake section is nearly full. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

Once baked, remove from the muffin pan and cool on a wire baking rack. I was able to make 50 mini cupcakes from this recipe. These fit very well in my bento box.

I mean look how tasty they look.

They have worked really well for me as a nice evening snack when I work on this blog. A bit of fruit on the side, and yum yum!

Nutrition Facts

I recently found a website that helps me calculate a nutrition facts label for the recipes I’ve been using.  To caculate these numbers, all ingredients were listed into a recipe builder, and the serving size was listed as 1 mini-cupcake.  Also, these nutrition facts were built based on using applesauce, not canola oil. Using canola oil will double the amount of calories and other items in the nutrition facts label.

This label is meant as a guideline only, and I am not in any way an expert in this.
I used My Food Diary (www.myfooddiary.com) to generate this label.

I hope everyone enjoys these cupcakes who chooses to make them.

For a printable version of this recipe, you can download a .pdf file of these Carrot & Pineapple cupcakes.  Just right lick on the link and choose “Save Link As.”

Be the bento everyone!

I just wanted to do a quick revisit to my recent recipe post on baked apples.  I decided the 1/2 of an apple cut up wasn’t as bento friendly as I’d hoped.  I decided to bake 2 more apples cut up with the honey/cinammon mixture and topping with only pecans.

OH YUM!  This was super quick to bake to since cutting the apples up seemed to shave about 5-7 minutes from the cooking time.  It was much more bento friendly to pack, reheated well, and was a totally yum and not too high in sugar sweet for my bento box.  A definite keeper.

I’ve been searching for a recipe that was a tasty dessert, but one that didn’t use a cup of sugar, flour, and the like.  Something quick and simple to make that would transfer well to my bento.  As I was searching through my cookbooks to find a suitable recipe, I came across this Recipezaar recipe in my cookbook binder, one I had printed out nearly a year ago but never tried.  These baked apples are wonderful, with a bit of sweetness and nearly foolproof.  Let’s get started.

Our ingredients list is overly simple: 2 baking apples, 1 tbs of honey, 1/4 tsp of cinammon (not pictured), 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of golden raisins, and 2 tablespoons of chopped pecans (I have too many pictured!  LOL!).  Place the butter into a small microwavable dish and nuke in 7 second increments until completely melted.

It’s time to prepare the apples for their filling.  First, we are going to gather our favorite chopping knife and a melon baller.  After washing the apples well and drying off, cut each apple in half.  Then, scoop out the middle using the melon baller.  Place the apples to the side.  Next, mix up your honey and cinammon: 1/4 tsp of cinnamon per 1 tbs of honey.

Place your apples into a baking pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray.  If the apples are wobbly, you can cut off a small sliver off the back of the apple to create a flat stable side.  If you’re wondering what to do with the small sliver of apple, eat it while you wait for your apples to bake.  Or if you are like me, feed it to the dogs.  Mine love apples.

Place 1/2 tbs of raisins in the center of your apple along with 1/2 tbs of pecans.  Now if you’re allergic to pecans, feel free to omit them.  They are completely optional.  Next, spoon on about 1/2 teaspoon of the honey & cinammon mixture onto each apple half.  Once all the apples are filled, you want to drizzle them all with the melted butter.

Place the apples into a 375 degree oven for about 30 – 40 minutes.  When you can slide a fork into the apples fairly easily, you’ll know they are tender and ready.  Also by this point, the pecans will be nicely toasted and have that really great toasted nutty flavor.  YUM!

Once done, eat one of the apple halves plain or add a scoop or two of ice cream if you have some wasting away in the refrigerator like I do.

I really enjoyed these.  However, they have made me wonder what it might be like to try something other than raisins in the middle…like blueberries, or peach slices, or nothing but pecans.  I’m a sucker for toasted pecans with apples.

I plan to slice up 1/2 of one of these to go into my bento this week.  It should make for a tasty sweet item in the bento that doesn’t carry as much sugar as a cookie or piece of cake.

Be the bento everyone.  See  you all on Tuesday with a packed bento.

I showed off these brownies in my last post. I promised to share the recipe. This recipe isn’t hard. It came from Recipezaar. You may even have a better recipe than this one. But since it’s all about my learning to cook around here, and I feel the need to share it with you, my readers, here’s the recipe in all its photo glory.

Now, before we begin I have to apologies to make.

First, I apologize for the odd squiggles and marks in each picture. If you notice, the squiggles are all in the exact same spot. I had dust on the sensor of my camera and didn’t realize it. Hopefully, tomorrow’s bento pictures don’t have this too!

Second, I apologize for the shots that include my hairy forearms! I truly, truly apologize. Learn from my mistakes. Do not put a macro lens on your camera then take a picture where your hairy forearm might be included. It’s just. not. pretty.

Now, on to the brownies. The brownies I made were the recipe linked above halved. This makes the perfect amount of batter for my 24-cup mini-muffin pan. And is way, way many more muffins than I need in my house, even if they are mini. I need someone to share them with, or mail them to, or feed them to. Anyhow, back to the ingredients…

1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup of chopped pecans, 24 whole(ish) pecan pieces, 2 eggs, 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1 cup of flour

1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter, 1/4 cup + 2 tbs (give or take) of cocoa powder, and a pinch (1/8 tsp) of salt (in the spice jar)

Now, don’t forget the tools of the trade as it were.

Large mixing bowl, mini-muffin pan, non-stick spray, large spoon for mixing, cookie dough scoop. Don’t have a cookie dough scoop? That’s okay. Use a tablespoon instead.

Before you do anything else, spray your muffin pan. I only mention this since I forgot to spray it last time. The horror! of cleanup!

Melt your stick of butter in the microwave. I’ve learned if you only microwave the butter in increments of 15 seconds it doesn’t melt away into oblivion. Pour the melted butter into your mixing bowl. And at this juncture I just must say, “Buttah makes it bettah.”

Pour in 1 cup of sugar

and 1 tsp of vanilla.

Mix this goodness up

until well blended.

Add in the first egg

and again mix until well blended. Then add in the second egg

and mix until well blended. Have you discovered a pattern here yet?

Now it’s the time you’ve been waiting for…cocoa time. Pour in the 1/4 cup + 2 tbs of cocoa.

Breathe deeply (but don’t actually inhale the chocolate powder). AAAHHHH, chocolately goodness.

Now mix until,

you guessed it, well blended.

It’s time to add 1/4 tsp of baking powder

and a pinch of salt. Mix until well blended (Sorry, this well blended photo is not shown).

Pour in 1 cup of flour

and mix

(say it with me now) until well blended.

It is time to add the 1/2 cup of chopped nuts into the well-blended cocoa mixture. If you are allergic to nuts, DON’T ADD ‘EM!! Stop now. Or maybe add in a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. I bet that would be good.

Mix until the pecans are incorporated completely into the batter. Which is a fancy way of saying, mix until well-blended.

Using your fancy dancy cookie dough scoop (I love that thing), scoop batter into your greased mini-muffin pan (hairy forearm alert!).

Once all the cups are filled, press a whole(ish) pecan into the top of each cup of batter. These pecans will toast while baking and be so super tasty.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 – 25 minutes. It says to bake longer in the actual recipe. However, baking them as mini-muffins didn’t take as long as the recipe suggets. It took these about 23 minutes to bake in my oven. If you’re not sure, use a toothpick to test the brownies.

Here they are in all their baked glory.

What’s that you say? You wish you could get up close and personal with one. Well, your wish is my command.

Ahhhh, brownieeeeee.

Put 2 on a nice plate

and snarf them down!

I hope you enjoyed today’s recipe. These go so well in my bento. I hope they find their way into your bento too.

It is an apple torte recipe that I have come to quickly adore. Join me as I make this recipe for the 2nd time. Try it out yourself. You won’t regret it and I highly recommend it.

First, you need to find all of your ingredients. Here they are:

4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick), 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg, 1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1/8 tsp salt, 2-3 large granny smith apples

Peel, core, and slice your apples. The original recipe calls for you to just slice the apples into regular, thin apple slices. Since I wanted to make something bento-suitable, I cut mine into smaller pieces.

In a bowl, put 1 cup of sugar and your 1/2 a stick of softened butter. If you were using fairly frozen butter like I was, pop it into the microwave for 15 seconds, nuked at 5 second intervals. Works like a charm.

Cream your butter and sugar together.

Add one egg.

Beat it all together.

In another bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Sift it all together. If you are like me and don’t actually own a sifter, use a whisk to help you “sift” the ingredients. I read that somewhere once. It works wonderfully! Dump this mixture into the butter, egg, sugar mix and beat together…

to form a bit of a batter. Pour your apples into the batter and mix together. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of this step. But I’m sure you can figure it out!

Find the baking dish(es) you plan to use and spray generously with non-stick spray.

Fill them with your apple and batter mixture. Don’t fill all the way to the top. If you do, this rises a bit in baking and will spill over.

If you have some of the silicon cups for your bento box, bake a few of these in those cups. Makes a great addition to your bento!

Pop everything into a 350 degree oven and bake for approximately 45 minutes – 1 hour, or until just brown.

Take them out and look at them in all of their baked glory.

Look at one really closely. Notice how it’s just calling your name.

For the sake of my audience here, I listened to this little torte, and scooped some out…

It is way more delicious than it looks! And I, quite immodestly, think it looks pretty darn good. Bon appetit!