Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake Muffins

I’ve baked my share of cupcakes but somehow I have never baked muffins. I have decided that it’s time to put my muffin tins to good use and whip up some goodies that aren’t cupcakes! So when I found this recipe for coffee cake muffins and read all of the rave reviews, I decided they would be perfect.

And they were perfect! They were moist and just sweet enough for my morning taste. The recipe called for blueberries, but I’ve had chocolate chips sitting in my pantry for a while now and decided to use them instead. I would double the amount of salt used next time, but other than that, this recipe is great as it is.

Turkey and Balsamic Onion Quesadillas

I thought I was having a good healthy week. I’ve cooked three nights this week and really believed that I was making good choices that meant I was being super healthy. I used turkey sausage instead of regular old sausage in one recipe and on this recipe used lean turkey meat instead of ground beef. But then I realized that I’ve used CHEESE in every. single. meal. I’m not that healthy after all am I?

Salmon with Brown Sugar and Dijon Glaze

I love salmon and my favorite way to make it is simple with some lemon, salt and pepper and maybe a little white wine. But not everyone is as fond of the fish as I am and this is the perfect recipe to bridge the love-hate gap of seafood. Promise. This is like the non-seafood, non-salmon lovers dream…in salmon form. It’ll make any seafood hater and believer in the good stuff from the sea!

The glaze will make you lose your mind! It’ll make even the least likely of salmon eaters savoring every last bite. It’s that good. Brown sugar, soy sauce, honey, Dijon…can you go wrong here!? No!

Simple Mushroom Soup

Since winter is refusing to go away much to my dismay, hot foods are remaining a necessity to me.  The only silver lining is that the cold weather is at least offering me tons of opportunities to make soup!

This is a riff on a mushroom recipe I found on 101 Cookbooks. I’ve changed it enough, but the basic elements should be credited to her recipe. I just wanted a simple, no frills soup with chunks of potatoes in it. The original recipe only called for water but I wanted to bump up the volume a bit with vegetable broth. I only substituted half of the water for broth so I could make sure I retained the mushroom flavor.

Pignoli Cookies

Making pignoli cookies for your Valentine…not the quintessential Valentine’s Day dessert, but I think that makes it even more special! I could have whipped up a red velvet cake no problem,  but this was a true baking challenge and was more than worth it when he couldn’t stop eating them throughout the night!

I don’t know from a pignoli cookie. I’ve only tried them one time and it was at one of the best bakeries in Philadelphia: Isgro’s, so I knew mine wouldn’t be nearly as good as their’s. But I’m told by my pignoli cookie lover that they were amazing nonetheless. So in my mind, this was a success, even if they didn’t turn out quite like the traditional Italian cookie.

Making Almond Paste aka Complete Madness

My boyfriend hinted requested that he wanted Pignoli cookies for Valentine’s Day. And I love a good food challenge so I obliged! Then I saw the recipe called for almond paste and apparently no supermarket in my five-mile radius carried. So I made my own because the recipe to do so seemed simple enough and I later found out almond paste is super expensive so this might have been a money-saving blessing in disguise.

First of all, when it says “peeled almonds” don’t get out the vegetable peeler like I did. I don’t know what my problem is half of the time in the kitchen but I believe it has something to with the fact that I just don’t THINK AT ALL. When I told people I did this, they laughed at me like I was an idiot…which is deserving because I really was an idiot. Don’t worry, I only peeled 5 or 6 almonds and cut myself with the peeler  just a few times before I said “Forget it!” and stormed away from the kitchen in a huff and decided to Google how to peel almonds. Surely there was a better way. And DUH there was. Boil them for 60-90 seconds and these babies literally FLY out of their skin. I’m not kidding. It was like the fucking fourth of July in my kitchen with almonds shooting everywhere, bouncing off of the ceiling. Madness. I’ll be finding naked almonds in my place for the next few weeks…

Cheesesteak Egg Rolls

I live only a few blocks away from a few of Philadelphia’s favorite Cheesesteak shops but I rarely indulge in our signature sandwich. I’ve only had the famous Pat’s 1 time and have I never even tried Geno’s! I do have my personal faves of course: Dalessandro’s Steaks in the Roxborough neighborhood is awesome and I’ve always loved me a Jim’s cheesesteak on South Street. But this city has so much more great food that just this sandwich, that I never seem to be jonsing for one!

Years ago I tried an appetizer I had never heard of: cheesesteak egg rolls and was blown away! I never ordered anything else from that particular restaurant until recently when it seemed that the egg rolls were popping up on restaurant menus all over the place! Is this just a Philly thing or do they have these in like Ohio?