Cheescake Puffs

This past weekend I decided to play around in the kitchen.  Got an idea and decided to give it a try.  I ended up creating what I have decided to call Cheesecake Puffs.

Cheesecake Puff

Here's the kicker aside from maybe the blueberries (and potentially cream cheese), you probably already have everything you need to make this little beauty, because the main ingredient...Pancake mix.  Thats right I started with nothing more than "just add water" pancake mix.

Ingredients

• Pancake batter
• Butter
• 1 8oz softened cream cheese
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/4 tsp of vanilla

Topping

• Blueberries
• Sugar to taste (I tend to error on the more for a sweeter product)

Before we begin, go ahead and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First let's mix up our cheesecake filling, if you planned ahead and your cream cheese is at about room temp good for you, if you are like me and decided to do this and are impatient you can soften the cream cheese up in the microwave for a short time(doesn't take long, you don't want to cook it....and PLEASE  don't do it in the aluminum wrapper, just put it in a microwave safe bowl).  In your mixing bowl add the cream cheese, sugar, egg, and vanilla, and mix it up real well.  Till you have a nice creamy consistency.  Now with that ready, you can set it aside and mix up your pancake batter.

I know I didn't put amounts on the batter, well a lot depends on the mix, and your own preferences, but you don't want to make it too thin.

With all this ready, I buttered my muffin pan up real well,  I suppose you could use oil, or shortening, but I am one who thinks a little butter makes everything better.  I'm not advocating a lifestyle of butter, but as with everything, it's all about moderation, and food should be enjoyed, not just eaten.  I did use a large muffin pan, so these are decent size, I was going for fork food, not finger foods( although a small version in a mini muffin pan, would be delectable, but dangerously easy to eat).  My pan was still pretty new and nonstick, so that was all I used.  Removing the finished product was pretty easy.

Fill each section about 1/3 of the way, although you could add more just adjust cooking time, this is all about playing, not perfecting.   In the middle of each add a scoop of the cheesecake mixture, you can add as much or as little as you'd like, I didn't use all of mine in one batch, but these were experimental, maybe someday I will perfect the recipe and put something a bit more precise.

Now let's add these to the oven and watch the magic.  It will take about 15-20 minutes, and the tops won't brown much, so keep a watchful eye on the edges.

While they cook you can make the fruit topping, anything you'd like would work, but I have an abundance of frozen blueberries from my in-laws, so they won in our household.  All I did was simply put some in a pan on medium heat, and added some sugar and cook them down.  This is where the fun of taste testing comes in as well, as you always have to taste to see if you need to add more sugar or not.

You will start to notice the middles rising on your puffs, with any luck they are pulling away from the edges of your pan as well, and you can get a good idea of how done they are by how brown the edges get, at least that is what I did.  The cheesecake centers should also be pretty well set at this point too.

Using a rubber spatula you should be able to scoop them right out.  This is where you test your nonstick pan and your butter job, both of which hopefully worked well.  Once you take them out, you can put a little of your fruit topping on the top, and there you go, instant sweet bliss.

Serving to a crowd, a beautiful display of them on a serving platter each individually topped would look marvelous.

Good luck, hope you enjoy them!

Cheater Peanut Butter Pie

If you are like my family, you can go through some peanut butter, whether it's peanut butter toast, peanut butter sandwiches, or peanut butter on pancakes.  Oh and if you haven't tried peanut butter on your pancakes, give it a try before you knock it, my wife thought I was a little off the first time she saw me do it, now she won't hardly eat pancakes without it.  I am also going to throw out my little endorsement for my favorite PB, if you haven't tried it, give Jiff Natural a try.   We thought we would give it a chance, and have never looked back, in fact it's the only kind we use now.

Now on to my goodie experiment., Here was the final product.  A simple peanut butter pie, perfect for anyone, even those that aren't big into cooking, but love peanut butter pie, especially since this is a no bake option.

This is the version I made, and although I think next time I am going to double the peanut butter, like I said my family is crazy about peanut butter, and I am also going to use just a standard graham cracker crust, as I think it has more flavor than the chocolate crust I used.

Here goes with what I did this time.

1 Crust (I used a chocolate crust, but I think a graham cracker crust will taste better)

Filling:
1 cup Heavy whipping cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup  peanut butter
1 box vanilla instant pudding

Put all the ingredients in your mixer, using the whisk attachment mix everything together good till it somewhat sets, it doesn't set quite as well as pudding alone.  IN about 5 minutes though it will be all mixed together well.  Then pour into the crust, cover, and place in the fridge.  The next day you have a wonderful peanut butter pie.  It probably would be ready in a couple hours, but it was late when I made it, so I didn't get to try it till the next day.

Top with some Cool Whip and you are ready to server.

Enjoy

Quick vegetable Lo Mein

Lo Mein is probably one of the things I like the most when I pick up Chinese carryout.  After many tries I finally found one that I make at home that I like just as much, and can easily be made just about any night,  assuming you have some good egg noodles handy.

My Vegetable Lo Mein

To start with this recipe, let me say I've tried making lo mein at home many times, with some less than stellar results.  Most of the time I started with some linguine noodles.  Unfortunately after all those attempts I found that the problem with them all was just that, the noodles.  Most pasta you get from the store has a high percentage of semolina flour, if not completely made from that.  While semolina gives you a wonderful pasta for italian foods, the results for lo mein are just not right.

Now in my previous post I mentioned my new pasta roller, this was the key to my lo mein.  I made some basic egg noodles straight off the recipe book that came with the roller. It makes a wonderful egg noodle, that is just perfect for this chinese dish.  Now if you don't want to make your own noodles, which I warn you, once you start, going back to some store bought box of noodles becomes very tough to do, you can buy some egg noodles, just try to avoid typical boxed pasta that has semolina and go for a basic egg noodle, for me I like something sized around the same as linguini.

As far as a recipe goes, this is going to be the most imprecise recipe you might ever read, but that's because I think lo mein is something that is cooked very much to taste, so I could say 2 tbsp of this and 1 tsp of that, but yours and mine tastes might disagree highly, so play around and find what you like.  The other beauty of this recipe is that with only some minor differences, you can turn it into a wonderful fried rice which I will talk about as well soon.

The basic ingredients that I start with are as follows:

egg Noodles
eggs
butter
wok oil
garlic
cabbage
carrots
green onions
oyster sauce
fish sauce
soy sauce
sugar
salt and pepper
and sometimes I even add some frozen peas


Cook your noodles as per your directions,  now me sometimes I will cook them a little longer, as I like a pretty soft noodle for lo mein, however you need to be careful, too long, and you will have lo mush, and not lo mein.

While your noodles are cooking, melt some butter in your wok, it doesn't take much just enough to coat the bottom of your wok, so your eggs won't stick too much, if you have a good non stick wok you can cut way back on it if you like.  Then scramble up your eggs, at our house we like a good bit of egg in ours, so I tend to use 3 to 4 eggs, it's also how I sneak in some extra protein into my vegetarian wife's diet.  Once you have your eggs scrambled, take them out and set them into a bowl for later.

Next I have to clean out the bit of egg that is left in the pan, my wok is not the most non stick item I have, and I don't want a ton of burnt egg in my lo mein.  Then I add some wok oil and a clove or 2 of minced garlic, depending on the size of the clove and how many vampires I want to keep away, but a lot of this is purely to your taste, if you like a lot of garlic go for 2 or more, but if you don't want to be over the top, keep it to one.

While thats sautéing, chop up some cabbage, now how much you like and how you like it cut is entirely up to you, I've made it chopped pretty fine and also as shown in the picture above cut much larger.  I do like a good bit in there, I used about half of a small head of cabbage, however if I got one of the heads of cabbage I get from my in-laws, it would be probably no more than a quarter if not less.  I have to say they have sent down some of the biggest heads of cabbages I have ever seen.

One the cabbage has started to cook a bit, I toss in some julienned carrots, I wait on them a bit because I prefer them to be less than completely cooked where as I like the cabbage to be cooked through much more.  I also cut the onions and place them in there now to cook.  I dice up the green portions as well, but save those as garnish for serving.

By now you have probably cooked your noodles, so let's strain them and rinse them well with some cold water, this prevents them from continuing to cook and keeps them from sticking together.

As your veggies continue to cook you start making your sauce.  Even for a large batch of noodles, which is probably almost a pound, it doesn't take as much as you might think.  I use about a tbsp of fish sauce, a couple tsp of oyster sauce, maybe 1/2 tsp of sugar and probably about 1-2 tsp of soy sauce.  Again I say this is all to taste, so play around a bit and find what you like, it's not rocket science, its cooking.  You can always add a little more while you toss the noodles.  Because of this I really try to go light on the soy sauce, and add a little more while it's cooking.  Mix this all up and here's where your hard work is about to pay off.

Make a bit of a well with your veggies and toss in the sauce, followed by the noodles, tossing everything together well, trying to coat everything with a bit of sauce.  Next add your eggs back into pan continuing to toss everything together.  Now add a little salt and pepper to taste and a little more soy sauce if you so desire as well.

Once everything is mixed together,  you can add the green portion of your onions to make it look like something you got from your local take-out.  you should end up with pan full of something like this:

Now you can scoop onto your plate and serve, although if you really want an unbiased opinion of your new creation, get yourself some of those little containers, and tell everyone you tried out a new Chinese take-out and see what they think.

Good luck in the kitchen and enjoy!