Peanut Butter Cheesecake Pizza

My youngest son loves this!

Thank goodness it is easy to make. I have to confess that the first time I made this, I somehow dropped the pan of hot pizza on the floor and had to remake almost the whole recipe. Major fail, but I am glad I had enough ingredients to make another batch. I am sure anyone that knows me at all would not be surprised as I am a major klutz. Now I need to learn how to drizzle melted chocolate artistically!

Peanut Butter Cheesecake Pizza from Taste of Home- Fancheon Resler

1 tube refrigerated cookie dough or 2 cups of my recipe for sugar cookies

8 ounces of cream cheese, softened

2 eggs

½ cup sugar

1 cup peanut butter chips

1 cup chopped, unsalted peanuts

1 cup milk chocolate chips

1 teaspoon of shortening

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Press the cookie dough onto an ungreased 14 inch pizza pan or a jelly roll pan works. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until golden. Beat the cream cheese and then add the eggs and sugar. Spread over the crust. Sprinkle with the peanuts and peanut chips. Bake another 15-18 minutes until the center is set. Cool 15 minutes. Melt the chocolate chips and the shortening together in the microwave. Drizzle over the pizza. I sometimes buy the chocolate and peanut butter bag of chips and either separate them by flavor or sprinkle half on the pizza and use half for the drizzle. Either way, you get the peanut/chocolate flavor and half opened bags of any flavor of chips are dangerous for me to have sitting around the house. Remember to refrigerate your leftovers.

Best Yet Sugar Cookies

I usually prefer frosted sugar cookies, but these ones are pretty tasty. My Mom got this recipe from someone in the PTA group at my grade school. That means I have been eating and/or making them a good 25 to 30 years! My Mom would alternate red and green sugar to roll them in for Christmas. Don't let the butter and oil in the recipe turn you off. It did freak me out at first and using 3/4 cup of oil works out also.  I think the combination is key to the texture of these cookies. I am sure the cream of tarter has something to do with it to. I have often used this recipe for the sugar cookie dough used for cookie pizzas. I think store bought dough tastes like baking soda.

Best Yet Sugar Cookies
2 sticks of butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup of oil ( I use canola, but vegetable is okay)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla
5 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking soda
2 teaspoons of cream of tarter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs, oil, salt and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients together separately and then add to the wet mixture. Roll into balls and then into sugar. Place on a cookie sheet and flatten each cookie with a glass dipped in sugar. Bake until barely golden around the edges. 8-10 minutes. Makes about 10 dozen, depending on how large you make the cookies.

Couscous Cakes

These may not look like much, but they are one of my husband's favorite things to eat. We saw the recipe on Food network one cold weekend morning. I hardly watch any TV right now, but in the winter months I like to wake up weekend mornings with some of the food shows and DYI on HGTV. Lots of coffee with the occasional shot of Irish Cream or Kahlua are usually in my hand. I think the show was 5 Ingredient Meals but I don't even know if it is still on. I liked it though. I am really not a fan of all of the challenge shows on that station. Show me something I can make myself and my family would like to eat. I don't need to see drama about making some cupcakes. Ugh! I changed the recipe a little to suit us and the kind of things we have in our pantry.

Couscous Cakes Adapted from: ClaireRobinson-foodnetwork

1 ¼ cups water

1 cup of couscous

2 tablespoons olive or canola oil

2 large eggs

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon of pepper

2 tablespoons of dried parsley

3 finely chopped green onions

In a medium pan bring the water and some salt to a boil. Add the couscous and oil. Cook for one minute. Turn off the heat and cover for 5 minutes. Stir the couscous to break it up and let if cool about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Beat the eggs together and add them and the rest of the ingredients. Shape into small cakes. I use my measuring cup for a 1/3 of a cup. Fry in about 2-3 tablespoons of olive or canola oil about 6 to 8 minutes on each side. Drain on paper towels and serve. I always double the recipe and it feeds the 4 of us. We like these with Japanese mayonnaise, which is 2 heaping tablespoons of mayo, a squirt of lemon juice and a shot of hot sauce(Sriracha) or we just use spicy BBQ sauce.

French Bread

This french bread recipe comes from a book my Mom gave me about 16 or 17 years ago when she was getting ready to move out of my childhood home.

The book is called Once-a-Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg. The book I had was the original 1986 edition. I wish I kept this book, but I must have been in a purging mood and got rid of it. That was most likely when we moved to PA from IL. It had some great ideas and I still make the granola and Balkan Meatballs recipe from this cookbook. I see there are newer additions out. I may have to pick one up. You can find it on Barnes & Noble's website.

French Bread from: Once-a-Month Cooking

3 cups warm water

1 package of yeast

3 tablespoons of sugar or honey

1 tablespoon of salt

7 ½ to 8 cups of all purpose or bread flour

Dissolve the yeast in one cup of warm water. Add the sugar and salt and let stand for 5 minutes. Stir in the additional 2 cups of warm water and 3 cups of flour. Add the rest of the flour a cup at a time. Knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes on a well floured surface. Grease a very large bowl and the top of the dough. Cover and let rise until the dough has almost tripled. Sometimes I make the dough before work and do the last rise when I get home.  You can shape into 4 baguettes or put into 3 ungreased 8x4 loaf pans (my lazy, preferred way). Let rise for another 45 minutes, covered. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and bake the loaves for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven to 350 degrees and bake another 30 to 35 minutes. Once I reduce the oven temperature, I lay a piece of foil over the tops of the loaves so they do not brown too much.  This is a nice, sturdy bread. I like to slice the extra and put it in a freezer bag. That way we can have homemade bread any night of the week. I just pop it into the microwave. It also makes great toast.

Basil Butter Garlic Bread

This bread was great on the grill! It is a good way to use up some of that basil in your garden.

The topping was easy to mix up in the food processor.

Spread it out on some soft, but chewy bread and bake, then broil, or grill.

Basil Butter Garlic Bread from: Two Peas & Their Pod

¼ cup butter

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 cup loosely packed basil leaves

1/3 of a cup loosely packed parsley

2 cloves of garlic or to teaspoons of diced

1 green onion

salt and pepper (to your liking)

1 loaf of french bread or some focaccia is what I used

1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the butter through the pepper together in the food processor. I am sure you could also just mix it all together in a bowl if you softened the butter just a little and finely chopped the basil, parsley and green onion. Sometimes the idea of cleaning that food processor bowl makes me think twice about using it. Cut apart the bread horizontally. Spread each half with the mixture. Put the halves back together and wrap in foil. Bake for 10 minutes. Unwrap and separate. Sprinkle with the cheese and broil until golden on top (2-5 minutes). I have also done this on the grill and just let the cheese melt on top. It gives the bread a good smokey flavor.

Coconut Macroons

I have always wanted to make these, but it took me a long time to finally get around to it. I used the recipe off the back of a bag of Baker's sweetened, shredded coconut.  The recipe is very simple to put together. If I visit our hometown in the Fall,  I am going to make sure to take some of these to my Mom. She told me she really likes coconut macaroons.  The Castles and Carriages blog has a great ideas of adding almonds to the cookie so it tastes like an Almond Joy when the bottoms are dipped in chocolate. You can't go wrong there!

Coconut Macaroons From: Baker's

1 14 ounce package of sweetened, flaked coconut
 2/3 cup sugar
6 tablespoons of flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt
4 egg whites
1 teaspoon of almond extract (or use vanilla instead)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Mix all of the ingredients together and drop tablespoon sized mounds on to parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake for about 20 minutes. Cool and dip bottoms or drizzle the tops with melted semi sweet baking chocolate or chips. This makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins

I can't believe it has been so long since I have made this recipe. I love these things. This is another recipe I got from my sister G. I know I have had the recipe for around 10 years, maybe longer. Every time I think of baking with zucchini, I think of making these before I think of anything else such as zucchini bread. I have no idea where this recipe originally came from.

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup oil
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 to 3/4 cup mini or regular chocolate chips

Mix the flour through the cinnamon together in a bowl. In another bowl, mix the sugar, egg, oil, milk and lemon juice. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and fold in the zucchini and chocolate chips. Bake in very well greased or lined muffin cups.

Note: This make one dozen muffins and they freeze very well in a freezer ziplock. The recipe also calls for 1/4 cup chopped walnut but I have never tried it with the nuts. Mini chocolate chips work well here, but I took a tip I heard somewhere ( some blog I can't remember) and mixed a tablespoon of the flour from the recipe with the regular sized chocolate chips before adding to the dough. It did seem to help keep them from all sinking to the bottom, like they had in the past. I also sprinkled a few chips on top of each muffin. Makes them look even better to me, plus more chocolate is always good!

Linking up to Sweets for a Saturday and Breakfast Ideas Monday