Banana Cinnamon Dessert Enchiladas

Happy Cinco de Mayo from my house to yours. But truth be told I am so going to be eating this dessert throughout the year. Because if there is one thing I always have on hand, it is ripening bananas, flour tortillas and cinnamon. And of course it was so delicious
 
 I am always looking for a healthier dessert and something to do with bananas that have gotten past the point where my family will eat them. We like our bananas nice and firm around here. This recipe turned out even better than I hoped -- so delish. Next time I may add a little Nutella inside the tortillas. We ate ours without any chocolate sauce. We were out. But really a few crumbly choco chips over the top and it was just perfect.

p.s. Maybe my definition of healthier is different than yours. But we changed out evaporated milk for coconut milk (for the lactose intolerant girl) There is no cream, no butter and really not a ton of sugar in each dessert. These are low fat but they don't taste that way. They are my definition of an amazing healthier dessert.

BANANA CINNAMON DESSERT ENCHILADAS
Makes 6. 

• 3 ripe bananas 
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 6 flour tortillas
• 1 cup sugar (This is a lot. You will have leftovers for cinnamon/sugar toast)
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp. ginger
• 1/4 cup coconut milk or evaporated milk
• 1/4 Cup chocolate chips

How to make it

•  Mix together sugar and spices.
• Peel bananas and cut in half lengthwise;
• brush bananas with lemon juice.
• Place one banana half at end of tortilla;
• sprinkle with sugar mixture.
• Roll tortillas and brush with milk. 
• Sprinkle top with sugar mixture after brushing the top and sides with evaporated milk.

• Bake at 400 degrees F. for 15 minutes in a well greased pan. Add chocolate chips on top for last 5 minutes. (they will get all crumbly)
• Remove from pan immediately and serve with hot fudge or chocolate sauce, or ice cream or just plain. They are decadent enough without any topping.

Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam

Strawberry season is here and this year I promised my family I would make some strawberry jam. Last year I made lots of jam but somehow never got any strawberry made and I had a lot of unhappy eaters in my house. They wanted strawberry jam. So, strawberry season is here and I delivered.

However, I like my jam to taste like the actual fruit. Not just sugar and so while I added plenty of sugar to this jam it is a reduced sugar jam using about half the amount of sugar most recipes call for.

I used my go to pectin for reduced sugar jams. Pomona Pectin is amazing. You can use little to no sugar or even honey or another sweetener and it still gels up. I love this stuff. It uses some calcium water to help the process. The calcium powder and directions comes with the Pectin. I get my Pomona pectin from my health food store. Sometimes they even order it in special just for me. But you can also purchase it online here.  In addition you can half or double the recipe and still get good results. It is like a little jam miracle. I think I should be their spokesperson.

Sound complicated? It is not. I had a batch of 5 jars of jam done in an hour.

As a culinary sidenote: Look at those mini Triscuits. I am never buying the full size ones again. Loving these, especially for little jam bites.

Another sidenote: I canned all my jam but this gels up really fast and I wish I had left some uncanned. It was amazing fresh out of the pot.


Recipe
Makes about 5 cups of jam or 5 half pints.
 4 Cups mashed strawberries  which is really closer to 6 cups of chopped strawberries. (I hull and chop and then mash with a potato masher, finished off with a few turns of my emulsifier to break up some of the bigger chunks.)
2 Cups sugar (you can use less if you want).
2 tsp of calcium powder (comes with the Pomona pectin)
2 tsp of  pectin

While preparing jam make sure you are heating your half pints, lids and rings in hot water. I run my lid rings and jars through the dishwashe
r and time it so I am pulling steaming clean jars out of the dishwasher when the jam is done. I place the lids in simmering (not boiling water) while I am preparing the jam. Follow the directions on your lid box.

Also if you use a water canner you should get this water boiling. I use a steam canner (and have for 14 years with great and safe results.)

Chop and mash strawberries.
Add strawberries and calcium water to a saucepan.
combine pectin and sugar in a small dish.
Bring strawberries to a boil.
Add sugar/pectin mixture and stir vigorously to dissolve sugar. Return to boil and allow to boil for 1-2 minutes.
Remove from heat.

Pour or spoon into jars. Fill to 1/4 inch from the top. Add lids and rings. Tighten rings to finger tight. You still want to be able to remove later.

 Process in a water bath or steam canner for 10 minutes. Add 1 minute for every 1000 ft elevation over sea level.

I am at a little over 6000 ft and I process for 17 minutes.

Remove from canner and cool.
Remove rings and clean in sticky residue if you are storing your jam.

Eat it up. It is delicious. The great part was that I opened up a jar later the same night and it was perfectly jelled.

Raspberry Coconut Bars

I have a confession to make. I am one of those gals that will always walk through the grass instead of on the sidewalk if it means that it is a shorter and better route. So, I think it is kind of funny when people assume I make everything from scratch. And they do occasionally. The truth is I a love a short cut. Especially when it comes to baking.

Which is why I love Jiffy Mixes. Especially the special flavors like Raspberry Muffin. On the side of the raspberry muffin box was a raspberry bar recipe. Sounds like a shortcut to a yummy dessert to me. I changed it a little by adding coconut because I am also one of those gals that thinks coconut makes everything better. OK, maybe not spaghetti and meatballs, but definitely everything else. You can substitute pecans or leave the coconut out if you are not a coconut gal (or guy).

Raspberry Coconut Bars
1 pkg of Raspberry Muffin mix (Jiffy)
5 TB margarine or butter, softened.
1/4 Cup quick oats
1/4 Cup shredded coconut
1/2 Cup Raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9" square pan.
Combine first four ingredients.
Mix with fork until crumbly.
Set aside 1/4 cup of crumb mixture.
Press remaining crumb mixture into pan.
Spread raspberry jam on top of crumb layer to within 1/2 inch of edges.
Sprinkle or drop reserved crumb mixture over filling.
Bake 25-28 minutes until slightly brown. 

5 Pie Round Up -- My Faves

Happy Happy Pi day. I only ever liked or did well at one type of math -- Geometry. And so I celebrate Pi and that one math class I got As in during high school with a roundup of my fave pies. It is so hard to pick. I LOVE, LOVE Pie.

Pie I am making today. I am making a large version of this Double Lemon Tart to giveaway to a deserving person in my neighborhood.

.
2. Peach and Bosenberry Mini Pies -- I just pruned my blackberry bushes and peach tree. So looking forward to these pies again.

3.  Gramp's Granny Apple Pie -- Oh how I love this rustic old fashioned pie.

 

4. Oreo Nutella Cream Pie -- One of the top viewed recipes on this blog. 

5. Mini Lime Tarts -- One of my favorite St. Patrick's Day Treats. 

And this is the pie I am dreaming of trying next. This Chocolate Caramel Tart from My Baking Addiction.

Italian-French Fusion Braciole or Stuffed Beef Rolls

My Grandma was half French and Half Italian. Her nationality was French, but her mother was Italian. There is an awesome love story of her parents there with Algeria as a backdrop. A story for another day. This Braciole is not her recipe but it is definitely in honor of her and her mad cooking skills.

I love a good stuffed beef roll. Even more I love a braciole which has been cooked in marinara sauce. However, I also love a quick, uncomplicated meal. That is the hurried American in me. Typical braciole is a little longer process. Unfortunately, I am in that stage of life where longer process meals are seldom on my menu.

But my adaptation of this Italian meal (with a small shout out to the French in me with the use of one of my favorite cheeses -- gruyere) is amazingly good (even better as leftovers) and it is simple and takes under an hour to cook. And yet it still turns out nice and tender.

As an added bonus it gets beef on the table within my dinner budget. These thin beef strips go a long way. I bought a pack of about 8 precut beef strips (about 12 inches long, 3 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick) for around $6.50.

Italian French Fusion Braciole
Six to eight servings

6 to 8 thin strips of beef appx. 10-12 inches long and appx. 3 inches wide.
1/2 cup italian seasoned bread crumbs
6 slices of prosciutto
1/2 Cup of spinach leaves
1/4 Cup of Gruyere cheese shredded or thinly sliced.
 garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups of marinara sauce.
1 Tb olive oil

Season each beef strip with garlic powder, salt and pepper.
Spoon a layer of bread crumbs down one side of each beef strip. Layer each strip with a piece of prosciutto, spinach leaves, and Gruyere cheese.
Roll beef lengthwise from one end to the other and secure with baker's string or a toothpick.
Heat olive oil in a heavy pot. I used a ceramic coated cast iron pan.
Place beef rolls in pan and sear on all sides until brown.
Remove beef rolls and add 1/2 cup marinara sauce to pan. Scrape browned bits up and mix into the sauce.
Return beef rolls to pot. Cover with remaining sauce.  Cover pot and reduce heat to medium or medium low. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

Serve warm.

Berry Drop Biscuits

A Blueberry Biscuit Story:

It started out with a craving. I saw a pic of some blueberry biscuits on Pinterest. And well I have been thinking of blueberry biscuits ever since. I have pinned a few of those recipes. But they just were not what I was looking for.

I decided to go back to the roots of this blog as I developed this recipe. Many of the original recipes on this blog were my attempts to use my pantry and food storage to make delicious food.

I decided to see what I could find in my food storage to make this happen. Instead of buying fresh or frozen blueberries, which are expensive right now, I decided to use some homemade blackberry jam (made this summer from my very own blackberries) and some of Trader Joe's freeze dried blueberries. They have these relatively inexpensive packs of freeze dried blueberries that hold about a half a cup of blueberries. I have been stocking up on these things.

I was in a hurry to get food on the table Saturday night after running a big event all day. I needed simple and fast. I decided to use Bisquick instead of opting for scratch. At least one box of Bisquick should be in every pantry for quick cooking solutions. I also like it because it has no butter or milk like some mixes and we have to do a lot of lactose free baking in our house.

I substituted coconut milk for the milk in this recipe for my lactose free eating girl. I prefer coconut milk (the kind in a carton, not a can) over soy milk for baking because of taste issues. You can use regular milk in this recipe.

I loved these easy and fruity biscuits. They were on the table in 15 minutes. And we ate All of them -- more than a dozen.

Berry Biscuits.

2 1/4 cups of Bisquick
2/3 Cup coconut or regular milk
1/4 cup freeze dried or fresh blueberries
2 TB of blackberry jam

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Stir Bisquick and milk until well combined. Fold in blueberries and blackberry jam.

Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake about 10 minutes or until top starts to get golden.

Double Lemon Heart Tart

Desserts are like love! They are all about the layers. 

I have been thinking up a new tart recipe for weeks now. I wanted something that had some yummy layers but started out with a delicious lemon wafer cookie crust. I recently discovered these lemon wafers at the grocery store. And they were just screaming "MAKE ME INTO A TART CRUST!"

I also wanted a layer of Nutella. (When is that ever a bad bet?) and I wanted a fluffy lemon topping.

I had every intention of making these in my new mini tart pans my sister bought me for Christmas. But then my friend brought me these cute spring release form pans from Wilton for my birthday. Perfect for a little Valentine's day treat for my fam.

And so hear they are. Fluffy lemony tarts with some Nutella love hidden inside and some berry love on top.

Double Lemon Heart Tart.

For 6 Tarts or 1 Big one.

2 Cups of lemon wafer cookies crumbs, crushed in food processor
3 TB of Sugar
4 1/2 TB of butter, melted.

1 can of lemon creme pie filling. You could also use a jar of lemon curd here.
1 tub of whipped topping
1/2 Cup of Nutella

Strawberries and blueberries.

 Directions:
Heat oven to 350 Farenheit
Combine cookie crumbs, Sugar and butter in a medium bowl.
Press a 1/2 inch layer of cookie crumb into bottom of tart pan or pans.
Place pans on cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and allow to cool. 

Meanwhile beat together lemon cream pie filling and whipped topping until combined.
Top cooled cookie crusts with a layer of Nutella.
Top with lemon filling.
Allow to cool in refrigerator for 4 hours or more.
Top with berries before serving.

Fluffy Pancakes (with a dairy free option)

Look at how thick and fluffy these pancakes turned out. Are they not just gorgeous?

The best part is that even though I had to alter these pancakes to make them dairy free, they still fluffed up like this using butter and milk substitutes. I have a daughter who is lactose intolerant and so we have to alter A LOT of recipes like pancakes, muffins, rolls and waffles. 

I am completely impressed with how well these turned out despite the fact that I had to make them dairy free. However, the this recipe can be made with regular butter and milk (same amounts) and they will still be beautiful. 

This is my new recipe for plain old traditional pancakes. I am going to use it again and again and again. 

Traditional Pancakes
 (makes 12 -16 pancakes)

1 1/2 Cups of Flour
3 1/2 tsp of Baking Powder
3/4 tsp of Salt
1 TB of Sugar
1 1/4 Cups of soy milk or milk
1 egg 
3 Tb butter substitute or butter (I used Smart Balance spread made with flaxseed oil)
1 tsp of vanilla

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl.
Make a well in your flour mixture and add milk, egg, butter and vanilla
Mix until smooth. 

Pour onto heated griddle or pan. Flip when top starts to form bubbles. Serve with syrup or some seriously yummy blackberry jam