Category Archives: Recipes

No-Bake Granola Cookie Bars

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Veronica

In Tupperware’s July specials brochure, there was a recipe for Peanut Butter Granola Bites that caught my eye because it was easy and the photo was very appealing. The best part is that it contained no granola, which I never have on hand, just ingredients contained in granola, which I always have on hand.

However, I just so happened to be running low on peanut butter when I decided it was time to make them (we are always running low on peanut butter because we eat it like crazy), so I adapted the recipe and made my own walnut butter for it. I have the original printer-friendly recipe here if you want to try that one instead. I can’t vouch for it since I haven’t tried it yet, but my similar version was very good and I’m sure it is too. I mine for snacks and even had some for breakfast since they are fairly healthy.

No-Bake Granola Cookie Bars

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2 cups raw nuts (I used walnuts)
½ teaspoons salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
½ cup honey
2 cups rice cereal
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup dried fruit, roughly chopped (I used half cherries, half cranberries)

Spread nuts out on microwave-safe plate. Microwave one minute; stir with fingers. Microwave for 1-2 minutes more, stirring every thirty seconds, until toasted and fragrant. Place nuts in food processor bowl with blade attachment in place, and process until nuts go from a meal, to a paste, to liquid. You will have to stop the food processor several times to scrape the sides down. Once it it liquid, add salt (use ¼ teaspoon if you’re using salted butter) and let it run another minute.

While you’re toasting and processing the nuts, start your oats to toasting. Place them in a skillet over medium heat and stir every minute or two until golden and fragrant, about five minutes. Set aside until you’re ready for them.

Melt butter in a microwave-safe bowl, microwaving one minute or until melted. Add to the nut butter in the food processor, then pour in the honey. Process until mixture is blended.

Place cereal, oats, cherries, and cranberries in large bowl. Pour the butter mixture over the top and mix until combined. Spray a 13″ x 9” baking dish with oil and spread mixture into the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours, or until firm. Slice into squares and devour.

Recipe source: adapted from Tupperware

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Posted in Brownies & Bars, Snacks & Appetizers and tagged bars, Cookies, no-bake, summer. Bookmark the permalink.

Brown Sugar Peach Pie

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Veronica

This was another of the pies Teri and I made during the great pie making adventure several weeks ago. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, but will add that yes, it’s every bit as good as it looks. And the crust recipe makes a lot, so you will have some leftover for pie crust cookies. Or do what my nephew and I did: cut animal shapes out of it, fill with jelly, press another shape on top and bake!

Brown Sugar Peach Pie

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Crust
2 2/3 cups flour
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup vegetable shortening, chilled in freezer
6-8 tablespoons ice cold water
1 egg, beaten, for brushing on the crust
1 teaspoon white sugar, for sprinkling on top

Filling
7-8 large fresh ripe peaches
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons butter

In bowl of food processor, combine flour, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon; pulse until combined. Scoop out the shortening and add it to the flour mixture; pulse until mixture resembles large peas. Add water, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough comes together. Form into two discs, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 425. Peel*, pit and slice peaches; place in a large bowl. Add lemon juice, brown sugar, flour, and vanilla, and mix well; set aside. Roll out one pie dough disc on a floured counter and fit into pie plate. Brush with egg to create a barrier between it and the filling and keep it from becoming soggy. Pour peach mixture into crust and dot with butter. Roll out second disk for the top of pie and place on top. You can make a lattice design or just make slits in top crust. Brush with egg & sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 10 minutes. Turn temperature down to 350 and bake approximately 40 minutes longer, or until filling is bubbling and crust is golden brown. Halfway through, or when it starts browning on the edges, cover edges with aluminum foil or a pie shield to keep it from burning.

*To easily peel peaches, score an X into the bottoms, drop them 2-3 at a time into boiling water, let boil for 30 seconds – 1 minute, then remove and place in a bowl of ice water. The skins will just slip off when you rub it away from the cut.

Recipe source: Foodin Life in New England

Owen with his butterfly pie crust cut out.

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After the filled cookies were baked, I spread more jam on top instead of making a glaze because it was easier. :)

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Posted in Pie and tagged baking, brown sugar peach pie, dessert, recipe, summer. Bookmark the permalink.

Caramel Banana Amish Friendship Bread

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Veronica

Have you ever heard of Amish Friendship Bread? This is how it works. A friend gives you a bag of starter and instructions with a recipe, and over the next ten days you knead the bag and add more flour, sugar and milk to it. On the tenth day, you take out three cups of the starter and put one cup each into three bags to give to friends along with instructions and recipes. Then you add stuff to your leftover starter to bake two loaves of Amish Friendship Bread. It’s the bread that never dies!

Back in 2000, I got burnt out on Amish Friendship Bread because it spread like the plague among my friends. We couldn’t seem to get rid of it. I finally had to stop accepting bags of the starter because I couldn’t bear to eat one more piece of the bread. Eleven years later, I was finally ready to make another go of it, although the thought of it made me feel a little ill. When I eat something until it makes me sick, I can hardly ever enjoy it again.

Thankfully, Amish Friendship Bread is proving to be an exception. Perhaps because I flaunted the usual recipe instructions that comes with the starter, which always includes a pudding mix, or perhaps because I gave myself enough time to recover from the AFB overload, but my love for the bread has been fully restored.

This variation was inspired by the circumstances that inspire me most frequently in the kitchen: what I had on hand. In this case, homemade caramel sauce and overripe bananas. The bread is very moist, almost like a pound cake, with plenty of banana and caramel flavor. OK, so mine was heavier on the banana flavor because I happened to add some banana extract to it, believing that 1 1/2 cups of caramel sauce in the recipe would surely overpower the flavor of banana, but the extract was completely unnecessary, so I omitted it from the recipe below.

I chose to dust my pans and the tops of the loaves with cinnamon sugar, which I thought was nice, but you could simply grease and flour your pan and maybe swirl some dulce de leche on top before baking. Mmmmm. Or serve with extra caramel sauce. Double mmmm. No wonder I kept a starter for myself from the batch I made! I can’t wait to make this again.

Caramel-Banana Amish Friendship Bread

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¼ cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Remaining Friendship Bread starter
1 ½ cups caramel sauce, room temperature
1 1/3 cups mashed banana (3 medium)
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine sugar and cinnamon in small bowl. Butter two loaf pans and dust with cinnamon sugar. Shake excess out onto a sheet of wax paper, or a large dish, and reserve extra for topping.

Put the friendship bread starter in a large bowl and beat in the caramel sauce, banana, eggs, and vanilla. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; stir until blended. Pour into prepared loaf pans and sprinkle remaining cinnamon sugar over the top. Bake for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

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Posted in Bread, Sweets and tagged amish friendship bread, baking, banana, caramel, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Caramel Sauce

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Veronica

When I need caramel sauce as an ingredient in frosting or in baking, I prefer to use homemade because the flavor is more pronounced and comes through better in the finished product. It is wonderful as a garnish on top of ice cream or cake, and I’ve successfully added it to frosting to make caramel buttercream, and to Amish Friendship bread, which I’ll be posting the recipe for tomorrow. And since it’s so useful and beloved in our home, my recipe makes a rather large batch so I always have some in the refrigerator, but if you only need enough to garnish ice cream, you might want to halve the recipe. Then again, this stuff will last months in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t hurt to have too much. Who knows what delicious creativity it might spawn in your kitchen!

Caramel Sauce

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2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup
¼ teaspoon salt*
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 tablespoons (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, cut into cubes*
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Measure sugar into a large saucepan and measure corn syrup over the top. Set the heat to medium-high.

When the corn syrup starts to bubble around the edges, stir with a spoon or silicone spatula.

Allow to sit again without stirring until it starts melting around the edges.

Stir infrequently until the sugar really starts melting, then begin to stir constantly.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Now it’s completely melted, but I want mine to be a little darker before I remove it from the heat. The darker the color, the stronger the flavor. Just be sure not to burn it.

When the sugar is completely dissolved and deep amber in color, remove from heat and stir in the salt, vanilla, and butter. The mixture will bubble up a lot.

When completely combined, add the whipping cream and stir until combined; mixture will bubble up again. Keep stirring until smooth and uniform in color.

Pour into a heat-safe dish and allow to cool to room temperature. Your pot will have a ring of crystallized sugar around it–don’t try to scrape it into the caramel sauce because it will make it grainy–just soak your pan in hot water and it will come right off.

Cover and store in the refrigerator once cool.

*Omit salt from recipe if using salted butter.

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Posted in Condiments & ETC., Sweets and tagged burnt sugar sauce, homemade caramel sauce. Bookmark the permalink.

Cool Strawberry Pie

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Veronica

A couple weeks ago, my friend, Teri, came over to learn how to make pretty pies. Being the organized (except when I’m not) person I am, I developed a pie lesson that included pies that required all four types of crust: single crust, single pre-baked, double crust, and double crust with a lattice top.

I saved a recipe for cool strawberry pie from a myspace friend, Kim D., in 2009, and was so ecstatic to finally have an excuse to make it! It’s the pie I chose for the single pre-baked pie crust. Instead of making a regular-sized pie, we made two smaller pies for most of the recipes so that we could each have one for ourselves to take (or keep) home.

The recipe, like many pie recipes, is very simple with only a few ingredients. But it’s utter magic! This was my favorite pie of all four that we made. It is just perfect for summer–cold, sweet, and refreshing. It even seems light, though I don’t dare calculate the calories. :)

I want to note that making your own pie crust does take the recipe from simple to time-consuming, so if you’d rather stick with simple, buy Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts or a frozen pie crust in a tin and follow the directions on the package for a pre-baked crust. My favorite pie crust recipe does not work well for a pre-baked crust, as there is a large ratio of butter and shortening to flour, which causes it to shrink substantially if baked without filling. I modified a shortening pie crust recipe from the back of a Kroger flour sack to include butter, and it worked much better.

Cool Strawberry Pie

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2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup butter, cold
1/3 cup shortening, chilled in freezer
5-6 tablespoons ice-cold water
1 egg white, beaten

6 cups strawberries (about 2 containers), sliced
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 cup water

1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine flour and salt in bowl of food processor fitted with blade attachment. Pulse a couple times to combine. Cut butter into cubes and add to flour along with the shortening. Pulse until until mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add water, a tablespoon at a time, pulsing until all the flour is moistened. Form dough into ball; divide in half, shape into two discs, and wrap one in plastic wrap to freeze for later use. Sprinkle counter with flour and roll pie dough out toto 1/8 inch thickness. Fit pastry into pie plate, leaving a 1/2″ overhang. Tuck overhand under until edge is even with plate, then flute the edges. Prick bottom and sides with fork and place a sheet of parchment or wax paper over the bottom, cut so that it sticks up well above the sides. Fill with dry beans and bake 10 minutes. Gather the corners of the parchment and pull out the beans. Return crust to oven to bake for another 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow to cool for a minute, then lightly brush beaten egg white over the bottom and sides of the crust to create a seal. The residual heat will bake the egg white. Allow to cool while you prepare the filling.

Mash enough berries to measure 1 cup. Mix sugar and cornstarch in 2-quart saucepan. Stir in the water and mashed berries. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir 1 minute; cool.

Fill shell with remaining berries; pour cooked strawberry mixture over top. Refrigerate until set, at least 3 hours.

Just before serving, beat cream in a chilled metal or glass bowl with chilled beaters on high speed until soft peaks form. Add powdered sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks. Pipe or spread onto pie.

Recipe source: Kim D.

Since I’ve already shared the recipe for Triple Berry Pie and won’t need this picture for a post on it, I thought I’d just share it with you anyway! The Triple Berry is the pie I chose to teach the lattice-top crust. As you can see below, Teri did a fabulous job on hers! We had so much fun.

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Posted in Pie and tagged cold, cool strawberry pie, refrigerated, summer. Bookmark the permalink.

Warm Chorizo & New Potato Salad

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Veronica

This is a very simple summer-friendly recipe that is also, shockingly, husband-friendly. My poor man just does not get the amount of meat and potatoes he believes he requires, so when I served him this salad, he was so ecstatic to be eating meat and potatoes, that he didn’t even care there was a bed of lettuce underneath.

The meat and potato mixture is substantial and satisfying, but I really think you need the egg on top to complete the salad. Jenna said it was optional, but I’m not going to tell you that. You need the warm yolk to run out over the salad and serve as a dressing. It really pulls the whole thing together quite nicely.

Warm Chorizo & Potato Salad

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1.5 lbs new, red, or gold potatoes (I used gold)
Salt and pepper to taste
15 oz chorizo sausage
16 oz mixed salad greens or shredded lettuce
1 lemon
4 poached or over-easy eggs

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut the potatoes into bite-size chunks; add to the water and once boiling, reduce heat a bit and continue to boil until fork-tender, but not mushy. Meanwhile, start your sausage to cooking. Add to a skillet and cook over medium heat, breaking it and crumbling with a spatula as you go. Remove from heat if it gets done before your potatoes are ready. Once the potatoes are tender, drain and add to the sausage. Stir well and cook another minute or two. Season with salt and pepper. Divide salad greens among four plates, then divide sausage and potatoes on top of each. Top with a poached or fried egg and serve immediately.

Recipe source: slightly modified from Jenna’s Everything Blog

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Posted in Meats, Mexican, Salads and tagged chorizo, easy, hearty, potato, recipe, salad, satisfying, summer. Bookmark the permalink.

Wacky White Cake {Vegan}

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Veronica

I recently had a request on facebook for a vegan white cake recipe from a lady whose daughters both have extreme food allergies. Since I don’t have one, I decided to try making one up, and unlike many baking experiments, this one turned out great the first time! I combined my recipe for Wacky Cake with the Dairy-Free White Cupcakes recipe and although the resulting cake is heavier than a regular white cake, it is very moist and has a great flavor. I have no pictures of the whole cake because I hate a whole row of the cake while it was still warm. Oops!

Wacky White Cake

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3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract (use clear to keep the cake white-I didn’t)
2 teaspoons almond extract
1 cup cold water

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray and set aside. Sift all dry ingredients together into a large bowl. Make three wells and put the oil in one, the vanilla & almond extract in another, and the lemon juice in the last. Pour water over it all and mix until well blended. Pour into prepared pan and bake 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Frost with white celebration frosting, or your favorite recipe. (I made a simple glaze with lemon juice, water, and powdered sugar.) Serve at room temperature.

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Posted in Cake & Frosting, Vegetarian & Vegan and tagged allergy friendly, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan, wacky cake, white cake. Bookmark the permalink.

Beef and Cheese Enchiladas & How to shred lettuce or cabbage

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Veronica

I often say that I was raised in a “health food only home,” but that isn’t completely true. If it were, I would have starved to death before I ever started kindergarten. The sad fact is that as a child, I hated everything healthy and loved everything else. My Mom still has a note from me, written in third grade, in which I thanked her for being a wonderful Mommy but asked if we could please have pizza sometimes. LOL! Needless to say, I went hungry most nights and gorged myself when we were allowed to have spaghetti (this was junk food to us), cheese sandwiches, or Mom made enchiladas. She didn’t do it often, but it was one of my favorite meals that she made. To this day, enchiladas are my favorite meal.

Mom made them very simply. She made taco meat and rolled it up with cheddar cheese in corn tortillas. She made red enchilada sauce from a mix and always stirred in a liberal amount of cilantro. She dipped each tortilla in the hot sauce before filling them, which made it a very messy procedure. She poured the leftover sauce over the top, topped with more cheese, and that was it.

I updated the recipe to simplify things, using canned sauce and stirring the cilantro into the beef mixture instead, and decided to top them with lettuce because my husband has always insisted this is the proper way to serve enchiladas. I fought this for a long time, because Mom knows best and she never served hers with lettuce, but I finally saw the light. Lettuce really freshens up this cheesy dish. Even with the changes, these are still very much like my Mom’s enchiladas, which makes me happy. Don’t we all love foods that remind us of our childhood homes?

Beef and Cheese Enchiladas

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1 lb. lean ground beef
1 medium onion, diced
2 tablespoons homemade taco seasoning (or a packet of store-bought)
½ cup cilantro
2 (8 oz) packages sharp cheddar cheese
16 corn tortillas
2 cans red enchilada sauce
½ head lettuce, shredded
Sour cream to garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a large baking dish with cooking spray, then cover the bottom with a thin layer of enchilada sauce, about half a can. Set aside.

Cook beef and onion together in skillet over medium-high heat until meat is browned. Do not drain. Stir in taco seasoning and cook another minute, until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro. Shred both packages of cheese and set half aside in the refrigerator. Dampen a paper towel and squeeze out water; wrap around a stack of five tortillas and microwave one minute or until hot and pliable. Place stack on a plate. Now you have everything you need to put the enchiladas together.

Place about two tablespoons of cheese down the middle of a tortilla, then top with 3 tablespoons of the beef mixture. The temptation is always to overfill them, but you must resist. Overfilled enchiladas means unsightly enchiladas that won’t close, and we want to keep things nice, tidy, and appealing.

Roll tightly and place in prepared dish.

Repeat, heating fresh stacks of tortillas as necessary, until all ingredients are used and dish is full of enchiladas. I always have to scooch my enchiladas to make them fit, but scooch they will. :)

Pour remaining sauce over the top, then sprinkle on reserved cheese. I was short on cheese but if you follow the recipe, yours will be fairly smothered with cheese. Which is proper. This sad amount of cheese is sacrilege.

Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted.

After plating, sprinkle with lettuce and add sour cream, if desired.

Devour.

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I’m sure many of you know how to shred lettuce, but I get very basic questions about cooking from time to time, including how to prep veggies, and thought I’d give a quick tutorial on this for those who don’t. You can also use this method to shred cabbage for coleslaw.

Cut thin slices of lettuce starting from the outside edge, working your way towards the center. Do not go all the way to the core.

Once you are getting close, turn the lettuce and start from the opposite side.

It is very important that you wear your Tweety bird pajama shorts during this process. Arg! I changed my shirt so you guys wouldn’t know I wore my PJ’s all day (it was my day off and I spent it cleaning), and didn’t think that my shorts would show above the table. On the plus side, I guess I’m taller than I thought I was. :)

Continue until you have sliced away on all sides, then do the top. Discard the core.

I didn’t cut very much off the core because I didn’t need a ton of lettuce. Usually I would cut down a lot more.

You should have a row of sliced lettuce. Chop along the row in 1/2″ increments, or smaller.

Turn your cutting board/sheet and repeat in the perpendicular direction, slicing every 1/2″ or so.

If you want your lettuce shredded even more finely, mix the lettuce with your hands, spread out in a line again, and repeat the cutting in both directions.

Voila! Shredded lettuce.

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Posted in How-To & DIY, Meats, Mexican and tagged beef and cheese enchiladas, easy, how to shred cabbage, how to shred lettuce, Mom's enchiladas, recipe, simple. Bookmark the permalink.

Peppermint Pops

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Veronica

I have several pops posts, and am ready to change things up a bit with a completely new type of pop filling that doesn’t involve cake at all. As I mentioned in my cream cheese mints post, I got bored just cutting the dough into squares, and decided to combine it with chocolate in pop form.

This photo was taken by Jen in the break room at work after I handed her a bag of Peppermint Pops in exchange for some delicious chocolate sheet cake that she made. I had to use it because it’s a much more attractive photo of the insides than the atrocity below. Thanks, Jen!

The method for these is the same as making cake pops, just with a different filling. Take a batch of cream cheese mints, roll it into balls, insert sticks, dip in chocolate. And voila, peppermint pops! It’s simple and even easier than cake pops because it doesn’t require any baking. And the taste? Well, if you like mint chocolate, you’re going to love these. The mint center is soft and creamy and the dark chocolate coating is classic. Think York peppermint patties with a softer, creamier center and slight tang. Bonus: it’s on a stick! Wheeeeeeeee!

Peppermint Pops

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1 (8-oz) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
2 lbs. powdered sugar
2 (12 oz) bags semisweet chocolate chips
2 teaspoons oil or shortening
50 lollipop sticks
50 (3″x4″) clear treat bags (optional)
curling ribbon (optional)

Beat the cream cheese until creamy, then beat in the extract. Beat in the powdered sugar until well blended. Depending on your mixer, you may have to use your hands to fully incorporate the sugar. The mixture will be smooth and like a stiff dough. Pinch off pieces of the mixture and roll into 1″ balls; place on rimmed baking sheet. You will get 40-50 balls. Cover and refrigerate two hours or overnight.

I had several mint projects going at once-classic party mints (left), peppermint pops, and peppermint patties (not pictured).

Gently melt chocolate with oil in double boiler or microwave. Dip ends of sticks in chocolate, then insert into the flat end (the end that has been resting on the baking sheet) of the mint balls. As you insert sticks, place the pops upside down on the baking sheet until all the balls have sticks. Refrigerate until chocolate around stick is set.

Now you can see evidence of the peppermint patties! The square mints are long gone…in mah bellah.

Dip each pop in chocolate and gently shake off excess while holding upside down. Don’t tap, as you would a cake pop, because the mint balls are more prone to fall off the sticks. Insert pops right-side-up into a large foam block. Once all pops are dipped, place foam block in refrigerator and let sit until chocolate is hardened, about half an hour. If you would like to package them, slip a treat bag over each pop, and tie curling ribbon around the base.

After writing this, I just can’t resist saying, “on a steeeeek.” :)

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Posted in Candy and tagged cake pops, candy pops, mint chocolate, peppermint pops, recipe, York. Bookmark the permalink.

Cream Cheese Mints & Peppermint Patties

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Veronica

I’ve been making these mints for years and they are always a hit. Unlike the hard & powdery ones you buy at the store, these are soft and the flavor far superior to the aforementioned imposters. Combine them with white cake and nuts, and you’ve got my idea of heaven. :) They are also very simple to make, though if you use a mold, it is a little time-consuming. You can let them air dry until they are almost like the classic mints that accompany most wedding and baby shower cakes, but I usually only let them dry overnight so they are just dry enough to hold their shape (unless smashed), but are still soft and creamy on the inside.

I made this batch because a co-worker requested them, and after turning 1/4 of the batch into the classic square mints for him and a girlfriend that loves them, I got bored and tried a couple other things with the dough. I figured I could use them as filling for peppermint patties, and although the flavor is a little different than the classic (I have a recipe for York-style peppermint patties here), I like it even better because I like the added tang of cream cheese. I also had another stroke of genius (if I do say so myself) after I made the peppermint patties, but that one deserves a post all of it’s own. Check back Friday!

Cream Cheese Mints

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1 (8-oz) package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
2 lbs. powdered sugar
Food coloring (optional)
Granulated sugar, for coating (if using a mold)

Beat the cream cheese until creamy, then beat in the extract. Beat in the powdered sugar until well blended. Depending on your mixer, you may have to use your hands to fully incorporate the sugar. The mixture will be smooth and like a stiff dough. Add icing gel coloring if desired. Pinch off a chunk of dough and roll it into a slender log.

Cut the log into small squares set onto waxed paper to dry.(Keep the remaining dough covered or sealed in Ziploc bag(s) during the rolling and cutting process, or it will dry out.)

Repeat until all the dough has been cut into squares. If you wish to shape the mints using a mold, pull off a small piece of dough, enough to fill the mold, and roll it into a ball. Roll the ball in granulated sugar, coating it very well, then press into the mold. Turn it over and pop the mint out onto wax paper. Allow to dry overnight before packing in an airtight container. Store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Yield: 2 1/2 lbs. mints

To make peppermint patties, roll dough out to desired thickness and use a small round cookie cutter or juice or shot glass to cut circles.

Place on wax-paper lined baking sheet and freeze, uncovered, for an hour. Melt a 12-oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips with 1 teaspoon oil or shortening and drop the peppermint patties in one at a time, turning and lifting out with a fork. Quickly tap off excess and use another fork or your finger to help slide the dipped patty onto another waxed paper-lined baking sheet. Once all patties are dipped, place baking sheet in refrigerator until chocolate is set, about 15-30 minutes. Store in airtight container and keep refrigerated.