Journey Into Deliciousness

Christmas Pinwheel Cookies

Grade: B (for taste) A+ (for looks)

Time it takes: for-ev-er (5 hours or so, lots of hands off time while the dough chills)

Yield: about 36 cookies

Source: adapted from Our Italian Kitchen and Rara Bakes - I started with the dough from Our Italian Kitchen and I absolutely hated it, it was terrible to work with and tasted horrid. But, because I really liked the look I found a new dough recipe and it went much better. However, I used concepts from each so I decided to site each, although the original idea came from my friend Atty who made pinwheel cookies a few months back.

I have a love hate relationship with sugar cookie dough. To me it tastes boring and has a random sweetness to it, but if you want to make a decorative cookie it is a good dough to work with. Similar to royal icing - tastes horrible, but can be used to make prettiness. Maybe I am still too new to the cookie world and there is some other magical decorative cookie dough out there that tastes amazing and one day I will stumble upon it! Or maybe I just think sugar cookies taste like poo, and I am one of the few...along with Chris, and my grandma, and everybody else everywhere...

I send out goodies packages to friends and family at Christmas-time. I wanted a really festive fun looking cookie to send, and I really liked the idea of a green and red pinwheel cookie. A good bit of the recipes I found are the same exact dough recipe as the one I first tried from Our Italian Kitchen - which ended in miserable results. The dough was a pain in the ass to get to the right consistency, and then it wouldn't roll properly no matter how chilled and un-chilled I got the thing. I decided to just roll it and bake them for a taste test. I put them in for the 15 minutes recommended time, and when I went to check on them they were black - pink (from a red dye miscalculation) green and black. Ugh I was so annoyed. They tasted like crap anyway! So I just threw the whole thing away and started fresh.

The dough recipe from Rara Bakes (which will be listed below) was a dream to work with compared to the above mess. I was extra careful with my liquid dye to flour ratio, but it wasn't super necessary. The dough is suppose to be rather soft, but chills beautifully...angels were singing when I rolled this stuff out I swear! Make sure to use at least half a bottle of dye to get really vivid colours and go slowly when rolling the two doughs into a jellyroll. Also use different colours and extracts to really tailor it to your specific needs. Next time I will roll out the two doughs a bit thinner and wider to get a better swirl going on, but I still think they turned out very Christmas-y anyway.

Click below to expand for the recipe!

Lasagna

Grade: A+

Time it takes: 1 hour and 25 minutes (40 minutes prep, 45 minutes bake)

Yield: 13x9 pan

Source: For the Love of Cooking - a food blog (lasagna)

Lasagna is a fantastic meal. It is one of Chris's favourite foods. The last time I made lasagna it tasted good, but not quiet like lasagna. It had a lot of flavours going on, and not enough gooey cheese sauce and meat-ness to it. For Chris's birthday this year, I decided to give a different lasagna recipe a try. I searched and searched for a recipe with just ground beef that seemed like the flavours would be simple, apparently ground beef with Italian sausage seems to be the meat combo of choice for lasagna, but I finally found one that seemed like a winner.

Sweet Jesus, it was! It tasted exactly how I wanted it to taste. It was wonderfully gooey and cheesy, with lots of sauce and ground beef. Mmm perfection. Chris loved it, I loved it, and I even got it on the table at a reasonable time - last time it took me a lot longer than I was expecting it to. I made the sauce from this recipe, and baked up some garlic knots to go with it. I no longer need to try out lasagna recipes because this one knocked it out of the park.

Click below to expand for the recipe!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Grade: A

Time it takes: 1 hour and 45 minutes (45 minutes prep, 1 hour bake)

Yield: 1 cheesecake

Source: Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen

I love this cheesecake! It is a softer cheesecake, but deliciously rich and pumpkin-y. Pumpkin pie had always been the norm for Thanksgiving. Last year I decided I wanted to try something new. I wasn't 100% sure of pumpkin cheesecake - to me it just sounded kind of odd. Cream cheese and pumpkin? I don't know. I eventually decided that if I didn't like it somebody would, it had someplace to go where people would eat it - one of the nice things about having family nearby, right? Turns out that wasn't an issue at all! Everybody thought it was scrumptious. I've made it 4 or 5 times since. So good, perfect for the holidays!

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Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Grade: A

Time it takes: 1 hour and 15 minutes (30 minutes prep, 45 minutes bake)

Yield: 13x9 casserole dish

Source: My grandma

My family always has this dish for Thanksgiving. If we weren't hosting then we would be asked to bring it as our contribution to the feast. My grandmother would be the one to make it until I moved out to Colorado where I realized I had to actually cook things. The first time I made this for Thanksgiving I read 2 tablespoons of grated onion as 2 cups of grated onion - it was a bit on the onion-y side that year. I've since gotten the recipe down pat.

It is a great side dish for your Thanksgiving spread. It has vegetables in there, but covered in cheese to fool the children - like me when I was a little one, I always hated vegetables but I loved this casserole. The prep isn't too involved, but if you don't feel like tackling it on Thanksgiving day you can make it the day before and stick it in the refrigerator. I pop mine in the oven right when the turkey gets out, and then I have 45 minutes to finish up everything else and get the table ready.

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Biscuits and Gravy

Grade: B

Time it takes: 35-40 minutes

Yield: Serves 2-4, depending on your level of gravy intake because the gravy lasted 3 servings

Source: Pink Parsley - a food blog (biscuits and gravy)

Biscuits and gravy is not a dish I've had often, or really ever...maybe a bite once or twice...in my life. I'm not entirely sure why. They sound delicious, but I've just never ordered them or made them.

I have quiet a few food blogs bookmarked that I check in with about once a week, and this biscuits and gravy recipe popped up on Pink Parsley's blog. It instantly sounded like a great idea to make biscuits and gravy. I can't for the life of me think why it took so long for me to finally get around to making them. I dangled the prospect in front of Chris' nose and he was excited enough about it to remind me almost daily that I should make the recipe.

I've never made regular ol' biscuits before nor have I ever successfully made gravy. Maybe that is why it took me so long to make these, I was afraid of failing miserably at gravy making. Well, I started by accidentally leaving the biscuits in for a good 4 or 5 extra minutes because the oven timer beeped while I was man handling sausage and then I forgot about them completely, so the bottoms ended up being hard. The tops were delicious though, so not a total loss. It took me a super long time to get the gravy smooth as well, but it tasted fantastic. My only problem overall was that the dish was too light on the gravy for the amount of sausage. It was more like sausage and biscuits with a bit of gravy. So, next time more gravy and less sausage would be perfection...and also not leaving the biscuits in for an extra 5 minutes would probably help as well.

No complaints about the taste in this household. They were gone faster than the flashiest of flashes - hard biscuit bottoms and all.

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Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies

Grade: A

Time it takes: Around 50 minutes (20-30 minutes prep, 8-10 minutes baking per baking sheet)

Yield: Makes about 2 dozen cookies

Source: Stephanie Cooks - a food blog (Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies)

I made these the same day I made the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. These cookies are super different from each other, so I think I picked the best two recipes to try out together. The CPBC cookies were super soft and cake-like, these were crunchy and had a spicy bite to them. I loved the way the pumpkin spices tasted in the form of a cookie, perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe for the fall. Out of the two I favoured the CPBC cookies, but my husband Chris couldn't get enough of the pumpkin spice chocolate chip cookies.

I also doubled this recipe so I had enough to go around, and I ended up with around 50 cookies (maybe a few more but Chris kept stealing them right out of the oven before I could get a final count).

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Grade: A+

Time it takes: Around 50 minutes (20-30 minutes prep, 7-9 minutes baking per baking sheet)

Yield: Somewhere in the vicinity of 30 cookies, depending on how big or small you decide to make them

Source: The Curvy Carrot - a food blog (Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies)

I made these cookies for no particular reason, just because I got the urge to make cookies. Really, that is reason enough for me! I decided to make a batch of these and a batch of pumpkin spice chocolate chip cookies (recipe to follow). Oh my god! These were so good. They were super soft and chocolate-y and peanut butter-y and incredibly delicious. Mmmm I wish I still had some left now.

I doubled the recipe because I sent a good bit off to friends and family, and I got around 60 cookies. The only thing I would change would be to add more peanut butter cups, probably up 1 1/2 cups to 2 cups. I'd also recommend refrigerating the peanut butter cups before you chop them up to make it easier all around. I actually think these are my favourite cookies I've ever made, granted I haven't made a large variety, but these are seriously addictively yummy.

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Oven Bundles

Grade: A

Time it takes: 2 hours (30 minutes prep, 1 hour and 30 minutes bake time)

Yield: 1 bundle

Source: My grandmother would make these all the time, and I just follow her example.

This is my go to, make them all the time, super easy and tasty weeknight recipe. There isn't much prep, the ingredients are simple, and you can pop it in the oven and forget about it for a while

You can certainly tweak the recipe to whatever your tastes are and whatever you have on hand. Season your chicken and then add in some vegetables - onion, carrots and potatoes are pretty standard.

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Pumpkin Pie

Grade: A

Time it takes: 1 hour and 30 minutes (30 minutes prep, 1 hour baking)

Yield: 2 pies

Source: From the Libby's can!

I love pumpkin pie! It is seriously so good. I wait all year for October so I can make them again. Because pumpkin pie is only as good as the season you eat it in.... I wait all year for October anyway because it is my favourite month, and favourite season all rolled into one. It is too bad I live in Florida where October is not that exciting.

I made pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake (recipe to follow) for Canadian Thanksgiving this year. Well, it went so fast I only got half of a piece of each. There is still 1 can of pumpkin left, so I am thinking another pumpkin dessert is called for sometime soon.

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Deviled Eggs

Grade: A

Time it takes: 1 hour and 20 minutes

Yield: 48 deviled eggs

Source: I cannot remember. I have had this recipe for a few years; if I had to guess I would say it probably came from somewhere on foodnetwork.com.

I really do not need much of an excuse to have a dinner party. So, when I found out there was such a thing as Thanksgiving-Canadian style I was definitely ready to pop a turkey in the oven. Canadian Thanksgiving was on October 10th this year, so Chris and I hosted a little get together and cooked up a storm all day.

I love deviled eggs on holidays. You need to make them ahead of time in order for the eggs to have time to get nice and cold, so they are perfect snacks in between peeling potatoes and brushing butter on the turkey. Desserts usually get made ahead of time too, but a forkful of pumpkin pie missing is definitely going to be noticed.

Click below to expand for the recipe!