Recipes

Chocolate Mint Cheesecake

Inspired from the Thin Mint Cookie, and with the special request, I created a Chocolate Mint Cheesecake, that tastes very much like the Thin Mint cookie.  Now that I got your interest, here's the recipe that anyone can follow, cause it's super easy!

Ingredients:

1 Oreo pre-made crust*

2 8 oz blocks of cream cheese, room temperature. **

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup sugar

14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk

1 tsp pure mint extract

1 slightly beaten egg (room temperature)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl, with a hand mixer on low, mix cheese, sugar and cocoa, making sure not to over mix.  Add milk and mint extract, mixing until just blended. *** Mix in egg, until just mixed.  Pour at once into pie crust, and cook in oven for 30-35 minutes, until just set.

Cool on baking rack for about 15 minutes, refrigerate until chilled (overnight works best), and then serve.  You can serve this with a little chocolate syrup if you like, but I eat it plain.

This cheesecake is also made with a condensed milk, which gives it a creamier texture.  

Ok, so you noticed all the stars.....here's the explanations:

* I normally would not use a store bought crust, but for portion control, and because the cheesecake is for my family, I use the store bought crust.  You can easily just double the recipe, use 1 cup crushed Oreo Cookies (sans cream side), 1/3 cup melted butter, and 1/3 cup of sugar to make your own crust for a spring form pan.

** The cheese must be room temperature in order for it to mix well.  Over mixing causes cracks.

*** It is important to not over mix a cheesecake.  After the initial mixing of cheese, sugar and cocoa, add remaining ingredients 1 at a time (milk and flavoring at the same time) and mix until just blended, insuring your scrape the sides of the bowl.

Cooking Like The Cracker Barrel

Chicken & Dumplins

Have you ever gone to the Cracker Barrel and thought:  Hey, I wish I could cook like this.  Well, you can, and I'm here to share one of my favorite recipes. This is NOT the exact Cracker Barrel Chicken and Dumplins recipe, but it tastes very close.  

I rarely cook with exact measurements, so most of these are guesses to what I normally use.  

Here's what you need to get you started:

Soup Base:

6 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, thawed, cut into cubes

2 stalks of celery, deveined and chopped

1 small red onion OR 3 scallions, diced

3 cloves of garlic, diced

1 can cream of chicken soup

splash of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)

2 chicken bouillon cubes

salt and pepper to taste

Biscuit Dough (my recipe, but you can use a bisquick, or any biscuit recipe that you like):

3 cups all purpose flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

9 Tbs Crisco (I used butter flavored)

milk (I don't have a measurement for this, but it's about a cup.)

In a large pot, or stock pot, heat EVOO on medium heat, and brown onions, garlic & celery.  Salt and pepper chicken and brown with vegetables.  Add bouillon cubes, cream of chicken soup, and 6-8 cups of water.  Bring to boil.

While soup base is cooking, mix biscuit dough.  In large bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder.  Cut in, with a pastry blender, the Crisco.  Pour in just enough milk to make a soft dough.  At this point, you can roll the dough, and cut to make little squares, but I enjoy pulling the dough apart and dropping it into the broth.

Once soup base is boiling, drop in biscuit dough, one piece at a time.  Bring Chicken and dumplins to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and simmer for about 10-13 minutes (allowing the dumplins to cook through.)

And that's it.  It makes about 8-10 servings.  I'm guessing the serving amount because it feeds my family of 6, some of us have seconds, and then I will normally eat it for lunch the next day.  If you have a small family, then I suggest freezing 1/2 and save for another meal.

Total cost: Not that much.  I normally have all ingredients on hand, so it's a quick, last minute throw together meal.

Enjoy!  Come back for more, yummy recipes.

Thank you for visiting my recipes page.  Here is where going to post my recipes from now on.