LEMON GARLIC TILAPIA

 My first time cooking tilapia, and it turned out pretty good.  I've always had good luck finding recipes on allrecipes.com so I headed there to find a recipe for tilapia, and I was not disappointed.  The simplicity of this recipe is what drew me to it initially, just lemon, butter, garlic, parsley and the tilapia.  I increased the temp of the oven to 400 degrees and it was done in about 12 minutes.  Here is the recipe, hope you all enjoy :)


INGREDIENTS:

4 tilapia fillets
3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp butter, melted
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp dried parsley flakes
pepper to taste


DIRECTIONS:

 Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Rinse tilapia fillets under cool water, pat dry with paper towel. Place fillets in baking dish.

 Pour lemon juice over the fillets.

 Combine garlic and melted butter together, drizzle over fillets.

 Sprinkle with parsley and pepper (I don't like pepper, so I didn't add any).

 Bake in preheated oven until the fish is white and flakes when pulled apart with a fork, about *30 minutes.

*Since I increased the temp of the oven to 400 degrees, I only cooked the fish for about 12-15 minutes.


~Under the recipe reviews for Lemon Garlic Tilapia, I took some suggestions that MommyfromSeattle
made.  This is why I cooked the tilapia at 400 degrees, and I did increase the butter I used.  She suggested upping the butter to 3-4 Tbsp, but I only increased it up to 2 Tbsp and that turned out fine for me.

~I used more than 1 tsp of parsley, I thought it looked a little sparse so I used about 2 tsp.

~Needless to say, I'm still caught up with the Olympics, so I didn't cook anything else to go along with the tilapia.  But while I was eating the finished product, I kept thinking of how good it would pair with wild rice and some mixed veggies. In case you are looking for some ideas of what to pair it with.

 Just a brief shout-out to let you know that I WILL post a recipe for this week, tomorrow, for Lemon Garlic Tilapia.  I know, I know, it's a day late, but I've been distracted.  I'm excited to try this recipe tomorrow.  Some of you may know, for those of you who don't, I am a vegetarian and I LOVE fish.  I am also very aware that a vast amount of people like meat, so I tend to cater to them when I cook.  So tomorrow's post is going to be more of a selfish post in that I'll be featuring fish.  Now, I love most fish but I don't have a lot of experience cooking it.  In the past I have shied away from cooking it, afraid that I wouldn't do it justice.  Tomorrow I'll be trying a recipe I found on allrecipes.com, it received good reviews and I'm excited to give it a try :)

 Now, as to what has had me distracted this past week.  The Olympics.  I LOVE THE OLYMPICS!!!!!  Always have, always will, it's that simple.  And yes, I am one of those people that even watch the opening and closing ceremonies.  Although, I have to say that I do happen to find the parade of nations, a little long.  But this year it moved along at a refreshing clip.  I love cheering for the underdog and for my fellow countrymen.  One of the highlights of the Olympics, for me, is to watch the medal ceremonies and hear the national anthem for my country being played.  I like to watch the winner's reaction to hearing the anthem and seeing the flag being raised, watching to see if they tear up and cry.  To me, the Olympics represent a time, and unfortunately all to brief, where the world comes together and celebrates goodness and the human spirit.  Differences are put aside and relations are forged between foreign nations.  Now, this is just my opinion and how I see the Olympics.  I know not everyone will agree, but we are all welcome to our own opinion. 

 That being said, I will be back tomorrow with the aforementioned recipe.  I hope you all have a restful night and a wonderful Monday :)

14-KARAT CAKE

 While I am not one for cakes, I LOVE carrot cake (minus the raisins, of course)!  This recipe is another one from my family reunion cookbook from 1998, the same book with the peanut butter bars recipe.  This recipe comes from my Uncle John and is often used in my family, frequently found at weddings and birthdays.  This cake is dense, very moist and absolutely delicious :)

 In my immediate family birthdays come in clusters.  This week happened to be one of those clusters.  My mother and sister celebrated their birthdays two days apart.  What better cake to make for them both than this carrot cake?!  It is no secret that I don't like raisins, so every time I make this I leave out the raisins.  Baker's prerogative!  As I was getting ready to make this cake I kept thinking of how it would taste with cranberries instead of raisins.  I just was not sure about combining cranberries and carrots.  I asked my sister for a second opinion and she thought I should go for it, so I did.  I must say it turned out pretty good!


INGREDIENTS:

3 C. sifted flour                                                    1 1/2 C. cooking oil
2 C. sugar                                                            4 large eggs, beaten
2 tsp soda                                                            3 C. grated raw carrots
2 tsp salt                                                              1 C. chopped nuts
2 tsp cinnamon                                                     1 C. raisins (or cranberries)


DIRECTIONS:

 Combine dry ingredients, add oil and mix well. Add beaten eggs; mix thoroughly.  Add carrots, nuts and raisins. Bake in a well-greased 9 x 13 inch pan for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, then reduce the heat to 300 degrees and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

14-KARAT CAKE CREAM CHEESE ICING

1 Cube butter
8 oz. cream cheese
1 lb. powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

 Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add sugar and vanilla. Spread on cooled cake generously.


~My sister likes dark chocolate.  So on her cake I put a layer of dark chocolate on top of the cake and then put the cream cheese icing on top of that.

~For me, I ALWAYS use the cream cheese icing with this cake.  They compliment each other very well.  I couldn't imagine using a different icing/frosting.

~I didn't put on all the icing this time.  When you follow the recipe it allows for a generous amount of icing.

FLAVORED EXTRACTS AND SYRUP

 Another favorite kitchen tool of mine is flavored extracts and syrups.  They are a great way to make a common recipe more versatile as well as adding an extra dimension to a recipe.  Flavored extracts are easily found, grocery stores carry the more common flavors.  While more exotic flavors can be found in specialty baking stores as well as online.  I have eight that I use often, some more frequently than others.

 Around Christmas time I make a variety of Christmas goodies to pass along to friends and family.  One of the things I like to make is a raspberry chocolate truffle.  At first I used raspberry chocolate chips and melted them down, but they are getting increasingly harder to find.  So I've adapted and now I use some raspberry extract.

 A nice thing about using extracts in baking is that you control how weak or strong you want the added flavor to be.  For the raspberry extract I use it in my raspberry chocolate truffles and my raspberry chocolate fudge with chunks of Oreo in it.


 I use orange extract to make orange dark chocolate fudge. 

 I also use it to make orange rolls (looks like a cinnamon roll, just with orange instead of cinnamon and an orange sugar glaze over the top).




 When I make my Aunt Dora's Tea Cookies, I use lemon extract.  It's basically a sugar cookie dough and I use it with cookie cutters and frost them when done.

 Another use I have for the lemon extract is for making white chocolate blueberry lemon fudge.



I use the strawberry flavoring to make strawberry fudge.

 A basic extract staple is vanilla.

 Vanilla extract is like the work horse of extracts.  I use it in cookies, breads, fudge, truffles and so on.  If you only have one extract, vanilla is the one to have.



 I have cherry extract that I use around Valentine's Day to make chocolate cherry fudge (I also cut up chunks of cherries and put them in), which I then cut into heart shapes ♥

  My last extract I use is peppermint.

 I use it when making both my white chocolate peppermint cheesecake and white chocolate peppermint fudge.  I also crush some round peppermint candies and put that in the fudge and use it as a garnish for the cheesecake.


 Lastly, I have coconut syrup that I initially used when I made chocolate smoothies.

 Then one day while I was making chocolate chip cookies I wondered what it would taste like if I used some coconut syrup in it.  They turned out SUPERB!!!  If you like coconut, you should give it a try sometime, I used about 1 1/2 tsp.


 There are endless other flavors of extracts and syrups out there.  Use your imagination and creativity and see what you can come up with!  My next addition will be a green apple extract, I already have a couple recipe ideas for it and am very excited to try them out!


RHUBARB CHEESECAKE SHORTBREAD BARS



I found this recipe last year when I was looking for something new to make with rhubarb, other than pie or muffins.  I found it on Allrecipes.com, and it's listed there as Rhubarb Cream Delight Dessert.  I think that doesn't really describe what it is, so I call it rhubarb cheesecake shortbread bars. Whatever you want to refer to it as, it's simply delicious!  There is basically three different layers, four if you count the frosting.  The bottom layer is a shortbread mixture.

 On top of that you have the rhubarb layer.

 Next you have the cheesecake layer.

 Once that's out of the oven you have the sour cream frosting.  In the following picture, you can see the sour cream frosting, it's the thin tan layer above of the cream cheese section.

 Since rhubarb is an acquired taste, for those who aren't a fan, you can substitute fruit for the rhubarb: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches......, you get the idea.  For me, this is the optimum in sweet and sour desserts.  The cheesecake layer and sour cream frosting are a nice counterbalance to the bitterness of the rhubarb.  The following recipe is enough to make a 10-inch pie.  I double the recipe and make it in a 9x12 inch pan, it's that good!

INGREDIENTS:

CRUST:

1 C. flour

1/4 C. sugar

1/2 butter or margarine

RHUBARB LAYER:

3 C. fresh rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1/2 C. sugar

1 Tbsp flour

CHEESECAKE LAYER:

12 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 C. sugar

2 eggs

SOUR CREAM FROSTING:

1 (8 ounce) container dairy sour cream

2 Tbsp sugar

1 Tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

1.  Crust: Mix flour, sugar and butter; pat into 10-inch pie plate.  Set aside. 

2. Rhubarb layer: Combine rhubarb, sugar and flour; toss lightly and pour into crust.  Bake about 15 minutes.

3. While the crust and rhubarb layer is cooking, beat together the cream cheese and sugar until fluffy.  Beat in eggs one at a time, then pour over the hot rhubarb layer.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until almost set. 

4. Combine frosting ingredients; spread over hot layers.  Chill

~When doubling the recipe I followed the suggestions of "nice lady" found on allrecipes.com under the user reviews section, for this recipe.  The only thing I change is the amount of rhubarb.  She calls for using 7 C. and I generally use 4-5 C. rhubarb.  The rest of her suggestions I follow.  I add 4 Tbsp flour to the rhubarb mixture and I cook it for an additional 10-15 minutes, as she directs.  I also increase the cooking time for the cheesecake layer an additional 5-10 minutes as per her suggestion.  Aside from the rhubarb and the flour you use for the rhubarb layer, all other ingredients are exactly doubled when making it in a 9x13 inch pan.