Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

I have had this recipe saved for 3 years now. I am so glad I finally decided to make it for a Memorial Day BBQ. There's not much of a recipe here, in terms of ingredients and measuring. I'll take you through the steps though. First you hollow out the strawberries. I used a small knife for this. Super simple and not as time consuming as you might think.

 

For the filling I bought the Jell-0 no bake boxed cheesecake. Easy peasy, just add milk and let set up a bit in the fridge while you hollow out the berries. I used a Zip Lock bag to pipe the filling into the strawberries.

 

I then dunked the filled strawberries in graham crackers, the Jell-O cheesecake comes with a package. See, so easy and convenient.

 

For the last step I melted chocolate chocolate chips and drizzled that over the strawberries.

 

So pretty and impressive. You can make these and you totally should make these. They were a HUGE hit at the bbq today.

Alaska Eats

I ate my heart out in Alaska.  I tried to control myself with the taking of food photos.  I put together a slide show of some of the highlights.

Created with flickr slideshow.

Princess Cruise kept us well fed with tasty treats all day long.

P.S. I'm not even going to get into how many times I thought it was appropriate to eat a cheeseburger...

P.P.S. Let's not talk about the french fry availability either....

Baked Alaska!

In case you didn't know, although I'd be amazed if you didn't, I am going to Alaska. Very soon.  I've been talking about it, thinking about it, planning it, obsessing over it, boring everyone to death about it since September.  Now that the trip is finally within reach I decided to celebrate with some baked Alaska, in cupcake form!!

Step 1 is to bake a cake.  I chose to just make a box mix chocolate cake. Easy peasy.  Try not to fill the cupcakes up too high to have room for the ice cream.  Or of you do fill them up too high, mush them down like I did. Either way it works!  I made 12 cupcakes, the rest of the batter I used to make a round cake.  This round cake was dubbed "hand cake" so you can eat it with your bare hands while standing at the counter.

But I digress.  After the cake has cooled and the ice cream has softened (both can happen at the same time, hooray!) plop a little scoop of ice cream on your cupcakes.  I used strawberry ice cream and a cookie scoop to portion it into the cupcakes and smushed it down to make a flat layer. This goes into the freezer to harden.

The final layer is the meringue, 2 eggs whites, some sugar, some vanilla.  Some recipes call for cream of tartar, but I didn't find it integral.

This went into a 450 degree oven for about 3 minutes and came out like this....

And now for the final unveiling....

Ta-da!!  The ice cream on the perimeter gets a bit melty, but the center stays nice and cold.

Baked Alaska cupcakes were a delicious and dazzling way to get myself pumped up for my cruise.

Off to Alaska! See you all when I get back!

Wonder what I'll be eating.....

Hummus 5 Layer Dip

This dip is really simple and really delicious.  The best part about it: no cooking of any kind., just some chopping which I actually love doing.

Below you can see the ingredients.  This is the order I layered the dip: hummus, cucumber, tomato (used one), olives, dill, feta, more dill to make it look pretty.

Everything gets diced up and layered in a dish.  I used a pie plate and it worked perfectly.

I served it up with pita chips.  I will certainly make this again and you should to at your next gathering.

Stuffed Eggplant

I can't believe I went a whole week without blogging, sorry guys!  I have at last made something that I deemed blog-worthy.

Eggplant stuffed with couscous, tomatoes, and feta.

I used a melon baller to scoop out most of the insides of the eggplant.  The scooped out halves went into the oven for about 15 minutes to soften up.

The eggplant innards got sauteed with tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil.

I cooked up some plain couscous to mix in with the vegetables.

Once the eggplants were stuffed I cooked them for 15 more minutes with feta cheese on top.

MmmmMmmm. Simple, easy, fast, just the way I like it.