Butterfinger Bark

I'm always on the lookout for desserts and treats that are non-dairy, or can easily be made non-dairy without resorting to the yucky substitutes. The recipe for butterfinger bark from Cookies and Cups fit the bill, and seemed easy enough to have the 3-year-old "help" with.

I pinned this photo:

The recipe calls for melting chocolate and putting half of it on a foil-lined sheet to cool. Then melting some candy corn, mixing with peanut butter, and spreading atop the chocolate. Cool again, and top with remaining chocolate. Sounds easy! I used dairy-free chocolate chips, which taste as good as the regular semi-sweet kind.

And it was indeed easy. Everything came together just as described (I only made 1/4 of a recipe).

It was easy and we had a blast making it. However....

Something went dreadfully wrong. The taste was great - JUST like a Butterfinger - but the texture was... not successful. The texture of the butterfinger part was somewhere between beef jerky and stale taffy.

I couldn't even cut it with my giant butcher knife. I had to bend it till finally it would snap. And because the chocolate was much softer, it peeled off the filling and then melted in your hands as you were trying to gnaw your way through. Resulting in:

... a mess. It tasted good enough that we eventually ate the whole batch, but this isn't something I'd make again. And definitely not for gifts or cookie exchange.

I'm not sure what went wrong. It could be that I heated the candy corn too much, or that my "natural" peanut butter was missing something. Who knows.

Verdict: Fail. It doesn't matter how good it tastes if you can't chew it.

Pancake Muffins

This pancake bites recipe comes from The World According to Eggface.

Basically, you throw together your favorite pancake recipe (mine is temporarily dairy-free), then bake it in muffin tins instead of frying on the stovetop.

I feared that this might result in muffin tins filled with stuck-on pancake batter. But I hate standing at the stove for 40 minutes flipping flapjacks. So I forged ahead.

Uncooked, the pancakes looked like this:

I just sprinkled on some wild blueberries I had in the freezer, and some chopped walnuts. The recipe calls for baking 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

My preferred bacon method is baking, and it seems to take about 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. So I had put the bacon in about 10 minutes earlier, then popped these in.

Then I went and finished my coffee on the couch. WAY easier than standing over a skillet.

They came right out of the pan, no sticking problems at all. And they were fantastic. Really delicious, and not at all heavy or greasy. This has become our go-to pancake method, the guys love it. It works perfectly with baked bacon.

 
The one change I've since made is to pour in some batter, then put in the add-ins, then pour more batter over. It puts the fruit more in the middle of the muffin.

Verdict: Perfect! Why haven't I been doing this all these years?

Oven-Roasted Sausage and Peppers

A super easy recipe for sausage, potatoes and veggies from the sassy Lila's Apron.

I love that her picture looks like real home cooking, not a magazine page:

I feared that this recipe might be bland. At 400 degrees for 35 minutes, it didn't seem like enough time or heat to develop roasty flavor.

But since it involved basically just chopping some stuff up and stirring it together, I went for it. This is what mine looked like on its way into the oven:

I used kielbasa and seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme.

Even though my potatoes are cut pretty small, it took longer than 35 minutes  - more like 50 - for them to soften. When they were done, the whole thing looked..... not too much different than when I put it in.

The taste - MUCH better than I expected. This dish is quick, easy, and humble-looking, but it's delicious. Sort of amazingly so, for how few ingredients there are. The banana peppers and and sausage add plenty of flavor.

Verdict: This is going to be a go-to for those times when I can't spend a bunch of time prepping.

Avalanche (Mudslide?) Bars

Cookies and Cups has a recipe for no-bake Avalanche Bars that's from 2010 but has been pinned a bunch recently.

It's pretty simple: melt white chocolate chips with peanut butter, stir in rice crispies, marshmallows, and some regular chocolate mini-chips, press into a pan. Cool them, then cut and eat.

We're temporarily dairy-free, so I swapped out the white chocolate chips and mini-chips for these:

I think you could use any kind of semi-sweet to sweet chocolate or peanut butter chip.

The recipe came together really quickly. The entire process took about 15 minutes. I didn't mess around with 50% power on the microwave to melt the chips, just used 30 second increments. This is what it looked like after all the ingredients were added:

It didn't need to cool for long. 20 minutes and it was pretty set. The bars were absolutely delicious. They have a light, airy texture and intense chocolate taste.

The recipe says to avoid pressing down too hard when you put them in the pan, in case they get hard. I put a lightly greased sheet of tin foil on top and pressed gently. I think I'll press harder next time, they were almost too delicate and fell apart easily.

Verdict: Insanely delicious. 36 hours later and my husband and I had eaten the whole batch (slightly embarrassing). These are the rare dairy-free treat that's actually good in its own right, and not just "not bad for non-dairy."

Prawn Dumpling Soup

This prawn dumpling soup looked gorgeous in the picture (Cook [Almost] Anything At Least Once):

The technique seemed easy enough - chop up some ingredients, puree most of it and leave the rest chunky, wrap in pre-made wonton wrappers, simmer in seasoned chicken broth.

My concern was the wonton wrappers, which I've never used before (the instructions on the blog made no sense to me). Mine came out looking like this, which doesn't seem exactly right:

The recipe didn't give amounts for the chicken stock. I didn't have chicken stock, so I used 3 cups of chicken broth, and 1 cup of shrimp stock I happened to have in the freezer. I added two pieces of lemongrass (each about 4 inches long and cut in half the long way), 4 thin slices of ginger, and the sliced green parts of a green onion. It looked like this:

 I think it needs more broth. I'd say 5-6 cups overall, the dumplings were too crowded in there.

As for flavor, it tasted pretty darn good! My 3-year-old said "YUM!" and my husband said "You made these dumplings?" He thought the broth tasted a bit "medicinal" so I'd cut down on the lemongrass next time. The dumplings were also a tiny bit too doughy. It might have been my wrapping technique, or the fact that I stuck them in the fridge for 1/2 hour before cooking. Also, my version doesn't have the rich color of the original.

Overall, though, I'm going to declare victory and move on.

Verdict: Delicious, though maybe you need to follow the recipe more exactly to get it to look like the picture. Or just play with the settings in Photoshop.

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Oh, these looked so good. Cinnamon Roll Pancakes from Recipe Snobs.

The basic idea is to pour pancake batter into the pan as you normally would, then pipe in a butter/sugar/cinnamon mixture in a spiral. Flip once, then you have cinnamon roll pancakes.

The problem I had is this: once you flip it, the mixture all melts out and coats the pan in sticky sugar mess, leaving sort of flavorless plain pancakes that look like this:

I didn't make the cream cheese glaze, and made some substitutions because we're dairy-free right now (vegan butter substitute, almond milk). Still, I don't think that was the problem. I don't see this turning out any different with real milk and butter.

It might be possible to make it work by pouring only part of the batter, then the sugar mixture, then more batter. But I can't be bothered to try it again.

This was not any better than regular old pancakes with some banana and blueberry mixed in.

Verdict: Not too bad, but SUCH a disappointment compared to the picture.

Roasted Cabbage

The pin for this roasted cabbage recipe from Martha Stewart came with the standard fawning caption "So addicting! Like crack! OMG!" or whatever. *eyeroll*

Like a sucker, I fell for it. Here's an original image:

I roasted the cabbage at 400 degrees, but by the recommended 40 minutes, mine looked like this:

And even overdone like that, the center part was still hard and a tad undercooked. Maybe a lower temp would work better? But you'd have to get it just right to still get the browning effect.

As for the flavor, I used salt, pepper, and cracked fennel seeds for seasoning, and I loved it. I thought they were delicious.

However, my husband and almost-3-year-old (both of whom will generally eat ANYTHING) each took one bite and pushed the rest to the side of the plate.

If you're keeping score at home, that's two of three non-picky eaters who thought this tasted bland, greasy, and just blah.

Verdict: Not a crowd-pleaser. 

Zucchini and Carrots "The Best Way"

I'm always looking for flexible recipes - I hate repeat dinners, so I like to find things where you can vary the seasoning and come up with something different.

This zucchini and carrot recipe from Voracious Vander has been pinned a bunch. Here's a pic from the original recipe:

I like that you can use different spices to complement your menu.

The recipe says to roast at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, or "until browned". The first time I made this, after 25 minutes the veggies were well-cooked but not browning. They were OK, but didn't really taste "roasted".

A couple weeks later, I found myself with zucchini and carrots on hand. I don't usually repeat failed recipes, but I thought this had potential.

I tried again, this time I upped the oven temp to 475 degrees. That seemed to do the trick. I also chopped the carrots smaller than the zucchini because they seemed to brown more slowly. Here's what mine looked like:

I used Herbes de Provence, salt, and pepper. They were really delicious. Highly popular with parents and toddler alike.

 I served them with broiled steaks from our locally-grown-and-butchered cow, and whole wheat pearl couscous with lemon and parsley.  (Yep, I didn't even wipe the plate before I took the pic. Sorry to those readers who have a compulsive streak)

Verdict: Success!

Roasted Grape, Goat Cheese and Honey Sweet Potatoes

 This recipe is originally from  How Sweet It Is, a blog with lovely, delicious-looking pictures and well-explained recipes.

This is one of the original pics:

I usually make sweet potatoes by microwaving, then adding butter and cinnamon sugar. Not terribly healthy, but pretty good. I thought this recipe might be a little something different.

I started by roasting the grapes,  350 degrees for 45 minutes. This was the result:

Carbonization! Someday, someone will be able to radiocarbon date these. OK, tried again, this time for 35 minutes. Success.

The recipe called for baking the sweet potatoes, but I microwaved them. After the grape debacle, my after-work dinner prep time was nearly up.

Followed the rest of the recipe as written, except that I didn't save out any goat cheese or honey for garnish - I just mixed it all in. Garnish is not a weeknight family thing, as far as I'm concerned. If they want garnish, they can take me out to dinner.

So, they came out looking edible, though not as GORGEOUS as the ones on the blog.

I know the pictures are ugly, but I want to show how it might look in your actual kitchen, not some magical place you can get to with an expensive digital SLR camera and food-staging expertise.

The taste, however, was just OK, the goat cheese added a nice tang. The texture was the big problem. It was like eating caulk. Maybe it was because I microwaved it, or maybe I stirred everything in too vigorously.

Verdict: This recipe is finicky at best. For the average home cook, I'd look for something else to change up your sweet potato routine.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Barb. I don't have a fancy kitchen, or a fancy camera. I'm not a trained chef, just a hobby cook. I do have Pinterest Boards that I use primarily for recipes.

I've found that the recipes aren't as reliable as those from good cookbooks, or my favorite cooking magazines (Eating Well, Cook's Illustrated).

Some of the recipes that I KNOW don't work seem to pop up over and over.

I want this blog to be a place where you can check that Pinterest recipe out. Is it worth your time?

I'm a mom of two under 3, and I work full-time. I don't have the time to test and tweak and attempt to fix recipes. If it doesn't work the first time, it gets the thumbs-down. 

There are some popular Pinterest-testing blogs out there (Pinstrosity, PinterTest Kitchen, etc), so this is more like a journal for myself than anything.