cheeseburger pizza w/ bbq sauce

Friday right?
Pizza night?
Time to kick back, chill and sloooow the heck down from a hectic week. How do I like to spend my Friday nights? Well, since I'm an old fartknocker I like going to bed early, yeah I know totally boring. But there are some nights when I want to totally chill and have a couple glasses of ice cold Prosecco with pizza and maybe sit outside and look at the water.
Here on cape cod it's hard to find a good pizza joint.  We have a whole foods which does a really good job, but they haven't done a BBQ pizza....yet.
So you just need to make your own.
At least when you make your own you can put BBQ sauce on it and extra cheese, plus whatever else you fancy/crave.


For the easy recipe:
all I did was use the multi-grain pizza dough from Whole Foods, smeared a bit of spicy bbq sauce on it, then some mozzarella cheese, then some cooked bacon, then some thinly sliced sweet onions, then some cooked hamburger (don't put raw hamburg on as it might not cook all the way through).
Take a little bit of olive oil and rub the edges of the pizza crust with it.
Bake in 450-500 degree oven till nice and crispy (about 15 minutes +/-).


If you like this then you're going to love my hamburg & cheddar pizza with fig jam.
Yes fig jam--It goes so well with this pizza, you must try it.

Tasty looking right?

You need to try the fig jam on your next pizza.

tropical chicken salad

I am still on my coconut kick, err...addiction. I made a few other wonderful creations, but here's one of my favorites: chicken salad. Oh yes, my friend this is tasty. Not only is there coconut in here, but there is pineapple, walnuts, and raisins. I know there are a ton of you foodies out there that will love this. Best part? Tastes crazy-good the next day. Why? The flavors all intensify....oh food of love people, food of love!

I didn't write out the recipe, but here's what's in here:
roasted chicken breast, cut into chunks
handful of raisins
handful of toasted walnuts
about 2 TB dried coconut (not the sweetened kind but just dried)
3 - 4 TB dried pineapple chunks, cut up (I love pineapple so I added a lot)
a little bit of red onions, chopped,
Hellmans Mayo with a bit of salt & pepper.
served on a brioche roll w/ fresh spinach salad

Feel free to use whatever additions you crave. I bet this would be good on rye bread.

blueberry cake

I love this time of year when I can go to Whole Foods and see an abundance of organic blueberries and strawberries. I am that tall, curly haired girl standing by the organic berries studying them all for a good 15 minutes or more deciding which 3 or 4 cartons will be going home with me. I inspect, I smell them (the best part right?) and try to find the most plump'iest (sp?). One carton gets eaten on the 40 minute ride home. The remaining cartons are going to be used in the best cake or muffin batter; a batter that is all homemade full of butter, sugar, flour and eggs.
This recipe is literally the best recipe I've ever come across for simple, tasty blueberry cake. It's almost muffin like. Solid recipe. You can count on this one time and time again to deliver. It's a bit heavier, not that light, but very moist, very moist. So, if you are a blueberry lover, then you simply must try this one. And this is one of those recipes that always tastes better the next day with your morning coffee. I swear this tastes better the next day, you know with that first hot cup of coffee of the day? Yeah.

Blueberry Cake
from Donna Hay
print recipe

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 ts finely grated lemon rind (I used 3 ts)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 350F.
Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add sugar and combine.
In a separate bowl whisk sour cream, eggs, lemon rind, and oil together.
Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in the blueberries.
To make a cake: spread batter into 9 or 8 inch greased & floured cake pan and bake for 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
To make muffins: fill a dozen 1/2 cup muffin tins about 2/3 full and bake for 12 minutes or until clean toothpick stage.

Note: I sprinkled raw sugar on top halfway thru the baking time-I love that crunch. I used a 9-inch round cake pan that was greased and floured. I baked mine for 30 minutes, but I have a convection oven, so it takes less. But make sure to watch the cake at around the 30 minute mark! I used 3 ts of fresh lemon zest--I love that lemon taste.

the ultimate peanut butter cookie

There really is nothing quite like a good, I mean a good, peanut butter cookie. I've noticed, there are so many varieties of peanut butter cookies out there; the list keeps growing on the diversity out here in food-bloggerland. There are raw, flourless, all natural, no bake, no peanut-peanut butter cookies, I mean I could go on and on here. My latest batch of peanut butter cookies comes inspired from the idea of making a flourless peanut butter cookie as Joy the Baker did. But I used flour, just not that much; I needed a little bit in my pb cookie to make it just a bit heartier, denser, chewier--you with me?
Thank you also to Alexis Stewart (yes that one) who saw my cookies and made them her own way. I was honored beyond belief. Thank you. (the link is up top under the Press Links).

'almost flourless' peanut butter cookies
(sort of adapted by The Gourmet Cookbook & Joy the Baker)
print recipe

1 cup smooth-type peanut butter* (no oily peanut butters!)
¾ cup dark brown sugar
¼ granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 TB flour
1 ts sea salt
Bittersweet chocolate chips, about ½ cup, optional
Sea salt for sprinkling, optional In a small bowl add the flour, baking soda and salt and mix, set aside.
In a mixer or by hand, combine peanut butter and sugars until well combined. Crack egg open in a small bowl and beat. Add egg to the cookie mixture; add in the flour mixture but by sprinkling it over the cookie dough, not just depositing it in one large dump. Mix till combined. Cover bowl and let it sit in fridge for about two hours or more (mine did fine overnight). When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll into tablespoon sized balls and place on non-stick cookie sheets or greased cookie sheets. With a fork gently make a criss-cross pattern with a fork. Bake for 10 minutes, until lightly browned. As soon as they come out of the oven sprinkle with just a bit of sea salt—this adds a nice peanut depth; this is optional. (If you want to add in a chocolate topping like I did, don’t make a cross-cross pattern, but rather make a small well. Bake those half way (about 5 minutes) then add in about 4 chocolate chips and bake remaining 5 minutes or so. The chocolate part is optional, but luscious.) Cool on a baking sheet for a while. Should make about 23 – 25 cookies.
*please use a creamy, not oily peanut butter. I used whole foods 365 organic creamy peanut butter, it has the perfect texture for these cookies.

white chocolate, pineapple & coconut bark

I'm not the biggest fan of white chocolate, but I did change my mind on this creation. This was good, really good. I had a small bite and then made sure to send it away to friends as I knew I would eat all of it. It's that type of candy that you have a piece, vow to have one more piece, then seal it up, then end up going back for a third, fourth and so on.



Are there a lot of people out there that like white chocolate? I know my hubby loves it. I love my high cacao chocolate--give me my fix! For the longest time I had been craving a pineapple & coconut type bark, every since spring came about actually. But mixing the pineapple and coconut with the dark or even milk chocolate was ok, not my thing really. I gave the white chocolate a try. But trust me, I was hesitant because melting white chocolate is a pain in the ciuco! You really have to watch the chocolate because it goes from melted directly to dry and crusty. But if you have all your ingredients lined up and work fast it comes out okay.



So, was this good? Yes, it was really good. I love the sweetness of the pineapple and coconut mixed with the almost salty-like white chocolate. And I used a dried coconut to give the bark texture (not a sweetened coconut, but dried). Plus the salty macadamia nuts were crazy good with this. Did I forget to mention the salty macadamia nuts? My bad--yes there are macadamia nuts in here and they are salty gooooood.



white chocolate tropical bark
print recipe

about 16 oz of white chocolate melted (about one bag and a half bag)
1/2 cup more or less dried pineapple, chopped
1/2 cup more or less dried coconut (not the sweetened kind but the dried)
1/2 cup more or less rough chopped salted macadamia nuts

You can use as much or as little of the ingredients above as you like. Have all your ingredients (in separate bowls) at the ready because as soon as the white chocolate is melted you need to pour it onto a sheet pan and add your mix in's. Get a small jellyroll pan ready; either use a non-stick one or cover it with parchment paper. Melt white chocolate over double boiler. (I don't microwave my white chocolate, it's never ever melted right for me). Keep stirring until it's melted, then pour onto jellyroll pan, spread with nonstick spatula, then sprinkle on the pineapple and then the nuts, push them down a bit to make sure they sink in a bit to the melted chocolate, then top with the coconut. Put in freezer to harden, about 30 minutes. After it's hardened, then let it sit at room temp for a bit before breaking into pieces.