recent recipes

Here are a few things I've made recently that you should try out!

Grilled Bruschetta Chicken
I made my own marinade that was super delicious (sundried tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt, honey), but even after about 7 hours in the marinade, the flavors just didn't really permeate the chicken enough for my liking.  Overall it was still a tasty dish though.  And the method for grilling the chicken was perfect for keeping it really moist.

I served it with some garlic butter quinoa.  It tasted like garlic bread!  Mmmmm.

Cinnamon Roll Scones
These are good.  SO good.  I made a few small changes:
- didn't use the nuts or cinnamon chips
- used 1/2 whole milk yogurt and 1/2 sour cream instead of the Greek yogurt
- made 14 scones (8 would be HUGE!)
- had half the glaze leftover so would cut the recipe down next time

Banana+ Muffins
This is my tried and true banana muffin recipe (I even have the recipe committed to memory I make it so often!).  Today I am calling it banana+ because I did some add ins to make things interesting for our guests.  I divided the recipe in fourths and made plain, coconut, walnut, and chocolate chip banana muffins.  They are delicious plain or with the add ins.  Experimenting is fun.  Especially when the ingredients are cheap and the recipe is easy to mix and fast to bake.
- 3 or 4 ripe bananas (4 for large muffins or loaf, 3 for mini muffins)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/3 cup butter, melted
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt (unless your butter is salted)
I always just mix everything in my mixer, but if you are a proper baker, I am sure you will want to mix the first 4 ingredients and set aside while you mix the last 4 dry ingredients before slowly combining them.  I often make these with 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 whole wheat flour and some ground flax seed tossed in.  I also have subbed the oil with applesauce without any loss of flavor or moist consistency.  They are a pretty forgiving muffin!  A friend recently said she's perfected her banana muffin recipe and it is this same recipe but with browned butter and a yummy crumb topping.  You can bet I will be trying that soon!  

Make your own Breakfast Burritos
Pretty self explanatory, but I included it because it is such an easy dish when hosting brunch.  I've made them the last 4 or 5 times we've had people over!

Use-up-the-Random-Fruit Crisp
I love fruit crisps and crumbles and cobblers.  I hadn't made one in months and we had some fruit that needed some love and attention.  What's a girl to do?!?!  I know I have made it pretty clear in this blog that I am incapable of following a recipe, and I think fruit crisps are the perfect example of this.  I always read a few recipes online and then wing it from there.  It doesn't really seem to matter how poorly I measure or what quantities I use of each ingredient, a crisp is a crisp is a crisp.  And it's allllll good!  This time around this is what I used:
Filling:
- 1/3 pint raspberries, whole
- 8 or 10 strawberries, sliced
- 1 peach, diced
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch
Topping:
- 1/4 cup butter, cold and diced
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/2 cup oats
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- cinnamon
Baked at 350 for about 45 minutes and served with vanilla ice cream.

Baked Feta
Or in our case, grilled feta.  Roy and I had this for dinner alongside some BBQ steak late one night last week after the kids were in bed.  We didn't have any crusty bread, but it was delicious with pita chips, so that is how we served it when we took it to friends' for a BBQ on the weekend.  This is a new favorite of mine, for sure.  I used feta, olive oil, red onion, fresh basil, garlic, tomatoes, and fresh cracked black pepper.  Don't skimp on the tomatoes.  You will want lots of them.  We wrapped it up in foil (double or triple wrap it to prevent the oil from leaking out) and put in on the BBQ for about 20-25 minutes (depended on the size of the hunk of feta we were doing each time).  I only have a picture of it before it hit the heat, but I can assure you it looks, smells, and tastes divine when it is opened up to eat!