Fettuccine Alfredo

I've always heard that fettuccine alfredo wasn't that healthy, especially the sauce. But when making it homemade, you know what ingredients go into it, so it's not as unhealthy. The link above mentions that other sauces use heavy cream and a lot of Parmesan cheese in the recipe, but this recipe I used doesn't call for any heavy cream, and it only calls for 2 Tbsp. of Parmesan cheese. Very yummy!


Ingredients:
1 cup fettuccine pasta
2 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. flour
1 cup milk
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese
parsley flakes

Directions:
Cook fettuccine according to directions. Melt butter. Stir flour into butter until you have a nice paste. Slowly stir in milk. Cook and stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly. Stir in garlic and salt and cook one more minute. Remove from heat and stir in Parmesan cheese. Divide pasta onto two plates. Pour Alfredo sauce over pasta and sprinkle parsley on top.


We didn't have fettuccine pasta, so we just used egg noodles. It was delicious!

This is from the Cooking for Two book found here:

Homemade White Bread & Sweet Honey Butter

Who likes homemade bread? I do, I do! It has taken me a while to actually make some because I don't have a bread machine and I know it takes quite a while to make homemade bread by hand. This recipe that I found in the Cooking for Two cookbook actually wasn't too bad! It took a while to get to the finished product since you have to let it rise and all that, but it was really easy to make. :) Eventually I want to get some wheat flour and make homemade wheat bread, but I thought I'd start by making homemade white bread since we had all the ingredients to make it.


Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk + 1/2 cup water
1 package active dry yeast
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. sugar
3 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:
Heat milk in saucepan just until warm. Pour into mixing bowl. Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Add to milk. Stir in oil, sugar, salt, and 2 cups of the flour. Beat at low speed with electric mixer 1 minute, and then on high for 2 minutes. Stir in remaining flour until you can't stir any more. Knead the dough on floured surface, adding flour if needed to make a slightly stiff dough. Place in greased bowl and cover. Put in warm area to rise (I turn the oven to 200 for a few minutes just to warm it, and then I turn it off before placing the bread inside). Let rise until double (about 1 hour).
Punch the dough down. Roll in flour and shape into loaf. Grease a loaf pan and place dough in pan. Cover and let rise in warm area until almost double in size. Heat oven to 375. Place loaf in oven and bake 30-45 minutes. Remove from pan and place on cooling rack. Tastes yummy served warm with sweet honey butter. (see recipe below)

The "I" in the recipe above is referring to the author of the cookbook. Just thought I'd clarify that the "I" wasn't talking about me. :) This recipe only makes one loaf, so I doubled the recipe and made two loaves. Also, I've never seen anything with such a big difference in time (30-45 minutes), so I experimented and did 35 minutes. I think that was a little too much time because the top of the bread came out darker. I think 30 minutes would be just fine. It does taste really good right out of the oven with honey butter on it!

Sweet Honey Butter

1/4 cup honey

3 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Soften butter. Cream together butter and honey. Mix in powdered sugar and vanilla until well blended. Spread over warm bread or scones.

This honey butter recipe wasn't my favorite, but it was still yummy! It's pretty sweet, so be sure not to put too much on your hot bread (the bread soaks it right up when it's hot, making it seem like it doesn't have much honey butter on it, but don't keep adding more! That was the mistake I made, so it was really really sweet!) I doubled the recipe for the honey butter so I would have more for when I had toast for breakfast or whatever.

Hope you enjoy your homemade bread with honey butter! :)

Sweet Apple Crisp

I thought I would make a new dessert recipe last week. It's somewhat healthy too! We had apples that needed to be used, so I went through my cookbooks to see if there was a recipe that uses apples that looked like it would be good. I came across the Sweet Apple Crisp recipe in the Cooking for Two cookbook, so I decided to try it! Now, the reason why I didn't post the recipe last week was because it really needed some tweaking, so I actually made it twice in just a couple of days (but it used up all of the apples we had, so that was good!). :)

Sweet Apple Crisp
3 medium apples
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 Tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt

Wash, core, and slice apples. Spread in small baking pan. Drizzle syrup over apples. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter until crumbly. Toss evenly over apples. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream.


I usually don't like crisps or cobblers, so it didn't surprise me that I wasn't a fan of this. The main reason was because it was too salty! I actually doubled the recipe both times I made it. The first time I used 6 apples and used a 9x13 casserole dish, and I doubled all the rest of the ingredients exactly. The second time I only used 5 apples (because that was all we had left) and I put it in a smaller casserole dish (7x11, I believe), and I changed some of the amounts of the ingredients (see below). I think it turned out a lot better using a smaller casserole dish, but if you do use a 9x13 dish, I suggest use more than 6 apples so that the bottom of the pan is completely filled (maybe 7 or 8 apples, and I actually quadrupled the topping for the 9x13 dish).

Here are the changes I made the 2nd time (doubling it):
5 medium apples (for a 7x13 casserole dish)
1/2 cup maple syrup
6 Tbsp. butter
2 tsp. cinnamon (quadruple this so it has more cinnamon taste!)
2/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt (single this for a double recipe. It was still a little too salty for my liking, so use even less if you want.)
1/2 tsp. sugar (I added this ingredient just to make the topping a little more sweet, but you can use more sugar, maybe 1 or 2 tsp.)

The first time I made it, I decided to soften the butter a little bit. The second time I made it, I just put the butter in straight from the fridge. It turned out a lot better the second time, so do NOT soften or melt the butter! Just put it in with the dry ingredients and mix it till you don't have big chunks of butter. It will take a while, but it will work! I mixed it with a fork so I could 'shave' the butter into thin slices and then eventually it all got mixed together so you couldn't see the butter anymore.

I actually thought it was really good the second time we made it, which is a little surprising since, like I said, I'm not a big fan of crisps and cobblers. It's really good if you have it with French Vanilla ice cream, or you can use whipped topping! It's a really yummy dessert! :)

Spaghetti Sauce

I got this Cooking for Two cookbook from Ryan for my birthday. I had mentioned to him before my birthday that I really wanted it since right now it's just the two of us that I'm cooking for (and who knows how long it will be like that before kids start coming). One of my goals for the New Year is cooking something new once a week. For this first week, I decided to make something from this cookbook. I flipped through the pages and found Spaghetti Sauce! I have never made homemade spaghetti sauce (we always just used the jar spaghetti sauce), so it was fun to make it! (and it tasted SOOOO good!)

Ingredients:
1 lb. hamburger
1 16-oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 8-oz. cans tomato sauce
2 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 garlic clove

Brown hamburger with salt, pepper, and garlic powder in a medium saucepan. Drain fat. Stir in tomatoes, sauce, seasoning, and sugar. Press garlic with garlic press or use 1 tsp. minced garlic. Add garlic to sauce and stir well. Simmer 1 hour or until sauce thickens and turns deep red in color. Serve over cooked spaghetti noodles. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Tip: Do not rinse noodles, as this rinses off the starch. The starch makes the noodles sticky, which helps the sauce stick to the noodles.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly. For one, we didn't have crushed tomatoes. I just used what we had which was diced tomatoes. I don't think it makes much of a difference. Also, it doesn't say whether to drain them or not, so I drained them a little. It came out being a little runny at the end, so maybe the tomatoes are supposed to be drained. 2 Tbsp. of Italian seasoning seemed like a lot to me, so I used a little less than that amount. Also, we didn't have a garlic clove, so I just used a little less than 1 tsp. of garlic powder. I had it simmering for about 45 minutes and it didn't seem like it was getting any thicker, so we just ate it after 45 minutes instead of an hour. Even though it was a little runny, it tasted really good!!! We had it over whole grain spaghetti noodles, so it was nice and healthy! Just add a salad and some veggies, and you're set with a good dinner!

Lemon Bread

This was really yummy! The glaze was a bit too lemony-sweet for my liking. I would have liked it just fine without the glaze. Maybe it would taste better with a little powdered sugar sprinkled on top. :)


Ingredients
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, well-beaten
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. lemon extract

Directions
Blend first 4 ingredients together. Sift dry ingredients together. Mix with egg mixture and stir in lemon extract. Pour into greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. While bread is still hot, prick top all over with ice pick or fork. Pour glaze over top.

Glaze: Stir together 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup lemon juice. Pour over bread. Remove bread from pan when bread is completely cooled.


We didn't have lemon extract but we did have lemon juice, so I looked online to see if it could be substituted. I read that you double the lemon juice when you use it to substitute it for lemon extract... so you would use 1 tsp. lemon juice. I also read that for the extra lemon juice you use, you subtract that amount from another one of the liquids in the recipe. 1/2 of a tsp. really isn't that much, but I just used a tiny bit less oil. I think it turned out ok. Also, we never did take the bread out of the pan. We just kept it in the pan and took out pieces of it when we wanted some. I think it's more like cake than bread. :)

Never-Fail Sugar Cookies

Haha... I felt like something sweet one day and we had nothing sweet in the house. I saw the name of these cookies and had to try them! Plus, I noticed that one of the ingredients was sour cream. Interesting! I really had to try them after I saw that! Remember this sugar cookie recipe? It has shortening in it. Ryan and I haven't had shortening in our house for a long time just because I know it's not good for you! (Sugar isn't really good for you either, but this is still a somewhat healthier version as opposed to the recipes with shortening.) :) SO... I want to share this recipe with everyone because these cookies are GOOD! You would never know that they have sour cream in them because they taste just like sugar cookies! Delicious!


Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 egg
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Directions
Sift dry ingredients together. Cream sugar and butter together. Stir in eggs, vanilla, and sour cream. Add flour mixture and stir well. Refrigerate until well chilled. Roll dough 1/4 inch thick. Cut shapes and place on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Just FYI ... I doubled the recipe. If you've ever made a single recipe of cookies, you know it's never enough to satify you! So I doubled the recipe. It still only made 24 cookies, so they were gone really fast. I need to quadruple the recipe next time! Haha!


Perfect cookies!

Quick and Easy Macaroni and Cheese

I love macaroni and cheese, especially homemade! Wait, let me say that again... I love macaroni and cheese, ONLY if it's homemade! Haha! I felt like making some for dinner tonight, but I didn't want to take the time to make this one and have to wait a while for it to cook in the oven. (By the way, that recipe is still my all time favorite mac & cheese recipe!) I looked in one of my cookbooks and found a really easy recipe that looked like it wouldn't take much time, so I tried it. It's not bad for a homemade mac & cheese. I like it better than this mac & cheese crockpot recipe. If you're looking for something quick to make for dinner, try this! You can also warm up hot dogs to eat with it. Very kid friendly! :)


Ingredients:
1 cup macaroni noodles
2 Tbsp. butter
3/4 cup cheddar cheese
1/4 cup milk

Directions:
Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain noodles and return to pan. Melt butter into noodles. Add milk and grated cheese. Stir until cheese melts. Season with salt and/or pepper to taste.


I didn't put any salt and pepper on mine, and it tasted just fine. I also doubled the recipe because I like having leftovers. I'd recommend this recipe if you're in a hurry or if you just don't want to spend a lot of time cooking. :)