February 22, 2011
Ultimate Chocolate Cake with Chocolate-Orange Buttercream (And Cake Balls!)
To celebrate Valentine’s Day and my birthday, Brandon and I spent a wonderful weekend in a little cottage I rented in the mountains a few hours away. It was such a fun getaway: we did some hiking, we drove around and got lost and we spent a lot of time soaking in the hot tub. When we got back home on Sunday afternoon, I wanted to make myself a birthday cake but after such a relaxing weekend I didn’t want to deal with complicated recipes or put time into making something that didn’t turn out great. That’s why I love the internet and recipe sites with reviews like Epicurious. I mean, if you can find a cake …
February 9, 2011
Light and Chewy Chocolate Cookies – Two Ways
I wasn’t able to post last week due to my work load being particularly crazy lately, so this week you get two recipes! I’ve been good about eating better and counting my Weight Watchers points for the past month, but sometimes I just get a craving for chocolate that won’t go away. Especially now since it’s almost Valentine’s Day and there are lots of chocolate recipes floating around trying to tempt me. That’s when I head to my trusty Cooking Light cookbooks because they always have really satisfying desserts that won’t kill my diet. Both recipes I’m sharing today are rich and chocolatey and will satisfy your worst chocolate craving, but they happen to be quite low …
January 26, 2011
Pear-Cranberry Streusal Kuchen (Coffee Cake)
Streusal is probably one of my most favorite words to say as well as one of my favorite things to eat. But now I have a new favorite word: Kuchen. Kuchen just means cake in German, but it’s so much more fun to call it kuchen, isn’t it? Whatever you want to call this recipe, it’s really good and very easy to make. It got the Brandon seal of approval and he rarely likes fruit-filled cakes, especially ones with cranberry. He said it tasted way too good to be a light recipe, but it is, so you don’t even have to feel guilty about eating it!
This is basically a coffee cake, but it doesn’t matter if you …
January 20, 2011
Chipotle Chicken Chowder
Since last fall I’ve tried a ton of soup recipes looking for that one perfect soup. A soup recipe that could stand up against my absolute favorite: Chicken Tortilla Soup. I’ve found quite a few good soups, even some great ones, but nothing that I loved as much as that tortilla soup. But, finally, after months of looking I think I may have found it. I’m not sure I’d say I like it more than tortilla soup, but it’s definitely tied with it now.
I would call this chowder a cousin to that tortilla soup. They are different and yet quite similar. That’s probably why I like it so much. Both have a base of …
January 10, 2011
Berry-Orange Crunch Muffins
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s time for my semi-annual I’m-going-to-get-in-shape-I-really-mean-it-this-time, so you’ll have to indulge me while I post some healthier recipes over the next few months. (Don’t worry, there will still be treats! I’d never give up dessert, I just find ones that aren’t as bad for you.) Honestly, I really overindulged on cheesecake and cookies last month, so I’m ready to get back to eating better and eating less processed food. I’ve been eating a piece of fruit for dessert every day this past week and it’s been perfection.
I’m always looking for easy things to have in the morning with my coffee and muffins are definitely my favorite. Unfortunately, a lot of muffin …
December 27, 2010
Holiday Cheesecake Sampler
I hope everyone had a nice weekend! Brandon and I had a pretty laid back Christmas, we stayed in and watched movies and played video games all weekend. It even snowed a little bit on Saturday so we got the proverbial white Christmas. After going all out for Thanksgiving last month, I really wasn’t in the mood to kill myself making a big dinner again so instead we had a small ham and I made my favorite Pineapple Stuff to go with it. But it is Christmas, so I couldn’t resist having fun with dessert.
One of my presents this year was a set of mini springform pans
When I was deciding which flavors I wanted to make, Peppermint Bark was at the top of my list because I’ve already had a bunch of questions from readers about making one. I’ve never eaten peppermint bark cheesecake before and I didn’t really look for a recipe, I just decided to have fun with it and come up with something that sounded good to me. It’s a white chocolate cheesecake marbled with white chocolate-peppermint flavored cheesecake (dyed pink for fun) and then topped with a peppermint-chocolate ganache and sprinkled with crushed peppermints. Let me tell you…it’s as good as it sounds. I was worried peppermint and cream cheese might be kind of weird together but adding the white chocolate makes it work perfectly. It honestly wasn’t even as minty as it you would think. I preferred keeping it subtle because I didn’t want to cover up the white chocolate flavor but you may want to increase the peppermint extract if you really like peppermint.
Red Velvet is another cheesecake I’ve never had before, but it sounded good and I thought the beautiful red color would compliment the red of the peppermint and the red of the cherries in the other cheesecakes. It’s flavored with cocoa and topped with a layer of cream cheese frosting because why not add some more cream cheese to your cheesecake? It’s Christmas, go all out!!
If you’re like Brandon and you prefer to keep your cheesecake simple, the other two are just as good as those crazy cheesecakes. The Oreo cheesecake has an Oreo crust, Oreos mixed in and more sprinkled on top. It’s pretty much your ultimate Oreo cheesecake.
Last but not least there’s the good ol’ basic cheesecake with a sweet cherry topping. And it’s not those weird fake looking cherries in a jar either, you can use fresh or frozen dark sweet cherries. Brandon said it was exactly what he wanted, so it will surely become a staple every time I make cheesecakes in the future.
I realize the most people won’t have these mini springform pans, so there are directions for making each of these cheesecakes full size and in smaller pans. But since it’s Christmas and these pans are so awesome I decided I want to give a set of four 4.5″ pans
All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post. Next Monday, January 3rd, I will pick a winner at random and announce it on this post as well as on the Back to the Cutting Board Facebook page.
To get extra entries for the giveaway:
- “Like” Back to the Cutting Board on Facebook (it counts if you’re already a fan, too).
- Tweet a link to this post about the giveaway or the recipes in this post.
Just come back here and add a new comment after you’ve “liked” me to get another entry. If you tweet a link to this post, it should automatically appear here as a comment, but if not, then add a comment with a link to your tweet.
Good Luck!
UPDATE 1-3-11: The contest is now closed. The winner is Intisar:
Those look great! I would love to have a set of mini springform pans, I love cheesecake, but DH doesn’t so this would be perfect!!!
Thanks so much to everyone who commented and tweeted and liked Back to the Cutting Board on Facebook! I will definitely be doing more of these kinds of giveaways in the future!
