Back to the Cutting Board

I have a raging sweet tooth and it usually reveals itself late at night. Usually I can be good and satisfy it with one of those 100 calorie packs of cookies, but sometimes only a real dessert will satisfy me. Because of that I always look for quick and simple dessert recipes to have in my arsenal that I can whip up in about an hour or two. Friday night was one such night, but I was not in the mood for any of usual chocolate recipes. I wanted something completely different. So I looked through my newest cookbook and found this recipe for glazed lemon cupcakes. They did not disappoint. Very sweet and moist and definitely a nice change of pace if your not in the mood for chocolate. Even the glaze part, which I’m usually very wary of (I’ve had some BAD experiences making icing before) was super easy to whip up. I just poured it right over the cakes, I didn’t even bother to spread it around on all of them, it pretty much did all the work itself.

The one thing I did learn from the whole experience is that I do not have the right kind of tool to zest a lemon. Unsurprisingly, using a cheese grater doesn’t really work. I tried to chop it up even finer after I grated it, but I still found large-ish pieces of zest in the cakes. I imagine the whole point of zest is that you don’t actually know it’s in there? Yeah, so FAIL on that. Google says I need a microplane grater, so there’s another kitchen tool I need that I don’t have room for in my tiny kitchen. I say, if you don’t have the tool to get the zest really fine, don’t bother putting it in there. The lemon juice in the cakes and in the glaze gives them more than enough lemon favor.

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Dinner, Favorites

October 22, 2008

Posted by Emily Tags: carrots, chicken, corn, easy, fast, Jason's Deli, peas, soup, vegetables

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

You could also call this Creamy Chicken Vegetable Soup. We’ve already established how much I love Jason’s Deli. Well, this is another item they have that I love almost as much as their muffins. When I was searching around for a similar recipe, I wound up finding two. One was made from scratch and kinda high in fat, while the other was uber simple (10 minutes to make it - TOTAL) and low fat. I decided to make both and see how they compared. In end all taste-testers (which would be me and Brandon) agreed that the made from scratch version was better, but the other version was definitely still good and the fact that it was so simple and also low in fat made up for the taste discrepancies.

In the end, I’ll be keeping both of these in my recipe arsenal and choose based on how much time I have to make dinner. Both versions were very hearty and filling. I was actually amazed that I could be filled up from soup! I’ve listed peas, carrots and corn, but I’ve also made this with green beans instead of peas. You can put in whatever vegetables you like. And just like Jason’s I put a square of puff pastry on top. So good!

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