Kneaders Key Lime Tarts

Let me start out by explaining the difference between Key limes and your everyday supermarket variety, the Persian lime. Key limes come from the Florida Keys, thus their name, and are smaller, more yellow and contain more seeds than the green skinned Persian limes. The bad news is they’re almost impossible to find fresh at your local market, but the good news is Persian limes work just as well in this particular recipe.

Ingredients

• ½ cup fresh lime juice (3 to 4 limes)
• 4 teaspoons grated lime zest
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 – 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 8 3” tart shells

Preparation

1. It’s easiest to remove the lime zest from whole limes so start with that.

2. Cut the limes in half and squeeze out the juice being careful to not include any seeds.

3. Whisk the egg yolks and lime zest together in a bowl until tinted light green. This takes about 2 minutes.

4. Beat in the milk, then juice and set aside at room temp till it thickens.

5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

6. Pour mixture into tart crusts, bake for 5 minutes until the center is set, but still wiggles when shaken.

7. Remove from the oven and cool to room temp.

8. Refrigerate for at least three hours until well chilled.

9. Serve with whipped cream topping and decorate with a lime wedge.

Makes 8 Tarts

EASY Home Made Chicken Pot Pie

This is one of my favorites. Super easy. We eat this a lot.

Chicken Pot Pie

~One double pie crust- (you can buy this ready made next to the refrigerated biscuits if you're in a pinch and don't have time to make your own. I always have one ready made crust on had so I can pop this dinner in the oven when I'm in a hurry.)
~One can of chicken, (we buy ours at Costco)
~ one can cream of mushroom soup
~ one bag mixed frozen veggies
~a hand full grated cheese
~ sprinkle as much garlic salt as you think you would like

Line pie plate with one crust. Mix chicken, soup, veggies, cheese, and garlic salt. Fill pie crust. Cover with top crust. Cover edges of pie with foil so they don't over brown in the baking process.
Bake for 40-45 min at 425 degrees (or according to pie crust instructions) uncovering edges for the last 10 min of baking.

Hope you make it and enjoy it!

Lasagna

I know you want it.

But you can't have it.

It's just so good. 

Turkey Meatloaf

I saw Tara on this season's The Biggest Loser, making Turkey Meatloaf and it looked so simple and delicious. I am pulling this recipe from Slim Shoppin's blog, which she pulled from Jennie-O's website, but I like her blog, so I'm doing some free advertising. 

Anyway, I'll be adding my own input in BLUE and illustrating with my very own pictures. :) I know you're excited.

First, I need to point out my new appliance! It did a FANTASTIC job on it's first use. I love, love, love it. And it was nice not having to spend time chopping all the veggies myself.

INGREDIENTS: 1 small yellow onion, coarsely chopped 

1 medium carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped 

1 stalk of celery, coarsely chopped 

2 chipotle peppers (canned in adobo sauce) 

1 (20-ounce) package JENNIE-O TURKEY STORE® extra lean ground turkey breast 

1/2 cup quick cooking oats 

2 egg whites 

FOR TOPPING: 1/4 cup fat free and sugar free ketchup 

1 tablespoon chipotle pepper adobo sauce (from canned peppers used in meatloaf)

 1 tablespoon brown sugar 

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350°F. In the work bowl of a food processor, combine onion, carrots and celery. Pulse until finely chopped. Add chipotle peppers and pulse until just combined. I found this in the Mexican food section of my grocery store.

In a large bowl, combine the ground turkey with the pepper and vegetable mixture. 

Add egg whites and oats; gently mix until combined. 

Place about 1/3 cup of the prepared meat loaf mixture into 9 wells of a standard size muffin pan that has been lightly sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. Mine actually filled the entire muffin pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine all of the topping ingredients in a small bowl; set aside. Remove meat loaves from oven and spoon the topping over each meat loaf. Return meat loaf to the oven and continue to bake for an additional 5-10 minutes or until meat loaf is firm and the internal temperature registers 170°F. Let meat loaf stand for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 9 (or 12) mini loaves. This Recipe is Biggest Loser approved

My sauce only made enough to cover 9 meatloafs, but I didn't mind because I wanted to try one without the sauce. 

The sauce was SUPER spicy-because of that chipotle pepper. The salad was the perfect side, because after each bite of meatloaf I could cool my mouth down with the ranch dressing. I would suggest using less of the abodo sauce, and subbing more ketchup if you want less spicy. HOWEVER, I do not suggest omitting the sauce all together. It really brought the whole meal together. The plain turkey meatloaf was lacking without that sauce. Overall, I give this meal a high rating. It was SIMPLE and DELICIOUS, and provided for easy clean up.

Try it out, and tell me what you think!

Nutritional Information for 1 mini loaf:

Calories: 110 Fat: 1 g Saturated Fat: 0 Sodium: 180 mg Protein: 16 g Cholesterol: 25 mg Carbohydrates: 6 g

Watch out for the baby though. He'll find the cookies while you're busy occupying yourself in the kitchen.

From Scratch!

I got a wonderful wheat grinder for Christmas. So after I went out and bought some wheat to grind I made bread. This was my first try! Pretty good huh?
I'm not going to post the recipe, so if you want it let me know. I'm not posting it cause I haven't found the bread recipe that I love, this was ok, but I didn't love it.
But we can enjoy the picture right!

Blueberry Crumble Top Muffins

I was inspired by Trent's blog to bake some Blueberry Muffins! And blueberries were on sale, so where could I go wrong? 

I'm not the greatest photographer, but these looks pretty scrumptious, huh?

Blueberry Muffins

1 1/2 C Flour

3/4 C Sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp Baking Powder

1/3 C Vegetable Oil

1 egg

1/3 cup Milk

1 C Berries

CRUMBLE TOP:

1/2 C Sugar

1/3 C Flour

1/4 C Butter, cubed

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Combine first 4 ingredients. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup. Add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups and sprinkle with crumb topping.

For the crumb topping, simply mix those 4 ingredients in a bowl with a fork. 

Bake at 400 degrees, 20-25 minutes.

Mama Mahelona's PB Chocolate Chip Cookies

THESE ARE YUMMY! You know how some cookies just don't taste good two or three days after you bake them, these cookies are different. They taste as good the next day and the next and the next and even the next.

1/2 C Margarine
1/2 C Peanut Butter
1/2 C Sugar
1/2 C Brown sugar
1 Egg

1 1/3 C Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
Chocolate Chips

Mix First 5 ingredients. Stir in last 4 ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet to bake. 350 for 9-11 minutes.
Yields: 2 dozen