Mini Cheese Quiche

I have two confessions before I get started here.

First:  It was all I could do not to title this blog Mini Cheesy Quichey.

Second:  I ate four cookies just now.  Which is an unacceptable amount of cookies to eat while making dinner!  In case you missed it, check out these chocolate chip cookies with avocado for half the fat, which, really, doesn't make it any better that I just ate four of them right before dinner. 

Anyway, normally when I make quiche I put lots of veggies in it that are not hidden at all... spinach, green peppers, tomatoes, or whatever we happen to have in the fridge.  So it actually didn't occur to me to hide veggies in it until I saw a recipe for mini cheese quiches on a "kid friendly" menu.  Ah ha!  Now I can try and hide veggies in something that shouldn't have any.

I found a handful of recipes online, and this is what I came up with after looking at them.  One interesting thing I read was to use bread as the "pie crust."  Just roll it out before putting into the muffin pan.  So, since I don't have any puff pastry or pie crust, I thought I'd give that a try.

I should also note that I used a jumbo cupcake pan.   In the jumbo pan this recipe made 6 quiches, so it would probably make 12 in a normal size cupcake pan.

Ingredients:
6 bread slices rolled flat
4 eggs
1/2 cup cauliflower puree
1/2 cup squash puree  (Note:  you can use any white/yellow/orange puree combination that totals one cup)
1/4 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheese

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400.  Roll bread slices flat and press/fold into cupcake pan.  Press cheese into the bottom of the crusts. 

Wisk together eggs and milk.  Wisk in purees.  Pour egg mixture into crusts. 

Bake approximately 20 minutes or until set. 

See how cheesy it looks?  Mm mmm, and it smells like toast.

While I was finishing dinner, my research team served our 11 month old some bread with carrot fondue...  I think this veggie thing is catching on!  Even I haven't completely replaced cheese with veggies! 

He also ate veggies hidden in quiche... sort of.  Mostly he smashed it on the tray.  But I have proof of at least one bite:

They turned out pretty yummy!  I felt like I could taste the squash in them, but the research team couldn't taste the veggies at all.  He knew there were veggies, but said it tasted like cheese quiche.

In the future I think will add some spices (I'm actually not sure why I didn't this time) ... salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, but I think that is all I would change. 

Also the bread-for-crust turned out really well!  It wasn't quite as tasty as the biscuit recipe I use for my chicken pot pies, but it was good.


The Verdict:

"Fooled the baby!"   (and the Daddy too...)


Next time... either veggie bread or brownies...  the way I ate those cookies I'm thinking I should hold off on the brownies for a little while, even if they do have spinach in them!  ;)

Sweet Potato Pie

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was in charge of a few pies for Thanksgiving, and since my research team isn't a big fan of pumpkin pie (I know, I know, I don't know what is wrong with him either!) we made sweet potato pie instead.   Which is HILARIOUS, because sweet potato pie tastes just like pumpkin pie.  :)   Moving on...

Actually, there are a few things about sweet potato pie that are better than pumpkin.  For example, if you want to make it from the actual vegetable, and not from a can, sweet potatoes are much easier to deal with than pumpkin.  No carving with a massive knife, no seeds, no stringies, no pumpkin splattered all over your computer... well, I suppose that could happen with sweet potato, it just hasn't happened to me... yet! 

I've made sweet potato pie in the past and this is my favorite recipe so far. 

I looked up a recipe on allrecipes.com and then also made some of the changes suggested in the comments.  It turned out so good.  Here is the recipe with the suggested additions/changes:

1 pound of sweet potatoes
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnimon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground chives
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon flour
1 pie crust

Directions

1. Boil sweet potato whole in skin for 40 to 50 minutes, or until done. Run cold water over the sweet potato, and remove the skin.
2. Break apart sweet potato in a bowl. Add butter, and mix well with mixer. Stir in sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth. Pour filling into an unbaked pie crust.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 55 to 60 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Pie will puff up like a souffle, and then will sink down as it cools. 

 

I didn't quite follow the directions exactly (you know me!), but I wanted to put them up here for next time I need this recipe!

So, one of the funny things about this recipe is the 1 pound of potatoes requirement.  I don't have a scale in my kitchen, do you?  Am I the only one who doesn't, and if so, how did I miss that? 

Well, I checked a few other recipes and found 2 cups of mashed sweet potatoes, and also 3 medium sweet potatoes.  I happened to have 3 medium sweet potatoes, so that is what I boiled.  But when I mashed them up it seemed like WAY more than 2 cups, so I didn't use it all.  I didn't measure it though (of course...), which I really should have done considering that I ended up with two pies worth of sweet potato pie filling. 

 

Anyways, I didn't want to wait 40-50 minutes for the potatoes to bake, so I peeled, cut up, and boiled them.  Honestly, it probably still took 40 minutes...  then I really did follow the recipe, I swear.

 

Like I said, I ended up with two pies, luckily I had two pre-made crusts in the freezer!  I thought that it would turn out fine since a few of the comments on the recipe said that it was really sweet.  So I figured that if I had too much sweet potato it would turn out perfectly.   

And they did.  I don't have any pictures, but if you just imagine a pumpkin pie, it looks exactly the same.  :)

In the future I think I will use 4 cups of mashed sweet potato for this exact recipe and plan on making two pies out of it.   I also will increase the amount of spices a little bit.   

 

It was so good!  Every time I make sweet potato pie I say that I am never making pumpkin pie again!  

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I eat healthy enough in my life that on the occasion when I am going to eat dessert, it better be worth it.  Butter, sugar, dark chocolate... no substitutions, nothing fake, no holding back.  So I have to admit that I almost didn't want to make these cookies.  I don't want to make or eat cookies that are only kinda good.  But, for the blog, I figured I'd try it out.

I heard that avocado can be substituted for butter, so I looked up a few recipes.  I ended up on The Hill Country Cook and basically followed her recipe.   (If you go to her page, be warned, she used green m&m's so that's what the chunks of green are in her cookies, not avocado! :))

So I had this great plan to have these cookies ready for my research team as a welcome home surprise after he had been gone for a few days, (two surprises:  surprise, cookies!  and surprise, hidden avocado!)  but when I opened the avocado, this is what I found:

It's weird because the skin was hard, so it didn't feel too soft.  I had three avocados, so I figured one of them would be good... but no, they all looked like that!  What the heck!?!?  I was super bummed, especially since I had already started mixing ingredients.  Ugh, and avocados are expensive!  :(  Well, I figured I'd just make a batch with no avocado, and then I would have a direct comparison when I did make them with avocado.

One week later... we had 3 new avocados.... but this time I checked the avocado before I mixed ingredients!

Phew!  Much better.  And so far, of the three new avocados, two have been beautiful.  (Plus BONUS! these were on sale!)

So now I can continue:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup avocado (1 small avocado)
3/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
dark chocolate chips
Combine dry ingredients, set aside.  Cream together avocado, butter, and sugars.  Here is what it looked like:

It's hard to tell in the picture, but it is just a little green.  But more worrisome was that I could taste the avocado... hmmm.  Add eggs and vanilla, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Then add dry mixture one cup at a time.  Add nuts and chocolate chips.  After adding the flour, we could STILL taste the avocado.   I felt more and more nervous that this whole batch was going to be a waste.

The recipe said to roll spoonfuls of dough into balls and flatten slightly.  Well, my dough was pretty sticky, so I sorta spooned the dough onto the baking sheets and tried to flatten it a little.  (Which after a batch of those, I pulled the flour back out and rolled them into balls and flattened them, to see how that turned out...)   Bake at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.  

Here's how they came out before I was rolling and flattening them, and then also a picture after I rolled and flattened them:

I actually like the non-rolled ones better, but I am weird like that.  More importantly they were not green at all, no sign of the avocado.  Also, and this was shocking to me... no sign of the avocado in the taste either!  None.  I was shocked.

So beautiful.  So in terms of comparing the cookies to the batch with no avocado (and 1 cup of butter, that is the only difference in the recipe)... this is how those came out:

They, of course, taste great, but are obviously much flatter.  It's funny because I like my cookies fluffier and WOW does the avocado solve the flat cookie problem!

I feel like I am still in shock about how well they turned out.  No joke, I think I am always going to make my cookies like this from now on!

The Verdict:

"Also great for breakfast!"

(Hee hee, he is not joking, we really did each have a cookie before breakfast...)

Chicken Pot Pies

We don't have pot pies VERY often, but it is definitely one of our favs.

I am honestly not sure how to make a real pot pie, but I invented this recipe and to this day it is one of my proudest accomplishments.  (It's actually not the pot pie itself that is so good, it's the biscuit recipe I use for the crust that is so good...)

So I thought it was about time I hide some veggies in it.  And it's zucchini season, so that's what I used.  This time I didn't puree it, I just finely shredded it, just like I would for zucchini bread.  (In truth, it would probably be much easier to hide cauliflower or white pumpkin, but like I said, it's zucchini season!)


Here we go!

I mixed together:

2 cups cooked frozen veggies (carrot, pea, corn, green bean combo... but choose your favorite)
1 cup finely shredded zucchini
1/2 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup cooked chopped chicken (I only make pot pies when I have left over chicken)
dash of black pepper, basil
 

Then I make this recipe from Recipes for Moms.  It's a baking soda biscuit recipe, it's easy, and the biscuits are so so good.  So for pot pies I roll it out to 1/4 inch or so, and cut it into circles with a bowl:

In to the cupcake pan they go (this is a jumbo cupcake pan, also called muffin size - these are the pans I used to make the cupcakes for my sister-in-laws wedding), and I stuff them full with the veggies and chicken.

I fold over the edge and use the leftover dough to fill in the tops.

The biscuit recipe says to bake at 450 for 10-12 minutes, I usually do 12 for the pot pies.

Oh these make me so happy!  They smell so good... 


Here is a picture of the finished product:

To be honest, I was disappointed.  You can see the water?  I should have pressed all the water out of the shredded zucchini really well, but I didn't.  I guess I didn't realize how much there would be.  So the bottoms were soggy.  :(

On the plus side, they tasted great!  The middle was a little greener than normal, but I don't think anyone would have asked.


The Verdict:

"Tastes like delicious pot pie!"

So in the future, I'm going to really press out all the liquid from the zucchini... or I'll just use the good ole standby... pureed cauliflower.  Or maybe, just maybe, this really great recipe will have to go without hidden veggies.  ;)   Ha, just joking, I can't help but hide veggies... next time I'll probably just screw it up with a different veggie!

Last minute dinner... plus BONUS! hidden veggies of course

We all have those "how the heck did it get to be dinner time already" days, and this was one of mine.  Fussy teething baby, no nap, no time for mama to do anything, then took REALLY LONG walk to keep baby happy (plus, yay! extra walking for me and the dog too!), and all of a sudden my research team was home!

So what to do for dinner?  Burritos are my favorite quick dinner, but we were out of tortillas and green chili.  So I pulled this out of the cupboard:

I am not a fan of meals-from-a-box, but it was on sale, so I bought it for a day just like today.  Anyway, I also had some acorn squash that I had baked, but not pureed... I thought I might be able to hide it with all the different textures of beans and rice.  Here you can see how not smooth the squash is:

I followed the directions on the bag and added the squash with about 5 minutes left to boil.  I measured out one up of squash, but as I was adding it, it seemed like there might be chunks of squash which wouldn't be very hidden.  So I chickened out and only added half a cup.

Also at this point I added half a U of sausage.  You know those U sausages?  

Here's how it looked:
 

At this point, my research team said "Hey, what are you taking pictures of?"  I didn't want him to know that I was hiding veggies (although I think he is smart enough to know that if pictures are being taken in the kitchen that means hidden veggies...) so I say "My foot."  And I get back to putting dinner together.

Well, he keeps bugging me about why I am taking pictures, and I keep side stepping the question, and he gets more and more curious.  Finally, he ends up with the camera, and looks at the pictures!  So I told him about the squash that was going to be in the beans and rice.  So much for trying to make him guess what the hidden veggie was!  That is my favorite dinner game:  guess the hidden veggie.  Oh well, next time.

I cut up some other veggies to eat, and decided that since it was a little spicy, some avocado would be good with it.  Here is a picture of my bowl:

My research team thought it was weird with the avocado, but get this:  during dinner I asked him what he thought of the meal.  Here's how it went:

Me:                     "Sooo... what do you think of dinner?"
Research Team:   "I love these beans and rice meals.  This is my kind of meal."
Me:                     "No, I mean what about the squash?"
Research Team:   "What squash?"

No joke, after all that pestering about the picture taking, and the stealing of the camera, he COMPLETELY forgot about it and didn't notice anything squashy in the rice.  :)  Awesome.

So, I did notice some squash pieces, but all in all (obviously) it was pretty hidden!  And tasty!  I am still going to try and have puree to hide, but it's good to know that in a pinch I can maybe hide some other non-pureed veggies.

Also, I think this is a pretty classic example of how some hidden veggies can make a out-of-the-box-last-minute-meal a little better for us.

On a side note:  I think my research team has taken my hidden veggie idea and reversed it.  He is hiding fatty foods in our veggies!   See?  ;)