Halloween Amaretti Cookies

September 28, 2022 Amanda Plott

I’ve taken Amaretti cookies and turned them into a lightened up version that also happens to be seasonal to Fall! They’re lightened up easily with a simple swap of half of the sugar for natural sweetener. I prefer to use a stevia or monk fruit sweetener. The important thing here is that the sweetener should measure cup-for-cup like sugar. Other than that, feel free to use whichever you prefer.

The only real thing I did here to make them ‘Halloween’ was the sprinkles that I used. So honestly, you could swap out sprinkles for other seasonal colors and themes to change these cookies up! These also call for cake batter extract, which can be tricky to find in some places. If you don’t have it and can’t find it, no big deal, just use some vanilla extract instead!…

Pastitsio

August 20, 2022 Amanda Plott

I’m just going to start this one out by saying that this recipe does take time. While it’s fairly easy to make, there are layering components that each take some time to put together. That being said, this dish is a great one. It tastes like all the time and effort that’s been put into it. So, what is Pastitsio anyway? It’s a Greek style of lasagna basically. The main difference between lasagna and Pastitsio is that Pastitsio is made with a different style of noodle and also with a béchamel sauce rather than ricotta. It’s layered a bit differently than lasagna too.

Now, I’ve never made a béchamel sauce, and even with this being my first time doing so I found it to be pretty easy to do and is very similar to any sort of roux based sauce. The béchamel gave this dish life. There’s so much flavor packed into the sauce that the béchamel is needed to sort of cut through that intense flavor…

Caprese Jar Salad

July 27, 2022 Amanda Plott

It’s salad season, and right now, I’m all about these jar salads. I love having a few ready made lunches on hand in the fridge that are put together and just need a good shake up to enjoy. They make for great grab-and-go lunches too since you can eat them straight out of the jar. This particular one is based one of my all time favorite salads, a caprese.

A caprese salad is tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and usually some sort of greens to go along with it. I started this one off with an Italian based dressing along with some basil pearled couscous to make the salad just a touch more filling…

Vegetarian Green Curry

July 15, 2022 Amanda Plott

I’ve been wanting to make a Vegetarian Green Curry for a good long while now, and today was finally the day. This curry starts off with onion and spices and quickly gets into veggies, tofu and even some chickpeas. The goal here was to load the curry up with as much veggie goodness as possible to make up for the lack of meat in it.

The end result is a curry that comes together really quickly and tastes amazing. The only thing I might do differently next time, is to add in some jalapeño for added spice and warmth. Every bite of this curry has new tastes and textures that all pair really well together…

Baked Buratta

June 21, 2022 Amanda Plott

Let me tell you guys something. I love cheese. It is my weakness. Not ice cream, or cookies, or cake - but cheese. Glorious cheese in just about any form. Sharp, sliced, shredded, fresh, soft, hard, crumbled. Any of it. All of it. I haven’t met a cheese that I don’t like, and I’ve never tried buratta before even though I’ve always wanted to.

Buratta is a pretty cool cheese. It’s basically a creamy spreadable cheese tucked away inside a skin of fresh mozzarella. So when you cut into it, the creamy cheese oozes out and it’s so so good. I didn’t want to have it just all on it’s own, so I decided to make this Baked Buratta. The name is sort of a lie since the buratta itself isn’t baked…

Skinny Stuffed Mushrooms

April 10, 2022 Amanda Plott

I for one, love appetizers. I could make a meal alone out of small appetizers, both hot and cold. One of my favorites though, has to be stuffed mushrooms. My love of stuffed mushrooms goes back several years where I think my first try was at a little Italian restaurant.

I immediately, and without being much of a cook at the time, taught myself how to make them. Skip forward to today and I like to make them with a few minor changes to the original easy recipe that included cream cheese, bacon, and just a touch of Italian cheese. I mean, who doesn’t just love the combination of cheese, mushrooms, and bacon? You’d be crazy not to!…