Eating The Alphabet: Mango Barbecue Sauce

Today is reveal day for the Eating The Alphabet Challenge.  This month we had to chose a fruit, vegetable, grain, bean, or legume that began with the letters M, N, or O.  Three options!  Lots of choices there.

I immediately knew that I wanted to do something with mango.  My husband pointed out that mango was an excellent option because it contained all of the letter choices: M, N, and O, in order!  Always thinking, that guy!  I like mango-flavored things, but had never cooked with fresh mango before.  Time to change that!  I remembered that I had pinned something with mango earlier this summer and quickly found it on my Pinterest board.  It is a barbecue sauce made with mango from What’s Cooking, Love?.  I thought it sounded amazing and couldn’t wait to try it.  We had several rainy days where grilling wasn’t possible, but finally the clouds left us and we were able to get out there and smother this wonderful sauce all over some chicken.  Here’s the recipe.

Mango Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients:
1 large mango, chopped
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp onion powder
¼ cup ketchup
¼ tsp salt

Directions:
Combine the chopped mango, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, ketchup, and salt in a blender and blend until smooth.

Set some sauce aside (to be used for dipping later), then brush the remaining sauce all over whatever raw meat you want to grill.  Grill the meat as you normally would, then use the remaining sauce to dip at the table.

Makes enough for 4-6 servings.

This sauce is so good!  The onion powder and salt were my additions.  You may choose to add other things, or subtract some depending on the size and flavor of your mango.  My mango was super duper sweet, so that’s why I added the salt.  This sauce is definitely sweet, but it has a wonderful zesty tang to it as well.

I wrote the recipe as just the sauce, because it would be good on any kind of barbecued meat.  I didn’t want to limit it just to chicken.  It was awesome on the chicken, but it would also be great on grilled pork chops and even salmon.  Can’t wait to try that!

If you have never cut up a fresh mango, I suggest you google “how to cut up a mango” and watch a quick video.  I totally mangled mine cutting it up.  Mangos have an odd-shaped pit, so it’s best to cut it a certain way to get the majority of the meat off of it.  After watching a video, I was able to cut up the rest of them with no problem.

Be sure to check out all the other great recipes below, and come back tomorrow for another great homemade condiment recipe.

Strawberry Lemon Cake Bars with Lemon Glaze

Finally Friday! It’s the last day of The Garden’s Bounty recipe series hosted by Savannah of Hammock Tracks.

We are ending on a sweet note.  Today we are sharing with you desserts that use up fresh garden goods.  I chose a great summertime dessert with tangy lemons and juicy sweet strawberries.  This recipe is slightly adapted from one I found at Bakeaholic Mama.

Strawberry Lemon Cake Bars with Lemon Glaze


Ingredients:
1 cup butter, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
1 egg
Zest of 2 lemons (2-3 tbsp)
Juice of 1½ lemons (about ¼ cup +2 tbsp), divided
2¼ cups flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¾ cup fresh strawberries, diced
1 cup powdered sugar


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.  Coat an 8×8” glass baking dish with baking spray.


In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together.  Add egg, lemon zest, and ¼ cup lemon juice.  Stir until combined.


In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until just combined.  Gently fold in strawberries.


Press dough into the bottom of the pan.  Bake for about 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Let cool.


For the glaze, combine the powdered sugar and remaining 2 tbsp lemon juice.  Pour over cooled bars.  Cut and serve.


Makes 9 bars.

These bars are so good!  Lemon and strawberry go so well together and they are perfect summer flavors.  The blog I got this recipe from called them “cookie bars”, but they seemed more cakey to my husband and me.  They are kind of crumbly, not chewy like a cookie.  So I named my version “cake bars” instead.  Whatever the name, you’ll call them delicious!

Check out the other great summertime desserts below.

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Eating the Alphabet: Kiwi Lemon Pie

 It’s time once again for the Eating the Alphabet Challenge.  This month we had to chose a fruit, vegetable, grain, bean, or legume that began with the letter K or L.

K and L are pretty easy letters to work with.  Kale, kiwi, kumquat, lettuce, lime, lemon.  Lots of choices.  I decided on a recipe that used both of the assigned letters, K and L.  I made a pie with kiwi and lemon.  I found the recipe at RecipeLand.  Here’s my adaptation.

Kiwi Lemon Pie


Ingredients:
1¼ cups milk
1¼ cups sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
½ cup fresh lemon juice
Zest of 2 lemons
1 tsp vanilla extract
9” graham cracker crust
¼ cup apricot preserves
2 kiwi fruit, peeled and sliced

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325°.


Heat milk over low heat in top of double boiler over simmering water.


Combine sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks in a medium bowl.  Add a small amount of the warm milk, stirring constantly.  Add another small amount of milk to the sugar/egg mixture, stirring until combined.  Gradually add the sugar/egg mixture into the warm milk, stirring constantly.  Increase heat to a boil, then lower heat and cook 5 minutes, or until mixture thickens.  Whisk in lemon juice, zest, and vanilla.  Pour mixture into pie shell.


Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until center is set.  Cool pie for 10 minutes.


Melt preserves in the microwave and brush thin layer over surface of pie.  Arrange kiwis to cover top of pie.  Brush again with remaining preserves and cool in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour or longer.


Cut into wedges and serve.


Makes 8 servings.

As you can see in the picture above, my pie turned out less-than-perfect, which is a nice way of saying “kind of messed up!”  I did kind of mess it up.  But it wasn’t the recipe’s fault, it was mine.  Well, the first problem I had was that it called for the juice of 3 lemons.  Well, the lemons I had were total monsters.  They were about twice the size of a normal lemon, which you can see above.  So I had to do some research to see how much juice to use.  

The second problem I had was that I ran out of cornstarch.  I needed three tbsp and only had about two.  I tried to compensate for this by removing some of the milk.  It kind of worked.  I had to cook the pie a lot longer than stated to get it to set up.  And well, there were some other complications, but I won’t bore you with the details!  In the end, while it wasn’t the prettiest looking thing, it tasted good, so that’s all that matters!

 I took too long taking pics and the filling started to ooze out on me.  

I took pictures of the intact pie very strategically!  (Trust me, this was the “good” side!)

So yeah, I had some problems, but it ended up working out.  My husband loved it so much he said he wanted to stick his face in it.  That makes it a success in my book!

No Bake Blackberry Cream Pie

It’s Day Five of the Fourth of July Blog Hop Series hosted by Savannah of Hammock Tracks.

 

Today we are sharing awesome summer desserts with you.  This No Bake Blackberry Cream Pie is the perfect summer dessert.  It’s super fruity, slightly sweet, creamy, cool, and making it won’t heat up your kitchen.  It’s slightly adapted from one at Better Homes and Gardens.

No Bake Blackberry Cream Pie

Ingredients:

1 (9”) prepared graham cracker crumb pie shell

1 cup whipping cream

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

10 oz. jar blackberry spread

Fresh blackberries, lemon peel twist, and/or mint leaves (optional)

Directions:

In a medium mixing bowl beat whipping cream with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form; set aside.

In a large mixing bowl beat cream cheese with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until smooth. Add blackberry spread. Beat on low speed just until combined. Gently fold in whipped cream. Spoon mixture into pie shell. Cover and freeze for 24 hours or until firm. Garnish with fresh blackberries, lemon peel twist, and/or mint. 

Makes 8 servings.

Oh my goodness.  This pie is so good!  It’s the perfect combination of sweet and tart.  It’s frozen, but it just melts in your mouth, literally!  And isn’t it the prettiest thing you ever saw?  That color is just gorgeous.  While it is cinch to throw together, you do need to make it a day ahead of time.  The original recipe called for freezing it “4 to 24 hours”.  I froze it for 4 before cutting into it, and it was not set up in the least.  I made it for my mom and her friend who stopped by briefly one afternoon, and I ended up serving them Blackberry Cream Pudding.  Still super duper tasty, but not a pie.  I put the remaining pie back into the freezer and left it there for 2 days.  It was good and set up by then!

Check out the other great summertime desserts below, and come back tomorrow for a refreshing summer beverage!

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Crazy Cooking Challenge: Peach Melba Smoothies

It’s time once again for the Crazy Cooking Challenge!  In this challenge, all the participants make and blog about the same dish each month.  Each blogger is to scour other blogs for a unique version of whatever that month’s dish is.  The goal is to highlight and promote personal food blogs. This month’s assigned dish was smoothies.  So we were to find a unique smoothie recipe, make it, and blog about it.

I have to be honest, I wasn’t too excited when I found out this month’s challenge was about smoothies.  I’m not a big smoothie drinker.  They just don’t really do much for me.  In general I don’t really care for slushy icy drinks, as I get those head freezy things really bad, which is why I prefer my margaritas on the rocks. 🙂  Anyway, I didn’t have any smoothie recipes bookmarked, so I had to go searching for one.  Somewhere I was reminded of that dessert, Peach Melba, and I got to wondering if there was a peach melba smoothie recipe out there.  There is!  On the blog, Cooking with the Camp Twins.   Linda posted this smoothie recipe back in 2010 and talked about how she enjoyed the real deal Peach Melba dessert when visiting France years ago.  She mentioned that she had intentions of posting the dessert recipe as well in the near future.  I clicked on the blog’s home page to see if she and her sister were still blogging, and they are. And guess what recipe had just been posted a day prior?  The Peach Melba dessert recipe!  I’m kind of going off on a tangent here, but I thought that was quite a coincidence, and took it as a sign that this was the smoothie for me!

Peach Melba Smoothies

Ingredients:

12 oz. fresh raspberries

2 tbsp sugar

16 oz. frozen peaches

¼ – ½ cup sugar

1 tsp almond extract

2 cups milk

Directions:

In a blender, puree the raspberries until well blended. Set a sieve on top of a medium bowl and drain the puree into the bowl. You will need to press the juice through the sieve.  Stir the sugar into the puree. Set aside.

Rinse out the blender and add the frozen peaches, sugar, almond extract, and milk. Process until well blended.

Using two large stemmed wine glasses or parfait glasses fill ⅓ full with peach smoothie. Drizzle with two tablespoons of the raspberry puree. Repeat with a second layering and then a final layer of peach smoothie.

Swirl slightly with a knife. Add a straw and serve.

Makes 2 large smoothies.

I think it is the prettiest smoothie I have ever had.  I love the contrast of colors.  After I took pictures, I gave some to my kids and my husband and we all stirred them up completely.  I liked it that way because I found the peach part to be kind of bland.  I think if I were to make this again (and I might because I have extra peaches and we didn’t use all the raspberry puree), I might sub orange juice for some of the milk in the peach part.  I think orange juice will give a punch of flavor that the milk can’t do.  Also, I used vanilla soymilk, so that added even more sweetness, so a little hint of tartness would compliment it well.

I’m glad that I stepped out of my comfort zone and made something I wouldn’t normally make.  After seeing how much my girls enjoyed these smoothies, I will have to make them more often.  They can be picky about their fruit (I have a bag of apricots in the fridge that they rejected for being too sour), so smoothies would be a good way to get around that.

Nicole from Daily Dish Recipes, and fellow CCCer, chose to make this recipe when she was assigned my blog for the Secret Recipe Club in August 2012.  Click on the button below to check out her post!

Improv Challenge: No Bake Fresh Strawberry Pie

It’s time again for the Improv Challenge.  The premise of this challenge is easy: each month there are two assigned ingredients.  The participants must make a recipe using both ingredients and blog about it.

This month the ingredients were strawberries and cream.  I didn’t waste any time trying to come up with a savory recipe using strawberries and cream, because I saw this recipe for No-Bake Fresh Strawberry Pie in last month’s Cooking Light and just HAD to try it.  And since cream cheese counted as a “cream” ingredient, I was good to go!  (As you can see, I did serve it with whipped cream on top too, for good measure!)

No Bake Fresh Strawberry Pie


Ingredients:
1 (6 oz.) Chocolate Graham Ready Crust
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
½ cup powdered sugar
¾ tsp vanilla extract
2 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed
2 tbsp seedless strawberry fruit spread
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 lb. fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
Whipped cream, optional


Directions:
Unwrap ready-made pie crust and set aside.


Place cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in a medium bowl; beat until smooth. Fold in whipped topping. Carefully spread over bottom of crust. Place fruit spread in a large microwave-safe bowl; microwave at HIGH 10 seconds or until softened. Add lemon juice; stir with a whisk until smooth. Add berries; toss to combine. Arrange berries over pie. Chill for 30 minutes before serving.


Serve with whipped cream on top, if desired.


Makes 8 servings.

The original recipe called for making a chocolate crust from scratch, but I simplified things by using a store-bought one.  I’m sure the homemade one would taste better, but it wasn’t worth the extra effort to me.  It also called for Chambord, a raspberry-flavored liqueur, but I wasn’t about to buy a whole bottle of that stuff to use 1 tbsp of it.  I just increased the lemon juice a tad.

Look at all those beautiful berries!

Piled high!

This pie was so incredibly easy; I think I had it put together in 15 minutes or less.  And it is so good.  The combination of the tart berries and the sweet, creamy filling is amazing.  Next time I will make some chocolate sauce to drizzle over the top.  Because there most definitely WILL BE a next time!

Shared at:

• Thursdays Treasures at Recipes For My Boys
• Showcase Your Talent Thursday at What’s Cooking, Love?
• Sweets for A Saturday at Sweet As Sugar Cookies
• Seasonal Inspiration at Crumbs and Chaos

Eating the Alphabet: Guava Custard Tartlets

It’s time once again for the Eating the Alphabet Challenge.  This month, we had to chose a fruit, vegetable, grain, bean, or legume that began with the letter G or H.

I could have taken the easy route and done something with grapes or grapefruit, but when I joined this challenge, I really wanted to do my best to use it to explore ingredients I had never cooked with before.  So I tracked down some guavas.  Actually, my favorite mega-mart, Meijer, carries them so I found them easily.  The cashier said, “Are these ripe? Are they supposed to be this hard?”  My answer: “I have no idea!”

I originally wanted to do a fruit salad, or something like that with the guavas, but after looking up guava recipes online, I found nothing of the sort.  Most guava recipes online are for some kind of puree or preserves or jam or something like that.  I found a recipe on Food.com that sounded interesting, though.  It was called Guava Whip, but it sounded kind of like gauva custard.  The sole reviewer put it in mini tart shells, and I thought that sounded like a great idea, so I picked up some of those graham cracker mini tart shells.  Here is the recipe I made.

Guava Custard Tartlets


Ingredients:
5 ripe guavas, peeled and chopped
2 tsp sugar
1½ tsp gelatin powder
2 tbsp hot water
½ cup prepared custard 
5 graham cracker mini tart shells
Whipped cream


Directions:
Place guava in a medium saucepan and cover with water.  Cover pan and bring to a boil.  Boil until gauva is soft.  If there is still a lot of water in the pot by the time the guava is soft, drain.  Place guava in a fine mesh strainer and press out liquid and pulp with a rubber scraper.  Discard the (mostly) dry flesh and seeds.  Put the gauva puree back into the pot and add the sugar.  Turn heat to low and cook gently until slightly thickened.  


Dissolve the gelatin in the hot water and add to the guava puree.  Whisk in the custard.


Pour into mini tart shells, cool, and refrigerate at least two hours.  Garnish with a blob of whipped cream.


Makes 5 tartlets.

Now, I have to be honest, and tell you this will probably be my first and last foray into cooking with guava.  Guava has a very odd texture.  Some recipes I read online called for scooping the seeds out before doing anything else, but the guavas that I had were almost all seeds, so if I had scooped them out, there would have been nothing left.  Now I know why all the recipes online were for purees or preserves.  It’s just not the kind of fruit you can cut up and put in a salad.  They have a very weird texture.  It could be that the cashier was right and that my guavas were not ripe; I still have no idea.  I boiled them for a very long time before it was even close to soft.  Once I boiled the heck out of it, it had the consistency of a raw pear.  Kind of grainy.  

The biggest problem I had with the guava was that it didn’t seem to have much flavor.  When my husband and I tried the tartlets, the general consensus was that it was really bland.  The added sugar just made them generically sweet, but they didn’t really taste very fruity at all.  Definitely edible, but didn’t have the “wow” factor I was expecting from cooking with tropical fruit.

So while I am glad that I can now say that I have cooked with and eaten guava, I think I will stick to other fruits in the future!  I actually would like to try this recipe with another fruit sometime.  I’m thinking strawberries, perhaps.

Tequila Glazed Grilled Peaches

Okay, so these don’t make the prettiest picture, but don’t be fooled; they are tasty!  This is a recipe I created all by myself.  I’ve been on a grilling kick lately and decided to try grilling fruit.  It’s fun!  Here’s what I came up with.

Tequila Glazed Grilled Peaches


Ingredients:
¼ cup honey
1 tbsp tequila
4 peaches
Whipped cream
Cinnamon


Directions:
Combine honey and tequila and heat over medium-high heat until just boiling.  Remove from heat.  Let stand a few minutes.  Glaze will thicken as it cools.


Grill peaches over medium-high heat until grill marks form and peaches start to soften.


Glazed can be brushed over peaches or drizzled over them.  Serve with a dollop of whipped cream and sprinkle with cinnamon.


Makes 4 servings.

My husband and I made this recipe together after the kids went to bed one night.  He grilled the peaches while I made the glaze.  He had a little trouble with the peaches sticking, so I suggest oiling the grate before laying the peaches down.

We didn’t skin our peaches, but I think I might do that next time.  It was a little bit bitter.

The cinnamon is certainly not necessary; it’s more for looks.  But it adds a nice touch.

I love tequila and the flavor really comes through in this dish.  The glaze is not really cooked long enough for the alcohol to be removed, so I would consider this an adult only dessert.

This dish makes for a sweet ending to a fun summer day.

Savory Peach Chicken

This is an Ellie Krieger recipe that I had saved a while back.  I had some peaches on my counter yesterday that I got from the local farm market that needed to be used up, and I remembered this recipe.  I looked it up again and to be honest, I wasn’t so sure about it.  It sounded to me like it was going to turn out to be overly sweet.  So I looked it up online to see what the reviewers said about it.  Online reviews of recipes = greatest invention ever.  I love hearing what people who actually made this dish thought about it before making it myself.  The reviewers of this recipe raved about it.  Several mentioned that it doesn’t turn out as sweet as you think it will.  So I decided to give it a try.  I’m glad I did because it turned out really well.

Savory Peach Chicken


Ingredients
1 tbsp canola oil
4 chicken breast cutlets
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
¼ cup orange juice
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, grated
½ cup low-sodium chicken broth
4 large peaches or 2 (10 oz.) packages frozen peaches, peeled and diced (about 4½ cups)
2 tbsp sliced almonds, toasted


Directions:
Heat the oil in a large skillet over a medium-high heat. Season the chicken on both sides with salt, add to the skillet and cook until browned, about 2 minutes per side. 


Meanwhile combine the brown sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and orange juice in a small bowl and set aside. When the chicken is browned, transfer to a plate and set aside.


Add the ginger and garlic to the pan and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add the chicken broth, the soy sauce mixture, and the peaches to the pan. Turn the heat up to high and cook, uncovered, for about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally until the sauce is nicely thickened and the peaches soften. Add the chicken back to the pan with the sauce, turn the heat down to medium-low, cover and cook for about 5 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.


Serve the chicken topped with the sauce and sprinkled with the toasted almonds.


Makes 4 servings.

The reviewers were right; it didn’t turn out overly sweet.  It definitely had a bit of sweetness to it, but the soy sauce and rice wine vinegar balanced it out very nicely.  And while you wouldn’t normally think of combining garlic and peaches, it works.  

A few of the reviewers indicated that 2 packages of frozen peaches was too much.  I used fresh peaches, but I would say that they were closer to small peaches than large ones, so if you are using large peaches, you might only need three.  And if you’re using frozen (which I will probably do if I make this in the winter), then maybe only do a package and a half.

I served this with brown rice and peas.  My husband and daughter both gobbled it up.

Fruit and Yogurt Parfait For A Crowd

This is the dish I made for our breakfast potluck dinner at church last night. Everybody loved it.

This isn’t so much a recipe as it is a method.

Fruit and Yogurt Parfait For A Crowd

Ingredients:

9 cups yogurt, any flavor you like

Assorted fresh or frozen fruit (thawed if frozen)

4 cups granola, crushed

Directions:

Spread one cup of yogurt in the bottom of a trifle bowl. Top with one cup of granola. Layer fruit on top of granola, making sure some is right up against the side so it can be seen in the layers. Top with 2 cups of yogurt, alternating flavors if desired. Top with another cup of granola and another layer of fruit. Repeat 2 more times. Finish with the last 2 cups of yogurt and garnish with some of each of the fruit you used. I didn’t worry about making each fruit layer pretty (I didn’t fan it out), but the top I made pretty.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Makes ? (a lot!) of servings.

A note about the granola: I used the wrong kind. After I opened it up, I realized that it had puffed rice in it. That gave it a kind of chewy, not crispy texture. It was all I had and there was no time to run to the store for more, so I went with it. At the meal, people thought the yogurt had made the granola soggy, but it wasn’t, it was just because of the puffed rice. So don’t get granola with puffed rice in it.

I would also suggest using regular yogurt instead of low fat. It tastes just fine with low fat, but it was a tad on the runny side. When people dug into it, it just kind of collapsed on itself. Next time I will use a full fat yogurt and see if that helps.

Other than the granola issue, it was a big hit. I was told that I have to make it again for Easter breakfast.

Here is how I layered this one, starting on the bottom: vanilla yogurt, granola, peaches (frozen), strawberry yogurt, granola, blueberries (frozen), vanilla yogurt, granola, banana slices, strawberry yogurt, granola, strawberries (fresh), vanilla yogurt, fruit garnish.

I’ve never done any type of fruit garnish before, so I think this turned out really well! I covered it right away and chilled for 2 hours and the bananas didn’t turn brown at all.