Coconut

Last week my mom and I were watching "Not My Mama's Meals" on the Cooking channel and Bobby Deen was making a Coconut Tiramisu! I was in awe, as I'm in love with coconut and lately been a bit obsessed with Italian food. I wanted to make it right away, but apparently our local grocery store doesn't sell lady fingers!? Then I decided to make my own lady fingers, but we were out of eggs. It was not my day to make tiramisu! I was frustrated and decided to just curb my coconut craving with Paula Deen's Cut the Calories Coconut Cream Pie, which went pretty well. I liked it okay but wish it had been sweeter. I make a different recipe of that, which I'll post later. Back to the tiramisu, I waited till the next week we went to the grocery store, hoping they'd have lady fingers then, but were still out. At least we had eggs though so on Saturday afternoon I made my first batch of lady fingers. They were pretty easy, the hardest part is making your own cake flour! So once the lady fingers were done and cooled, I made the the rest and chilled it overnight. Now last night I went to make the whipped cream, and the top layer of my heavy cream had turned into butter. Has this ever happened to anybody else? There was some heavy cream underneath the top layer, but the first time I tried to whip it it just would not. The second time it worked, but it was still an odd carton of heavy cream. The results were delicious and I would make it again!

Single Serving Sauteed Spinach

The other day I made Bobby Deen's creamed spinach. It was delicious and I had it for lunch for four days. Today I didn't have any more but didn't want to make a another four-day serving when I plan on making something else on Friday, (Every Friday I make a new recipe.) so I decided try to quarter his recipe. When I did half a tablespoon of butter and half a tablespoon of flour, the mixture pretty much burned and smelled like popcorn. I decided then to just make a sauteed spinach. I added a few of his ingredients but it tastes very different from the creamed spinach, so I call it  "Single Serving Sauteed Spinach". It was so good so here's the recipe:

2 cups bag spinach (this may seem like a lot but it will wilt down)
1/2 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 small clove garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese

Melt the butter in a small saute pan. Add the spinach and garlic, cook until it is wilted (it will look soft and half the size of the 2 cups before) Drizzle the olive oil on the spinach and cook a few seconds longer. Move to plate and sprinkle the salt and Parmesan on. Enjoy!

Cucumber Salad

Since I've started cooking it's been more about experiencing the different techniques and I haven't really learned enough to make my own recipes. Lately though, the only vegetables we've produced from our small garden in the backyard is cucumbers and yellow squash. I'm not a big fan of yellow squash because of too many seeds, but I love cucumbers! My dad asked me to make him a cucumber salad a few weeks ago and I did it completely without a recipe and this is what I came up with. It's pretty simple but tasty.


Ingredients:

2 English cucumbers, peeled
2-3 plum tomatoes (You can leave the seeds in but I prefer mine without)
3 tablespoons red onion
2 tablespoons white vinegar (I used white wine or white balsamic)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste (if you don't like pepper, like my mom, you can leave it out)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
sprinkle of  dried parsley

Dice the cucumbers and tomatoes and mince the red onion. Put in a medium sized bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and place in the fridge for 30-60 minutes for a good flavor.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog! My name is Emilia, and I'm fourteen years old. I'm homeschooled and I'm a freshman in high school. My love for cooking and baking began when I was twelve and I wanted my mom to make me some brownies. She was busy so I did it myself and realized how much fun it was! That was just the beginning. I began to make more things every Sunday such as cookies and cupcakes. Then I found the book, "The Crepe Makers Bond" by Julie Crabtree at the library about a girl my age who loved to cook. I had never gone beyond baking simple things and that's when I realized I could do so much more. These days I am making more complex things such as lasagnas, ravioli, tiramisu and lemon meringue cakes. I am inspired by Skinnytaste.com for recipes that are delicious but guilt-free. Another chef I really like is Hungry Girl's Lisa Lillien and I own all of her cookbooks! I post pictures of most of my food on Instagram, feel free to follow me, my username is summergrace134. This blog will be about my culinary experiences as a teenager and I hope you'll join me on my journey!