Cottage Cheese Rolls

I recently gave you all the recipe to my favorite cookies, but Cottage Cheese Rolls are my favorite dessert of all time!  They are so amazingly delicious, that I’m pretty sure they will be served at the marriage supper of the Lamb!   Now, if like most people I share this recipe with, you think, “I don’t think I like the sound of cottage cheese in a dessert”, let me reassure you that you will never know there’s cottage cheese in it – trust me.

The recipe is SUPER simple:

1 1/2 cups cottage cheese (the wet kind – not dry)
1 cup margarine (softened)
2 cups flour
pinch of salt

1.  Blend together all ingredients. 
Form into a ball and chill dough overnight in a sealed container.  (This is so the dough isn’t so goopy and sticky & makes it easier to handle and roll out later)

2.  Divide into four parts.
Take one part at a time and roll dough into a circle on a lightly floured surface (about 10-12 inches in diameter).  Cut into 12 wedges and roll up each wedge (start with large end) to form croissant shape.

3.  Bake at 350F for approximately 20 minutes. 
Alternatively, you can freeze them and bake them at another time.  Personally, I find that I actually like them better when they’ve been frozen.  For some reason, when you make them fresh, they turn out a little differently.  You also don’t really need to thaw them out before baking for more than a few minutes.  I wouldn’t recommend placing them on the pan quite as closely as the picture depicts below (I had them this way for freezing), but they can be pretty close when baking, since they don’t get much bigger than their raw form.

4.  Frost with icing. 
Now, the icing is actually the part that makes these so good!  The rolls themselves are not sweet at all and really only transform into a dessert once the icing is added.  The icing happens to also be one of those things that I don’t have a recipe for and sort of just “wing it”.  It’s maybe roughly 2 teaspoons softened margarine (optional), about a cup of icing sugar, maybe 4 tablespoons of milk, and several dashes of cinnamon.  You can experiment with the amounts until you get something you’re happy with.

Mmmmmmm…I just ate those delicious manna from heaven pictured above.  They are best accompanied by a nice glass of cold milk!  You really should try them & then tell me what you think!

My Favorite Cookies

So, I’ve been wanting to post this recipe for quite some time because they are my absolute favorite cookies in the world and I feel that you are all greatly deprived if you have never had them!  Unfortunately for those with peanut allergies, you will have to remain sorrowfully deprived, but I will pray for your divine healing so that you can partake of their yummy goodness!

Chocolate Peanutbutter Chip Cookies

1 cup margarine, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour
2/3 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup peanut butter chips

1. Cream margarine, sugar, eggs and vanilla together.
2. Mix dry ingredients and stir into sugar mixture.
3. Stir in peanut butter chips. Shape into balls and bake at 350F for 8-10 min.

If you can refrain from eating half of the cookie dough on it’s own, this should yield around 3 dozen cookies.

Spicy Sweet Potato and Smoked Sausage Soup

Since I’ve been off of dairy to see if it’ll help ease my little guy’s tummy pains, I’ve been searching for new recipes that don’t use milk or cheese, since many of my staple menu items use these ingredients.  I tried this recipe a little while ago for the first time and really loved it, so I thought I would share it with you all, with a few minor modifications that I’ve made to suit our personal taste.  I got this recipe from a recipes program that I got for Christmas from my brother’s girlfriend called MasterCook Deluxe, in the Mealtime cookbook, recipe coutesy of The Florida Department of Agriculture. 

8 ounces smoked sausage, diced
1/2 cup onion, diced
1/2 cup celery, diced
1 tablespoon jalapeño pepper, minced (I used a whole jalapeño pepper)
3 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and large-diced
2 tablespoons flour
3 cups chicken stock (I used 6 cups)
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
Green onions, garnish

1. Sauté sausage in a large sauce pan for 5 minutes over medium heat.  I used local Pioneer Meats smoked all pork farmer’s sausage (the best sausage in the world) that comes in packages of approximately 800 grams (1 3/4 pounds or 28 ounces).  The last time I made this, I used one whole link which would be about 14 ounces instead of the 8 ounces called for by the recipe and it was a little too much meat, so this time I did more like 10 ounces.  I just sliced it as opposed to dicing it.

 

2. Add vegetables and continue to sauté for an additional 5 minutes. 

 
I cut up the celery and onions quite small, and if you can see on the picture, my trick for cutting onions is to cut the onion in half and then in slices so that the layers are like a rainbow and then cut around the curve so that the layers work to your advantage to create nice small pieces with less cutting. 

 
For the sweet potato, I hate cutting these because they are quite dense and hard, sort of like trying to cut a huge carrot, but I have found that it helps to cut lengthwise with the grain.  I cut the sweet potato into bite-size pieces approximately 2 cm cubed (1/2 to 3/4 inches).  Also, the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon jalapeño pepper, but I found this wasn’t spicy enough, so I just did the whole pepper this time. 

 

3. Add flour and cook for 2 more minutes.  The first time I tried this, I thought it was really weird to add flour to vegetables without using any water or butter or something, but it actually works quite well. 

 

4. Add stock, salt and pepper and stir until smooth.  Since the soup was quite thick the first time, my husband Joe requested that I use more broth, because a lot of the broth seemed to cook out when cooking the sweet potatoe, so this time I used 6 cups of broth instead of 3, using 6 teaspoons of chicken OXO with 6 cups of hot water.  This soup would probably taste quite different if you used actual chicken stock as opposed to OXO, but I like it this way.

 

5. Simmer for 20 minutes until potatoes are soft. Garnish with green onions.  I left out the green onions mostly because I didn’t have any, but also because it seemed unnecessary to me. 

 

So there you go!  I really enjoyed this recipe and I think you’d like it – so give it a try!

Delicious Pumpkin Cookies

I found this recipe while blog-surfing at “Jesus and Dark Chocolate” and it sounded good, so I tried it out today, with a couple minor modifications…

Ingredients:
1 cup of pumpkin
1/2 c. of butter (softened)
1 1/2 c of sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. of white flour
3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. of raisins (to soften, boil 1/2 c. of water and add raisins, and let sit about 5 min., drain, and add to mixture) **I substituted the raisins with chocolate chips, ’cause I don’t like raisins & I love chocolate!**

     
1.  Pre-heat oven to 375.  In a large bowl combine, granulated sugar, pumpkin, butter, egg and vanilla.
2.  Beat at medium speed until well blended. **It looked kinda chunky to me at this point, but I blended it as well as I could & I think it turned out fine. **

    
3.  Add flours, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt.
4.  Beat at low speed, until soft dough forms.  **My blender’s lowest setting isn’t very low, so at this stage I ended up with little chunks of cookie dough splattered over my work area!**
5.  Add chocolate chips (or raisins).
6.  Drop dough onto cookie sheets.  **Normally, I would want to form my cookies into perfect little balls, but this dough is VERY sticky, so that didn’t work!**

 
7.  Grease cookie sheets.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookie is set. Cool completely.  **For my first cookie sheet, I set the timer on the microwave but apparently I forgot to press ‘Start’!  So I’m not sure how long they were in the oven – they got a little crispy on the bottoms.  For my second cookie sheet, I baked them for 12 minutes which seemed perfect.  Then for my third cookie sheet, they looked done already at 10 minutes!  I’d say keep an eye on them & take them out when they are just golden brown.**

Now for the frosting/icing!

Ingredients: 3/4 c. packed brown sugar 1/4 c. butter 1 1/4 c. icing sugar 1 to 2 TBSP. half & half  **I just used milk** 1 tsp. vanilla
		1.  Melt butter in small pot. 2.  Add brown sugar and cook over medium heat until mixture can be stirred smooth. Do not allow it to boil. Remove from heat. 3.  Add remaining ingredients. Stir until smooth. 4.  Spread frosting evenly on cookies and ENJOY!!!

I personally found the icing difficult to spread on the cookies, as it’s very sugary and not very spreadable.  It tastes good but is a little too sweet for me.  But the cookies were great!!  With or without the icing!  I would definitely recommend them.  I’m now going to bring them to my friend’s birthday party tonight and see what everyone else thinks of them.