Tiramisu Cups

Tiramisu!  It's rolls off the tongue beautifully and is hands down, absolutely, positively my favorite dessert of all time.  I can't recall when I first had it... I think it was about the time I discovered my love for coffee.  Which was during our engagement, when my head was spinning all things wedding 24/7, I somehow started drinking coffee just out of the blue.  I can't tell you exactly how it happened, oddly enough.  But now 4ish years later, I can't go one day without my Pikes Place coffee.  Oh do I love coffee about as much as I love my red wine and tiramisu!  Give me coffee for breakfast, tiramisu for lunch and a good cabernet for dinner and I'm one happy camper.

There is some sort of formality about tiramisu I love.  The light fluffy mascarpone layers, the delicate chocolate chiseled on top, the coffee soaked cake.  It just melts in your mouth and no matter how full I am, I always have room when tiramisu is on the menu!

On my bday a few years ago, Aaron surprised me with a whole pan of tiramisu.  Then my parents showed up with a whole tiramisu cake.  HOLY TIRAMISU!  Well tiramisu just doesn't sit up long, it must be ate within a day or so.  The thought of letting any of it go to waste would just be incomprehensible   And no I did not eat 2 large pans of tiramisu in a 2 day period.  Don't tempt me though.  I ended up buying single serving containers and froze them into individual servings and let me tell you, I celebrated my bday for months to follow, not one slice went to waste.  I ate pretty much every. single. piece.  Sometimes I shared a few bites with Aaron, others times I ate it in secret because I'm just not too keen when it comes to sharing at times.

Have I mentioned I love TIRAMISU!?!?!  :) :) :) :)  (insert one hundred more smiley faces here).

So what's a girl to do but try making it.  And it turned out darn good.  And I made enough to share.  Lucky husband and friends I have!

I'm not too much into difficult recipes.  Making tiramisu from scratch is WAY beyond my skill set.  So I found this recipe that has a lot of shortcuts and gets the job done to my satisfaction.

Yep, I could eat all of these ingredients completely individually, spoon please?  

Don't try shaving a chocolate bar unless over a sink, I made a huge mess!

Never had it with raspberries before and it made for a pleasant addition

Hello delicious goodness!



INGREDIENTS: Red notates specifically what I used

1

tub  (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese Spread (Mascarpone cheese with coffee added, found in gormet cheese section)

2

cups  cold milk

1

pkg.  (3.4 oz.) JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding

1-1/2

cups  thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, divided

1

pkg.  (10.7 oz.) prepared pound cake, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (Sara Lee, frozen section)

1/3

cup  brewed strong Coffee, cooled (Starbucks VIA for simplicity)

1

oz.  Semi-Sweet Chocolate, coarsely grated (Ghirardelli Chocolate Bar)

1

cup  fresh raspberries

make it

BEAT cream cheese spread in large bowl with mixer until creamy. Gradually add milk, then dry pudding mix, beating well after each addition. Gently stir in 1 cup COOL WHIP.

PLACE half the cake cubes evenly in 8 jars or dessert dishes. Drizzle 1 tsp. coffee over cake in each jar; top each with 1/4 cup pudding mixture and a sprinkle of chocolate. Cover with remaining cake cubes, coffee, pudding mixture, chocolate and COOL WHIP. Top with raspberries.

REFRIGERATE 2 hours.

Source: http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/tiramisu-in-a-jar-143306.aspx

Bravo! Cucina Italiana Grilled Balsamic Chicken Copy Cat Recipe

Fun weekend had by anyone?  Ours has been pretty low key.  We are heading to a Bon Jovi concert tonight, which we scored tickets for FREE!  

Aaron gets some good perks from his clients working as a commercial real estate broker and this was one of them.  A few months ago, he came home and said he was offered FREE tickets to either Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift, or Kenny Chesney.  His pick.

My initial reaction was not so good.  "You mean to tell me we could have gone to Taylor Swift!?!?!"  "How could you pick Bon Jovi over Taylor Swift!" "I can't believe you turned down TAYLOR SWIFT!" "Heck, even Kenny Chesney would have been my second choice!" After throwing my little temper tantrum, I realized, well of course he choose Bon Jovi, why in the world would Aaron be excited or have any desire to go to a Taylor Swift concert?  After all he is a guy.  It's probably a good thing he is not jumping up and down and squealing to see T Swift, that might actually be kinda weird.  Then I started to feel bad for my reaction because he was just doing what he thought we would  both enjoy best.  Although I've already seen Bon Jovi in concert before, I'm sure we will have a great time as he is a good performer and I do enjoy his jams and am thankful to get free tickets!   That part is pretty cool so how can I really complain?! 

Moving on to something even more exciting...  Lately I have been having MAD CRAVINGS for a delicious restaurant-prepared gourmet salad.  FINALLY I’m craving something healthy!  That doesn't happen often... 

A few weeks ago, we are at Bravo! Cucina Italiana and I had their Grilled Balsamic Chicken Salad.  And oh was it yummers!  Of course I cancelled out the healthiness factor but scarfing down the bread basket, my love/hate relationship with carbs always gets the best of me. 

I don't like eating salads at home too much; they just aren't as pretty out or as tasty.  Something about the super freshness a restaurant can serve up that I can't compete with…UNTIL NOW!  My knock off version was just as good as Bravo's.  For REALS people. I could not get enough of this salad last week.  It's one of my new favorite recipes.  And it's super easy to toss together!  

YUMMERS!  SO beautiful! 

You can TASTE summer in this salad! 

 Ingredients:

Balsamic Glaze (see pic below) 

Grilled Chicken breasts (marinaded in Kraft Balsamic dressing)

*cool the chicken breasts so they are just slightly warmer than room temp

Fresh Strawberries

Fresh Blueberries

Gorgonzola cheese crumbles

Bagged Romaine Salad 

This is the balsamic glaze I used and recommend

Slice strawberries into strips.  Slice grilled chicken breasts into strips.  Assemble in this order: salad, chicken, strawberries, blueberries, cheese, drizzle over top with balsamic glaze.   

Bite into that delightful freshness!  You betcha I'll be eating this all summer long! 

Tomato-Basil Chicken Rollups

This past weekend, we attended the Taylor/Lewis wedding.  Lauren is a good friend of mine from college, the last year of college I think we were out and about pretty much every Thursday, Friday and Saturday together.  We've had some really good times, now she lives in Minneapolis and for the last few years, they have been a part of our New Year's Eve group as well as her and Ben come to Des Moines and stays with us on occasion throughout the year.  Her husband Ben is a great guy and makes a great match for her.  Congrats to them!

The beautiful bride 

At the wedding, there were several flavors of wedding cake, the lemon flavor was intriguing to me and OMGosh was it good!  I had Aaron go back up and sneak me another piece.  Oh do I now have lemon cake on my mind, I would expect you will see a posting on that in the near future as I've gots to get me some of that recipe!  Aaron kept trying to snag bites of mine and I finally barked at him to go get his own, I was being protective of that second piece of lemon deliciousness!

While at the wedding, I knew I knew one of the bridesmaids but was unsure how.  We finally figured it out.  I told her that I remember meeting up with Lauren one night for dinner a few years ago and she had dined with us also.  She then goes, yes I do remember you, you were the girl with the coupon!  LOL, love it!  I'm known as 'the girl with the coupon', darn right/proud of it, I freaking love coupons! 

Other than attending the wedding, we've been just doing the usual weekend agenda... clean, laundry, grocery shop, dog park, catching up on some reading, cooking, stuffing our faces with food, etc.  Life as usual at the Hyde household! 

Today I spent some time in the kitchen whipping up some meals for this week.  Tonight's menu... Tomato-Basil Chicken Rollups.   I was really hoping to grill out this weekend but gosh darn wind and chances of rain blows my dinner ideas but this is a fun twist on baked chicken.  And holy cats, this was good!  It was yummers in our tummers.

Filling the chicken and rolling them up, it's that easy

Make ahead dinners are the best, was all ready to go by early afternoon and just had to pop these in the oven

Well hello lil' stuffed filled chicky's! 

This was amazing!  Taste seriously gourmet, I can't help but boast on this dish!    

Ingredients:

4 oz cream cheese

2 green onions, finely chopped

6 Tbsp chopped fresh basil

1 pkg of Kraft Italian 5 cheese, shredded

8 small boneless chicken breasts, pounded to 1/4 inch thickness

1 jar spaghetti sauce 

Heat oven 400 degrees.  Mix cream cheese, onion, 2 Tbsp basil and 1/2 cup shredded cheese.  Shape into 8 logs (I used saran wrap to roll the mixture and then cut into sections).  Place one log onto the chicken and smooth out mixture and roll up chicken.  Tucking chicken around filling and placing seam down on a 13x9 inch backing dish sprayed with cooking spray.  Top with spaghetti sauce.  Bake 30 min or until chicken is done, top with remaining cheese and bake for a few more minutes to melt.  Top with remaining basil. 

Easter 2013

Hi Y'all!  Did you have a good Easter?  We sure did.

We started off with the 7 am service at Lutheran Church of Hope.  I really wasn't overly excited about getting up really really early but it worked out well, all the "Creasters"(aka, those who only attend church on Christmas and Easter) were still asleep so getting in and out of church was a breeze at that time.

Our church is pretty awesome.  It's a church that constantly challenges me to dig into God's word and building a relationship with Him all week long and not just on Sundays.  I need that constant challenge in this chaotic world where I constantly find myself failing at what really matters in this temporary life on earth.  It's also a church that has given Aaron and I a lot of tools for our marriage.  Not only do we both come from families with strong marriages, but we also have our church that has given us a solid foundations of tools/resources to have the marriage we have today.  Thank you God for blessing us with such a great church!

Easter is the one holiday we stay in Des Moines each year, normally just Aaron and myself but this year we had my family up to visit.  YAY, I love when they visit!  We started out with brunch at Americana.  After brunch, we had a good ol' Easter egg hunt with our nephew Elijah.  He's at such a fun age, where his facial expressions are so genuine and his curiosity runs wild.  Here are a few pictures of their vist:

Eli's Easter basket from Aunt Erin and Uncle Aaron

Elijah checking out his basket

Easter egg hunt!

Those sweet, sweet cheeks! 

Great Grandpa helping hold one of his Easter basket

A little assistant is very helpful! 

Oh my!  A mouthful of marshmallows! 

Elijah, you are getting so BIG!  Galloping thru the yard! 

Blowing bubbles with Auntie Erin 

He knows how to blow bubbles, just needs a little more force behind his cute tiny winds!

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. John 3:16-17

Hope you all had a Happy Easter!