Nutty Mocha Biscotti

I tried something new and sent a recipe card along with my Christmas cards to close family & friends. I had a really cute picture of my daughter from one of her photo shoots, and had just made these...so I decided to put the two together. And everyone really enjoyed them. So here is the recipe for all to see :)

Ingredients: 

2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 Tbsp. instant coffee

1 cup chopped pecans

heaping handfuls both chocolate chips & chopped pistachios

Directions

 HEAT oven to 325°F.

 MIX flour and baking powder in small bowl. Beat next 4 ingredients in large bowl with mixer 2 min.    or until well blended. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing until well blended after each addition. Stir in nuts.

 DIVIDE dough in half. With lightly floured hands, shape each half into 14x2-inch log on greased baking sheet. (Dough will be sticky.)

BAKE 25 min. Remove from oven. Cut each log diagonally into 16 (1-inch-thick) slices. Place, cut sides up, on baking sheet. Return to oven. Bake an additional 10 to 15 min. on each side or until lightly toasted on both sides. Cool completely.

MELT chocolate chips in microwave for about 1 minute, dip biscotti end in chocolate then pistachios……ENJOY!

first round of baking done

10 more minutes per side

getting all dressed up

all done & ready to be eaten!

I could not resist posting these pictures too!

Cookie Xchange & Slow Cooker Lava Cake

I love the concept of a cookie exchange. Bake a couple dozen of the same cookie and then share the fruit of everyone's labor!! (In half the time of what it would have taken you to bake everything.)

In effort to get out of the house and meet new people, I jumped at my invitation to a book club in August, plus I consider myself a book worm. I had been in Cincinnati for almost 9 months and had oh...3 friends. Mind you I was figuring out this whole motherhood thing out and had my hands full at times. But after the routines & scheduling had kicked in with my daughter, I was ready for something else. PLUS my husband had never put my daughter to sleep at night because why would he if I was home!? So very happy to have this 'social' evening with these lovely ladies.

 Good food, great girls, and flowing conversations....what else do you need!???

We usually bring appetizers, finger food, dessert, etc.

picture taken directly from tasteofhome.com

For our cookie exchange  get together,  I brought slow cooker lava cake with candy cane ice cream (to be festive). Imagine...steaming lava cake with a minty cold ice cream melting over it....are you salivating yet? Because I know I am! It is so so easy to make and clean up was a cinch with my newly discovered slow-cooker liners. I read a review of the recipe and someone had recommended using a slow-cooker liner bc the cake really stick to the pot and then you need a chisel to get it clean afterwards.

3 main ingredients for the lava cake: devil's chocolate cake mix, chocolate pudding, and lots of chocolate chips. And there can be so many different variations to it, if you let your imagination (or taste buds) run wild.

Change up the pudding: use vanilla, coffee-flavored, mint, etc.
Change up the choc. chips: use peanut butter chips, butterscotch, white chocolate, etc.

Had to include this bc its such a great invention, find it in the saran wrap/ ziploc bag section of your grocery store.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Slow-Cooker-Chocolate-Lava-Cake <---link to the recipe, enjoy!!

The cookies that I brought were soft ginger molasses, I got the recipe from a blog, Bran Appetite, that I recently started following. She had a post up called "my top 6 holiday cookies", I do plan to give all of them a try, but one at a time ;) So far so good! I did sub butterscotch chips with Heath toffee chips.

http://www.branappetit.com/2012/11/27/my-top-6-holiday-cookies/

the girlies

"Its the most wonderful time of the year!"

My Healthy Twist on Cream of Mushroom Soup...shhh its a secret

Thank you trialx.org for pic ;)

Believe me you will not taste the difference...I even fooled my husband ;)

Ingredients:
12-16 oz. soft tofu <---that's the secret!
1 cup water
1 1/4 cups portobello mushrooms
2 medium yellow onions
4 cloves garlic
2 stalks celery
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp sea salt, plus more to taste
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
freshly ground black peper
fresh or dried thyme
2-3 Tbsp. dry sherry or dry Marsala
6-7 cups any basic vegetable broth
2 1/2Tbsp. Arborio rice
1 tsp. sweet paprika
1/3 cup chopped fresh dill or parsley

Method:

1. Clean and coarsley chop the mushrooms. Chop the onions; you should have about 3 cups. Mince the garlic and chop the celery to get about 3/4 cups.
2. In a nonstick skillet, heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil, add the chopped onions and a pinch of salt, and cover over gentle heat, stirring now and then, until the onions are soft and golden, about 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, in a second skillet, heat the remaining 1 Tbsp. oil with the butter and saute the garlic in it over medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add the the mushrooms, 1/2 tsp. salt, and black pepper and thyme to taste. Raise the heat to high and saute the mushrooms, stirring often, until they give up their liquid, sizzle, and begin to turn darker brown, 7-8 minutes. Add a splash of sherry or Marsala and stir as it cooks away.
4. When you get a spare moment, blend the tofu an water together.
5. While the mushrooms and onions are sauteing, put the broth, rice and celery into a soup pot and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes. (Remember, if you are using canned broth you should dilute it, about 2 parts broth to 1 part water, or it will be too salty.) When the mushrooms and onions are ready, add them to the pot along with the paprika and tofu, keep simmering, covered, for another 15 minutes. remove the soup from the heat and stir fresh dill or parsley. Taste and correct the seasonings with a pinch more salt if needed.

**I pureed this soup to a semi-rough stage with an immersion blender until it was somewhere between smooth and chunky. Of course, you can puree to any degree of smothness you like. Add a bit more water or broth if the soup seems too thick.