Secret Recipe Club: Carrot Cake Pancakes & more...

Woohoo! Yay! Yippeeee! This is my first time with Secret Recipe Club and I am so excited. Can you tell? From the first moment I heard I was accepted, I couldn't wait to see whose lovely blog would be assigned to me. And I wasn't disappointed one bit! 

For my first SRC post with Group B, I was assigned to a fabulous blog - Amy's Cooking Adventures. Hey - my little girl is an Aimee! :) 

Wow! The first time I visited her site, I was amazed! So many awesome recipes to choose from! How on earth was I going to choose? And from what I've read, she's an amazing mom, a strong woman and she's as cute as a button, I tell you! There's this picture of her with her new braces, and I swear I haven't seen anyone look so adorable after just getting braces! 

And just when I finished making the yummy food, and writing this post, I saw a message that another Group B member wasn't able to make her post happen, and I jumped at the chance of cooking from two blogs! Loved every minute of both. I've linked to my other post at the end of this one!

Now, back to my dilemma. I started off by bookmarking recipes on Amy's blog. I bookmarked 20 to start with. Ended up making three. And all of them were yummy! I will share the recipe for one of them here in the post. For the other two, you'll have to head on over to her site and get the recipe. 

These pancakes really were a treat. They were so reminiscent of a carrot cake - that same spice hit and moist goodness. And to make the experience complete, we had it with a cream cheese-maple glaze. It really was awesome. And it is such a healthy recipe! Can't believe something that tastes this good can be healthy too! Thank you, Amy, for an awesome recipe! 

Carrot Cake Pancakes
Adapted from this recipe Amy's Cooking Adventures
Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup all purpose flour

¼ cup ground flax seed

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs, lightly whisked

1 1/3 cup skim milk

½ cup pureed carrots

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. In a large bowl, combine the flours, ground flax seed, baking powder, spices and salt. Stir together and set aside.

2. In a smaller bowl or measuring cup, combine the eggs, milk, carrots, honey, sugar and vanilla. 

3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients and stir just to combine.

4. On a hot skillet over medium heat, add some 2-3tbsp butter or oil. Tilt the pan to spread evenly.

5. Drop small ladlefulls of the batter on the skillet. You should be able to make 2-4 per batch depending on the size of your skillet.

6. Wait till small bubbles appear on the surface of your pancakes and flip them using a spatula. Cook for a further 2-3 minutes until the pancake is cooked through. 

7. Serve topped with pancake syrup, maple syrup, cream cheese glaze, sweetened Greek yogurt or a topping of your choice. 

Amy suggests serving this topped with toasted walnuts and that would have been just perfect! But I just plain forgot. All of us loved this recipe - especially my Aimee. She ate two for breakfast and then came back for another at snack time! Thank you, Amy!

Another recipe I tried from her site was the 'Melt in your mouth' chicken. This one was surprising. It is ridiculously easy to make and surprisingly tasty! I served it over elbow macaroni because it had quite a lot of sauce, and the kids gobbled it up! Surprisingly, the biggest fan was my husband. The only changes I made to the recipe was adding a glug of Tabasco sauce, and sprinkling the top with some smoked paprika. It was really good! 

This was a simple, quick and yummy dinner that all of us loved! Our only complaint was that there wasn't more of it!

I also made Amy's recipe for Peanut Butter Dog Treats! And my Jerry loved them and gobbled them up without hesitation! Here you can see him staring at a doggie treat with great longing in his eyes! :) I wish I had taken more pictures! 

It was a pleasure visiting your site and getting to know you a little, Amy. You are a beautiful person, a wonderful mom, and after I spent time reading your "Angel Wings" posts, I think you're a such strong person too! God bless you and your lovely family... XOX to you! 

I loved my first month of Secret Recipe Club! Don't forget to visit my OTHER SRC  post!

Click on the cute froggy face below to see the other awesome recipes from SRC's Group B!

Tuna Casserole w/ Cheesy Topping

Today, I learned that my daughter loves eating plain boiled pasta, my dog loves tuna, and that sometimes, laziness pays off!

What a weekend! I was so exhausted after a fun morning at church, that I took a Sunday afternoon nap - something highly unusual for me. I rarely sleep during the day! Now, that's not something worth blogging about though, right? Well, it is if you invited someone over to spend the evening with you, & then fell asleep with your toddler. They arrived and stood knocking at our door for a while before they realized we were probably out like lights. So, how did they wake us up? The old tiny pebbles against the window pane trick! Only this time, it was not-so-smallish rocks against the air-conditioning unit trick! It worked though, and after I apologized for making them wait, we had a good laugh about it!

After that great nap, I was raring to cook! I made one of my favorites - Tuna Noodle Casserole. Now, I know I say 'noodle', but we prefer using macaroni for this dish.

 The shortcut I talk about is the topping I used for this casserole. Usually, for a bread crumb topping like this, melted butter is added to the crumbs. But me, I was too lazy to even melt the butter. So, I added soft butter to the crumbs & cheese and ended up with something that resembled cookie dough! Anyways, I just tore it all up and put the pieces over the dish and baked it. It ended up tasting like chewy cheese biscuits and we loved it!

I usually add more vegetables to this casserole - I especially love to add button mushrooms or broccoli, but today all I had were green peas. Remember the Pea & White Bean Soup post? Yes, I still have peas leftover in my freezer! Not complaining though - I love peas.


Tuna Noodle Casserole
(Serves 2 1/2 people)

Ingredients
6 oz uncooked macaroni
2 tbsp Olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tsp plain flour

1 cup milk
1 1/2 - 2 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp prepared mustard
 3/4 cup green peas
1 dried bay leaf
1/3 cup cream
1 6 oz can of tuna

Cheesy Biscuit Topping
2 slices stale/crusty bread (I used only the end slices of the loaf)
1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese
1 1/2 tsp dried parsley
2 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/4 tsp pepper

Method
1. Cook the pasta in salted boiling water. Drain, refresh and set aside.
2. In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and butter. Swirl around till the butter is completely melted. Add the garlic, celery and onion. Cook until the onions are softened but not brown. Add the plain flour and stir for a few minutes.
3. Take the pan off  the heat and add the mustard, the milk and 1 /2 cups of the stock. Stir to make sure there are no lumps.
4. Put the pan back on the heat, add the peas and the bay leaf.
5. Cook until the sauce is thick and velvety, and the peas are cooked. 
6. Take off the heat, and stir in the cream. Flake the tuna into the sauce.
7. Remove the bay leaf and discard.
8. Stir in the macaroni and stir until the pasta is well coated with the sauce. If you feel it is too dry, add a little more stock.
9. Adjust the seasoning and transfer to a baking dish.
10. Add the cheesy topping & bake at 400 until the topping is bubbly and brown.

Cheesy Topping
1. Process all the ingredients except the butter in a food processor until the bread has turned to fine crumbs.
2. Continue processing and add the softened butter, keeping the machine running until it forms a soft dough.
3. Tear up the dough and strew over the top of the casserole

This casserole is something I never tire of eating. Over the years, I have tried several recipes and this one is a combination of the best of all those recipes. My husband - who usually eats fish only if it's fried, loved this dish and commented on how 'it didn't taste fishy at all'. My daughter loved it and even while I was trying to get a decent picture of the dish, she couldn't keep her chubby little fingers out of the plate - as you can see!

This is the perfect amount for a family of three, but this dish is pretty easy to double and triple. In fact, I think I should do that the next time I make this. We would really enjoy any left-overs of this dish!

Technorati Tags: Tuna, Casserole, Recipe, Topping, Cheese