Gingerbread Cookies with Confectioner's Sugar Icing

Our friend recently deployed to Iraq for a year. While he's gone, a group of us has committed to sending him care packages that represent the current season back home. We thought and thought about what we should include in the fall-themed package, and a trip through Hobby Lobby provided inspiration: gingerbread cookies in the shape of turkeys! It was obviously fated, so we snapped them up and ran home to bake.

The basis for our cookies is the Gingerbread Cookies recipe from Cooking Light's November 2009 issue. We made these for our annual Christmas party last year and they were a smash hit, so we were able to bake with confidence.

Before attempting these cookies, be aware that the dough requires an hour's worth of chillin' in the fridge. The good news, though, is that the cookies will keep for weeks in an airtight container, so you can make them several days ahead when you have time and ice them later.

We love the simple icing recipe that accompanies the cookies, but it's more for piping, and we didn't quite know how to pipe a turkey! That's why we headed over to Williams-Sonoma and snapped up a recipe for Confectioners' Sugar Icing instead.

The W-S icing requires 3 ingredients not pictured in our ingredient line-up - 1/2 stick of butter, water, and 1/2 cup of powdered sugar - and about 7 minutes to prepare (5 of which are cooling time). It results in a buttery, sugar icing that can either be drizzled or spread.

We chose the festive route and opted to drizzle the icing on our cookies, and they turned out looking very chic and modern! A tip for fellow drizzlers - lay your cookies out on a large sheet of saran wrap, leaving plenty of room on the top and bottom sides. Then, start the stream of icing before you get to the first cookie, and finish after you've reached the last one. That way, all of your cookies look perfectly uniform, with none of them looking like an obvious starting or ending point.

Our fingers are crossed that the desert heat doesn't melt these into a sticky, gooey mess! But hey, it's the thought that counts, right? And no matter how they look when they reach their destination, we know one thing's for sure: they'll still be delicious!

Chicken and Rice Casserole

Let's start today's dish with a disclaimer: we are not casserole people. Neither of our families made casserole dishes frequently (if at all), and it's possible that they are wonderful and we just don't have a taste for them. Bear that in mind as we dig in to this Chicken and Rice Casserole, from Cooking Light's August 2010 issue.

The first thing you should know when considering this recipe is that it takes a lot of (mostly active) time to prepare. The casserole itself bakes for just 20 minutes, but it took a whopping hour and a half, start to finish, to prepare.

You'll notice from our ingredient shot that we chose to make a few substitutions. We had some cooked boil-in-bag brown rice in the fridge from a recipe misfire the previous day. We had also used up all of our chicken broth this weekend for a batch of red beans, so we subbed in some veggie broth that was hanging out in the pantry. (We tell you this in the interest of full disclosure, because it's possible that our substitutions may have impacted the final quality of the dish.)

There are a lot of discrete steps to this dish: sauteeing, then boiling, then shredding, followed by reducing, more sauteeing, even more boiling, some baking, and some broiling. There's a little down time, but you'll probably spend the bulk of it cleaning up after yourself!

The good folks in the Cooking Light comments section have offered some time-saving tips, such as cooking the chicken and rice the night before, or just using rotisserie chicken instead. Some also threw in some additional vegetables, like carrots, to vary the texture.

And it looks like some of the earlier commenters agree with us that the dish lacks seasoning and just isn't special or exciting enough to offset the time it requires to prepare. Overall, it was a little soggy, a little needy, and just not good enough to merit making again.

Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies with Dried Cherries and Pistachios

Halloween is fast approaching, and what better way to prepare than with a sinful treat? (No tricks, we promise!) This one comes from our new favorite recipe destination, Williams-Sonoma.com, and they call these their Crisp Chocolate Chip Cookies with Dried Cherries and Pistachios.

First a warning - do not start eating this dough, or you will not be able to stop. Seriously, we clearly missed the part where it said we were actually adding crack to the dough. It must have been in the butter.

Let it be known that those pistachios and cherries came with a Williams-Sonoma price tag, but boy were they worth it! The cookies themselves were very easy to assemble. Beyond combining the powdered ingredients, the bulk of the recipe relied heavily on our old friend, the stand-mixer. Add, mix, add, mix, add, mix...you get the idea.

Placing the cookies on the prepared sheets was challenging, because the dough was a) sticky, and b) delicious. To save yourself a few extra hours on the elliptical, we recommend using two teaspoons to shape the dough into balls, flattening them with the palm of your hand, and quickly stashing both baking sheets in your oven. Then lick that mixing bowl clean!

Swapping the baking sheets midway through cooking creates a problem because those sheets are good and greased up. Your cookies will slide if you don't keep them level, so take your time!

We offer this caution because we, of course, did NOT take our time. Zombies must have eaten our brains last night, because one of us tried to perform the whole sheet-swapping task without setting down either baking sheet.

That's how we ended up with Mega-Cookie.

Most of Mega-Cookie was salvageable with a few quick cuts from the edge of a spatula, and one of us appreciated the excuse to sample some of our less attractive product.

The verdict? These. Cookies. Are. Delicious. In fact, we've already pulled the trigger and added them to our Christmas Party must-have list. They are so crammed full of delicious fall flavors that we could eat them all season. (And since W-S doesn't include nutritional information with their recipes, we just might!)

So make these. Make them now. This weekend, if you have to wait. And...have a tasty, treat-filled Halloween!

Pasta with Fresh Tomato Basil Sauce

If you're like us, you love to cook but don't want to spend any more time in the kitchen than necessary. Pasta is an easy foundation for a dish and allows for lots of experimentation. Plus, you can keep most ingredients stocked in your pantry and grab them in a pinch, supplementing with whatever fresh ingredients you have on hand.

Today's recipe comes from Cooking Light and definitely delivers on quickness. It's the Pasta with Fresh Tomato Basil Sauce (September 2010), and it's a good introduction to extending your reach beyond dried noodles and canned sauce.

There are just three steps to this recipe: 1) cook and drain the noodles, 2) sautee the firm produce, and 3) remove from heat and incorporate spices, delicate ingredients, and cooked noodles. Keeping those steps in mind will allow you to modify this recipe with whatever you have on-hand.

Zucchini languishing in the fridge? Cut it into ribbons and toss it in with the tomatoes. Last night's recipe left behind some extra oregano or thyme? Throw it in! Even frozen vegetables can make a splashy addition - just let your imagination and your taste buds be your guide.

The Cooking Light recipe itself isn't particularly mind-blowing. In truth, it lacks any sort of spirit or flavor. But as a sort of "training wheels" for cooking technique, it's a confidence-building dish worth making once.

Spiced Pork Tenderloin with Sautéed Apples

Fall is in the air around here - how about where you are? With tonight's brisk air and the abundance of apples populating our grocer's produce aisle, we thought we'd spice things up with an autumnal fruit dish. Today, it's Spiced Pork Tenderloin with Sautéed Apples, from Cooking Light's October 2010 issue.

Let's cut to the chase - this dish was outstanding! It required a decent

amount of fresh ingredients, although no

thing that will spoil too quickly (and don't pretend like you aren't looking for any excuse to buy apple cider right now!).

We didn't have a cast iron skillet, which concerned us at first, but have no fear. That particular item is not essential to a successful dish in this case. We began by mixing up our spice rub for the pork - the cinnamon and nutmeg are what give this pork its delicious fall flavor.

The pork is sliced into medallions, then rubbed with the spice mixture and transferred to a pan coated with cooking spray (or a touch of extra virgin olive oil, if you prefer). The slicing of the pork allows it to cook quickly, taking 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Because we have to soak up all those wonderful seasonings from the pan, the recipe instructs you to remove the pork and keep it warm. (We stash ours in the microwave.)

Now enough about pork - let's talk apples! Sauteed in real, bona fide, salted butter and complimented with some lovely shallots, those apples are a thing of beauty. Sauté them to whatever texture you like: crisp like taking a bite right off the tree, or soft like those heavenly ones they serve at Cracker Barrel, this part's completely up to you.

The recipe only calls for 2 cups, but we had a feeling we'd love them, so we made about twice that. We ought to have doubled up on the cider and spices to compensate, but taste wise, it didn't matter - we were in apple heaven!

This dish held up pretty well in the microwave, which was the final test for our Yuppie Test Kitchen seal of approval. We have a feeling this is going in our rotation until spring time, and we just might sneak it in a couple of times after that, too!

Eggplant, Zucchini, and Tomato Tian

Generally, when we try a recipe and then go find the link to share it with you guys, we end up seeing reviews on the recipe site that are very similar to ours. This time, though, we've stumbled upon something that we didn't necessarily love but that's had a positive public response. So we'll let you be the judge...

Today's recipe is Eggplant, Zucchini, and Tomato Tian (Cooking Light, June 2010). Part of our problem might be that we didn't realize this was intended to be a side dish! The issue itself didn't specify explicitly, but now that we see it on the web, we've realized our error.

This has all the makings of a delicious vegetarian dish: hearty vegetables, fine cheeses, savory breadcrumbs. (We substituted vegetable broth for chicken broth to make it completely veggie.) And it was easy enough to assemble, requiring 15 minutes of prep time to roast the vegetables and 1 hour of cooking time for the completed dish. We just found it to be seriously lacking in flavor.

We did use fresh oregano and thyme, but we think more seasoning would've provided us with some richer flavor. And maybe, as a side dish, the recipe plays better not taking center stage, but standing alone it was pretty lackluster.

The dish may also have benefited from the inclusion of more (and more melt-able!) cheese. For example, a shredded mozzarella layered over the vegetables may have brought the dish together a little better than the drier texture of the Parmesiano-Reggiano. Maybe even the incorporation of a little bit of tomato past to bring out richer flavors would help.

So we leave you with a challenge: Try this recipe and see what you think, either as a side or a main dish, making our recommended substitutions or finding your own. Then let us know what you think in the comments!

Risotto Primavera

We're back with another budget dish from Cooking Light. This time, it's the Risotto Primavera from the June 2010 issue. This dish seemed a little heavy for our southern climate back in June, but now that the temperatures are more consistently out of the near triple digits, it's a lot more palatable. There's nothing particularly summery about it, so all of the ingredients should be available wherever you might live.

This recipe rings up at $2.48 per serving, which, if your grocery store is anything like ours, is influenced heavily by the inclusion of fresh asparagus. We'd be willing to bet that you could sub in some of the frozen stuff without anyone batting an eye. Purchasing the Arborio rice in bulk may offset a decision to go with the fresh stuff.

Before you think another minute about making this dish, beware: Risotto requires constant attention. You'll be stirring and reducing for about 20 minutes, so put on some comfortable clothes, flip on the tele, give your stirring arm a quick arm warm-up, and get ready to cook!

The first step is to roast the tomatoes in the oven for 15 minutes. (We recommend lining your jelly roll pan with heavy aluminum foil to speed up your clean-up.) You can use this time to trim up your asparagus, grate your cheese, and measure out other ingredients, because, once you start adding liquids to your rice, you won't have time to even think about measuring, grating, or chopping.

Next, you're ready to combine your water and broth in a sauce pan, heating - but not boiling - them. The onion goes into your Dutch oven first, then rice, then vinegar. Then it's time for your marathon stirring session!

You'll add in half-cups of the broth and water mixture one at a time, stirring until all of the liquid is absorbed. According to the recipe, this should take about 20 minutes, start to finish, which we found to be pretty accurate. When the last cup of the broth mixture goes in, so do the veggies (other than the tomatoes).

You've probably notice that, due to a clerical error in our grocery list-making, we ended up sans peas. We subbed in frozen corn instead; the consensus in our house was that the corn lent the dish a little more snap than the peas might have.

Off the stove came the rice mixture and in went the grated cheese, making the texture of the dish smooth and luxurious. We plated the mixture and topped it with tomatoes and more cheese, then a dusting of pepper and, voila - an inexpensive, hearty dish that required just a little bit of elbow grease!

If you're wondering whether it's possible that this dish reheated well - it certainly did! Just be sure to heat it in short increments and stir until you're happy with the temperature. This isn't something you want to shock in the microwave for 5 minutes!

Pork Roast with Dried-Fruit Compote

As the weather cools off and daylight hours become scarce, there's nothing better than coming home to a delicious smelling roast. Last week, we decided to see whether William's Sonoma's Pork Roast with Dried-Fruit Compote would fit that bill.

The recipe comes from the retailer's "Food Made Fast" series (the "Slow Cooker" issue, to be exact), and while "fast" and "slow cooker" are certainly oxymorons, the prep for this roast was unbelievably quick. The ingredient list only necessitates one "fresh" ingredient - the roast itself. Everything else is either a pantry staple (brown sugar), something you could substitute with a pantry staple (dried rosemary) or something you could pick up and keep on hand for whenever the mood for a roast strikes (dried fruit).

The only time-consuming step was browning the pork. Set your alarm an extra 20 minutes early and check the weather or catch up on the news while you work. It's a quick 15-minute task to brown the roast, and with an additional 5 minutes, you've deglazed the pan and are ready to go.

When we arrived at home, we were greeted with some fabulous smells and a roast so tender that it literally fell right off of the bone. It was so good that we didn't even have enough left over for lunches the next day, so we regrettably can't give you the skinny on how well it reheats!

All in all-this was a solid dish for a day when you know you won't have the energy to slave over the stove. And now that we know where to find Williams-Sonoma's stash of online recipes, we'll certainly be back for more!

Minty Tomato Soup

If you read the recipe for Minty Tomato Soup in the September issue of Cooking Light and thought, "Gosh, that sounds time consuming," then congratulations: You are WAY smarter than we are!

After all, tomato soup is delicious, there are only 4 steps in this recipe, and it calls for very few ingredients. What could go wrong?! Well, the lady whose fingernails are still stained orange will tell you, "A LOT"!

Our idea of a good recipe is one that takes 45 minutes, start to finish. This one took a whopping 45 minutes just to get the tomatoes prepared! Careful readers will notice that you handle these tomatoes several times. The first step is cutting the tomatoes in half. (Not so bad, right?) The second step is juicing them. Yes, juicing them - pressing them through a sieve and collecting the juice. (This is where we got concerned.) Finally, you must grate them over a bowl with a box grater, tossing the skins. (What the...?)

Once we'd done all that, we were instructed to mix the reserved tomato juice, salt, red wine vinegar, and chopped mint with the tomatoes and...that's it. No heating, no pureeing - just grated tomatoes and tired hands.

It turns out the rest of the ingredients are for a pesto topping and some really weak toast. Since we'd planned to accompany this with grilled cheese sandwiches - and because we were flat-out bushed! - we called an audible and skipped the toast.

We prepared the pesto as instructed and tossed our lackluster tomato mixture in with it, pureeing everything until smooth. Then we poured the soup into a Dutch oven and warmed it while the grilled cheese sandwiches were being assembled. And then came the true test: taste.

The finished product wasn't bad, even with our improvisations. There wasn't much depth to it, though; it tasted like grated tomatoes with some mint. It could have used some black pepper and maybe a dash of oregano, too. (Our grilled cheese sandwiches were fabulous, if you wondered!)

We'd love to say we'd try this again but the bottom line was that it just didn't make an impression. For our next grilled cheese night, we'll stick to Campbell's!

Gingery Pork Meatballs with Noodles

It seems like everyone's saving their pennies these days, and that fact has prompted Cooking Light to start a new feature called "Budget Cooking". Their recipe for Gingery Pork Meatballs with Noodles (Sept 2010) is advertised with a price tag of $2.06 a serving - let's see if it packs big flavor at a low cost.

The ingredient list is heavy on pantry staples, i.e., things Cooking Light thinks you should already have in your kitchen. Items like breadcrumbs, soy sauce, sesame oil, and some spices aren't counted in the calculation, which allows the "budget" label to be applied to a dish that, at face value, has a laundry lists of components. These items can have high costs if you don't have them on hand, but you're guaranteed to get loads of use out of them, especially if you frequent the magazine's files for recipe ideas. All of the ingredients for this particular recipe are easy to find, including the "wide rice noodles", which we scored from a local Whole Foods-style grocer.

A lot of times, as we skim recipes when creating our weekly menu, we miss the little "idle times" hidden in the instructions. Make sure you budget 30 minutes for the meatball mixture to chill. This would be a great time to chop up the ingredients for the noodles or, if you're super-prepared, to fit in a quick workout or throw in a load of laundry!

Now, the recipe itself says, "cook noodles according to package directions," which would be easy to do...if we could read Japanese. Thankfully, a quick Google search yielded several preparation options. We picked the path of least resistance, soaking the noodles for 30 minutes, then adding as detailed in step 3 of the recipe. Either 30 minutes wasn't enough, or we should've bitten the bullet and boiled them, because we ended up with some seriously crunchy noodles!

At left is the finished product: a lovely, easy-to-assemble taste of Asian cuisine. The meatballs are moist and the ginger, garlic, and soy sauce give them a distinct taste that will breathe life into your dinner repertoire. We took them to work the following day and were pleasantly surprised by how the flavors held up after a turn in the microwave. (No improvement in those noodles, unfortunately, but we'll keep at it!)

This one's a keeper, gang. Tuck it away in your recipe file for a rainy day and wow the pants off of your roommate, significant other, or whoever else is over for dinner!

Banana-Chocolate-Walnut Bread

Let's sweeten up our Saturday, shall we? Last week for work, we attempted the Banana-Chocolate-Walnut Bread (Cooking Light, Oct 2010) for a coworker's birthday. Chocolate, bananas, more chocolate - it seemed like a recipe for success.

The bread was straightforward to put together and required mostly the kinds of staples we tend to keep around our kitchen. (What, you don't keep a bag of chocolate chips on hand at all times?) We popped it in the oven and sat down to relax while it baked the requisite 55 minutes.

It came out of the oven smelling a bit burned, which puzzled us. Generally, our oven temperature runs a little low, so we have to cook things a minute or two longer than stated by the recipe. When we went to pop the chocolate and milk topping mixture into the microwave, we realized why: the 5 tablespoons of melted butter that were supposed to go in the batter were still sitting in the microwave.

Heartbroken, we sliced off an end of the bread and gave it a taste...and, much to our surprise, it wasn't bad at all! Most likely, it was the addition of plain yogurt to the dough plus the bananas themselves that kept things moist and bound despite the lack of fat from the butter. Once we decided that this could still be served to coworkers without destroying our baking reputation, we went ahead with assembling the topping.

Perhaps it was the type of chocolate we used (Nestle semisweet mini chips) or the fat-free milk, but the topping wasn't nearly as thick as shown in the recipe image. But that - and our own inattention to detail! - was our only difficulty with this recipe. All in all, it receives our recommendation for a tasty, anytime treat.