Bleu Cheese Alfredo with Chicken and Spinach

A few years ago, I developed an alfredo sauce recipe from a couple recipes I found in books and online, and last weekend I decided to give it a go, with a little twist.

A bleu cheese twist.

It was incredibly quick to prepare, and I decided to mix in some cooked chicken and baby spinach to give it some extra nutrition, and to use up some chicken I'd cooked the day before.

The result was beautiful, and my husband, who isn't particularly a fan of alfredo, loved it.

Peach Cobbler Pie

A few years ago, I sort of created my own recipe for peach cobbler pie, based on pieces and parts of other recipes I'd found online and in cookbooks.

Since the peaches were so amazing this year, I couldn't help but make a peach cobbler pie.

Peach pie (really any peach treat) is rather time consuming, only because you have to peel, slice, and pit the peaches.  It's also a rather messy process.  But it's definitely worth the time and effort.

Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Just a quick post tonight to report on a cookie triumph.

My brother-in-law's birthday is this Thursday, and I know he's got a big weak spot for chocolate chip cookies (as does my husband.... and father-in-law... must be genetic).  So I decided to pull out all the stops and make some triple chocolate chip cookies, based on this recipe for Triple Chip Cookies from Bakerella.

Bakerella's recipe calls for white chocolate, milk chocolate, and butterscotch chips.  I went with white, milk and dark chocolate, only because I sadly discovered that I had less than a 1/3 of a cup of butterscotch chips in my pantry.

This is probably due to the fact that I'd gotten into the habit of sprinkling a handful on my ice cream this summer, in spite of the fact that I'd purchased said butterscotch chips specifically for these cookies.

In any case, I substituted the dark chocolate chips for the butterscotch and kept everything else in Bakerella's recipe the same.

The hubby and I did some quality control.

They met with our exacting standards of quality.

The only thing I did slightly different from Bakerella, other than the chip substitution, was use a smaller cookie scoop.  Mine has only a 1-inch diameter, so I actually ended up with 5 1/2 dozen cookies.  Two dozen are slated (after a little bit of pleading and some puppy dog eyes) for my husband's project meeting at work tomorrow.  I'll probably save the extra six for us to munch on.  The rest are heading to my bro-in-law's and will hopefully arrive on time for his birthday.

I leave it up to him if he wants to share with his roommates.

The Great Grape Pie Experiment

The New York State Finger Lakes region is rather well known for it's wineries, grapes, and treats related to grapes.  One of the baked items I've long thought about making is the "famous" Naples grape pie.  It sounds sort of odd, but interesting and good at the same time.

So armed with some fresh NYS concord grapes, and this recipe for "the world's greatest grape pie", I set out to see what all the fuss is about.

Chunky Vegetable Beef Soup

We had a little cold snap a couple weeks ago, so I came home from work and decided to try my hand at making vegetable beef soup.  I'd never done it before and didn't really have a recipe, but it's one of my husband's favorites and it sounded really delicious.

Campbell's Chunky Soups has nothing on me.

Coneflower Spice Cupcakes with Maple Apple Butter

My aunt celebrated her birthday a couple weeks ago, and I decided to do cupcakes for her.  I had some regular old Duncan Hines spice cake mix in my pantry, so I used that and "spiced" it up a bit.

I decided to take a really pretty technique created by Amanda at i am baker for a large daisy design and downsize it for cupcakes.  But my aunt wanted pink frosting, so I couldn't do daisies.  Then I realized if I did the same design in pink, I would essentially have coneflowers.

And because I've come to love filling cupcakes with yummy surprise flavors, I filled them with maple apple butter we got from a local "jam expert" at our farmer's market.

Now on Twitter!

It's official - I'm on Twitter!

Feel free to follow me, if you're a Twitter user.

I'm planning to get a new recipe up tonight or tomorrow, in case you're salivating all over your keyboard.