Fantastical Food Fight: PBJ Smoothie

Wow, my first post of the year and it's already March!  I've cooked this year for sure, but haven't experimented with new recipes as often as usual or written new posts.  My husband and I both started new jobs in December and January and adjusting to that has been taking up a lot of... well, everything.  Little bloggie has not been forgotten, just taken a backseat for a little bit.

 

So, this is a Fantastical Food Fight post.  I tried to participate in January, which had the focus of slow cooker soup.  Picked a recipe, bought the ingredients, then didn't actually make the recipe until late February.  It's funny, really, I ended up using all the originally purchased ingredients for other things and had to repurchase them when I actually made the soup!  The good thing about FFF though is that there's no obligation to participate every month, so I wasn't letting anyone down when I didn't participate.

 

This month's Fantastical Food Fight subject is peanut butter and jelly!  Yum, we love PBJs at our house.  I immediately thought of Ina Garten's amazing PBJ bars, but I've already made those and posted about them on the blog.  As much as I'd love an excuse to make that recipe again, the Fantastic Food Fight posts are supposed to be about new recipes.  Looking online, I found a couple of recipes and ideas I was interested in trying, but settled on a smoothie because we've been on a real smoothie kick since we got a Vitamix blender.  

 

Okay so there isn't actually any jelly in this smoothie.  I try to make my smoothies as healthy as possible and although I like jelly, I a) did not want to add sugar to the smoothie, and b) I wanted to use fresh fruit.  But strawberry jam is frequently used in PBJs and peanut butter banana sandwiches are pretty common, too!

 

This is actually round two of my PBJ smoothie experiment.  The first time I tried it, I used milk instead of yogurt and water, real peanut butter, two bananas, and about half the strawberries.  Neither of us were crazy about the result.  I didn't like how rich (from the fat in the peanut butter) and milky it was, and the banana totally obliterated the strawberry flavor.  Usually I use two bananas in a smoothie for two people, but that wasn't a good choice for this one.  This version uses peanut butter powder so it's not as rich, yogurt and water, just one banana, and more strawberries.  The banana was actually added after I had already blended everything up.  My plan had been to leave out the banana entirely, but it was lacking a little something without the banana, so I chucked one in.

  

It's actually a lovely shade of pale pink- the glass is light green!

  

So, how did it turn out?  Pretty good!  My husband and I both agree that we like green smoothies better, but this was good and a nice alternative if you happen to be out of kale or spinach or are low on yogurt but want protein in the smoothie.  The flavors of the peanut butter, banana, and strawberries all come through nicely.  One thing I'd like to add is to make sure all your ingredients are cold.  The yogurt and strawberries came right out of the refrigerator, and I used cold water, but the banana was room temperature and the resulting smoothie was not very cold.  Usually I don't mind room temperature smoothies, but this one was definitely at its best when cold.

 

PBJ Smoothie

 

1/2 C plain greek yogurt

1/4 C cold water

1 frozen or cold banana

2 C frozen or cold strawberries

3 to 4 Tbsp peanut butter powder (I used 3 but 4 would have been good)

 

Place all ingredients in blender, put on lid, and blend until smooth.

 

Yield: 2 medium sized smoothies

   

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Fantastical Food Fight: Earl Grey Shortbread

Time for the second Fantastical Food Fight!  This month's assignment was shortbread cookies.  A friend of mine on Facebook recently mentioned making shortbread cookies with earl grey tea in them.  I love earl grey (and basically bergamot anything), so really didn't even consider making any other type of shortbread.  My friend used a different recipe that had thumbprints filled with jam.  That sounds delicious, but I wanted something simpler so the earl grey flavor could shine.  This base recipe was originally called Scottish Shortbread and comes from Taste of Home.  I added the tea.

 

Verdict?  Yum!  I used only one tea bag and couldn't taste much tea, so I put 2 tea bags in the instructions below.  Better to start out with not enough than too much, right?  Regardless, this is some tasty shortbread.  Very buttery and crunchy.  The brown sugar adds a lot of flavor and you'd never guess how few ingredients are in the recipe.  I can't wait to make these again with more tea.

Unrelated, but I finally got a new camera so the iPad food photos will be no more.  Enjoy the still terrible, but slightly less terrible food pictures!
  

 

Earl Grey Shortbread

 

1 C salted butter, softened

1/2 C brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)

about 2 C flour

contents of 2 earl grey tea bags, crushed (I used a mortar and pestle and Tazo brand earl grey)

 

Preheat oven to 325 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Set aside.

 

Cream together butter and sugar.  Add flour and tea, mix until well combined- it will look dry at first.  When dough comes together, remove it to a clean counter and knead for 5 minutes.  You can add a little more flour if you need to.  The goal is to have a rather stiff, but not dry or crumbly dough.

 

Roll dough out to 1/2 inch thickness and cut into 1 by 3 inch pieces.  Transfer to the prepared baking sheet and arrange 1 inch apart.  Poke cookies with a fork.  Bake until light golden around the edges, about 20 to 30 minutes.  Allow to cool, then store in a tin.

 

Yield:  About 24 cookies
  

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Fantastical Food Fight: Pimento Cheese Deviled Eggs

In the wake of the sad demise of Secret Recipe Club, I've decided to join another bloggy cooking group.  This one is called Fantastical Food Fight.  It's pretty different from SRC and I don't know if any other blogging group could take SRC's place in my heart, but I'm happy to give it a go.  With this one, all we have to do is choose and make a recipe from any source that fits a certain category (it can't be a recipe you've shared before), then post about it.  This month's assignment is deviled eggs.
  
My husband is crazy about deviled eggs and I make them fairly frequently.  Usually they're just the standard deviled eggs, which for some reason I've never posted a recipe for, or Deviled Eyes on Halloween.  My first thought was to make bacon deviled eggs (I even have cooked leftover bacon in my refrigerator right now!), but while briefly snooping around online deviled egg recipes, I found this one for Pimento Cheese Deviled Eggs over at Country Living.  All I can say is YUM!  In typical form, I fussed with the recipe a little and added garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and changed the kind of mustard.
 
Verdict?  Good!  These would be nice to make for a special occasion, maybe Christmas.  Deviled eggs are often a rather impromptu thing I toss together and this recipe needs more planning because it has some ingredients I don't typically have, but that's okay.  It's nice to make special treats sometimes, and as far as special treats go, this one is pretty damned easy to make.  Next time I'll cut back on the cream cheese and add more cheddar so it has more of a cheddar flavor, and I'll use freshly grated cheddar instead of the packaged kind.  The amount of cream cheese in the recipe tasted fine, but it made a LOT of filling as is and adding more cheddar without reducing the cream cheese would just be too much.
   

  
Pimento Cheese Deviled Eggs
  
12 eggs, boiled, cooled, peeled and cut in half
2 oz grated cheddar cheese
3 oz cream cheese (I used the whipped kind)
1/4 C mayo
3 Tbsp diced canned pimentos, plus more for garnish
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp yellow or dijon mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
  
Place egg yolks in a flat bottomed bowl and mash them with a fork until fluffy.  Stir in grated cheddar, cream cheese, mayo, pimentos, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, garlic powder, and salt and pepper to taste.  Scoop a little into each egg half and garnish with a diced pimento.  Refrigerate eggs for an hour or so until they're cold all the way through, then serve.

Yield: 12 reasonable sized servings, more like 3-4 Mr Cheese with Noodles servings

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