Cooking with Kids! Taco Boats, Muffin Tin Pizzas, Apple Faux-nuts, and Mason Jar Lid Blueberry Pies

Our most recent cooking show featured kid-friendly recipes.  Recipes that were fun to prepare, and fun to eat!

I was joined by Emily and Lily, two 10-year-olds who happily assembled our recipes with very little assistance.

We started with Taco Boats.  We layered cooked rice and seasoned chicken into tortilla "boats," then popped them into the oven for a few minutes to heat them up.   After removing them from the oven we topped them with chopped avocado, tomatoes and a sprinkling of cilantro.

Hmm...I wrote "we" but it would have been more truthful to say "Emily and Lily."  I stood and watched while they did all of the assembling! 

The only prep that I did was to cook the rice in advance and prep the chicken (which means I removed and chopped up the meat from a cooked rotisserie chicken).  So easy!

Next up were Muffin Tin Mini Pizzas.  

I used a cookie cutter to cut mini "crusts" from flour tortillas, then placed them into a muffin tin.  

I then took a step back and watched as Lily and Emily took over and filled them up with their favorite toppings!

Football season is finally here, and these mini-pizzas are a great appetizer to serve when you're watching the game.  Go Patriots!

Mason Jar Lid Blueberry Pies

Yes, we baked these pies inside mason jar lids!  Emily and Lily cut the mini-crusts from ready-made pie crusts. 

I'm glad I remembered to snap a few photos because after they cooled down they were the first thing to disappear!

Apple Faux-Nuts

I sliced a few apples into rings, and then Lily and Emily took over and frosted and decorated the "donuts." This was my favorite recipe of the night...I managed to snag one that had berry cream cheese topped with blueberries and coconut chips.  A winning combo!

It also gave us the chance to use marshmallows, which are always a hit when cooking with kids!

Cooking Show: Lemons!!

My friend, Gayle, recently told me that she lived in California when she was a child and there was a lemon tree in her yard.  My reaction was like, GET OUT!!!

It was fitting that Gayle should join me for our recent cooking show!  Lemons were the featured ingredient in each recipe that we prepared.

Gayle also told me that they had an avocado tree as well.  Mental note: future show.

Okay, back to lemons.  We started with Limoncello & Raspberry Fizz.  So refreshing!

Next, we prepared salad with grilled lemon chicken and lemon vinaigrette.

Click here for the printable recipe for the vinaigrette.  It's loaded with fresh herbs and a little goes a long way!

Toss together a salad using your favorite fresh salad ingredients.  We used 4 cups of romaine, 1/2 English cuke (chopped), 1 cup of grape tomatoes, 1 avocado (sliced) and 1/4 cup of kalamata olives.

We also used my favorite Grilled Lemon Chicken in this salad. It's one of my summer staples!  I like to prepare a large batch of this chicken at the beginning of the week and use it in weeknight dinners.

It's a great addition to salads, sandwiches, pasta and as you're about to see--pizza!!

Yes, PIZZA. Specifically, Chicken & Broccoli Pizza with Lemon Cream Sauce.   All the recipes you need--pizza dough, grilled chicken, cream sauce--are included in the link!

If you like Bertucci's Silano pizza, this is my attempt to replicate it.  It disappeared quickly when we finished filming the show...I think it was a hit!

Finally, we finished up with a Lemon/Almond Tart.  Sooo good, and also gluten-free.

Thanks for stopping by!

Pizza Cooking Show

We filmed another episode of the cooking show last week.

Pizza!

My friend,  Jay, cooked with me.

I had all sorts of toppings & cheeses ready, and we prepared fresh pesto and a simple red sauce.

For the simple red sauce: 

Sauté 1 small chopped onion and 2 cloves of crushed garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat until soft and just beginning to caramelize.  

Add one 14-oz can of tomato sauce (your choice, I prefer a thin, runny sauce--which thickens up as the sauce simmers--but if you like a thick or chunky pizza sauce use canned diced tomatoes or tomato puree).  

When the sauce comes to a boil, reduce the heat and allow the sauce to simmer and thicken while you prepare your pizza dough.

We made two types of pizza dough.  

A quick dough which requires no yeast (and thus no rise time).  Mix it, knead it, bake it.  

Jay declared it "a game changer."

Here's the pizza he made with the quick dough.  He called it a "Grilled Cheese and Tomato" pizza, very simply topped with shredded mozzarella and diced plum tomatoes.

The rest of our pizzas were made with my favorite homemade pizza dough.

I put together a Chicken/Pesto pizza with mushrooms.  I spread some pesto on the crust, then added some chicken.  I covered it all with shredded fontina and a little bit of Parmesan.  And mushrooms.

My favorite corner, with the mushrooms.

Jay created a Meatlover's Pizza, topped with pepperoni and sliced meatballs.

I decided to go half and half with this pizza:  pepperoni and shredded mozzarella on one half, and sliced fresh mozzarella on the other half.

Jay also made a "little bit of everything" pizza which I neglected to get a close-up picture of.  I think it had chicken and chopped tomatoes on one half and meatballs and fresh mozzarella on the other half.  And shredded mozzarella, fontina and Parmesan sprinkled on top.

You can click on the highlighted links above for the pesto and quick crust recipes, and here is the recipe for my favorite pizza dough:

Chicken Pesto Pizza (with mushrooms)

Caitie:     We should bake something today!

Erin (smirking, sarcastic):    uh, WE?

Caitie:    Well, YOU should bake something, and I'll sit here and keep you company!


That was a recent conversation between the two of them.

If you read my blog regularly, you may have seen the brownies and cupcakes and creative cakes that Erin regularly bakes.

Caitie does her best to avoid the kitchen.   Just imagine my surprise when I walked in the door one day last week and was greeted by this:

Caitie got busy baking blondies.  They were still warm!

And then she requested that I make Chicken Pesto Pizza.  She's hard to resist when she plies me with warm blondies.

I feel the need to warn you that this is going to be a long recipe.  Three recipes, actually.   I made the crust from scratch.  I made the pesto from scratch.  And THEN  I made the pizza.

But before I made the crust, pesto and pizza, I roasted the garlic (for the pesto), roasted the chicken (for the pizza), sautéed some mushrooms (because NO pizza-o-mine is complete without 'shrooms).  It turned into a two-hour ordeal.  Two hours!!!  For two pizzas.  But it was soooooo good.

Make that sooooooooooooooo good.

To save time, make it easy on yourself.  It's the pesto & chicken combo that's important,  and nobody's going to judge you if you don't prepare all of your ingredients from scratch.  Buy ready-made pizza dough.  Buy ready-made pesto.  Buy pre-cooked (or rotisserie) chicken.

Another Meatless Friday

It must be some sort of a "forbidden fruit" dynamic, each friday during lent I crave bacon cheeseburgers all day.

I think I have only had one bacon cheeseburger in my whole life, I really don't care for them.  By tomorrow, the craving will be gone.

But today--I can see it, practically smell it.  It drives me crazy. 

Another friday, another pizza.  It's not a bacon cheeseburger, but it'll have to do.