Mint Chocolate Chip Cheesecake

I was thinking of something to make for Saint Patrick's Day and the first thing I thought of was something minty. So naturally my next thought was chocolate and cheesecake. There are various recipes out there for this but I just did my basic recipe and added green coloring and mint extract. My boys thought I had made a dessert using the mint chocolate chip ice cream and they were temporarily very happy. I was happy that they thought it looked like mint chocolate chip ice cream as that was my goal. They weren't very happy in the end because they don't care for cheesecake. Maybe that's why I make it so often...more for me!

Check here for more fun Saint Patty's Day dinner and treat ideas!

                                             Click here for printable recipe. 

Posted by: Jen

Ingredients:
already made chocolate crust

2 packages (8-oz each) cream cheese, softened

1/2 c sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp mint extract

few drops green food coloring

1 c chocolate chips

for the ganache

1/2 c cream

1 c chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat together the softened cream cheese and the sugar. Your cheesecake will cook better if the cream cheese is completely softened. Beat until it is smooth. Add the eggs and mix them in well.

Add food coloring and mint extract. (make sure it is mint and not peppermint. Of course you could do the same thing at Christmas with peppermint extract and pink food coloring) Blend in well until it is all green.

Stir in the chocolate chips and pour into already made chocolate crust.

Bake in oven for 35-40 minutes or until the center is slightly jiggly. If you miss that point, then take it out when you see it start to get a little golden on the edges. Don't worry if it cracks. We are going to cover it with chocolate ganache anyway.

Completely cool the cheesecake on a wire rack. This may take an hour or so. Meanwhile make your ganache.

For the Chocolate ganache, add the cream to a small pan and heat over medium heat. Stir occasionally because you don't want the milk to stick or burn on the bottom. When it reaches a simmer, remove from heat and add the chocolate chips.

Stir in the chocolate chips until it is completely smooth. If desired, you could add a tablespoon of butter to help have that glossy look, but it isn't necessary.

Let it cool a little bit and spread over the cheesecake evenly to the edges. Put cheesecake in refrigerator overnight or for at least 2 hours. You may not use all of the ganache. Put the rest in a container and store in the fridge for later. This is the best base for the best ever hot cocoa.

I personally think that cheesecake is best served the following day. I like it more firm. My husband disagrees. He likes to eat it the same day it's baked. If you serve it within a couple hours of it being baked it has a more mousse like consistency.

Brownie bottom mint chocolate chip cheesecake

For another variation use a brownie mix as the bottom layer. Check out the Brownie bottom cheesecake recipe for directions. Use 3 pkgs cream cheese, 2/3 c sugar, and 3 eggs, but keep everything else the same. After the brownie is baked, then bake the cheesecake for about an hour or until slightly jiggly in the middle. When cooled then either cover the entire thing in ganache, or just the top. I would have done it this way, but alas I only had 2 eggs in my refrigerator so I did the faster version.

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Angry Bird Pizza

My boys love angry birds. They love the video game, they have the board game, and they even have a stuffed red one that makes noises. So, it was inevitable that my son asked for Angry Bird Pizza for his birthday dinner. I thought and thought about how I could come up with this. I came up with using just a basic cheese pizza but I put the sauce on the TOP of the cheese instead of the bottom. My boys loved it and when I put it on my Facebook page it got a lot of comments. So without further ado, here is my tutorial on how to make your pizza look like a red angry bird. If you make this for your kids, they will think you are the coolest person ever. I promise.

Click here for printable recipe. 

Posted by: Jen

The Ingredients:

pizza dough, either store bought or homemade (check here for my recipe, minus the corn meal)

1 can pizza sauce (I tend to use spaghetti sauce)

shredded Mozzarella cheese (probably a couple cups. I tend to just cover the pizza without thinking of how much I'm using)

Mozzarella cheese cut into circles. (cut from a block of cheese or Mozzarella ball)

couple slices of cheddar cheese, cut into triangles

black olives, sliced

The Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Roll out your pizza dough into a circle. You can make it as thin or as thick as you like. At the top, pinch two pieces of dough to stick up like the angry bird's feathers. Poke all over with a fork. (so it doesn't puff up). Sprinkle with cheese all over.

Bake in oven for about 10 minutes or until the edges of the crust start to get a little golden. Remove from oven and place on wire rack to "decorate" your pizza.

While your pizza crust is baking, cut out the cheese that you will need for the face. You will need 2 white circles for the eyes, a bunch of sliced olives for the eyebrows and the eyeballs, and some orange triangle cheddar cheese slices for the beak.

Here is the red angry bird for you to look at, just in case you need a reminder.

You can put pizza sauce over the entire pizza and then cover the bottom triangle with more cheese, OR just leave the bottom triangle with just cheese and no sauce. I left it with no sauce because I didn't want any red peaking out. Arrange the facial pieces.

Bake about 5 more minutes or until everything is completely melted and the crust is brown on the edges.

I hope you and your kids have fun with this. If anyone can figure out how to do a blue bird, yellow bird or green pigs, let me know. I just couldn't think of anything that would be appetizing for those colors. (except maybe a Monterey jack cheddar blend might work for the yellow...)If your family likes black olives, I imagine that you could do the black bird.

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Welcome, News, and Links

Welcome to Recipe Shoebox!  My name is Lara and I started the Recipe Shoebox in 2008 after getting sick of trying to keep track of my recipes in a mess of binders, bookmarks, and a shoebox.  When I first got started I envisioned this blog being a family forum for me and my sisters to share recipes amongst each other.  It didn't take long to realize though, that I was a bit more excited about blogging than my sisters, so you'll find that the majority of the over 600 recipes here are mine. 

In 2011 I started to get a little overwhelmed with trying to keep up the blog and my five kids, so I took on a blogging partner, Jen, to help me.  She is a passionate cook who loves to create fun food for her three boys.  I've enjoyed her creative contributions to the blog  and  loved the fresh influx of recipes to the blog at a time when I was feeling a bit distracted from it.  Little did I know back when I invited her to join me in our cooking adventures that it wouldn't be long before I would appreciate her efforts more than ever. 

You see, in January my sixteen-year-old son was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and as a result this blog immediately took a back burner in my life.  My son is responding well to treatment so far, but has spent almost the entirety of the last two months in the hospital undergoing intensive chemo to treat the aggressive nature of his type of leukemia.  He is scheduled to undergo a bone marrow transplant about 6 weeks.  

With very little in the way of cooking happening in our house, Jen, my sisters, an aunt, a cousin, and my sisters-in-law have sacrificed their time and kept this blog flowing with new recipes.  It may sound like a little thing, but with how much time and effort I've put into the Recipe Shoebox over the years, it's meant a lot to me knowing that the recipe sharing is continuing onward in my absence. 

I hope you'll enjoy your stay here at the Recipe Shoebox.  Check out the menu bar on top for easy navigation.  The search bar on the right is helpful if you're looking for a specific recipe or a recipe that calls for a specific ingredient.   You can subscribe by following it via "Google Friend Connect",  by email with a form on the right, or you can add the blog address to your feed readers.  You can also check out the new social media (Facebook and Pinterest) buttons I've added to make it easier than ever to share your favorite recipes with friends!  

NEWS

Radio Show:  I'm going to be interviewed on a radio show on Monday morning!  Listen to it live at 10:00am EST  here:  http://www.wbcl.org/default.aspx.  If you already missed it, I will post an archived link when I receive it. 

Five Star Rating System:    The company that provided the five star rating system at the bottom of each blog post has discontinued offering that service and thus far I have been unable to find a replacement.  :(  I am sad that all the ratings have disappeared, but I will continue looking to find a replacement service.  If any of you bloggers know of any, please let me know. 

Indexes:  While I've done my best to keep the indexes up-to-date, current events in my life being what they are, I am a few months behind on them.    Use the search bar on the right to search for recipes by  name or specific ingredients. 

Pinterest:  I've added new "Pin It" buttons on the bottom of each post to make it easier than ever to pin your favorite recipes to Pinterest!  My user name is wawadehut....if you want to check out the recipes I've got bookmarked to try when life is normal again. 

Facebook:  Check out the new Facebook "Like" buttons on the bottom of each post and on the right to go along with Recipe Shoebox's revamped page on Facebook!     Check us out! 

LINKS

My Very Favorite Recipe: 

                                                           Chicken Pasta Salad

this healthy recipe is in the top-5 favorites for each one of my kids

Reader Favorites: 

                                                       Crockpot Chicken Parmesan

easy, cheesy and oh so good!

                                                 Garlic Chicken Pasta with Spinach

flavorful and healthy

                                                            Thai Chicken Pasta

this one is quick and easy and always a hit at our house

    Honey Lime Enchiladas
when I asked my Facebook friends which of my recipes was their favorite, this one got the most votes!

   Blueberry Spinach Smoothie
I'm always looking for a tasty way to sneak some superfoods into our diet and this one is my kids' favorite way to eat their spinach

                                                  Easy Chocolate Pretzel Bites

with only 3 ingredients, this is literally one of the easiest treats you can make and they taste as great as they look.  I just let my kids do the unwrapping and setting it up and it's done in no time!

Family Favorites:

                                                           Chicken Tortilla Soup

using leftover chicken and dried onions, this flavorful soup can be done in less than 10 minutes.  It's been on our menu for well over a decade and is still a staple in our menu.

                                                          French Peasant Bread

Back in the day when I was cooking regularly, we made this super easy homemade bread a couple times a week.  It's so easy I even trained my 11-year-old to make it. 

                                                        Makeover Chicken Crescents

This is one of my family's favorite meals ever!  I'll make it for dinner one night, then  freeze the leftovers and then I add them frozen to the kids' lunches.  They are thawed out perfectly by lunchtime and they love getting something other than PB&J's!

                                             Flourless Chocolate Cake

No one in our family needs to eat a gluten-free diet, but this totally flourless cake recipe (no strange flour concoctions to buy at a health food store) is still our favorite chocolate cake recipe ever.  They have a really normal cake texture (not dense like some gluten-free baked goods) and no one will ever guess in a million years that a can of garbanzo beans is the flour replacer.

Most Requested Recipes: 

                                                                  Perfect Pie Crust

This is my #1 requested recipe by a long-shot!

                                                               No-Fail Apple Pie

This recipe has won or placed in several bake-offs and there are certain people who know me as "apple pie lady".

                                               Mom's Streusel-Topped Breakfast Cake
Classic and easy, this recipe has been in our family for a couple of generations and is as well-loved now as it was then.   I've brought it to many brunches and breakfasts over the years and almost invariably I get asked for the recipe.  I usually make it with at least part whole -wheat flour and it still gets gobbled up!

                                                           Secret Buttermilk Syrup
This syrup was a culinary life-changing discovery for us and we simply don't buy regular maple syrup anymore, because this quick to make syrup is so darn good!  My 11-year-old usually whips it up whenever we have pancakes or waffles!  Try it and you won't go back! 

Blogposts about my son:

How We Found Out About Spencer's Leukemia
How We Told Spencer
Trusting in the Lord


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Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Two months ago today my life was consumed with busy mom stuff.  What should I make for dinner tonight?  How many  places do I have to go tonight?   Then on the evening of January 10th we got the phone call that turned our world upside down and in a single instant our priorities shifted in a big way.     After 51 nights in the hospital with my son (and many more to go), I certainly haven't done much in the way of cooking or experimenting with recipes lately, but then I remembered that I do have a bunch of recipes I'd made and hadn't blogged about yet.  I'm taking advantage of a quiet moment tonight and posting about one of those stand-out recipes from BL (Before Leukemia).    

It's been a while since I made this slow cooker meal, but I remember it being super easy--a dump it and forget it type of meal!   I also remember us all enjoying it and thinking that I would definitely make it again.   
Thank you to friends and family who've been taking care of the blog in my absence!    Hopefully you'll see me pop in from time-to-time with some more of these forgotten recipes. :)
Enjoy! 

Adapted from:  All Recipes

Click here for printable recipe. 

Posted by Lara. 

The ingredients: 

(oops!  The black beans didn't make it into the picture) 

1 pound raw chicken breasts, cubed
1 (15 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (10 ounce) can enchilada sauce
1 medium onion, chopped
1 (4 ounce) can chopped green chile peppers
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 (14.5 ounce each) cans chicken broth
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 (10 ounce) package frozen corn
1 can (15-ounce) black beans, drained
1 Tbs. chopped cilantro
7 corn tortillas
vegetable oil

Directions: 
For soup:  Place chicken, tomatoes, enchilada sauce, onion, green chiles, and garlic into a slow cooker. Pour in chicken broth,  cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. Stir in corn, black beans, and cilantro.

Cover, and cook on LOW for 6 to 8 hours or on HIGH for 3 to 4 hours.  Serve hot with sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, and tortilla strips. 

For tortilla strips:  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Lightly brush both sides of corn tortillas with oil. Cut tortillas into strips, then spread on a baking sheet.

Bake in preheated oven until crisp, about 10 to 15 minutes. To serve, sprinkle tortilla strips over soup.

Enjoy!

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Five things to do with Chicken Nuggets

I often eat lunch with a three year old who loves chicken nuggets. Needless to say, I'm sick of chicken nuggets. Plus, there are some nights that are just really busy and it's easy to heat up nuggets for dinner. But what adult wants to eat chicken nuggets for dinner?! So, I've gotten a little bit experimental with chicken nuggets. This is not necessarily a 'how to' post, but rather ideas for you to use when your children beg for chicken nuggets for dinner.

Ingredients:

Cooked Chicken nuggets

imagination

1. Chicken nugget sandwich.

I often eat this for lunch with my toddler because it's easy and I feel a little more full. It's a bit more complete with wheat bread, cheese, and lettuce.2. Chicken nugget quesadilla.

I chopped up the cooked chicken nugget and put it in between two tortillas with cheese and salsa. My kids really liked this.

3. Chicken nugget wrap sandwich.

I have to admit that the inspiration for this came from McDonalds wrap sandwiches. You can wrap whatever you want and use whatever dressing you want to add. Make it like a ranch club with chicken, bacon, cheese, lettuce, and ranch dressing. Make it Buffalo style with buffalo wing hot sauce, lettuce, and blue cheese dressing. Make it whatever you want! Just make sure to wrap it securely at the bottom so nuggets don't fall out.

4. Chicken nugget curry.

I just cooked the nuggets and added them to heated curry sauce. I did add raisins to my curry sauce to give it a little sweetness and a bit of chopped zucchini for nutrition. Serve over rice.

5. Sweet and sour chicken nuggets.

It seems to me that most stir fry recipes involving cooked chicken would also work with chicken nuggets. Check out this recipe for easy sweet and sour sauce. Or this recipe for Orange chicken.

Stay tuned later for even more ideas of ways to use your kid's chicken nuggets!

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Taco Pizza

A long time ago (in a galaxy far far away...in the midwest) I remember Pizza Hut serving taco pizza. It was one of my favorites. Granted, now I can no longer find it at Pizza Hut but I can make it in my own home. I love this pizza because you can put just about anything you would put on a taco, on top of a pizza. What a great combination! I recently came across a recipe that put some corn meal in the pizza dough and I thought I'd try it out. After the first bite, my husband exclaimed, "This tastes like a Chalupa!". And once again the culinary wheels in my head started turning. Anyway, Chalupas are for later, right now it's time for taco pizza.

Posted by Jen

Printable Recipe

The Ingredients:
For the dough:

1 c warm water
1/4 c oil (I like Olive oil)
2 1/2 c flour
3/4 c corn meal
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp (or 1 package) yeast

For the taco toppings:
1 lb ground beef
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 c tomato sauce (not pictured, oops)
1 taco seasoning packet OR 2 tsp taco seasoning (or more to taste)
1 4 oz can diced chilies (optional)
2 c shredded cheese (cheddar, Monterey jack, pepper jack, etc)
1 c shredded lettuce
1/2 c (or more) salsa
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c sliced olives
1 chopped avocado (optional)

OR anything else you like on tacos (refried beans would be great, but my family doesn't like them.

The Directions:
Make your pizza dough as you normally would either in a Kitchenaid, by hand, or by machine. (I used a bread machine on the dough cycle).

While the dough is resting/rising, cook your hamburger with the onion, and spices. (and green chilies if desired) Then add the tomato sauce. (I actually didn't have any tomato sauce so I added some red enchilada sauce!). I also used this opportunity to add in some pureed carrots and spinach so I can sneak more veggies into my family. When the dough is ready roll it out thin and place on your pizza pan. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Poke pizza dough all over with a fork so that it doesn't puff up while baking. (sorry I forgot to take a picture at this point) Bake in oven for about 10 minutes or until lightly brown. Remove and add meat and cheese toppings. (If your family likes refried beans, heat some up and spread it thinly on the bottom of the meat mixture)
When the cheese is melted, remove from oven. Working quickly add the lettuce, salsa, avocados, olives (if you'd like), and sour cream. Serve immediately while still warm. Yum. It looks like a giant taco!

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