1. Pour 1 cup fat free milk into a tall glass or large mug.

2. Add 24 Teddy Grahams Chocolate Graham snacks, a few at a time.

3. Serve with a long spoon to scoop out and eat the graham snacks, and a fun straw to slurp up the milk.

Brought to you by the back of the Teddy Grahams Box.

Ingredients

Oatmeal Scones from Gourmet Nov. 2005…I substituted yogurt and a little whole milk for buttermilk (the carton we had in the fridge said sell by March 17th…I thought it smelled okay but everyone made me throw it out). But the scones were really good!

Servings: Makes 18 scones.

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups plus 2 tablespoons old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon pieces
2/3 cup well-shaken buttermilk plus additional for brushing

Preparation

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.

Sift together flour, 1/4 cup brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a food processor. Add 1 1/3 cups oats and pulse 15 times. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal with some pea-size lumps. Transfer to a bowl.

Add buttermilk and stir with a fork until a dough just forms. Gently knead on a floured surface 6 times.

Pat into a 9-inch square (1/2 inch thick). Cut into 9 (3-inch) squares. Cut each square diagonally to form 2 triangles. Transfer to an ungreased baking sheet.

Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with remaining brown sugar and oats. Bake until golden brown, about 16 minutes.

Polenta is rapidly becoming a staple at school…it is super cheap to buy in bulk and you can eat it for any meal, and is even better when you fry it up the next day in butter. This is the best recipe I’ve used so far, the bacon makes it extra delicious. I didn’t have any sage when I made it so I just left it out, and it was still good. From Bon Appetit 1997

Polenta with Bacon & Sage

1 cup coarsely chopped bacon (about 7 slices)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
1 10-ounce package frozen corn kernels, thawed
5 1/2 cups water
1 cup polenta (coarse cornmeal)*
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Cook bacon in heavy large skillet over medium heat until crisp. Using slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 1/2 teaspoons fat from skillet. Add sage; sauté 1 minute. Add corn; sauté 1 minute. Add 5 1/2 cups water; increase heat to medium-high and bring to boil. Gradually whisk in polenta. Reduce heat to low; cook until polenta begins to thicken, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes. Stir in cream, cheese, and bacon. Season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

* Available at Italian markets, natural foods stores, and some supermarkets. If unavailable, substitute an equal amount of regular yellow cornmeal, and cook mixture for about half the amount of time.

This is the best flourless chocolate cake recipe I’ve found…it’s super easy and hardly has any ingredients, most of which you’d normally have on hand anyway. It’s great for potlucks too because it’s super rich and you can only eat a little at one time! From Gourmet, 1997

Ingredients

4 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened)
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder plus additional for sprinkling

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375°F and butter an 8-inch round baking pan. Line bottom with a round of wax paper and butter paper.

Chop chocolate into small pieces. In a double boiler or metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate with butter, stirring, until smooth. Remove top of double boiler or bowl from heat and whisk sugar into chocolate mixture. Add eggs and whisk well. Sift 1/2 cup cocoa powder over chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined. Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven 25 minutes, or until top has formed a thin crust. Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes and invert onto a serving plate.

Dust cake with additional cocoa powder and serve with sorbet if desired. (Cake keeps, after being cooled completely, in an airtight container, 1 week.)

Ingredients

Banoffee Pie is probably the easiest and most impressive-looking no-effort dessert there is. It only has 3 ingredients (plus the crust) and it hardly costs anything to make. Also it is so rich that you can easily feed 10-12 of your friends, no problem. The only trick is figuring out how to caramelize the condensed milk. Rumor has it you can put the cans of sweetened condensed milk directly into a pot of boiling water and boil them for 2 hours straight, but after some research I decided that I didn’t want to risk exploding cans of milk and I took a less exciting but significantly safer route. If you put the 2 cups of condensed milk in a tinfoil-covered glass Pyrex (a pie plate works fine), you can then place that in a pan full of water and essentially caramelize the milk in the oven without worrying about shrapnel.

2 cups canned sweetened condensed milk (21 oz)
1 (9-inch) round of refrigerated pie dough (from 15-oz package)
3 large bananas
1 1/2 cups chilled heavy cream
1 tablespoon packed light brown sugar

Special equipment: a 9-inch pie plate (preferably deep dish)

Preparation

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.Pour condensed milk into pie plate and stir in a generous pinch of salt. Cover pie plate with foil and crimp foil tightly around rim. Put in a roasting pan, then add enough boiling-hot water to reach halfway up side of pie plate, making sure that foil is above water. Bake, refilling pan to halfway with water about every 40 minutes, until milk is thick and a deep golden caramel color, about 2 hours. Remove pie plate from water bath and transfer toffee to a bowl, then chill toffee, uncovered, until it is cold, about 1 hour.

While toffee is chilling, clean pie plate and bake piecrust in it according to package instructions. Cool piecrust completely in pan on a rack, about 20 minutes.

Spread toffee evenly in crust, and chill, uncovered, 15 minutes.

Cut bananas into 1/4-inch-thick slices and pile over toffee.

Beat cream with brown sugar in a clean bowl with an electric mixer until it just holds soft peaks, then mound over top of pie.

Recipe from Gourmet January 2005.

Ingredients

Described as ” A zingy lemon tart [that] gains an Italian accent with a crisp, almond-perfumed crust,” the lemon crostata I made a few weekends ago was good, but not really worth all the effort. The crust had 3/4 cup of almonds added to it, but honestly it didn’t really taste that different from a normal pastry crust. Also with all of the eggs and butter, it probably wasn’t that healthy either. But it turned out beautifully.

From Gourmet April 2006

For pastry dough
3/4 cup whole almonds with skins
(1/4 pound), toasted and cooled
2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
11/4 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon salt

For filling and assembly
5 large egg yolks
3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
3/4 stick unsalted butter, cut into bits
3/4 teaspoon salt

Equipment: an 8-inch springform pan; a pastry/pizza wheel

Preparation

Make dough:
Pulse almonds with 1/4 cup flour in a food processor until finely ground, being careful not to grind to a paste.

Beat together butter and sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Chill 1 tablespoon beaten egg for egg wash and beat remaining egg into butter mixture. Beat in vanilla and almond extracts. At low speed, mix in almond mixture, zest, salt, and remaining 1 3/4 cups flour until a dough just forms. Halve dough and form each half into a 5- to 6-inch disk. Wrap disks separately in plastic wrap and chill until firm, at least 30 minutes.

Make filling:
Beat yolks with 3/4 cup sugar using cleaned beaters until very thick and tripled in volume, about 5 minutes. Transfer to a heavy medium saucepan and stir in zest, juice, butter, and salt. Cook over medium-low heat, whisking frequently, until curd is thick enough to hold marks of whisk and mixture begins to bubble, about 6 minutes. Transfer lemon curd to a bowl and chill, its surface covered with parchment paper, until cold, at least 1 hour.

Bake crostata:
Preheat oven to 375°F with rack in middle. Generously butter springform pan.

Roll out 1 piece of dough (keep other piece chilled) between 2 sheets of parchment into a 12-inch round (dough will be very tender). Remove top sheet of parchment and invert dough into springform pan. (Dough will tear easily; patch it with your fingers.) Press dough over bottom and 1 inch up side of pan, trimming excess.

Chill shell and roll out remaining dough between sheets of parchment into a 12-inch round. Remove top sheet of parchment, then cut dough into 10 (1/3-inch-wide) strips with pastry wheel and slide, still on parchment, onto a baking sheet. Chill until firm, 30 to 45 minutes.

Bake shell until bottom is pale golden and edge is golden, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool shell in pan on a rack, about 30 minutes.

Spread filling in shell and arrange 5 strips 1 inch apart on filling. Arrange remaining 5 strips 1 inch apart diagonally across first strips to form a lattice with diamond-shaped spaces. Trim edges of all strips flush with edge of shell. Brush lattice top with egg wash and sprinkle crostata with remaining tablespoon sugar.

Bake crostata until pastry is golden and filling is bubbling, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool completely in pan on a rack, about 2 hours (juices will thicken).

Amazing Black Bean Brownie Recipe

When I read about the amazing black bean brownies recipe on 101 Cookbooks I was really excited. Not known for being a health food, brownies with black beans and agave nectar (instead of sugar) sounded to good to be true…and they were. Admittedly I substituted honey for the agave nectar (as suggested by the author of the recipe) and I had to use a blender instead of a food processor, but the result was not the delicious brownie I’d envisioned. I nearly broke my blender trying to chop up the walnuts and the black beans together and the “egg swirl” on the top didn’t look nearly as pretty as in the picture. But if you didn’t know that there were beans in them and you didn’t think that you were eating a brownie, they were pretty impressive for having such non-traditional ingredients. It was an interesting experiment, but at the end I kind of felt like it was a waste of butter.

From 101Cookbooks.com

For those of you who have a hard time tracking down agave nectar (which is becoming much more readily available) substitute honey 1:1 for the agave nectar. Ania’s head notes encourage you to keep these brownies in the refrigerator, they will slice much better if refrigerated several hours or preferably overnight. I used instant coffee this time around, but you can find natural coffee substitute at many natural food stores.

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups soft-cooked black beans, drained well (hs: canned is fine)
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup (granulated) natural coffee substitute (or instant coffee, for gluten-sensitive)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
4 large eggs
1½ cups light agave nectar

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line an 11- by 18-inch (rimmed) baking pan (hs note: or jellyroll pan) with parchment paper and lightly oil with canola oil spray.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on high. Stir with a spoon to melt the chocolate completely. Place the beans, 1/2 cup of the walnuts, the vanilla extract, and a couple of spoonfuls of the melted chocolate mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Blend about 2 minutes, or until smooth. The batter should be thick and the beans smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup walnuts, remaining melted chocolate mixture, coffee substitute, and salt. Mix well and set aside.

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat the eggs until light and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the agave nectar and beat well. Set aside.

Add the bean/chocolate mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture. Stir until blended well.

Add the egg mixture, reserving about 1/2 cup. Mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup egg mixture until light and fluffy. Drizzle over the brownie batter. Use a wooden toothpick to pull the egg mixture through the batter, creating a marbled effect. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the brownies are set. Let cool in the pan completely before cutting into squares. (They will be soft until refrigerated.)

Makes 45 (2-inch) brownies.

Reprinted with permission from Baking With Agave Nectar: Over 100 Recipes Using Nature’s Ultimate Sweetener by Ania Catalano. (Ten Speed Press 2008)

Over break I made this polenta, it was really delicious and had just the right amount of blue cheese. The recipe was from the April 2008 issue of Gourmet, and it went really well with flank steak and broccoli! Also it’s really quick to make and pretty hard to screw up.

See the Recipes page for instructions and ingredients.