Sweet Potato & Black Bean Soup

Do you use canned black beans or do you make your own? Since canned beans can be as much as 1.00 something a can, I decided to make my own. After doing some research, I settled on cooking them in the Slow Cooker. I soaked the beans for about 6 hours and cooked them for about 4 hours on high. The interesting thing was, my black beans became brown beans. It seemed most of the dark color was either in the water from soaking or in the water from cooking. Has anyone else experienced this?

I've seen quite a few recipes for soup with black beans and sweet potatoes or butternut squash. With these recipes as inspiration, I created my own recipe. This recipe makes a delicious but very spicy soup. I love the flavor from the addition of just a touch of cinnamon. You could easily add chicken or even some sausage to this soup.


Slow Cooker Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 T. olive oil
1 large sweet potato, diced
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
2 cups black beans
1 can Rotel peppers
1T. chili powder
2 t. cumin
1 t. smoked paprika
1/2 t. cinnamon

Chop garlic and onion. Heat olive oil in a skillet until sizzling, add garlic and onion. Saute until soft. Dice sweet potato. Combine all ingredients in crock pot. Cook on low 8 hours.

I am linking this to Tasty Tuesday's, Tuesday's at the Table, Souper Sunday at Kahakai Kitchen and Tuesday Night Supper Club.

Chocolate Pudding - Sweet Melissa Sunday's

Does chocolate pudding remind you of your childhood? It's one of my earliest kitchen memories. My mom would make Jello Chocolate Pudding for dessert. I remember when I was maybe seven? she let help me stir the pudding on the stove. I don't remember it seeming to take as long to cook as it does today!

I love dessert! It's my favorite food group! I make a lot of desserts from scratch. Pudding, however, I don't think I have ever made from scratch. When I saw this weeks SMS recipe was Chocolate Pudding, I knew I wanted to participate. I also realized pudding is on my Top 50 list, so apparently this isn't the first time it occurred to me I'd never made pudding from scratch.

I made 1/4 recipe and ended up with 2 five ounce ramekins. The recipe called for checking pudding after 45 minutes. To be safe, I checked after 40. Was it done? It didn't appear soupy but didn't really look done. Melissa suggests using an instant read thermometer and if it reads between 150 - 155, it's done. Okay, 152! Interesting though the top of my pudding doesn't appear smooth like I would expect it to look. I wonder if I cooked it too long.

The pudding is denser and thicker than I expect a pudding to be. The flavor is nice, with just the right amount of chocolate. I liked it but I didn't love it!



Thanks to Leslie of Lethally Delicious for choosing this week's recipe. You can find the recipe on her blog. If you want to see the other SMS baker's pudding, you can find the links to their blogs here!

I'm hosting SMS in two weeks, Irish Soda Bread!!

Pink Saturday

Since it's still cold in the midwest, I wanted to share some beautiful reminders of Spring.

I am linking this to Pink Saturday at How Sweet the Sound!!

Worlds Best French Toast

When we were in Cabo a few weeks ago, we had breakfast at a great little restaurant, Mama's. Mama's boasts they have the "Worlds Best French Toast". It's their version of Stuffed French Toast.

I wanted to recreate this dish! After reading the recipe, I realized I don't really have a flambe pan. Probably not a good idea to flambe in non stick! The only french bread in the freezer was baguettes. Not a good size for french toast. With stuffed french toast as my inspiration, this is my version of the "Worlds Best French Toast". Maybe not the world's best but we thought it was pretty darn good.


Stuffed French Toast w/Banana Syrup

French Toast
1 serving
2 slices White Bread (I used sourdough)
Strawberry Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 Egg
2 T. Milk
1 t. vanilla
1 T. Butter

Spread cream cheese on one side of slices the bread. Make a sandwich out of the bread.
Whisk egg, milk and vanilla.Dip the bread in the egg mixture, making sure it is is coated well.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium high heat. Once the butter is hot, add the bread and cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Flip and cook on the other side.

Syrup

1 banana, sliced in 1/2 inch slices
2 T. Honey
1/2 t. cinnamon
2 T. Pecans, roughly chopped

Melt butter in a skillet over medium high heat, stir in honey. Once combined, add cinnamon and pecans. Once the sauce is bubbling, add the banana and cook an additional minute or two. Don't overcook or the banana will get too soft.

Pour over French Toast. Garnish with powdered sugar, if desired.

I am linking this to Foodie Friday at Designs by Gollum and Fat Camp Friday at Mangoes and Chutney.

From The Good Life - Trek Up The Tower

I am so proud of my husband! This past Saturday he completed Trek Up The Tower. 40 floors, 870 stairs! Trek Up The Tower is held in The First National Bank Building in Omaha. Which by the way, is the tallest building between Denver and Chicago.

Cracaos - Chocolate with Francois

One of the things I like about Chocolate With Francois is it challenging my baking abilities! Boy does it challenge my baking abilities! If I look back over the past months of Chocolate With Francois, I've had more failures than successes. However, those successes are fantastic. what keeps me coming back is hoping that month's recipe will be another success. Unfortunately, this month's wasn't that next success.

Payard's explains Cracaos are a traditional European cookies. There isn't a picture of these cookies in the book. Being a visual person, I searched for Cracaos. Nothing, except a reference to the recipe in this book. Interesting! I am not sure I have ever baked anything that you can't find on the internet.

The recipe goes together easily. The challenging part for me began with the shaping of the cookies. Francois instructs the baker to roll the dough to 6 x 5 1/2 x 1 1/2, chill and then cut into 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 x 1/4 strips. I realized you have to cut the dough in half to get to 1/4. I decided to cut mine into stars. The dough was hard to work with and tricky to cut into shapes. I halved the recipe and ended up with 12 stars. The recipe calls for a baking time of 10 - 12 minutes. I think because of the larger shape of mine, they required a little longer baking time. After about 17 minutes, I opened the door to pull them out and check on them. I touched my forearm on the oven door. Hot oven and my reflexes made me jump. All but three cookies were either in the oven or on the floor in pieces.

I picked up the pieces, salvaged the good ones and placed them on a rack to cool. Once they'd cooled, I tried a couple of the pieces. I thought they were blah! Not at all what I expected. Since these cookies have toasted pistachios and walnuts, I thought they would be packed with flavor.



I am looking forward to seeing what this month's host, Astheroshe and my fellow CWF bakers thought of these and how their Cracaos turned out.

Pink Saturday

Last weekend Tim and I went to Lauritzen Gardens. Beautiful blooms on a cold winter day!!!

I am linking this to Pink Saturday at How Sweet the Sound!!