Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars

So my husband's birthday is on Valentine's Day.  As in, yesterday.  Lucky for him, I've never been the biggest fan of Valentine's Day.  I know that seems strange for a female to not really be interested in it.  I've never understood why you pick one day to suddenly show how much you love someone.  Isn't that something we should be doing every day?  So every year, I always tell Ryan that his Valentine's Day gift to me to keeping me out of the chaos that surrounds restaurants every February 14th.  I'd much rather stay home and cook Ryan a big birthday meal than go out and wait for two hours just to get a seat at a table.  No thank you.  Ryan's big meal this year consisted of his favorite meal - homemade spaghetti and meatballs with the homemade focaccia bread.  You might remember that bread from this post, perhaps?  I always want to make him a really good dessert to go along with his birthday dinner and that usually either means this key lime pie or something chocolaty.  But this year, I decided to change things up a bit and make something I'd never tried before.  The recipe seemed way too easy to be real but we pushed on anyway. 

Ryan and I love to eat at On the Border Mexican Restaurant.  One of our favorite things?  Their sopapillas.  You absolutely cannot go wrong with baked, sweet yeast dough that's covered with cinnamon sugar and then dipped into honey.  I mean, that's like heaven on a plate!  When I came across this recipe on The Tale of Two Kitchens blog (you might recall I got her delicious cookies in the cookie swap last December), I knew this was a recipe that I couldn't just put in my binder of "found recipes" and then forget about it.  It combined two of my favorite things - cheesecake and sopapillas!  Cheesecake!  Honey!  Sugar!  CINNAMON!! 

Here's the trick - it needs to be COLD when you eat it.  The taste is not right when its a room temperature or especially not when it's hot.  Just be patient and let it sit in the fridge for a few hours.  You'll thank me for it!

This recipe will easily reduce by half to fit into an 8x8 pan instead of a full 9x13.  Keep the cook times the same but remember to only use half of the can of crescent roll dough on the bottom and the other half on the top.  Feel free to use reduced fat crescent roll dough and reduced fat cream cheese (I think I used one full fat and one fat free - they were on sale) to make yourself feel better about eating the whole thing one piece.

Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars
courtesy of The Tale of Two Kitchens

2 cans of Crescent Roll Dough
2 8 oz. Cream Cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 c. Sugar, divided
1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
2 tsp. Cinnamon
2 Tbsp. Butter, melted
Honey (optional)

Preheat your oven to 350.
Spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray.
Unroll your first can of crescent roll dough into the bottom of the pan, pinching the seams together.
In a mixer, combine 1 cup of sugar, vanilla, and both packages of cream cheese and mix until smooth.
Spread over your crescent roll dough.
Unroll the second can of crescent roll dough over the top of the cheesecake mixture; again pinching the seams together.
Brush the top of the crescent roll dough with your melted butter (use all the butter!).
In a separate bowl, mix your cinnamon and the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar.
Now go crazy and sprinkle all of the cinnamon-sugar mixture over the entire surface of the buttered crescent roll dough.
Bake for 30 minutes or until the bottom crust is slightly browned.
Cool completely.
Let it chill in your fridge for a few hours.
Cut into bars, drizzle with honey (if you like), and enjoy!!

Easy Banana Nut Muffins

Sometimes a recipe comes along that is so good, people ask for it as a gift.  This is the story of these muffins.  I was looking for a banana nut muffin recipe because I had some bananas that were turning black and were begging to be used.  Now, I'm not the biggest fan of banana nut bread or muffins.  I prefer straight bananas but my best friend Erin is the exact opposite and I knew my parents loved banana nut things (what about Ryan?  He hates bananas).  So I knew if I made them, they would be eaten.  I made the muffins and my dad fell in love with them.  He loved them so much that when I asked him what he wanted for father's day, he said, "I want those banana muffins you made a couple of weeks ago."  So that's what I did!


Banana Nut Muffins
(recipe courtesy of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook)

1/2 c. Butter, melted
1/2 c. Brown Sugar (I use light but you can use dark if that's all you have)
3/4 tsp. Baking Soda
3/4 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice (no PPS?  Use 1/4 tsp. nutmeg and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon)
1 tsp. Vanilla Extract (Neilson-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste)
3 Ripened Bananas
1/4 c. Honey
2 Eggs (or 1/2 c. Egg Beaters)
2 c. Whole Wheat Flour (or White Whole Wheat or All-Purpose) (KAF)
1/2 c. Chopped Walnuts or Pecans

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 12 cup muffin tin.
Beat together the butter, brown sugar, baking soda, spices, and vanilla in a bowl until smooth.
Add the honey and eggs, beating until smooth.
Peel the bananas and place into the bowl.  Using a potato masher, mash the bananas into the mixture (you can make it as lumpy or smooth as you like).
Add in the flour, stir to combine.
Lastly, add the walnuts/pecans and mix.
Pour the batter evenly into your muffin tin (I like using a 1/4 c. measuring cup so I know how much is going into each tin).
Bake the muffins for 23 to 28 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool for a couple of minutes and then move the muffins to a rack to cool.

Notes:
Want to make Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins?  Add 1/2 c. chocolate chips instead of the 1/2 c. nuts.
Want bread instead of muffins?  Follow the directions only instead of adding to greased muffin tin, you'll add the batter to a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes.  After 50 minutes, cover the bread lightly with foil and cook an additional 10 minutes.  Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing the bread from the pan and allowing it to finish cooling on a wire rack.

Baklava Cookies

I've never had baklava.  And I've certainly never tried to make it (too many layers... one day, I may attempt it).  But that doesn't mean I've never wanted to try it.  But I've always been leery of new things but I've become more outgoing when it comes to food here lately so when I came across this baklava cookie recipe in Spike Mendelsohn's cookbook The Good Stuff Cookbook, I was certainly intrigued (for those of you who watch Top Chef on Bravo, Spike should be no stranger to you - he's one of my favorite chefs to ever be on the show and when I found out that he had put out a cookbook that was all about burgers, shakes, and sweets, I was alllll over it!).  So today, I finally summed up the courage to make this cookie and boy am I glad I did!  I adore this cookie!  The more I eat them, the higher up on my list of favorite cookies it goes.  Everyone loves chocolate chip (or, my other post, oatmeal-raisin) but every once in a while, you want something different.  If you want a different cookie, this is the recipe you should try.  It's buttery and rich and with the honey glaze, decadent but without being too overpowering to make you not want to eat more than one.  I highly recommend that you try this cookie recipe ASAP!

Side note:  Please use parchment paper under your cookies for this recipe.  When you drizzle the glaze over the cookies, it will make cleanup extremely easy for you.

Baklava Cookies
(from The Good Stuff Cookbook by Spike Mendelsohn)

Cookies:
2 3/4 c. All Purpose Flour (KAF)
1 - 1 1/2 c. Chopped Walnuts (I prefer less walnuts so I opted for 1 c. but you can use up to 1 1/2 c.)
1 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
1 1/4 c. Butter (that's 2 1/2 sticks!  I told you it was buttery.)
2 c. Sugar
1/4 c. Egg Beaters (or 1 egg)
1 tsp. Vanilla (Nielson-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste)

Glaze:
1/3 c. Honey
2 Tbsp. Butter
1 tsp. Vanilla (Vanilla Bean Paste)
1/2 tsp. Lemon Juice
1/4 tsp. Ground Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350.
In a large bowl, combine flour, walnuts, cinnamon, baking soda and powder .
In another bowl, mix melted butter and sugar until smooth.
Add the egg and vanilla to the butter and sugar mix.
Slowly add the egg mixture to flour and nut mix and mix well.
Using your hands, form small round dough balls and place them on a baking sheet that's covered with parchment paper (I told you before - I love parchment paper!).
Press down on the dough balls gently to flatten them slightly.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.
While the cookies are baking, make the glaze by combining all ingredients into a small saucepan over low heat until the mix is syrupy.
Set the glaze aside until ready to use.
Let the cookies cool on their baking sheet and drizzle the glaze over the cookies after they've cooled.

Calories:  171 per cookie (makes 35)