Flashback Friday - Viente de Mayo

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on May 20, 2013.

After seeing several Internet items extolling the virtue of making one's own corn tortillas, I thought I'd give it a go. Why not try it to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that means nothing to most Americans but, like St. Patrick's Day, is a good excuse to drink?

But we had a pack of corn tortillas in the fridge already, and, truth be told, Mr Minx isn't all that fond of tacos made with soft corn tortillas. (I know!) So instead of tortillas, I figured I'd make some other sort of fried thingy with my newly-purchased bag of masa. 

I noodled around online and found recipes for things called sopes, which appeared to be thick fried tortillas with a rim around the edge. But some of those recipes were similar to the rimless gorditas, which may or may not be split open and filled, depending on the recipe consulted. This blog (and others) calls them Salvadoran enchiladas, but if there's no chiles on them, etymologically speaking, how is that even possible? 

If I did call them sopes or gorditas and, heaven forfend, topped or filled them with something non-traditional or not from the proper region, the spirits of Mexican grandmothers will haunt me forever. Or so my research led me to believe.

I decided that the best--and safest--technical term for fried corn thingies made by a gringo like me would be Fried Corn Thingies. Then I would be able to top them with whatever my little heart wanted to top them with, without fear of repercussions from the Great Beyond. For our Cinco de Mayo dinner, that was a combination of chicken and chorizo, plus refried black beans and various condiments. On the side I served my version of esquites, and we washed everything down with passionfruit margaritas. Well, the original intention was to have passionfruit margaritas, but the Ceres brand passionfruit juice I purchased didn't taste very much like the tangy fruit in question. They were ok, but not anything to write home about. Especially if home is Mexico. Everything else, however, was muy bueno.

Fried Corn Thingies with Assorted Toppings

Thingies (recipe below)
Refried Black Beans (recipe below)
Chorizo Chicken (recipe below)
Chipotle Sauce (recipe below)
Easy Salsa (or your favorite salsa) (recipe below)
crumbly cheese, like feta or cotija
sliced avocado
fresh cilantro

Layer beans, chicken, chipotle sauce, salsa, and cheese on a Thingy. Top with avocado and cilantro. Devour and repeat.

Fried Corn Thingies 

2 cups masa
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus more for frying

Mix masa, water, and 1/4 cup oil into a smooth dough. Divide dough into 10 pieces. Form each one into a flattened disk about 1/4" thick.

Heat a griddle or large frying pan. Add disks a few at a time and cook for about 2 minutes on the first side, until it starts to brown lightly. Flip the disks, cook 2 minutes more on the other side, and remove from heat. Set aside until ready to eat.

When ready to serve, cook the thingies about 2 minutes per side in a bit of oil to crisp. Drain on paper towels.

Refried Black Beans

1 15oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup water
salt and pepper to taste

Put beans and water in a saucepan and cook over medium high heat, stirring frequently and vigorously, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the beans are mostly mashed. Remove from heat and add salt and pepper to taste.

Chorizo Chicken

1/2 cup chopped onion
vegetable oil
pinch salt
2 links Mexican chorizo
3 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
splash balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook onion in a bit of oil and a pinch of salt until softened. Remove chorizo from casings and add to onions, breaking up sausage with the back of a wooden spoon. Cook, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes, until sausage starts to darken. Add the chicken thighs, broth, and cilantro. Bring to a boil, then cover the pot and turn the heat down to medium-low. Simmer chicken about thirty minutes until tender.

Remove chicken from pot and allow to cool for a few minutes. With your fingers, two forks, or a knife and a fork, shred/chop the meat into small piece and add back to the pan. Turn up heat and cook, uncovered, until most of the liquid has evaporated, skimming off most of the red oil that rises to the top. Stir in the garlic, brown sugar, and vinegar. Cook an additional minute or two and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Chipotle Sauce

1 canned chipotle in adobo, seeded and minced
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
3 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
pinch sugar
pinch salt

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Easy Salsa

2 large or 4 small tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup chopped scallions
1 tablespoon lime juice
pinch cumin
salt and pepper to taste.

Mix first four ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Avocado Soup and Crab Salad

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on June 21, 2013.

I do most of the cooking on the weekends, except when we go out to eat (of course). If I'm thinking ahead, I plan my meals by Tuesday, our usual grocery shopping day. Most of the time though, I don't give it a thought until Thursday or Friday and then I have to decide whether I should just use what we have in the house, or schlep down to the grocery store to pick up special ingredients.

One recent weekend, we had steamed crabs on Saturday and ended up with a nice container of leftover meat. Rather than default to making crab cakes, I decided to make a crab salad and serve it with a soup made from the two ripe avocados we had picked up earlier in the week. The soup was thick and lusciously creamy, and the citrussy salad added the perfect touch of acid.

I used black garlic to season the soup because I had it. You can use one clove of regular garlic, but chop it and add it to the scallion while it's cooking to cut some of the strong garlic taste. Of course, if you like the flavor of raw garlic, don't let me get in your way!

Avocado Soup

4 scallions, white and green parts, chopped
olive oil
2 ripe Haas avocados
3 tablespoons lime juice
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 cup plain yogurt or sour cream
3 cloves black garlic
couple shakes of hot sauce (I used green Tabasco)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook scallions in a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt until wilted. Add them, along with the rest of the ingredients, to the bowl of a food processor or blender and purée. If the mixture is too thick for your taste, add a bit more stock or yogurt. Season to taste, adding more lime juice, if desired. Serve chilled, topped with a handful of crab salad.

Makes 4 appetizer or 2 main dish servings.

Crab Salad

2 tablespoons orange or grapefruit juice or a combination of the two
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon honey or agave syrup
1 lb blue crab meat (body and claw), picked over for shell
1 tomato, seeded and finely chopped
fresh basil and mint leaves

Combine the first six ingredients in a small bowl, beating well with a fork until the dressing emulsifies. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the crab and tomato in a medium bowl. Pour over the dressing and toss lightly to coat. Taste for seasoning and add additional salt and pepper, if necessary. Cut basil and mint into a chiffonade and stir in before serving.

Makes more than you'll need for the soup, so grab a fork and dig in.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Thai Beef Salad

It's not even Summer yet and we've already had some sizzling weather on the East Coast. When the weather is warm and I don't want to spend a lot of time fussing with dinner, I resort to gazpacho and salads so I can stay out of a hot kitchen. When I got word of the Keystone Beef recipe contest in honor of National Beef Month, I knew a quick salad was the way to go. It helped that the rules require the dish be made in 30 minutes or less, but that was going to happen anyway because the main ingredient was pre-cooked meat. Yeah yeah, I see you wrinkling your nose at the thought of canned, pre-cooked, beef. I felt the same way, but then I tasted Mr Minx's Emergency Chili made with the same product, and realized that canned beef isn't all that different from canned tuna. It's convenient and tasty and cuts down on cooking time in a big way.

This dish cooks for about 12 minutes, and chopping takes maybe another 10, but the flavor payoff makes it seem like it took much longer. I served the salad over a pile of baby spinach and arugula, but you can scoop it into cups of lettuce, if you'd like, or even eat it over rice or pasta.

Thai Beef Salad

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoons sambal oelek
1 can Keystone beef, drained
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved, quartered if large
1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into matchsticks
2 scallions, chopped
Salt to taste
Handful of torn mint leaves
Handful of cilantro
French fried onions
Fresh greens of your choice

Combine the lime juice, fish sauce, brown sugar, garlic, and sambal in a bowl. Place the beef in a sauce pan and warm over medium heat. Stir in the sauce. Cook for ten minutes. Add the tomatoes, carrot, and scallions and stir. Cook an additional minute or two. Taste for seasoning and add salt, if necessary. Stir in most of the mint and cilantro, leaving a few pieces for garnish.

Serve the beef warm or at room temperature over a pile of greens. Garnish with leftover mint and cilantro and some of the french fried onions.

Serves 3-4 as an appetizer or two as a main dish.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Another Carrot Recipe - Yes, I Like Carrots.

I normally don't follow recipes to the letter. I don't know if it's because I know my palate and understand what will work best for it, or if I just have some odd recipe-specific ADD. In any case, it's very very rare that I do what I'm supposed to do. Case in point: the recipe for roasted carrots with creamy nuoc cham dressing that I found in a recent e-mailing from Bon Appetit magazine. Nuoc cham is the ubiquitous Vietnamese all-purpose sauce. It's sweet, salty, pungent, and amazingly delicious. Blending it with mayo and oil to create a dressing to go over a lightly sweet roasted root vegetable seemed like the fabulous no-brainer idea I always want to have (but often don't).

Normally, if I get a recipe off the Internet, I write the ingredients on a piece of scrap paper and take that to the kitchen with me. In the case of this recipe, I neglected to write down "1 ½-inch piece ginger, peeled, thinly sliced." So I made it without the ginger. Nevertheless, the sauce was lovely (after I added more mayo and a pinch of cayenne to up the heat level a tad). It worked very very well with the roasted carrots, but would be even better, I think, as a dressing for a Caesar salad. Just add parm. Had I remembered the ginger, however, I don't think I would have made the connection.

Fortunately, this recipe makes more dressing than needed for the carrots. Toss it on some romaine lettuce, add croutons and lots of fresh Parmesan, and you'll have the Caesar salad of your dreams.

Roasted Carrots with Creamy Nuoc Cham Dressing (adapted from Bon Appetit)

2 pounds medium carrots, peeled
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Kosher salt
1 medium shallot, thinly sliced
Pinch red pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Pinch cayenne (optional)

Preheat oven to 425°. Toss carrots and vegetable oil on a large rimmed baking sheet and season with salt. Roast, tossing occasionally, until crisp-tender, 20–25 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring shallot, red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, sugar, and 2 tablespoons water to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook until shallot is soft, 8–10 minutes. Let cool. Transfer to a blender or mini-prep food processor, add lime juice and mayonnaise, and blend until smooth. With motor running, gradually stream in ¼ cup oil; blend until emulsified. Season dressing with salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper, if you'd like the dressing to be spicier.

Drizzle dressing over carrots just before serving.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Fish Tacos

I don't particularly like fish tacos; I find them to be bland. I've had them in different places, but no matter how many toppings were added to the rather plain fish, they were all meh to me. Then I had them at Grille 620 in Ellicott City. The ones I had there were wrapped in flour tortillas, rather than the usual corn, and I think it made all the difference. Flour tortillas have relatively little flavor, so the elements inside can sing out. Corn tortillas have a little more going for them, and I feel they work better with bolder fillings.

My blog, my opinion. I don't care if flour tortillas aren't traditional. Neither am I. (And if they're good enough for Bobby Flay, they're good enough for me.)

Fish tacos usually involve some sort of white fish, plus a slaw, and a crema. Lots of times there will be pickled onions involved, too, which is my favorite part. Oh, and guacamole. I also added a tomatillo salsa, which is easy peasy to make, and tastes great on just about any other kind of taco you can imagine as well.

Pickled Red Onions

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon superfine sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 red onion

Combine the vinegar, sugar, and salt in a pint jar. Put the lid on and shake vigorously to dissolve sugar and salt. Slice the red onion thinly and place into a colander or sieve. Put a couple cups of water on to boil; when boiled, pour over the red onion in the sieve. Shake all of the water off, then pack onion into the jar. If the vinegar doesn't come up over the onion, add a little more. Seal jar and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Tomatillo Salsa

4-5 tomatillos
2 jalapeno peppers
3 scallions
Handful fresh cilantro
1 small clove garlic
1-2 teaspoons brown sugar
Pinch cumin
Salt, to taste

Remove husks from tomatillos, rinse them and cut into quarters. Stem and deseed the jalapenos (leave some seeds in, if you want more heat). Remove root end from scallions and chop remainder into 1" pieces.

Put tomatillos, jalapenos, scallions, cilantro, and garlic into a blender and puree. Pour into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir in the brown sugar, cumin, and salt. Cook about 5 minutes, until mixture darkens. Taste for seasoning, adding more sugar or salt if you think it needs it. It should mostly be tart, but not sour.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Thai Bolognese

In a three day period, Mr Minx and I dined at Bobby Flay's new restaurant, Gato, had a 7-course lunch at Le Bernardin, another multi-course lunch at Ma Peche, and dinner at Harold Dieterle's Kin Shop. With all of that good food behind us, it was hard to come home to a fridge full of nothing. Right away we went to the grocery store to stock up on fresh veggies and dinner fixins. I figured a spicy Asian-style meal would be a good segue from fancy NY food to home cooking, and the first night home whipped up a pasta sauce that was part laab, part Bolognese.

I wanted to use ground pork, but the store we visited had none. Instead, I used ground turkey and made sure to season it well to get rid of, well, the turkey flavor. There's always an assortment of Asian condiments in the fridge (miso, gochujang, hoisin, chili bean paste) so I combined my favorite Thai chilli with basil paste and red curry paste, plus lots of fish sauce, lime juice, and coconut milk powder to make a richly flavored yet light sauce. You could use liquid coconut milk, but I find it doesn't keep well if you don't use the whole can right away. Instead, I always have packets of dried coconut milk so I can use a little or a lot and then store the rest in a zip-top bag in the cupboard.

While the dish wasn't Kin Shop-worthy, it was still pretty darn delicious.

Thai "Bolognese" Sauce

1/2 large onion, chopped
Vegetable oil
The innermost leaves of 1 stalk of lemongrass, bashed with the side of a knife and minced
1 lb ground turkey or pork
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tablespoon Thai chilli basil paste (Maesri brand)
1 tablespoon red curry paste (Thai Kitchen)
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons coconut powder
1/4 cup water
Juice of half a lime
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
Chopped cilantro
Thai basil
Chopped scallions
Fresh mint

Cook onion in vegetable oil over medium high heat until translucent. Add lemongrass and ground meat, breaking up meat with wooden spoon. Cook, stirring constantly, until meat is mostly cooked through and beginning to brown. Stir in garlic, chilli basil and red curry pastes, and 1 tablespoon of the fish sauce.

Combine the coconut powder, water, and lime juice in a bowl. Pour over meat mixture in pan and stir well. Add sugar and remaining fish sauce. Turn heat to low. Cook mixture until ground meat doesn't taste strongly of turkey or pork but has taken on the flavors of the pastes and fish sauce, 5-10 minutes.

Serve over pasta or rice, garnished with plenty of fresh herbs and scallions. Alternately, you can chill the mixture and eat it like laab (Thai ground meat salad), rolled in fresh lettuce leaves.

Serves 4-6.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Avocado Soup and Crab Salad

I do most of the cooking on the weekends, except when we go out to eat (of course). If I'm thinking ahead, I plan my meals by Tuesday, our usual grocery shopping day. Most of the time though, I don't give it a thought until Thursday or Friday and then I have to decide whether I should just use what we have in the house, or schlep down to the grocery store to pick up special ingredients.

One recent weekend, we had steamed crabs on Saturday and ended up with a nice container of leftover meat. Rather than default to making crab cakes, I decided to make a crab salad and serve it with a soup made from the two ripe avocados we had picked up earlier in the week. The soup was thick and lusciously creamy, and the citrussy salad added the perfect touch of acid.

I used black garlic to season the soup because I had it. You can use one clove of regular garlic, but chop it and add it to the scallion while it's cooking to cut some of the strong garlic taste. Of course, if you like the flavor of raw garlic, don't let me get in your way!

Avocado Soup

4 scallions, white and green parts, chopped
olive oil
2 ripe Haas avocados
3 tablespoons lime juice
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 cup plain yogurt or sour cream
3 cloves black garlic
couple shakes of hot sauce (I used green Tabasco)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook scallions in a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt until wilted. Add them, along with the rest of the ingredients, to the bowl of a food processor or blender and purée. If the mixture is too thick for your taste, add a bit more stock or yogurt. Season to taste, adding more lime juice, if desired. Serve chilled, topped with a handful of crab salad.

Makes 4 appetizer or 2 main dish servings.

Crab Salad

2 tablespoons orange or grapefruit juice or a combination of the two
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon honey or agave syrup
1 lb blue crab meat (body and claw), picked over for shell
1 tomato, seeded and finely chopped
fresh basil and mint leaves

Combine the first six ingredients in a small bowl, beating well with a fork until the dressing emulsifies. Season with salt and pepper.

Put the crab and tomato in a medium bowl. Pour over the dressing and toss lightly to coat. Taste for seasoning and add additional salt and pepper, if necessary. Cut basil and mint into a chiffonade and stir in before serving.

Makes more than you'll need for the soup, so grab a fork and dig in.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Viente de Mayo

After seeing several Internet items extolling the virtue of making one's own corn tortillas, I thought I'd give it a go. Why not try it to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that means nothing to most Americans but, like St. Patrick's Day, is a good excuse to drink?

But we had a pack of corn tortillas in the fridge already, and, truth be told, Mr Minx isn't all that fond of tacos made with soft corn tortillas. (I know!) So instead of tortillas, I figured I'd make some other sort of fried thingy with my newly-purchased bag of masa. 

I noodled around online and found recipes for things called sopes, which appeared to be thick fried tortillas with a rim around the edge. But some of those recipes were similar to the rimless gorditas, which may or may not be split open and filled, depending on the recipe consulted. This blog (and others) calls them Salvadoran enchiladas, but if there's no chiles on them, etymologically speaking, how is that even possible? 

If I did call them sopes or gorditas and, heaven forfend, topped or filled them with something non-traditional or not from the proper region, the spirits of Mexican grandmothers will haunt me forever. Or so my research led me to believe.

I decided that the best--and safest--technical term for fried corn thingies made by a gringo like me would be Fried Corn Thingies. Then I would be able to top them with whatever my little heart wanted to top them with, without fear of repercussions from the Great Beyond. For our Cinco de Mayo dinner, that was a combination of chicken and chorizo, plus refried black beans and various condiments. On the side I served my version of esquites, and we washed everything down with passionfruit margaritas. Well, the original intention was to have passionfruit margaritas, but the Ceres brand passionfruit juice I purchased didn't taste very much like the tangy fruit in question. They were ok, but not anything to write home about. Especially if home is Mexico. Everything else, however, was muy bueno.

Fried Corn Thingies with Assorted Toppings

Thingies (recipe below)
Refried Black Beans (recipe below)
Chorizo Chicken (recipe below)
Chipotle Sauce (recipe below)
Easy Salsa (or your favorite salsa) (recipe below)
crumbly cheese, like feta or cotija
sliced avocado
fresh cilantro

Layer beans, chicken, chipotle sauce, salsa, and cheese on a Thingy. Top with avocado and cilantro. Devour and repeat.

Fried Corn Thingies 

2 cups masa
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus more for frying

Mix masa, water, and 1/4 cup oil into a smooth dough. Divide dough into 10 pieces. Form each one into a flattened disk about 1/4" thick.

Heat a griddle or large frying pan. Add disks a few at a time and cook for about 2 minutes on the first side, until it starts to brown lightly. Flip the disks, cook 2 minutes more on the other side, and remove from heat. Set aside until ready to eat.

When ready to serve, cook the thingies about 2 minutes per side in a bit of oil to crisp. Drain on paper towels.

Refried Black Beans

1 15oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup water
salt and pepper to taste

Put beans and water in a saucepan and cook over medium high heat, stirring frequently and vigorously, until most of the liquid has evaporated and the beans are mostly mashed. Remove from heat and add salt and pepper to taste.

Chorizo Chicken

1/2 cup chopped onion
vegetable oil
pinch salt
2 links Mexican chorizo
3 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
splash balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook onion in a bit of oil and a pinch of salt until softened. Remove chorizo from casings and add to onions, breaking up sausage with the back of a wooden spoon. Cook, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes, until sausage starts to darken. Add the chicken thighs, broth, and cilantro. Bring to a boil, then cover the pot and turn the heat down to medium-low. Simmer chicken about thirty minutes until tender.

Remove chicken from pot and allow to cool for a few minutes. With your fingers, two forks, or a knife and a fork, shred/chop the meat into small piece and add back to the pan. Turn up heat and cook, uncovered, until most of the liquid has evaporated, skimming off most of the red oil that rises to the top. Stir in the garlic, brown sugar, and vinegar. Cook an additional minute or two and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Chipotle Sauce

1 canned chipotle in adobo, seeded and minced
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
3 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
pinch sugar
pinch salt

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Easy Salsa

2 large or 4 small tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup chopped scallions
1 tablespoon lime juice
pinch cumin
salt and pepper to taste.

Mix first four ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Refrigerator Pie

When I saw the recipe for 10-Minute Lime Cracker Pie posted on Serious Eats, I decided it would be the perfect thing to serve on the Fourth of July. And I was right. A big ol' slab of lime-flavored heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk was just thing to have after indulging in hamburgers and bratwurst. <g> Ok, not really. But a couple of tablespoons of the tangy stuff hit the spot.

The name is a bit of a misnomer. The dish took a little more than 10 minutes to make, maybe 15, and it needs to hang out in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours (or even better, overnight) in order for the crackers to absorb the liquid. But the result is much like key lime pie, but with layers of "crust" within rather than just one on the bottom. So like key lime pie, in fact, that I think this would be much much better if made with plain graham crackers rather than Ritz. The Ritz (we used the low-sodium variety) tasted sorta, well, Ritz-y.

I think an orange or lemon version with chocolate cookies might be fun to try.

10-Minute Lime Cracker Pie (from Serious Eats)

2 (14-ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk
1 pint heavy cream
1/2 cup lime juice (about 4-5 limes)
10 ounces (about 2 1/2 sleeves) Ritz crackers
zest from 2 limes

Combine milk and heavy cream in a large bowl. Add lime juice and whisk until thickened, about 1 minute. Spread 1 cup filling on bottom of 8" square baking pan. Top with single layer of Ritz crackers. Repeat, alternating layers of filling and crackers until pie plate is full (finish with a layer of filling). Sprinkle with grated lime zest. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or up to overnight. Serves 8-10.

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.

Icedgems Cupcakes

There's yet another food truck visiting the UMB area, this one serving up several different flavors of cupcakes. Icedgems Creations, with a brick-and-mortar bakery at 213 Main Street in Reisterstown, is now cruising the streets of Baltimore in a pink-dotted refrigerated truck chock-full of sweet treats.

Find out where they'll be next by following them on Twitter or liking them on Facebook.

Chocolate Hazelnut and Key West cupcakes

Both cupcakes I tried were good, but I have to say I preferred the vanilla cupcake with the zesty lime buttercream.

Brownies and Lime Squares

For Father's Day this year, I decided to bake up a batch of both brownies and lime bars.

Rather than make my favorites, I decided to use the recipe for coconut swirl brownies that I found in my recently-acquired copy of Martha Stewart's Cookies. It seemed fortuitous that I had a partial can of sweetened condensed milk in the fridge, left over from making Thai iced coffees a couple weeks earlier. Mr Minx doesn't like the texture of shredded coconut, so I substituted a few tablespoons of coconut milk powder. And because I wanted a lot of brownies, I doubled the recipe, baking them for 40 minutes.

Something went awry and I ended up with a pan of huge puffy brownies that were very dense and cakey. I suppose they tasted fine, albeit not quite coconutty enough, but the texture was off-pudding. To me. I like 'em wet and fudgy. Brownies, that is.

The lime squares were far more successful. I used a tried-and-true recipe for lemon bars from the Joy of Baking, and substituted lime juice and zest.

Tart and Tangy Lime Bars

Shortbread Crust:
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
1 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

Lime Filling:
1 cup granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1/3 cup fresh lime juice (three or four limes)
1 tablespoon grated limes zest
2 tablespoons flour

Garnish:
Confectioner's sugar

Preheat oven to 350F and place the oven rack in the center of the oven.Spray an 8 x 8 inch pan with non stick vegetable spray.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the flour and salt and beat until the dough just comes together. Press onto the bottom of your prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool while you make the filling.

Beat the sugar and eggs until nice and smooth. Add the lime juice and zest and stir to combine. Fold in the flour. Pour the filling over the shortbread crust and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the filling has set. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

To serve: Cut into squares or bars and dust with powdered sugar.
--------------------------------------------
Unfortunately for all of us, my brother was feeling poorly (thanks to his stressful job) and my Dad didn't feel it was right to celebrate Father's Day without both of his kids. I was able to freeze some of the raw ingredients I was going to use for dinner, but was forced to eat all of the dessert! Well, not all of it. Mr Minx and I ate brownies all week, but I experimented with freezing most of the lime bars. Fortunately, it was a successful experiment and Dad was able to enjoy them a week later.

Lime bars are so easy and tasty, I don't know why I don't make them more often. I'm contemplating playing with other juices in the future. How about tangerine bars? Mango bars?