Fine Dining at Disney World Orlando
By Elizabeth | April 24, 2008
This past weekend, I was honored to be invited to attend the first Disney Mom Blogger Mixer along with Maria Bailey, creator of Precious Moms.com, as well as my fellow Precious Moms Lori Seaborg and Marybeth Whalen. We had an unbelievable two and a half days of fun and surprises at Disney World, including a sneak peek at a new Hollywood Studios attraction that NO ONE else had seen, and a trip to see “La Nouba” at Cirque de Soleil!
I expected to be treated to some special meals, but Disney far exceeded my expectations. Our dinner on Friday was at “Tutto Italia” in the Italy section of Epcot. I had a Caesar salad that is unlike any I have ever had before, with a whole heart of romaine, shaved parmesan, a homemade crouton/bread slice, and a delicious creamy dressing. For my entree, I chose Bucatini Gratinata. Bucatini is a spaghetti-like noodle that is thick and has a hole in the middle. It was mixed with prosciutto ham, peas, and a parmesan cream sauce, with broiled cheese on top. Decadently delicious! We hadn’t planned on dessert there, but the pastry chef insisted, and we each got a plate with a sweet cream and candied fruit cannoli, a huge chocolate dipped strawberry, a cream puff rolled in chocolate flakes, and a cup of zabaglione topped with sweet marsala wine sauce and strawberry puree. Amazing!
Our lunch on Saturday was at the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood Studios; it’s a recreation of the famous Hollywood restaurant where the Cobb salad was invented. Most restaurants serve a big pile of lettuce with a small amount of toppings, but not the Brown Derby! Their Cobb salad is a huge bowl with a bit of chopped lettuce and herbs, topped with chopped tomato, hardboiled egg, bacon, turkey, blue cheese, and avocado, with a creamy dressing. It was better than I imagined! We also had two delicious appetizers, a crispy shrimp in ginger-lime sauce, and braised beef short ribs on celery root puree, and that beef literally melted in my mouth.
And that was just the first day!! Here’s photos, and then I’ll write up our amazing dinner on Saturday night in a separate post.
The Caesar Salad:
The Bucatini Gratinata:
The Dessert Plate:
The Shrimp Appetizer:
The Cobb Salad:
Doesn’t that make you want to go to Disney World so you can taste it for yourself?? 
Topics: Dining at Disney World | 13 Comments »
Four Foods on Friday
By Elizabeth | April 16, 2008
I am having so much fun participating in this meme every Friday, and I think Val at Fun, Crafts and Recipes is a genius for coming up with it! If you like recipes for good, basic food that is easy to prepare and kid-friendly, I recommend signing up for her free daily recipes email.
#1. Cottage cheese. Small curd, large curd, chunk or whipped?
#2. Burgers. Made fresh, preformed fresh or preformed frozen?
#3. If you could only buy one kind of salad dressing what would it be?
#4. Share a crockpot or slow cooker recipe.
#1-Cottage cheese is nasty, but if I had to eat it, it would have to be small curd. There’s whipped cottage cheese?
#2-My All-American Burgers, the recipe is in my FFoF post from last week!
#3-Hidden Valley Ranch. It’s good on EVERYTHING.
#4-Interesting you should ask this! If you type the keywords slow cooker hot fudge cake into Google, guess who is number two????
Crockpot Hot Fudge Cake at MomCooks-Recipes that Rock
Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and everyone who eats it will be in chocolate heaven! Slow Cooker Hot Fudge Sundae Cake Slow Cooker Hot Fudge …
momcooks.net/2007/11/02/crockpot-hot-fudge-cake/
Yay me! Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
1 cup Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup baking cocoa
1 1/2 cups hot water
Directions
1. Spray inside of 2- to 3 1/2-quart slow cooker with cooking spray. Mix flour, granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons cocoa, the baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Stir in milk, oil and vanilla until smooth. Stir in nuts. Spread batter evenly in slow cooker.
2. Mix brown sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa in small bowl. Stir in hot water until smooth. Pour evenly over batter in slow cooker.
3. Cover and cook on high heat setting 2 hours to 2 hours 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
4. Turn off slow cooker. Let cake stand uncovered 30 to 40 minutes to cool slightly before serving. Spoon warm cake into dessert dishes. Spoon sauce over top.
Makes 6 servings
Topics: Cakes, Chocolate, Crockpot, Four Foods on Friday | 15 Comments »
Very Chocolatey Cookie Recipes
By Elizabeth | April 16, 2008
This past Monday, the Second Annual AirBake Extreme Cookie Challenge took place, it’s a cookie recipe contest sponsored by Wearever. The Grand Prize was one by the recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “Ice Cream Cones”, and I have the recipe!!
![](http://momcooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/cookiedough.jpg "Cookie Dough \\"cones\\"")
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough “Ice Cream Cones”
by Heather & Alexa Cohen from Owings Mills, MD
Ingredients
For the “Ice Cream Cones”
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts (preferably toasted; you can substitute pecans or almonds)
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
For the “Cookie Dough”
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons malted milk powder (optional)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons milk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Whipped cream
Maraschino cherries (optional)
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. To make “ice cream cones”, in a small saucepan, combine butter, sugar, and corn syrup. Bring to a boil; remove from heat. Add walnuts, flour, and salt. Stir until well-combined. Let sit for 10 minutes.
3. Depending on the size of your sheet pan, place 4-6 rounded teaspoons of dough on an ungreased
AirBake sheet, at least 5 inches apart (the dough spreads a great deal).
4. Bake each batch for about 10 minutes, until most of the bubbling stops and the cookies turn a walnut brown. Let the cookies rest on the sheet pan for about 1 to 2 minutes, until they are easily removed from the baking sheet with a spatula. Allow to cool slightly longer if cookies wrinkle when a spatula is slid under the cookie. If too stiff to remove, put back into the oven for a couple of minutes to soften up.
5. With the small spatula, wrap the cookie around a cylindrical object such as a funnel or water cooler paper cup. Or roll a 6″x10″ piece of parchment paper into a cone and cut it into a 5″ cone and wrap the cookie around it to resemble a cone. Repeat with the rest of the cookies. Again, if they become too stiff to remove, put back into the oven for a couple of minutes to soften up. The ice cream cones can be made ahead and stored in an air tight container until ready to top with the raw cookie dough.
6. To make “cookie dough”, in a large bowl combine flour, salt, cinnamon, and malted milk powder (optional).
7. In another large mixing bowl, cream together butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla extract, and milk. Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips and mix until well blended.
Refrigerate for 1 hour.
8. To make the finished “ice cream cones”, spoon a rounded tablespoon of the “cookie dough” into the “ice cream cones.” Top with whipped cream and a cherry (or anything else you or your child’s heart desires, like hot fudge, caramel, sprinkles, nuts).
9. Makes about 36 cookies.
**********************
Yum! One of the finalist recipes has a funny name, “Extremely Chocolatey Beaver Huts”, but that’s because the finished cookie does look like a beaver hut covered in logs! Here’s that recipe:
Extremely Chocolatey Beaver Huts
by Jessie Grearson & Eleanor Sapat from Falmouth, ME
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup Quaker instant oats
1 Tbsp. cream or half and half
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
¼ cup white chocolate chips
¾ cup dark chocolate chips
¼ cup chopped walnuts
One Hershey’s kiss
5-6 Tbsp. Nutella (note-this is chocolate/hazelnut spread, found in grocery stores with the peanut butter)
1/6 bag thin stick pretzels, some broken, for decorating huts
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. In large bowl beat together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy.
3. In another bowl whisk together flour, cocoa, oats, baking soda and salt; stir into the butter mixture and add cream slowly, just enough to form a stiff, but well-blended dough.
4. Fold in chocolate chips and chopped walnuts (we think of these as rocks and stones).
5. Roll by large tablespoons into rough balls, about the size of a ping-pong ball (these are your mud huts) then hide a chocolate kiss “beaver” inside one cookie.
6. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes on an ungreased AirBake cookie sheet in the preheated oven until set (watch carefully).
7. After cookies cool, spread a small amount of Nutella as muddy layer over each hut and have fun adding pretzel “sticks” to the outside of each beaver hut.
Makes 20-24 cookies.
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To see more of this year’s finalist recipes plus recipes from the 2005 AirBake Challenge, please visit the Wearever website.
Topics: Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Food News | 3 Comments »
Four Foods on Friday
By Elizabeth | April 13, 2008
I am SO late on this, it’s actually 11:44 pm on Sunday! But I wanted to get this in, so here is this week’s Four Foods on Friday questions, and my answers.
#1. What’s your favorite food smell? The smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven.
#2. What’s your favorite kind of apple? Gala
#3. What veggies do you like in your salad? Leaf lettuce, cucumber, tomato, carrot
#4. Share a recipe that uses beef.
This recipe is called “All American Burgers”, I found it on About.com, and it’s the only way I make burgers now. I free-hand the seasonings though, as I find we all like more seasoning than the recipe calls for, and I also add garlic powder as well. I use two pounds of ground round to make six burgers.
Ingredients for four burgers from the original recipe:
* 1 lb. ground beef
* 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
* 2 tsp. water
* 1/2 tsp. seasoned salt
* 1/2 tsp. onion powder
* 1/8 tsp. pepper
* 4 sandwich buns
Preparation:
Crumble the beef into a large mixing bowl, add the liquids and the seasonings. Mix gently, divide into fourths, and roll each fourth into a ball, then shape into a patty. Fry or grill until done to your liking.
To see how other bloggers answered these four questions, please visit Fun, Crafts and Recipes.
Topics: Beef, Four Foods on Friday, Fruit, Salad, Vegetables | 2 Comments »
Ooey Gooey Pancake S’Mores
By Elizabeth | April 10, 2008
I’m thinking that if looking at this photo doesn’t make you drool a little bit, you might want to check your pulse to see if you are still alive. Because SERIOUSLY. Pancakes, sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs, spread with marshmallow creme and chocolate chips. To DIE for.
The recipe comes from Betty Crocker and Bisquick, and was kindly delivered right into my email inbox. Imagine if I had never known about the existence of these pancakes. *shudder* Here’s the recipe:
2 cups Original Bisquick® mix
1 1/3 cups milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs
7 tablespoons marshmallow creme
7 tablespoons milk chocolate chips
1. Heat griddle or skillet; grease if necessary. Stir Bisquick mix, milk, sugar, vanilla and egg until blended. Pour batter by slightly less than 1/4 cupfuls onto hot griddle.
2. Cook until bubbles break on surface. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon cracker crumbs over each pancake. Turn; cook until golden. Remove from griddle.
3. Spread about 1 tablespoon marshmallow creme over the crumbs side of each of 7 pancakes; sprinkle about 1 tablespoon chocolate chips over marshmallow creme on each. Top with another pancake, crumbs side down.
And then, of course, you will want to soak these in pancake syrup, or maybe whipped cream, because if you are going to go for it with a recipe like this, you might as well GO FOR IT.
Topics: Breakfast, Pancakes | 9 Comments »
