snack

Mmmm. Some days when you get home from school, nothing will do but a fresh-from-the-oven popover, a hot, crispy, buttery puff of ethereal deliciousness. Sadly, for us at CT, there had been more than a few at-home popover failures. (Or, as we like to call them, pop-unders.) Then we stumbled upon a killer recipe from our favorite Contessa, Ina Garten, and played around with it for a while to make it a little easier on the waistline and on the prep. Now squatty popovers are a thing of the past.

Check it out – with only five ingredients (six if you count the cooking spray) and a hot, hot oven, you can magic-up popovers in about the time it takes to watch Family Guy. The trick to sky-high success is to have all ingredients at room temperature and to keep close tabs on the time.

Sky High Popovers
(adapted from Barefoot Contessa Parties)

Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt or whatever you have
3 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups whole milk, at room temperature

To Prepare

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees

Spritz popover pans or muffin tins with cooking spray. (You can use softened butter to grease the tin if you don't have any spray.) You'll need enough pans to make 12 popovers.

Whisk together the flour, salt, eggs, milk and melted butter until smooth. The batter will be thin. Fill the popover pans about half full and bake for 26 minutes. Do not peek or they will flatten!

Eat immediately. (If you eat them with sweet butter and jam, we won't stop you.) Or try to wait and bring them to the table to share. We said try.

Want to buy the lovely Contessa's book? Click on the Contessa in the box.

Tags: popovers, quick, easy, snack, recipe

You get home from school – famished as usual – and rifle through the cabinets searching for something sweet. But then you come across something salty. And crispy. And that age-old debate begins: Sweet? Salty? Sweet? Salty? While you’re pondering, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. You can have your salt and sweet it too.

This snack not only fulfills your cravings, it gives your body something substantial to work with while you’re doing your homework or getting ready for gymnastics practice. If you’re going to make one or two of these little bites for yourself, you might as well make a whole batch because once that bacon smell is in the house everybody will come looking for the source.

Ingredients

10 slices of bacon, cut in half cross-wise to yield 20 pieces
20 cubes of pineapple, either fresh or from a can (If you use canned pineapple, make sure it’s unsweetened.)
If you don't have pineapple, or you're in the mood for really sweet, substitute 20 dried dates for the pineapple.

To Prepare

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Wrap a half slice of bacon around each cube of fruit, tucking the ends of the bacon underneath the fruit.

Arrange the wrapped fruit bacon-ends-down on an aluminum-foil-covered baking sheet that has raised edges.

Bake for about 7 minutes, then take out the sheet and turn over the little bacon bites and return to the oven. Cook about 7 minutes more or until the bacon is crispy.

Enjoy!

Tags: quick, easy, snack, recipe

You get home from school – famished as usual – and rifle through the cabinets searching for something sweet. But then you come across something salty. And crispy. And that age-old debate begins: Sweet? Salty? Sweet? Salty? While you’re pondering, preheat the oven to 450 degrees. You can have your salt and sweet it too.

This snack not only fulfills your cravings, it gives your body something substantial to work with while you’re doing your homework or getting ready for gymnastics practice. If you’re going to make one or two of these little bites for yourself, you might as well make a whole batch because once that bacon smell is in the house everybody will come looking for the source.

Ingredients

10 slices of bacon, cut in half cross-wise to yield 20 pieces
20 cubes of pineapple, either fresh or from a can (If you use canned pineapple, make sure it’s unsweetened.)
If you don't have pineapple, or you're in the mood for really sweet, substitute 20 dried dates for the pineapple.

To Prepare

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Wrap a half slice of bacon around each cube of fruit, tucking the ends of the bacon underneath the fruit.

Arrange the wrapped fruit bacon-ends-down on an aluminum-foil-covered baking sheet that has raised edges.

Bake for about 7 minutes, then take out the sheet and turn over the little bacon bites and return to the oven. Cook about 7 minutes more or until the bacon is crispy.

Enjoy!

Tags: quick, easy, snack, recipe

With five minutes to go before the school bus is due, your well-meaning attempts at breakfast can quickly deteriorate from a homemade nutrition-fest to packaged-weird-sweet-pastry-thing-in-the-toaster (where it morphs into toasted-weird-sweet-pastry-thing, which you gobble down while running out the door, only to crash a couple of hours later in math class when your body is craving some real nutrients).

But with just a teeny bit of baking wizardry on the weekend, after school or in the evening, you (and your family) can enjoy a luscious, nutritious, yummy muffin in the morning in the same time it takes for the toaster to work its magic on that pouchy “pastry.” The key to success here is to make a bunch of muffins at once, then to toss them in the freezer and use later as needed – for breakfast, with lunch or for a delicious (and, as it happens, nutritious) snack.

Family-Friendly Pumpkin Muffins

A Cookin’ Teens Original

© Rising Moon Media, 2008

Ingredients

Dry:

3 3/4 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup mixture of small, dried fruits such as mixed raisins, dried blueberries, dried cranberries, etc.
1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

Wet:

1 can plain pumpkin (29 ounces)
1 cup of unsweetened applesauce
6 eggs

To Prepare:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spritz three 12-cup muffin tins with cooking spray, or grease each cup with a teeny bit of butter.

In a large bowl, combine the first eight dry ingredients (flour through salt) and mix well with a fork. In a second bowl, combine the wet ingredients and mix well with a fork. Add the wet ingredients to the bowl with the dry ones, then add the chocolate chips, dried fruit and nuts. Combine thoroughly and spoon batter into muffin tins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in a muffin comes out clean. (Try to avoid stabbing the chocolate chips with a toothpick or it might be hard to determine whether or not the muffins are cooked.)

When the muffins are done, remove them from the tins and let them cool on a rack or a plate. Once cool, wrap the muffins singly or in pairs in plastic wrap, then toss the wrapped muffins into a couple of freezer bags and put the bags in the freezer. When you plan to eat the muffins, either take them out the night before and let them thaw on a plate, or, if you don’t plan that far ahead, take them out of the freezer when you need them, remove the plastic wrap, and heat them in the microwave for a minute or two – or about the time it takes for the pouchy pocket to pop up out of the toaster and morph into a pastry.

Tags: quick, easy, snack, breakfast, recipe

A Cookin' Teens Original

There's little as comforting as real hot chocolate when you come in from the cold after a long day at school. But when you're famished, a mug of the stuff just won't do; you want something you can sink your teeth into. Looking for a little inspiration, we took a page out of Giada de Laurentiis' new cookbook and put an American, French and teen-friendly spin on one of her "New Italian Favorites." The result is a gooey, cheesy, hearty, absolutely fabulous snack that you can put together in a flash.

© Rising Moon Media, 2008

Ingredients

1 loaf of whole wheat French bread or thin loaf of whole wheat Italian bread (non whole wheat will do in a pinch), about 12 inches long
4 ounces cream cheese
2 ounces good-quality, semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 apple (Golden Delicious is nice with this but any apple will do), washed and cut into six thin slices with the core removed

Preparation

Preheat broiler.

Slice the loaf in half lengthwise. On one half, spread the cream cheese. On the other half, sprinkle the chocolate chips and cover them with the apple slices one next to the other.

Put both halves crust-side down on a cookie sheet, and put the sheet on a rack under the broiler. Cook until the edges brown (just a couple of minutes) then take out and squish and press the two halves together so that the chocolate and the apple and the cheese form a tasty, oozy, sweet and crunchy concoction that tastes part panino and part pan au chocolate. Wait a couple of minutes so the flavors can blend (if you can stand it!), cut into sections and enjoy!

Makes six 2-inch panini.

Want to explore Giada's new book, "Giada's Kitchen"? Click on Giada in the box.

Tags: quick, easy, snack