Black Walnut Cluster Kisses for the Holidays

The holiday season is a great time to bake cookies. Do you know of anyone who can object to receiving a plate of homemade cookies? I love to bake during the holiday’s, but don’t need to eat many of the rich cookies and desserts. So, let’s bake cookies and give them away (well, most of them)! This season I am making a tried and true cookie recipe, “Black Walnut Clusters,” and I am adding a Hershey’s Kiss in the center of each cookie for an extra “pop” of chocolate and a festive appearance. This cookie recipe is a favorite with the flavors of chocolate and black walnuts in a rich vanilla cookie. It is simple and quick to mix up.

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Molded Lime Fascination Salad with Walnuts

“Lime Fascination Salad with Walnuts” is a soothing pineapple and jello salad for the the hot summer months. Bonnie made a small recipe of the “Carrot Salad with Golden Raisins & Pineapple” which I featured in April. She had crushed pineapple left over and asked for suggestions to use it. Of course, I like to think of ideas and remembered that we ate lots of jello salads with fruit when growing up. One of my favorites was lime jello with pineapple. It also contained cottage cheese and heavy whipping cream. I decided to update the recipe for a more healthy version and substituted Greek yogurt in the recipe. The fruit salad is just as delicious as the ones I remember from my youth!

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Yogurt Cheesecake with a Salty Pretzel Crust and Candied Walnuts

I like a challenge and was excited to see a notice for a contest to create a recipe using California walnuts. The goal was to submit a blog post and recipe using walnuts in either a sweet or savory recipe. Well, I love walnuts and so I jumped at the chance to enter the contest. However, by the time my walnut samples arrived in the mail and I figured out what to make, I’d missed the deadline. I made my recipe anyway. It is a soothing yogurt cheesecake — very healthy, too — I added a salty pretzel crust (savory) and candied walnuts on top (sweet). The recipe contains a “twist” on traditional cheesecake recipes. You will see. The dessert turned out great.

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Apple and Walnut Compote a.k.a. Haroset

Passover will soon be here. My husband’s family is planning a “virtual” Seder meal and service via “Zoom.” With family is scattered all over the country and unable to travel and local folks trying to maintain 6 feet of space at a table, this seems like a good solution. We are living in a new era. One dish at the Seder meal which I particularly enjoy is Haroset which is served along with Matzah. Several years ago, a friend brought Haroset to our Seder which was absolutely delicious. The combination of apples and  walnuts in a sweet sauce is good to eat anytime of the year — whether or not you are celebrating Passover or another religious observance. I made the recipe to share with you.

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Spring Green Salad with Jalapeno Pepper Dressing

A salad dressing which is becoming increasingly popular on Louisiana restaurant menus is “Jalapeno Pepper Salad Dressing.” Some variations use red pepper jelly and others Tabasco pepper jelly. I made homemade jalapeno pepper jelly last summer and figured that this would be a good use for own jars of jelly. This salad dressing is a vinaigrette-style of dressing with a sweetness. It complements tart salad green blends nicely.

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Homemade Crunchy Granola

In the 1970’s, granola was launched commercially by major cereal manufacturers and it quickly became part of the health food craze. Granola is a very tasty and versatile breakfast cereal and we always had some around. Recently, I decided to revisit this healthy cereal and found a recipe in the cookbook, “More-With-Less,” which dates from the 1970’s era. Ingredients for Granola - IMG_9490 Continue reading