Devil Eggs

We are always a fan of the classic deviled egg; it is a great go to appetizer, and in this case an awesome thing to dress up!

Enjoy our Devil Eggs!

Ingredients: makes 2 dozen –make sure you have a ziplock  bag      

A dozen eggs
½ cup roasted red peppers
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup canola oil
1 fresh red pepper
Cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Place all 12 eggs in warm water and set to high heat. Once the water comes to a boil, let boil for 12 minutes. Remove from water, and set eggs in an ice bath.

Once all eggs are cool, peel, and slice in half. Remove yolk and set aside.

Now we can make the filling, in a blender combine oil, salt, mustard, yolk, and roasted red pepper and blend until smooth. If you want it smoother add more oil.

To pipe the filling, place into a ziplock bag and cut the corner off fill in a circular motion.

To finish them off, cut pepper into thin slices, and then into little triangles to create the horns, and then sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

Let chill in refrigerator and then serve!

Holiday Spicy Chocolate Truffles

During this time of year it is always wonderful to make small sweets that you can just pop in your mouth while wrapping some presents or to give as gifts. We decided to make some chocolate truffles. They are fun to make and there are so many options of how you can flavor them and decorate them. A huge problem we had while making them is they kept getting eaten before I could photograph them!

These truffles are a rich and creamy cinnamon and cayenne spice chocolate treat, with two kinds covered in sprinkles, one in coconut flakes, and one in chopped hazelnuts.

Enjoy, and happy holidays!

Ingredients: Makes about 2 dozen at about 1 ½ inches in diameter, takes about 2 hours

8 oz cream cheese
3 cups powdered sugar sifted
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate
1 ½ teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

In a large bowl beat the cream cheese until really smooth. One half cup at a time, add the sugar to the cream cheese until it is completely blended.

In a medium sauce pan melt the chocolate constantly stirring. The second all the chocolate melted take it off the burner, because chocolate will burn and dry out in a heartbeat! Don’t fret though, just stir and keep an eye out, should take about 5 minutes.

Stir the melted chocolate and vanilla into the cream cheese. Next add the spices and make sure you evenly blend so there is no one part that is spicier. Now place in the fridge for an hour to let set a little.

Once your hour is up, set up 4 small plates up with your decorations. Using a spoon, spoon out about one heaping tablespoon of chocolate, and using the heat of your palm form a ball. It takes love and patience!

Now to decorate you can either roll your chocolate truffles in the sprinkles etc… or a tip that I found to be useful is to pour some of your toppings into your hand and roll it in your hand so that you can evenly press the toppings into the chocolate.

You can serve right away, or refrigerate for another hour to let harden! You will adore these chocolates, and they are festive and super sexy!!!

Voila!

Boo-tastic Spicy Shortbread Cookies

I must say that I am incredibly obsessed with Halloween and have essentially sucked Michael into (whether he likes to or not) loving it with me. My birthday being October 21^st it is only natural that I have this crazy obsession because since I was little I have had many Halloween birthday parties. That being said, this is the first of 13 posts that we will give you, day one being actually Halloween day.

For our first post, we give you some boo-tastic shortbread cookies. We are both lovers of shortbread because of its beautifully rich and buttery taste. When we were thinking of what to do, and thinking how shortbread is the easiest dough to color in section with food coloring and not have the colors bleed, and what would then make our recipe differ from the rest, shablam, Michael said it, why not make these a bit savory and spicy. So try out shortbread cookies with its buttery taste and the ever so wonderful spicy kick at the end, being sure to send a warm feeling to you on the spooky nights to come.

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
 2 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted
 2 tablespoons coarse sanding sugar
1 tsp. cayenne
Food coloring

 

First preheat oven to 325 and get all of your tools out and ingredients measured out. When we bake we have everything pre measured, because it makes life so much easier and keeps you from getting all your ingredients dirty and your kitchen from become a baking mess.

Most recipes call for an electric mixer with a paddle, but we used a spatula just fine. So using the spatula cream together butter and sugar, mix in vanilla, and then add flour and cayenne slowly in portions. Because there is no egg, you can try the dough to see if there is enough spice, you want to barely taste it, because when you bake it the flavor will intensify.

Once mixed well, portion the dough into three sections preparing to add the food coloring. For yellow, just use yellow, for orange use red and yellow, and for white use nothing. It took me about 6 drops of food coloring to get the intensity I like, so do accordingly.

Now that all of your colors are mixed lay out in the shape of a rectangle, starting with yellow, then laying out on top of that orange, then on top of that white. Using a sharp knife cut a 2 inch wide log cutting through all the colors, so essentially you have a two inch thick about 8 inch long strip of dough, no lay on its side and cut little triangles out. Using your fingers you can round the corners a little and then lay on a greased baking sheet. Repeat the steps until you use up all the dough.

Bake for about 20 minutes, you want the dough to start to harder a little and pull it out before it starts to turn a golden brown. The cookies will blow out of shape a bit, which is fine because these are meant to be spooky, and they will harden while cooling. Let cool for 10 minutes, and then dig in! These delightful cookies will be sure to bring great joy to all who come to play tricks on you.

Chip and Dip Fiesta!!

Summer fiestas are upon us. What better food gift to bring then homemade chips and dip. Summer to me always embraces spice and bright fresh flavors. So we decided to create a spicy dip, a spicy chip, a bright dip, and a bright chip! Here we made a bright olive oil salted rosemary chip, a roasted red pepper feta dip, a spicy roasted tomatillo salsa, and a cayenne lime chip. Mix and match and you won’t disappoint!

Ingredients

Roasted red pepper feta dip:
1 cup cream cheese
1 cup feta
2 med red bell peppers
1 Tlbs. Water
½ a lime

Tomatillo Salsa:
7 tomatillos
Salt and pepper to taste

Chips:
3 packs of pita, approx. 15 pita breads
4 limes
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
4 Tlbs. Salt
2 Tlbs cayenne
¼ cup olive oil

Chips:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cut your pitas into 16ths and lay out on to 4 baking sheets. Set aside two sheets of pita slices. Take the two you have and drizzle with olive oil. Remove rosemary from stem and finely chop. Sprinkle salt and rosemary over your pita slices. Take your other two sheets of pita and squeeze as much lime as needed to get the pita wet. Sprinkle cayenne, so the bread appears slightly dusted. Place in oven and let bake for about 25 minutes or until crispy and browned. Check half way through and maybe flip around if your over is temperamental like ours.

Dips:

*be sure to remove outer layer of tomatillo and wash all the stickiness*

On an open flame (we literally place vegetables on stop top burners) roast your bell peppers and tomatillos. You want the skin to blister and blacken, which is how you know your vegetables are fully roasted. Set asides tomatillos. We are now going to make the cheese dip.

Cut green tops off over your bell peppers, wash off blackened skin, wash out all of the seeds, and chop. Place feta cheese, cream cheese, bell peppers, water, and a squeeze of half a lime in blender and blend on high until all fleck of red blend together. Pour mix into a sauce pan on low heat and whisk until mi thickens as it reduces, about 5-7 min. Pour serving bowl and serve hot or chilled.

Now, super simple, place the tomatillos with blackened skin into a blended with a pinch of salt and pepper and blend. Pout into serving bowl and you can garnish either how you like.

Place chips around your dip and get to dipping!