The Daily Dish Recipes

This book is pure heaven.

Crazy About Cupcakes by Krystina Castella is a book that no baker should be without. There are nearly 300 different recipes/combinations to create for any occasion or just because. From chocolate to crunchy, spicy to creamy and so many other variations, there is sure to be one to please anyone. The photographs in the book are absolutely gorgeous, full-color depictions of those tiny little wonders. Also included, to make these a bit easier for those of us who are not cupcake experts, there is a chapter devoted to charts and templates to help with flavor combinations and designs.

So far I’ve created about eight different cupcakes and they are all amazing. Watch tomorrow for the latest creation, and keep visiting periodically to see some more little flavorful bites of heaven.

If you enjoy baking, and cupcakes are on your menu from time to time, this cookbook will lend itself beautifully and help you to create the most decorative and beautiful cupcake. People will wonder where you learned to do that.

If you would like a small sampling of what you can find in the book, visit Krystina’s website.

Have you seen this show? Anyone who is looking to save a little time and money in the kitchen would be silly not to watch her. First of all, she’s spunky, sweet and kinda fun to watch. Not at all annoying like others I have sat through. Very entertaining.

The foods she prepares are the types of food that any average American would be consuming. Normal things like cookies and meat and potato dishes. She could easily win an award for All-American, as she is simply cooking with a few added seasonings, she mostly follows recipes and she doesn’t use a bunch of obscure or expensive ingredients to cook with.

If you haven’t checked out her show - it’s on the Food Network, or you can go visit her website.

As I mentioned in an earlier smoothie recipe I shared, I bought myself a new blender a few days ago. I used my old blender a lot, for all kind of things, but it just didn’t want to crush ice at all. (yes, it was made for it) So I decided it was time.

I did some research, read product reviews and asked family and friends what they use and what they had previously used that weren’t good brands. Another cool thing I got to do, was attend a class where we tested several small kitchen appliances. After all of that, I decided on the Oster Fusion Blender for several reasons. The first thing that grabbed me is that it boasts a 600-watt motor that has a reversible motor and a six-point shaped blade. I was impressed with the speed, and power that it blended cold and frozen drinks. It was the main reason I picked this one.
Another thing I appreciated about it is that it makes 5 cups at a time, and with 5 children this was important. There is nothing worse than being one of the last two children to wait for their special drink to be made while everyone else is busy enjoying theirs because there wasn’t enough room to make several at a time. It also has a pre-programmed frozen drink setting and with one push of a button and the inclusion of some ingredients, you have a frozen beverage in less than 30 seconds. That was a great selling point for me.

When I brought my new kitchen gadget/toy home, I was pretty excited about using it right away. The first thing we used it for was an evening of drinks by the pool at a friends house. I was so amazed at how quickly it made everything, how easy it was to use and how delicious everything tasted (blends very well). The reverse motor was pretty impressive and was the selling point for my friends husband who purchased one the next day. The reverse motor pulls the ice down to the bottom to be blended, unlike a regular blender where you have to either blend the ice first or push it down to the bottom. Or much like my old blender, not get ice blended at all.

It isn’t just a blender or a frozen/smoothie maker - it actually also works as a food processor which was another point I liked. I need a food processor and figured if I could get a 2-in-1 deal on something that would do multiple things, I’m all over that. I have used it twice as a food processor and both times had good luck, despite what a few negative reviews online said. I am thinking that perhaps too much food might have been added and this is why they had hard luck when using the food processor feature. It worked well, and now I don’t think I will need a food processor.

Since I puree a lot of foods, I had to try my purees out on the blender to see how well it did. I wanted to try something out of the Sneaky Chef which called for a White Puree which was cauliflower. It blended the cauliflower seemlessly and I was impressed at how quickly it all happened. I was able to make extras to freeze which I love when I’m cooking (to be able to grab something pre-made and not have to do it right then and there everytime).

There were only two things I might consider ‘cons’ when deciding on this blender. The first was the price, and only because it was retailing at $69.99, but it really was worth every cent of that. I did get lucky and get it for $59.99 (not sure why but that is what it rang up). The other thing is that because of its power, it is LOUD. However, if you can overlook the sound, and have the money to spend on a good blender, it is worth the price to get all that I have mentioend in one little gadget/appliance.

I give the Oster Fusion Blender FIVE stars. *****

The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals by Missy Chase Lapine, is actually one of the best cookbooks I have come across in quite a long while. In much the same style as its predecessor, it is designed to deceive the one with the appetite. It is again, a book filled with purees, except this one is the king-all, as Missy goes far beyond just vegetables, and has created a whole bunch of different purees such as flour blends, fruit blends and bean blends.

My favorite part about this book, besides the nutritional aspect of each prepared meal, is that the recipes were so simple to create and much quicker than I found in the ‘other’ book. Purees can be prepared in advance and frozen in portional sizes, to be reused at a later date.

My other favorite part about this book, is that there was so much information packed into this book. Besides just learning to prepare the purees, it explains why these particular purees were selected, how they benefit you nutrition wise, and lots of other factual, yet useful information.

The recipes were absolutely fantastic. I have probably made 14 different things from the book, and my kids have admitted that every single thing has tasted great. I have five kids, so do get a 100% consensus is extremely challenging in our household. Nobody is any the wiser to my “sneaky” additions to the meals, and I know I am feeding my family well, while still enjoying the same delicious foods we have always enjoyed.

I have heard many mention the fact that it reads more like a book, but to me that would be the uneducated who simply picked the book up and flipped through it. While the book does not contain pictures of the recipes, beyond the information and puree section, is a very easy to use format of dozens of recipes. It also containes plenty of sidebars and tip boxes to give advice and to make cooking with this book easy.

I recommend this book to anyone with children, especially if you have a Miss or Mr. Picky too.

Click here to try a few recipes from The Sneaky Chef

Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, by Jessica Seinfield (HarperCollins), gets its name from the delicious foods inside that have been deceptively prepared. But not in a horrible sense at all. Have picky eaters? This book could be just what you are looking for. The book is extremely user friendly with great photographs to accompany many of the recipes, which of course is always a benefit for those of us who like to see a visual product.

I was happy to find some kid-friendly favorites like tacos, spaghetti, chicken nuggets and pancakes, all made with deception in mind. That deception comes in the form of pureed vegetables. But don’t wrinkle up your nose just yet, I’m not talking about those little jars of baby food. In fact, the purees are designed so that there is no flavor change, and if there is a slight change it is designed to enhance it through deception. See, no harm there.

When I first picked up the cookbook, I was skeptical. I will admit, I have a low tolerance for celebrity cooking, and tend to turn my nose up at many of the recipes in these types of cookbooks. However, I will admit to being somewhat pleasantly surprised. The first recipe I decided to try out of this book was for the Quesadillas which called for the butternut squash puree. I was very worried at the start, as I have one of the pickiest eaters in the world. Guess what? She loved it! And she had absolutely no clue (and still doesn’t) that there was squash involved. Score one for mom!

The second recipe we decided to try was for the Chocolate Brownies. How many people can say their kids don’t love brownies? Well, mine absolutely devoured these in less than a day and a half and all the while, were none the wiser to the addition of carrot puree and spinach puree. We also tried some muffins, pancakes and tacos. All with puree’s and all were enjoyed.

My biggest complaint is that there weren’t more traditional kid-friendly meals. The book didn’t contain nearly as many recipes as I would prefer when paying for a book of this caliber. A few meals we made, the kids did turn up their noses, but more just because they didn’t like the whole dish, rather than the included deceptive ingredient.

Another thing I noticed about this book, is that it seems to require a lot of ingredients to get to the end result. If you are one that enjoys cooking with 5 ingredients or less with an equally easy and quick preparation time, you aren’t going to love these recipes too much. Most require more than 8 ingredients, and prep time is quite extensive.

Overall I am happy to have this book in my cookbook library because there are some recipes we plan to try or repeat that we really enjoyed. However, the price is steep, and if you are looking for a “deceptive cookbook” but you aren’t real set on the type you get, and you don’t think that this sounds like the type of book you would be interested in, consider checking out The Sneaky Chef, by Missy Chase Lapine. It’s awesome! (my favorite!)

Click here to try a few recipes from Deceptively Delicious.