S for strawberry Shortcake.

I think we may have made these before, at least the shortcake part. The shortcake tasted familiar; the strawberry part not so much. You wouldn’t think the strawberries would be the something different; I mean its sugar and strawberries, but it was. Yes we used strawberries when making strawberry shortcake however we did not use nearly that much sugar.

I was a bit shocked when I saw the amount of sugar to strawberry ratio. It was one cup to a package of berries. That is more sugar then I put in a strawberry rhubarb pie and Rhubarb is tart, but I thought okay maybe I am wrong maybe this is a normal amount of sugar and we generally do it differently to save… I don’t know our teeth or something. When I eat strawberry shortcake that someone else has made or at a restaurant it does tend to be a bit sweeter than what I am used too, and I am trying to stick to the book so I did it, I soaked the berries in the sugar and waited the appropriate time, and while I waited I got started on the shortcake.


The shortcake was easy and pretty much what I am used too in a homemade shortcake. I did think they were a bit big, but the recipe said it made four so I went with that. I think usually when we made this it made eight and I think that is a more appropriate number for the amount of dough it makes, so future shortcakes will go back to being smaller, and then more people can eat them too!

Once the shortcake was out of the oven I had to do that torturous thing of waiting till everything is completely cooled. Why are deserts so hard to wait for? Seriously why?
Once everything was cooled I whipped up the whipping cream and to my absolute delight I didn’t mess it up. I have a tendency to either over whip, or under whip or add to much powdered sugar or cream of tartar; anyway Whipped cream has never been a strong suit of mine so the whipped cream made me proud this time.
So everything was good and ready to be assembled.

And here are my thoughts on the strawberries. WAY TO MUCH SUGAR! They were not nestled nicely in a fine syrup; no they were globed together in a gritty sludge. There was so much sugar there was no way it could all dissolve in the juices. I may have been able to dissolve it if I had heated the strawberries but that is not what the recipe called for, so I left it and made a mental note to myself to use a quarter of the sugar next time.

So yes the strawberry shortcake was good, even if it was a bit sweet and yes it will be made again with a few alterations but nothing that would change it too much; because no matter how I look at it I really like strawberry shortcake. Yum!

R for Raison-Apple muffins

These sounded amazing. I love muffins, I love anything with raisons baked in them, and I eat cheerios nearly every day. So everything about these seemed like the real deal but…


I don’t know if I did something wrong or if they were supposed to be like they turned out. To me they tasted a bit stale even fresh out of the oven. I know the cheerios I used were not stale as I had eaten them for breakfast, and everything else was good too. The only thing I can figure is I didn’t crush the cheerios fine enough and they dried out in the baking process.


The muffins also had little hard bits in them which I think were the bigger pieces of the cheerios. Now when I say bigger pieces keep in mind these were not big pieces at all I did crush them as finely as I could which to me looked fairly fine, however I did crush them in a bag with a rolling pin, when I probably should have used the food processor, but you know lessons learned. In the event I make them again I will use it.


I also thought they tasted too healthy for the amount of sugar in them. Most of the muffins I make call for less sugar yet taste sweeter. These also had the same amount of oil in them as a traditional recipe yet call for apple sauce, which normally is used to cut down on the fats. These definitely have that healthy taste to them, but without being any healthier so I thought that was a bit weird.

I also thought since they had apple in the name they should have apples in the recipe, either fresh or dried just something to go along with the apple sauce as apple sauce flavor tends to disappear into the background, something that definitely happened in this recipe.

I wasn’t really a fan of these and will probably stick to my old standby of Betty Crocker with the few tweaks I already use. I find if I use just a basic recipe, I can add whatever I like to it and they turn out wonderful every time.
Needless to say this recipe is not going to go into the list of staples.

Q for quick cheese burger pie

This is one of those recipes my mother wouldn’t let us make because she thought the ingredients sounded weird.
We would ask but the answer was always no. Until one day when we were teenagers my sister decided she was going to make cheeseburger pie. I don’t remember why she was cooking if she was simply doing it because she wanted too, or if this was during the brief point of time when my mother had us rotating dinner duty. In any case my sister didn’t ask she simply made it, and this as it turns out was the best recipe ever!

And the weird ingredient that my mother was so concerned about was actually the thing that makes this recipe the tops. And what was that ingredient? Pickle juice!

Now personally I don’t think pickle juice is weird but for some reason my mother did. But the Pickle juice and chopped pickles really make this taste like a burger. I really enjoy making this recipe. And yes even my mother came around, she loves it too.

This is a relatively easy straight forward recipe. Par bake the crust, Brown the meat with some other things, add the rest of the ingredients except half the cheese, spoon into crust, bake for a while then add the rest of the cheese and bake for 5 more minutes.


Due too not being able to eat beef I did make the change of using turkey burger but other than that I stick to the recipe. I do believe that is why it turns out so well, someone really thought this one through. And I love it.

Generally I eat it topped with ketchup and mustard just to really make the burger experience come alive.
And yes this is one to make over and over again.