Carrot Cheesecake Bars

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups HONEY MAID Graham Cracker Crumbs
• 1 cup sugar, divided
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
• 3 (8 ounce) packages PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup BREAKSTONE\’S or KNUDSEN Sour Cream
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup finely shredded carrots
• 1 1/2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

Directions

1. 
   Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. 
   Mix butter, crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon; press onto bottom of 13×9-inch pan. Bake 10 minutes.
3. 
   Beat cream cheese, vanilla and the remaining sugar and cinnamon in large bowl with mixer until blended. Add sour cream; mix well. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each just until blended. Stir in carrots; spread over crust.
4. 
   Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool completely. Refrigerate 4 hours. Serve topped with COOL WHIP.

Nutritional Information

Amount Per Serving Calories:
176

Total Fat:
11.9g

Cholesterol:
63mg

Pickled Vegetables

Description

Pickled carrots, jicama, cauliflower, and string beans make a healthy snack to have on hand. The carrots offer a great deal of beta-carotene and iron. The jicama and cauliflower provide vitamin C and potassium, and the sting beans have a good deal of antioxidants and also add some color to the combination. The vinegar here is well seasoned with the essence of mustard, dill weed, and garlic, all offset with a hint of sweet and balancing brown sugar. The pickling liquid makes an excellent dressing for any salad.

Ingredients

1/2 pound carrots, peeled and cut in round on the diagonal (about 2 cups) 1/2 pound string beans 1 small head of cauliflower, broken into florets (about 2 cups) 1/2 raw jicama, peeled and cut in half and cut into sticks DRESSING: 2 cups purified water 2 1/2 cups cider vinegar 1/4 cup olive oil 3 tablespoons brown sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon dill weed 6 cloves garlic 1/4 cup pickling spices or: 5 bay leaves 1 tablespoon mustard seed 1 tablespoon dill seed 1 1/2 teaspoons red chili flakes

Instructions

Fill a large pot with 5 cups of water and bring to a boil. First drop in the carrots and parboil for 2 minutes, then quickly scoop them with a strainer or large slotted spoon and transfer to a pot filled with cold water and ice to shock them. Drop the sting beans into the boiling water and cook just until they turn bright green (about 3 minutes), then quickly transfer them to the ice water. The cauliflower will only need to parboil for 1 minute. Let all the vegetables sit in the cold water for a few minutes to cool. Drain the cold water, remove the cooled vegetables to a big bowl, and add the raw jicama. Put all the dressing ingredients including the pickling spices in a stainless-steel pan set over medium heat, bring it to a boil, and cook for 2 minutes. Pour the cooked dressing over the vegetables and allow them to cool at room temperature. Once cooled, put the vegetables into a 1-gallon glass jar or lidded plastic container and fill it with as much dressing as the jar will hold. Cover and refrigerate for 2 days before eating. Tips from Rosie's Kitchen: Blanching your vegetables makes them porous to absorb flavor from the dressing. Cooling them rapidly shocks the vegetables and stops any further cooking; shocking them quickly keeps your pickles crisp and crunchy rather than limp and rubber. The jicama is porous enough raw, so it doesn't need to be blanched. Each vegetable is blanched separately because some vegetables need more time than others, and we want them all to be crisp and flavorful.

Bannana Nut Cheesecake

1 cup chocolate wafer crumbs
1/4 cup margarine, melted
16 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas
2 large eggs
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup milk chocolate chips
1 tablespoon margarine
2 tablespoons water

Combine crumbs and margarine; press onto the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes.

Combine cream cheese, sugar and banana, mixing at medium speed on electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in walnuts, pour over crust. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes. Loosen cake from rim; cool before removing rim pf pan.

Melt chocolate pieces and margarine with water over low heat, stirring until smooth. Drizzle over cheesecake. Chill.

Try the five-grain cream waffles recipe

For years, Kim Boyce, a pastry chef who sifted and stirred her way through some of Los Angeles' best kitchens, from Wolfgang Puck's Spago to Nancy Silverton's Campanile, only worked in white. White flour, that is. Until she discovered the delight of cooking with whole-grains.

Curiously, she had her epiphany — make that her whole-grain epiphany — when she plopped some beet and apple purees into a bowl of 10-grain pancake mix and made pancakes on a plugged-in griddle on her dining room table.

"It was nutty and chewy and had a depth of flavor I'd never tasted before," says Boyce, whose aha! moment was born of desperation. She had a hungry 1-year-old on her hip, and, deep in house reconstruction, she didn't have a kitchen.

She'd roamed the grocery aisles that very morning, in search of the healthiest food she could cook for her baby, but given that she was working without a sink, it had to be something that would end with the fewest pots to scrub in the bathtub. She settled on that 10-grain sack.
What she discovered was deliciousness.

From that virgin bite, Boyce says, she set out to conquer the whole-grain world. And she was set on stirring up recipes more delicious than all the white-flour financiers and puff pastries she had prepared in her professional past.

"I had never in a professional kitchen come across a bin of whole-wheat flour, or a bag of rye flour," says Boyce, who shares her discoveries in "Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95).

It wasn't the nutrition that led her to learn the fine points of baking with buckwheat, oat and spelt flour. It was the flavor, Boyce insists. Soon, her kitchen counters were lined with screw-top glass jars of flours she'd never heard of.

Baking with whole grains "is all about balance, about figuring out how to get the right combination of structure and flavor from flours that don't act the same way as regular white flour," she writes. "There is a reason whole-wheat pastry has a bad reputation."

If you're inclined to march down the whole-grain road, Boyce suggests you start slowly. Choose just one flour for your first experiments; she recommends barley or rye flours, which are milder than whole wheat. (She opts for storing it in the fridge, not the freezer, if you don't think you'll use the flour quickly.)

Finally, she adds this dash of courage: Don't be disappointed. And don't give up.

The whole-grain deliciousness is worth your time in the experimental pastry kitchen.

Five-grain cream waffles

Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 4 minutes/batch
Makes: 12

The multigrain flour mix gives these waffles their complex flavor. Two cups of cream make the batter delicate and keep the waffles moist. Serve with the best maple syrup you can find and a knob of good butter.

Ingredients:
1 cup multigrain flour mix (see note below)
1 cup whole-grain pastry flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
3 eggs
2 cups whipping cream
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, melted

1. Turn waffle iron to highest setting. Sift all dry ingredients into a large bowl.

2. Whisk eggs and cream together. Pour into dry ingredients. Gently fold mixtures together until batter is thick and pillowlike, with large pockets of deflated bubbles on surface.

3. Brush waffle iron generously with butter. Ladle on 1/2 cup batter; close. Remove waffle with fork when indicator light shows it's done, 4-6 minutes. Repeat.

Note: For multigrain flour mix, mix in a bowl 1 cup each whole-wheat flour, oat flour and barley flour; 1/2 cup each millet flour and rye flour. Whisk.

Nutrition information:
Per serving: 274 calories, 67% of calories from fat, 20 g fat, 12 g saturated fat, 118 mg cholesterol, 19 g carbohydrates, 5 g protein, 253 mg sodium, 2 g fiber.

Recipe: Hickory-smoked brisket with coffee BBQ sauce

There's nothing like taming a tough cut of meat through the mastery of a low and slow fire, or deftly handling a lean cut quickly over a hot grill. But often it's that signature touch -- a thoughtfully honed sauce -- that separates barbecue masters from weekend warriors.

Total time: 2 hours, plus 5 to 6 hours smoking time
Servings: 6 to 8

Note: This recipe calls for hickory chips and the use of a smoker, or a charcoal grill converted to a smoker. Hickory chips are available at many well-stocked markets as well as at barbecue supply stores. The barbecue sauce makes about 6 cups, more than is needed for this recipe. Any remaining sauce will keep up to 1 week, refrigerated.

Hickory-smoked brisket
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 (3- to 4-pound) beef brisket with a layer of fat no thicker than 1/2 -inch
4 cups beer
2 cups water
Hickory chips, soaked

1. In a small bowl, combine the salt, pepper, onion powder, cumin and garlic powder. Rub the mix into the brisket and let sit at room temperature, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

2. Meanwhile, prepare your smoker or grill to cook over low, indirect heat for several hours. Set up a drip pan underneath where the brisket will smoke, and fill with the beer and water. Shortly before cooking, adjust the heat as needed to maintain a temperature around 250 degrees, and add hickory chips to start smoking.

3. Place the brisket (fat side up) in the prepared smoker and cook for 2 1/2 hours. Adjust the heat as needed (add several coals to either side of the grill as needed if using a kettle grill) to maintain the ambient temperature (around 250 degrees); replenish the chips as needed to keep smoking. Baste the brisket every 30 minutes or so to keep it moist.

4. After 2 1/2 hours, wrap the brisket (fat side up) tightly in foil and continue to cook over indirect low heat until the meat is fork-tender, 3 to 4 additional hours (time may vary depending on the heat of the smoker and size and thickness of the brisket).

5. Remove the brisket from heat and, still wrapped in foil, cover it with a layer of newspaper and kitchen towels to keep warm. Set aside, covered, for at least 1 hour before serving. While the brisket is resting, make the sauce.

Southwestern barbecue sauce and assembly:
1 large onion, thinly sliced, top to bottom
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 jalapeños, seeded and diced
2 poblano or pasilla chiles, seeded and diced
1/2 cup strong brewed coffee
1 beer, preferably ale
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cups ketchup
1/4 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
1/4 cup molasses
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon New Mexico chile powder
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
Prepared smoked brisket

1. In a heavy-bottom 4-quart pot, combine the onion, garlic, jalapeños and chiles with the coffee and beer. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat and simmer until the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes.

2. Stir in the tomato paste, ketchup, maple syrup, molasses, cumin, salt, chile powder and red wine vinegar and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and blend the sauce using an immersion blender or in stages in a stand blender, until fairly smooth. Set aside.

3. Remove the brisket from the foil and slice across the grain into thin strips, reserving any pooled juices and leftover bits. Stir these drippings into the barbecue sauce. Serve the brisket warm with the barbecue sauce on the side.

Nutrition information:
Each of 8 servings: 667 calories; 37 grams protein; 19 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 44 grams fat; 18 grams saturated fat; 161 mg. cholesterol; 1,077 mg. sodium.