Dumb Easy Dessert: 3-Ingredient No Churn Peach Mango Ice Cream

I was going to do shameless marketing post using a recipe inspired by the characters in my book, but then I made this and, since it is 100 and trillion and bazillion degrees here (and humid), I just had to post it.

Shameless marketing for my book will just have to wait for my release date on the 28th. Or, wait, I can work some shameless marketing in right now by inviting you to join the giveaway I'm hosting. Win a free book and a $10 Amazon gift card! Go here to sign up.

Okay, marketing is done. Now make this ice cream. If you've got frozen fruit on hand, it takes only five minutes to make. You only need a good blender or food processor, some frozen fruit, and a can of sweetened condensed milk. For this, you get cold beautiful perfection.  Now I call this Peach Mango (and that was a very good combination), but the first time we made it just with peaches, which also blew us away. I imagine it could be made with a variety of other frozen fruits although peaches and mangoes do give it a creaminess that you might not have with, say blueberries or something like that. My point here is that you should feel free to experiment and if you don't have a bunch of frozen peaches on hand, you shouldn't be afraid to try this with another fruit.

But we had farmer's market peaches that I'd bought for $.50/lb and $.50 mangoes, so we went with this combination.  

3-Ingredient No Churn Peach mango Ice Cream
adapted from Saving Room for Dessert
serves 4-6 smallish portions
prep time: 5 minutes
Cost: $4.00 (less if you use cheap farmer's market fruit like we did)
peaches: 2.00, mangoes: 1.00, sweetened condensed milk: 1.00

Note: You can buy these fruits pre-frozen at the store. No shame in that. But I got a steal on my fruits and froze them myself. As a bonus, the peaches particularly were super fresh and amazing.

Note: When this is first done, it will be a creamy soft-serve texture. After it sits in the freezer for a day, it will look more like the pictures above. Both are amazing, but we ate almost all of ours in soft-serve state.

3-4 peaches slices and frozen (skin can be left on or peeled off)
1-2 mangoes, frozen
1/2-1 can sweetened condensed milk

Add fruits to a food processor (or a good blender). I added about half, pulsed and chopped, then added the other half, pulsed and chopped, so that I had some chopped up, icy fruit. Then I added the sweetened condensed milk and pulsed, then just let the processor run. I did not need the full can of sweetened condensed milk, but if your blender or food processor is struggling, feel free to add some more. This might make for a slightly runnier finished product, but I'm pretty sure you still won't regret this dessert.

Dumb Easy Dinner: Savory Crock Pot Pork Roast

It might be almost April (I may even have some spinach sprouting up in my garden), but I'm not ready to ditch the comfort foods quite yet. I mean, it might get cold at night. Are spinach smoothies going to help me with that? I think not. 

Which is why all of us still need a few good roast recipes in our back pockets. This is a very good recipe. Sometimes crock pot recipes come out a little more bland than their roasted counterparts, but this was packed with flavor and very tender. And I don't know about you, but I always appreciate a good dump-in-and-leave-it crock pot recipe. Five minute assembly, check.

Savory Crock Pot Pork Roast
adapted from Poor Amy
feeds 6-8 people unless you're big teenager man people, then maybe less
prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 6 hours in crock pot
Cost: $8.10 (this is $1-2/per meal for fantastic, top-notch food)
pork: $8, dry onion soup: .70, beef stock: .20, soy sauce: .10, other stuff: .10

Note: I did use the dry onion soup packet, which felt like cheating, but I tried not to feel too sorry since I did just make my family a fantabulous meal of meat and potatoes for freaking out's sake. However, if making food not from complete scratch is offensive to you, then use some good quality beef broth with an onion sliced into it instead of the dry onion soup/water in this recipe.

1 pork roast (mine was about 4 pounds)
1 (1-ounce) envelope dry onion soup
1 C water
3/4 C beef stock
3 Tbsp soy sauce
black pepper
1-2 Tbsp minced garlic

Dump that roast in the crock. Put the dry onion soup on top, then pour on water, beef stock, and soy sauce (pour this over the top so it mixes with the onion soup). Kind of mix everything together with a spoon. Top meat with black pepper and minced garlic.

Cook on high for 6-ish hours.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Banana Yogurt Breakfast Plate

My kids are out of school! And I've been on a little food jag. It seems wrong not to tell you about it, even if it is dumb easy (especially if it is dumb easy). But this little "recipe" sat on my shelf for a couple weeks. Yes, I'm ashamed to say, but even though it tastes just as good as a banana split and maybe even better, I just hadn't gotten it posted. And then this weekend when my son and his friend went through our neighborhood and gathered mulberries from all the trees they could find. Mulberries, should you have no idea what they are, are a berry that grows on a tree. They taste like a cross between a cherry and a blackberry to me and are purely delicious. They grow all over the place around here and the trees are actually considered a bit of a pest because they'll sprout up wherever they please and grow like mad. I'm not sure you can find them on the grocery shelf anywhere. And I'm not sure why. Maybe they're too delicate to store/ship/whatever. I didn't even know what they were until we moved to Indiana several years ago. Interestingly, we've tried to get several adult friends to eat them from the tree and they Would Not Touch Them. Well, my kids touch them and eat them until their faces and hands are purple. And so my son and his friend rode their bikes around with a large bowl somehow balanced on their ?laps? or something (my son claims to be the best no hands biker around, but still--how did they transport an enormous bowl of berries on bicycles--it's a gift, I suppose). And then they came home and told me that now I could make mulberry jam.

How could I refuse? They'd been biking around with a bowl of berries on their laps for two hours.

Now, I would love to be sharing a perfect mulberry jam recipe with you today, but after digging out my only package of somewhat expired, low-sugar pectin and making a jam with a weird fruit in it, our jam came out delicious but slightly runny.

We also had a couple bunches of very ripe bananas on our hands and that runny jam and some Greek yogurt just called to me. Over and over again my friends. Because this is delicious. And easy. And kid-friendly. And kind of pretty. And well--rounded. It's got your fruit, protein, calcium, nuts. It could be eaten for breakfast, snack, pre/post workout food, or as a side dish with dinner. Which is how we first ate it several weeks ago when we had it.

It's hard to call this quite a recipe exactly, but when you're on a delicious, wonderful food jag, who cares?

Banana Yogurt Breakfast Plate
adapted from Natural Noshing
Prep time: 2 minutes
Cost: $.70
banana: .15, yogurt: .25, jam: .10, other stuff: .20

1 ripe banana
1 dollop plain Greek yogurt (I like it best thick)
1-2 spoonfuls jam or real maple syrup or this
maybe a squirt of whipped cream if you're feeling evil
nuts or shredded coconut

Cut your banana in half. Plop on the yogurt, then jam, then optional whipped cream. Sprinkle generously with nuts. And eat.

Two-Minute No Knead Pizza Dough

So apparently Gwyneth Paltrow is now on the food stamp budget bandwagon. She's gotten plenty of push back too and, while I admit that in some ways, she seems perfectly oblivious to the plight of some of us commoners, the push back is sometimes annoying to me too. One thing I read recently criticized her because she can go to the store and buy food as opposed to the poor who, apparently, cannot go anywhere at all ever. Except McDonald's. The article pretty much said that poor people can't make it to the store, that's why they have to eat fast food. Because as we all know, grocery stores are millions of miles away from poor people, but Taco Bells just sprout off of their poor people trees.

Listen. I don't think there's anything wrong with a person (poor or otherwise) going out for fast food now and again, but when journalists start talking about the poor as though they're destined to live off of cheeseburgers and Big Gulps, it gets my little britches all in a wad. It's just so unempowering (spell check says this is not a word), and in this unempowerment (also not a word), it's super insulting. If you're poor, then I guess you'll just be stuffing your face with cheap hamburgers.

Well, not today. Today we're making pizza. Beautiful, homemade pizza. We can do it if we're poor because it's inexpensive, delicious, and easy to make. Or we can do it if we're not poor because it's inexpensive, delicious, and easy to make. We can do it if we're anywhere in between because it's inexpensive, delicious, and easy to make. Oh sure, I hear you, Mr. Condescending Journalist--the poor don't have time to make homemade pizza. Well today they/we do. The dough takes two minutes--TWO minutes--of assembly time and can be thrown together (almost literally) the night before, the morning of, or that afternoon depending on your needs. (Note: It will need rise time, so some planning is necessary. Please don't tell me the poor cannot plan.) Add to this some 5-minute marinara sauce (or a can of $.99 Hunts if you will), and some mozzarella and you've got yourself a perfectly respectable poor man's meal that tastes like a rich man's meal. All together, a 15x12 inch cheese pizza with this dough will cost you about $3.50. In fact, you've got yourself a poor man's meal for 6--that's about $.60/serving (teenagers not yet included). Yes, you could go to Little Caesar's. And, again, I'd like to point out that there's nothing inherently wrong about that. But this dough tastes better. And has less sodium and sugar than a fast-food pizza. It's also a little cheaper and a little bigger (it can feed our whole family whereas a Little Caesar's pizza can't). And has been prepared by your very own hands. You can personalize it with any toppings you wish if you've got the cash and inclination for that.

You do have to get your booty to the grocery store at least once a year for these pantry stable ingredients, but I'm pretty sure if Gwyneth can do it, you can too.

Two-Minute No Knead Pizza Dough
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
makes enough dough for one large pizza
Cost: $.40
flour: .35, yeast: .05

Note: You'll use 1/8 tsp yeast for a 24-ish hour dough,
1/4 tsp yeast if you make your dough the morning of (12-ish hour rise time),
1/2 tsp yeast if you make it around lunch time (5-6-ish hour rise time),
3/4 if you make it a few hours before dinner (3-4-ish hour rise time).
I believe this dough is tastier and chewier the longer you leave it to sit, but I don't always plan ahead enough, which is why you have the higher yeast adaptations (and it's still yummy made that way too).

3 C flour (I used 2 1/2 C all-purpose and 1/2 C of white whole wheat for righteousness' sake)
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/8, 1/4, 1/2, or 3/4 tsp yeast depending on how long you want to let it sit (see note)
1 1/4 C water

Combine dry ingredients. Add water and stir. It'll look like a lump of craggy dough (different than kneaded dough).

Cover and let sit for up to a day.

Take it out  (it will now be slightly sticky, and less firm than that craggy dough was originally). Fold it a time or two into a ball. Spread it on your pan and top it as you will.

Bake at 400 degrees until your cheese is bubbly. (Note: Pizza pros often cook their pizza at much higher temps. You can. Sometimes I do too, but usually I make a medium-thick crust and keep it at 400 or 425. I'm not a pro, but it comes out pretty tasty nevertheless.)

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Cookies and Cream (An Icebox Cake)--Photo Redo

Today is my mother's birthday. So I made her favorite food. Because that is the type of selfless memorial we're all about around here. Love you, Mom.

And look what I did.

I made it all pretty.

I can't say I did that for Mom. No. I did that for you Pinterest. And for the rest of you, social media.

But the truth--the honest truth--is that you needn't make it like this. And the honest honest truth is that to make it on a cake stand like this is a terrible idea. Unless you have a cover for your cake stand and a very very empty fridge to store it in. Because this cake needs to sit in the fridge for 24 hours before you can eat it.

If you want to skip the cake stand and still make it pretty, just put it onto a little Tupperware pie or cake container.

See, still pretty, but much more practical.

And then, you can cover it up with more whipped cream because--personally--that's how I like it best. And look--still pretty. albeit not quite as showy.

You could even sprinkle some crumbs from the cookies on top for visual effect, but I didn't think of that until I was typing this up.

Then cover it, pop it in your fridge. 24 hours later you're good to go.

Now if you really really want it on that cake stand--say, for a certain loving, but potentially over-hyped holiday, you can prepare it on waxed paper on your nice practical Tupperware container, cover it, let it sit, and then just before eating, use that wax paper to slip it onto a fancy cake stand before serving. If that's your style. (Trim that waxed paper and you're good to go.)

(See.)

But except for the occasional burst of energy with this blog, that kind of fancy isn't usually my style. If you click to the original post, you'll  see what my style is (note: lazy; also not particularly visual). I put it all into a glass bowl with a lid and then flop it out with a spoon. It works, but Better Homes and Gardens won't be calling you (by which I mean, of course, me) any time soon. Here are some pic's from that original post for your viewing enjoyment.





And for the skinny on this recipe (by which I don't mean anything skinny at all), have a look at the post. It will give you all you ever wanted to know about this simple recipe, and lots of stuff you never needed to know. Below you'll find the basic recipe, but--you know--not the self-gratifying blabbing I usually do (because there was nothing self-gratifying in this post at all; nothing).

Cookies and Cream (An Icebox Cake)
Serves: Um, my family of 6 (but it should serve more; it really should; we have issues)
Prep time: 15 minutes
Fridge time: 24 hours
Cost: $5.12 (Okay, I know I've been highlighting some sort of pricey desserts lately, but May is my holiday month, okay. Besides, this is way cheaper than you'd get even one teeny from-a-box-of-some-sort dessert at a chain restaurant.)
(cookies: $3, cream: $2, sugar: .12)

1 box Nabisco Chocolate Wafers
1 pint cream
3/4 C sugar
2 tsp vanilla

Beginning by whipping your cream. Pour it in a bowl and blend it until soft peaks form. When they do, add the sugar and vanilla. Whip or beat until firmer peaks form.

Put a blob of it on the bottom of a salad bowl and spread that around. Make one layer of cookies, breaking some if you need to so they don't overlap. Add more whipped cream and spread. Add another layer of cookies. Repeat until you top it off with a thin layer of whipped cream.

Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours or until the cookies are perfectly soft.

Dumb Easy Dessert (and a Picture Redo for Easy Chocolate Pie)

Most of the pictures from my early days of blogging are a little of what I'd like to call, well, ugly. Yet many of them are fabulous recipes--my tried and true classics.

Sunday, when I went to make an apple pie only to discover that 3/4 of my bag of apples (from Walmart--land of evil produce) were completely rotten--as in just rotted through after you peeled off the shiny red outside...Anyway, after that, I had a pie crust and no pie. So I decided to fill it with what we had. Which was chocolate. And I was reminded of this lovely and stupidly easy pie. I was also reminded that its picture was ugly.

Today I rectify that.

Easy Chocolate Pie

I also remind you that this pie filling takes only about 5-7 minutes of prep time. A graham cracker crust will add another 5. And then you chill it. You'll be finding it on my dumb easy Thanksgiving line up soon.

Dumb Easy Dinner: Pizza Crescents

This is the first installment of my Dumb Easy Dinner series--which is not to promise that I will post Dumb Easy Dinner posts on a particular day of every week or any such promise that I probably can't keep. It is to say that sometimes (okay, maybe often), I post recipes that are just too easy and awesome to pass up. From now on when I post them, they will have the lovely introduction/heading of "Dumb Easy Dinner." Now isn't that nice.

I may even, if I am gripped by loads of enthusiasm and energy, go through my own blog and highlight some of my past Dumb Easy Dinners (although--note: They were not called "Dumb Easy Dinners" because that is a new thing I am starting as of today. Thank you.)

Today we begin with these Pizza Crescent Wrap Ups that were a super ridiculously huge hit in our house and took all of 5.5 minutes of work for me (of course I scientifically measured the time it took by using precise scientific instruments, like guessing). They are not a whole food. But they're not total junk either. Especially if you dip them in a nice healthy marinara sauce. If you do that, then you can feel fully that you met the vegetable requirement for the night. If you serve a salad with this (even if it is a salad-from-a-bag), then you can consider yourself a bonafide Really Good Person. And that in less than 10 minutes of prep time.

If the idea of such an easy dinner is repulsive to you, then make them for your next party as an appetizer. 

The other intensely awesome thing about this meal is that it can be popped into a lunch box the next day and possibly compete with Lunchables for coolness.

(Look, it's just like those Pinterest moms.)

Pizza Crescents
adapted from Taste of Home
Makes 8 rolls, which will serve 2-4 people--not counting teenaged humans (we need to double or even triple this amount)
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time 12-14 minutes
Cost: $2.00 (that's $.50-1.00/serving)
crescents: 1.30 (Aldi prices), pepperoni: ..40, cheese: .30

1 package refrigerated crescent roll dough (the tubed stuff; yup--not a whole food)
16 round slices pepperoni
1/4-1/2 C mozzarella cheese

Unroll your dough and lay out the triangles.

Sprinkle cheese on each triangle. Put two pieces of pepperoni on each triangle.

Roll up as you would if you were making crescent rolls.

Bake according to the time requirements. Err on the side of too blond instead of too brown if you're going to err at all.

Eat with a little dip of marinara sauce thereby.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Easy Chocolate Pie (there's no Jello Pudding involved, so don't even go there, okay?)

Time for a photo redo. So many of my early recipes come with ugly pictures. Which is a shame because this isn't an ugly pie. It's a beautiful, delicious, and dumb easy pie. And now you can see it for yourself instead of blindly trusting me. 

And just for old time's sake, here's the original picture. Hmm, let's make it smaller--the glare from the flash is blinding me. 

We like chocolate in our house. Has that fact been mentioned? Last year I made a great chocolate pie from my America's Test Kitchen Cookbook. It was good, don't get me wrong. It was very good. But it was fussy. And for some reason the butter separated slightly and so we had just a bit of an oily film on top of the pie. And so I decided to return to my old faithful, really easy, and (don't tell Christopher Kimball) just as good chocolate pie. It's maybe even a little bit better since no sweat, blood, or tears are dripped into the recipe. My recipe came off of the back of some Nestle dark chocolate chips. Maybe Nestle doesn't sell the chips anymore. Or maybe they're trying to promote their baking bars now. Whatever the case, I was going to link you to them and give them all the credit and all, but they don't have the recipe up anymore. All they've got is one with 4 ounces less chocolate, and I assure you we don't want that. Also, I always use Ghiradelli chips. (So take that, Nestle--promote whatever lame-o 8-ounce bars you want, but I'm not going to.)

Dark Chocolate Satin Pie
Serves 8

1 graham cracker crust (I'll post my favorite below)
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
2 egg yolks (save the whites and make macaroons)
11-12 oz (about 2 C) dark chocolate (I use Ghiradelli 60%)

Whisk milk and egg yolks in a sauce pan. Heat until thickens slightly. Do not boil. Take off heat. Add chocolate chips. Pour into crust and chill 3 hours. Garnish with whipped cream. (I'll be putting up a whipped cream recipe later tonight. Use it. It will transform your Thanksgiving and possibly your life forever.)

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Graham Cracker Crust 

Adapted from allrecipes

10 graham cracker
1/3 C white sugar
5 Tbsp butter, melted
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional, if you like a little cinnamon with your chocolate, you Mexican hot chocolate lovers, you)

Put graham crackers in a blender and blend till they're crumbs. (I know it dirties an extra dish, but it's so so much easier. It'll save you a good 10 minutes. 20 if you're me.) If you don't have a blender or are a sicko and love crushing graham crackers, put them in a gallon Ziploc bag and rolling pin them or let your kids stomp on them or whatever.

Put crumbs in your pie crust. Add sugar and butter and mix. Spread in pan and press into a pie crust with your fingertips.

If, by chance, you don't like graham cracker crusts, or you don't have graham crackers and wild horses can't drag you back to the store right now, here's a great traditional pie crust recipe as well.

Standard Pie Crust

Makes 2 crusts (so use the other for your pumpkin pie or freeze it for another time)


2 1/2 C flour
1 C butter, cold
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4-1/2 C cold water

Process flour, sugar, and butter in food processor or blender until the butter is in pea-sized chunks (my chunks are always a little smaller). (Or cut the butter in with a pastry cutter if you feel the same way about cutting in butter as I do about kneading bread.)

Add water by the tablespoon till the dough comes together. Knead the dough a few times if necessary, but try not to handle it too much with your hands because that warms the butter and that means less flakiness (if flakiness matters to you in your crusts).

Roll out the dough. The internet says that a nice, easy, neat way to do this is to roll it between 2 pieces of waxed paper or parchment paper. Then the transfer is easy. Take off one layer of waxed paper and put your crust in the pan. Then take off the other layer and crimp your edges or whatever edge fanciness suits you. I tried this with 2 pieces of wax paper and it just scooted around annoyingly and wouldn't really roll out. I took off one layer and it still scooted around, but I got it to roll and it really did make the transferring way easier, but do flour your wax paper.