A Week Of New Recipes

Trying out new recipes can be fun and exciting, or extremely disappointing!

I have tried out several new recipes this week and about half have been "keepers" and the other have need some test kitchen work.

Not pictured was Sunday night's dinner, a Skillet Gnocchi.  I used Sweet Potato Gnocchi, white kidney beans, diced tomatoes, chard and mozzarella & Parmesan cheeses.  It was delicious!  Let me know if you want the recipe.  Healthy and Yummy!

Then Monday I made the Hearty Potato Soup in Italian Bread Bowls.  The soup was good, but needs something else to give it some kick - 1 it was a slow cooker recipe that I think would have been better stove top, and 2 it needs more flavor.  The bread recipe turned out well and I will keep that one.  Both were from a Southern Living email I received.  I don't think it was directly a SL recipe, and I don't always have good luck with those.  I did make a slow cooker BBQ chicken from one of the last SL issues and it was incredible.  I was going to make an Italian Pot Roast today from a similar SL email and the more I looked at the recipe, the more I decided it didn't look that good, so I am making my own Pot Roast recipe and it smells wonderful!  (I am new to the slow cooker world, so this is fun for me to try out the good recipes).

For dessert Monday, I made vanilla cupcakes which were supposed to be the "perfect vanilla cake".  I disagree.  They looked good, but the texture was all wrong.  They called for cake flour so I thought they would be fluffy, but it was the opposite!  So, now I have a second quest for the best.  I will be trying out several vanilla cake recipes to see if I can find a good one.  Vanilla/White Cake is a tough one, but I determined!   At least I have my wonderful chocolate cake recipe and chocolate is always better anyway!  The icing I used is my new favorite one from several months ago and it was great!

I am off to finish dinner which includes a new vegetable dish - how did all these new recipes surface at once!?  It is from the same email that the Italian Pot Roast was in, but it has potential.

Tonight's dessert gets it's own posting! :)

Potato Soup in a Bread Bowl

Vanilla Cupcake with Pink Vanilla Frosting