Recipes 4, 5, 6 & 7

My list of recipes to try in 2013 keeps getting longer so I decided it was time to start crossing a few off. Last weekend I tackled four of them and was very pleased with them all.

First up, Cranberry-Pumpkin Seed Energy Bars:

These are my new favorite thing for breakfast. They have rice krispies in them so it's like eating dessert for breakfast. You can really use any kinds of seed and nuts and fruits that you want but for this round I followed the recipe. You then make this honey caramel-like mixture that holds everything together. They are sweet but not overly sweet at all. Buying all of the ingredients can feel like it's costing a lot because they aren't cheap things, but from every bag of nuts and seeds I bought, I'll probably get three batches of these and one batch is more than enough for breakfast each day of the week.

For Sunday night dinner it was Crispy mustard-roasted chicken:

This is from the Barefoot Contessa's new cookbook and the recipe isn't online yet so I don't have the link. Email me if you want the recipe. It's chicken dipped in mustard and white wine and then topped with panko with lemon and thyme and then baked until crispy. I did all chicken breast but you can do whatever you like. I paired it with some parmesan mashed potatoes and some broccoli for a yummy dinner. This was also really good left over for lunch during the week.

Then, as a treat for a meeting I was going to on Monday night, it was Salted Caramel Brownies:

These are also from the new Barefoot cookbook and oh my goodness they are tasty. They are incredibly rich (I am not kidding here) and kind of fudge-like. The base is her go-to standard brownie that I had never made before but might make my go-to standard. Then, as soon as you take them out of the oven you pour caramel sauce over the top and sprinkle on a bit of salt. The guys at the meeting I went to each at two very large brownies (I could barely eat one small one) and it was a good think I brought along the milk!

Then, for my regular Tuesday night dinner group, I made Carrot Cake. I don't have a picture of this and I don't have a link to the recipe so it's a little anticlimactic, I know. Again, it's from the new Barefoot cookbook and it's actually called Carrot Cake with Ginger Mascarpone Frosting. However, I changed it up a bit. I made the cake as directed and it was SO good. I just changed up the frosting a bit. The people I was making this for love carrot cake for the cream cheese frosting so I wanted to make sure that it had a lot of that flavor. So, instead of there being more mascarpone, I used equal parts of that and cream cheese. I bought the candied ginger that was supposed to get mixed in and I tasted it and didn't like it. So, I didn't put it in there. The cake was a huge hit!

*Sorry if the pics are really small still, I'm having some issues making them do what I want.