Greek Salad Dressing

I was craving Greek food the other day. Although when I think of Greek food, I think of a good salad, rice pilaf, and pita bread with cucumber yogurt sauce (tzatziki). Now please don't laugh at me, I realize that this is not Greek food, but that was what I was craving. I settled on making just a Greek salad. I searched long and hard to find a recipe for Greek salad dressing, aka I looked at my pins on pinterest and low and behold there was a recipe for greek dressing. The recipe was good but after some changes, it is now amazing.

Greek Dressing
1 C. olive oil
3/4 C. red wine vinegar
1/8 C. water
2 1/2 tsp. of each: garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano, dried basil,
3 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
3 Tbsp. sugar
Put everything in a blender and blend well until all is incorporated. Serve over a salad. For a Greek salad I like the combination of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, feta cheese, kalamata olives, and pepperoncinis. Be creative, but enjoy!

English Muffin Breakfast Sandwich-Breakfast of Champions!

Now that you've made Sourdough English Muffins, it now time to take them to the next level. In fact you could take it up a couple more notches by adding my secret sauce. Well, it's not going to be a secret after I share it, but I'm nice like that.

English Muffin Breakfast Sandwich
-English muffin(s)
-1 egg/sandwich
-1 piece bacon/sandwich
-1 slice cheese/sandwich (so far I've tried muenster and cheddar and both were delicious)
-Liz's secret chipotle sauce
Cut English muffin in half and toast. Cook bacon (for a fast breakfast, cook the bacon ahead of time and freeze, just reheat while cooking the egg). Cook egg with some salt and pepper. I usually crack the egg into the pan, break the yoke, add some salt and pepper, and while it's cooking, use a spatula to keep egg in a round type shape. Once the muffin is toasted and the egg cooked, assemble the English muffin, egg, bacon, cheese, and add Liz's secret chipotle sauce. Enjoy!

Liz's Secret Chipotle Sauce
(note: this is also called chipotle mayo but I don't like mayo so I have a hard time calling it that)
You will need:
Mayonnaise
1 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (you just want the chipotle peppers, not the adobo sauce)

In a blender, put in mayo. I usually do a bigger batch so I always have it on hand. Remove chipotle peppers from adobo sauce, cut open and remove seeds. It is very important that you remove the seeds. If you do not, then it becomes very spicy and not very flavorful. We want flavorful with a bit of spice. Turn on blender and add one pepper at a time until it is a salmon color. The darker it is, the spicier and stronger it will be. Store in either a container or squirt bottle.

Tiramisu cupcakes

As Curtis' birthday was nearing, I asked him what his favorite cake was. He told me several different kinds and one was tiramisu. Since we were going out, I decided that I wanted to make something that didn't require me cutting and serving, but something that could be self served. Because of my stipulations, I decided to make tiramisu cupcakes. No one ha ever done that, right? Wrong. Google has everything. Unfortunately, I didn't like any of the recipes so I combined 5 different recipes and added some extra love. The result was an incredible tiramisu cupcake that looked amazing and tasted even better.
However, due to life, I never wrote down what I did so the blog post never got written. Then my grandma had a birthday party and I was in charge of the dessert. I decided to attempt at repeating the process and was again successful.
For those who don't know what tiramisu is (like my grandparents and cousins), its a coffee soaked scone like cake with a layer of creamy custard and topped with whipped cream. There are different versions, but this is my favorite. Plus I had an Italian taste them and as he went back for seconds he said that they were amazing and were just as good as the ones in Italy.

Note: this is an easy recipe but requires multiple steps and a good chunk of time...but it's so worth it.
Tiramisu Cupcakes (makes 12)
Layer 1 (lady finger cake part):
4 eggs separated
2 Tbsp + 2/3 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Preheat oven to 400F. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form, then add 2 tbsp sugar. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking soda together. In another separate bowl, beat egg yokes and 2/3 cup sugar. Add half of the egg white mixture to the egg yoke mixture. Once incorporated, add all of the flour/baking powder mixture and gently mix. Then fold in the remaining egg white mixture. Fill lined muffin tin with batter about 1/2 full. Bake 8-10 min or until slightly golden brown. Allow to cool.

Layer 2 (coffee soaking mixture):
3/4 cup strong coffee-not hot (I used instant espresso)
2 tbsp
3 tbsp sugar
Mix together until sugar is dissolved.

Layer 3 (creamy custard part):
4 egg yokes
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
4 oz mascarpone cheese (found in the specialty cheese section of most grocery stores)
Whisk eggs, sugar and milk together. Cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil. Chill in fridge (or freezer if you want to rush the process) until completely cooled. Once it is cooled, add the 4 oz of mascarpone cheese)

Layer 4 (whipped cream topping):
12oz heavy whipping cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4oz mascarpone cheese
Approx. 1-2 cups powdered sugar (I didn't measure it, I just added until I liked the taste of it)
Using a hand mixer or kitchen aid, whip the cream on med high until soft peaks form. Continue whipping while adding vanilla and sugar. Once the whipped cream tastes good and looks good, add the mascarpone cheese. Put all the contents in a gallon size zip-lock bag and store in fridge until ready to use.

Assembly instructions:
Remove the lady finger cupcakes from pan. Using a fork, poke a couple of holes in the lady finger cake part. Spoon in the coffee mixture until the cake part can't soak up any more or the coffee mixture is gone. Spoon cooled custard part on top of the cake. Cutting the corner of the ziplock bag containing the whipped cream mixture, squeeze contents onto custard. Note: if custard isn't completely cooled, then the whipped cream part will slide off. Dust with chocolate powder and sprinkle with chocolate shavings. Place in fridge for at least an hour. Enjoy!