Dirt Cake

We had a special little boy turn 2, and he loves playing in the dirt, so it was very fitting to have dirt cake and worms for his birthday :)

Ingredients:

• 1 box of Oreos
• 2 packages of instant vanilla pudding
• 1 block of cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• Gummy worms

Directions:

1. Put all of the Oreos in a ziploc bag and crush them with a rolling pin.
2. Prepare the pudding according to instructions on the box.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together softened cream cheese and sugar.
4. Add the cream cheese mixture to the pudding and mix until smooth.
5. Layer the Oreos and the pudding mixture, starting and ending with the Oreos.
6. Top with gummy worms.

Summer Garden Ratatouille on Polenta

Here is another great recipe from Simply in Season.  It's the Summer Garden Ratatouille.  The recipe can be found here.  I put the ratatouille over fried polenta and topped it with parmesan cheese.

Quinoa Wrap

A few years ago someone gave me a copy of Simply in Season, which is a fabulous recipe book!  It is a great resource to have, especially if you have your own garden.  One of my favourite things about it is that they have an index at the back that you can look up recipes according to ingredient.  They also have a great selection of vegetarian recipes.

For my Quinoa Wrap, I used the Stoplight Salad recipe from Simply in Season.  I added quinoa to it and topped it with cheese and sour cream.  Then I put it in a warm tortilla and wrapped it up.

Cake Pops

After a very long break, I finally uploaded my pictures!  Now, I will catch up a bit from my long silence...I am still here and still cooking :)

The other day a friend of mine suggested that a few of us get together to make Cake Pops.  I have to admit, I didn't even really know what she was talking about, but apparently they are all the rage!  She ended up doing most of the prep work and then we decorated them together.  They turned out great and they were lots of fun to make!

Here is the finished product:

I don't have the actual recipe that my friend used, but here are a couple of sites that have recipes: 

Martha Stewart

Veronica's Cornucopia

Pumpkin Gnocchi

I love gnocchi, but the problem is, I really only like homemade gnocchi.  I have had amazing homemade gnocchi at a couple of restaurants and I always want to try and recreate the experience.  

I tried making it once a couple of years ago. It didn't turn out very well because I had to use too much flour.  I had very low expectations this time and maybe that's why I was so pleasantly surprised when it turned out great!  

My four year old even made some!  She did just as good a job as me :)

Here is the final product.  I used the Canadian Living Pumpkin Gnocchi recipe.  I found that it worked really well to reserve about a half cup of the flour to use for rolling it out with your hands.  I ended up roasting red peppers, leeks, and tomatoes in a cream sauce to go with it.