First of all I wanted to let you all know that we decided to postpone Kynden’s surgery that was scheduled for today. Mostly for money reasons. But also because of timing issues as well as that the doctor said that it wasn’t at all urgent. So thank you for your thoughts and prayers. If you’d like to continue to pray towards something, you can pray that we can quickly and easily get a different insurance so that it won’t cost us so much! I’m working to that end.

On a different note, I had a request from Susan to share my dessert recipes from Thanksgiving. So here I go!

Snickers Cheesecake Preheat oven to 300

Crust:
8oz chocolate graham crackers (about 1.5 wrapped packages inside box)
1/2 stick melted butter

Grind crackers up in food processor until fine. Add butter and pulse til well combined. Press into a springform pan (bottom and sides) and chill until filling is complete.

Filling:
32 oz of cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1/4 c flour

Beat this in mixer for about 4 minutes.

Add, while continuing to mix:
4 eggs (one at a time)
1 TB vanilla

Continue beating while you melt:
3 oz semi-sweet chocolate

Once chocolate is melted, add slowly to the mixer until it’s well incorporated. Now you can turn off mixer!

Remove crust from fridge. In bottom of crust, sprinkle roasted peanuts until the bottom is covered, but they’re not overlapping. On top of this, pour caramel ice cream topping until nuts are covered. (the original recipe calls for actual melted caramel..but that hardened so much that the cheesecake was impossible to cut!…so I think this will be better) Over the top of this, pour the cream cheese filling. Put the cheesecake in the oven WITH a separate pan of water. You can place the cheesecake in the pan of water, but make sure you wrap tin foil around the outside of the pan to avoid getting water inside the cheese cake. Bake cake for approx 50 min. The outsides of the cake should be set, but the inside 3 inches should still be jiggly. At this point you may either turn off oven and keep the door open while it cools (not practical for me w/3 two year olds) or remove it from oven…you just don’t want there to be a huge temp difference. But either way, immediately take a plastic knife and run it between the pan and the crust to loosen the sides…do this again after about 15 minutes. This is supposed to help it not crack. Cool for about 1 hour. Refrigerate cake at least 4 hours or overnight. When ready to serve, top it with hot fudge topping. Can you say, yum?

Lemon Tarts preheat oven to 325

Crust:
6 oz cream cheese
3/4 cup butter
2 cup flour

Beat in mixer until combined. Press into a tart pan or cupcake pans for individuals. Bake 15 min. If you’re making a large tart, you probably want to use pie weights or parchment paper and dry beans to keep the crust from bubbling.

Filling:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch

Mix together in sauce pan.

Add:
1 1/4 cup milk
3 egg yolks
1tsp grated lemon peel
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup butter

Bring to a boil. (slowly!) stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and pour it into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. (touch the plastic wrap directly on the filling so that it won’t get a skin) Chill.

Mix in:
1 cup sour cream

Fill the crusts with the lemon filling. I topped mine with whipped cream and grated lemon peel to make them pretty.