Our Best Bites Strawberry Cheesecake Bars

Noah picked these out as treats, Strawberry Cheesecake Bars from Our Best Bites first cookbook, he wanted to share with his friends at school, so I made them and took them in for his birthday celebration at school.  He and I are the only ones who tried them, I gave them a 7, because of the crust, and Noah gave them a 9.  He and his classmates really liked them, so that's good :).  We cut them into squares, and we had 28 squares made.  The calories for one bar were 206 calories, but because the recipe called for Pecan Sandies Cookies, and almond extract, and we can't bring nuts into Noah's school, I had to change the recipe and use only vanilla extract and graham crackers, and the same weight in graham crackers did not yield very good results.  The crust on these was dry and flavorless, and there wasn't nearly enough butter to make them taste better.  Next time I will try to follow the recipe better.  I used my strawberry cherry jam again, so it was just a little different, and then I covered them in some strawberry sauce from Our Best Bites that I will hopefully feature at another time.  Here's the recipe the way I made it:
16 oz graham crackers, divided then crushed
2 T butter, melted
11 oz cream cheese, softened
2 eggs
2/3 c sugar
pinch salt
2 t vanilla
2 c sour cream
1 1/4 c strawberry cherry jam

Strawberry Sauce to garnish

Preheat oven to 375.  Spray a 9x13 pan.  In a food processor, process 3/4 of the graham crackers.  Mix with the melted butter and press into the pan.  Set aside.
Beat together the cream cheese, eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla, and sour cream.  Spread half of the batter into the set aside crust. 
Pour 1/2 of the sauce over the batter, spreading evenly.  Top with the remainder of the cheesecake batter, then spread with the remainder of the jam, then top with the reserved graham cracker crumbs. 
Bake for 25-35 minutes, then cool and chill for at least 8 hours.  Serve with some strawberry sauce if desired.

Coffee Cake and Shrimp and Potatoes

Happy Saturday! We love Saturdays around here, not only for the fact that we can eat lots of yummy food, but also because we have no school!!! Saturdays let us eat fun breakfast food we don't have time for during the week. Take this coffee cake for instance. It's called Raspberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake, but I used strawberry lime jam instead, since that is our homemade jam we had.  This was a typical coffee cake, not fabulous, but a nice sweet brunch food.  We gave it 7 stars, and the calories for 24 slices were 196/slice.  I kept everything else the same inside the recipe besides substituting out the jam.

Now on to dinner. We had some delicious dinner food tonight, shrimp and potatoes are some of our favorite things anyway, but then trying them in different ways makes things even better (at least most of the time :)). Paul's Barbequed Shrimp is the name of the shrimp recipe, and they really are fabulous.

Aaron said these are his new all-time favorite shrimp, so obviously he gives them a perfect 10. I gave them a 9, and Owen and Noah gave them an 8, because they have a spicy kick to them. I love the ease of shrimp, being able to get them on the table in under 15 minutes is such a treat for a mom, and having my family be such huge fans of it also helps. Anyway, the calories on these, since I cut back on the butter is 250 calories for 4 oz of shrimp, or 1/4 of the recipe.  Instead of using rosemary, thyme, and oregano, I just substituted in 3/4 t poultry seasoning, and I cut down quite a bit on the cayenne because of my little guys.  These were great how we made them.
The potatoes might just be my perfect dinner.  If they weren't so fattening and full of bad things, I could eat these every day and be happy.  We used the mashed potatoes recipe from Our Best bites found here, and in their cookbook they have a loaded variation that we used.  Follow the basic mashed potatoes recipe and add in
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c grated sharp cheddar cheese
6 oz chopped bacon
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 t kosher salt
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t garlic powder

Whip the potatoes with the sour cream, salt and spices, then mix in the extras by hand. 

These are so good.  Owen and I gave them a perfect 10, Noah gave them a 9, and Aaron gave them a 7 since they were too "chunky--especially the bacon".  Go figure :)  The calories for the potatoes the way we made them were 313 calories for 1/6 of the total.  Anyway, we all really enjoyed our dinner, and thanks to my dad for the awesome corn on the cob we've been eating straight from his garden.  Yum!

Tomorrow we're having lamb tagine and couscous and a devil's food cheesecake that the boys requested.  I'm going to have to work out more than usual this week I think :)