justJENN recipes

I LOVE Black and White cookies. But mini ones are even better! Cute and bite-sized.

This isn’t as much a recipe as a how to. Therefore, to make the black and white cookie dough, I use this one from Everyday Food, but you can use any one. Now here’s the trick, instead of making them GIANT, use a 1/2 ounce ice cream scoop and put the dollops on the sheet, approx 2″ apart.

When they finish baking they’ll puff up like little rounded cakes…

Flip the cookies over, and frost the flat side, the puffed side will now be the bottom.

Make a batch of vanilla glaze, separate it into two bowls. In one bowl add cocoa powder to make the chocolate. Then frost one side “white” and the other “black.”

They are great cause they are just the right size to get all the flavors at once!

I made these with the white part ‘pink’ for the Best Shower Ever. They turned out very cute!

Simple, healthy, and not too stinky. I don’t like smelly fish, but this recipe gives your house a yummy teriyaki smell.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin (sweet cooking wine)
1/4 cup sugar
garlic
ginger
salmon filets

This recipe calls for mirin, which is a Japanese sweet cooking wine. While this of course gives the best flavor, you can also use sake, or even orange juice if you want a more citrus-y salmon. Still, I say use mirin if you have it.

Rinse and pat dry salmon. Put all the ingredients in a saucepan, and boil until simmered down and a little thick. Probably about 10 mins.

Here’s where some people differ. They way I do it is I like the full flavor of the teriyaki. So I soak the salmon, just for a few minutes, not overkill, in half of the liquid mixture (after it is boiled and cooled).

Place the marinated salmon on a silpat lined baking sheet and broil. Just 2 minutes on one side, baste with more of the sauce, then turn over and broil another 3 minutes on the other. 5 minutes! Who doesn’t have that kind of time?? So easy!

Be careful. Sugar+broiling = nightmare. The sugar burns quickly, therefore longer than 5 minutes and you are doomed. Sure you can use foil, but it will stick like a motherf*er and who needs that headache. Buy a silpat. The end.

Now, stop here and you’ll have a wonderful dinner. However if you have kids, keep reading. The best way to make them eat fish is to mix it up with some rice, then form little musubis. Of course this works best with a white fish like a cod, but work with me here.

You can buy little musubi makers or just form the shapes yourself. The point is the kids like things that are FUN. And what is more fun than a ball of fish? Hm…

I developed this recipe due to the fact that my kids love pasta. Love chicken. Love broccoli. Love olives. HATE the red sauce. When I made pasta and poured a marinara over it, they were aghast. So I went simpler and it worked. They ate.

ingredients:
1 pkg penne pasta (16 oz)
1 pre-cooked rotisserie chicken
2 cups cooked broccoli
1 small can sliced olives
olive oil
2 cloves chopped garlic
1/8 cup parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Boil your pasta according to package directions. Drain. Debone and chop up your store bought chicken. You don’t have to use all of it if you don’t want that much meat. In a large bowl, toss together.

I buy my broccoli frozen from Trader Joe’s. I find that their frozen brand tastes just as great as freshly cooked broccoli. Other brands don’t compare. Toss in the broccoli and the drained olives.

Add the chopped garlic, olive oil, and toss everything together. Man, there’s a lot of tossing going on up in here. Sprinkle the parmesan and pepper over the pasta, and serve.

Quite obviously, all the ingredients are easily interchanged with others. We just like penne. Quick, easy and your kids are sure to love it.

The Baby had a Wolverine/Elmo birthday. Don’t ask. Anyway, I HAD to make Elmo cupcakes, right??
ingredients:
cupcakes
frosting
red sanding sugar
marshmallows
Hershey’s Kissables
Orange gummi drops

I made chocolate cupcakes, I was really worried about the red bleeding into a white cake. I frosted it with a buttercream that I tinted red, then I rolled it in red sanding sugar.

I had been planning to make these for months. I was going to use white icing to pipe the eyeballs, then I saw these and liked her idea of using a marshmallow. Excellent.

For the eyes I used Hershey’s Kissables, a mini candy coated chocolate kiss, kind of like an M&M, with a point. And that’s…the point. I poked a hole in the marshmallow and the point of the kiss went in easy peasy.

For the nose I toyed with the idea of using upside down Halloween candy corn pumpkins, but instead I found these sugarless orange drops at an old time candy store. They were the perfect size!

The party was a success -what else did we have? A soft serve ice cream bar, 8 different kinds of ice cream and a Cereal bar. SUGAR HIGH. Then I sent all the kids home to their parents. HA! Go here for more party pics.

Chicken on a stick. Plain and simple. It’s amazing how easy this is, but how great it tastes.

Here’s the thing, the key to this whole recipe is the skewers. You MUST soak your bamboo skewers in water for a good 30 mins or else the whole thing is shot to hell. Why? They will burn like a motherf*er if you put them on the grill and they aren’t properly soaked. No one wants that.

ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup mirin
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon pepper
(2 Tablespoons sake - if you want)
skewers

First off, soak skewers, see above paragraph. Do as I say.

Drain your skewers. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, and skewer. Look here, you start adding bell peppers and tomatoes and sh*t and it’s no longer yakitori, it’s a kebab. Just so you know. There’s a difference.

Combine all the ingredients and pour into a 9×13 pyrex, or any dish with sides that will hold the liquid. Finish skewering the chicken and place in the liquid to marinate, and hour or two will be just fine.

Prepare your grill. You can do this outside on a full bbq, but I do it on an indoor grill just fine. Place the skewered chicken on the grill and keep turning it so it doesn’t burn. Since the chicken is bite sized it shouldn’t take long.

My kids LOVE this. The taste isn’t overpowering and hello, skewers. (Watch it with the small kids who like to stab, like mine.) It’s best with rice and side salad. YUM.