For King and Prince Recipe Reviews (Pg. 1)

Bazlama - Turkish Flat Bread

Reviewed: May 14, 2012

I can literally count on less than one hand the amount of times per year that we eat out, but when we do happen to be in a bind, we try to eat at Subway or something that will have a lot of fresh veggies. My hubs loves their flatbread sandwiches. Now I can cross Subway off my list of places we ever need to eat! This is even better! My dough made 8 LARGE rounds and it was sticky and took a lot of extra flour. I dry toasted it on a nonstick skillet. In the future I would use less salt. I made grilled eggplant sandwiches with onion and tomato and salted NOTHING so it balanced out. But on any other occasion this bread would be waaay salty, and I love my salt! I will definitely be cooking up extra of this to freeze for quick egg sandwich breakfasts, dinners, heck, anything!

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Cinnamon Coffee Frosting

Reviewed: May 14, 2012

Although I love cinnamon and I love coffee I must admit I was skeptical about the combination of those two, not to mention I could not imagine what this would taste like on chocolate cake. In the end, although my cake stuck to the pan and fell apart into pieces, and I ran out of powdered sugar (made some extra by grinding regular sugar in my blender), the flavors in this frosting were AWESOME!l The cake was good too, even if the whole thing ended up being a trifle instead of a frosted cake. I didn't hear any complaints! :) Will make again.

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In-a-Pinch Ketchup

Reviewed: May 4, 2012

I doubled this (making bbq sauce out of the extra), and had to simmer it much longer to get it the right consistency, but that was not a big deal since I wasn't in a rush. I must say, I absolutely hate ketchup, but this was good! Even I would eat it. My kids are too little to know the difference, but I had a friend (who loves ketchup) taste it, and she said this is soooo much better than the bottled stuff! We barely eat anything pre-bottled, boxed, etc. anymore, and now I can cross ketchup off my list. I'll never buy again. I omitted the corn syrup, decreased the brown sugar by 1-2 T. (can't remember), and we didn't miss it at all. Thanks!

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Whole Grain Banana Muffins

Reviewed: Apr. 19, 2012

These were good, but not the best banana muffins I've ever had, and I tend to cook whole-grain recipes rather than regular. These muffins were tasty, but they just weren't my favorite ever. I'm undecided as to whether I'd make them again.

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Cinnamon-Apple Chex® Mix

Reviewed: Apr. 10, 2012

Flavor was good, cooking method was iffy. Mine burnt in the initial 3 minutes, so I was unable to keep microwaving it for the second round if I wanted to salvage any. That being said, flavor was fantastic - used 1.5 tsp cinnamon and yogurt raisins and yogurt cranberries. Subbed cashews for almonds because I was almost out of almonds. I'll probably do again, but maybe go back to the old fashioned oven-dry, and skip the microwave altogether. I don't really trust that thing anyways...

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Kay's Shortbread

Reviewed: Mar. 20, 2012

Absolutely delicious! Everything you want from shortbread.

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Honey Baked Lentils

Reviewed: Mar. 15, 2012

Always my problem with lentils - the recipe NEVER states which type of lentils to use. Anyone remotely familiar with lentils knows that there are several varieties. I grew up in Asia, so I am most familiar with yellow and orange lentils. I used a combination of those two (10 oz yellow, 6 oz orange). I ended up with watery, watery MUSH. I suspected this might be a problem after the initial cook time they still had tons of liquid and already were starting to look mushy, but I gave the recipe the benefit of the doubt and added the extra cup of water anyways. I ended up with soup. However, the flavor was fantastic, and I intend to serve leftovers over brown rice tomorrow. Word to the wise: think BIGGER varieties of lentils (i.e. Split pea type) as these would need a lot more liquid to cook down. All in all, I will make this again, as it is somehow deliciously reminiscent of my childhood in Asia, although I am certain we never added honey to our lentils! One last note - my pot was more like a soup pot, so not much surface area for water to evaporate. Next time I might pour these into a 9x13 for the bake time.

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Chocolate Syrup

Reviewed: Feb. 28, 2012

Very good! A lot of people suggest using corn syrup in place of some of the sugar to help chocolate sauce thicken - I suggest using agave nectar as a better alternative. I just made this using 1/2 c. granulated sugar and the rest agave. I added only about 1 T. water and I forgot the salt (although I would have added it had I remembered). This turned out wonderfully thick and much closer to the actual store bought syrup, but not loaded with all the extra stuff they put in there. Next time I will try eliminating all sugar and using only agave. I have no doubts that it will work even better! (Note: agave is sweeter than sugar so either increase the amount of cocoa powder or reduce the amount of agave to compensate).

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Whole Grain Waffles

Reviewed: Feb. 26, 2012

Very tasty! We all enjoyed them very much! I exchanged wheat germ for wheat bran because I thought I was out of germ (I wasn't, I saw later, but it tasted fine). I'll make again! I didn't have whole wheat pastry flour so I did 3/4 c. whole wheat flour and 1/2 c. white flour.

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Easy Butternut Squash Ravioli

Reviewed: Feb. 26, 2012

Delicous. Not my favorite filling ever, but still very good. It was a bit too sweet for my tastes - next time I would play with the spices to enhance the savory flavor rather than let the sweetness of the squash be quite so bold. I used homemade pasta dough rather than wonton wrappers (although I have done ravioli that was as well and it certainly is a lot quicker!) All in all, an impressive dinner and people enjoyed it.

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Basic Pasta

Reviewed: Feb. 26, 2012

Very tasty, will definitely make again and again. I'm excited to try out other flavors, particularly whole wheat pasta, since that's about all we ever eat. My only problems were that this dough was VERY hard to roll extremely thin, which is needed for ravioli. Yes, I let it rest, and it definitely helped, but it was still very difficult. Whole wheat would make this even harder. (Um, hubby... can I have a pasta roller?) The only other thing is that this is a teeny recipe. I doubled it originally and cannot POSSIBLY see how a double recipe would feed six. I rolled as thin as possible by hand and got maybe 12-15 large ravioli out of a double recipe. I had to mix up another double (and I should have tripled it!) batch quickly to use up the rest of my ravioli filling. Perhaps as spaghetti or some other shape this stretches farther, but as ravioli I would probably quadruple or even quintuple the batch from the get-go.

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California Grilled Veggie Sandwich

Reviewed: Jan. 9, 2012

Yum-O! Added a few different veggies and served on fresh homemade focaccia. Very similar to the eggplant sandwiches on this site, which are a favorite of ours. I'll definitely make again!

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Cajun Pasta Fresca

Reviewed: Jan. 9, 2012

Everyone enjoyed this very much! I used regular tomatoes because that's what I had, and 1.5x the spice. The cheese was hard to stir in and got a little clumpy, so I added just a sprinkle of extra cheese on the top of everyone's bowl. Delicious and will make again! Served with fresh homemade focaccia bread.

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Spanish-Style Quinoa

Reviewed: Jan. 5, 2012

This was my first experience cooking quinoa. I made it to go with "Addictive Sweet Potato Burritos." I also made "Refried Beans without the Refry," but I did black beans and cooked them on the stove top (did not mash). I had all this wonderful spiced bean broth left over, so I used 1 1/2 cups of bean broth and 1 c. water in the quinoa. The flavor was excellent and I can see myself cooking a lot of quinoa in the future, as I really enjoyed the texture and pretty much everything about it. However, I found 2 1/2 c. liquid to be WAAAY too much. After 40+ minutes of simmering, there was still a LOT of liquid, and the quinoa was tender. I didn't want it to get mushy, so I drained it through a fine mesh sieve, then reheated it over med-high heat for a few minutes just to evaporate some of that leftover moisture. I don't know if this was caused by my use of bean broth, or if there really was just too much liquid. Either way, next time I'll try 2 c. liquid and see how that fares. Otherwise wonderful and everyone enjoyed it!

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Refried Beans Without the Refry

Reviewed: Jan. 4, 2012

Delicious! I have done this in the slow cooker a few times, but I have also done it on the stove top - combine beans and spices, cover with water (or chicken broth) and boil till tender, adding liquid as necessary. I did black beans on the stove top for burritos (skipped mashing them), and they were delicious!

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Peanut Butter Popcorn

Reviewed: Dec. 31, 2011

Really good! I also baked it to crisp it up and tossed it with some Reece's PB chips after it cooled. The kids gobbled it up (of course)!

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Hawaiian Bread II

Reviewed: Dec. 12, 2011

I made this as I would a yeast bread, not a batter bread - so I added enough flour to make a knead-able dough and let it knead in the mixer for several minutes. I skipped the ginger because it just sounded a little off to me, and we didn't miss it at all. I made these into buns and they rose HUGE and made almost mini round loaves rather than buns! These had very subtle pineapple flavor and were wonderful with our chicken teriyaki and grilled pineapple sandwiches! Will make again!

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Emily's Famous Marshmallows

Reviewed: Dec. 1, 2011

These were a disaster, but a tasty disaster that ended up ok after all. I completely burned the first batch, due to my brand new candy thermometer which was 60 degrees off. Go figure. I knew I should have calibrated that thing... Second batch went much better just using the cold water test. Unfortunately I was interrupted in the middle by my 2 month old, so after breaking for a quick feeding, my gelatin mixture was already beginning to set up. I tried to pour it into my egg white mixture anyways, but "pouring" was sort of a joke by this point, so it was more like gloppy spoonfuls that got pulled up into the spinning mechanism of my KA mixer. Glop got EVERYWHERE. And I do mean EVERYWHERE. My husband essentially had to partially dismantle my mixer to get it clean. I don't know how I actually got ENOUGH of the glop into the egg mixture to actually make these work, but somehow I must've! These were fantastic in cocoa and I also used them to make an AWESOME homemade peppermint mocha. (Made peppermint mallows instead of vanilla). My kids were eating them by the spoonful. Even I enjoyed them, and I actually hate marshmallows. So, despite the disasters, call me crazy, but I'm making another batch today. Only thing I'll change is to cut the peppermint extract to 1/2 tsp. One full tsp was just a little too strong for my tastes. Next project: Hot chocolate on a stick with a homemade peppermint marshmallow in between two chocolate blocks.

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Chocolate Gingerbread Men

Reviewed: Nov. 22, 2011

Delicious! The dough is a bit hard to work with - not sticky to the touch, but sticky enough to stick BAD to the rolling pin (I have a marble pin) and tear up your best efforts at rolling 1/8 in. thick dough. It's easy enough to dust the counter with plenty of flour, but I had to dust my dough a LOT on the top to keep it from sticking to the pin, and this left unsightly white flour all over the tops, which I wanted to decorate all cute like the picture. Second batch, I used unsweetened cocoa to dust the top. Better, but still not ideal. Honestly, I think a rolling pin cover is the only way to go, or covering the dough with a clean linen towel (a regular kitchen towel will leave towel impressions on your dough). If you have the stick-to-it-iveness (no pun intended) to deal with the rolling woes, the flavor of these cookies is wonderful - all gingerbread-y with a hint of dark chocolate. Followed the recipe exactly except used 4 oz. Ghirardelli 60% chips (couldn't find the bar) and used Nestle unsweetened cocoa as that was what I already had on hand. Wonderful Christmas cookie. Edit: I made a white choc frosting from 4 oz melted white chocolate, 1/2 c. softened butter, 2 1/2 c. powdered sugar, 1 t. vanilla, and milk - 1 t. at a time till desired consistency. Whipped together with an electric mixer and it made fluffy delicious frosting which really went well with these cookies (it's soft frosting though, so don't stack the cookies too deep unless you want cookie sandwiches!)

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Ciabatta

Reviewed: Nov. 19, 2011

Yum-o! Made this into buns for Chicken Parmesan burgers. I don't have a pizza stone, but this was still awesome even baked on cookie sheets. I'll make it again and again!

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