TWD Rewind--from January 29, 2008 Orange Berry Muffins and a Father's Day Ultimate Turtle Cheesecake

I'm sad to say and sorry to report that I was not able to make Andrea of Andrea In The Kitchen's pick this week for Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise, on pages 293-295 in Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking From My Home to Yours.  This dessert looks SO good and chock full of yummy fattening things.  I was actually going to give it a try, but the week just kind of got away from me and I ended up not doing it.  Go check out Andrea's dacquoise!  It looks just like Dorie's photo in the book!

Since I wasn't able to make this, I did want to make a Tuesday's With Dorie recipe that I missed before joining the group.  So on Father's Day this past Sunday (Kevin likes blueberry muffins), I whipped up the muffins from page three of the book.  They are Orange Berry Muffins.  But did I make orange berry muffins?  Well, no.  But sort of and close enough.  Really all I did was use lemon instead of orange.  (I would have liked orange better, but I didn't have an orange.)  There are great, simple muffins that I thought turned out really nice.  I'd make these again, but I'd use an orange next time.  Not that there was anything wrong with the lemon, I'm just saying. ;)

One dozen perfect muffins.

I made no other changes to the recipe except using lemon zest and juice instead of orange.  Mmmm, berries!

Sorry, Andrea about not making your pick this week.  It looks delish!  Check out the other blogger's daquoise by going to the Tuesday's With Dorie website and scrolling down to the blogroll list on the right.

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Since you're here.  Here's the cheesecake I also made for Father's Day.  Kevin really likes cheesecake.  I usually just make a plain one and the only fruit he likes on top is canned cherry pie filling.  I decided to branch out here.  I have made a chocolate cheesecake before and he liked it, so I went with this because it looks and sounds so good.  It WAS good.  He liked it and so did some friends of ours who came over for dinner on Sunday.

I got the recipe from Kraft Foods website (also home to Philadelphia Cream Cheese, which is why I went looking for recipes there.)  You can get the recipe on the link to Kraft Foods.  I didn't change much.  Instead of 2 cups of Oreo cookie crumbs, I used one cup of mini Oreos and 1 sleeve of chocolate graham crackers.  It worked great.  I also toasted and chopped the pecans, which the recipe did not suggest doing.  That's it.  Otherwise, I made the recipe as it was written.  Oh, I also only use 1/3 less fat cream cheese when I make anything with cream cheese. 

Wanna a slice?

Sorry this is the last one and Kevin called it. ; )

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It was so hot today (Monday) and it isn't supposed to cool off all week.  There was even a heat advisory out for the 97 degrees to feel like over 110+.  Ouch.  It was SO muggy, and sticky and eewwweeee outside.  I actually didn't even go outside and neither did Sam.  The other boys ran to neighbor's houses for a bit.  After Sam's nap when no one else was home, I decided to build him a fort out of blankets.  He thought it was pretty cool and set up camp inside of it with snacks and things to play with.

Now, what else can we do the rest of the week since it's going to keep being so hot out?  I've been having fun with my new ice cream maker and will get to posting some of that deliciousness soon!