jenny can cook

Click here for my recipe. – Jenny Jones

Smacznego!

This may be the easiest cookie recipe ever. No mixer, no flour, no butter, and only five ingredients. Well… make that six. It’s my peanut butter cookie recipe but this time I added chocolate chips. Wow! They were so good I made them twice this week. It’s a winning combination: peanut butter and chocolate, and even healthier by using dark chocolate chips so I just had to share my “new” recipe.

This recipe is so flexible that next time I might add some extra chopped peanuts too. This simple recipe is so easy, even if you don’t bake, you can make these cookies. – plain or with chocolate chips.  Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Not eating enough vegetables? Here’s one way to eat a little more. Besides adding a bit of nutrition to this easy cake, zucchini also makes it beautifully moist. This yummy cake is made without butter, only using vegetable oil or extra light olive oil instead. Most cakes tend to get overdone around the edges so I recommend using a cake strip. Click here to learn more.

Have some fun and serve this “chocolate cake” to your family and ask them to guess what’s in it. Nobody would guess zucchini. I’m always finding new ways to bake without butter so the only butter here is a little in the frosting if you choose to use it. As for this delicious cake, you can just call it what it is –  a delicious, moist, and a little bit healthier chocolate cake. Click here for the recipe.  – Jenny Jones

Roasting vegetables is just about the easiest way to cook them. I love this dish so much, probably because roasting brings out the sugar in vegetables so they are sweeter, and in many cases, have more nutrients than they do raw.  Today I used red potatoes, sweet potatoes, red & yellow peppers, green beans, Brussels sprouts, red onions, and carrots. I added some olive oil, salt & pepper and roasted them at 400 along with my pork tenderloin. Here they are after roasting…

This may look like a lot but between the two of us there was not one piece of vegetable left on this tray. We usually save some of the sweet potato slices for dessert because they are so sweet after roasting. With all these beautiful colors, the antioxidants here are enormous. I have two recipes you might like. One is just the roasted vegetables as a side dish. The other is what I made tonight, my fabulous pork loin dinner. (there’s no pork left either!)

Pork is one of the leanest meats you can find, and so delicious! Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

If you know anyone recovering from an injury or surgery, make them soup using these vegetables: carrot, potato, sweet potato, red pepper, broccoli, spinach and add some lima beans. By researching, I learned that there are certain nutrients that can help heal the body from an injury, a wound, or surgery. The most essential are vitamins A, C, and E along with zinc, calcium, potassium, and protein. So I created this recipe using ingredients highest in these nutrients for a powerful healing soup. It’s also a delicious vegetable soup and any vegetable soup will have health benefits, but using these specific ingredients provide the best concentrate of what is needed by the body to heal.

I make this soup using my own homemade chicken broth. Chicken broth has its own health benefits and it’s the best liquid to use. Vegetable broth is also a good choice but even if you use plain water, all the wound healing benefits will still be there. If someone is not able to eat due to a closed jaw or dental surgery, this soup can be pureed to drink, or pureed and thinned to drink with a straw.

One more food with excellent healing enzymes is fresh pineapple (not canned – only fresh has enzymes). So the most beneficial meal to help recover would be a big bowl of wound healing soup with some fresh pineapple for dessert.

By the way, even if you’re not trying to heal, this is an incredibly healthy vegetable soup full of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. If you want to use my chicken soup as a base, click here for the recipe. You can make the stock the day before and after it’s refrigerated, remove the fat from the top and proceed with this vegetable soup. Once you have the stock, my wound healing vegetable soup takes just 30 minutes to make. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Flour must be aerated before measuring because it often settles in the bag or container making it heavy  and compact, resulting in too much flour being measured. Aerating basically means fluffing it up and is not the same as sifting. Flour should not be sifted before measuring unless the recipe states to do so. Otherwise sifting will result in too little flour being measured.

If you dip into flour without aerating, you will be getting too much flour and your dough will be too dry. To aerate flour you simply stir it around with a spoon before measuring. To measure, be sure to use a flat-topped dry measuring cup. You can see how I aerate flour in my Quick and Easy Chocolate Cake video at the one minute mark: Click here to see it.

After aerating, there are two ways to measure the flour: 1) Scoop & Level – Gently scoop the flour up with a spoon and sprinkle it into your measuring cup until it’s mounded above the rim. Do not tap the cup or the container of flour. Finally, level off the excess flour with the back of a knife. 2) Dip & Level – Gently dip your measuring cup into the flour until it’s mounded above the rim and level off the excess flour with the back of a knife. In my kitchen, a cup of flour weighs 4 1/2 ounces (130 grams).

They are low in sugar with as many diced apples as I could squeeze in. The top is the best part because I sprinkle it with a little cinnamon & sugar before baking. I used a mix of Granny Smith and gala apples and I was out of buttermilk so I used a mixture of milk and plain yogurt (about 1/2 & 1/2) and it worked great.

There’s no butter in these lightly sweet, delicious muffins, but they don’t need it. Anything baked with apples is always going to be good. It’s apples!  Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

Blueberries were on sale yesterday so I made muffins. These are part whole wheat, part white, and I followed my lemon-blueberry muffin recipe but without the lemon. (I forgot to buy a lemon!) So no lemon peel and no lemon glaze and instead of the glaze I just sprinkled the tops with a little sugar for a nice, sweet, crispy top. Oh, and I was out of buttermilk so I mixed up some milk and yogurt, about 1/2 and 1/2 and it worked great. Imagine if I had some lemon yogurt!

We had these delicious whole wheat blueberry muffins as part of our breakfast and I’m planning another one for dessert after my beef stew. Blueberries are called “brain food” for all the antioxidant benefits they provide to help protect against Alzheimer’s and other diseases. So while they’re still affordable, I recommend eating blueberries any way you can… like my blueberry pancakes, coffee cake, or my fancy lemon-blueberry  bundt cake. To make these easy whole wheat muffins or the lemon-blueberry muffins, click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

I made one of my top ten favorite recipes today: Orange Sesame Chicken. It’s fast, healthy, and so much better than restaurant orange chicken, which is usually batter fried. My lean chicken is stir fried in 2 teaspoons of oil and made with freshly squeezed orange juice and toasted sesame oil. If you haven’t tasted (and smelled!) toasted sesame oil, it’s unbelievably fragrant. And bonus: this recipe takes 20 minutes. But that’s not even why I like it so much. It is deeeelicous!

If you’re wondering, here is the entire top ten list of my own personal favorite recipes, the ones I make the most:

1. Granola Bars
2. Tortillas
3. Chicken Pot Pie
4. Multigrain No Knead Bread
5. Giant Breakfast Cookies
6. Orange Sesame Chicken
7. Spaghetti & Meatballs
8. Cabbage Rolls
9. Pork Loin Dinner
10. Deviled Eggs

Happy Labor Day weekend to everyone and if you want to try my orange sesame chicken, click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones

I made lemon brownies today and decided to experiment with a larger pan, using a 9 x 9-inch square instead of the 8-inch square. Well, this recipe is indestructible. The brownies turned out great, even a little fudgier than the original. Even an amateur baker can’t mess this up. I’ve made these easy lemon brownies with all purpose flour, with whole wheat pastry flour, once when I was out of yogurt I used sour cream instead and no matter what, they always turn out. And it’s one bowl!

It’s one of my most popular recipes because they are so easy to make. There is no mixer, almost no cleanup, and they are so darn delicious. If you haven’t tried it yet, or even if you have, you can now make it in an 8 by 8 or 9 by 9 pan. Click here for the recipe. – Jenny Jones