Pinterest creations

Another one of my goals for 2012 was to actually make some of that yummy stuff I have been pinning.  My main reason for this goal is because some of our go to easy meals and desserts are getting kind of old and we need to fill up the recipe book I got for Christmas with lots of yummy things (of course they only make it in the book if it's a good recipe!).  I've tried two so far and only one is making the family recipe book.  A dessert which was ok and a pasta dish which was AHHHHmazing were my first to picks of the year. 

For Christmas I got a tart dish from my sister and I needed to make a dessert for dinner at a friends one night.  I immediately hit up Pinterest to find a recipe.  I was immediately excited about a Chocolate peanut butter tart I found and of course pinned.  How could you go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter? 

Well it wasn't awful by any means.  It probably needs some tweaking but I don't have time for that so it won't be getting a spot in the Smith family recipe book.  Here is the link to the recipe here if you all want to try and make it better.  If you do, send it my way and I will try it again.  I did tweak it a bit because the peanut butter filling, which I expected to be like a yummy whipped sweet filling like the kind you make for buck-eyes, hardly had ANY powdered sugar and way too much peanut butter.  I kept adding sugar to get it somewhat how I wanted.  The ganache was ok too, but I think I would have preferred just melted chocolate chips.  The best part about it was the crust.  It was like a peanutty short bread.  Maybe I will make up my own buck eye tart using this crust. 

The next recipe I tried was a pasta dish-Penne and Roasted Asparagus in Balsamic Butter.  Two things made me want to try this:  pasta and FAST.  We need fast GOOD meals to make during the week and I was shocked about how easy this was AND it was good too!  We are definitely making this again.  Even Lilly loved it.  Pasta-good, Parmesan cheese-good, asparagus-good!  We may try adding grilled chicken next time but it was good meatless as well.

This one is definitely going in the recipe book!  It was even great leftover the next day for lunch.  Yum-looking forward to trying more recipes!