Jackie Alpers27 recipes
Recipes, creative cooking ideas and food photography from the author of the Taste of Tucson and Sprinkles! Cookbooks
Happy, healthy recipes for everyone. - Recipes - Jackie Alpers
At the urging of my friends and family, I've put together a new blog of easy, healthy and hopefully fun recipes that I've developed over the years. It's illustrated with food photos that I took just for this project.
Lavender Limeade - Recipes - Jackie Alpers
Here's an easy summer beverage. Lavender Limeade is super easy and you don't need to add a bunch of sugar. The lavender flowers add their own sweetness.
Sparkling Star Shaped Sugar Cubes - Recipes - Jackie Alpers
Ideas for fun and easy ways to add sprinkles to your holiday creations, including these sparkling DIY Sprinkles Sugar Cubes for champagne cocktails.
How to Cover Easter Eggs in Sprinkles! - Recipes - Jackie Alpers
I made fancy sprinkles covered Easter eggs, and you can too. It's easy! Learn how in my latest article for the Food Network.
Mini Ice Rings filled with Sprinkles & Fruit - Recipes - Jackie Alpers
N my latest article for the Food Network I give step-by step instructions with photos on how to make individual ice rings to cool down and brighten up summer drinks. They are easy enough to make for everyday celebrations, or make them all different for parties so everyone can identify which drink is theirs.
Drying and Milling Chiles for Powder
Here's how to dry chile peppers for chili powder and custom spice blends. Preserve an abundance of homegrown chiles or buy and dry store-bought fresh chiles when they show up at the market. You can save jars of single-variety powder or mix them into custom chili powders and spice blends. Some varieties of chiles can be expensive and/or hard to find, so don’t let a treasure trove of chiles go to waste.This is a valuable skill to have because some of the exotic varieties of chiles can be expensive and/or hard to find. Amanda Horton, owner of Desert Provisions specialty spices, showed me how easy it is to dry and mill fresh chiles into chili powder. Buy a coffee grinder just for grinding chiles if you are at all worried about your coffee tasting like chiles. (Which could be kind of cool sometimes but probably not all the time.)
Crustless Frico Parmesan Peperoni Pizza
I topped this baked cheese crisp (which is a popular dish called Frico in Italy) with pizza spices and toppings before sliding it into the oven. The results: crustless pizza! This dish is a fast & easy, low-carb, high protein way to enjoy pizza night anytime, and it travels well too. Recently, I took a batch on a flight. When I unwrapped my precious bag of “yellow gold” I’d stashed in my carry-on bag, my fellow passengers sniffed the air like dogs and stared at me jealously as the unmistakable aroma of baked cheese filled the cabin. I used a cookie sheet covered with a Silpat so that the cheese slid right off. You can also cover your cookie sheet with parchment or foil.
Quick & Easy Sonoran Style Chicken Tortilla Soup
This Sonoran version of tortilla soup features crushed tortilla chips and melted cheese anchored in a clear broth that is seasoned with garlic, green chiles and Mexican oregano. I use shredded roasted or rotisserie chicken so that it’s ready in about 30 minutes. If you can’t find RO-TEL in your neck of the woods, you can substitute it with 1 cup diced tomatoes and 1/4 cup canned diced green chiles.
Chorizo, Egg, and Cheese Breakfast Taco
A quick and easy Tucson Sonoran breakfast taco with a crispy egg fried in chorizo then folded with cheese into a tortilla. I ate this as a makeshift breakfast every day for weeks while writing the Taste of Tucson cookbook. The fat from the tablespoon of chorizo makes the egg really crispy and adds a lot of flavor without too many extra calories. I fry up a batch of chorizo in advance and store it in the fridge, where it becomes solid, until I scoop it out, and heat it up.
How to Grill The Perfect Cowboy Steak
Grill the perfect perfect cowboy steak with step-by-step instructions from a famed Arizona steakhouse. Making authentic cowboy steaks is really easy. When I asked Bryan Keith, the Grill Master from Tucson's Pinnacle Peak Steak House if he had any additional tips he said, "Put some love in it!"
Candied Yam Waffles
A fun Thanksgiving leftovers brunch recipe that is sure to please, waffles made with leftover candied yams. This quick and easy recipe makes 2 Belgian or 4 rectangle/square waffles.
Creepy Spaghetti Carbonara with Fungi (Mushrooms)
To help us carbo-load for the long trek through the neighborhood, my mother would prepare her standard pre-trick-or-treat meal of Kraft's boxed spaghetti dinner. We loved it. This recipe is almost as easy to throw together before going out. It's also quite a bit spookier looking, yet elegant enough to serve at a Halloween themed adult dinner party. Try challenging kids who think "weird "mushrooms and black pasta are too creepy to eat to a fun Halloween dinner game where they have to try it anyway. I'm betting that this spooky Carbonara, (or "Bacon and Egg & Cheese Pasta" as I like to refer to it), is sure to be a hit. For the black pasta I used Asian Organic Black Bean Spaghetti, which I found at my local market. It is considerably less expensive than the traditional black squid ink pasta, plus it's gluten free, with only 17 carbs per serving, making it a nice counter-balance to all of the sugar you'll probably be eating later on.
Walnut Pesto Linguine
Walnuts are less expensive and easier to find than the traditional pine nuts and I think they taste even better, plus they're loaded with healthy fats. Spinach linguine keeps the pasta a lovely shade of green. This recipe originally was written for and published for Refinery29 as part of an article on easy pasta recipes. See the rest of the article here.
Chocolate Dipped Frozen Banana Bites With Sprinkles
We all know that rainbow sprinkles make the world-go-round and this super-easy recipe is fun, festive and good for you too. You can melt the chocolate in the microwave which makes it the perfect treat for a hot summer's day. This recipe was originally developed for my Refinery29 article, "Frozen Fruit Hacks"
Sriracha Lime Vinaigrette Salad Dressing
This super easy salad dressing recipe is especially good on a Greek salad, cucumber salad or Asian Chicken salad and you can make it right in the bottle if you only have a little bit of Sriracha left.
Baguette Breakfast Casserole Bake with Canadian Bacon, Eggs & Cheese
Here's an elegant, yet quick and easy baked breakfast casserole. Tuck savory Canadian bacon, eggs, herbs and cheese inside crusty baguettes the night before. When you wake up, add a little cream, then slip it into the oven for brunch. This recipe originally appeared on Tastecooking.com
Creamy Wheat Berry and Butternut Hash Breakfast Bowl
Sweet and creamy butternut squash hash, hearty wheat berries and protein rich eggs merge into the perfect breakfast bowl. Prepare the grains according to package instructions unless otherwise noted. You can do this in advance and store the cooked grains in the refrigerator to save time later. Different varieties of the same grain have different cooking times so be sure to check the label. This recipe was originally written for, and published on Refinery29 as part of an article on easy and affordable grain bowls. Check out the rest of the recipes on the site.
Sweet Pepper Poppers
Mini sweet peppers filled with jalapeno cream cheese and topped with panko bread crumbs for an easy appetizer.
Brigadeiro: Brazilian Style Chocolate Truffles
How do you say "delicious" in Portuguese? Brigadeiro, that's how! These easy-to-make balls are fun to roll in chocolate jimmies. Box them up for the perfect gift.
Fleur De Sel Caramels
Fleur de sel (flower of salt) is a hand-harvested sea salt with distinctive flavor. Look for variations that have a pink or gray tone. You'd think that something with such a fancy-sounding name might be complicated to make, but in fact these sweet and savory bite-size treats are as easy to concoct as they are to devour. Still, if you want to let your friends believe these caramels are a feat of culinary magic, your secret's safe with me.You will need a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature.