Happy Birthday Bebe B!!

Well the day has come and gone and my BEBE is two!!  It really does not seem possible.  We had a sweet little party for her with the theme of her favorite book...The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle!!  What a fun time it was and so wonderful to see the fun Bebe B and her friends had coloring pictures, playing with balloons and eating some yummy food.  As always I look at special occasions as another chance to prove yummy food can be healthy too!  I wish you all could have been there but since that wasn’t possible I’m sharing some of my recipes from the day with you.  I apologize my pictures aren’t the greatest as I kind of forgot about taking pictures and was all wrapped up in Bebe B and our guests.  

The Very Hungry Fruit Bruchetta

Ingredients:

2 Apples

2 Pears

2-3 plums

10-12 Strawberries

2 oranges

1 loaf of french bread

1-2 tbsp butter or Earth Balance

1/4 cup of vanilla bean yogurt

1 tbsp organic sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Peel oranges.  Chop the fruit into tiny pieces and mix it all together in a bowl, set aside.  Mix the sugar and cinnamon together, set aside.  Slices bread and toast pieces until lightly toasted.  Spread each piece with butter or Earth Balance.  Next sprinkle each piece of bread with then sugar and cinnamon mixture (you could easily reduce or exclude the sugar and simply use cinnamon).  Top each piece of bread with a spoonful of the fruit mixture then drizzle with vanilla yogurt!  This is a great crowd pleaser but doesn’t really keep for left-overs since after time the yogurt will soggy up the bread.  Makes a great snack or breakfast too!

Swiss Butterflies

Ingredients:

10-12 slices of swiss cheese

pretzel rods

2-3 tbsp cream cheese or yogurt cheese

Use a cookie cutter to cut butterfly shapes out of the cheese slices.  Smear a strip of cream cheese (or yogurt cheese) down the middle of each butterfly and stick a pretzel rod in it to form the body of the butterfly.  It’s that easy and darn cute!  

Pistachio Pesto Tomato Tarts

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp salt

3 tsp baking powder

1 ½ Tbsp brown sugar

3 Tbsp cold butter (cubed)

5-7 Tbsp Ice Water 

¾ cup fresh basil leaves (plus extra for garnish)

¼ cup fresh sage leaves

1 clove garlic (chopped) 

¼ cup grated Asiago or Romano cheese (plus extra for top)

½ a lemon’s juice

¼ cup olive oil

8-10 pistachio nuts (shelled)

1 small tube fresh goat cheese (about 4 oz)

1 pint cherry tomatoes (sliced)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Sift flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl.  Stir in the brown sugar until well mixed.  Add butter and use your fingertips or a pastry cutter to work butter into the flour until no pieces larger than peas remain.  Make sure the ice water is ice cold and add a splash of milk if desired.  Add a tablespoon at a time till a dough consistency is reached.  Mix with a spoon just until combined, careful not to over mix.  Roll the dough in to a ball with your hands, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 15-20 minutes.  While the dough is chilling make the pesto.  To make pesto, add the basil, sage, garlic, ¼ cup Asiago or Romano, lemon juice, pistachio nuts and olive oil to a food processor and process until a pesto consistency is reached (about 1-2 minutes).  Set pesto aside.  Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/8 of an inch thick.  Cut tart shaped out of the dough using cooking cutters in the shapes desired.  Bake on lightly oiled pans for about 10 minutes.   Allow tarts to cool for about 2 minutes.  Top each tart with about 1 tbsp of pesto, 2-3 slices/ clumps of goat cheese and 2-3 slices of cherry tomato.  Sprinkle with Asiago or Romano cheese.  Return to the oven for another 5 minutes.  Garnish with basil and serve warm.

I also made Key Lime Cupcakes from a fun food blog I recently discovered.  I changed the recipe just a touch by using plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream in the cupcakes and reducing the butter in half in the frosting and adding an avocado instead and making them with all organic ingredients.  They were heavenly!  As you can see Bebe B adored them too!

Happy Birthday Love Bug!!