TWD: Coconut Tea Cake

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie selection was the Coconut Tea Cake, a bundt cake made with coconut milk and shredded coconut.


The was such a cinch to make. I took it to my family's early Easter celebration and had been fretting about having enough time to make it. I contemplated skipping it and throwing together a quick batch of cookies. This cake, however, ended up faster and easier to make than any cookies would have been.

We thought this cake was so yummy. It tasted like a pound cake with coconut, and the coconut wasn't too overwhelming. It was so good with ice cream. Thanks to Carmen of Carmen Cooks for picking this week's recipe. She'll have the recipe posted if you'd like to make it yourself.

TWD: Thumbprints for Us Big Guys

Dorie created this cookie as an adult verson of her smaller thumbprint cookies. The cookies are made with hazelnuts, butter, sugar, flour, vanilla extract and almond extract. I actually substituted almonds for the hazelnuts just to avoid having to peel the skins off of hazelnuts. They were delicious! They tasted like those danish butter cookies that come in the big blue tins. Yum!

And Dorie recommended raspberry jam for the centers of these thumbprints. But that just didn't sound fun enough for me. So I used Nutella. I stuck it in the microwave for about 15 seconds (even though it says on the jar not to microwave... so you probably don't want to put it in for very long). But it softened up just enough to pour right into the centers. And it tasted delicious! Mmmm... these are so good and so easy.

And even though they're supposed to be for the "big guys", my little guy liked them too.


The recipe was selected by Mike from Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude. Very catchy blog title, don't ya think? Go check out Mike's site for the recipe and to see why men can have fun baking too!

Tex-Mex Lasagna

This Tex-Mex Lasagna is delicious! It's a meatless, southwestern version of lasagna. And my meat-loving husband actually raved about it. I tried to conceal the fact that it had no meat because I knew if I told him that beforehand, he wouldn't be very excited about dinner. But he DID notice right away, and said he didn't even miss the meat. Wow, he's coming around!

This is a really quick and easy meal that's perfect for a weeknight. Use the oven-ready lasagna noodles to save a lot of time. And a can of store-bought salsa and cumin give it that southwestern flair. I used a chunky mild salsa, but you can really use any type of salsa to experiment with the flavor.



Tex-Mex Lasagna
(adapted from Cooking Light)

3/4 cup bottled salsa
1 and 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
8-ounce can tomato sauce
Cooking spray
6 pre-cooked lasagna noodles
1 cup frozen whole-kernel corn, thawed
15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups (8 ounces) preshredded reduced-fat 4-cheese Mexican blend cheese
1/4 cup chopped green onions

1. Preheat oven to 450°.

2. Combine first 4 ingredients; spread 2/3 cup sauce in bottom of an 8-inch square baking dish coated with cooking spray. Arrange 2 noodles over sauce; top with 1/2 cup corn and half of beans. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup cheese; top with 2/3 cup sauce. Repeat layers once; top with remaining 2 noodles. Spread remaining sauce over noodles. Sprinkle with remaining 1 cup cheese.

3. Cover and bake at 450° for 30 minutes or until noodles are tender and sauce is bubbly. Let stand 15 minutes. Sprinkle with onions.

Makes 4 servings.