Rhubarb Crisp

Yesterday, for the first time since moving to Oklahoma, I found rhubarb at the grocery store!  My mom used to make rhubarb crisp when I was a kid; we had some in our garden and we also had some growing wild in the field behind our neighborhood.  When I saw it at the store, I immediately texted my mom and asked her to send me her recipe.  

For those of you who are like the cashier at Crest and have no idea what rhubarb is, this is it:

I actually tried it raw last night - it's extremely sour.  I thought that it would be a lot like eating celery, but the texture is totally different.  Because rhubarb is so sour, most recipes containing rhubarb also call for a lot of sugar. :)

For rhubarb crisp, you will need 6 cups of chopped rhubarb.  You will have to buy 8-10 stalks.  Once it is chopped up, pour it into a shallow 6X10 baking dish.  

(I halved the recipe ... hence the smaller dish)

Then sprinkle 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon over the chopped rhubarb.

In a separate bowl, combine 6 tablespoons of butter, 3/4 of a cup of sugar, 3/4 of a cup of oats, and 3/4 of a cup of flour.  Work together until crumbly.  Pour over the rhubarb. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  It's really good served with vanilla ice cream!

Garlic Cheese Herb Bread

First, buy a round loaf of bread.  Cut the bread horizontally and vertically, but don't cut all the way through the bottom. You want to be able to pull the pieces out. (Kind of like a blooming onion at Outback)

Take about 1/2 cup of pesto (which you can find in the spaghetti sauce aisle) and stuff all the cracks with it.

After you have stuffed the cracks with pesto, go back and fill all the cracks with mozzarella cheese.

Mix some melted butter and garlic salt together, and brush over the top of the bread.  Cook at 350 for 15-20 minutes.   mmmm...so delicious!

Mint Cookies!

I found a recipe for mint cookies online, and decided to try it out.  The original recipe is from squarebakery.blogspot.com.

You will need:

2 sticks of butter, melted

1/2 a cup of powdered sugar

3 teaspoons of peppermint oil, or 12 teaspoons of peppermint extract. (I only had 7...)

2 teaspoons of vanilla

2 1/4 cups of flour

A few drops of green food coloring (optional)

Combine the melted butter, powdered sugar, peppermint oil, vanilla, and food coloring in a medium sized bowl. 

Mix well. Make sure that there aren't any clumps of butter or powdered sugar. Then, stir in 2 1/4 cups of flour.  Mix well.

Drop teaspoonfuls of dough onto a greased cookie sheet. Cook at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Enjoy!

Kolache

When I was in 5th grade, we had to do a project about the country our family immigrated from. We put different things from our culture into our presentation and had to write a short paper about the country we were from. Then, when we were all done with our presentations, we had Immigration Day. We all got matched up in couples so that we would be "married." I got stuck with Cameron, the shortest boy in our class (story of my life), and we all went through Ellis Island (which coincidentally looked a lot like our school cafeteria), and at the end we all got a cup of tapioca pudding, because apparently that's what immigrants eat.  Anyways, I did my report on Czechoslovakia, and my Nana came over and taught my sister and I how to make kolache.
According to my mom we both hated it and she had to throw almost all of them out, but my Nana also apparently used prune jelly. No wonder we didn't like them.  I had some strawberry/rhubarb jelly in the fridge that I was looking for something to do with, and remembered that I could make kolache!  My dad doesn't have my Nana's recipe anymore, but I found one on tasteofhome.com.

A couple tips before you start:
You will need arm muscles that are more functional than a wet noodle and
This is extremely time consuming.

You will need:
2 1/4oz packages of dry active yeast
1/2 cup of sugar, divided
5-6 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 cups of warm milk (110 degrees)
4 egg yolks
1/4 cup of melted butter
1 beaten egg white
2 cups of canned fruit filling (I used jam.)

In small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in warm milk, let stand for 10 minutes.
In large bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, remaining sugar, egg yolks (JUST THE YOLK!), salt, butter, and the milk/yeast mixture. Mix until smooth. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough. (I ended up using a little over 5 cups of flour.)

Place dough on a floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. Add additional flour if necessary, it shouldn't be sticky at all.  FYI, you will look at the clock when your arms get tired, and you will still have a long time to go.
Place dough in a greased bowl, then turn it over so that the top and the bottom of the dough are both greased. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in a warm place for one hour. I just put the bowl on the stove and turned the stovetop light on, and that seemed to be warm enough.
After an hour, punch the dough down, cover, and wait another hour. (I wasn't joking about this being time consuming.)
Once it has risen again, roll out until dough is 1/2 an inch thick.  Cut dough using the opening of a glass.
Place on greased cookie sheet and let rise another 45 minutes.  Then make indentations on each one with your thumb (make them deep!) and fill each indentation with fruit filling.  Cook at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

I totally forgot to take pictures of this, but I did take one of the finished product ....

These are strawberry/rhubarb.  They are so delicious. There are 25 of them. If you are reading this, please come try one so I don't get fat.  I am a very, very happy Czech girl.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

Last weekend, the weather was gorgeous and Megan and I were hanging out with nothing to do. So we went to the Farmer's Market!  As a kid, my mom used to make Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp a lot, and I loved it, so when I saw this ... 

I had to buy some!  Then I remembered that Garrett and I both hate toast, and therefore not much jelly is eaten at our house. Oops.

BUT, today, while looking through one of my favorite cooking websites, I found the recipe for these delicious cookies.

(P.S. this is not my recipe. It is from twopeasandtheirpod.com.  Their recipes are SO GOOD.)

The best part about these cookies is that they only take 4 ingredients, which you probably already have.

You will need:
1/4 of a cup of sugar, + 2 Tablespoons
2/3 of a cup of flour
4 tablespoons of melted butter

Mix the 1/4 cup of sugar and the butter together with a fork.

Next, add the flour. (I added a little water too, because the dough was super crumbly.)  At this point I had cookie dough all over my hands, so I skipped a couple steps worth of pictures.

Put the 2 Tablespoons of sugar in a small bowl.  Roll 1 inch balls of dough in the sugar, and put on a GREASED cookie sheet.  Then, using your thumb, push down the ball of dough so that there is a "well" in the cookies.

Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes.  Once they are done, leave them on the cookie sheet to cool. Before serving, spoon any kind of jam into the well of each cookie!  This makes 10 cookies, perfect for 2 people. Then, try not to eat them all before your best friend gets home from work. That's the tricky part.

Caramel Apple Cheesecake

Hi!  My name is Kenzie Keck, and about a year ago I started a blog called Keck's Cakes.  I have always loved baking, and when I got married, I finally had someone to help taste test all my recipes!  My husband encouraged me to start this blog.  Some of the recipes I make up on my own, and others I find on other baking websites or on Pinterest.
For now, this is a baking blog, but I plan to start adding dinner recipes instead of just deserts.  I also love crafting, so I hope to add some crafts to this blog soon!

This recipe for Caramel Apple Cheesecake is one of my own, and it has been a huge hit every time I have made it.  I have had several people ask for the recipe.  I hope you enjoy it as well!

First, crush 1 1/2 cups of cinnamon graham crackers.  With a fork mix in 1/4 a cup of sugar and 1/4 a cup of melted butter.  You may need to add more butter, it's really important that the crumbs stick together.  Press into a 9in springform pan all over the bottom and an inch or two up the sides. Bake the crust at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Next, melt 14oz of caramel squares (This part takes forever.  Luckily my husband volunteered to unwrap them ... and eat a lot of them).  If you buy a bag at the grocery store the bag will likely be 14 oz, so you will need to unwrap all of the caramels.  Melt these together with 2/3 of a cup of evaporated milk over medium high heat. 

Once melted, pour one cup (about half) of the caramel mixture on top of the graham cracker crust.  It should look like this ...

Next, using a mixer, mix together 2 8oz packages of low fat cream cheese, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 Tablespoon of flour and 2 eggs until the mixture is smooth and creamy. 

In a separate bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups of chopped, peeled apples, 1 tablespoon of flour, and 1/2 a teaspoon of ground cinnamon.  Chopping apples is also a great job for husbands or roommates. :) 

Combine the apples with the cream cheese mixture and pour into the crust. 

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.  Then, pour the leftover caramel mixture over the top (you may have to reheat it) and bake an additional ten minutes.  

You can cook this cheesecake in a water bath if you prefer.  All you do is put an inch of water into a baking pan and put the cheesecake in the water.  You definitely need to make sure that no water can get into your cheesecake pan.  Putting it in a water bath can reduce cracks in the top of your cheesecake.  I normally don't do this because usually I don't care about presentation, and this one has caramel on top, so you can't really see the cracks anyways.

Let cool for about 30 minutes and then refrigerate.  I left this one in the fridge for 5 hours. The best way to cut it is with a knife dipped in warm water, this way the caramel won't stick to the knife. This cheesecake was devoured before I had a chance to take a picture of the finished product!  It was delicious!

Enjoy!

Fruit Tart? Torte? Not really sure.

You will need:
2 cans Pillsbury cresent roll dough OR pie crust dough
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of vanilla
Fruit of your choice.

I didn't have enough cresent roll dough, so I made a pie crust.  I used 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of vegetable shortening, and 1/2 a cup of water.
Use a fork to combine the flour and the shortening, then add water.
I just rolled out the dough onto a greased cookie sheet until the dough covered the entire cookie sheet.
Cook just the crust in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes.  Make sure to poke holes in the crust before cooking so that it doesn't bubble up.

While that is cooking, mix together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla.  Once the crust is out of the oven and cooled, spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the crust.

While I was making crust and icing, best friend was cutting up fruit!  Wal-mart had some amazingly delicious strawberries on sale, and I also found a ripe mango and some kiwi.

Put all the chopped fruit on top of the icing, and let chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

SO. DELICIOUS!