Now traditionally in Italy the sauce is literally just eggs, but other countries include a portion of heavy cream. I'm one of those people who likes the inclusion of cream. I've eaten the Italian version made with only egg and have even tried my hand at making that version but if the egg is applied and the pasta is too hot the egg will curdle/scramble instead of adhering as a smooth, creamy sauce. Including the cream helps prevents that and leaves you with a delicious, smooth pasta dish.
Also, traditional Carbonara uses guanciale, a bacon made from cured pork cheeks. I don't know about you but my local Kroger (or any other grocery store in the area) doesn't just happen to carry this. Pancetta is an excellent substitution, but let's be real. Normal bacon also works just fine.
In fact, I used normal grocery story bacon in this recipe. I didn't go to my usual Kroger when I went grocery shopping as I was already on the other side of town and even though I'm a creature of habit I didn't want to drive to the opposite side of town just to go to my normal Kroger. Needless to say I was completely turned around. I know my Kroger like the back of my hand but this other Kroger is arranged differently and I couldn't find the pancetta. And anyone who knows me knows I don't like to ask the employees for help as I have this weird thing about feeling like I'm inconveniencing them. Anyway...
I've actually made this recipe many times before. It comes from Danilo Alfaro over at The Spruce Eats and it's one of the first Pinterest recipes I'd ever tried. In fact, long before I decided to start this blog of my cooking exploits. It's already earned a place in my recipe box but I thought I still needed to include it on my master list of recipes to try. After all, the whole point is to introduce you to great recipes, too!
This recipe creates a perfect, creamy sauce with the perfect amount of bacon. I'm drooling again and I've already eaten a pretty good sized portion tonight. The recipe claims this only makes four servings but can I say as a pregnant pasta lover even I think four portions is going overboard? You could easily get six servings out of this. Maybe eight if you're using this as a side dish. But let's face it. Pasta is the main meal in our house. In fact, Dear Husband requests some sort of pasta weekly, with Carbonara being the most popular of all the requested pasta dishes.
So the breakdown of this recipe. The total cost of this meal was: $5.37. Each serving, at six servings was: $0.89! I think that makes it the cheapest recipe I've tried for this blog so far. Now the calorie count is a bit...rangy... Using my app I show 434 calories per serving but according to the Spruce Eats website it's 633 calories per serving. That's a pretty good difference. Not sure how they calculate. And to be honest I'm not sure how accurate my app is either. Either way you get an estimate.
The other recipe I tried today is the Blueberry Lemon Drizzle Cake. I intended to make this recipe on Monday for FHE but I was in such a hormonal, cranky mood that I didn't want to do anything, including trying to make this cake.
I'm glad I waited. It was worth waiting for. Look at it! But then again...it's a terrible picture. I'm really just at that point where I know with a good camera and a light box I could take decent pictures for this blog but I just can't justify it yet. So you guys will just have to make do with my crappy iPhone photos taken under terrible lighting.
This recipe comes Barry at Rock Recipes. Now I must admit I was skeptical. As a formerly picky eater I wouldn't eat any kind of dessert that included fruit, especially blueberries. I was (and still am) a die hard chocoholic and anything that wasn't chocolate was immediately suspect. Now as a mom-to-be I want to incorporate as much fruit into recipes (desserts or otherwise) as possible so my children don't take after my former picky habits.
I love that this recipe doesn't overdo it with sugar. Sometimes dessert recipes have nearly as much, or more, sugar than flour! This one doesn't. There's just enough sugar that, between that and the blueberries, gives it just enough sweetness. In the actual cake, that is. There is a lot of sugar in the icing. But if you're conscious of your sugar intake feel free to leave the icing off.
The recipe says it takes 40-45 minutes to bake in a 9x9 pan. I only had an 8x8 pan and mine needed an extra twenty five minutes to cook all the way through.
This cake was delicious! Perfectly moist. Perfectly sweet. And if picky me is saying that you know it must be a winner! Dear Husband liked it, too.
The breakdown. This cake cost me $5.87 to make and it works out to be $0.65 per serving, at nine servings. And it has approximately 339 calories per serving.
Anyway, I hope you're feeling inspired to try something new! Much Love, Hailee
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