Some New Recipes

I spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen yesterday because we had company over for dinner, and came up with a new "recipe" for a roast in the slow cooker. I put recipe in quotes because it was a very spur of the moment thing. I had intended to make my usual roast, but at the last second, I decided not to add the soy sauce. But I didn't measure, not that anything needs to be exact. I had a 4-pound chuck roast, and I poured about 1/3 cup onion powder, 1/4 cup garlic powder, and 1/4 cup seasoned rock salt all over the meat. (You could substitute about 2 tablespoons of kosher salt and 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper for the rock salt.) I left the string on, and cooked the meat on high for about five hours and low for another hour. It came out great, and I got lots of compliments on it.

This was my first time using my brand new $12 slow cooker, and it worked perfectly. As Marie pointed out, the outside does get quite hot, but all of my slow cookers have been that way since I've stayed away from the ones with complicated electronics. I do prefer the oval shaped crock to the round crock like my new cooker has, but I'll manage since $12 is such a great price.

For dessert, I made this cookie cake, but I divided the dough in two and froze half. The other half went into a 9-inch springform pan and baked for 25 to 30 minutes until the top was a deep golden brown. I lined the bottom of the pan with parchment paper, and it came out of the pan perfectly intact for a beautiful presentation. The best part was that the cookie topping was really crunchy, so the texture was fabulous.

I also made this apple cake, although we haven't tried it yet. I omitted the cinnamon and sugar topping, since I wanted to use sanding or turbinado sugar and didn't realize I was out until right before I put the cake in the oven. I did taste the batter, though, and it was great, so I expect the baked cake to be quite tasty too.

What new recipes have you tried lately?