Meatless Monday: Simple Meatless Pasta

This is a light and fresh pasta dish using vegetables that looked good simply roasted.

1 pint cherry or other small tomato
4 small peppers
4 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt and pepper
about 1/2 box linguini
parmesan cheese to taste

Preheat oven to 350, cut vegetables and toss lightly with olive oil and salt and pepper.  Roast for about 30 minutes.

While vegetables are roasting, cook the pasta.

Once the pasta and vegetables are finished cooking, toss the pasta in the pan with the vegetables. Add pasta water if needed. 

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and additional salt and pepper if needed.

As an option you can add seared scallops.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

 Cupcakes for Valentine's day...what's better than extra chocolaty super moist cakes? Not much, but with an added fresh strawberry frosting, de-light-ful!

The chocolate cupcakes were my sons choosing, I signed up to make cupcakes for his Valentine's day party at school and when I asked what kind, he eagerly said "Chocolate!"  So that is what I did, I was also thinking of making cake pops, but he didn't like that idea.  The cake was the easy part and semi-homemade but finding a frosting that wasn't too sweet was another.  I have found that a lot of kids my sons age (2) seem to just eat the frosting and only a little cake.  So I made mini cupcakes, and decided on a cream cheese frosting with strawberries...sweet but not too sweet.

For the cakes:

1 package of Devil's Food cake mix

1 large box (5.85 oz.) instant chocolate pudding mix

1 cup sour cream

1 cup vegetable oil

4 large eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350, prepare muffin tins with liners or spray.

In a large bowl, sift together the cake and pudding mix. Mix in the sour cream, oil, eggs and water until just combined.  Fold in the chocolate chips. Pour into the cupcake tins.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Cool slightly in pans before removing to a cooling rack.

For the Frosting:

1 pint strawberries

8 oz. cream cheese (I used the lower fat)

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

2 cups powdered sugar

1-2 cups cool whip (optional)

Puree the strawberries using a food processor, add the cream cheese and butter. Mix well.  Slowly add in the powdered sugar. Because of the liquid from the strawberries the consistency was slightly more runny, and not in a bad way. So if you want to thicken it up to a pipable consistency then add cool whip to your desired consistency.

Enjoy!