Cooking With Herbs

Two of my passions are herbs and cooking and when the two come together as they sometimes do when I teach cooking classes at life+style, the cooking store for the everyday gourmet in our little town.

I teach other classes as well but the cooking with herbs classes are my favorite.    And tonight, the cooking with herbs class featured the following dishes:

It was not only a Cooking With Herbs class but a Cooking With Farmer's Market produce class.      All the vegetables for the class came from our local Farmer's Market.    All the herbs came from my garden.

At my classes, it is not just a sample but a real helping.    Three salads:

Broccoli/cauliflower salad with a pesto mayonnaise dressing

Strawberry Salad with a rosemary tarragon sweet dressing

Pasta Salad 3 Ways 

(Pasta with vegetables and an oil and vinegar dressing, one portion served plain, one portion with dill and the third portion with fennel)

Corn made lines infused with sage.    Fresh, hot out of the oven and served with chive butter.

Backups with rosemary, dill and parsley as well as sage.

And there can't be a meal without dessert and I simply adore herbal desserts.    Tonight it was

Mini lavender cherry cheesecakes.  

With a sprig of candied lavender on the top.

It's the old 80's recipe for those mini cheesecakes (in fact, I made them sans lavender for Daughter Sarah's 4th grade birthday party at school) with the addition of lavender in the batter.

It was a fun class and I so enjoyed visiting with the participants.    The lavender cherry cheesecakes were the hit of the evening.

LAVENDER CHERRY CHEESECAKES

16 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature

1 T. lemon juice

2 eggs

3/4 c. sugar

1 t. vanilla (optional)

2 T. ground lavender buds (I use a coffee grinder but you can leave them whole)

1 box vanilla wafers

foil cupcake liners

Preheat oven to 350.   Place 1 cookie in each cupcake liner.    Place rest of ingredients in mixer bowl and mix until well blended.    Spoon mixture on top of cookies.    Bake 15 minutes.    When cool, top with cherry pie filling.

Thank you to friend Kate and friend Cynthia for the pictures.    My camera had a dead battery.   (the only flaw with my camera is the time between telling you that the battery is low and the battery is dead is a nano second!)    I think they did an awesome job!

It is Friday and I'm sharing this herbal feast with Michael at Designs by Gollum for Foodie Friday, Cindy at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday.