Two Creamy Cheesy Pastas, Cinnamon Raisin Muffins, Soul Cakes, Soup & Bread

 Creamy Cottage Cheesy Pasta
That's right!  Cottage Cheese.  If you're not worried about calories, substitute Ricotta!  A great substitute for calorie-rich Alfredo or bechamel sauce for any pasta dish.

8 oz Pasta of Choice
1-1/2 cups Small Curd Cottage Cheese
3/4 cup Dairy -- milk or plant-based "milk"|
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
Salt & Pepper
Optional -- 1-2 tsp Lemon Juice
1-2 cloves garlic
Chopped Parsley to finish

Cook the pasta to package directions -- I used Barilla brand Red Lentil Rotini.  Reserve about 1/4 cup of the pasta water.  Drain and reserve pasta.

In your food processor combine the cottage cheese, dairy,  salt & pepper, Parmesan and lemon juice if using.  Take it all for a nice long spin to smooth the sauce out. 

Now in a pot, gently saute the garlic in a splash of olive oil, then stir in the sauce.  As the sauce cooks it's going to thin out a bit.  If too thin you may want to use a corn starch slurry to tighten it up a bit. 

When the sauce is heated through, dump the pasta in another pot of nearly boiling water for a minute or to to heat it back up.  Drain and then toss the pasta into the pan of the sauce.  Serve garnished with some chopped parsley...

Half Creamy Tuna Pasta
Here's another variation on the cottage cheese pasta sauce theme.  Why "Half Creamy"?  Look at the quantities:

1/2 box Rotini pasta
1/2 cup Diced Tomatoes with herbs and garlic
1/2 cup Cottage Cheese
1/2 cup Frozen Peas
1/2 can Albacore White Tuna in water, drained.

Start the pasta water.  Cook pasta to package directions.    Meanwhile...
Put the tomatoes & cottage cheese in the food processor and take them for a long spin.  
Transfer tomato/cheese mix to a pot and start heating it to medium.
Add tuna and peas to the sauce pot and keep cooking.

Transfer cooked pasta to a bowl and pour the heated through sauce over.


Cinnamon Raisin Muffins
Super simple.  You may have everything on hand.  I made just a half of the batch below and got 4 nice size muffins.

2 cups Bisquicktm or other Baking & Pancake mix
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Dairy -- milk or plant-based
1/2 cup Raisins
1/2 cup unsweetened Apple Sauce -- or two eggs, beaten
2 tsp Cinnamon

Mix everything together and spoon into silicon muffin/cupcake cups or greased tin.  Bake at 400F for 20 minutes.  

Anglo-Saxon Soul Cakes
Halloween was just the other day, and an interest group I belong to published this modern equivalent quantities for the Soul Cakes which the Anglo-Saxons made for this season...

The tradition of making soul cakes as offerings for the dead dates back to the Middle Ages, but it has a darker past. It started with people making 'Honey Cakes' to appease a pre-Christian Saxon Honey Monster -- a creature with a wicker bee hive for a head who lived in the forest but came out to raid farms where bees were kept to make honey for the family.

To appease the Honey Monster, the people left offerings on their paths. The Soul Cakes of 10th century Hallowmas were a remnant of this tradition, appeasing wandering souls instead of monsters. 150 grams Honey 159 grams Butter/margarine 2 Egg Yolks (save the whites for another recipe) 100 grams Oats -- I used Old Fashioned Rolled Oats 220 grams AP or WW Flour I'll leave the Metric to Imperial measurement conversions as an exercise for you; or use a scale and weigh everything in grams. A half batch makes about 16, 2" diameter 'cakes'. Combine the oats and flour, then add the eggs and butter and use a paddle/spoon to combine things into a dense dough. Form it into a ball and let it rest for about 20 minutes to hydrate the flour and oats. I fancied up the cakes by rolling the dough out 1/4" thick and using a 2" cookie cutter to make everything the same size, instead of patting out lumps of various sizes and thicknesses. I dry-fried them on a non-stick skillet on medium-low for 6-8 minutes per side.

The result is a dense "cookie" (digestive biscuit to my Brit readers). More crumbly than chewie. Next time I might whirrr the oats to make them small er particles. Not particularly sweet, just pleasantly so. The 'flavor' of the honey you use definitely comes through. I used local Black Mangrove flower honey, not a commercial blended honey.

Soup & Bread

Just had to show off this Super Supper -- Hungarian Mushroom Soup and fresh, hot, buttered No-Knead Foccacia Bread.  Recipes here on the Blog of course-- use the search function to find them.