June 2025 – Simply Delicious: The Cookbook Project

12-19: Cannelloni Milanese

Jamie Martin Group 12: Pasta & Rice, Section 2: Main Courses June 16, 2025June 15, 2025boiled, broiled, brunoise, cabbage, cannelloni, Cheddar, cheese, cheese sauce, chicken bouillon, chicken broth, chiffonade, Chinese cabbage, chopped, cream of mushroom, diced, dinner, dried herbs, fairly hard, frozen, grated, half-and-half, herbs and spices, inexpensive, Italian, julienned, lasagna, milk, oregano, Parmesan, pasta/noodles, peeled, poached, purée, salt, shredded, spinach, stuffed, stuffing, tomato paste, tomato sauce, untested, vegetable bouillon, vegetable broth, vegetables, vegetarian, whipping cream

Ready for a (slight) break from dessert recipes? I know I am. 12-19: Cannelloni Milanese is the last card I have for Group 12, and it’s been hanging out in my “to-do” pile for a LONG time. In the interest of finally “landing this plane” sometime this century, let’s knock this one out now.

Sounds good in theory, right? Perhaps…however, Simply Delicious has tricked me before.

If you like the vegetable lasagna from Stouffer’s (or at least, used to back when frozen food was good), this is totally gonna be your jam. If you don’t, you’re probably in for a bad time.

16-2: Cheesecake

Jamie Martin Group 16: Pies & Cakes, Section 3: Desserts & Baked Goods June 12, 2025June 15, 2025all-purpose flour, blind bake, butter, cakes, cheesecake, cinnamon, cold desserts, college, cream cheese, crème fraîche, dessert, dried spices, egg whites, egg yolks, eggs, fairly easy, fairly inexpensive, folded, fruit, garnish, glazed, graham crackers, granulated sugar, grated, lemon juice, lemon peel, lemons, melted, meringue, nutmeg, party food, pie crust, revisited, soft peaks, stiff peaks, vanilla extract, vegetarian, whipped, zested

Question: Why did it take me so long to get to 16-2: Cheesecake (especially since cheesecake is one of my favorite foods)?

Answer: Technically, I’ve made it once before–when I lived in my first REAL apartment during college (20 years ago…YIKES). I’ve talked before about my cooking misadventures while in college (I went to a high-altitude school, which messes with baking more than you think), so we’ll take my note below in stride.

OK–why so long to make it again, then?

I held out on this one for so long because I wanted to make it with real dairy–the vegan/fake stuff was never going to do this cake justice. It’s not even a particularly GREAT cheesecake (Junior’s version is the one you want for that–I even won my work cheesecake “throwdown” with that one), but I wanted to at least try to do it right.

Dietary “needs” have recently evolved, so real dairy is back on the menu after many years of using substitutes. In honor of that, let’s give this one another try now that I’m closer to sea level and have 20 additional years of cooking experience behind me.

15-4: Fruit Salad with Chocolate Sauce

Jamie Martin Group 15: Cold Desserts, Section 3: Desserts & Baked Goods June 2, 2025June 2, 2025almonds, chocolate, chocolate sauce, cold desserts, dark chocolate, dessert, dips, dollop, double boiler, easy, egg-free, fairly inexpensive, fruit, fruit salad, ganache, garnish, gluten-free, grapes, kiwis, layers, oranges, party food, peeled, pineapple, sliced, snacks, strawberries, summer, supreme, toasted, untested, vegetarian, whipped, whipping cream

I had picked out 15-4: Fruit Salad with Chocolate Sauce specifically because I didn’t think I’d have a ton of time to cook last week, since we took Memorial Day week off to work on some home improvement projects.

I even took EVERY shortcut I could think of to shrink that time commitment down even further (plus, my kitchen was out of commission most of the week), so this will be…we’ll call it truncated. You’ll see what I mean after the jump.