Thanks to everyone who “de-lurked” last week to say hello! And if you read, but didn’t comment, that’s okay! I still appreciate you!

This week, I have a super easy cheesecake that I found over at Buns in My Oven. Cookies and cheesecake? How can you go wrong? I put this together for an ill-fated birthday dinner a couple weeks ago. My mom was supposed to come over for her annual birthday dinner, where she always requests White Chicken Parmesan, but there was rampant sickness in her house. I’d already made the dessert however, so my coworkers got to benefit from Mom’s birthday.

I have to apologize for the quality of the pictures here. My camera went missing a few weeks ago, so all I had available was the camera on my phone. Photo quality aside, this was one tasty cheesecake!

You’ll need: Cream cheese, sugar, eggs, vanilla, butter, oreos

First, crush 28 oreos. I suggest using a food processor, but this can be done with a baggie and a rolling pin if you’re determined.

Add 4 tablespoons of melted butter or margarine and stir until the crumbs are moist.

Press into the bottom of a 9×13 pan. (I lined my pan with parchment paper first, per Bun in My Oven’s suggestion.) Bake crust for 10 minutes.

Put 3 packages of softened cream cheese into a large bowl

Add 3/4 cup sugar

and 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix until well blended.

Add the eggs one at a time

mixing well after each addition

Crush the remaining oreos by hand. You just want to break them up a little, they don’t need to be pulverized.

Stir the oreos into the cheesecake batter

and pour onto the oreo cookie crust.

Spread the cheesecake layer evenly over the oreo crust layer.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Refrigerate at least 3 hours, or overnight.

Slice and enjoy!

Cookies and Cream Cheesecake
Source: Buns in My Oven

1 package of Oreo cookies
4 tablespoons butter, melted
3 packages cream cheese (24 ounces total), room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3 eggs

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Using a food processor, blender, or rolling pin, crush 28 Oreo cookies into crumbs. Pour into parchment or wax paper lined 9 x 13 pan and pour melted butter on top of cookie crumbs. Stir to coat all the cookie crumbs with butter and press into the pan to form the crust. Bake the crust for 10 minutes.
2. Beat cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until well blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing just until blended.
3. Crumble remaining Oreos with your fingers and add to cheesecake mixture. Stir together to combine and pour over cookie crust. Smooth the batter and place in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until the edges are set but the center is still slightly jiggly. Cool on a wire rack and then refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.

First things, first… today is

Delurker Day! Basically it just means, if you’ve been reading and not commenting, please “delurk” and leave a comment. Even if you’ve got nothing to say about the recipe, feel free to just say hi.

Moving along!

You may have noticed that I put the “Watergate” salad in quotations in the title. There’s a good reason for that. According to Kraft, this particular jello salad is called Watergate Salad. I’ve even recently seen it referred to as Pistachio Fluff. But in my family, we have a different name for it. One that’s not exactly appetizing and blog friendly… are you ready for it? This is Barf Salad. Yes, like that-thing-you-do-when-you-have-the-flu salad. Yum, right?

The story goes, however many years ago, my cousin Matt laid eyes on this green jello concoction and said “I’m not eating any of that barf salad!” It’s been barf salad ever since, and to this day, he still won’t eat it. I hope you will though, it’s quite tasty! This salad, Watergate, pistachio or barf, has always been one of my favorite things to find on the food table at family get togethers. It’s now my job to make it.

Here’s how.

Pistachio pudding, crushed pineapple, mini marshmallows, pecans, cool whip.

In a medium sized bowl, dump one box of dry pistachio pudding mix.

Add to that one 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple without draining.

I gave it a quick stir at this point. This is also the point at which I realized that a green bowl was probably not the best choice for this particular dish. It happened to be the most appropriately sized bowl that I had though!

Add 1/2 cup chopped pecans. I used pecan chips because I was too lazy to chop pecans. Or because they were out of any other kind of pecans at the store. Or both.

1 cup of mini marshmallows

Finally, 1 1/2 cups cool whip.

Stir until everything is well combined. Make sure you get everything up from the bottom… just when you think you’re done, you’ll pull up a spoonful of pineapple pudding goo and realize you haven’t quite gotten it yet.

And the finished product! Doesn’t it look good? Okay, maybe not in that green bowl…

Okay, that’s a little better. You can probably see why this dish earned its endearing name, but it’s still delicious!

Watergate Salad

1 box Pistachio pudding mix, dry
1 20 oz. can crushed pineapple, undrained
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 1/2 cups whipped topping

Combine all ingredients. That’s it!

Let’s take a brief intermission from the sweets, shall we? No worries, there will be more coming. (I really ought to have named this blog Jenn Bakes or perhaps even Jenn Eats Sugar rather than Jenn Cooks… I DO enjoy baking far more than anything else.)

I found this little dip recipe on a quilting blog, believe it or not. Back when I thought I was going to be able to learn how to sew in straight lines, I added a bunch of quilting and crafting blogs to my feed reader. I kept most of them even after I packed up the sewing machine, and a little while back, I found this gem.

I made this dip and took it to my Christmas Eve dinner. People seemed to enjoy it, but I have a feeling it would have gone over better if I had, you know, been ON TIME. I was too busy breaking my car out of its candy coating (a layer of ice) to get out the door on time. Oh well! It was still good!

Cream cheese, sour cream, shredded cheese, pizza sauce, green pepper, green onion, pepperoni, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, oregano. (Ritz crackers)

In a bowl, add 8 oz. of softened cream cheese

1/2 cup of sour cream

1 teaspoon oregano

1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper. Honestly, if I make this again, I’ll probably leave this out. It give it just a little bit of a kick, not too spicy, but I’m not a fan of ANY spicy. Up to you, but I personally think the dip would be just as tasty without the peppers.

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Mix until well combined.

Spread in a 9-inch pie plate. (Sorry for the quality of the photo… my camera suddenly decided flash was unnecessary, it was dark outside and I didn’t have the time to fight with it!)

Top with 1/2 cup pizza sauce

Green onion

Diced green pepper

and diced pepperoni.

Bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Add 1 cup of cheese and return to the oven.

Bake 5 more minutes, until the cheese is melted. Serve with Ritz crackers.

Pepperoni Pizza Dip
Found at Sister’s Choice Quilts

8 oz. cream cheese, softened
½ cup sour cream
1 tsp oregano (or Penzey’s Pasta Sprinkle)
¼ tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp crushed red pepper
½ cup pizza sauce
½ cup or more diced pepperoni sausage
½ sliced green onion
¼ diced green pepper
1 cup shredded cheese (I used a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar)

Preheat oven to 350. Beat together the cream cheese, sour cream, oregano, garlic powder and crushed red pepper. Spread in a 9 inch pie pan. Spread the pizza sauce over the top. Sprinkle with the pepperoni, onions and peppers. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle evenly with cheese. Return to the oven and bake for 5 more minutes until golden. Serve with Ritz crackers.

Serves 12 or more.