September Meeting - Copycat Theme Pictures and Recipes

We started the evening with an appetizer plate of T.G.I. Friday's Potato Skins from the book Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur. These were made slightly lighter per serving by using half the butter, substituting low fat sour cream and cheddar for the higher fat ingredients and by using 6 small potatoes instead of 4 large ones. Potatoes, butter, bacon, cheddar, sour cream and chives ... how bad could it be?

- Rebecca


We moved onto California Pizza Kitchen's Sedona White Corn Tortilla Soup. It's a tomato-based soup which automatically makes it "light". Despite the name of the soup, I unfortunately forgot to buy the corn tortillas that go into the soup at the beginning of the recipe, so I suppose I unintentionally made it even lighter by omitting the fried tortilla pieces. The soup turned out well and was super easy. I thought it looked beautiful in Kim's soup bowls.

- Christine




The Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuit recipe can be found here.

I found two recipes for similar cookies, one in Eating Well and the other in Cooking Light. I used the recipe from cooking light as I liked the marshmallow filling better, but I added more cocoa powder and switched 1/2 cup all purpose flour with 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour to add a little fiber and nutty taste. I also reduced the salt to approx. 1/2 teaspoon as it seemed salty at the full 1 teaspoon called for. Finally, I could not find non-fat buttermilk, so I used low-fat. I thought the cookies came out well and I got a couple of good tips from Kim and I think Rebecca on things to do when upping the cocoa powder - remove an equivalent amount of flour to keep it from getting too dry, and using wheat flour - someone said you might need to add more liquid to compensate for this, if I recall correctly.

This was the first time I made marshmallow as well. This was a great item for me to step out of my comfort zone with and I really enjoyed making the cookies.
- Lauren