This weekend I did a lot of cooking for various events. Since getting back into cooking this year, I have greatly expanded my repertoire of recipes. While I prefer to stay with the tried-and-true, I have been making myself try out new recipes in order to learn new cooking skills.

This was the birthday boy's treat (click for larger photo). I have made tarts in the past, but these were different. Instead of making custard, I made a baked cream-cheese filling. They turned out well, although I used store-bought pastry crusts for the sake of saving time.

For a potluck I made a spinach artichoke dip based off this recipe which uses Swiss chard. I haven't tried any of her recipes yet but will try others since this one turned out very well. I used frozen spinach instead of chard and since mayonnaise is illegal in my kitchen, subbed sour cream for mayo. Also, the dip will be baked instead of heated via stove top. I usually don't stick with any recipe verbatim.

Last, I made cookies for a holiday cookie exchange. The lesson I learned is not to go about something without a plan. I made some small round sugar cookies with the intent to put icing on them. What kind of icing, I didn't know. I decided to use a decorating tip to put a dollop of white or chocolate cream cheese icing on top of the cookies. The icing was not thick enough to hold its shape, so I ended up making half moon cookies. They look good. Do they taste good? Well, yes, but I am not as much of a fan of the cream cheese icing as I initially anticipated. Does cream cheese icing even go with sugar cookies? I dunno. I think I went cream-cheese crazy this weekend.