Fruity waffles

This isn't really a recipe, but more of an idea I had while making waffles. I've been adding various fruits to our Bisquick mix and it has made our lives more exciting (what can I say, we live in Dillingham). So far I've added strawberry puree and grated pear. I usually add a bit of vanilla to the batter as well. For the pear I added cinnamon and nutmeg. I think it's pretty tasty and a way to add a bit of fruit to your diet. The pear had a very subtle flavor, I think because I grated it. If you want more pear taste, I would suggest chopping it up in chunks. The strawberry waffles were a pretty pink color. So, if you have a little girl in your life, she might enjoy them. I didn't really do anything differently with the recipe, just added the fruit. It was easy. Here are some pictures of the finished result.

They look like there's not fruit! You can be sneaky.

I pureed the strawberries with the milk the recipe called for. It looks like a milkshake.

The pink color is subtle, so boys would probably eat it too.

Cookie Dough

I don't know many people who don't enjoy eating cookie dough. It's basically why I like baking. There is always that risk of sickness, though (I guess, it has never worried me). Here is a recipe to make cookie dough minus the eggs. I've used this in my cookie dough cupcakes and I made cookie dough truffles once. I think it would be great in homemade ice cream, or to just eat while you're sitting on the couch watching tv.

Cream your butter and sugar.

It's really pretty much like any chocolate chip cookie recipe, minus the eggs.

It's dangerous.

Cookie Dough

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups flour

14 oz sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Cream together butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Mix in salt and flour. Add sweetened condensed milk and then chocolate chips. Yes, it's that simple.

The time I almost cut off my toe.

These bars nearly caused me to lose one of my toes. I'm not sure how it happened. This is probably the easiest recipe on our blog, but someone it almost ended with an ER visit. Our knives are just so sharp (Samara had a run-in with them while making the infamous 12 layer cake too). Here is a chronicle of the events while making Cinnamon Toast Bars:

The foot incident actually happened while I was melting the marshmallows. Luckily my former-paramedic husband ran into the room and took care of the wound while I sat on a chair and stirred the marshmallows (4 cups mini) and butter (3 tablespoons). What can I say, I'm hard core.

After the marshmallows and butter are melted, I added 6 cups of the cinnamon toast cereal. Get all the cereal covered in the gooey mess. 

Put it in a greased pan. I put mini chocolate chips on top to make it festive. These were easy, but good.  A fun take on the traditional crispy treat.

Hopefully if you make them it won't end in bandages and a sore foot.

Roasted Beet & Garlic cream sauce

Before I post the pictures, ignore the color. This dish is made with red beets and thus the sauce is going to be beet colored. So it is the color of magenta play-dough. It was good and low fat.

Gather together:

• 1-2 pounds of beets
• 1 garlic bulb
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• low fat cream cheese (cubed)
• 1/2 cup of fat free milk (see I told you it was low fat)
• favorite whole wheat pasta

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut off the top of the garlic, add olive oil, salt and pepper and wrap in foil. Cut off the tops and bottoms of beets. Spray with olive oil and salt and pepper. Wrap in foil, but put them in a pan. It's less messy this way. Let those roast in the oven for about 45 minutes or until soft.

Remove from oven. Place in to freezer for about 5 minutes--just so they are cool enough to handle. They they are cool, squeeze garlic from the bulb and peel the beats. Add Beets and garlic to a blender with the milk. Get that going until you have a smooth texture. Add more milk if needed. Next transfer to a sauce pan and add the cream cheese. Mix this until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with rosemary. Serve over your favorite pasta. Ignore the color.
This was really flavorful and pretty in a spring/play dough kind of way. This might be a way to get the kids to eat beets.

Blood Orange Bread

Erin and I wanted to make a blood orange cake. We searched and searched an the only thing we could find was the Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake. (We had already tried the Anticraft Blood orange cake, but again without having poppyseed filling.) This sounded wrong on so many levels. So we went with more of a bread instead.

Gather together:

• Butter for greasing pan
• 3 blood oranges (segmented without membranes)
  
• 1 cup sugar
• Buttermilk
  
• 3 large eggs
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup of butter
• 1/4 cup blood orange juice

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray your loaf pan down with Pam or butter or use your misto. Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs, buttermilk and juice. Next slowly add in all the dry ingredients. When this is mixed up pretty well, fold in the blood oranges. Put mixture in to pan and allow to bake for 55 minutes.


We served this with a simple syrup make from sugar and blood orange juice. This turned out more like orange muffins than like a cake. I bet it would make pretty good muffins.

Pecan Sticky Rolls

The Saturday before Easter, I attempted to make my mother-in-law's light rolls. I followed the instructions. They were suppose to turn out light and fluffy. Mine turned out like little hard bricks. I decided I would make pecan sticky rolls instead since I had made them a few days earlier at work. I don't feel like typing out all the recipe today, so if you are just dying for it, let me know and I will get to that in a day or so.
Making the dough in the Kitchen Aid mixer.


Rolls placed in the pan on top of the pecans sugar and corn syrup. I almost never use corn syrup. I think it is gross and it doesn't digest as well as regular sugar. It is in almost everything, but it is the only thing that I could find to use in Dillingham.

Here they are in all their buttery, nutty, sticky goodness. I made 4 pans of these before Easter and gave them out to people. Strangely, these were easier to make than the light rolls. Messier, but easier.

Brandied glazed carrots

I simply can not believe how good these carrots are. We paid a caterer a lot of money for the auction and he made these carrots. Not only are they super good, but they are easy to make.

Gather together:
2 pounds of carrots-peeled and cut in to 1.5-2 inch pieces
stick of butter (I told you it was good)
1/4 c. brown sugar
2 table spoons brandy
parsley
pinch of salt

Boil the carrots until they are tender crisp--not fully cooked, but yet still tender enough a fork can puncture them. Drain the water. In a casserole dish add butter, sugar, salt, & brandy--stir. Add in carrots. Toss them in the butter mixture and place in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes. Toss to coat the carrots again. Sprinkle with parsley and Ta-Da!
People will think you slaved over the stove for hours for these.



I served it with balsamic chicken and veggies. Look at the pretty mushrooms, red peppers and onions! This is just a simple saute then right before serving add a bit of balsamic vinegar. Let it heat up and reduce for a minute and you have a great dinner on your plate.

Buffalo Chicken Pizza

I woke up an hour early on Monday. The sun is rising everyday at about 7:00 am and it is setting at about 10:00pm. I think this has something to do with the weird sleeping issues. But this time I used it to my advantage. This morning, I made pizza dough. This dough was pretty good and the toppings are yummy. Aaron ate a couple slices even though I added blue cheese to the whole pizza. He's such a good sport.


Gather together:
3 1/2 cups flour
1 cup warm water
2 tablespoons yeast
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup oil
1/2 teaspoon Salt



Proof the yeast in 1c. warm water and honey-- about 5 minutes. In the kitchen aid mixer (what?!? You don't have one? GO OUT AND BUY ONE RIGHT NOW!!! I'll wait) add flour, oil, salt and yeast mixture. MIx this until you get a nice non lumpy dough ball'--about 5-10 minutes. I love my mixer, it kneads the dough for you. Spray a large mixing bowl with Pam or with your Misto. Add the dough and spray it down too. Leave for 4 hours (or until it doubles) while you are at work. Come home on lunch and punch down the dough. Leave for 4 hours and come home for the day and punch down again. This time pull it out of the bowl on to a floured work station. Roll out to fit what ever pan you have. Add toppings--whatever you like. I added chicken cooked in butter and Frank's Hot Sauce, onions, green olives, white cheese and blue cheese. I guess it is also inportant to know that I added butter and garlic to the crust instead of marinara. Bake at 400 for 20-30 minutes.


If I could do anything different, I would have baked the crust for about 10 minutes before adding the toppings to give it a head start.

Sugar Cookies

I have a love-hate relationship with sugar cookies. They're a lot of work and don't taste that great, but they're so festive and fun and remind me of being a kid. The love outweighs the hate, so I end up making them for various holidays. I found a recipe on allrecipes.com that is pretty awesome. These cookies tasted like those ones you can buy at Wal-Mart with a half inch thick blob of frosting on top. You know what I'm talking about. Anyway, they're pretty good. I made this in honor of Easter and spring, even though it's far from spring weather here. Well, it is above freezing, so that's saying something

I let the dough chill overnight.

Before the baking.

After the baking with the frosting outline.

I wanted to try and use royal icing because it's pretty and looks impressive. I, however, do not have meringue powder and felt weird about using raw egg whites. I found a recipe using heavy cream that looked shiny and pretty, so I used that. I was pretty pleased with how these turned out. I really liked the pretty pastel colors. I think the blue birds are my favorite. Even though it looks like a lot of work, the whole process from start to finish was about 1.5 hours, including clean-up. Not bad for sugar cookies!

Sugar cookies
(from allrecipes.com)
INGREDIENTS: (I made half this recipe and it made roughly 24 cookies.)
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS:
1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Creamy Icing
1 cup sifted powdered sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream
Food coloring

I just mixed it all together and added more powdered sugar and cream until I got the consistency I wanted. For the outline of the cookies I made a thicker icing. For the frosting in the middle I added a bit more cream. The measurements above are really sort of guidelines, not exact measurements. You can't really screw up this icing too much no matter what you do.

Biscuits and gravy

What are you going to cook for breakfast at 11am on a Sunday morning after a long night of Wii karaoke? Biscuits and sausage gravy! Ok, so I cheated and used Bisquick for the biscuits. I swear I am going to follow Alton Brown's advice and make my own biscuit mix, but I haven't yet. I have mastered sausage gravy. This isn't an exact science when it comes to making gravy, you just go by what looks right so I am not going to give any measurements.


Gather together:
1 lb of bulk sausage--not links
milk
flour
salt & pepper to taste
cast iron skillet

Brown the sausage in the skillet. Break up the meat in to small pieces as you go, unless you like large chunky gravy--there is nothing wrong with that. Once all the meat is browned, remove it from the pan in to a collandar over a bowl to catch the oil. The oil is important so try to drain as much of the oil off the sausage in to the bowl. Add the oil back in to the pan. Add some flour a couple tablespoons. You want a bubbly flour mixture known as a roux, not a paste. If you added too much flour, pour in a bit of canola oil. Let the roux bubble and get brown. Slowly wisk in the milk. I used about 2.5-3 cups. Crank this up to medium high heat and continue wisking until you think that it is never going to thicken and you start freaking out a bit. And then keep wisking. It will thicken. Just keep wisking. After what seems like 20 minutes (in reality is only about 8 minutes) the gravy will start coating the wisk. Let it bubble for a few mintues longer then remove from heat. Stir in the sausage. I only used about 1/2 of the sausage for the gravy and saved the rest for later, but if you love sausage, feel free to use it all. Add salt and pepper to taste.


Serve this over biscuits with some fruit on the side.


On a side not, not every thing I make is deep fried with butter and pork. Most mornings Aaron eats a granola bar and I have a cup of coffee with splenda and a piece of fruit or toast. This kind of stuff we eat on rare occassions. But it wouldn't be any fun if I blogged about every piece of toast and cup of coffee, or would it? No, no it wouldn't. So there you go.

Blood oranges

I got more blood oranges in my CSF box this week. It's pretty exciting because they are hard to come by sometimes. Erin and I back in January attempted to make this blood orange cake from the anticraft. It was really pretty in the picture and it used the blood oranges and had a poppy seed filling. We didn't have enough blood orange juice (each orange only rendered about 1/8 cup of juice) and the blood orange sauce never set right so it was just runny. Also, Dillingham lacks poppy seed pie filling. My only other option was to make poppy seed filling, but you need at least a cup of poppy seeds would would have cost me about $100 since they sell those tiny bottle of poppy seeds for $12 each and I would have needed about 9 bottles. I just can't spend $100 on poppy seeds. It's so wrong. So I bought a can of black berries that expired in 2005. I was pretty excited that the cashier gave them to me for a penny since they expired 4 years ago. I guess no one really likes black berries here. So any way, the cake was a bit of a flob. (sorry we didn't get pictures) So here I am with 4 more blood oranges and nothing to do with them.

I had been wanting some southern style sweet tea. The idea went kinda like this:
Sweet tea + Blood oranges= Blood tea (or blood orange tea if you prefer not to be creeped out)

This is easy. Make ice tea --not that instant stuff--brew the tea. This can be done by boiling water and putting it in a pitcher with some tea bags or just clean out the coffee pot and brew the tea bags in there. I used black tea bags. While the tea is still warm, add sugar or splenda. Cut 1 blood orange in to slices and toss in the pitcher. Chill for a couple hours.
Serve this with southern fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits or your scary meal.

triple squash soup

Remember the butternut squash from earlier pictures? Well, I finally got around to doing something with it only after I received another type of squash in my weekly veggie box. This time it was an acorn squash. I started thinking and after the couple days of snow storms (yes it is still snowing here in Alaska), I thought it would be nice to have some warm soup and some bread.

First I had to roast the squash. This is easy, if you haven't done this before, give it a try. It's super easy and is very tasty. This stuff tastes good straight out of the oven.

Cut your squash or squashes? [I have no idea what the plural of squash is...Maybe squash is plural, like moose. Huh, uh, anyway...] Cut your gourds in half length-wise. Scoop out the seeds and gooey stuff. (You can save the seeds if you want to plant some or clean them and roast them too for a crunchy snack) Spray the insides with oil--I used canola in a Misto--and add some sea salt (Get one of these...they are awesome!) Now, place the squash skin side up on a baking sheet that has sides--as they cook, they will render some liquid. Take some cloves of garlic and some thyme and shove them in the scooped out part. As they roast, they will take on the flavors of what ever you put in there. Put them in a 375 degree oven for about an hour or until they are soft and can be removed from the skin easily. After they are cooled scoop out all the flesh. I did all this the night before I made soup.

The day of the soup, I put the squash bits in the blender with some water (feel free to use chicken stock or vegetable stock) to make a puree--add those roasted garlic cloves to the mix if you want. Now, I bet you are wondering where the other squash comes from. Enters a can of pumpkin puree. I would have roasted a pumpkin if I had one. I didn't. A can of pumpkin puree is just as good. DO NOT USE PUMPKIN PIE FILLING. It's not the same, trust me on this one.
Add the pumpkin and squash puree in to a large stock pot. Add 2 cups of water to make it more like soup and less like paste. Heat this up on Medium heat. Add Salt, corriander, cumin, garlic powder and pepper. Add Sriracha if you want to add some heat--I did, I knew Erin was going to come over. Now, add a pint of heavy cream to give your soup a velvety creaminess. (You can omit this if you are watching your weight)


I served this with grilled garlic bread. It was nice and warm and filling. Aaron ate 2 bowls and I'm not even sure if he knew this was good for him.

Chocolate Malt Cake

I took pictures of this cake long before I had a food blog. I baked this for Anthony for his 27th birthday (hence the 27). He loves malt anything, so I figured this would be the perfect cake. It was a straight forward recipe and was definitely for the malt lover.  The buttercream was super buttery. So, if you like butter and malt, you'll like it.

Chocolate Malt Cake

2 cups malted milk powder

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt (I used regular salt and it was fine)

3/4 teaspoons baking soda

3 large eggs

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups whole milk (I used skim because it was all I had and it turned out fine)

 

1. Heat the over to 325. Coat two 8-inch cake pans with flour and oil.

2. Combine malted milk powder, flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl.

3. Combine eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla in a separate bowl and whisk until combined and smooth. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture and whisk until incorporated. Add 1/2 the milk and whisk until smooth. Continue with the remaining flour mixture and milk, alternating between the two until all the ingredients are incorporated and smooth.

4. Divide batter into the two pans. Bake about 45 minutes.

Malt Frosting

3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

3/4 cup malted milk powder

1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature (I used skim. It was good.)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

I used my stand mixer and creamed all the ingredients together. Add more powdered sugar if you like a stiff icing. I put crushed malt balls around the edge of the cake to make it pretty.

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Eggplant Parmesan or deep fried eggplant

You can call it eggplant Parmesan, but that seems a bit fancy. And really one of the best ways to get the men folk to eat some vegetables than to deep fry it and cover it with cheese. This is pretty easy as long as you are not scared of deep frying. You can use one of those fancy deep fryers with the basket if deep frying scares you. If you're not scared, pull out your cast iron skillet and get started.


Gather together:
2 medium eggplants (sliced in to 1/2 slices and soaked in salt water for an hour)
panko bread crumbs or your favorite bread crumbs
4 eggs--beaten
oil for frying

Since this took place so soon after the potato chips, I just left my oil in my cast iron pan for use with this. I heated the oil to about 350 or medium heat. Get your station set up with your egg bath and bread crumbs. Coat the egg plant in the egg, then the bread crumbs and carefully place in the oil. Fry on each side until they are golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

At this point, I put the fried eggplant in a casserole dish, added marinara and covered in Parmesan. I let the cheese melt in the oven using the broil option. I served this with whole wheat pasta to counter the effects of all the oil.


This was pretty good. I was surprised that Aaron ate 2 pieces of eggplant, but then again, you really can't go wrong with fried vegetables.

Home-made chips

I order a weekly box from a CSA called Full Circle Farm which conveniently send a box of fresh organic produce practically to my door step every Wednesday, weather and volcanoes permitting.

My box the past couple weeks have had tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, egg plants, potatoes and for some reason a butternut squash. (Yes, I realize it looks kind of phallic--dirty minded people, sheesh) After a long stressful week, I decided to make cheeseburgers and chips. If you have never tried making your own chips, I really suggest you do. It's alot of fun and you can put whatever seasoning on them you want. All you need is a cast iron skillet, food processor and 1/2 gallon of cooking oil. :)

2 pounds of small potatoes (I had a bag of purple and yellow)
cooking oil (I use canola oil)
salt, pepper or other seasonings

Run your little potatoes through your food processor with the slicing blade. If you don't have a food procesor, you can cut them by hand, you might have to cook them longer. Heat your oil to about 350 --which on my stove is about 6 or high-medium. Add the potatoes to the hot oil giving a stir just to make sure that potatoes are not sticking. After about 5-6 minutes, they should be blowned & ready to come out of the oil on to a papertowel lined plate. Season imediately. Continue this process until you are out of potatoes.
Garnish with a cheeseburger with all the fixens.