Bread Pudding

Since for the time being I'm spending a whole lot more time at home than usual, I figured it was good time to dust off the old blog and post some more recipes.  This time, I'm making raspberry and white chocolate bread pudding.  To make it, you'll need:

• 2 large croissants (or a package of mini croissants)
• 2 packages (12 oz total) fresh raspberries
• 1 C milk
• 1/4 C sugar
• 1 C white chocolate chips
• 4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8x8 baking dish.  Cut up the croissants into small chunks and mix them together with the berries in a large bowl.

Next, pour the milk into a large microwave-safe bowl and microwave for about a minute (stirring every 20 seconds) until the milk is hot.  Add in the white chocolate and sugar and let that sit for a bit to melt the chocolate.  Whisk that together until the sugar and chocolate are all dissolved and melted and whisk in the eggs until it's all blended together.

Add the liquid to the croissant bits and berries and stir until all the bread is wet.

Pour this into your prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed and it's all custardy.

Serve warm with caramel sauce and/or ice cream if desired.

This is a really easy dessert and super tasty.  It warms up really nicely, too!

Chicken Salad

Today was the kickoff at my library for our summer reading program and I decided that to celebrate that by throwing together a pot-luck at work.  One of my contributions was chicken salad.  It's a super short and easy recipe, but very tasty.  To make it, you'll need: ~3 C cooked chicken; 1/4 C dried cranberries; 1/2 C diced celery; 3 Tbsp diced red onion; 1 diced apple; 1/4 C chopped toasted pecans; 6 Tbsp (or so) mayonnaise; 2 tsp lemon juice; 1/4 tsp salt; 1/8 tsp black pepper.

Just get yourself a rotisserie chicken; it's so much simpler that way

Either chop up or shred your chicken into little bits and combine it with the cranberries, celery, red onion, apple, and toasted pecans.

Like so

In a little bowl, combine the mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.  Stir it into the chicken until it's all nicely mixed (add more mayo if you need it).  And you're done!

Ta-da!

The only "difficult" part is all the prep work, especially chopping up the onion.  That always makes my eyes water something fierce.  Anyway, you can serve this alone, on rolls or crackers, or, my favorite, on banana bread!

Heaven on a plate

I've got a pretty good recipe and Panera has a great recipe for peanut butter banana bread.  I know it might sound a little weird, but trust me: chicken salad and banana bread go great together.

Guinness Chocolate Cake

It's Saint Patrick's Day which, for a lot of folks who bake something for the occasion, means breaking out the green food coloring.  Not me, though!  My Saint Patrick's Day goodies usually involve Irish Cream and this year, Guinness.

To make your own Guinness chocolate cake (with Irish Cream frosting!) you'll need: 1 C butter; 1 C Guinness; 3/4 C cocoa powder; 2 C flour; 2 C sugar; 1 1/2 tsp baking soda; 3/4 tsp salt; 2 eggs; 2 /3 C sour cream; 1 C Irish Cream; 8 oz cream cheese, softened; 3 C confectioners' sugar; 6 Tbsp Irish Cream.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease a springform pan.  In a large bowl, melt the butter and mix in the Guinness and cocoa powder.  Set it aside to cool for a bit.

In another bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt.  And in another bowl, beat the eggs and sour cream together.

Mix the eggs and sour cream in with the Guinness mixture, then slowly stir in the dry ingredients and then pour it into your springform pan.

Bake for 45 minutes or so, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Also, you might want to check your springform pan beforehand for leaks.  Otherwise, you might get this fabulous burning smell from your oven about 5 minutes into baking and discover a small batter puddle getting charred into the bottom of your oven and you'll have to go around and open up all your windows and balcony door even though it's kind of cold out.

ANYWAY, after the cake has baked, let it sit for about 20 minutes or so to cool down, then remove it from the pan and put it on a cake plate or cardboard cake round.  Then look on in horror as you try to remove the bottom of the springform pan from the cake and find that, despite greasing the bejeebers out of it, a lot of the cake is still stuck to the pan.  Scrape these bits off of the pan and artfully arrange them on top of the cake.

Oh the humanity!

Realize that, while frosting can cover a multitude of sins, this is just a disaster.  Get out another cake round, put it on top, and flip the damn thing over.

MUCH better!

Poke a bunch of holes in the top of the cake with a fork, and slowly spoon 1 C of Irish Cream over the cake, letting it soak in.

Make the frosting by beating together the cream cheese and confectioners' sugar and add in the Irish Cream until you get both the desired consistency and flavor.  Frost the cake and stick it in the fridge until you're ready to take it to your coworkers!  Many of whom, it turns out, are teetotalers and won't eat it anyway.  Well, MORE FOR ME!

Cake Balls!

A while ago at work I was looking through a cart of books waiting to be reshelved and saw this little book all about making cake balls.  Looked simple enough, so I figured I'd give it a try!  And you know what, it was simple!  This recipe is for amaretto cake balls.  You will need: 1 box of yellow cake mix (and whatever ingredients are listed on the cake mix box); 3/4 C amaretto; 3.4-oz. pkg instant vanilla pudding; 1/2 tsp almond extract; 1/2 C chopped almonds; 2 C confectioners' sugar; 2 Tbsp softened butter; 2 Tbsp milk; 1/2 tsp vanilla; 24-oz bag of milk chocolate chips; 2 Tbsp shortening.

First up, we make the cake.  Follow the directions on the back of the box, except reduce the water by 1/2 C and add the amaretto.  Stir in the package of pudding mix and the almond extract and bake your cake by the instructions on the box.

What a pretty cake!

While the cake is cooling, make frosting by mixing together the confectioners' sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla.  When the cake is cooled down to room temperature, the fun part begins.  You need to crumble up your nice, pretty cake into a large bowl.  Try not to leave any big chunks.  I find that the corner pieces don't crumble very well, so you might just have to eat those parts.  Mix in your chopped almonds in with the cake crumbs.

Now, mix in the frosting until it's all nice and doughy and moist.

It's time to start rolling little cake balls!  Get out a large cookie sheet and cover it with waxed paper.  Pull off little bits of dough and roll them in your hands to get little balls about an 1"-1 1/2" in diameter.  You'll end up with a lot of them.

Put them in the freezer for about 2 hours or so.  When you're ready to dip them in chocolate, melt your bag of milk chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons of shortening together in a double boiler.  When the chocolate is melted, take the cake balls out of the freezer and dip them one at a time into the chocolate, using a fork or a toothpick (exact same way that the Oreo truffles and the buttercreams were done).  Put the dipped cake balls onto some more waxed paper and refrigerate until you're ready to eat them!  And of course I forgot to take a picture of them finished, but you can probably guess what little balls dipped in chocolate look like. 

This ended up being very easy to make, though rather time-consuming.  There are pretty much endless possibilities with these, using all kinds of varieties of cake and frosting flavors.  Just have fun and experiment!

Paella

This holiday season, Dad was able to get Mom to make his favoritest-ever dish: paella.  It's not a very traditional paella recipe, but it is incredibly tasty.  And also kind of expensive, so you might want to save this one for special occasions.
To make it, you'll need: 1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless, chicken thighs; 1/4 C extra virgin olive oil; 2 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes; 1 1/2 C Arborio rice; 3 C chicken broth; 2 Tbsp salt; 8 oz sea scallops; 1 lb fish cut up into chunks (Mom used grouper); 4 oz pimento; 1 15 oz can artichoke hearts; 14 oz raw shrimp; 9 tsp paprika; 1/2 tsp black pepper; 1/4 tsp red pepper; 1/8 tsp saffron; 4 oz sliced onions; 10 oz frozen peas; 6 rock lobster tails (if desired).

All this, minus the fruit, plus the peas and onion, which I forgot to get out.

In a heavy large pot or dutch oven, heat up the olive oil and brown the chicken.  Remove the chicken once it's browned and pour off any excess fat.
Add the onion and tomatoes to the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, or until the onion is tender.  Stir in the rice, chicken broth, salt, paprika, black and red pepper, and saffron and then add the chicken back into the pot.

Let this come to a boil, then cover tightly, lower the heat, and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
When that's done, gently stir in the shrimp, fish, scallops, and peas.

Cover it back up and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.
Now gently stir in the artichoke hearts and pimento, and continue to cook until it's all heated through.

If you're also having lobster tails, go ahead and throw them in a pot of boiling water while your artichoke and pimento is cooking, for about 5 minutes, or until the lobster meat is opaque.

And you're really done!  You can serve this right from the pot, or you can dish it up on a big paella dish and put your lobster tails on top, all fancy-like.

Brownies

I said last time that I was going to make brownies this week and I generally try not to be a big ol' liar, so here they are!  Plus I'd told my friend that I was going to bring them for his half-birthday party, so I really needed to make them anyway.  It's really a pretty simple recipe and I haven't made brownies from a box mix since I found it.  What you will need is: 1/2 C butter; 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped; 1 C granulated sugar; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 2 large eggs, lightly beaten; 2/3 C flour; 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/4 tsp salt.  Plus, I threw in about a cup of peanut butter chips because they are delicious, though entirely optional.

And because a half-birthday doesn't come around every day, I got the good chocolate.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8" square pan and set it aside.  In a medium saucepan, melt your butter and chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly.  Once it's all melted, remove it from the heat and let it cool slightly.  Then whisk in the sugar and vanilla, then the eggs, and finally the flour, baking powder, and salt until it's all blended.

If you're going to add in peanut butter chips, or chocolate chips, or anything else that melts, let your batter cool a while longer before you stir them in.

Only a few melted peanut butter chips

Once you've done that, just spread the batter in the pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached.  And I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the finished brownies, but I'm pretty sure you can guess what they look like.  Instead, here's a picture of my kitty investigating the package of mousies she got for Christmas last year.

Uh-oh, mousies, you better watch out! Hilda's gonna get you!

And that's it!  They may take a little longer to make than a box mix, but I think they're a lot tastier, so it's worth it.  Stay tuned for next time, when I try making something maybe a little healthier!

Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo (done the easy way)

I've been kind of remiss in posting things this summer, due to a killer combination of the awful southern summer heat and the fact that my apartment isn't climate controlled.  I've got a couple of window units, but the kitchen has been around 90 degrees for the last month or so, which makes it awfully difficult to motivate myself to cook anything.  This weekend was a little bit cooler (it was only 87 degrees in my kitchen!) so I decided I'd try something pretty easy: chicken and broccoli alfredo.  There's not much actual cooking involved and it makes enough leftovers to give me lunch for most of the rest of the week.  All you need for this is a rotisserie chicken, broccoli, a couple of jars of alfredo sauce, and a box of pasta.

Cut up your broccoli into bite-sized pieces and boil it for about 5 minutes.  Shred up your chicken and add that, the cooked broccoli, and the alfredo sauce to a large pan.

Warm all this up over low to medium heat until it all heated through.  While you're doing that, go ahead and cook the pasta as directed on the box.  Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and return it to the pot.  As soon as your sauce is hot, pour it over the pasta in the pot and stir it all up so it's nicely mixed.

And that's it!  The sauce might seem like you've got too much, but if you plan on having a lot of leftovers and you don't have the extra sauce, your pasta will be kind of dry when you reheat it.  And having made this many many times before, I can tell you it does make for good leftovers.

That's it for this quick recipe.  Stay tuned for next time when I make homemade brownies!