Cut-Out Pound Cake

One thing I used to love back when I could eat gluten was those little Pillsbury cut-out shape sugar cookies.  You've probably seen them; they have different ones for each season, and recently I've seen (and purchased and made for others to eat) TMNT ones.  They are so easy to make in a hurry, and I've brought them to home fellowship many many times.  I always wondered how they made the different shapes.  This recipe reminded me of those cookies, although I don't think they could employ this method with cookie dough...The recipe in Simple & Delicious is with a shamrock, with the shamrock cake flavored mint.  But since we are long past St Paddy's day, Emma and I decided to do a star since we're close to Independence Day, and we didn't add any extra flavoring.  Here's our finished product:

Cut-Out Pound Cake
2 pkg (16 oz each) pound cake mix (I used Betty Crocker)
10 drops food coloring (I used a lot more than that and still couldn't get it any redder than that...I had gel food coloring too which is supposed to be better)
Glaze:
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
3-5 tsp 2% milk

Preheat oven according to package directions.  Grease 9x5 loaf pan.  Prepare one package of cake mix according to package directions, adding food coloring before mixing batter.  Transfer to prepared pan.  Bake and cool as package directs.

Cut cooled cake into 1" slices.  (I have a knife that my mother in law gave me a few years ago that is perfect for this...it's meant to cut homemade bread into uniform slices.  It has measurements from 1/8" up to 1"

See how uniform?  Perfect).  Cut slices with a 2 1/2" shaped cookie cutter

(I had trouble with this in that my cookie cutter was half the length of the slice.  But I think if I had cut the cake any thinner, it would have crumbled.  So I put the cookie cutter down as far as a I could with each piece, and used a sharp knife to cut away the remaining cake.)  Save remaining cake for another use (in my house, that "other use" is children, husband, and friends nibbling on pieces as they walk through the kitchen).  Stand cake pieces upright at an angle in a clean greased 9x5 loaf pan.

Prepare remaining cake mix according to package directions.  Pour batter around and over the cake slices (if I was making this again, I would put a thin layer of batter down first, then the cake slices, then the remaining batter).

Bake and cool as package directs.  For glaze, combine sugar, vanilla, and enough milk to reach desired consistency.  Pour glaze over cake, allowing some to flow over sides.

I do wish the color was more pronounced.  My mom told me years ago that when you get to the point that adding more color isn't changing the color of your batter, just stop, because too much coloring can change the flavor of the cake.  So I stopped.  You can still see it though.

I was pretty excited about how this came out, and people said it tasted good too.  I made sure to point it out to multiple people at home fellowship too ;)  This took a long time to make, but wasn't really technically difficult.  So I might make it again someday, for some fun occasion. 

Slow-Cooker Teriyaki Chicken

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you have heard (read) me lament about how nothing that comes out of a crock pot looks good.  It is easy and convenient, but always looks just blah.  Sadly this recipe is no exception.  The source of this recipe is from a post that a friend of mine posted on facebook.  The picture accompanying the recipe looked very nice.  And the hook is that it's better Chinese food than you could get at a Chinese restaurant (no argument from me there, it's definitely less fat and probably a lot of other things too).  Here is the link to the original blog post (because, to be clear, I am not a plagiarizer.  I try recipes I see and then make them and post the results).  http://slowcooker-chicken.cooktopcove.com/2016/05/13/how-to-make-slow-cooker-chicken-teriyaki/  If you click the link you can clearly see how yummy the recipe looks.  Also notice the sesame seeds.  Which are not a listed ingredient.  How hard would it have been for me to sprinkle sesame seeds on top?  Not hard at all, but that's not the point.  And my finished product looked far far worse than the picture there.  Ok so here's the recipe.  Which was very easy and tasty (I try to always give credit where credit is due).

Slow-Cooker Teriyaki Chicken
1 lb chicken breasts, cut into 1" chunks
1 cup chicken broth
½ cup teriyaki sauce (I buy GF teriyaki sauce from the NLC)
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 cloves garlic, minced

Place chicken in bottom of crock pot sprayed with cooking spray.  In a small bowl, combine remaining ingredients.  Pour over chicken.  Cover and cook on low 4-5 hours or on high 2-3 hours.

See how easy?  And everybody really liked it.  Here's how mine looked (wait!  If you haven't clicked the link above to see how they said it would look, please do before you look at mine, so you can see what I'm talking about....)

As you can see, mine looks nothing like theirs.  But, it was very tasty.  I made the rice in my Aroma rice cooker (one of the best things I've ever invested in for the kitchen).  Steve took the chicken & rice the next day to work, but then I ran out of rice, so I just took chicken to work and made a little salad out of it.  I think I did start with slightly more than a pound of chicken, although I didn't weigh it.  So despite the false advertising of the blog (haha) I am sure we will have this again, because it took only like 5 minutes to make this.  And to have everybody like it is awesome.

Skillet Beef and Potatoes

We had this for lunch on Sunday.  It was so good.  At first I usually think that steak is too expensive to have for a meal for all of us.  But when I did the math on this one, I was pleasantly surprised.  $7 for the steak, $3 for the potatoes, something like $0.79 for the (canned and delicious) green beans, and maybe $2 for the biscuit ingredients.  So that's $12.79 for a meal that fed 5 of us with a small serving left over that Steve took to work the next day for lunch. Granted, the younger children did not have huge servings, but we all felt like we had enough (hence the leftover portion Steve could take to work).  And the hardest part of the recipe was slicing the potatoes and the steak. Here's the recipe, from Simple & Delicious.

Skillet Beef & Potatoes
1 ½ lbs red potatoes, halved and cut into 1/4" slices
1/3 cup water
½ tsp salt
1 lb beef top sirloin steak, cut into thin strips
½ cup chopped onion
3 tbsp oil, divided
2 tsp garlic pepper blend (I didn't have this, but I did have "Seasoned Pepper" and garlic powder, so I kind of made my own)
1 1/2 tsp minced fresh rosemary (they didn't have this when I went shopping, just an empty space where it should have been...so I skipped it.  But sometimes I don't like the feel of rosemary anyway...kind of like chewing a pine branch.  Although I do enjoy the aromatic smell of it)

Place potatoes, water, and salt in a microwave-safe dish; microwave covered on high for 7-9 minutes or until potatoes are tender.  Drain.

Meanwhile, toss beef with onion, 2 tbsp oil, and pepper blend.  Place in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add half of the beef mixture; cook and stir 2-3 minutes or until no longer pink.  Remove from pan; repeat with remaining beef mixture.  (You can probably do this all at once instead of in two batches if your skillet is big enough)

Scrape out skillet and heat remaining 1 tbsp oil over medium-high heat.  Add the drained potatoes; cook 4-5 minutes or until lightly browned, turning occasionally.  Add beef back into skillet and heat through.

Everybody thought this was so good.  The potatoes were especially good.  This was easy, and as illustrated in my math lesson above, fairly inexpensive as far as steak & potatoes go for a family of 5.  And naturally GF which I always appreciate.  No doubt, we will definitely have this again.

Chicken with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes

Sounds fancy huh?  It's not really though because you buy the can of fire-roasted tomatoes for like $0.66, it's not like you're charring them yourself over an open flame.  I don't have a lot of recipes like this one, that utilize the fresh veggies of the season, because I've never been much of a gardener...so I don't have a bunch of my own fresh produce to use up.  If I see a recipe that sounds good, I buy the veggies fresh if I can, and frozen if I can't. But this recipe is a good one to use up fresh green beans, and from what I understand, if you grow beans, you have zero beans for much of the summer, and then 1,000,000 beans for a week once they start producing.  If you are (or will be) in that situation, then this is a good recipe for those bumper-crop times.  Also, the chicken part of the recipe is very easy, so this recipe is good on three levels...looks good, uses up fresh green beans, and is easy.  The hardest part of this recipe was snapping the ends of the beans, and I had my kids do that ;)

We had this with leftover potato salad, but I took the picture before I put it on the plate, because I didn't want to mess up my plating for the picture. Ha.  It wasn't my idea to plate it like this, that's how they did it in the picture in the Simple & Delicious magazine.

Chicken with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes
2 tbsp salt-free garlic herb seasoning blend (I used Pampered Chef Garlic & Herb Seasoning)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes, optional (I left them out)
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1 tbsp olive oil
1 can (14.5 oz) fire-roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
3/4 lb fresh green beans, trimmed
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp butter

Mix the first 5 ingredients and rub over chicken.  In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat.  Brown chicken on both sides.

Add tomatoes; bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 10-12 minutes or until meat thermometer reads 165*.

In a 2-qt microwave-safe dish, combine beans and water; microwave, covered, on high 3-4 minutes.  Drain. (mine took longer to seem ready to me...6 minutes).

Remove chicken from skillet; keep warm.  Stir butter and beans into tomato mixture. 

Serve with chicken.

So let me tell you that my kids are very used to canned green beans.  I love them so much, how mushy and salty they are.  I could eat them every day.  So fresh green beans, even when they're cooked, obviously have a very different texture.  One that the younger two did not care for.  I made them eat several, but I get it.  It's not as yummy.  Everybody else ate them all.  The chicken was very good with the tomatoes, almost chicken parm-ish.  Overall, this came together quickly and easily and it's a good summertime meal.

Southwest Stuffed Peppers

Well, in the spirit of "you win some, you lose some," here is my dinner recipe from last night.  I have made stuffed peppers before, with a lot of rice for the filling.  I wanted to try this one because it has mostly meat for the filling and I thought that would be a better hit with my carnivores than a rice filling.  I knew that the younger kids would not eat the pepper, so the fact that you cook the peppers in the microwave for this recipe was not a deterrent for me, because I knew > 50% of us wouldn't be eating the peppers.  But green peppers are inexpensive and make a fun bowl. 

Before I tell you the recipe, let me show you the tool I use to hollow out the peppers.  Now, if you have any peppers reading this with you, you should cover their eyes, because this is going to get graphic.  I got this tool for like $4 from Pampered Chef.  It is awesome.  You just cut the top off the pepper, or cut it in half, whatever the recipe tells you to do, and scrape that thing over the ribs...the insides come right out.  I highly recommend it, and I am not getting compensated to say that.

Okay so here is the recipe.  It's from the Taste of Home cookbook my mom got me for Christmas this year.

Southwest Stuffed Peppers
1 lb lean ground beef
2/3 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 3/4 cup chopped seeded tomatoes, divided (I just bought a can of petite diced tomatoes, because that sounded easier)
4 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I omitted this)
1 1/2 cups water, divided
4 medium green peppers
2 tbsp sour cream (omitted this too because I don't like it)
2 tbsp shredded cheddar cheese (I used more than this)
2 green onions, chopped (I forgot to buy these)
4 grape tomatoes, halved, optional (so I opted not to, because you can't just buy 4 of these, and then I would have had to figure out what to do with the rest, and none of us like raw tomatoes)

In a large skillet, cook the beef, red pepper, and onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink.  Add garlic and cook 1 minute longer; drain.

Stir in 1/2 cup tomatoes, chili powder, cornstarch, cumin, oregano, and cayenne.  Gradually stir in 1/2 cup of the water.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the green peppers in half lengthwise; remove seeds (with your handy tool if you have one...).  Place in an ungreased shallow 3-qt microwave safe dish; add remaining 1 cup water.

Cover and microwave on high for 8-10 minutes or until crisp-tender.  Drain.

Fill each pepper with about 1/3 cup beef mixture.  Top with remaining tomatoes and then garnish with sour cream, cheese, green onions, and grape tomatoes.

Ok.  Because you don't bake them or anything after you fill them, the filling did not get that characteristic green pepper flavor that you look for in a stuffed pepper.  Unless you eat the pepper, which only my husband did.  I also thought the filling wasn't salty enough, and both Nathan and I added salt to ours, but the other 3 thought the filling was fine and so they didn't.  As you can see, it would not really be worth making this recipe again, but it was fun for a change.  We had it with warm potato salad on the side. 



 

Berry & Ganache Cheesecake Bars

It's summer break woohoo!  That means I have more time to make desserts for home fellowship.  Usually during the school year I just throw brownies or cookies together real quick.  Or on very busy days I just bring chip and dip, but nobody likes that, not even me.  I really do like making yummy desserts.  Lots of times they are not gluten free so I can't eat them, and I just have to judge by facial expressions and what's left on the plates to see if people liked them or not (because people won't typically tell you to your face if they don't like something...I've been at this a while and I know it's true).  Lots of times I can make modifications to normal recipes to make them gluten free, but then I usually don't reveal that info unless someone asks me outright, because a lot of people think (wrongly) that gluten free=gross.  And it's just not true.  This recipe I was able to adapt by just replacing the graham cracker crumbs with GF graham cracker crumbs.  These I got on the clearance rack at Walmart.  They aren't outdated, I guess they were just making space.  I like them so much that I would pay full price for them.  They were easy to work with AND people ate the dessert, so clearly they were a good substitute for the gluten version.  Here is a picture of them:

If you end up buying and using these, you don't have to add the melted butter for this recipe.  The box says to just press into the pan, and they are kind of the texture of brown sugar, so I decided to not add the melted butter, and it worked great like that.

Also, this recipe calls for 2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar to be added to the ganache.  I did not do that.  I get that it's all trendy now to add weird things together, like lavendar and lemon, and basil and whipped cream.  But that's just not "me".  And I suspected it wasn't "my friends at home fellowship" either.  I did google "why add balsamic vinegar to ganache" and I didn't get a good answer, just foodies raving about how adding the distinctive flavor made for a good contrast.  So I opted not to do it, but if you are a foodie (as if any foodies read my blog hahahahaha), then add it when you add the corn syrup.  Ok here is the recipe, from the Simple & Delicious issue I'm working through.

Berry & Ganache Cheesecake Bars
1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs
¼ cup finely chopped pecans
¼ tsp salt
¼ cup butter, melted
Cheesecake Layer:
2 pkg (8 oz each) cream cheese, softened
½ cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
Topping:
1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tbsp light corn syrup
1 ½ cups fresh raspberries or sliced strawberries

Preheat oven to 350*.  In a bowl, mix cracker crumbs, pecans, and salt; stir in butter.  Press onto bottom of greased 13x9 pan.  Bake 8-10 minutes.  Cool completely on wire rack.

In a bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth.  Beat in vanilla.  Add eggs; beat on low speed just until blended.  Spread over crust.  Bake 15-20 minutes or until center is almost set.  Cool 1 hour on wire rack.

Place chocolate chips in small bowl.  In a saucepan, bring the cream just to a boil.  Pour over chocolate; let sit 5 minutes.  Stir with a whisk until smooth.  Stir in corn syrup; cool slightly. 

Pour over cheesecake layer; let stand 5 minutes.  Top with berries.

Refrigerate at least 3 hours before serving, covering when cooled.

Sorry I don't have a picture of one after it's been cut.  They looked good.  I was surprised that they chocolate layer was quite a bit thicker than the cheesecake layer.  Still tasted great though.  You could use other berries...I might use sliced strawberries next time because I like them better than fresh raspberries (I find all those seeds distracting...).  Enjoy!

Spice-Rubbed Chicken Thighs

No picture for this one!  Sorry...I made this the night before we went to Boston for my son's surgery so I had 1,000 other things on my mind and forgot to take a picture.  But it was good so I'm sharing now that we're back (and everything went great in Boston).  My parents came over to eat with us too, and that was a spur-of-the-moment invite, so we had enough pasta salad and green beans to go around, but our servings of chicken were a bit skimpy.  But still everyone said it was good, even if we didn't have great quantities haha.  It's from the June/July 2016 Simple & Delicious.

Spice-Rubbed Chicken Thighs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp oregano
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp paprika
¼ tsp chili powder
¼ tsp pepper
6 boneless skinless chicken thighs

In a small bowl, combine the first 8 ingredients.  Rub onto chicken.

On a greased grill rack, grill chicken, covered, over medium heat or broil 4 inches from heat 6-8 minutes on each side or until chicken reaches 170*.

See how easy?  I made this on the broiler, but it could easily have gone on the grill if Steve was grilling (which he wasn't...but he will be soon).  Also it could have gone on my George Foreman grill.  But this day, the broiler pan seemed like the easiest option.  Very easy, very yummy.  We'll have it again, I'm sure.