Lefty's Chicken

I was grocery shopping a few days back, and saw a package of Lefty's chicken and fish mix on the shelf. For whatever reason I grabbed it, thinking "Fried chicken might be fun".  http://www.amazon.com/Leftys-Fish-n-Chicken-Mix/dp/B003ETO4E2

We don't own a deep fryer, but I had some thoughts to get around that. I basically followed the recipe instructions on the back, except where they mentioned a deep fryer.

I used some chicken breasts and thighs we had, cut into chicken nugget sizes, and it worked really well. I mixed a cup of lefty's and two cups of water into a bowl. Then I dunked each nugget in and coated it. Then I coated it in a loaf pan filled with dry lefty's mix. Then I dumped the remainder of our vegetable oil into a big frying pan and cranked the temp to max. Dropped each one in, and fairly quickly the down side would brown. Flip them over, and let that side brown. Then they are done. It took a bit of eyeballing when they were done, and the first few were darker than I wanted.

They turned out great, and I will definitively buy this again. I'll get some pics up later. I didn't think to take any during the in-between steps, but I got some finished product.

Warning, the oil will splatter up and burn you. It's the price you pay.

Baking Feature: S'mores Cupcakes Mk II

A coworker requested S'mores cupcakes for her birthday, but we decided to change up the recipe this time. We kept the graham crust, but this time I made chocolate cupcakes and then whipped up a marshmallow buttercream icing (which she'd used a few weeks before and told me about).

First of all, the chocolate cake was outstanding. It was Betty Crocker's Triple Fudge box mix, and it is my new favorite chocolate cake mix ever. I was eating it out of the mixing bowl with a spoon after I topped all the crusts I'd made.

The Marshmallow buttercream was a Rachael Ray recipe and I definitely changed it because this recipe made me gag a little when I read it. It calls for 4 full sticks of butter, some powdered sugar, some marshmallow fluff, and so little vanilla that it's silly that it's even mentioned (but I put it in anyway). I cut the recipe down by a stick of butter and used a total of three 7oz jars of marshmallow fluff (the recipe having called for one 16oz tub... but my grocery store doesn't sell tubs that big).

I also used my new super decorator to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes, and it was really fun to use. They were a pretty big hit and I didn't have any trouble getting rid of them. Actually I needed to hide one to bring it home to Jeff.

-Aly

Recipe

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup granulated sugar
5 Tbsp butter
Chocolate cake mix (and ingredients needed by box)
3 sticks of butter (room temp)
2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 7oz tubs of marshmallow fluff

Preheat oven to 350
Line muffin pans with paper liners
Mix graham cracker crumbs, granulated sugar, and butter in a bowl
Spoon into paper liners and pack down to make crusts
Bake crusts for 5 minutes
Make cake batter according to instructions
Pour into liners on top of crusts and bake according to directions
Beat butter for icing in a large bowl until creamy
Beat in one-forth of confectioner sugar until fluffy; repeat with remaining sugar
Beat in the vanilla, then stir in the marshmallow fluff until well blended
Frost cupcakes

FLOTUS Cookies

I was reading an article a week ago that was super pissed about a cookie recipe exchange/contest between Michelle O and Anne Romney. I thought it was a neat way to sort of "put politics aside" and just make some cookies, but apparently its demeaning for Big O's wife to make cookies because she is too important for that. Its an extremely liberal blog, so I doubt they cared if Anne wastes her time. They didn't seem outraged about that. Long story short, I failed to see the outrage, but I did get hungry. So I went home and made cookies.

Anne's recipe was for M&M cookies, which is neat but also kind of lame. Michelle went with a white/dark chocolate chip (you see what she did there?) and that sounded neat so I went to emulate that. We didn't have dark chocolate, so I went with milk.

I didn't think to go with whatever recipe Michelle posted, and instead googled one of my own and then changed a bunch based off feel (Aly hates when I do this, but she wasn't home yet). It was delicious. Aly had some left at her "Girls Night" and everyone complimented her on them.
No pictures for you because I always forget to take them, and they are blurry anyway. Aly typically takes them.

Ingredients

• 3/4 Cup Sugar
• 3/4 Cup Brown Sugar (we only had light, but Aly tells me there is also a dark kind)
• 2 Eggs
• 2 3/4 Cups Flour (I skimped here and went closer to 2 1/4.)
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• 1 Cup Butter
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Cup of Milk Chocolate Chips (plus some to finish the bag off)
• 1 Cup of White Chocolate Chips (ish)

Directions

1. Preheat Oven to 350. 
2. Mix sugar, and eggs until creamy
3. Melt butter (says to use a stovetop but I used a microwave) and add to mix along with vanilla
4. Mix in flour and baking soda 
5. It will be impossible to stir. Do it anyway. 
6. Add in chips
7. Grease cookie sheet.
8. Drop teaspoon fulls onto the sheet
9. Bake for 7 Min

I had to bake ours forever (more like 15 min), but it may be because I didn't follow the teaspoon sized dollops rule instead going with tennis ball sized balls I eyeballed with my hand and a wooden spoon. The important thing is it fit on one cookie sheet. Bad thing was most of them merged together and were weird shapes.

In the end they were amazing, super soft and really worth doing again.

* Four seconds of googling found her recipe. http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/ann-romney-and-michelle-obama-face-off-in-presiden
**I do not know why some of the lines are white. Maybe Aly will fix them.

Baking Feature: Tandy Cake Mini Cupcakes

This is a recipe that I've adapted down from a full cake into bite size pieces. Most of the things I bake need to be ready to travel somewhere and I want all of them to get eaten so I don't have to bring any home. The original recipe came from a Betty Crocker cookbook that my mother picked up one day. I have made it several times for various events and it's always a huge hit. However, when I took it to work, I ended up bringing a lot of it home with me and was astonished. A coworker told me, "It's really good, but you need a whole giant glass of milk with it, and our vending machine doesn't have any right now." So I took that to mean "reign it in, girl. If I eat that cake I'm going to fall asleep at my desk." That's when I decided to use the basic principles and create a smaller version that doesn't trigger "your 2:30 feeling." Because it's so rich, when I started scaling down the servings, I skipped right past the regular cupcake size and headed straight for mini-cupcakes.

These do turn out delicious and are a very good solution to the size:richness ratio problem, but they are some of the most time consuming baked goods I've ever bothered to finish, and I must say that I bitch the whole time, so only make these for someone you REALLY love, or someone you really need to impress (in this case, a coworker on my new team).

They are a pain because you bake mini cupcakes, then frost them delicately with peanut butter, then put them in the freezer, then mix up chocolate frosting, then delicately frost them with that (but quickly, before the peanut butter gets warm and mixes with your frosting). No, it's not the most difficult series of steps ever involved in a dessert, but let's just say you really get sick of looking at 60+ tiny cupcakes all mocking you with their tininess.

Recipe:

Ingredients:
Yellow Cake Mix (I prefer Butter Recipe Yellow)
Whatever the cake mix calls for to make it cake
Creamy Peanut Butter (maybe 1/3 cup. Less than required for the original cake)
Tub of chocolate Frosting
2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup chocolate chips (Semisweet or milk chocolate both work well)

Directions:
1. Line mini-muffin pans with mini baking cups (probably about 60-70 total)
2. Mix cake batter according to instructions and pour into mini-muffin pans
3. Bake according to instructions (Mine were done in about 12min on 350 w/ our slow oven)
4. Remove from muffin pans and let cool on wire rack for about 10 minutes
5. Put Peanut Butter in a bowl and microwave for about 20 seconds until smooth and spreadable. If not smooth, continue microwaving at 10sec intervals until smooth
6. Spread a small dollop of peanut butter on each mini cupcake being sure to stick to the middle and not go to the edges (going to the edges will make the chocolate step more difficult)
7. Put the mini cupcakes on a baking tray in the freezer for about 15-30 minutes so that the peanut butter sets
8. Mix butter and chocolate chips in a bowl and microwave for 20 seconds, then mix until smooth
9. In a bowl, combine chocolate tub frosting with butter/chip mixture
10. After cupcakes are done in freezer, spread chocolate frosting mixture on top of cupcakes being careful to spread gently without smearing peanut butter around. Be sure to frost edges. You may have a ton left over, but I haven't figured out how to beat this and still use tub frosting.
11. Go have a drink; you've earned it. Damn smug little cupcakes.

-Aly

God Bless 'Merrica Casserole

Honestly, I'm not sure what led to this. We were brainstorming what to have for dinners this week, and I think we were determined to use what we already had in the house. Incidentally, that wasn't very much.

We cooked elbow macaroni, fried some chicken pieces up in a skillet, and then put them in a bowl and melted some cheese over top. Unfortunately, we only had slices of American cheese. This made for the most white trash dish we have ever created.

We referred to it as "God Bless 'Merrica Casserole." I do not recommend ever trying to recreate this dish as Jeff felt very ill almost immediately after eating his portion. I tried adding some A1 (the truly 'Merrican thing to do), but it didn't really help. Also, if you don't eat it fast enough, the cheese solidifies and congeals in the most unpleasant way.

All around a "let us never speak of this again" kind of dinner.

Mango

I ate my first Mango today.

Hard to believe it hadn't been done, but it's true. In fact, I don't know if I had ever even seen one eaten and paid attention. I was at the grocery store today, and in a weird state so I bought a bunch of off-list stuff. Something I never do. One thing was a pair of Mangoes.

Takeaways:

• I like ripe mangoes. One of the ones I bought was ripe. 
• I do not like unripe mangoes. The other was not. 
• Red mangoes are riper than green. (regardless of whether or not I am correct on ripeness, I prefer red)
• The skin is not edible. 
• They have some sort of solid stringy mass at the center that is hard to cut through. Don't bother. Instead, carve chunks off. 
• Unripe (green) mangoes are really bitter and solid. Hard to cut. 
• Ripe (red) mangoes are really sweet and smushy. 

Fruit Adventures might be a regular feature. I think Aly took some great action shots of me trying to figure it out. I almost bought a (nonstandard) melon at the store, it was white with green stripes. You'll have to wait until next grocery trip to find out for sure.

Cream Stuffed Strawberries

Dinner night with T is usually a fancy affair, so lately I've been trying to keep up by having special desserts planned to complete our sophisticated meals.

Last week at our friend's house (after I gave him his awesome cookies) his stepdad was chatting with Jeff and said that their friend stuffs strawberries with cream cheese for dessert. It sounded simple and awesome, so I thought I'd go for that this week for fancy dessert night.

I mentioned it to my coworker who is an awesome chef (and baker) to see if she had any input, and she suggested I try stuffing the strawberries with that new chocolate cream cheese that Philadelphia put out. I completely agreed and picked some up on the way home from work.

I wanted to stuff the non-chocolate strawberries with something more than just cream cheese, so I added 1/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla and whipped it all together with an electric mixer before stuffing the strawberries. It was a sweet filling and it was very tasty. I didn't alter the chocolate at all because that would be sacrilege.

Both versions were pretty amazing, but the chocolate disappeared from the plate first. I would imagine that finding some way to dip these in chocolate to get a hard shell would be awesome, and I might experiment with that this summer.

-Aly

"Recipe"
Ingredients:
-Strawberries (enough for however many people you're feeding keeping in mind that they'll each want at least 2-3, or more in our case)
- Chocolate Cream Cheese
Cream Cheese Filling: (I halved these ingredients when I made it)
     -8 oz Plain Cream Cheese
     -1/2 cup Sugar
     -1 tsp Vanilla

Directions:
1. Rinse strawberries and cut off the tops with a paring knife in a cone shape to hollow them out (see pics above to see what they should look like)
2. Mix Plain Cream Cheese, Sugar, and Vanilla together with electric mixer until smooth and well blended.
3. Spoon the different fillings into the strawberries and place on a plate to serve.