First, you need to make cupcakes.  You can use whatever recipe you like, but my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe is the one on the back of Hershey’s cocoa container.  It was a cup of boiling water added at the end which gives it that moistness every good cupcake needs.  Next you need to make a basic buttercream frosting and tint it yellowish-green.  I added a drop of green with a few drops of yellow, mixed that in, added another drop of green with a few yellow, mixed, repeat until I got the right shade.

For decorating the cupcakes, you will need: green gummi candy-gum drops, fruit gems, whatever you can find, mentos (3 per cupcake), melted chocolate chips, a toothpick or wooden skewer, waxed paper, and rolling pin.

Use the waxed paper and rolling pin to flatten your green gummi candies.  Use a small knife to cut the candy into ear shapes and an antenna.  Press these at the top of the cupcake.  Press 3 mentos into the frosting as eyes.  You can use a bit of melted chocolate if you need help getting them to stick.  Using the wooden skewer (or toothpick), make dots of chocolate for the pupils and a small circle for the mouth.  When you are finished, it should look something like this:

We all had fun with this one!

My husband’s cupcake was by far the best.  He kindly traded with our son after he dropped his face down on the table.

This was such a great activity with the kids.  Not hard enough to cause big pressure for anyone and delicious to eat!

I’d planned to have chicken something today, but only remembered to take the chicken breasts out of the freezer around 2:30.  At 5:00 you could hardly tell any thawing had occurred.  I pulled two out of the package, pried them apart, and began slicing them very thinly-maybe an eighth of an inch.  I don’t think I could slice them so thinly if they weren’t still mostly frozen.  I figured that would be a good way to cook them quickly, but hopefully not over cook them.  I put the iron skillet over medium heat with a tablespoon or so of olive oil in it.  I put the slices of chicken breast in the pan, let them sear for a few minutes, and turned them over.  I took them out of the pan and put them in a bowl to the side.  I didn’t worry if some of the thicker ones weren’t completely cooked through, but I knew I’d put them back in the pan at some point.  I did this in two batches so as not to over crowd the pan.  I also added some salt and pepper to the pan each time I added or turned the chicken.
     While the chicken cooked, I dug around in the fridge and cabinets to try to come up with some sort of sauce to eat with the chicken.  I pulled out a small onion, 4 garlic cloves, a tomato, chicken broth, and sherry wine.  I chopped everything and added a bit more oil to the pan.  I sauteed the onion for a few minutes and added 1 tablespoon of  flour.  I stirred in the flour, scraping the bottom of the pan, and let it cook for a minute or so.  Then, I added the garlic and let it cook for a minute.  Next I added about a cup of chicken stock.  I stirred everything and let it bubble for a bit.  Then, I added about a quarter cup of sherry.   I let the sauce simmer again and thicken over low heat.  Now that I had created something resembling Chicken Marsala, I put some water in a large pot to boil.  I added the chicken back to the pan and put a lid over it.  
     Once the water was boiling, I threw some angel hair pasta in the pot and set the timer for 3 minutes.  I turned the chicken over in the sauce, making sure to coat every piece, and put the lid back on.  After the 3 minutes was up, I put the pasta into the pan with the chicken and sauce.  I decided the tomato just didn’t go with the dish, so I washed some lettuce and made a salad with it.  I did add some of the pasta water the thin the sauce a bit.
     I served the chicken and pasta topped with freshly grated parmesan.  I suppose some chopped parsley would have been a nice addition, but I didn’t have any on hand.  My only regret is that I didn’t take a single picture of any portion of the meal.  Maybe next time.  
     Here’s the list of ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, mostly frozen
olive oil
salt and pepper
small onion
4 cloves garlic
1 Tbs flour
1 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup sherry
grated parmesan

1 Tbs olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped finely
about 1 pound of ground beef, pork, chicken, or turkey 
1 large (28 ounce) can diced tomatoes (I prefer petite diced)
1 can pinto beans
1 can white hominy (fear not, it’s quite delicious in this) 
1 package Taco Seasoning (I found a low sodium one)
1 package Ranch Dressing Mix 

Possible Toppings: grated cheese, sour cream, avocado, fritos/tortilla chips

Heat the oil in a large dutch oven.  Add the onion and saute until tender.  Add the meat and cook until no longer pink.  Add the seasoning packets and stir until fully combined.  Now, add the cans of tomatoes, beans, and hominy.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.  Let simmer for 20 minutes, or longer if preferred.

Clearly I could recreate the Taco Seasoning mix without much trouble, but I’m not so sure about the dressing.  And hey, an easy meal with no measuring is a nice thing!

Except for Cook’s Illustrated.  If you are the type that likes to know the theories behind the recipe, the best brand of noodles to use, illustrations for techniques and such, then this magazine is for you.  I suppose I should say they did not pay me or give me anything for my endorsement (HA!) though I certainly wouldn’t turn it down!  The website is tremendous as well, but you have to buy a subscription to view all the details within it.  You can get a short-term free trial, but you have to cancel it or they’ll charge you.  Ask me how I know about this…In his defense, he was out of town with minimal internet service when time was up.

Anyhow, we made the beef tacos tonight from the Fall Entertaining Issue.  They were fabulous!  The only change I made was using 2 teaspoons of Chipotle Chili Powder instead of 2 Tablespoons (yikes!).  J fried up the tortillas, as suggested, for the taco shells.  They were indeed far better than any we’ve bought off the shelf.  I love little more than having J in the kitchen with me cooking.  We make a pretty good pair, I say!  I’ve been spoiled this week with him home, but it’s back to reality tomorrow.  I have big meal plans for this week-chili, a revised coq au vin, waffles, and a simple pasta with brie and spinach-so I’ll try to get back here with some details.

I took special care this year to incorporate that love into each meal that day.  My husband was on call, so we couldn’t depend on having him home to cook.  For breakfast, I made heart shaped pancakes.  I’ve tried molds in the past with little luck.  I suppose if you like a thick batter they’d work better.  What I did this time worked quite well.  I spooned the batter into a glass measuring cup with a pouring spout.  Then I poured a small dot onto the pan, dragging the batter downwards.  I lifted the cup, poured another small dot and dragged the batter down again to form a point.  The kids were super excited with them!

By lunchtime, my husband had been called into work.  I considered heart shaped sandwiches, but settled on quesadillas instead.  When I make quesadillas for the kids, I keep things super simple.  I heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Then I spread 6 corn tortillas on a large cookie sheet.  I top each with grated cheese and top with a second tortilla.  Heat in oven until the cheese melts.  Oh so simple.  To jazz things up a bit, I took my heart cookie cutter and cut a heart out of the center of each quesadilla.  The kids ate both the heart cutout and the leftover circle with the heart cut out.  I didn’t take any pictures, but I think it’s pretty self explanatory.

For dinner, I planned beef burgundy according to the recipe in the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook.  FYI, it is quite delicious but it takes FOREVER to make.  Now that I’ve made it, it wouldn’t be such a big deal to do again.  I thought all day about how I was going to incorporate hearts into beef burgundy.  One of the first steps is to cook bacon in a pan and then set it aside.  You’re supposed to put the bacon back in later, but I decided to cook the bacon in a heart shape (make a V, then fold ends into center-though a simple V for Valentine’s would work too).  I placed the bacon on top of the dish as a garnish.

My husband was put in charge of dessert, since he did the grocery shopping on the way back home from work.  He spotted some Nutella and wonton wrappers and a delicious, easy dessert was born!  Place the wonton wrapper on a flat surface.  Put a small dollop of nutella in the center.  Dip your finger in water and wet two sides of the wrapper.  Fold in half to form a triangle using the wet sides to seal the wontons.  Heat oil in a pan with fairly high sides and fry.  These only take a few minutes to cook.  Top with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar.  
One of our traditions is to use our “fancy” plates on special days.  Last year I got the kids some adorable plates, cups, and saucers for Easter.  We use the saucers as dessert plates most often.

I hope you had a lovely Valentine’s with your loved ones.  It really doesn’t take much to make something a little extra special, but it adds so much more fun!

I did skip out on baking Monday for the most part this week.  I made biscuits for dinner that night, so I doubled the recipe and froze the leftovers.  They are easily as good as the Pillsbury frozen ones and homemade!  (I’ve updated the last post with recipes)  Also, with 2 birthdays coming up at the end of the week, I’ll be busy enough making cupcakes and brownies, and I don’t know what all just yet!

Last night I’d finally remembered to get the chicken breasts out of the freezer in time for them to be mostly defrosted by dinner.  I checked out a copy of Martha’s Everyday Food cookbook (LOVE it!) from the library so I thumbed through it to find a good chicken recipe.  I found one for Parmesan stuffed chicken breasts which sounded delicious so I set about making it, with several alterations to make it my own.  I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of the meal, I was too busy stuffing my face!

I used 5 bone-in skin on chicken breasts for this recipe.  I buy the large packages whenever I can-esp when I find them buy one/get one free!!  We eat 2 for dinner that night, I freeze 2 for another night, and I save one out to reinvent into some other meal.  If you don’t have that many, just cut the recipe in half.  It’s clearly not an exact science!

Parmesan Stuffed Chicken Breasts a la Depeche Mom

5 bone-in, skin on chicken breasts
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup plain bread crumbs
3/4 tsp garlic powder
1 Tbs dried parsley
1 Tbs paprika
salt and pepper

Heat the oven to 450 degrees.  Drizzle a large, sided cookie sheet with olive oil.  
Loosen the skin from the chicken breasts, without removing it completely.  Combine the parmesan, bread crumbs, and seasonings in a bowl.  Place the stuffing up under the skin on each of the breasts and place on pan.  Drizzle each breast with a small amount of olive oil and smush the remaining stuffing on the outside of the breasts.  Bake for 30 minutes, then test for doneness with a thermometer-you want it to reach 165 degrees.  
Should you decide to cook fewer breasts, you can use a 13×9 baking pan.  But don’t cram all 5 into your cake pan.  If you do, it will take FOREVER for them to reach 165 degrees!  Trust me on this one.

Serve over rice.  And throw some vegetable on the plate too, if you like!

[Sidenote:  When Belle was young, she called the kitchen the chicken.  I always thought it was so funny, but now I find myself having to pause to make sure I'm using the correct word.]

I’m making a potato salad to go along with it.  Even though it’s a holiday, I’m hoping to keep up my baking Monday tradition with biscuits, pumpkin chocolate chip bread, a loaf of bread, brownies, and vanilla ice cream.  (I only used one vanilla bean instead of two)

On our recent library trip, I checked out the Martha Stewart Everyday Food cookbook.  I’d wanted the Cook’s Illustrated cook book, but I’ll have to go to the other library for that one.  More than likely I’ll have to get it on inter-library loan, but that’s easier to do through our local library versus the one we were at this weekend.  We tried a recipe last night-written for a skirt steak, but we used a flat iron instead-and it was quite delicious.  The flat iron steak was an excellent choice.  Cheaper than the flank steak and oh, so tender!  I’m planning to cut the leftover piece as thinly as possible and making steak sandwiches tomorrow night.  

I’ll come back later (notice how ambiguous I am, that could be later today or later this week!) and update on the recipes and throw in any necessary links.

*****

I’m finally back to update, some two weeks later!  Sorry ’bout that.  I didn’t make the brownies since I ran out of butter and eggs.  Oh well, saved me some calories!

First the biscuits.  So easy and delicious.

Freezer Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs sugar
1/4 cup butter (chilled and cut in small pieces)
3/4 cup milk

Stir the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl.  Cut in the butter, either with a pastry cutter (this funny rainbow shaped wire tool) or your hands.  It’s ok to have a few chunks of butter running about.  Add the milk and stir just to combine.  
Dust a piece of parchment paper, wax paper, or just your counter with flour and kneed the dough a bit until it forms a nice dough.  
Use your hands to flatten the dough to about 1/2″ thick and cut into rounds with a biscuit/cookie cutter.  Place on a cookie sheet that will fit in your freezer.  You can put them fairly close together, but not touching.  Continue flattening the dough and cutting rounds until you’ve used all your dough.  After a few hours of freezing, put them in a ziploc bag.
In the morning, heat your oven to 375 degrees.  Get out as many biscuits as you need and bake them for about 17-20 minutes, depending on how many biscuits you are cooking.

The original recipe says it’s difficult to kneed if you double the recipe, but I’ve done it twice now and have not had any problems.  I say more biscuits is a very good thing, so go ahead and double it!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

1 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 2/3 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
A handful or so of chocolate chips 

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine the ingredients as listed in a medium bowl, stirring as you go.  If you don’t like chocolate chips, throw in some nuts or raisins instead.  Place in a loaf pan (9×5) and bake for about 1 hour.
I doubled this recipe as well, putting half in a loaf pan and half in mini loaf pans.  This way I was able to use one whole can of pumpkin.  We ate the mini loaves that week, and the large loaf is calling my name in the freezer.