Mourning Dove

Merry Christmas everyone! Yes, I am late in posting this, but that's because I did sooooooo much baking and then had to share! :)

I baked a ton of cookies! Including my theme cookie, Chocolate Peppermint! Mmm! This cookie is so time consuming but totally worth it! It's always requested for holidays :)

( More under the cut! )

~Kay

I decided to bake for people this Christmas, totally forgetting that this would require chaining myself to the kitchen for the few days leading up.. Lots of muttering & dried fruit later I came out with some half decent looking presents! I've never made Florentines before, so this was a first for me & I think they turned out ok.. They didn't hang about for long anyhow!



.. I wish I'd got a better photo of them, but they'd all gone!


( recipe. )

More recipes over at my blog! Chase Me Charlie

( 2 more pictures and recipes )

I made this recipe yesterday and it was fantastic! Edit: I've been informed that leftovers for lunch the next day were even better :)

Pictures, recipe and commentary at my blog: mangeratrois.net

( And the full recipe is behind the cut. )

I recently auctioned off a custom-made cake as part of a fundraiser. The winner asked me to make a cake for last week's Lunar Festival, based on a picture he gave me. Here's how it turned out:


Not as perfect as I'd have liked - not least because it cracked across the middle - but overall, I'm pretty proud of it.

This is such a fun recipe to make with kids. There's making the dough, rolling the dough into balls, rolling the balls in sugar, and then squishing in the chocolates. My daughter loved it. And the cookies taste so good. They were still soft and delicious the next day.



( Recipe )

So, I cook at a retirement village and every day I have to bake for morning and afternoon teas in addition to the regular meals. This is honestly the most exciting part of my job, but I have one tiny problem. We have 8 diabetic residents, and I always run out of time/energy/creative power and end up giving them peanut butter and sugar free jam sandwiches for tea. I feel really bad about this! So what I need are some tasty and quick recipes for diabetic-friendly baked goods..

Italian Sausage Vegetable Soup

 

I found this recipe in a Pillsbury Slow Cooker book, edited to be with chicken instead of pork, and doctored it up a bit.  Hope you enjoy…

 

½ lb. spicy chicken sausage

28 oz. chicken broth (homemade, if you can!)

1 cup sliced fresh carrots

1 large baking potato, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 (15 oz.) can garbanzo beans or chickpeas, drained

1 (14.5 oz.) can of chunky tomatoes, undrained (plain, Italian spice, or with green chilies)

1 ½ cup water

½ teaspoon dried Italian seasoning

1 bay leaf

1 cup julienne-cut (2x 1/8 x 1/8 inch) zucchini

¼ cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese, if desired

 

Cook sausage, casings removed, in large skillet until no longer pink, stirring frequently.  If excess amount of oil, drain. 

 

Add chicken stock to skillet and scrape to deglaze pan. Pour sausage and stock into crock pot.

 

Add carrots, potato cubes, garlic, drained garbanzo beans/chickpeas, tomatoes with liquid, water, Italian seasoning, and bay leaf.  Stir to combine.

 

Cover pot and cook on low setting for 6.5 hours.

 

After 6.5 hours, remove bay leaf and add julienne zucchini.  Cook an additional 30 minutes or until zucchini is tender.

 

To serve, lade soup into individual bowls.  If desired, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

 

This is a favorite recipe -- Henri Soule's Poule au Pot:

One 3 lb chicken
3 carrots scraped, quartered lengthwise and cut into one and a half inch pieces
3 ribs celery, trimmed, split and cut into one and a half inch pieces
2 or 3 turnips, trimmed and cut into one and a half inch pieces
1 cup leeks, white section only, quartered lengthwise and cut into one and a half inch pieces
1 fennel bulb, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1 zucchini, trimmed, quartered and cut into one and a half inch pieces
5 cups chicken broth
1/4 cup rice
salt, pepper, French chervil for taste

1.  Truss chicken and place in a narrow pot; it should fit snugly ... cover with water, add carrots, celery, turnips, leeks, fennel and zucchini.  Bring to a boil, remove from heat and drain well.

2.  Return to pot, add chicken broth.  Add all vegetables except zucchini.  Simmer 20 minutes, uncovered.  Add zucchini, simmer 5 minutes, skimming from top periodically.

3.  Add rice, salt and pepper, cook until chicken is tender, about 10 minutes. 

4.  Untruss chicken, cut into serving size peices, serve in four hot soup bowls with rice and vegetables.  Garnish with fresh chervil.

I've made this (without the fennel and chervil
because I don't ever have any around ... I'm lucky when I remember to buy a leek and the turnips for this one ... I've substituted potatoes for the turnips with good results).  

My question is:  This is an easy recipe for a weekend, but it would be kind of nice to have it waiting in the crockpot when I get home from work.  Will it work if I toss the vegetables and that much broth in the crockpot?  Should I adjust the broth amount or cut the veggies bigger?  And what about the rice?

Thanks for any ideas!

I need a recipe for apple spice cupcakes - but they need to have applesauce in them, not chopped apples, in order to save time and cut costs. All the recipes I've found so far either use chopped apples, or do have applesauce but are more like muffins. I could just take my pumpkin spice cupcake recipe and mess around with it a bit, but I wanted to try this first. Thanks guys.

I want to back something for New Year's Eve. I'd prefer it to look showy and special but don't want to rely on foundant for the looks. I'm a good cook so complex isn't an issue. I'd like it to be a cake rather than cookies. Any suggestions?

Good morning, busybodies.

http://www.otherpeoplesbusiness.net/comic/issue-3/page-8

( Click here to read the commentary )

and visit my new blog -- http://freshlywhipped.blogspot.com/ -- for more pictures and the recipe!

http://xkcd.com/682/

The world was rebornIt was just over a year ago that a solar flare activated the X-gene and created mutants. Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr opened the Xavier Haven for these newly gifted individuals, but found themselves facing more challenges than they anticipated. A mutant riot pushed Senator Kelly's Mutant Registration Bill through Congress, the Sentinel Project is soon to launch, and the rogue mutant Sabretooth is attacking his own kind. The X-Men and Acolytes are both recruiting, what will you do in this new world? Join us and help build the future! Most Wanted: Banshee, Beast, Cyclops Freakshow, Gunthries, Havok, Mystique, Nightcrawler, more X-Men, Acolytes and OCs Mod Journal | Main Community | OOC Community Premise | Rules | FAQ | Teams & Cast | Timeline Holds & Taken | Wanted | Apply | Drop Box | Site Map

I'm dying to bake something, but am currently lacking ingredients. I have flour, sugar, things like peanut butter/chocolate chips/fruit etc, but no baking soda or powder. Can you possibly recommend some recipes that don't require baking soda/powder? I know that it sounds silly, but I really want to bake, haha.

I hope that everyone had a fantastic holiday season. Kramer and I celebrated with my parents on Christmas Eve, then had a Festivus breakfast yesterday morning with his dad, his dad's girlfriend, and his sister. My parents gave Kramer and I tickets to Rome for our honeymoon and these awesome union suit pajamas (pictured are my brothers, Dane (19) and Wyatt (16), Kramer, and myself). My brothers also got me the Tracy Morgan autobiography, I Am The New Black, which I'm really excited to read! Kramer's dad (check out his golfing blog, Journey to St. Andrews) got me a bread-maker (which I will be putting to good use very soon) and a pasta roller attachment for my KitchenAid mixer! You can all thank him for the inevitable carb-o-loading you'll soon be witnessing on here.

When I originally found this recipe, it was advertised as a recipe for buttermilk brownies. Interesting, I thought, I've never seen a brownie recipe that used buttermilk before. That's probably because this recipe ended up being for cake and not for brownies. As I added the flour into the wet mixture, I knew it was much, much too thin to ever be brownie batter. No matter, though, because there's nothing wrong with rich, moist chocolate cake! The buttermilk made a big difference in the texture and taste of this cake. It was so tender and the crumb sticks perfectly together while still being light, fluffy, and delicate. The frosting is ridiculously simple and is as good as it is easy to make. If you need something quick to whip up for a New Year's party, this is the thing! Just slice into small bites and place in muffin liners for clean, easy snacking. If you haven't had a fantastic piece of chocolate cake in a while, let me help you out: make this today! Recipe after the cut or on my blog at The Crepes of Wrath.

( Chocolate Buttermilk Sheet Cake with Chocolate Buttermilk Frosting )

 Crack it open and you'll find out!


Flour and pastry crust Chicken. Recipe from Jamie Oliver's: Happy Days with the Naked Chef!
More here: YouMeTogether