Saturday Supper

We had a special supper tonight - just to celebrate Saturday. This afternoon I found a recipe on Pinterest for Peach Cobbler. I got the ingredients out, followed the recipe to put everything in the pan, and put it in the oven. Next, I started the garlic green beans, using I recipe I had found online. We've had them once before- and they were so good, that I couldn't wait to make them again. Craig grilled some steaks, and I put together salads for us both. I also sauteed some  mushrooms and onions for Craig's steak.
 When everything was ready we sat down to eat a delicious meal while watching the end of the MN Twins game - and they won 9-3.
Here are some pictures of our special supper.

I started with a tsp of butter and a tbsp of olive oil in the pan. I added a can of portabella mushrooms, drained, and slices of onion. I sauteed them for a couple of minutes. Then I added 1/2 cup of beef broth and salt and pepper (to taste) covered the pan and let it all simmer for about 5 minutes. Then I removed the top and let the liquid cook down.

Click on the picture to get the recipe.  I added onions and bits of bacon.

Here's one of the salads. Doesn't that look yummy?

Here's Craig plate. A wonderful Saturday supper!

Peach cobbler.... I know it's not the best picture - but if you click on the picture you can get the recipe and see better pictures. We each had a piece while it was warm, and we had some vanilla ice cream on top.

Did you have a special supper recently? You don't need to have a special occasion to have a special supper.

When the weather outside is frightful... make cookies!

Yesterday, just after lunch, the wind began to blow. The night before it snowed - about 3-4 inches of the light fluffy snow. So when the wind came up, it whipped up that snow, and we couldn't see across the lake. On top of that, the temperature began to fall.
So  Craig and I decided to "hunker in" and enjoy being home. Craig made a fire in the wood stove - and I made cookies.

Craig wanted Oatmeal Cookies. So I went to my favorite source - Pinterest - and I found a recipe for Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Craig asked me to use steel cut oats so I put 1 1/2 cups of steel cut oats and 1 1/2 cups of instant oats.  I only put 1/2 tsp cinnamon into the dough.  

Don't you just love my old mixer? We got it from Craig's Grandma - and it still works! I used it to mix all the ingredients into the dough. Then I dropped the dough onto a greased cookie sheet - about 1 tablespoon per cookie. The recipe said to flatten the cookies - but I left them alone because I wanted soft chewy cookies. I baked them for 10 minutes and that was perfect! 

The cookies are delicious! For the last dozen cookies I added walnuts, and Craig thinks they're the best. Next time I make this recipe, I will make some with golden raisins.

The weather may have been bad outside, but inside it was warm and wonderful!

Necessity is the Mother of Invention (or, How to Bake Without an Oven)

We are in the middle of a kitchen remodel, which means that we don't have an oven right now. The old one was moved out, and we can't install the new wall oven until after the counter tops go in.

But we don't have any cookies in the house! Oh no!

When Craig went to the store yesterday to buy milk he looked at the cookies - but they cost over $4.00 for just a dozen. So he came home without any.

Necessity is the mother of invention - and the Internet is my reference library. So I logged onto my computer, clicked on Google and Pinterest and looked for a recipe that caught my eye.
I love, love, love homemade chocolate chip cookies. So when I found this recipe for microwave chocolate chip cookies I knew I had to try it.

The recipe was easy to follow and I had all the ingredients, so 5 minutes later we were enjoying delicious cookies with our vanilla ice cream. Check out the recipe at No. 2 Pencil.  I would take pictures of our cookies, but my camera battery just died and I can't find the charger. It must have gotten packed in a box when we were taking apart the old kitchen. I am not sure I can "invent" anything to charge the battery, so I'll just have to keep searching for the charger!!

A Baking Weekend

 Every Sunday after the morning worship service, our church has a fellowship time called "Snack Attack."
5-6 people bring treats to share, and this week it was my turn. So on Saturday I decided to do some baking. I needed to bring about 3 dozen treats, so first I picked out a new recipe that I saw in the August Better Homes and Gardens magazine called Strawberry Shortcake Icebox Bars. Then I picked out a recipe for Pumpkin Pie Squares that I'd already made once with my daughter, Carrie. Finally, I picked out a recipe I've been wanting to make for a couple of months: Doughnut Hole Pops.

I shopped for the ingredients for these recipes, and after supper I began... I made the pumpkin pie squares. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of those but you can click on the name above and see the recipe.
Then I began making the strawberry bars.  They turned out to be rather time consuming. I had to bake four 8 inch square "shortbread cookies." Using parchment paper made taking them out of the pan really easy. While they were baking I made the strawberry filling, which needed to chill for and hour and a half.

Finally it was time to assemble the bars. I had left the 4th cookie in the pan. I spread some of the strawberry filling on it and added another cookie.

The next layer was whipping cream and fresh strawberries.  I used Cool Whip.

Then another cookie on top of that, topped with more strawberry filling.

I put the last cookie on the very top, and put it in the refrigerator to chill overnight.
The next morning, before leaving for church, I tried cutting the bars into squares. That was when I really ran into trouble. The cookie layers were so dense that they were hard to cut. Plus, they would slide around on the strawberry filling. I finally got them cut and decorated each square with a dollop of cream and some more fresh strawberries.

These bars would be wonderful for a special dessert after a dinner party, or for afternoon "tea" - when you could serve them on individual plates, but they were not perfect for transporting to church. They did taste good - but next time I'd use less sugar in the filling.

After putting the strawberry bars in the refrigerator I turned to making the doughnut hole pops - and they were a flop!
I started with store-bought holes, which ended up being stale. I couldn't find the lollipop sticks that the recipe called for, so I tried using straws. The straws worked okay but were not super sturdy. I followed the directions and dipped the straw into melted almond bark before pushing it into the doughnut hole.
Then the pan went in the freezer for a half hour.  They didn't look too bad at this point.

So I melted some more almond bark and tried dipping one. Only problem was, where to put it until the coating hardened? If I set it down, it got flat on one side and no longer looked like a lollipop.  The coating got too thick, and the straw wouldn't support it anymore. We didn't have any Styrofoam or I would have tried sticking the straw into it. At this point I got frustrated, and just threw them all away. 

What new recipe have you tried lately? Have you ever thrown anything away? 

Homemade Chocolate Layer Cake

Thursday night Craig and I were making a grocery list when Craig mentioned that he'd really like to have a chocolate cake this weekend. So we put it on the grocery list, and Craig came home from the grocery store with a cake mix and a can of frosting. 

When I asked him today if I should make it, he said yes. He wanted a layer cake with pudding in the middle, and that's what he thought he had bought - a mix that had the pudding. When I looked at the mix, it said that there was pudding in the mix - not as a separate layer. So I started looking through cookbooks, and online to try to figure out how to make this layer cake. When I looked in the cupboard for cake pans, I found that I only had one round pan - an additional challenge.

Here's what I did:

I lined a 15x10 inch jelly roll pan with parchment paper. Then I mixed up the cake batter according to the directions on the box. Then I realized that the instructions did not include baking time for my size pan!! Time to guess... I set the timer for a few minutes less than what the box said for cupcakes, and did the toothpick test. And it worked! The cake came out of the oven looking good. After letting it cool completely, I mixed up some instant chocolate pudding - using two boxes of mix but one less cup than the directions called for... I was hoping that would stiffen the pudding so that it wouldn't leak out the sides of the cake. 

I cut the cake into three equal pieces - each about 5 x 10 inches, and spread the pudding on two of the three pieces. Then I put the cake into the refrigerator to firm it up.

Finally, I assembled the layer cake, stacking the three layers one on top of the other, with the piece that didn't have pudding on top of the others. I stirred up the can of chocolate frosting Craig had bought, and frosted the whole cake. Here's what it looks like:

Looks pretty good, doesn't it?  There's just one problem... The frosting wouldn't stick to the cut side of the cake or the pudding. So the back side looks like this:

We're planning to have cake during halftime of the MN Vikings vs. Green Bay playoff game tonight. Based on what I tasted when licking my fingers after frosting the cake, I think it's going to be delicious (especially with a little glass of milk!) even if one side doesn't look too pretty.

Have you ever had challenges making a layer cake? (Or any other food?)