Thursday, January 28, 2010

White Chicken Chili

I like a hot soup for dinner on cold days.  And if I have time in the morning it's all the better because I can put it all in the crockpot for later.   Since I had to boil the beans and cook the chicken first I could have waited but I like the thought of it simmering in there all day and bringing all the flavors together.  All the recipes I have seen for this call for canned beans.  I used dry beans and boiled them for an hour then rinsed and put in the pot with the other ingredients.  I used half Great Northern and half Navy.  

White Chicken Chili

1 1/2 cup dry white beans
2 cups cooked cubed chicken
1 cup chicken broth
1 onion chopped
3 cloves garlic minced
2 cans chopped mild green chilies
1 teas. ground cumin
1 1/2 teas. cayenne pepper
Juice of 1 lime
Fresh cilantro, chopped
Sour cream - optional
cheddar cheese - optional

Process beans as you wish.  Put all ingredients except lime juice and cilantro in pot with lid and cook.  If you use a crock pot its about 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 on high.  Before serving add lime juice to taste and garnish with cilantro.  Also garnish with Sour cream and cheese if desired.  I recommend it.

Observations - Check your cans of chilies before you just dump them in.  I didn't and ended up fishing woody pieces out of my mouth.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Blackout Cake

Another Birthday, another cake.  I'm not a fan of regular 'ol cake and buttercream frosting.  To much cake decorating I guess.  Other concoctions of cake however. . .
For mine and my husbands birthdays I get to be a bit more creative in baking and for my husbands birthday I chose a Blackout Cake.  hard to go wrong with triple chocolate, right?

The version I chose to make was from Food Network's Ask Aida.  Simply because I had seen the show at some point and I knew I could find the recipe easily.  I know there are many versions out there and I may try a different one sometime. 

The pudding in this recipe is extremely chocolate-y.  And the cake is a nice dense dark chocolate flavor.   I used Oreo's for the cookie crumbles.  Each of these three is great on it's own, but put them together....

For my version I left out the espresso powder and did not make the whipped cream.  As you can tell by the photo, I had trouble with the pudding, it was a bit soft and slumped down the side.  This might be because I had to use 1% milk, or not.  But that's what I'm blaming it on.

All in all it was very good and very chocolate-y.


Monday, January 18, 2010

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love the smell of browned butter.  Who couldn't?  And when I saw this recipe I was determined to try it.  When an opportunity came I pulled out the recipe.    Since my last doctor visit confirmed my suspicions of elevated insulin levels, no to mention cholesterol,  I have to have a good excuse to pull out the baking pans, much to my sorrow!  Thank you church functions that always need refreshments! 

This is the recipe I first found and so used is from this blog.   Along with browned butter it also uses toasted and then ground oatmeal and toasted nuts.

I only used half the nuts and ground them up fine because the cookies were for my Son's function and he doesn't like big nuts.

I liked the flavor the butter added.  I found that it was more pronounced if the cookies were baked a little longer.  I wish butter was still an important diet staple like it once was when the Pioneers needed the fat. I am reminded of a story of my GGG Grandfather who when he was traveling with some companions they thought he ate too much butter and tried to make him sick of butter by making him eat a pound for dinner and not letting him have any meat.  They tried the next day too and he said he would but they wouldn't be able to make him sick as his mother had also tried it when he was young.  They finally gave up.   Clearly I would not eat a straight pound but I sure like to cook with it.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Birthday cake

I seem to be getting lazier and lazier at my blogging. I also am getting lazier and lazier at my cake decorating. This time I waited a day to take a picture. I shouldn't have done that. The orange leaked into my windows, tires and letters. Yuck. It actually looked pretty decent, given that I really cheated a lot on it. I was going to leave the sides just white but age 6 said I had to make them checkered, and it was his birthday after all. A little black spray should fix that. heh heh heh, ya right.
You can see some of my other cakes here.
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