King Ranch Mac & Cheese

Since Monday night's dinner wasn't exactly a hit with Dan, I wasn't taking any chances tonight. Tonight's dinner also had some Mexican flare to it, so I changed it up and made it my own.

Thankfully, it was a success!

I needed something quick, because I leave for cake class in 20 minutes. I also wanted something hearty, because I can't shake the chill that I've had all day. Last week, Thursday was about 50 degrees. Winter has come back, full force. I am ready for warm weather, I am ready for just a sweatshirt and not my North Face fleece, I'm ready to not pay for oil to heat my house any longer...

In addition to tonight's dinner, I threw together some vanilla cupcakes for class, and a batch of Wilton's frosting. I'll post about the frosting some other time. Here's the recipe to dinner before I head out to decorate these naked cupcakes.

King Ranch Mac & Cheese
adapted from Life As a Lofthouse

8 oz. elbow pasta, cooked and drained
2 cups cooked, cubed chicken (I used a rotisserie)
1 block Velveeta Cheese
1/2 can diced tomatoes (I used Fire Roasted Garlic tomatoes)
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup
1/2 cup sour cream
1.5 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 and spray a 9x13 casserole dish.
2. In a medium saucepan, combined the Velveeta and tomatoes over medium heat. Stirring until cheese is melted and they are combined.
3. In a large bowl, combined the chicken, cumin, garlic powder, cream of chicken and sour cream. Slowly add the Velveeta mix and stir. Add the noodle and mix everything together.
4. Pour into the casserole dish and sprinkle with cheddar cheese. Bake for 25 minutes.

It's sooooo creamy and delicious. Definitely a good choice for tonight!

Cheeseburger Rice

February vacation has come to an end. Back to work I went today. And no, I didn't bake last week, except for the cake I had to make for cake decorating class. As always, I planned to bake and cook and a crazy schedule got the best of me. Between a sick puppy and things popping up, I didn't get too much time to devote to cooking. I was able to get into the kitchen tonight and try a recipe I found in a magazine ad. I don't usually use recipes from a box (no reason why), but this recipe just looked easy and like something Dan might eat. I was right about it being easy. It's an easy weeknight meal that comes together with little to no fuss. However, I was wrong about Dan liking it - it wasn't his favorite. Too much onion, even though I used less, and too much "Mexican spices", which I used much less of as well. Oh well, I enjoyed it, and I'll even have some leftovers for lunch tomorrow since Dan didn't care for it. Can't win 'em all I guess.

By the way, here's the cake from last week's class. It's the Wilton method of decorating. This first course is very basic, and we've only learned how to use two icing tips so far, so that's all we could use to decorate with. The pattern came out okay, but I would've used a different tip for parts of it.

 

 

Cheeseburger Rice
from GOYA (don't remember the magazine it came from)

1 tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 yellow onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
2 tsp. chili powder
GOYA Adobo All-Purpose Seasoning with pepper, to taste (didn't use)*
1 (8 oz.) box GOYA yellow rice (I used Spanish style)
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

* I used a little bit of some chipotle rub I had in place of the all-purpose seasoning

1. Heat oil in a 12" skillet over medium-high heat. Add the beef, onion and garlic and cook until beef is browned. Drain and discard the fat.
2. Add the tomato sauce, chili powder and seasoning. Stir to combine and then move beef to a bowl or plate.
3. Add 2 cups water to the skillet and bring to a boil. Stir in the rice packet and let boil for 30 seconds. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes until rice is tender and water is absorbed.
4. Remove from heat, mix in the beef mixture and sprinkle with cheese. Let sit for 5 minutes, covered, until cheese melts.

Baked Chicken Fajitas

We're back to a sick dog. Last night, when Dan got home from hockey, as we were laying on the couch talking about our day, Lana jumped up on top of us an immediately threw up on us (mostly Dan). Right now she's just eating white rice and I will see how that goes, as going to the bathroom is a whole other issue for her. We might be heading back to the vet. If we do, it's nothing but ramen for a while for Dan and I, because blood work and x-rays aren't cheap. If I had known she was going to continue to be sick I would've savored these fajitas last night even more....

Dan doesn't eat anything Mexican or anything with Mexican style spices, so taco and fajitas are rare in our house. Yesterday I was craving some, so since he was working and then had hockey, I made a small batch for myself. I forgot I had this recipe for baking them, which is even less work than standing at the stove to stir fry everything up (which isn't even much work to begin with). I scaled it down from the original a bit to make a little 8x8 dish of it, rather than 9x13. I also had more veggies in mine than chicken. I used the rest of the chicken to boil for Lana's new sick puppy diet....

This is my smaller version. If you want the bigger one, just use a whole pound of chicken breasts. I used 2 peppers instead of one, and half an onion rather than a whole one. I also left out the tomatoes and chiles.

Baked Chicken Fajitas
adapted from Six Sisters Stuff

2 boneless, skinless chick breasts, cut into strips
1 or 2 bell peppers, cut into strips
1/2 medium onion, cut into strips
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
tortillas
cheese
sour cream

1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Combine the chicken and veggies in an 8x8 baking dish.
3. In a small bowl combine the oil and spices. Drizzle over the chicken and veggies, stirring to coat.
4. Bake for 25 minutes or so until chicken is cooked through and veggies are tender.
5. Serve on warmed tortillas with cheese, sour cream, any toppings you want!

Why did this rotate? Ugh....

Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches

Once again, it is snowing. Snow storms are the best days for crock pot meals. Even though you're usually stuck home during storms, giving you more time to prepare a meal, there's something nice about throwing something in a crock pot and letting it cook all day, filling your house with amazing smells while you romp around the yard in the snow with the dogs. I made this Thursday when we had a snow day from school. Maybe I should have planned 2 crock pot meals this week and used one today.

Here I am, the first full day of my February vacation, planning out all of the great things I'm going to cook and bake. Whenever I do this, it never happens. Although, I do have to bake because I'm taking a cake decorating class and my homework this week requires me to bring in a cake and make some icing. So that will definitely happen, but I need some more fun stuff to make as well. Time to get back into some baking, well, if the puppy decides she'll take a break from destroying everything in sight...

Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches
from Confections of a Foodie Bride

1 medium yellow onion
3/4 cup beef broth
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. mustard (I used Dijon)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 lb. chuck roast
salt and pepper
sandwich rolls (I sliced up a Ciabatta loaf)
sliced provolone cheese

1. Slice the onion into 1/4-inch rounds. Place the rounds in the bottom of the crock pot.
2. Add the mustard and garlic. Combine the broth, water, soy sauce and Worcestershire and pour over onion.
3. Season the roast with salt and pepper all over and place in the crock pot.
4. Cook on low for 6-7 hours until beef is cooked and tender. Shred the beef.
5. Place sandwich rolls under the broiler for 1-2 minutes until a little golden. Top with beef, onions and a slice of cheese. Return to broiler and broil another 1-2 minutes until cheese melts. Eat!

These were great and really hit the spot. The only downside is that roasts can be so expensive sometimes, so it's not something I would make all the time. I grabbed a nice Ciabatta loaf from the bakery and sliced it up. I mean, it was pretty hard to pass up this fresh roasted garlic loaf...


See that garlic?? See it?!?!

Sometimes measuring is optional for me.

Easy Valentine's Day Chocolate Bark

This week has been so crazy! We had another snow day yesterday, a two hour delay today, and vacation has begun! Not only did we have the snow day and the two hour delay, but it's Valentine's Day, and we had A.L.I.C.E safety training. My kids were all balls of anxiety and excited about goodies for the holiday. I needed something easy to make in the classroom in case our block got cut short due to the delay, so I found this really easy bark recipe. The kids enjoyed it, and it turned out pretty good. If I was going to make it outside of the classroom, I would do better chocolate and different toppings, but it's a good recipe for kids to make.

Easy Valentine's Day Chocolate Bark
from Crunchy Creamy Sweet

2 pkgs graham crackers (that's 2 pkgs in a box, not 2 boxes!)
6 bars Hershey's milk chocolate
any toppings you like, we used:
conversation hearts
M&Ms
sprinkles

1. Line a cookie sheet with wax, parchment or foil.
2. Lay out the graham crackers to cover the cookie sheet, breaking them to make them fit if needed.
3. Melt the chocolate and pour over the crackers. Spread out so it evenly covers all cracker surfaces.
4. Sprinkle with toppings and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
5. Break apart and eat!

Cheesy Sausage Tortellini

What a day. And not in s good way either. I had a busy day at work, and stayed late to do some lesson planning. Then, I came home to baby Lana, who had diarrhea all over her crate. I take her outside, she pees, poops, and comes back in. She drinks a bunch of water and then vomits all over the area rug.

This is about the 7th day that she has vomited or regurgitated her food. Wonderful. She's still got an appetite and she is playful as ever. A call to the vet was put. Of course, she looks healthy, temp is normal, stomach feels fine. She is now on antibiotics and a bland diet of boiled chicken, hamburg and white rice. Chicken is boiled, rice is on the stove now. Hopefully, this works and she just has some sort of bug. Paws crossed!

Dan and I both spent some time cleaning up her messes. I decided to make dinner early so we could eat before the vet, just in case we had to wait around for anything. Luckily, I didn't have to change my dinner plan. This meal is quick and easy, great for a night where you don't have a lot of time, or your stress level is on high and you don't have much focus or energy for cooking. I had most of the ingredients on hand, all I really needed was the turkey kielbasa and the tortellini. We actually almost always have a pack of tortellini in the fridge. We are tortellini lovers in this house! I doubled the recipe for the sauce and tortellini, since Dan usually has a big appetite and left overs are always welcome. Below is the original recipe, not the doubled one.

Dan isn't big on red sauce, but this sauce has a great creaminess due to the heavy cream and some great flavor due to the chicken broth and that I added a roasted garlic Parmesan spaghetti sauce. If you have a spaghetti sauce of choice, use it, it's way better than plain old tomato sauce.

Unless you're into plain old tomato sauce....

Cheesy Sausage Tortellini
from Kevin and Amanda

1 package turkey sausage kielbasa
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup tomato sauce or your favorite spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup chicken broth
9 oz. refrigerated tortellini (such as Buitoni)

1. Cut kielbasa into small slices.
2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Let the oil get good and hot. Add the kielbasa, cooking for a few minutes until nice and browned on both sides.
3. Add the garlic and stir. Cook 30 seconds until fragrant.
4. Add the tomato sauce*, cream, broth and tortellinis and stir to combine. Bring to a nice bubbly boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Sprinkle some cheese on top and enjoy!

**If using plain tomato sauce, now is the time to add some spices and seasonings if you'd like. Maybe some salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, parsley, oregano, red pepper flakes for some heat...sky's the limit!

Oh, and remember how I said leftovers are always welcome? Yeah, there were none. Dan really, really liked this dish!

Orange Chicken

It's not healthy in any sense of the word, but I love me some cheap mall Chinese food. And, when I do get it, I always go for the "orange chicken". You know, the spicy but sweet and sour chicken that is coated in an orange sauce, but doesn't actually taste like orange? The sauce is thick and sticky and awesome? The chicken is always questionable, and for someone who is the pickiest meat/poultry eater and eats little to no dark meat, I gobble up that dark-meat (or some kind of meat) chicken no problem. 

Even listening to myself describe the sketchiness of this dish does not deter me from wanting to eat it again.

ANYWAYS, while this recipe is not exactly what you get from a place like Panda Express or China Wok, it's the closest I've come. Every recipe of this style that I've made is either not flavorful enough, tastes entirely too much like soy sauce, or the sauce never thickens up and gets that beautiful stickiness to it. However, this time, I got wonderfully flavorful and sticky sauce. This is definitely a recipe to repeat. I never use my wok as much as I could, but part of it is because when I use the wok, it turns my kitchen in a smoke room. My kitchen is not big, so having that smokiness isn't always fun. Also, as always happen, and did tonight, I burnt the ginger and garlic. I knew I should have let the wok cool a little bit longer, but I followed the recipe and alas, they burnt. That hardly affected the flavor though, so I can imagine it might be even better without those burnt items. Let's get to the recipe, since that's the most important part...other than eating it....

Orange Chicken
adapted from Cooking Recipes Corner

2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
1 tbsp. oil (plus more for frying) (I used canola for the marinade and peanut oil for frying)
1 egg
pinch of white ground pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cornstarch + 1 tbsp. cornstarch, divided
1/4 cup flour
1 tbsp. fresh minced ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp. rice wine (I didn't have any, I used a dry cooking sherry)
1/4 cup water

For the "orange sauce"
3 tbsp. soy sauce
3 tbsp. water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup white vinegar

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the tablespoon of oil, egg, white pepper and salt. Add chicken and mix to coat chicken in the egg mixture.
2. In another large bowl, whisk together the flour and 1/2 cup of cornstarch. Add the chicken pieces and toss to coat with dry mixture.
3. Heat oil for frying in a wok over high heat, to about 375 degrees. Add chicken ( do this in 2 small batches). Cook for 5 minutes or until golden and fried and cooked through. Remove with tongs and let drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Repeat with second batch of chicken pieces.
4. Rinse wok and wipe clean. Return to high heat for 10 seconds, then reduce heat to medium high and heat a tablespoon of oil. Add the ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant, about 10 seconds. Add the red pepper flakes and rice wine.
5. Combined the orange sauce ingredients in a small bowl and then add to the wok. Heat to boiling.
6. Combined the remaining tablespoon of cornstarch with the 1/4 cup of water. Add to the wok and mix. Let the sauce cook and thicken up.
7. Add cooked chicken to wok and toss to coat in the sauce. Remove from heat and serve over rice!

Chocolate Merlot Cupcakes

Today is my best friend's birthday. We celebrated last night with a sushi dinner and some drinks with friends. I love cupcakes and so does she, so her present was easy to figure out. I decided to finally try and make a cupcake bouquet.

Now, it's pretty simple to make one, but it did take some trial and error playing around with it. I moved my cupcakes around several times. I also added some nips into this bouquet, because...well, why not? Mini cupcakes worked well for this, but you could mix and match some regular and mini for a wider variety. I was also going to make two different colored frostings, but after the first batch, Lana decided I had had enough stress-free baking time and that it was time for her to keep trying to swipe everything off the counters.

To make the bouquet, you need a flower pot, a foam ball, some tissue paper, toothpicks and cupcakes. For my flower pot, I actually used a really cute 2-cup measuring cup I found at Michael's.

This was my first start at playing around with the cupcake placement. I just stuck the foam ball in the cup and pressed it in pretty firmly and stabbed it a whole bunch with toothpicks.

Then I actually took them all out and started with the nips. I glued the nips to thicker popsicle-like sticks using a hot glue gun. Some fell off pretty easily, so if you do this, use a sturdy stick and a decent amount of hot glue. I also added in some crinkled squares of tissue paper under each cupcake.

Finally, I took each cupcake off again to frost it. This frosting had a weird consistency. At first it was too thick to pipe, so I added a tiny bit more Merlot to the mix and thinned it out. When you use wine in frosting, it tends to give the frosting a more grainy (and I know this sounds gross, but a slightly almost curdled looking) texture. Putting them back on the toothpicks was trickier because I didn't want to ruin the frosting, but it worked out well.

Here's the recipe I used. The frosting is my own recipe.

Chocolate Merlot Cupcakes with Red Velvet Merlot Buttercream
adapted from Tastes Like Food

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1.5 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup Merlot
2.5 cups flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
6 ounces dark chocolate, melted

Frosting:
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
5 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup Merlot (you won't use all of it)
1/2 tbsp. red velvet baking emulsion


1. Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 cupcake tins or 1 cupcake tin and 1 mini cupcake tin. Or even 2 mini tins.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, one at a time, mixing each until combined. Add the wine and mix in.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg.
4. Add the flour mix to the wet mix slowly and mix until combined.
5. Melt the chocolate and add the mix, making sure everything is combined.
6. Bake 13-15 minutes for mini cupcakes, 18-22 minutes for regular cupcakes.
7. For the frosting, in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Add 3 cups of sugar, one at a time, mixing between each addition. Scrape down sides of the bowl as needed.
8. Add 1/4 cup of Merlot and the red velvet emulsion and mix. Add remaining sugar one cup at a time.
9. If it's too thick, add more Merlot, a tablespoon at a time.
10. Frost cupcakes and eat! Or make a bouquet!

I made one batch of mini and one batch of regular. I obviously ate one just to be sure they tasted ok...