Cheater's Bread

Does anything make your house smell better than homemade bread? Seriously, I’ll give you a minute to think about it. Because in my book, it’s definitely in the top 3 amazing smells (the others being fresh cookies and the first time you open the windows in spring).

I’m calling this cheater’s bread because you can casually throw out “Oh, I made bread this morning” when people ask how you’re doing and they’ll think you’re an amazing baker. But really all you did was throw some stuff together into a plastic container, wait for a while, then throw part of it in the oven.

Seriously, it’s like cheating at baking. Bread gets this bad rap as being super difficult. I’ll be honest and say it’s not the easiest thing in the world to bake (I’ve made more than a few clunker loaves) but this recipe is like being asked to sing the ABCs in order to get a doctorate. Yes, it’s that easy.

Throw this together and you can have fresh bread for three weeks. Did I mention the dough lasts  that long? No? Sorry, it totally does.

Are you smiling yet? Seriously, the more I think about this recipe the more I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Throw the dough in the fridge – then do 300 push-ups, right? No? I just go to bed? Ok, but then when it comes to baking it has to be bathed in the tears of virgin goats, right?

No? I just turn the oven on and throw the dough on a pan and then bake?

Best. Recipe. Ever.

Maria Speck's Artichoke Tart with Polenta Crust

Does anyone else read the name of a recipe and immediately want to make it? Even when several components include things they’ve never made before? 

I read The Wednesday Chef and she talked about this recipe. “Maria Speck’s Artichoke Tart with Polenta Crust.” I mean seriously, aren’t you drooling? So what if I’d never made polenta before, didn’t know where to find artichoke hearts, and forgot to buy half of the ingredients for the custard – I was making the recipe come hell or high water.

Or burned fingers, but we’ll get there in a minute.

Never one to assume I can’t do something, I made the monthly pilgrimage to Whole Foods hoping it might help me find polenta and artichoke hearts. Luckily, it came through. Polenta is really just coarser ground corn meal, so if you can’t find ground polenta in your area I think it’d be a fine substitution. However, I was lucky enough to find Bob’s Red Mill Polenta in the cereal aisle and canned artichoke hearts packed in water next to the canned beans. Whew.

Everything went fairly smoothly – the polenta came together really easily and the custard was super simple the make. So don’t worry if you’ve never done this sort of thing before, give it a try. And don’t forget to wear oven mitts.

Yes, I know, Baking 101. After you use oven mitts to take something out of the oven, you can’t them move it with bare hands. It was a brain fart on my end, but luckily the blister is already starting to heal. Pro Tip from a Part-Time Blogger: safety first! Wear oven mitts. Always.

Double Chocolate Yogurt Pancakes

I know there is a great divide in the world between people who are pancake eaters and people who are waffle eaters, but I still don’t understand it. Seriously, the batter is almost identical and both taste amazing smothered in butter, maple syrup, or chocolate hips. So waffle lovers of the world, forgive me. I don’t have a waffle iron so I haven’t tested and recipes for you yet. But I honestly think you’ll like this one.

Pancakes with Greek Yogurt at the base, who would have seen that one coming? I’d heard of ricotta pancakes but haven’t tried them yet. But since I always have Greek Yogurt on hand this recipe called my name. It also told me to add cocoa powder and chocolate chips. I tried to say no, but honestly it was very insistent. It said it would be sad if it wasn’t a double chocolate chip recipe, and well, who wants to see a sad pancake?

I don’t.

So double chocolate yogurt pancakes it was. These are less fluffy than traditional pancakes, which only makes sense when you think about how little flour is actually in these things. I’d like to try it again with a non-traditional flour – maybe spelt or whole wheat pastry – but only because I’m interested in playing with new flours. These tasted great as is, slightly tangy but super delicious. I’d only planned on eating 2 (one serving) but somehow all 4 were inhaled faster than I’d like to admit in public.

In any case, you should try these too. And make sure to add the chocolate or your pancakes will be sad.

Good thing I posted this on a Friday afternoon, huh? You have plenty of time to run to the supermarket before the weekend!

Asian Glazed Chicken Breasts

To be completely honest, the only reason I initially tried this recipe is because I was out of peanut butter. Which meant I couldn’t try a new peanut chicken recipe I’d found. Still, I had all the other ingredients and thought this looked worth a try.

It’s awesome! It’s amazing how thick the glaze can get when cooked properly and the taste is great. I'm not kidding - I ended up kind of burning the glaze and still ate it. Part of that was sheer stubbornness (chicken is expensive!) but most of it was that it tasted really really good despite my cooking misadventure. Plus, doesn’t it look amazing?

Honey Cornbread Muffins

I promised a while ago to experiment more with corn bread recipes, but didn’t really follow through on it. This… isn’t much of a switch to be honest. It’s a similar recipe to the Moosewood Corn Bread, but less healthy. Sorry. But once you taste these suckers, I promise you won’t mind the extra addition of sugar and butter. And if you make 12 each one comes out to be around 160 calories – not terrible in the grand scheme of things.

The major change was mostly baking it in muffin tins instead of an 8x8 pan. Whoops! Creativity fail. Sorry guys, one day I’ll follow through. But when you have a winning recipe, there’s a lot of incentive to keep going back to it.

I’ve been eating these along with my Spicy Red Lentil with Rice Soup. One is perfect crumbled alongside the rice, lentils, and spice. I think it’d also be amazing with Navajo Stew or Beef and Bean Chili, but then few things in life aren’t actually improved with cornbread.

Bailey's Brownies

No, these brownies do not belong to someone named Bailey, but you do owe the drink quite a bit for making these amazing. I brought them to work yesterday to make sure I wasn’t crazy and they actually tasted good; they disappeared within a couple hours, which is a great sign. As are meeting new co-workers who have heard there are baked treats in the vicinity and came over to check them out.

Boozy Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes - 2 ways!

I am always that idiot who gets pinched on St. Patrick's day. Every year I remind myself to wear green and yet the morning comes around and I'm happy enough to be dressed and have my hair free of snarls that I tend to forget my lofty sartorial goals.

This year I'm not going to bother with the clothes debate, instead I'm just going to bake stuff with Bailey's in it. Think that will get me a freebie from would-be pinchers? I mean really, if someone offered me a cupcake in exchange for not pinching them I think it's pretty clear what the answer should be.

Hope you enjoy these cupcakes!

Mudslide Oreo Cheesecake Cupcake or White Russian Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes
Adapted from my Oreo Cheesecake Cupcake Recipe

With the right Oreos, the White Russian version of this recipe is gluten free; sadly Bailey's is distilled from wheat and as such contains some gluten (though apparently some celiac experts disagree about what happens to the gluten proteins during distallation. In any case, try the Bailey's at your own risk if you are gluten intolerant).

Ingredients

Cupcakes

8 Oreos, whole

1 8-ounce package cream cheese

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large egg, room temperature and lightly beaten

1/4 cup sour cream

Pinch of salt

For White Russian Cupcakes

1-ounce Vodka

For Mudslide Cupcakes

1-ounce Baileys

Frosting

2 ounces semisweet chocolate (about half a small bag of chocolate chips)

1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup

2 tablespoons half-and-half

1-ounce Kahlua (for either Mudslide or White Russian cupcakes)

Equipment:

Muffin tin, cupcake liners, hand-mixer, mixing bowl, pot

Make the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 275° F.  Line standard muffin tins with paper liners.  Place 1 whole Oreo cookie in the bottom of each lined muffin cup.

Beat cream cheese on medium-high speed until smooth, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed.  Gradually add the sugar, and beat until combined.  Beat in the vanilla.

Drizzle in egg a little at a time, beating to combine and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add in sour cream and salt, beat to combine.  Pour in 1-ounce either Bailey's or Vodka and mix until incorporated. Divide batter evenly among the cookie-filled muffin cups, fill each cup almost to the top. 

Bake, rotating muffin tins halfway through, until the filling is set, about 22 to 28 minutes.

Transfer the muffins tins to a wire rack to cool completely.  

Make the frosting:  Set a bowl (heat resistant) over a pot of simmering water to create your own double boiler. Combined chocolate and corn syrup and whisk mixture often. Cook until mixture is smooth. Remove from heat, add the half-and-half and 1-ounce Kahlua, and whisk mixture until smooth.

Refrigerate cupcakes and frosting (in the muffin tins) at least 4 hours (or overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.

Makes 8 (serves 1)

Szechuan Spicy Eggplant with Ground Turkey

I’ll be completely honest – I don’t seem to follow the trend of most food bloggers who have extensive lists of things they’re planning on cooking next. I do have a massive, extremely organized bundle of recipes that look tasty, but when it comes down to it on Saturday mornings I tend to cook whatever shiny thing has caught my fancy at the moment.

Call me the magpie chef if you well.

In any case, I saw this gorgeous graffiti eggplant at the supermarket one Saturday morning and figured I’d buy it and figure out what to make with it when I got home. I vaguely remember my mother making a dish with ground pork, eggplant, and tofu so I picked up some ground turkey before I left (no, I don’t know why either. It made sense at the time). I figured I could probably make something tasty from the veggies in my fridge and the new ingredients I just picked up.

I was correct. This is a great recipe. The ingredient list may look a little ridiculously long, but I had pretty much all of it in my cupboard already. And it keeps really well – I ate it for lunch everyday for a week.

Hope you enjoy!

Healthy Peanut Butter Banana Muffins

I love muffins, but I get confused where the line is between muffin and cupcake. The chocolate-chip muffins with frosting? How isn’t that cake?

Personally, I prefer a heartier muffin because I like to eat them for breakfast. While I’ve also never had a problem eating cake for breakfast, I first tried this recipe back in January aka the month of good intentions. While I’ve clearly fallen off the healthy eating wagon once or twice since then, these have been a great find. Crunchy peanut butter + banana + no added sugar? And they actually taste good?

I tend to make a batch of these, keep ‘em in the fridge for the week, and bring them in for a mid-morning snack at work. Does anyone else have the problem where no matter what they eat for breakfast, or even if they skip breakfast, ten o’clock rolls in and your stomach is rumbling so loudly people two cubicles over can hear it?

Just me then? Oh well, these muffins definitely hit the spot right around them. I hope you enjoy them too!

Spicy Peanut and Sweet Potato Soup

I’ve been wanting to make a sweet potato and peanut soup for a while now, but for some reason hadn’t gotten around to it until I saw this recipe and bam! I needed that in my belly yesterday.

Let think about this – sweet potatos are awesome, peanut butter is awesome, spiciness is awesome, and lentils are tasty. How could this recipe go wrong? Easy, it didn’t.

It’s a very thick soup, so feel free to stir in some extra water after you blend everything together. But make sure you top with peanut – they really add an extra dimension!

Baked Chicken Gyros

I studied abroad in Athens during college. Oh it was a real hardship – historical monuments, museums, bank holidays, island hopping – I’m surprised they managed to squeeze class in there!

At the time I was living with other students from my university in a small apartment building.  There was a small plaza down the street from us which had the world’s best bakery as well as a great Gyro shop. We ate there so often we began to measure prices in units of gyros – that bag costs 10 gyros! That hostel is only 6 gyros, what a steal!

I miss that place – it used to pile fresh French fries to top off an already perfect sandwich.  Seriously, if you’ve never had an authentic gyro, you don’t know what you’re missing. The meat is slowly roasted on a split, and thin slivers are cut off to order. No sitting around and getting tough for this meat. I honestly don’t even know what meat I was eating at the time; I just pointed to whichever spit had the least amount on it (on the theory that the locals had probably been eating it the most, so clearly it was awesome) and hoped for the best.

You’d be surprised how often this method works, just make sure not to think too hard about what you could be eating. That way leads to madness and possibly upset stomachs.

In any case, when I found this recipe I had to give it a try. It was a good choice. Chicken marinated in yogurt plus tzatziki and onion? Pretty delicious, but you’ll definitely want to make sure to brush your teeth after eating!