Chicken Cake!

One of my favorite coworkers is a sort of chicken fanatic - she raises them (yes, real chickens, right here in Dallas!), collects all sorts of chicken doodads, and her license plate even says BA-GAWK. Naturally, for her birthday today, I had to make a chicken cake for her!

 

Cute, right? :) Several people asked how I did it, so here's a little pictorial...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Special Saturday Breakfast: A Savory Pastry

My favorite thing to make and eat is, without doubt, any kind of breakfast! Every Saturday morning, I fix up a "special" -- typically indulgent -- breakfast for us :)

Today we had a scrumptious, savory pastry... A shallow puff pastry 'bowl' filled with carmelized onions on a bed of baby spinach, topped with two eggs and crispy, crumbled baccon.



Yes, it was marvelous!

Yummiest Instant Oatmeal

This is a simple little thing worth sharing! To make your instant oatmeal sweet and flavorful, add this secret ingredient: apple juice. Instead of the amount of water you'd normally use, do half water/half apple juice. You won't believe the difference :)

"Cheater" Lasagna

This is officially the easiest lasagna recipe ever. When we're done here, you'll want to shake my hand, or maybe even give me a big fat kiss. ;) 

 Here's my big secret: Instead of lasagna noodles, make layers of refrigerated ravioli!

If you've ever tried to construct a decent lasagna from scratch, you'll know what I mean when I say I kind of hate boiling and handling lasagna noodles. This is a terrifically fast and flavorful way to circumvent that whole process. You only need a handful of simple ingredients and about 30 minutes.

I made a small dish because I'm only cooking for two, but you can easily increase the size or do beef instead of chicken. I'll offer suggestions at the end of this recipe!

To make a small chicken lasagna (feeds 4 people), you'll need:

•  8 x 8 baking dish
• 1 package refrigerated cheese ravioli (not boiled) 
• 1 rotisserie chicken, meat removed & chopped into bitesize pieces
• 1/2 c. shredded mozzarella 
• 2 c. ricotta cheese mixed well with 1 egg & 1 tsp. Italian seasonings (we'll call this the ricotta cheese mixture)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In the baking dish layer the ingredients in this order:

1. ravioli
2. chicken
3. half of the ricotta cheese mixture, maybe slightly more
4. ravioli
5. other half of the ricotta cheese mixture
6. shredded cheese

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top layer of cheese has reached the desired golden-brown-ness :)

What if you want to make a beef lasagna? Use ground beef instead of chicken (cook the beef first), and add some jarred spaghetti sauce (or home made!) on top before the final layer of cheese. Maybe even add a thin layer of sauce in the middle - on top of the beef, before the ricotta cheese.

What if you want to make a larger lasagna? To fill a 9" x 13" dish, just double or triple the amount of each ingredient. If you triple it, you may get to make a couple more layers.

Hopefully this little trick works out as well for you as it did for me!

A Pretty, Tidy Kitchen Countertop

Problem:
In our new apartment, our kitchen has this large, wonderful island... I love it! But the sink is in the island, so if I have the soap, sponge, and scrubby brush right there out in the open, it junks up the look of the room.

Solution:
I got these plain white dishes at Target for about $25 -- a plate, a gravy boat, and a pitcher that all sort of match. I got a glass candle pedestal to set the plate on top of, so it actually looks somewhat like a cake stand. I put the sponge and sink stopper in the gravy boat, and long handled scrubby brush in the pitcher, with the soaps perched atop the plate stand. These clean, unassuming items make the perfect display for all my sink accessories! It's actually kind of decorative. :)

By the way, I put a little square of rubber grippy material (it's sold in rolls as kitchen cabinet liner, I think -- not the sticky kind) between the plate and candle pedestal to keep the plate from moving around. It worked perfectly! You'd never know they're two separate things. This is so much better than gluing them together, because I can still put the plate in the dishwasher any time I want. Of course you can get a cake stand, but I couldn't find one that was this inexpensive.

So there's the solution to my countertop conundrum!



Leftover Cakeballs

Sure, leftover cake is rare... but it happens! Here's how you can easily "restyle" that uneaten cake into a whole new, super-fun treat.

You'll Need:

• Any amount of leftover cake or cupcakes, with icing
• Chocolate bark / microwaveable chocolate coating
• Possibly some extra icing* depending on how heavily iced your leftover cake is.

* Here's the deal with the icing... If I were starting with a whole cake instead of leftovers, I would use an entire container of icing. You can use less, but keep in mind that the icing is a binding agent for cake crumbs.

1.  Your cake will probably already be iced (if it's leftover)... Mine wasn't iced yet because I made too many mini-cakes and didn't finish icing them. Either way, the cake needs to get completely crumbled and mixed with the icing until it forms a sort of paste.
2. 
3. 
4. Chill the mixture in your fridge overnight.
5. Once the mixture is firm (think of cold cookie dough) scoop out about 1 Tbsp at a time -- I highly suggest using a cookie dough/melon baller, but you can do this by hand, too. A good size for your cakeballs will be about 1" diameter. Smaller than a ping pong ball.
6. Once the balls are all rolled, return them to the fridge in order to keep firm while working on the chocolate coating.  
7. I won't lie... the chocolate coating process is kind of a pain. Just try to have fun.
8. Line 9 x 13 baking dish (or cookie sheet) with foil.
9. Follow the instructions on the chocolate bark package to melt.
10. One at a time, gently drop each cake ball into the melted chocolate. Coat completely, and remove as quickly as possible. The cakeballs will start to fall apart as they get warm in the chocolate. Once removed from the chocolate, set each cakeball on the foil to cool.
11. When all of the cakeballs are coated, cover the dish (this is why I prefer the 9 x 13 dish - it's harder to cover a cookie sheet without touching the melted chocolate) and refrigerate again.
12. If you want to decorate with sprinkles, do so before refrigerating... obviously... :) Since my leftover cake was carrot cake, I used white chocolate and decorated them with currants.
13. 
14. To store them, I recommend keeping the cakeballs somewhere cool.
15. Enjoy... yum yum!  
    
    

Breakfast-Muffin French-Toast Bake

Here's how to make a "special" breakfast out of whatever muffins you like!

The story (if you're interested)...
You might ask, "Why not just eat the muffins?" You could do that. The story behind this dish begins with my boyfriend buying groceries while he was hungry. He does this all the time - it's the baked goods that always get him. He ends up buying a dozen muffins (a half dozen of this flavor, a half dozen of that, because they both look so good) from the supermarket bakery. Needless to say, too many muffins for two people to eat before they go stale, unless we both eat a muffin for breakfast every day of the week. I don't eat sweets for breakfast unless it's something special... so, here's how to make a "special" breakfast out of those leftover muffins!

You'll Need:

• 8" x 8" baking dish, or a pie plate might work
• 4 large muffins (I used banana nut)
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 c milk
• maple syrup for topping

Instructions:

1. Mix the eggs and milk in a small bowl.
2. Slice the muffins each into 3 pieces horizontally (I sliced off the top, then cut the bottom in 2 even halves).
3. Grease the baking dish.
4. Using only the bottom parts of the muffins, arrange them in the baking dish so that they make a basically solid layer. You will have to cut some into smaller pieces. It's like a muffin puzzle! I filled in the corners by cutting 1 slice into 4 pieces.
5. Pour half of the egg mixture evenly over the first muffin layer.
6. 
7. Using the muffin tops (in the center of the arrangement) and the remaining muffin slices, make a second layer in the dish. Again, you may have to cut the circular slices into smaller pieces, like so...
8. 
9. Pour the remainder of the egg mixture evenly over the dish.
10. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25-30 min. or until golden brown...
11. 
12. Serve warm with maple syrup!
13. Yummmm.