I discovered a new lunch superstar this week.  Superstar because not only is it a hit with me, but also with all of the kids – and that, let me assure you, is no small feat.

It’s a wrap, which means it’s as easy to throw together as peanut butter and jelly.  And it has hummus, and avocado, and feta–which means it is seriously delicious.

Here’s what you need:
- tortillas (I prefer the whole wheat ones from Trader Joe’s).
- deli turkey
- Feta
- lettuce
- hummus (I prefer the edamame hummus, also from Trader Joe’s).
- avocado

Here’s what you do:
- Warm the tortilla in the microwave for a few seconds so that it won’t split when you wrap it.
- Spread some hummus all over it.
- Layer with turkey, sliced avocado, Feta, and lettuce.
- Roll it up.  Enjoy.
- Come back and leave me a comment telling me how delicious it was.

I’ve been busy.  Busy baking that is.

Today I’m going to share a recipe for Mandlebrot.

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, what the heck is mandlebrot.

Where have you been?

Not reading Disney’s FamilyFun magazine obviously.

This I know because that’s where I found the recipe.  Eight or nine years ago.

Mandlebrot, for you unenlightened ones, is a twice-baked cookie, that is remarkably similar to biscotti.  Only better.  Way better.

And good news: it’s pretty easy to bake.

You really should give it a try.

Here’s how:

Ingredients
cinnamon-sugar for sprinkling
1 c. cooking oil ( I use organic coconut oil but vegetable oil works fine too)
3 eggs
3 1/2 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 t. vanilla
1 c. chopped almonds (or chocolate chips, walnuts, raisins or any other stir-in you like.  For my most recent batch I used a combination of chopped almonds, toffee pieces, and cinnamon chips – yum!).

Procedure
In a large mixing bowl, mix the oil and 1 cup of sugar with a wooden spoon (although you could use a KitchenAid mixer like I do – just sayin’).  Stir in the eggs, one at a time.  In a separate bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder and salt.  Gradually stir in the flour mixture, one cup at a time, into the liquids.  Stir in the vanilla and the mix-ins of choice.  Gather the dough into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

Heat the oven to 350 and grease two baking sheets or line them with parchment.  Divide the chilled dough into four equal portions and shape into logs, about 10 inches long.  Place the logs, at least two inches apart, on one of the prepared baking sheets.  Sprinkle the logs with cinnamon sugar.

Bake on the center rack for 20 minutes.  Remove from the oven.  Once the logs are cool enough to handle, cut each one crosswise into 14 pieces, each about 3/4 inch wide.  Arrange the cookies, flat side down, on the cookie sheets.  Return the cookies to the oven and bake for 18 more minutes, or until the edges begin to brown and the cookies are golden.

Once cool, the cookies can be stored in airtight containers or frozen in ziplocked plastic bag.  Makes 56.

It’s that time again.

Holiday baking time that is.

Sugar cookies, gingersnaps, and mini-loaves of sweet breads are the usual suspects.

But we like to do things a wee bit different around here.

And–in case you do too–I thought I’d share some of our favorite holiday cookie and confection recipes.

I won’t bore you by doing them all at once though.  I thought I’d sprinkle a few into my posts over the next couple of weeks.

I hope you’ll report back if you try one of our favorites and fall in love.

Tonight?

Toffee Oatmeal Fudge Bars.

And yes.  They’re as sinful as they sound.

But Christmas goodies are guilt-free, right?

Ingredients:

1 cup softened butter
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup’ish (more or less according to your tastes) Heath toffee bits
2 eggs
2 t. vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 cups old fashioned rolled oats

For the gooey filling:

1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 package chocolate chips
1/4 cups butter
2 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350.  Grease a 9×13 pan.  Cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl until fluffy.  Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.  In separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add to creamed mixture.  Stir in oats and toffee bits.

In medium saucepan, mix sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips and butter (you can also use a double broiler if you have one).  Heat just until chocolate is melted.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Spread 2/3 of the oat mixture into prepared pan.  It may be tough to spread, but if you grease a rubber spatula you should be able to pat it down quite nicely.  Top with fudge mixture and spread evenly.  Drop remaining oat mixture on top by spoonfuls.  Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.  Cool completely before cutting.

Dig in. :)

I’ve mentioned Jeff’s house specialty a time or two on the ol’ blog.  Each time that I bring up his grilled tequila lime chicken, my inbox floods (well maybe not floods, but you get the idea) with requests for the recipe.  This most recent time I promised a few friends on Facebook that I’d post the recipe.  I just so happen to be  a woman of my word (not counting the hasty bribes offered to my children) so I am posting the recipe.  Not like it’s a family gem or anything.  He pretty much adapted his house margarita concoction to work as a marinade.  That’s right my friends.  It’s like having your margarita and eating it too.  If the name alone didn’t leave your mouth watering, I know you’re thirsty hungry now.

Mark my words: you won’t regret it this one in the morning.

2-3 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast.  Or any other meat I suppose.
juice from 4-5 squeezed limes.
1/4 c. Triple Sec
1/2 c. Tequila
1 T. chili powder
1 T. cumin
3 cloves minced garlic
Kosher salt and pepper to taste.

Mix it all up and drop in the chicken.  Let it all hang out together in the fridge for at least 2 hours (preferably longer though) before you grill and enjoy.  Thoroughly. enjoy.

We use tequila lime chicken for tacos, tostadas, enchiladas, you name it.  We also just eat it plain sometimes too but it adds a delicious twist to any Mexican dish that calls for chicken.

¡Olé!

Remember that party we were going to?  The one that put me into a tizzy because I wanted to bring along a just right hostess gift?

It was this past Saturday.

You all gave me a ton of great suggestions.  So many, in fact, that I plan to compile the top ten and present them in a future post.  It would be wrong of me to take credit for that idea though; Metropolitan Mama suggested it and I thought it was brilliant.

Are you curious what I decided on?

Baked goods were, by far, the most popular suggestion.  And since I happen to harbor a love for things that ooze with butter and sugar it didn’t take much twisting of my arm to get me to agree.

I found a recipe for cupcakes on Martha’s website.  I was pleasantly surprised by this Martha recipe in that it didn’t call for ridiculously difficult to find ingredients nor did it require an absurd amount of steps.

Not wanting to gift them without first sampling, though, I tried them on Super Bowl Sunday.

To say that they were good would be an understatement.  They were beyond good, beyond delicious even.  These things were like heaven in a paper liner.

Unless of course you don’t care for the dense texture of pound cake.  In that case, you might want to skip out on these.

I’m a fan of the whole pound of butter, pound of sugar concept though.

And that explains my thighs.

Moving right along…I’m not one to hoard a good recipe so I thought I’d share with the whole class.

One more thing and then I’ll get to the recipe.  If the brown – butter glaze intimidates you let me persuade you to put your fears aside and give it a go.  It couldn’t be easier and it results in a rich, praline-like topping perfectly paired with the texture and intensity of the cupcake itself.  Listen to me sounding like a fancy shmancy foodie.  Just trust me on this one.

Picture zoinked from Martha Stewart’s website

Brown-Sugar Pound Cupcakes
3 c. sifted all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
8 oz. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 c. packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature (mine were cold and it didn’t seem to matter)
3/4 c. buttermilk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Line standard muffin tins with paper liners.  Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl.  Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.

Reduce speed to low.  Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk, and ending with dry ingredients.  Scrape sides of bowl.  Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full.

Bake cupcakes until testers inserted in middle come out clean.  I found that in my convection oven they took between 22-25 minutes.  Let them cool before glazing with:

Brown-Butter Glaze
4 oz. (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 c. sifted confectioners’ sugar
2 t. pure vanilla extract
2 to 4 T. whole milk

Heat butter in saucepan over medium heat until golden brown, about ten minutes.  Carefully pour butter into a bowl leaving sediment behind.

Add sugar, vanilla, and 2 T. milk to butter, and stir until smooth.  If glaze is too thick, add more milk.  Use immediately.

*The second time I made them I doubled the glaze recipe because I thought it was a bit scant on the my first attempt.  It didn’t turn out so well so I wouldn’t recommend doing that.  For one thing it was way greasy for some reason.  And also, the cupcakes really just didn’t need to be fully covered in the glaze to be divine.  Guess that’s why she called it a glaze as opposed to a frosting.  That’s what I get for messing with Martha.

Let me know what you think if you try them.  Something tells me you’re gonna likie likie. :)

For more Works For Me Wednesday ideas visit Rocks in My Dryer.

Thanksgiving is just over a week away and I, for one, am SO excited.  I’m looking forward to the cooking and the beautiful table.  I’m excited to see the family members who will be coming to break bread with us.  I’m excited for the Black Friday ads that will be spread out across the living room floor come Thursday night.  Oh, and I am so excited for the mashed potatoes.  Mashed potatoes, you see, are my favorite food and it’s been a terribly long time since I’ve made any myself.  And now that Thanksgiving is so close, I might just as well wait until the big day.  I admit that I’m already salivating over the thought of them though.

Anyway…

I’ve been having fun playing around with the menu.  I already bought my turkey even.  He’s a 17 pounder from Trader Joe’s.  I went the ‘all-natural’ route this year.  For 99 cents a pound I picked up a fresh young turkey without all the antibiotics and yada yada yada.  100%  vegetarian feed too.  Ironic isn’t it?

I’m trying some new things this year.  The recipes come courtesy of The Pioneer Woman.  I’m truly in awe of the recipes she posts.  Actually, I’m in awe of the photographs of the food she posts.  You will be too when you see them.

But this whole menu planning thing got me to wondering what kinds of unique dishes, or perhaps just unique to Thanksgiving dishes, other families will be serving.

Our family has spent the previous two Thanksgivings with our now temporarily-Texan friends, Kelly and Geoff.  Until we met them I never understood how people could spend holidays away from their families.  Now I get it though.  Good friends are really more like family than anything else.  Only they don’t bring along a cheek-pinching, too- much-perfume-wearin’, crazy great aunt who insists on calling you Darlene.  I actually don’t have one of those, but you get the idea.

Anyway, Kelly’s Thanksgiving dinner included a few things I’d never seen served before.  I’m still not sure if it’s because she comes from Delaware and they do things differently there or because she’s a really picky eater and she expanded the menu so as to have a bit more to choose from. 

The first year we celebrated with them at their house and she asked me to bring mac’n'cheese.  I have a love/hate relationship with mac’n'cheese (love the taste, hate the calories) so I was thrilled to have an “excuse” to eat it unabashedly.  She also served green salad, which, though it’s a very typical food, has never been a part of any other Thanksgiving dinner I’ve attended.

Not that the foods we include in our dinner are typical either.  Sure, my Grandma, (or mom, depending on who was doing the cooking) made the green bean casserole and the marshmallow topped sweet potatoes.  Stuffing and potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce from the can all made an appearance too.  But somewhere along the line somebody got a recipe for a cranberry salad and now it too has become a standard part of our dinner.  And really, what’s not to love about cranberries, apples, cool whip, celery and chopped walnuts all coming together in a dessert that somehow makes it onto the table disguised as a salad?

So now you see why I’m curious.  What strange dish makes it to your Thanksgiving table?

Inquiring minds want to know…

Are you a fan of pumpkin?  I’m a fan of pumpkin.  Pumpkin bars, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie – you name it, I’ll eat it.  Last fall, in my quest to find a new way to infuse pumpkin into my seasonal baking frenzy, I discovered a recipe that will forevermore go down as one of my absolute favorites.

Iced Pumpkin Cookies.

You can thank me later.

Cookie dough
2.5 c. all purpose flour (don’t even try substituting with whole wheat flour – I can assure you it doesn’t work)
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. cloves
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. softened butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 c. canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 t. vanilla

Icing
2 c. powdered sugar
3 T. milk
1 T. melted butter
1 t. vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and salt in a mixing bowl and stir to combine.  Set aside.  In medium bowl, cream the 1/2 c. butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla to mutter mixture and beat until creamy.  Mix in dry ingredients.  Drop on cookie sheet by tablespoonfuls; flatten slightly (or don’t it still works just fine).  Bake for 15-20 minutes in the preheated oven.  Cool cookies and then drizzle glaze with a fork.

For real.  These are dee-vine.

For more works for me Wednesday tips, suggestions and recipes, visit That Family!

I dare you to say your mouth isn’t watering.

Yes, this is how I spent one of my precious free hours this morning.  Baking a fresh strawberry pie for my family to devour after dinner.  This, and freshly laundered sheets on the beds that every single one of them will crawl into tonight.  And they have the nerve to ask me what I did all day.

Okay, enough with the pity party.  On to the recipe that will change the way you look at a strawberry.  You can thank me after you’ve whipped up one of your own.

Crust:
1.5 c. crushed shortbread cookie crumbs
1.4 c. chopped blanched almonds
1.3 c. melted butter (don’t even think about using margarine).

Filling:
6 c. hulled strawberries
1 c. sugar
3 T. cornstarch
1.3 c. water
1.4 t. salt
1.2 t. almond extract (althoug vanilla will work in a pinch)

So you start by preheating the oven to 350.  Mix the crust ingredients together in a bowl and then press on the bottom and up the sides of a 9 inch pie plate.  Bake for 8 minutes and then let it cool completely. 

While that cools, mash enough strawberries to equal 1 cup.  In a medium saucepan combine sugar and cornstarch.  Stir in mashed strawberries and water. 

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly (no cheating, the e-mail can wait), until mixture thickens and comes to a full boil.  Boil one minute.  Remove from heat.  Let cool ten minutes.  Then stir in salt and extract.  While it cools, arrange remaining strawberries in cooled crust. 

Once the strawberry/sugar mixture has cooled, pour it over the pretty strawberries in the crust.  Stick the whole shebang in the fridge and let it chill for at least 3 hours.  Garnish with whipped cream and you won’t. be. sorry.  Promise.

     Last week, I told Nicole that over the weekend I would post a few recipes for meals that the whole family would gladly eat.  Well, the weekend got away from me and here I am finally composing this post.  Here’s the thing though: what follows aren’t exactly recipes, they’re more like methods.  The only time I ever follow recipes are when I’m baking or when I’m trying something for the first time.  Once I’ve made a dish a time or two I sort of learn to finagle it and customize it to our tastes.  You guys do that too right?

Pretzel Crusted Chicken Nuggets

What ya need:
1 bag of pretzels (sticks, twisted, whatever)
Worcestershire sauce
butter (the real thing not that nasty margarine crap)
boneless, skinless chicken breast cut into bite-size pieces
dipping sauce

What ya do:
Pour about half a bag of pretzels into a big ‘ol Ziploc bag and smash ‘em to smithereens with the smooth end of a meat tenderizer.  Or the back of a skillet, whatever you have handy.  Melt a few tablespoons of butter in the micro.  Add a teaspoon or two (I warned you that I don’t follow recipes, sorry) of Worcestershire sauce and mix well.  Put the chicken peices into the butter mixture and make sure they get all gooed up.  Once they are properly gooed, drop them all into the bag of pretzel crumbs and toss to coat.  Spread in one layer onto a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.  We always serve them with french fries and a salad and they are a big hit with the whole family.

Chicken Salad Pita Sandwiches

What ya need:
2 or more pounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts
Red seedless grapes
Miracle Whip
Dijonaise mustard
Almonds
Paprika
Chopped parsley
Whole wheat pita pockets
Red leaf lettuce

What ya do:
Boil the chicken and then chop it up nice and fine (with your Pampered Chef food chopper if you’re lucky enough to have one).  Slice the grapes in half and chop the almonds.  In a small bowl, mix together some Miracle Whip (you decide how much depending on whether or not you like a mustard based sauce or a mayo based one) and dijonaise mustard.  Mix the mustard/mayo mix into the chicken and add the grapes, parsley and almonds.  Cut the pitas in half and put a couple leaves of lettuce in each one.  Add the chicken salad by the scoopful.  Sprinkle some paprika on the top and enjoy! 
*I think this one is best when the chicken salad has had time to chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Okay, this one sounds weird but I’ve never heard anybody say they didn’t love it.  You’ve been warned.

Chicken Stacky Uppy

What ya need:
Cooked brown rice
2 Cooked and chopped boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (do you see a theme here?)
A can of cream of chicken soup
Celery
Red Pepper
Pineapple (canned or fresh but I prefer the latter)
Tomatoes
Colby Jack cheese
Lo Mein Noodles
Coconut
Chopped Almonds

What ya do:
Prepare the brown rice (or white if you aren’t into health.  Your loss.)  Prepare the soup according to directions.  Add the chopped chicken to the soup.  Wipe your brow and complain about the difficulty of this recipe.  Moving right along now…
Cut the celery into thin slices, dice the red pepper, chop the pineapple and tomatoes.  Put all of those things as well as the cheese, noodles, coconut, and almonds into individual bowls and put them on the table.  To serve: add a scoopful of rice into a cereal bowl and then put a ladleful or two of the soup/chicken mixture on top of it.  Let everybody sprinkle their own “toppings” on it at the table.  Whambamthankyoumam you are done!

I told you this one sounds weird.  It really is quite good though, and makes for a light summer meal.  And it’s nice because it is customizable to please picky eaters. 

Note to self:

Grilled chicken tostadas = big hit with the family

Homemade Tres Leches Cake = eh, not so much