Spinach Artichoke Chicken

Alright folks. I have a confession. Cooking for two sometimes gets the better of me. Pretty sure I am becoming more and more clumsy every day, and my ability to accurately judge how much food two people will eat is no better. So between the spills, random mishaps, my inability to successfully follow the directions, and never managing to make enough pasta, sometimes I just need a stress-free recipe. This, my friends, is one of those recipes.

It requires two ingredients (well, three, if you include cooking spray): chicken and spinach artichoke dip. Yep, the dip. As in, pre-made, normally-you-would-just-heat-it-up-and-eat-it-with-chips dip. The directions? Just as simple:

1. Preheat your oven to 375.

2. Defrost your chicken breasts.

3. Grease the pan.

4. Put the chicken in the pan. 

5. Smother the chicken with the dip. Yep, just slather it on there.

6. Bake for 30 minutes. 

7. Eat (and smile, because it's yummy). 

That's it! Go forth and prosper (with yummy chicken in your bellies)!

S'mores Bars

Happy Thanksgiving! 

So this is what I made for Thanksgiving 2012: this s'mores bars recipe. Man, they were good! But man, they were soooo rich! 

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 king-sized Hershey's milk chocolate bars 
1 1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and both sugars until light. Beat in egg and vanilla. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt. Add this to the butter mixture and mix at a low speed until it's all mixed together (we'll call this your "dough").

Cover the bottom of the pan with an even layer of your dough. Place chocolate bars over dough. Three king-sized Hershey’s bars should fit perfectly side by side, but break the chocolate (if necessary) to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread chocolate with marshmallow creme or fluff. Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff. (This part is a little tricky...we tried placing the dough in small globs on top of the marshmallow, then spreading the globs into each other. It sort of worked, especially once we decided to grease the spoon we were using). I'm not sure if we just did a bad job of splitting the dough in half, or if the recipe did not create enough dough, because we did not have enough dough to cover the top. Sooo, improvising, we sprinkled on some more graham crackers. 

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars.

Brown Sugar & Bacon Smokies

Holy smokes these are good! We made them for a fun "let's stay in and cook" Sunday night, but they'd be great for a party or tailgate...or really anything or anytime that calls for some major yummyness.

1 pound bacon

1 pound little smokies (little weenies)

1 stick butter, melted

2 - 1 cups brown sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 375. 

2. Cut the bacon into thirds and wrap each third around a little smokie. Place all of the wrapped smokies in a single layer in a greased baking pan. 

3. Stir the first cup of brown sugar into the melted butter until mixed well. Pour the butter and brown sugar mixture on the wrapped smokies. Then take the other cup of brown sugar and sprinkle evenly over top. 

4. Bake your little sugared guys for about 15-20 minutes and then turn the heat up to 400 for about 10 minutes until the bacon becomes crispy.

5. Get ready to have your mind blown!

Hot & Naked Pasta

Have you ever been to a restaurant (such as Spaghetti Works...yum!) that serves "hot and naked" pasta? If not, well know this: it's my favorite! Hot and naked is just that...hot and "naked" - meaning it is not doused in one of your typical pasta sauces. It's just pasta in a light concoction of Italiany nothingness. Aaannnnndddddd, it's cheap and easy-peasy to make! Here's how (you're welcome in advance ;}):

What you'll need:
- pasta (I'm partial to shells, but any shape will work)
- olive oil
- butter
- some spices you like (I'm a sucker for oregeno, so I combined that with pepper and garlic salt )
- parmesan cheese (optional)

Alright folks, let's make some pasta! That's what you do first: make pasta, like normal. Then, when your pasta is cooked to al dente perfection, just starting mixing it with your other ingredients. Add a pinch of this here and a dash of that there until you create the most amazing nothing sauce. And then eat. That's it! Super yummo pasta that's hot and naked and light yet filling and pretty much all-around fantastic. 

Baked French Toast

So I've recently been stuck in a rut when it comes to baking, thanks to botched attempts at homemade "Easy Mac" and donuts. It's really been quite frustrating. But this recipe - one that has the potential to be a regular holiday gem - went largely according to plan (thank goodness)! So here it is: a recipe for prep-ahead-of-time, cook-in-the-oven french toast. It keeps very well (it's been sitting on the kitchen counter for days now, and is still scrumptious to nibble on), and makes a TON (i.e. a whole cake full). Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS:

French Toast -

1 loaf crusty sourdough or french break

8 whole eggs

2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

3/4 cups granulated sugar

2 tablespoons vanilla 

Topping -

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick cold butter, cut into pieces

nutmeg, to taste (optional)

fresh fruit (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Grease 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Tear bread into chunks and place spread-out in the pan.

Mix together eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla, then pour evenly over bread. Cover tightly and store in the fridge several hours or overnight.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt, and some nutmeg if you like. Add in the butter pieces and beat into the dry mixture until the whole thing resembles fine pebbles - or something like that. Don't worry too much if you don't get a perfect "pebble-like" look; mine turned out mushy and more like a giant cookie dough-esque clump, and it still turned out okay. Store your pebble mixture in a Ziploc baggie in the fridge.

When you're ready to bake the casserole, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove the french toast from the fridge and sprinkle on first the fruit (if you're using fruit) and then the pebble mixture over the top. Bake for 45-60 minutes (keep it closer to 45 if you desire a bread pudding-type thing, or an hour if you want it more solid-like). 

Top with butter and drizzle with maple syrup. Then eat.

Pizza Rollups

I LOVE PIZZA. It's just so yummers in my tummers.  So when I saw this little recipe (you can find the original here) I knew I had to try it. You know what's funny? I made this recipe (and was excited about it all day) even though I ate pizza the night before for supper. Oopsies. But hey, it's not unhealthy if it's "homemade" right?!

INGREDIENTS:
1 can of crescent rolls
4 mozzarella cheese sticks, halved
pepperoni (optional)
pizza sauce for dipping (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350. Lay out crescent rolls on a cookie sheet, then top with half a cheese stick and some 'ronis if you want. Roll those little thingers up and pop 'em in the oven. Cook for 10-12 minutes. Then eat.

Easy Apple Tarts

I get random and sudden cravings for homemade apple pie. I can't explain it; it just happens. I like to pretend I'm a superb baker, but sometimes I just don't want to spend quite that much time in the kitchen. That's where these tasty little treats come into play. They're much faster to make than a real apple pie, and much cuter since they're just little guys. And unless I'm surrounded by a bunch of liars, they were good, too! Now that's a bingo. 

INGREDIENTS:

2 cans of crescent rolls

2 apples

1 egg

brown sugar

cinnamon

nutmeg

butter

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lay out crescent rolls (unrolled). Place 3 or 4 thin slices of apple in the middle of each of crescent roll. Sprinkle (or dump, as I chose to do) some brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg on each clump of apples, then add a little slice of butter on top, too. Fold up the crescent rolls around the apple cluster. This part gets a little messy, but by the last one I'm confident you will have created an ingenious method of your own (I believe in you!). Brush the top of the crescent rolls with egg wash, then sprinkle on some more sugar and spice. Bake for about 12 minutes, until puffed and brown. Serve warm.

NOTE: You can also add a slice of brie to each tart before cooking for something a little fancier.

Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Cookies

I’m a baker. I may not be the best (or really, anywhere close), but I often get a craving for some quality Betty Crocker time in the kitchen. Here is one of my latest escapades in the kitchen, one that ended up in the best batch of cookies I have ever made (go me!).

The dough was seriously fantastic. Not too sweet, and astonishingly light and fluffy. I hardly noticed the cream cheese even though they are supposed to be “cheesecake” cookies, but the dough was so fabulous I didn’t mind. I tend to end up altering the original recipe somehow, whether I mean to or not, and this time was no different. I used sea salt, powdered sugar and a mixture of stick and tub butter instead of what I was instructed, but these deviations proved magical! They came out looking a little like moon cookies (yeah, I don't really know what that means either, it just made sense in my head), but I found the shape to be quite endearing (you can flatten them before baking to avoid moon cookie syndrome if you please). 

INGREDIENTS (including my adjustments):
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
10 tablespoons butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
3 ounces cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
 

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 375. Mix together the first four ingredients in a bowl (this will be your “dry mix”). In a second bowl, combine butter, sugar, egg, cream cheese and vanilla with a mixer. Then slowly add in the dry mix until all are blended together. Stir in chocolate chips then sculpt your cookies on a greased cookie sheet. Bake around 10-12 minutes.

NOTE: do NOT overbake these. I’m pretty sure they would taste like rubber. Watch those cookies like a hawk and pull them out when the edges start to get lightly golden brown. Then immediately move them to a cool plate.