Poached Grilled Cheese

Simple but delicious. Open-faced grilled cheese sandwich with a poached egg, topped with dill.

Butter Pecan Cake

Ingredients

Cake

• 1¼ cup butter, softened, divided
• 2 cups chopped pecans
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup milk

Frosting

• 2 pkgs (8 oz each) cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 pkg (2 lbs) confectioners’ sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 to 3 Tb milk, as necessary
• extra chopped pecans for garnish, optional

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour three 9″ round cake pans.
2. In a medium heavy skillet, melt ¼ butter over medium heat. Add pecans; cook until toasted and fragrant, about 4 minutes. Spread across sheet of foil to cool.
3. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk to combine; set aside.
4. In a separate large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.
5. Add flour mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with the flour (flour in 3 parts, milk in 2). Fold in toasted pecans.
6. Divide between cake pans and bake 25-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack before removing from pans. Cool completely.
7. FOR FROSTING: In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla. Beat in enough milk, as necessary, to achieve spreading consistency. Frost cake. Store in refrigerator.

Notes

You may not need to add any milk to the frosting if it is already soft enough.
NOTE: The cake batter itself seems to be based off the old-fashioned 1-2-3-4 cake (1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs). That is if you don’t count the extra ¼ cup of butter used to toast the nuts. I wasn’t completely impressed with it, but I didn’t think it was bad (a tad dry). I will say though, if you have a favorite white or yellow cake recipe, you should use that instead and then follow the same step for making the toasted butter pecans, add them in, and absolutely use this frosting recipe. If you want to use your own TWO layer recipe instead of a three, then you’ll need to use less pecans, maybe just 1¼ cups would be perfect.

No Bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars

Ingredients

For the Cookie Dough:
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cup mini chocolate chip morsels
For the frosting:
• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat softened butter with brown sugar until fully combined. Add vanilla and peanut butter, beat until fluffy. Add flour and sweetened condensed milk. Beat until everything is blended well. Fold in the mini chocolate chip morsels.
2. Press into an 8inx8in baking dish.
3. In a microwave safe, medium sized bowl, add peanut butter and chocolate chips for the frosting. Melt for one minute. Stir and spread over the cookie dough.
4. Refrigerate for 3 hours (or overnight). Cut into bite sized pieces. Store in a covered container for up to a week.

Heart Attack Brownies

This weekend  I made heart attack brownies. Cookie dough, candy bars, Oreos, and brownies all in one. I'm not sure I've ever eaten anything like it. I took it to work today and my staff fell into a deep sugar coma.

Peanut Butter Bacon Pie

This week we watching the American Baking Competition on TV and thought we'd try our hand at Francine's Chocolate Peanut Butter Bacon Pie.

We used the recipe we found online but it proved to be full of holes and inaccurate information. We search several different discussion pages and finally found the correct recipe but we had already messed up it up with the "official" recipe that was posted on the TV website.  What we ended up with was decent but it definitely could have been better.  It looks a lot better than it tasted. One of these days we'll try it again and adjust it more to our liking.

How To Make Waffles from Scratch

Today I ran out of Bisquick and we had a craving for waffles, so what was I supposed to do?  Some would say run to the grocery store, but not me...I made them from scratch here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups warm milk
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and then stir in the milk, butter, and vanilla. Next add the salt, flour, baking powder, and sugar.
2. Ladle the batter into a preheated waffle iron.  Cook until golden brown.

This recipe made about 5-6 waffles.

Egg Salad Sandwiches

Me: "Jason, what do you want for lunch?"
Husband: "Umm, you know, an egg salad sandwich sounds pretty good."
Me: "...."

Yep, it's a first.  I have never made an egg salad sandwich.  Last week when I was in Bellevue, I had two bites of one and couldn't finish it.  It was riddled with overpowering onions and way too much mayo. Growing up we never ate them, so I really had nothing to go off of...

Me: "Umm, what is in an egg salad sandwich exactly?"
Husband: "Mayo, mustard, and eggs."
Me: "Oh..."

So I took off to the kitchen to try my hand at this feat.  I boiled 6 eggs until the yolks were hard and combined them with mustard and mayo.  It was missing something, or rather a lot of things.  It was just TOO plain..  So I fancied it up a bit...or rather a lot...

Egg Salad Sandwiches

Ingredients:

• 6 hard boiled eggs
• 1 cup Mayonaise
• teaspoon of dill weed
• teaspoon of garlic salt
• fresh ground pepper (to your liking)
• handful of dried onion flakes (approx. 1/8 cup)
• small squirt (about 1 tablespoon) yellow mustard
• Wheat bread

Directions:

1. In a bowl, gently mix all ingredients, then apply to bread.

Very difficult recipe...I know.  This recipe yields about 4-5 sandwiches, depending on how much egg salad you want on your bread.

Glad it's only taken me 27 years to accomplish this great task...