Baked Pork Chops, January 26, 2016

Last night, in keeping with her January comfort food theme, Jeannene made a really yummy dinner of seasoned baked pork chops (she used some kind of packet for the seasoning and it included a bag, so my clean-up was much easier), potatoes au gratin, and very wonderfully garlicky brussels sprouts. I added dessert to the meal, a really easy and good from-scratch mint chocolate cake. I'm not usually much of a baker and I definitely don't often make my cakes from scratch, but this was super simple. Warning, though---it was SUPER rich, requiring small portions and a mug of milk!

Mint Chocolate Cake

2 c. flour

2 c. sugar

1/4 c. cocoa

1 tsp. instant espresso powder (this brings out the chocolatey flavor)

1 c. butter

1 c. water

1 tsp. baking soda

2 eggs

1/2 c. buttermilk

2 tsp. vanilla

10 oz. bag mini peppermint patties (I like York)

Chocolate frosting (I used Duncan Hines' dark chocolate fudge)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, sugar, cocoa, and coffee powder. Mix water and butter together and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add baking soda. Add flour mixture, then eggs, milk, and vanilla. Spoon into a greased, floured 13x9 pan. Bake half an hour, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Top with peppermint patties and bake another couple minutes. Gently spread evenly across the top of the cake. Allow to cool completely, then frost with the chocolate frosting of your choice. 

Green Tomato Bounty! And Rhubarb, Too!

Last week, a friend from church found out I collect Boyd's Bears and invited me to come over and pick some of hers to take home with me. I was bowled over by the kindness of that invite and will be going later this week to see her collection. Today, I received a Facebook message from another church friend, asking if I like fried green tomatoes. I responded that I love them. Her husband is a tremendous gardener and had just brought in a couple dozen green tomatoes---did I want some? Did I ever! Not only did they extend that lovely offer, but they threw in a couple of beautiful ripe tomatoes and a bunch of rhubarb! The best part of all, though, was getting to visit with them, meet their gorgeous German Shepherd, and have a tour of her quilt studio! She is terribly creative and makes beautiful pieces of art in fabric.

Because of their generosity, we get to have fried green tomatoes and rhubarb cake! I told her I would post my tomato recipe before I actually make them, so that she can use it, too. The tomato recipe is my adaptation of the Neelys' recipe.

Fried Green Tomatoes

6 green tomatoes, sliced about 1/4" thick

Salt, pepper, and a smidge of cayenne

3/4 c. flour

3/4 c. buttermilk

Dash hot sauce (I like Louisiana Hot Sauce best, but use your favorite)

3/4 c. cornmeal

1 1/2 c. panko

Oil for frying

Sprinkle tomatoes with salt, pepper, and a little cayenne---or a lot, if you are a big fan of very spicy food. Whisk the buttermilk with the hot sauce. Mix the cornmeal with the panko. Dredge the tomatoes in flour, then dip in buttermilk, and coat in panko. Fry until golden on both sides---make sure your oil is nice and hot before you put the tomatoes in or they will be greasy and soggy. Don't be afraid to get them deep golden. Place on a baking sheet lined with paper towels. Adjust seasonings, if needed. Serves 4-6. 

These are good with remoulade or

Basil Mayonnaise

2 c. fresh basil

1 c. mayonnaise

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tbsp. Dijon mustard

Salt & pepper

Pulse together in a blender or food processor (of chop basil finely and whisk together by hand). Also good on sandwiches. 

My favorite thing to do with rhubarb is to my my friend Shawna's rhubarb dump cake:

Rhubarb Dump Cake

1 lb. rhubarb, cut into 1/4" pieces

1 c. sugar

3 oz. strawberry jello

1 box yellow cake mix

1 c. water

1/4 c. butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13x9 baking pan. Put the rhubarb in the bottom. Sprinkle with sugar, then jello, the cake mix. Pour water and butter over the top. Do not stir! Bake 45 minutes. 

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Sauce

My wife is a huge fan of peanut butter in probably every one of its forms. I'm not so hot on it, but sometimes I do like it, when I am in the right mood. I must have been in the right mood the other night because I made a chocolate-peanut butter sauce for Jeannene's ice cream and ended up thinking it was completely terrific! We had it on Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. Talk about gilding the lily! This would also, I am certain, be pretty amazing just eaten from a spoon. Yum yum! Complete decadence!

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Sauce

4 squares semi-sweet chocolate

14 oz. sweetened, condensed milk

2 tbsp. peanut butter (I think the creamy kind is best here)

2 tbsp. milk

2 tsp. vanilla

Melt all the ingredients but the vanilla together on low heat, stirring the whole time. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Serve warm. 

Chocolate Caramel Bread Pudding

How many of you will complain if I tell you to eat the whole dessert in one day? I thought not many. Seriously, you wouldn't have to eat it all, but it does get a little weepy when left overnight, so it's a great dessert to make when you're having company to dinner. My wife loves bread pudding, but is always disappointed in restaurants, where there are invariably raisins in it. Of those, she is not a fan. So, I like to try different versions of it on her. This one is yummy and definitely different. I got the recipe from my friend, Kristal, who uses cinnamon chips in her version. I was unable to find those when I was getting ready to make this, so I subbed caramel chips and a new dish was born.

Chocolate Caramel Bread Pudding

8 oz. French bread, crust cut off

1/4 c. butter, melted

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. cocoa powder

1/2 c. caramel chips

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 3/4 c. milk

1 c. half & half

50 Hershey Kisses

2 eggs, beaten

1 c. caramel chips

1/2 c. half & half

1 c. powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2 qt. baking dish. Cube enough of the bread to make 6 cups. Toss with butter. Mix sugar and cocoa together. Toss with bread cubes. Add 1/2 c. caramel chips. Put in baking dish. Heat milk and 1 c. half and half just until bubbles form around the edges. Remove from heat. Add Hershey Kisses and stir until melted and incorporated into a smooth mixture. Gradually add to eggs (if you add it too quickly, it will give you chocolate scrambled eggs). Pour over bread cubes in pan. Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool on a wire rack for about an hour. Melt 1 c. caramel chips with 1/2 c. half & half. Add powdered sugar, stirring to incorporate completely. Serve warm with bread pudding. Serves 10-12. 

Making Candy for Team Building

My wife decided to have a team building exercise at the local art studio, you know, the sort of place where you can paint your own pottery or be instructed in how to create a canvas with a reasonable facsimile of a giraffe or dandelions or what have you. It was pretty amusing watching all those business guys trying to figure out what on earth to paint. Jeannene got the main dinner foods from a local restaurant, but asked me to pitch in and make some desserts. I have several go-to candy recipes, treats I've been making at Christmas for years, so I decided to make a few of those. I am also rather vain about my key lime pie, which I learned to make after discovering that it's near-impossible to find proper key lime pie in Ohio. It's one of my favorite desserts and nothing disappoints me more than ordering it in a restaurant and being served a bright green monstrosity that was clearly made with Jello included or a frozen, white, frothy thing that features Cool Whip and is scarcely tart at all. A proper key lime pie will be custardy, buttery yellow, and quite tart. I like mine with no topping at all, unless perhaps a little bit of unsweetened, real whipped cream to cut the sweet of it. I'm not opposed at all to a lime meringue pie. Just don't call it key lime pie. Rant over.

Key Lime Pie

4 egg yolks (I like to use the whites for pavlova or meringues)

1 can sweetened, condensed milk

3-4 oz. key lime juice (bottled is acceptable---I like Nellie & Joe's)

1 graham crust (I seldom make mine, although I do think homemade is better)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix egg yolks with sweetened condensed milk until it turns a beautiful light yellow. Gradually add a little juice at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition. If you dump it all in at once, it becomes a real pain in the neck to get incorporated. Why, yes, I did learn this the hard way. Pour it all into the crust. Place it on a baking sheet (in case it slops over) and bake 10 minutes, checking in after about 8 minutes to make sure the edges aren't burning. Allow to cool completely, then cover and chill at least 4 hours before serving. 

Until my almost-grandma, Mary,  couldn't physically do it any longer, she used to set about baking for Christmas like nobody's business. I would arrive at her sweet little blue house in the holler and there would be planning sessions for what we would bake that year. One of her favorites from her younger years was chocolate rum balls and they became a favorite of mine, as well. My second-grandma, Gen, loved these so much that she submitted the recipe for the Dayton Women's Club cookbook and gave me a copy as a surprise for Christmas that year. My grandmom took some I had made along to Vermont one Christmas. They were destined for ham radio buddies at a stop along the way, in Fredonia, NY, where my grandies always overnighted on their way to spend the holiday with my auntie. Jean ate so many that Christmas that she made herself sick, but asked for more the following year. You have been warned.

Chocolate Rum Balls

1 c. chopped pecans (a mini food processor does this perfectly; you can also buy pecan chips)

1 c. Oreo crumbs (I used to be able to find these boxed, but they have vanished from the shelves in recent years. You can buy the more expensive cookies like the Bremner chocolate wafers, but it's not that hard to empty Oreos and pulverize the chocolate part in a food processor or with a rolling pin. I have recently begun to wonder if perhaps the insides might not be interesting in truffles or something else.)

1 c. powdered sugar

1 1/2 tbsp. light Karo syrup (use any brand you like---I use the term generically to mean corn syrup, much like Southerners use "Coke.")

1/4 c. light rum (or any liqueur you fancy, really. Cinnamon whiskey might be interesting.)

Granulated sugar for rolling

Mix everything but the rolling sugar. Shape into small balls (walnut-sized). Roll in sugar. makes 2-3 dozen. 

I'm a big fan of truffles and the cappuccino truffles are some of the yummiest I've ever had. They're not much to look at, as they are seldom perfectly round and tend to be a bit misshapen, but they are amazingly rich and wonderful. I make them a bit on the smaller side, not nearly as big as, say, a Godiva truffle, because they are so very sweet. If you want bigger truffles, by all means, make them bigger! These are a little time consuming because they have to chill and be rolled. They are also terribly messy. Make them anyway. They are worth it.

Cappuccino Truffles

12 oz. milk chocolate chips (you can make espresso truffles by using bittersweet chips)

6 tbsp. butter, cut into 6 pieces

3 tbsp. heavy cream

1 1/2 tbsp. instant espresso powder (I might try Cafe Bustelo sometime for cortadito truffles, but I usually use Medaglia d'Oro)
Cocoa powder for rolling

Melt the ingredients together in a microwave safe bowl on high/full power for about a minute, until the chocolate & butter are almost melted. Stir until smooth. Freeze for 1 hour. Shape into small balls, rounding them in the palms of your hands and wiping/washing hands frequently to maintain traction. Roll in cocoa & keep refrigerated until you're ready to serve them.

My granddaddy, Clyde, loved peanut brittle, so from the time I was a tiny girl, he got a box of peanut brittle from me for Christmas. When I was in my 30s, I started toying with the idea of making it from scratch for him instead of buying it. I was intimidated by making it, though. I wish I'd known then how easy it is. I didn't, though, so I waited and waited and kept buying him peanut brittle. The last Christmas he was alive (although I didn't know it was his last at the time), I finally worked up my nerve and made a batch for him. He loved it and I have now started making it for my stepdad at Christmas and for his birthday. Jeannene loves it, too. This year, I tried just a smidge more baking soda than usual and it really made it fantastic. 

Peanut Brittle

2 c. sugar

A little baking soda on the end of a spoon (the more you use, the fluffier your brittle will be)

1 c. peanuts

Grease a baking sheet well and have it by the stove. Have everything, in fact, measured and ready by the stove. Get a tall saucepan with a heavy bottom nice & hot (but not too hot or you'll scorch your sugar) over medium-high heat. Pour in the sugar and stir constantly, stirring out all the lumps, until the sugar has just gone completely to syrup. If you're not used to this process, it can be worrisome, as the sugar gets all clumpy and hard before going liquid. It will look kind of like the ice is breaking up in spring for awhile there. Keep stirring. While you are stirring, you should also be brushing down the sides of the pan with a basting brush. If you don't, it won't ruin everything, though. It will, however, ruin everything if you allow your sugar to scorch. If it starts looking really dark or smelling burned, you could be in trouble, so keep a very close eye on it and act quickly in everything. Also, be very, very careful. Molten sugar hurts like mad when it touches your skin and it can bubble up unexpectedly. The second the sugar has gone to syrup, dump in the soda and the nuts & stir very, very quickly to incorporate before pouring onto the prepared baking sheet and spreading, working very quickly, into an even layer. Then, you just have to let it cool before breaking it into whatever size slabs you like. 

Christmas Breakfast

When I was growing up, we would often make a Christmas Eve run to Young's Dairy for pecan sticky rolls to have in the morning. My mom and I would also make eggs and a basil potato pancake to complement the sweetness of the rolls and stocking candy we inevitably got into along with our stocking oranges. One of my favorite Christmas breakfasts, at my almost-grandma's house in St. Petersburg, Florida, included orange juice squeezed that morning from fruit we picked in her back yard.

As a young woman, I continued to spend Christmas with my mom, stepdad, and almost-grandma. My almost-grandma and my mom made stollen every year, a tradition from my almost-grandma's side of the family. We also had eggs & the potato pancake.

Since I began spending Christmases at home with Jeannene, 13 Christmases now, we've had a breakfast casserole I can pop in the crockpot before bed on Christmas Eve. We awake with breakfast already prepared and all I have to do is make our sweet. I've done cinnamon coffee cake, cheater sweet rolls, and stollen. But ever since I came across Paula Deen's recipe for gorilla bread and tried it, that has been our go-to sweet treat Christmas morning. If you like monkey bread (another of my almost-grandma's favorites), this is the same thing, amped up with cream cheese. Decadent, for certain! The first time I made it, Jeannene said, "That is a food group of its own. And it is elevated above all food groups."

Christmas Crockpot Breakfast

32 oz. frozen hash browns

1 lb ham (diced) or sausage (browned)

1 onion, diced (I just threw in a handful of minced, dried onion this year and it was great)

1 green pepper, diced (optional)

2 c. shredded cheddar

12 eggs

1 c. milk

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

Layer first 5 ingredients in a crockpot. Beat eggs with milk & seasonings. Pour over layers in crockpot. Cook about 10 hours on low. 

Gorilla Bread

1/2 c. sugar

3 tsp. cinnamon

1 stick butter

1 c. brown sugar

8 oz. cream cheese, cut into 20 cubes

2 (10 count each) tubes whomp biscuits (as Jill Conner Browne describes them, on account of you whomp 'em against the counter to open 'em)

1 1/2 c. chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray. Mix the cinnamon & white sugar. Melt the butter with the brown sugar over low heat. Sprinkle each biscuit with 1/2 tsp. cinnamon sugar and then seal a cube of cream cheese in each. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the nuts into the Bundt pan. Add half the biscuits. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and pour half the butter-brown sugar mixture over the top. Repeat, starting & ending with nuts. Bake half an hour to 45 minutes. Cool 5 minutes before inverting into a plate. Serves 12-15.