French Toast Bread Pudding

Back in October (October? Has it been that long?!?) I had plans to go to a potluck brunch and when I thought about what I wanted to bring I instantly had an idea. French toast bread pudding. I absolutely adore bread pudding and french toast is a relatively obvious breakfast choice so why not combine them?!? It sounded delicious and perfect for a potluck situation when a casserole-like dish would be so much easier to bring and keep fresh-tasting than servings of french toast which would probably stick together, get cold and be limp before anyone could dig in.

I knew I could probably wing it and be okay but I decided to Google "french toast bread pudding" to see if I could find any existing recipes or at least get an idea of what others did. I found a few but none were exactly what I had in mind. Some had the nutmeg and cinnamon I knew would make it taste warm and fall-y but didn't have the maple flavor, others had the maple but didn't use the light, egg-y challah that I knew would be so good in this dish, and so on and so forth. So I took the parts of each I liked and made my own Franken-recipe. I do this a lot. Really. A. Lot.

So here is what I came up with and it is wonderful. Not overly sweet on it's own but puffy and light with a slightly crispy top. Add a smidge of your favorite syrup and it's perfect! Enjoy!
French Toast Bread Pudding
(recipe loosely adapted from Dozen Flours)

1 (1 pound) loaf challah, cut into 1 inch cubes
8 eggs
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups half-and-half cream
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
6 tablespoons maple syrup, divided

Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish. Arrange the bread cubes evenly in the dish. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and 3 tbsp syrup. Pour over bread cubes, cover, and refrigerate overnight. The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a small saucepan, combine butter, brown sugar and maple syrup; heat until bubbling. Pour over bread and egg mixture. Bake in preheated oven, uncovered, for 40 minutes. Bread pudding should be puffed, browned and crisp on top. Serve with maple syrup!

Enjoy!
~Layne

PS: On another, slightly related, note here are some pictures of the lovely ladies that attended that brunch. Kristen and I are both there, can you spot us? Well, if not, the next picture is just us. Don't ask what was so amusing?!?! I couldn't begin to tell you. :-)

Chocolate/Peanut Butter & Cinnamon/Sugar Crescent Rolls

I found the recipe for these crescent rolls on For the Love of Cooking and thought they were a brilliant idea. It's one of those things that's so simple and obvious you think, why didn't I think of that? Well, I didn't think of it but I did take credit for it!

I brought these delicious crescent dessert rolls to Kristen and Justin's Housewarming party last weekend and they were a hit. And they paired wonderfully with all the other delicious food that Kristen and her family prepared for the party. They are great for an afternoon snack or a wonderful dessert or appetizer. Try them! They are too easy and too delicious to pass up!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crescent Rolls
(recipe adapted from For the Love of Cooking)

1 tube of crescent rolls
Peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
Chocolate chips

Preheat the oven according to the package directions. Place the unrolled and separated crescent rolls onto an foil-lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Spread a layer of peanut butter on each triangle and top with chocolate chips. Roll from the bottom of the triangle to the point, ending with the point on the top and center of the roll. Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve while hot.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Crescent Rolls
(recipe adapted from For the Love of Cooking)

1 tube of crescent rolls
Cinnamon-sugar*

Preheat the oven according to the package directions. Place the unrolled and separated crescent rolls onto an foil-lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Sprinkle triangles liberally with cinnamon sugar. Roll from the bottom of the triangle to the point, ending with the point on the top and center of the roll. Sprinkle additional more cinnamon-sugar to the top of the crescent rolls, to taste. Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and serve while hot.

Enjoy!
~Layne

*Make your own cinnamon-sugar by combining 1/4 cup granulated sugar with 4 tsp cinnamon.

Housewarming Party

On Saturday, October 17th, my husband and I threw a housewarming party to break in our new home. The house was open from 2pm until 2am and we had a variety of munchies all day long. Here's a peek at the menu:


Appetizers

stuffed cold shrimp

BLT bites in cherry tomatoes

Greek-style deviled eggs

pepperoni pinwheels

tortilla chips and salsa

cheddar cheeseball with crackers

cucumber-yogurt dip with vegetable dippers

chocolate "crack" cookies

chocolate peanut butter crescent rolls

cinnamon-sugar crescent rolls

cream cheese-Fluff dip with fruit

balsamic-strawberry cups

Dinner on the Grill

hot dogs

hamburgers

Andouille sausages with roasted onions and peppers

Crock Pot Pulled Pork

This meal was another great surprise. I love cooking in my crock pot because it's so gosh-darn easy. And I love the feeling at the end of the day that dinner is done and the whole house smells good and it doesn't feel like I had to do any work to make it happen. I had tried pulled pork before but it was an on-the-bone cut of meat that roasted in the oven for hours, required regular basting, was very difficult to shred and, in the end, wasn't the greatest. I decided to try to find a recipe that included a boneless cut of meat (read: cheaper and easier) that could be cooked in the slow cooker. And voila! This made for an amazing dinner.

I found this recipe and was hoping it would be a winner. It was so easy, used mostly staples that I always had on hand (except for the pork) and was very budget friendly. My husband and I aren't really into spicy foods, so I omitted the tobasco sauce. I also omitted the liquid smoke just because I didn't have any in the house. When my husband came home from work and started drooling immediately, I knew it was a good sign. Because I didn't start this until after lunch, I opted to cook it on the high setting and planned to let it cook for 4 hours. Well, this smelled so good that we lost all control and dug in just shy of 3 1/2 hours in. Even still, the meat was super tender and fell apart when I took two forks to it. I really think this recipe is foolproof and worth a try!

Crock Pot Pulled Pork
(adapted from Prudence Pennywise)

1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. pork chops
1 teaspoon or more tabasco sauce (optional)
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)

Place first 5 ingredients in slow cooker and whisk to combine. Add pork chops and turn to coat. Cook on high for 3-4 hours or on low for 6-8 hours. Remove pork chops and use two forks to shred meat. You can use the sauce that was created as your BBQ sauce by adding the pork back to crock pot and tossing with sauce. We chose to use our favorite BBQ sauce instead but did spoon a few tablespoons of the sauce in the slow cooker over the pulled pork and tossed to combine. This just added more moisture and flavor to the pork. Slap on a bun for a very tasty pulled pork sammy!

Enjoy!
~Layne

PS: I served mine with some yummy sweet potato fries which made for a very tasty dinner combo!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love baking but I don't do much of it. It's a shame and I've been wanting to get into the habit of baking more. For a while I had the hankering to make some wonderful homemade, baked, sweet something. But what? I wanted it to have some semblance of healthfulness. Zucchini bread. Bran muffins. Oatmeal cookies. Something that wasn't all calories and fat and sugar and guilt.

When it comes to healthfulness my biggest challenge is my husband. It's not that he doesn't care about being healthy but to say veggies really aren't his thing would be the understatement of the year. I try to sneak any form of nutrition into what I cook for him but it's definitely difficult to say the least. Brad was pretty wary of the whole vegetables in dessert idea so I postponed the zucchini bread in favor of some oatmeal cookies. He had had some at a party a couple weeks prior and really liked them and I knew I could make something healthy and delicious with them. So I decided to find a recipe and play with it.

First, I wanted to eliminate most of the fat by replacing the 3/4 of the butter in the recipe with apple butter. You can also do this with apple sauce but while I'm not really a fan of applesauce, I love apple butter and had some in the house. The apple butter I used had less that half the calories and NO fat compared to the butter I was using. So I saved 540 calories and 96 grams of fat JUST by making this substitution. (This counts the whole batch of cookies, but still.) Also, because apple butter adds a lot more sweetness than butter would, I also cut out some of the sugar in the original recipe.

I also added some wheat germ to the mix. For those who don't already know, this is a great option to any baked recipe to add nutrition. I add wheat germ to pancakes, waffles, cookies and muffins. It adds nutrition without changing the flavor. One note of caution, though. When you are baking the ratio of dry ingredients to wet ingredients is important. Since it has a dry, powdery consistency, wheat germ may throw this ratio off some. To counteract this, if your mix seems too thick add more of a wet ingredient. For example, in my pancakes I add a splash more milk. In the case of these cookies, the dough was fine so I didn't need to add anything.

One last thing I do in almost all of my baked recipes is switch half of the flour needed from all-purpose to whole wheat. Again, by only switching out half the flour for whole wheat, you can maintain the flavor and texture while still dramatically increasing the nutrition.

So these cookies were absolutely the surprise of the season. I thought they would be good but since I was seriously tweaking the recipe and wasn't sure exactly what the outcome would be. To both of our surprise these were amazing! It must have been the apple butter because there was this depth of flavor that couldn't be explained by anything else. If it's at all possible, these cookies really taste like fall, not too sweet with a great mix of spices and a burst of chocolate every now and then. They didn't puff up the way most cookies do, I think because of the lack of "real" butter . They held the shape they had in their raw form and just got nice and golden. But it didn't really bother us. Really it just added to the rustic, homebaked look of them.
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Crepes of Wrath (originally from Quaker Oats)

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
3/4 cup apple butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp toasted wheat germ
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups dry oatmeal
1 cup milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the flours, wheat germ, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. In large bowl, beat together the butter, apple butter and sugar until light and fluffy, at least 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla and beat well.
3. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat together until just moistened. Stir in your oats, then stir in your chocolate chips.
4. Drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto foil-lined cookie sheets.
5. Bake the cookies 10 to 12 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool for a bit on the cookie sheets before transferring elsewhere to cool. Makes approx. 3 dozen, depending on size of your cookies.

Ok, now I was tagged by Layne to post six things that make me happy. And, since this is a food blog, I've decided that my six things will pertain to food. :o)

Here are the rules: Link to the person who has tagged you. Write down six things that make you happy. Post the rules, tag six others and let them know you did it. Then tell the person when your entry is complete. Six Things That Make Me Happy, in no particular order. . .

1. CHEESE (what more can I say?)
2. Stuff that goes with cheese (like fruits and crackers and veggies and WINE)
3. Big parties with small hors d'oeuvres (there is nothing better than creative finger food)
4. Meat... don't get me wrong, I love vegetarians... I eat vegetarians at almost every meal!
5. Desserts that are way too rich and filling to take more than a couple of bites
6. Last, but not least, sharing food with my friends and family (awh... I know, cheesy, but true)

I'm tagging Layne, Alan, and anyone else who feels like responding. ;o)

Grilled Pesto Chicken

Brad just got his first grill for Christmas so we are grilling a lot lately. And, luckily, he loves it! I like it not only because the grill adds so much flavor on it's own, but also because it's very easy to stay healthy and low fat by grilling. On that note, I adapted this Cooking Light recipe last week and it was wonderful! By far the best thing we've had on the grill.

Grilled Pesto Chicken
(adapted from Cooking Light)

2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1/4 cup basil pesto
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 tsp minced garlic
Juice of one lemon
1 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Combine the first 7 ingredients in a bowl, and stir well. Place the chicken in a baggie and add half of the sauce to the bag and. Seal bag and turn to coat chicken well. Marinade in refrigerator for 30 minutes (longer would be better, up to 4 hours but I didn't have much time).


Prepare grill. Place chicken breasts on grill rack and grill for about 6 minutes per side or until the chicken is done, turning occasionally.


Remove from grill and top with remaining pesto mixture. We served this with grilled corn, sauteed mushrooms and rolls. It was delicious. Very moist chicken and the sauce was so flavorful!

Enjoy!
~Layne