Open Source Cook

This is one of those bread recipes that Jesse gets cravings for every so often. It’s kind of like a chocolate chip cookie, but better for you since it’s a bread and not a cookie. It’s actually really easy to make and there are a lot of times that I don’t measure the chocolate chips.

I’ve never tried it (my bread machine died and we haven’t replaced it yet), but I’ve been tempted to try this recipe with something other than chocolate chips. For instance, using butterscotch chips or white chocolate chips instead. Jesse would hurt me if I tried….just try taking away his chocolate….so I haven’t had the chance yet.

Ingredients:
1-1/2 tsp or 1 pkg
4 cups bread flour
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp softened butter or margarine
1 egg
1-1/4 cup warm milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Place all ingredients in the pan of the bread machine, except only use 3 cups of the flour, in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select White Bread cycle; press Start.
2. If your machine has a Fruit setting, add chocolate chips at the signal as well as the remaining flour, or about 5 minutes before the kneading cycle has finished.

This is a very peanut buttery bread. Jesse remarked that it was really rich. The original recipe called for Reese peanut butter cups, but I changed them to the Reese pieces because it added more peanut butter than was needed. In fact, I’m tempted to take out the Reese pieces and just use chocolate chips. Plus, the cups that are buried in the bread are not that many and it is a surprise when you bite into one.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups brown sugar
1/3 cup chunky peanut butter
1 cup milk
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
Reeses Pieces Candy

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Generously grease bottoms only of 3 small aluminum-foil loaf pans (5 3/4×3 1/4×2 in) or 1 regular loaf pan. Mix all ingredients except candies; beat with spoon 30 seconds.
2. Divide batter evenly among pans. Sprinkle candies randomly on batter in each pan, pushing candies halfway into batter. Coarsely chop remaining candies; sprinkle one-third of chopped candies over batter in each pan.
3. Bake 45 to 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans to wire rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour.

Substitution:  A 9×5x3-inch loaf pan can be used instead of the 3 small pans. Generously grease just the bottom of the pan. Prepare as batter as directed–except pour all of the batter into the pan. Place 15 candies randomly on batter, pushing candies halfway into batter. Coarsely chop remaining candies; sprinkle over batter. Bake as directed.

Nutritional Info: Calories: 150 (Calories from Fat 55); Fat: 6g (Saturated Fat 2g); Cholesterol: 20mg; Sodium: 115mg; Carbohydrates: 30g; Fiber: 1g; Protein: 4g
Daily Values: Vitamin A 0%; Vitamin C 0%; Calcium 4%; Iron 4%
Exchanges: 1 Starch; 1-1/2 Fat

I actually picked this recipe up from my friend Nikki. So to start it off, I’m going to give you her words…

These are easy to make (even in bulk) and freeze well. To freeze, I typically bake them 3/4 of the way and then freeze them on the tray Once froze, I transfer them to a ziploc bag. To reheat, I thaw in the fridge overnight and reheat in the oven at 400 degrees for 10 minutes.

For the filling, we make all kinds of variations of these. I use portobella, zucchini, and spinach for my vegetarian sister; pepperoni, olive, and mushroom pizza calzones for us; and sometimes I even follow the recipe I almost always add fresh basil and extra veggies to make it a meal — just sauté them ahead of time to cook out the water or else the calzones become soggy when they cook. Taryn loves them too! To make them even faster, I often swap out fresh spinach for frozen, chopped, heat it in the microwave, and squeeze the water out. Also, Kirkland canned chicken breast or roaster chickens work well for the filling instead of having to cook the chicken ahead of time.

I throw whatever I have on hand in the calzones: button or portobello mushrooms (sautéed first), onions(sautéed first), basil, chicken sausage, broccoli (precooked), zucchini, etc. For pizza-style calzones or Stromboli (one log w/ the pizza dough), I put the sauce inside and cut a little vent in the top.

When I use spinach in this recipe or add it to something like lasagna, I get the small box of frozen, chopped spinach from the freezer section and thaw it in my microwave for a few minutes. Once it comes out, I let it cool and then squeeze all of the water out by dumping the spinach into 4-6 paper towels and squeezing it out. I usually double the calzone recipe since they freeze well & I use one box of spinach. That way it doesn’t overpower the recipe and I have room for other veggies that we like.

I definitely do not recommend getting the generic store brand of refrigerated pizza dough.  It may be cheaper than the Pillsbury stuff, but it tends to be a lot saltier and it takes away from the dish.

As for the ingredients, we’ve tried a few various and they’ve all came out pretty good in my opinion.  Jesse isn’t crazy about the spinach (neither of us are fans of it), but I didn’t think it was that bad.  I did do one minor adjustment.  Instead of using shredded cheese, I got some sliced cheese instead.  I found it was a little easier to use and it was spread more evenly among the inner ingredients.  Plus I like cheese and it added more cheese without allowing me to go nuts with it.

Overall, I really like this recipe and it’s easy to improvise with ingredients I already have in the house.  Although, I do want to find a good pizza dough recipe so I don’t have to rely on the refrigerated kind, but that’s going to take some work.

Ingredients:
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 minced garlic clove
2 cups thinly sliced spinach leaves
1-1/4 cup (5oz) shredded sharp provolone cheese
1 cup (5oz) cooked and shredded chicken
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp cornmeal
1 (13.8oz) can refrigerated pizza dough
1 jar marinara sauce (for dipping)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Combine salt, pepper, and garlic in a large bowl. Add spinach, cheese, and chicken. Toss gently to combine.
3. Brush oil over baking sheet.  Unroll the dough onto prepared baking sheet; cut into 6 equal portions. Cover with a towel and let rest 5 minutes.
4. Pat each dough section into a 6″x5″ rectangle. Spoon 2/3 cup of the mixture into the center of each dough portion. Fold one corner of each dough portion over to form a triangle. Press edges together with fingers to seal.
5. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 minutes until golden.* If planning to freeze, cook 8-10 minutes and then reheat for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.
6. Let cool for 10-15 minutes and serve with a small bowl of marinara for dipping.

Nutritional Info:
345 calories
11.7g of fat
40.1g of carbohydrates
4.8g of fiber

Jesse wanted to grill today and we’re starting to get bored with chicken, so we decided to do pork. While looking for some grillable pork recipes, I stumbled across this one over at Allrecipes. The recipe was created by Andrea Bolden, but I’m going to make a few changes.

The one thing I initially missed when I was first wrapping these was that you have to make sure you wait until AFTER you’ve included the seasoning.  I started wrapping the first one when I realized “where’s the soy sauce?”

One major change both Jesse and I agree on is that something sweet needs to be added and the broccoli needs to go.  I don’t know if I didn’t put in enough peppers (since I never measure those) or what, but the pork loin was a little bland.  Since I’m not usually a fan of pork to begin with, to me, this wasn’t all that great.  I see potential though.  Ian started eating it once I added honey, so I’m thinking next time around I’m going to add some honey to the soy sauce and sesame oil.  How much, I’m not sure yet.

Ingredients:
1 pound pork tenderloin, sliced
2 cups sliced carrots
1 (8oz) can sliced water chestnuts, drained
1 medium green pepper, julienned
2 green onions, sliced
1/4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
4 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp ground ginger
Hot cooked rice

Directions:

1. Divide pork, broccoli, carrots, water chestnuts, green pepper and onions evenly among four pieces of double-layered heavy-duty foil, but do not fold close. Combine the soy sauce, sesame oil and ginger; drizzle over pork and vegetables. Fold foil around filling and seal tightly.
2. Grill, covered, over medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until vegetables are tender and pork is no longer pink. Serve with rice if desired.

Nutritional Analysis: One serving (1 packet, calculated without rice) equals 265 calories, 9 g fat (2 g saturated fat), 67 mg cholesterol, 621 mg sodium, 19 g carbohydrate, 7 g fiber, 27 g protein. Diabetic Exchanges: 3 lean meat, 2 vegetable, 1/2 starch.

Guess what I found….a recipe to make brownies from scratch and I had all the ingredients on hand. This is good news and bad news. The good news: I can make brownies whenever I want. I always have these ingredients on hand at home (well, minus the marshmallows and nuts). The bad news: I can make brownies whenever I want.

Since I found the recipe, I decided to make some rocky road brownies. Jesse had been going on and on about rocky road brownies, ice cream, etc all day, so I figured why not. I did make a few changes to the recipe. For instance, I doubled the amount of chocolate chips that were melted because it just didn’t seem like enough to me. However, since I doubled the chocolate, I didn’t mess with the flour and this caused it to be a little more fudgy in the middle than what I had intended. So I doubled the amount of flour as well. The fudgy center wasn’t really a bad thing, but it did change the texture a little. Regardless of this, the brownies came out really good. They were so good, that the majority of them were gone before I could get a picture of them. So this is what you get.

The one thing I will caution you about this recipe is the chocolate chips and marshmallows on top.  Too many chocolate chips is actually a bad thing for this recipe because it’ll drown out the marshmallows.  So don’t go nuts adding the chips.  Jesse doesn’t think the chips on top were needed at all, so use your own judgment on this.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup chocolate chips
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 marshmallows

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Grease an 8×8 baking pan; set aside. In a medium saucepan melt butter and 1/2 cup chocolate chips over low heat. Remove from heat. Stir in eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, beat lightly just till combined. Stir in flour and nuts.
3. Spread batter in prepared baking pan. Bake in oven for 30 minutes.
4. Immediately sprinkle 1/4 cup chocolate chips and 1/2 cup marshmallows evenly over brownies. Bake an additional 3 minutes or until marshmallows are just beginning to brown and chocolate is melted.

I love anything mint, so what better brownie to make than one that incorporated york peppermint patties?

The first thing I will say about this is you need to refrigerate the York peppermint patties at least 24 hours before making this. Cutting them up was a little interesting and they all stuck together so it made sprinkling them over the top a little difficult.

When I first made these brownies (before adding the York Peppermint patties), we found that the brownies were a little too fudgy so I doubled the flour amount.  Now that I had doubled the flour amount, the brownies came out a little too cake like.  So now I’m thinking that while I do need to increase the flour amount, I didn’t need to increase it as much as I did.  The original recipe had 3/4 cups, this time around I used 1-1/2 cups, so I’m thinking that 1 cup of flour will do the trick.

Another problem we came across was the york peppermint patties.  Sprinkling them on top and then baking the brownies really didn’t work all that well.  It worked, but the patties ended up getting hard and they were’nt really that chewy.  So next time, I’m planning on mixing the patties straight into the batter and baking that way.  If that doesn’t work, then I’m going to take a step from the Rocky Road Brownies and sprinkle them on top and then bake them for 3-5 mintues after the brownies have had a chance to bake.  I may make these again this week to see if this works, but I’m not sure yet.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup chocolate chips
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cups all-purpose flour
8oz of York Peppermint Patties, chopped into pieces - chilled

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8×8 baking pan; set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan melt butter and 1/2 cup chocolate chips over low heat. Remove from heat. Stir in eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, beat lightly just till combined. Stir in flour.
3. Spread batter in prepared baking pan.  Sprinkle top of batter with chopped up York Peppermint patties
4. Bake in oven for 30 minutes.

I finally bought a funnel cake pan and I couldn’t wait to use it. When an opportunity came up to use it, I couldn’t pass it up. This recipe came from Oma Rollison over at Allrecipes.

The cake actually came out pretty good and I like how easy it was to flip out of the pan.  Everyone at my mom’s group seemed to like it and the only critique I heard about it was that it seemed like it would be good heated up and spread with butter.  It came off tasting more like a banana bread than a cake, which I could definitely see.

One thing I did mess with, is I made this recipe as muffins as well for the kids, but instead of adding the sour cream, I used chocolate chips and made chocolate chip banana muffins.  I figured the kids would like that more than just straight bananas, but the odd things was, the moms liked the muffins more than the cake.  So I may try this recipe again, but getting rid of the sour cream and adding the chocolate chips to see if that works out.  So you may see a recipe like that sooner or later.

One thing I would change about this is the confectioner’s sugar on top.  If you’re planning on making this in order to take somewhere, the powdered sugar really doesn’t transports well.  When I had taken the tin foil off at our gathering, all of the powdered sugar was gone and it left just the cake.  Since there wasn’t any icing, it was just a banana bread loaf.  So, that’s why I’m including the powdered sugar icing below.  I would drizzle a little of that over the cake instead of just sprinkling it on.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening
1-1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/4 cups mashed ripe bananas
2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
confectioners’ sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a mixing bowl, cream the shortening and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Blend in vanilla. Add bananas and mix well.
3. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to the creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, stirring just until combined. Stir in walnuts.
4. Pour into a greased and floured 10-in. fluted tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50 minutes or until cake tests done.
5. Cool 10 minutes in pan before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.