Parmesan Drumsticks and Sweet Potato Fries

This was quite the delicious meal. The Parmesan Drumsticks were new and came from Saving Dinner. The Sweet Potato Fries we have made before. They are from sparkpeople.com. I always forget that and search allrecipes first, can't find them and wonder where I found them. I had to go back to an old calendar/menu to find out where they were from. Problem no more. Now they are here. Both were delicious, and I think every child loved them - the baby didn't eat the chicken, but he LOVES the sweet potato fries.

See what did I tell you, he loves those fries. Had seconds and thirds, but you can't see how tasty the chicken looked there (it actually tasted just as good.) So here is a picture of my plate.


Parmesan Chicken

Ingredients

• 1 cup Parmesan cheese (I debated the powdery stuff or real grated, bought both, and in the end opted for the powdery stuff thinking it would make a better crust. I may try real next time though.)
  
• 1 Tablespoon oregano
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• salt and pepper to taste - I used about 1/2 tsp. each
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 12 chicken drumsticks, no skin

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
In a bowl, combine Parmesan cheese, oregano, paprika, salt and pepper.
Line shallow baking pan with foil. (I used a cookie sheet.)
In a small frying pan, melt butter and oil together. Dip each drumstick in the butter mix, then in the cheese mix, and place on the foil-lined pan.
Bake for 1 hour or until chicken is completely cooked. (I think I took mine out at about 55 minutes because they were done.)


Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients

• 2 medium sweet potatoes, washed and cut (lengthwise) into strips (1/3 inch on each side)
  
• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
  
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  

Directions:

1. Line cookie sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.

2. Preheat oven to 450° F.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except potatoes. Mix to evenly combine, then add the potatoes and mix to coat.

4. Place potato strips on lined cookie sheet (allow space between individual strips for even cooking). I never have space because I've always done 2 medium to large sweet potatoes. I ought to use 2 sheets, but it doesn't seem to help them get crispy

5. Bake for 15 minutes (or until potatoes become crispy) turning strips every 5 to 7 minutes (or as needed). I've never had them get crispy, and I've baked them for longer time, and then stuck them under the broiler. If you do that, just keep and eye on them or they may suddenly burn.

chocolate cream cheese brownies

OK, so I promised my piano students a treat if they met their practice goal each week of the month, and the person who had the most practice minutes could get double treat - trying to motivate them to practice without it being totally their mom's job. I was hoping it would work well since I have 3 boys 10-11 years old. Working on a bit of healthy competition linked to their stomachs. Anyway, it didn't work as well as I hoped, but it did leave me without brownies on the day of lessons so I grabbed the old Betty crocker cookbook and picked pretty much the first brownie recipe. Wow, were they good. I think I ended up eating half of them. (OK, probably not really since all of my boys got one, and my students got one, plus one person got 2, but still, I had too many. Then I had to run 6 miles today.) Good thing I'm only making treats once a month for lessons.

Ingredients

• 1 6-ounce package (1 cup) semisweet chocolate pieces
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (originally walnuts, but I had pecans.)
• 1 3 oz. package of cream cheese, softened
• 1 beaten egg

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.
Grease and lightly flour an 8X8X2 inch baking pan. Melt chocolate and butter; cool. Stir together flour, baking powder, adn 1/4 teaspoon salt. In a mixer bowl beat 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla; gradually add 3/4 cup of the sugar. Continue beating eggs till thick and lemon colored. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture; beat till well combined. Stir in chocolate mixture; stir in nuts. Beat cheese and remaining 1/4 cup sugar till fluffy. Stir in remaining egg and 1/2 teaspoon valnilla. Spread half of the chocolate mixtuer in pan. Pour cheese mixture over; top with remaining chocolate mixture. Swirl layers to marble if desired. Bake 45 minutes. Cool. Cut into bars (makes 16)

This chocolate mixture was quite thick. Don't know if I should have used other chocolate (I just used chips) but it made for a thick mix. It was kind of hard to spread, but doable on the bottom of the pan. The cheese mix was really runny, so spreading the chocolate on top of that was pretty messy. It needed to be swirled to hide the mess. I wondered about it and hoped they would turn out. They did. Wonderful brownies.

rolls/ cinnamon rolls

These are delicious!! They make wonderful rolls as well as wonderful cinnamon rolls. No picture yet, but I hope to make these in the next couple of weeks and post a picture.

Ingredients

• 1 package (2 1/3 tsp) yeast
• 1 Tablespoon Sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 eggs well beaten
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups flour

Directions:
Dissolve yeast in 1/4 cup warm water with 1 Tablespoon sugar. Melt butter and add milk -- cool to lukewarm. Add yeast mixture and stir. Add eggs, salt and sugar. Add flour and mix well. If too sticky add more flour about 1/2 cup at a time, but not more than 1 cup. This is a pretty sticky bread dough. Lightly cover with a thin sprinkle of flour, cover with towel and let rise 4-6 hours.
Roll 1/2 of the dough out in a circle 1/8" thick. Spread melted butter (1/2 cube per batch) and cut in pie fashion to 12 pieces. Roll up each piece lightly from large end to small end to form a croissant. Place on greased cookie sheet (or use parchment paper) Cover and let rise 4-6 hours. Bake at 375 for 8 to 10 minutes - until golden brown. Brush with melted butter.

You can cool the milk mixture by placing the pan in cold water. You can freeze the rolls after roll out stage before second rise. Then thaw about 4 hours and bake as normal.

Make cinnamon rolls by rolling out the dough and sprinkling with cinnamon, sugar, raisins and pecans. Then roll up and slice into 1 in slices and put on baking sheet. Let rise and bake just as the rolls.

Lion House rolls

OK, we used the recipe we found for lion house rolls and I was totally unimpressed. I'm sure we overcooked them because they were dryish, but I also was unimpressed with the flavor. I'm curious to try it again because DH made it this time so I'm not sure if he did something different, but since the flavor wasn't there, I'm not sure I will. It did leave me wanting to make the recipe for rolls my mom gave me but I haven't found time to do it yet. I will publish that next though once I go find it. I got the recipe at realmomkitchen. I've just copied and pasted since DH made the rolls there is no commentary. I did have fun shaping them. She has a good link for shaping rolls here.

Ingredients

• 2 cups warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
• 2/3 cup nonfat dry milk (instant or non-instant)
• 2 tablespoons dry yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/3 cup butter, shortening, or margarine (I use canola oil)
• 1 egg
• 5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour, or bread flour

Directions:

In large bowl or electric mixer, combine water and yeast; let sit 5 minutes. Add dry milk yeast, then sugar, salt, butter, egg, and 2 cups flour. Mix on low speed until ingredients are wet, then for 2 minutes at medium speed. Add 2 cups flour; mix on low speed until ingredients are wet, then for 2 minutes at medium speed. (Dough will be getting stiff and remaining flour may need to be mixed in by hand). Add about ½ cup flour and mix again, by hand or mixer. Dough should be soft, not overly sticky, and not stiff (It is not necessary to use the entire amount of flour).
Scrape dough off sides of bowl and pour about one tablespoon of vegetable oil all around sides of bowl. Turn dough over in bowl so it is covered with oil. (This helps prevent dough from drying out). Cover with plastic and allow to rise in warm place until double in size, about 45 minutes.
Scrape dough out onto floured board. Shape as desired. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and allow to rise until double in size, about 1 to 1 ½ hours. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, or until light to medium golden brown. Brush tops of rolls with melted butter. Makes 2 dozen rolls.

Helpful Tips for Making Rolls

Always add flour gradually and keep dough as soft as you can handle. A soft dough will produce a lighter roll.
It is not necessary to use the entire amount of flour called for in the recipe—add only enough flour to make dough manageable.

Sausage, apple and cranberry stuffing

This is the stuffing we made for thanksgiving. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com. We omitted the liver. We also didn't cook it in a bird because we had our bird on Friday and Ham on Thanksgiving so it ended up a little bit dry. It was actually better the second day. It was delicious. If we make this again though, I would add a bit more liquid to make up for not cooking it in the bird.


Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups cubed whole wheat bread
• 3 3/4 cups cubed white bread
• 1 pound ground turkey sausage
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3/4 cup chopped celery
• 2 1/2 teaspoons dried sage
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried rosemary
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 Golden Delicious apple, cored and chopped
• 3/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1/3 cup minced fresh parsley
• 3/4 cup turkey stock
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degree F (175 degree C). Spread the white and whole wheat bread cubes in a single layer on a large baking sheet. Bake for 5 to 7 minutes in the preheated oven, or until evenly toasted. Transfer toasted bread cubes to a large bowl.
2. In a large skillet, cook the sausage and onions over medium heat, stirring and breaking up the lumps until evenly browned. Add the celery, sage, rosemary, and thyme; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes to blend flavors.
3. Pour sausage mixture over bread in bowl. Mix in chopped apples, dried cranberries, and parsley. Drizzle with turkey stock and melted butter, and mix lightly. Spoon into turkey to loosely fill. (We baked it at 350 in a 9X13 pan)
   

Sweet potato pie

First time I've ever made sweet potato pie and it was really good. Makes me want to make it again. You can see in my picture that I didn't take the foil off my pie before putting on the marshmallows (in fact I didn't even write it in the instructions.) My crust was already starting to brown too much. I think for next time I would cover the crust for the first 30 minutes, then take off the cover when adding the marshmallows to avoid the sticking problem I had.  This is from my whole grain cooking book - hence the barley and wheat flour crust.  Feel free to use your own recipe crust, but this was good.



Crust ingredients:

• 2/3 cup (2 3/4 oz) whole barley flour
• 1/3 cup (1 1/4 oz) whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 Tablespoon buttermilk powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter
• 4 to 5 Tablespoons cold orange juice. (3 were actually too many for me.)

Filling ingredients:

• 2 medium sweet potatoes or yams (1 lb) peeled and cut into chunks.
• 1/4 cup cranberry or apple juice
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup half and half
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
  
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 cup dried sweetened pineapple chunks
• 1/2 cup crystallized ginger

Topping

• 2 cups miniature marshmallows

Garnish

• 1 cup pecan halves
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• scant 1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Crust
Whisk together the flours, buttermilk powder, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Cut butter into small cubes and work into dry ingredients. Sprinkle in orange juice a tablespoon at a time continuing to mix until dough is cohesive. (I started with 3 Tablespoons and it was too much. I had to add more flour.)
Shape dough into a disk. Roll on its edge along a floured work surface to smooth the edges out. Pat the disk till it's about 1 inch thick, wrap in plastic and refgrigerate overnight or for up to 3 days.
30 min before assembling the pie, remove the dough from the fridge. Allow it to warm a bit and get flexible, 15 to 20 min.
Flour your work surface and roll the dough into a 12 inch circle. Transfer the dough to a 9 inch pie pan that is at least 1 1/4 inches deep. Trim and crimp the edges making a tall crimp. Place the crust in teh fridge to chill while preparing the filling.
Preheat oven to 425
Filling:
Cook the sweet potatoes by placing them in a microwave safe dish. Drizzle with juice, cover and cook 12 to 14 minutes - till soft. Mash the sweet potatoes. You should have 1 1/4 cups (11 oz) I think I had a bit more than that. I put them in the food processor then added the sugar, half and half, vanilla, cinnamon, salt and allspice. Then I added the eggs.

Chop the dried pineapple and crystallized ginger into fine pieces; spread on the bottom of the cruet then pour filling over it. (I couldn't find crystallized ginger. I tried to chop the dried pineapple in the food processor, but it made a sticky mess. did sprinkle a bit of ginger on the pineapple. It wouldn't chop. I ended up rolling it out with my rolling pin - which was still sticky, but that at least made a sheet which I put on the bottom of my pie crust. Not sure flavor wise if it was worth the effort or not. It didn't take away from the pie, but I'm not sure it added enough to make it worth the effort.

Bake the pie for 15 minutes, reduce the oven temp to 350, cover the edge of the crust with a pie shield or foil and bake for another 15 minutes. Remove pie, sprinkle with marshmellows. Return pie to oven and bake until a knife inserted 1 inch from teh edge comes out clean, 20 minutes or more. Remove from oven and place on a rack.

While pie is cooking, make garnish.

Garnish
Place the pecan halves, sugar and salt in a large frying pan. Cook mix over medium heat stirring frequently, until sugar melts and caramelizes the pecans. Once the sugar melts and turns golden brown, remove from heat, continue to stir until the nuts are thoroughly coated with the sugar. (should take 6 to 8 minutes) Transfer the nuts to a piece of parchment or foil to cool. (This didn't work super well for me either. The sugar seemed to stick to the nuts in crystals rather than making a syrup. I've done this before, but can't remember what I did. I think I would probably start the sugar out alone in the pan and then add the nuts later. My other thought was that maybe my frying pan was too big.)

Arrange caramelized pecans on pie. The pie is best served 30 minutes to 1 hour after baking, but believe me, it was still good the next day. I didn't taste the wheat in the crust the first day. The second time I ate it I thought it tasted a bit wheaty, but the third time it tasted fine.

Cherry pie

My 2 thanksgiving pies came from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book. It is a book I checked out of the library, tried a few recipes from, and liked so I bought it. It uses different whole grains. I chose my pies because they used barley - I really wanted to try a barley pie crust and the other one used oats. Both turned out pretty well. I have had trouble in the past with pie crust, but these 2 were both good. They also both rolled out nicely.
Here is the recipe for the cherry pie. It used oat flour. I weighted out the amount I needed in oat groats and ground that in my mill rather than grinding the oats in a food processor.



Crust Ingredients

• 2/3 cup (2 1/4 oz.) rolled oats
• 3/4 cup (3 1/8 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon buttermilk powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon white or cider vinegar
• 4 to 6 Tablespoons ice water -I only used 3 and it was too much.

Filling Ingredients

• 5 to 6 cups pitted sour cherries -I only had black cherries mine were frozen
  
• 3/4 cups sugar (I should have reduced this with the sweeter cherries)
  
• 1/4 quick cooking tapioca
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

Topping Ingredients

• 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I didn't want to regrind finer flour, and I didn't feel like making the topping whole wheat, so I used 1/4 cup wheat and 1/2 cups unbleached AP flour.
• 2/3 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter cut into small cubes

Toss the frozen cherries with the sugar in a large bowl. Allow to thaw at room temperature; this takes several hours, so start early. Stir occasionally.

Crust: Grind the oats in a food processor for about 30 seconds. In a medium bowl whisk the oats, flour, buttermilk powder, baking powder, and salt. Add the almond extract. Cut the butter into small cubes and work into the dry ingredients. I like to use my fingers for this. Sprinkle in the vinegar -ONLY a TEASPOON (I mistakenly put in a Tablespoon to the first batch and had to throw it away.) Then add the water a tablespoon at a time, continuing to mix until the dough is cohesive. (I suggest actually doing it a Tablespoon at a time. I added 3 Tablespoons thinking if I stayed under the recommended amount I'd be fine. It was way too watery and I had to add extra flour.)
Shape the dough into a disk. Roll on its edge along a floured work surface to smooth the edges out. Pat the disk till it's about 1 inch thick, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 3 days.
About 30 min before you're ready to make the pie, take the dough out of the fridge. Allow it to warm a bit and become flexible, 15 to 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425

Flour your work surface and roll the dough into a 12 inch circle. (I have a nifty little tupperware rolling sheet that has circle sizes printed on it - so nice. Transfer the dough to a 9 inch pie pan that's at least 1 1/4 inches deep. Trim and crimp the edges. place the crust in the frige to chill while preparing the filling.

Cherries: By the time they thaw, there should be between 1/2 and 2/3 cup juice in the bottom of the bowl. Do not drain. Add water if necessary to total between 1/2 and 2/3 cup.
Combine the tapioca and the cinnamon. Sir into cherries until everything is evenly combined. Stir in the almond extract and salt. Reserve the butter. Set the filling aside for 20 minutes giving the tapioca time to start working.

While waiting, prepare the topping by stirring together the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder and salt. Add almond extract. Work the cubed butter into the dry ingredients until crumbly.

Spoon the filling into the piecrust, and dot with the reserved 2 Tablespoons butter. Spread the topping over the filling.

Bake 40 to 45 minutes -until crust and topping are golden brown and fruit is bubbling. Add a crust shield (buying one of these. foil is so annoying) or pieces of foil around edges of the crust after 20 minutes if it appears to be browning too quickly. Remove pie from oven and cool for at least 1 hour before slicing so the filling can set up.

This was delicious. It was a little on the sweet side becasue I didn't use sour cherries, but it was still plenty tasty. You just had to eat a smaller slice. The crust turned out great.