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Waffle Bread Pudding - Leftover Tuesdays 6

 

It's Leftover Tuesdays #6 and this month it's being hosted by Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity . More good news is that I finally (FINALLY) got to make my Leftover Waffle Bread Pudding. It took some sly, spy-like moves to keep the family from eating the homemade belgian waffles, but I did it. 

Jell-O Jigglers

 

Who doesn't love Jello Jigglers? I think I eat more of these than my kids do. This is a little embarrassing to admit but I generally have to look up the recipe to remember how to make these jell-o goodies. I just can't seem to remember how to make them. This is a very, very easy recipe. If you use juice instead of water, it could almost be considered healthy. Add alcohol and it could be considered fun as well. I just noticed on the Kraft site that there is a comment that says: "Do not swallow jello jigglers whole". Not sure what's with that, but I'm sure thousands (maybe hundreds) of college students are trying it right now. Nothing better than a party trick involving Jello! Good fun. Now I have to make some more of these just to see what happens when you DO swallow jigglers whole.

Strawberry Cake

 

I find strawberry picking a very Zen activity. Which is fine, really, that I can do something in this crazy life of mine that brings me such peace. Except that I've now become the strawberry version of the zucchini neighbour. You know the type - plants an ENTIRE package of zucchini seeds in the spring, brings it over by the bushel load and eventually becomes the most feared person in the neighbourhood. That's me, with strawberries instead of zucchini. I get caught up in picking them and have to give most of them away. You wouldn't think that people could actually hate strawberries, but given enough of them they do. This brings us to Strawberry Cake. Strawberry season is almost here in southern Ontario and I still have a freezer full of last year's berries. Well, not full exactly, but I still have many strawberries. Mr. Chef usually uses them to make a fruit sauce for our waffles but even he has been a little challenged by the sheer mass of all that fruit. Strawberry Cake is something I had heard of but never tried. A little panic, a bit of internet searching, and plain old cheapness brought me to this cake recipe. It calls for frozen strawberries, some jello, and a boxed cake mix. Peasant food at its best.

Dutch Baby - Oven pancake

I have to admit that this is the first time I've ever eaten one of these. I was looking for a 'yummy' breakfast recipe, as per the request from my hyperactive 5 year old, and came across these Dutch Babies. It occurred to me, while the 5 year old bounced around my kitchen talking non-stop, that I could see why the Dutch would actually eat their babies. Then I read the recipe and decided it was an oven baked pancake, or an oven baked crepe. This dutch-baby recipe has no leavening in it other than eggs; this seemed to be the usual recipe, although I did find some that had some baking soda or powder in them. I decided simple was better (and cheaper). The recipe originally calls for 4 eggs but I've changed this to 3 or 4 eggs. We have our own chickens here on the farm, and our eggs are REALLY large - so I use 3 eggs. But if you are using grocery store eggs, you'll probably need 4 of them. I guess there's a 'method' to making these, which believe it or not I followed, so my suggestion is to actually read the instructions for guidance. I'm not sure what would happen if you didn't follow 'the method', but I wouldn't want to be responsible for any breakfast disasters.

Pineapple Pie

 

Pineapple Pie is a light, fluffy dessert that I had at my mother's house last week. Our family still gets together every other Sunday for Sunday dinner, and my mom likes to use us as guinea pigs and try out new recipes at these gatherings. This cream cheese based pie is one of those experiments. It's a delicious combination, very summer-y tasting, and not too heavy after a good supper. Pineapple Pie uses a graham cracker crust, which you can make yourself (the recipe for the crust is included), or you can buy a store bought graham crust. This recipe is very easy and tastes great, and it's a pie! Three things that make a keeper in my book.

Leftover Tuesdays - Chocolate chocolate chip Oatmeal Cake

 

Squeaking in my own Leftover Tuesdays entry just under the wire, here is Chocolate Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cake. Are you saying "huh"? Me too. My sister once mentioned that she should find a recipe for leftover Oatmeal, and four years later I've finally decided to post one for her. I personally don't like oatmeal, but add some chocolate, turn it into a cake, and it's edible. My sister's oatmeal is cooked plain, two parts boiling water to one part oatmeal, and her family adds cream and sugar as they like it, so that's the cooked oatmeal I've used in my recipe. 

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cake is kind of based on an Amish recipe I found many years ago. I've altered some things, added others, and finally decided I like this recipe. I've used leftover oatmeal here, but the original called for cooking the oatmeal right before you make the cake. I have to admit though, I've seen the other entries for Leftover Tuesdays, and to be honest - leftover oatmeal seems a little pedestrian compared to the other dishes! My mother always told me I was a peasant at heart, and I suppose it's definitely true when it comes to food. And I suppose I should admit that I eat this cake for breakfast (we call it the breakfast cake, which Mr. Chef says is just wrong).

Apple Oatmeal Squares

 

This is actually a combination of two old apple square recipes - one came from the Tightwad Gazette, by Amy Dacyzyn and the other part of it is from an old church ladies cookbook I found lying around. I wanted this square to be like a date square without the dates. The Tightwad recipe (I think it was from the depression or something like that) does not call for sugar in the crumb topping, but the other recipe - an actual apple-date square recipe - did call for it. So like always, I improvised. And then I forgot half the ingredients as I was mixing it - so the picture may not be exactly what it will look like in its finished form. (I kept wondering why there was so little crumb mixture - once I added the oatmeal in, it seemed to work much better.)

Mini-Cinni-buns

 

These are cute, tasty, very easy little cinnamon buns that I like to make for my kids. Even Mr. Chef likes them, despite the can of refrigerated crescent rolls I use to make them. These taste just like a regular cinnamon bun, only in miniature, and take only about 20 minutes to make.

Chocolate Buttercream Icing (Frosting)

 

A New Year, and a new computer, and back to blogging we go! And what better way to start - a recipe involving cake. This is a recipe for chocolate frosting (or icing, depending on your local lingo) that is almost a copycat of the canned whipped frosting. I was very impressed with the texture and taste, and pretty happy that it even turned out. In my usual fashion, I didn't actually read the original frosting recipe all the way through - I just did it my own way. Well, my own way was nothing like the instructions, and once I finished the first part I realized I had made chocolate pudding (a good cooked pudding, but pudding nonetheless). Add half a pound of cold butter to pudding, whip it for a while and voila! A really good whipped frosting (whipped icing?). I do have to admit that the cake in the picture came from a Duncan Hines boxed mix. The trick to getting a really moist cake is to cook it for about a minute less than the shortest time on the box. But this is about frosting! (Icing? Confusing.)

Brownies

 

Here is a favourite, very easy brownie recipe that I use. I can put it together in less than 10 minutes, bake for less than 20 minutes after my supper is cooked, and the kids have dessert for school the next day. This brownie recipe gets that shiny, crackley top on it that I used to think only came from a boxed mix. I'm not sure why this recipe works where others have failed, but it does. It's in between a fudgy brownie and a cake-like brownie, but you can adjust the texture a little by baking longer or shorter. I've combined a few of my favourite recipes, one being an old handwritten hand me down from somewhere, and this is what has come out of it. Actually, all the recipes were almost identical, the only slight variation being in vanilla and salt. The brownie in the photo was made with pastry flour, as one recipe called for, but I usually use all purpose flour and it's fine too.