Breakfast Turnovers of Glory

This a.m. hubby woke up on the cranky side of the bed. So, to help him out (I’m so thoughtful) I made turnovers for breakfast. This was my own concoction - I happened to have the ingredients handy.

8oz of cream cheese (I didn’t have a full 8oz of cream cheese, so I used what I had - 5oz.)

Sugar

Puff Pastry, thawed

Mini choc chips (optional)

Heat oven to 350. Mix the cream cheese and sugar together. I used around 3 tablespoons, but I frequently don’t measure when I cook. Use more/less to suit your own taste. Cut the pastry into 4 squares. Divide the cream cheese mix evenly on half of each pastry.

If you want, add approx 1 tablespoon of mini choc chips into each portion. I made half choc, half plain. Fold dough over and press edges together.

Cook for 15-18 min.

LET COOL. The filling will burn your mouth to bits.

You will enjoy. These are probably one of the best things I’ve ever made.

Bar-B-Que Chicken a' la Crock-pot

So, I rushed home after class yesterday to wait for our maintenance guy to come see if he could fix the dishwasher (it shouldn’t take 3 cycles to clean a dish). Since I was home at 1:30 with nothing to do but wait, I decided it would be a good time to do a crock-pot recipe - there was plenty of time to throw everything in the pot to simmer for hours.

I’ve been hanging on to this recipe (Crockpot BBQ Beer Chicken from How Sweet It Is) for a little while. For some reason, I really need to gear up to do a crock-pot recipe. I have no reason why.

(Side note: I’m not a total alchy. I’ve posted 2 recipes that include beer as an ingredient not by coincidence. We bought a mix pack of seasonal brews and neither hubby nor I really liked some of them. So they have been in the fridge waiting to be cooked with.)

I halved the recipe since it serves 8-10 and we still had leftovers. No complaints, though. This stuff is yummy. I get bar-b-que cravings and this stuff will straight-up satisfy it. And it’s much healthier since it’s chicken breast instead of pork. I also added 12 oz of beer instead of 8 and used a little less sauce (only cause I didn’t have a whole lot).

Yummy yummy. Pulled-chicken bar-b-que on a wheat bun.

The maintenance guy came the next morning. I’m so glad I waited for him.

Chick(not Fil A)en Nuggets

Once I get a craving for something, nothing will make me happy until I get whatever I’m craving. This happens A Lot. Something I crave (at least) once a week - Chick Fil A nuggets. I’m a crazy person about these things. So, when I found a recipe that promised the exact same nuggets as the ones I’m constantly longing for, it was like the skies opened up in sunshine-y glory.

I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

Now, don’t get me wrong - these puppies were good. Great even. But they were no Chick Fil A nuggets of wonder.

However, I did mess up on the recipe. Twice. In step one. The first line of the recipe (here, from My Name is Snickerdoodle) states In a medium bowl whisk the egg and stir in the milk. I left out the egg. I also didn’t have any milk and used cream + water instead.

Despite my efforts to screw up, these turned out very good. And looked surprisingly like the photo. That’s a first for me. I will make these again (the correct way) and see if they taste any different.

Viking Bread

Confession: Last night I didn’t cook dinner. We had frozen chicken pot pies. From the microwave. *Shame* I was tired and frankly uninspired. However, by a pure stroke of luck I found a super easy recipe (you know it’s easy ‘cause it’s in the name!) that I happened to have all the ingredients for. Presenting Easy Honey Beer Bread from Kirbie's Cravings.

I used clover honey and Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale and it turned out delicious. It was slightly sweet because of the pumpkiny-ness of the beer, so a darker ale or lager would probably be a heavier taste. I had several tasters today and they all liked it. So, yay!

Side note, my tasty bread crusted A Lot more than the pictures Kirbie’s site. It was good, but not as pretty as hers.

This is called a teaser.

I made bread. Post tomorrow.

Chicken Enchilada Puffs

First, I would like to apologize for the blurriness of my pictures. Apparently, I shake.

Second, if this recipe was a prostitute, it would be one of those REALLY high class ones that everyone thinks is in PR or advertising and you worked really hard to snag while all the time you’re thinking “Man! I really pulled this off!” … I think I lost this metaphor somewhere.

Anyway, last night I made chicken enchilada puffs. I was prepping these while on the phone with my mom and she remarked “it sounds so gourmet!” They weren’t. But they did taste pretty damn good.

The recipe is here from Tidy Mom. I’m pretty sure this is one of those Kraft-sponsored recipes, or whatever, but who cares, because, seriously, it’s that yummy.

What I changed:

1. I used puff pastry instead of crescent rolls. But the frozen kind, not homemade. My motto is, if it’s good with crescent dough, it’ll be better with puff pastry. (Technically, this is the first recipe where I’ve tried out this motto, but so far, so good.)

2. I used more chicken. I grilled 4 chicken strips (approx 1 1/3 breasts) on the George Foreman grill and used all of it in the mix. It came out to about 1 cup of torn-up chicken. Even after this, it was still a little creamy for my taste, so next time I make this I’ll probably use less cream cheese.

I used about a heaping tablespoon of filling per turnover. You will have some filling leftover. I suggest putting it in a wrap and having it for lunch the next day. (I really wish I had thought of that this morning.)

3. I cooked mine for about 18 minutes on 350. The inside was still a tiny bit dough-y (you may be able to see that in the pictures if you look really hard), but with already cooked chicken, there wasn’t a big worry about under cooking.

If you try this one, let me know what you think. And what you served with it. I didn’t cook any sides, just served mine with canned pineapple. It was good, but not great, together, I just kind of forgot about sides.

Punkin Muffins

I made muffins a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d post them while we still had some (all pictured here were eaten moments after the photos were taken).

These babies are pumpkin muffins with cream cheese filling. I also made some mini muffins with no filling. Perfect little bite-sized muffin numminess.

The recipe I used was from movita beaucoup and I didn’t really adjust anything. I would recommend putting more filling in them, though. That part is yummy.