Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

I had been wanting to make these pancakes for a while, but they are so sweet and so NOT good for you that I felt like I needed to wait for a special occasion to make them.  I decided that New Years Day was the occasion I had been waiting for and they turned out to be so good!

I had looked at several recipes for these and they are all kind of the same, just with a few tweaks here and there.  

Before you start, you need to prepare all the components.  So make a batch of your favorite pancake batter (I ALWAYS use Bisquick.  I have a funny family story about that...I'll put it at the end of the recipe).  Then mix up the cinnamon filling.  

Cinnamon Filling:
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
 ** this makes enough for pancakes for 2-3 people (i was making them for 5 people, so i doubled it)
Melt the butter, add the other ingredients and put in a zip lock baggie

Then make the glaze that goes on top of the finished pancakes:

1/2 stick butter (melted)
2 ounces room temperature cream cheese
3/4 cup powdered sugar
splash of vanilla extract
Over low heat melt the butter, mix in cream cheese, then stir in powdered sugar. set aside.

Now start making your pancakes.  Add your batter to the pan.  Let them cook until bubbles begin to form.  Then take the zip lock bag with the cinnamon filling and snip the corner of the bag.  Starting from the center of the pancake, squeeze out the filling in a swirl shape.  Just keep the filling about a 1/4 inch away from the edge of the pancake.  Cook for another 2 minutes or so (until the bubbles on the surface are popping) then flip the pancake over and cook till finished.  Keep doing this until you run out of batter or filling.  

When you serve the pancakes, drizzle a little bit of the glaze over the top of them.  

These are SO sweet but SO good!  Plan on 2-3 pancakes per person. 

So my family are pretty loyal to Bisquick pancakes.  My grandma (who is famous for her pancakes) swears by it.  My Papa used to be a traveling salesman and as he would go on his sales route, he would stop in various restaurants.  One restaurant's pancakes were, in his opinions, "heavy as lead balloons" and were clearly not made with Bisquick.  My Papa asked to talk to the chef, told him his opinion of his pancakes and explained that using Bisquick would fix the problem.  The next time my Papa ate there, they were using Bisquick to make their pancakes. :o)

When we were little, we'd ask my grandma to make our pancakes in different shapes (our initials, hearts, etc).  With a bunch of hungry people around the table, she didn't have time to make all those shapes, so she would make normal circle pancakes and tell us they were planets, soccer balls, basketballs, golf balls, tennis balls, etc.  Took us a while to catch on... :o)

English Muffin Bread

I love homemade bread. The problem is that I really don't like making homemade bread.  Usually I solve this problem by just enjoying my mom or my sister Christy's homemade bread. They make some delicious ones!  (Seriously - you should check my sister's blog for some ideas).  But, I had a friend who had recently had a baby and instead of bringing a meal, I wanted to bring some muffins, scones and breads to put in her freezer so she'd have something easy to grab for breakfast.  (When I had Riley, people brought us dinners, which is a huge help and I was so thankful, but I never knew what to do for breakfast when I didn't have time/was too tired/decided to shower instead of eat/etc. and found myself eating some strange things for breakfast.) I felt bad trying to get my mom or sister to make some breads for me to bring my friend so I decided to just suck it up and do it myself. 

The part of bread making that I don't like is all the steps. I get a little intimidated using yeast. I don't like waiting for dough to rise. I get confused with where I am in the process. Thankfully I found this recipe for English Muffin Bread. It was super easy, cheap to make, only used one bowl and made 4 loaves. 

I found the recipe on The One Good Thing by Jillee Blog.  If you want to see pictures of what it looks like, head on over to her blog. Be sure to grease the pans very well and don't cut it until it's completely cooled! This made 4 loaves. It has all the nooks and crannys that English muffins do (hence the name) and tastes best toasted.  It was good with jam or jelly but I liked it best with butter and honey.  Here is the recipe...

5 1/2 cups warm water
3 packages RAPID RISE yeast
(Update: You can use regular yeast, but you will need to let is rise TWICE. Once in the bowl, til it reaches the top…and then again in the pans, til it reaches the top. With the RAPID RISE you only need to let it rise once in the pans.)
2 Tablespoons salt
3 Tablespoons sugar
11 cups all purpose flour (you can use bread flour as well)

Mix altogether, then spoon into (4) well greased loaf pans.  Let rise in pans until dough reaches the top of the pans, and bake in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or until golden brown. 

10 minutes before done, brush with melted butter. Makes 4 loaves. Bread will be moist at first. Allow to COOL COMPLETELY before cutting. Makes terrific toast.

 Enjoy!

Roasted Veggie Tacos

I love tacos. Lately I've been trying to be more creative than the normal chicken or beef tacos. I saw a recipe for roasted vegetable tacos on a website and adapted it a bit.

I diced a summer squash, a zucchini, a red pepper and a red onion into large chunks and then tossed them in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a large pinch of salt, 2 teaspoons of cumin and 4 cloves of minced garlic. I then put all the veggies on a baking sheet and roasted them in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes (until they were tender and starting to brown).

While they were roasting I mashed together an avocado, a pinch of salt and 1/2 cup plain greek yogurt until it was creamy.  (just use a fork to mix these. i tried it in the blender and it would have been much easier just to do it by hand!)

I also heated up a can of black beans on the stove.

Then I warmed up some corn tortillas in a skillet (wrap them in a clean dishtowel to keep them warm) and shredded up some monterey jack cheese.

When the veggies are done, you just assemble your tacos. A big scoop of veggies, a spoonful of black beans, a good drizzle of the avocado cream and then some of the shredded cheese.

These were SO good. I should have used more veggies because Kirk and I could have each had another taco or two!

Greek Salad

I love salads.  I am totally fine with a salad for dinner. My southern meat and potatoes husband is not. According to him, a salad is fine as long as its on the side of a steak.  I've managed to find a salad or two that he likes enough to not complain when I make it for dinner.  One of those is a buffalo chicken salad because the chicken on the salad meets his meat requirement.  The other is this Greek Salad.  I found the recipe for it on the Pioneer Woman's blog and just tweaked it a little.  I'm just going to give the recipe for the dressing because I'm sure everyone can make a salad.  When I make this I usually use: romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, thinly sliced red onions, kalamata olives, some sliced pepperoncinis and sometimes throw some salami in.

To make the dressing:

Combine a 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 cloves minced garlic, about 10 kalamata olives chopped extra fine, a pinch or two of salt, a few shakes of black pepper.  Mix it together and taste it.  adjust if needed. (It's pretty much the same recipe on the Pioneer Woman's site, so she gets the credit!  i just upped the amount of sugar, olives and garlic, because i found myself always adding more to the original recipe!) I always try to make it in advance so it can sit a while before adding it to the salad.

After you dump the dressing on the salad, squeeze some fresh lemon juice over the entire thing.

This is also really good in a wrap or in a pita.

Recipe: Drip Beef

One of my favorite parts of cooking is making certain meals that remind me of different people.  I got this recipe for Drip Beef Sandwiches from my friend Keara who lives in Oklahoma.  Keara and I met when we both were working for YouthWorks in Minneapolis.  She's been a good friend for years.  Keara's parents own a beautiful ranch in Oklahoma and I've been there a couple times.  It is incredible!  And ranch life is so not what I'm used to.  Last time we were there, I looked out the window and Kirk and Keara were outside with a gun trying to keep a coyote away from the cattle.

If you ever need a place to take a group or want to do a hunting trip, you should look into their ranch.  It's called Spring Valley Ranch.  Click here to see their website.

Anyways, one of the times I was there, Keara made Drip Beef Sandwiches and I've loved them since then.  Even better, you make them in the crock pot, which makes life easier.

All you do for these is get a 3-4 pound roast. I use chuck roast, you can also use a rump roast.  I don't really know what the difference is between the different cuts of meat and I kinda get the heebee geebees if I think too much about my meat coming from an animal, so I just try not to think about it and get whichever is on sale.

Take the roast and trim off any extra fat.  Then take a knife and cut some slits in the meat.  I use the minced garlic that comes in the jar (normally I'm not a fan of the jarred garlic, but for this one it seems to work well). Using about 3 tablespoons of garlic, stuff a little bit of garlic into the slits you've cut in the meat.  Then put it in the crock pot.

Take a large jar of pepperoncinis and dump the liquid from the jar over the meat.  Then cut the stems off the pepperoncinis and discard.  Slice the pepperoncinis into rings and dump them over the meat. 

Cook on high for about 6-8 hours.  Pull the meat out of the crock pot and shred with 2 forks.  I then put the shredded meat back in the crock pot so it soaks up more of the juice from the pepperoncinis.

You can serve this many different ways. I usually get good rolls and melt some shredded mozzarella on them.  Keara's family eats them on rolls with french onion dip on them.  I also think they'd be good in tortillas.

Another great part of this meal is that it makes a lot!  I made this last week and only used a 2 pound roast and got 8 big sandwiches out of it. 

Enjoy!

Apple Sauce

On Halloween Jess, Riley and I went over to my moms to be with her and to help hand out candy. While we were there we also decided to make my moms SUPER yummy applesauce. We all had a LOT of fun being together and making it. Riley liked to help stir the apple sauce but LOVED running to the door to look at the trick-or-treaters when the doorbell rang. Below are pictures from the day - I am no chef or cook by any means so don't mind unique description of words at times :)

My mom uses Macintosh apples. So the first thing you do is wash the apples and cut them in fourths.

Using a boiling pot with strainer you cook the apples until the get nice and mushy. It smells great! 

This is what the apples look like in the pot/strainer after they have been cooked. Nice and mushy. You pour out the extra water and then the apple mush gets transferred into a special pot thing with a crank.

Once the apples are mushy they get transferred into a grinding/sifter pot with a crank. You then crank all the mush through the pot into a bowl.

Cute Lil Ry sitting in a "big girl chair" helping out and eating an apple.

Riley even liked to help crank the apples through the pot. This is where a lot of time goes into. Cranking the apples is a slow process and takes some good arm muscles.

Ry couldn't resist a little finger taste test of the fresh apple sauce!

This is my mom "seasoning" the sauce. She adds brown sugar, regular sugar and cinnamon. This is where her "magic" comes into play because there is no recipe she does it by taste and what the sauce looks like.

When it is ALL done... it is VERY YUMMY!!! 

Riley's painted feet!

maître d' butter

We celebrated my mom's birthday last weekend and I got the very challenging task of bringing bread and butter. :o)  Since I lucked out on getting the easy thing to bring, I figured I'd get a little creative.  I bought some bread at Trader Joe's and decided to jazz up the butter at bit.

All I did was put 2 softened sticks of butter in my mixer (with the paddle attachment). I added about 3/4 cups finely chopped parsley, the zest of one lemon and about 1/2 a lemon's worth of lemon juice.  I added a pinch of salt (since it was unsalted butter) and mixed it all together.  Then I took a piece of foil, put a piece of plastic wrap on top of it and then dropped the butter into a long log on top of the plastic wrap.  I then wrapped up the butter (making sure it was completely surrounded by the plastic wrap - the foil would stick to the butter) in the plastic wrap and foil.  I then twisted both both ends of the foil (like you'd twist a candy wrapper).  This helped smush all the butter together in a cylinder shape.  I let it re-harden in the fridge for a couple hours (if you aren't planning on using it right away, you could put it in the freezer, just defrost it before you need it).

The verdict - it was so yummy!  It was such as simple (and cheap) way to make the boring bread and butter a little more special.  The best part is the possibilities are endless!  You could replace the lemon and parsley with pretty much anything.  Garlic! Sun dried tomatoes! Red Pepper flakes!  Or for pancakes and waffles you could go the sweet route.  Chocolate shavings! Cinnamon!  Berries!  Berry butter on pancakes sounds delicious! 

The 2 sticks made plenty for the 12 of us. If you are making this for more than 15 people, I would definitely add another stick of butter.

As a side note, I had no idea this was called maître d' butter.  I thought of it because I remembered seeing it on a blog or pinterest somewhere and just made up my own version.  My sister, who is a chef, informed me that this is what it was called.  Who knew I was so fancy!?!

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