Tag Archives: Baking

Bryce Canyon and A Slice of Buttermilk Pie

Posted on April 29, 2013 | Leave a comment

Have you ever eaten Buttermilk Pie? The first time I had ever even heard of Buttermilk Pie was on a trip to southern Utah. We were with a large group of folks who were hosting exchange teachers from Taiwan. We had taken the teachers sight-seeing through the dramatic canyonlands, a geological wonderland that sprawls across northern Arizona, southern Utah, western Colorado, and New Mexico.

Bryce Canyon National Park national park located in southwestern Utah. According to Wikipedia “the major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters, along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors.

It was on this trip we stopped by a little cafe well-known for the 32 — yes 32 — different flavors of pie on the menu, one of which was Buttermilk. Fast forward a few years and I find myself living in southern Tennessee surrounded by buttermilk pie lovers! (I like it too!)

The Brown Eyed Baker recently posted this stunning picture and the recipe for Buttermilk Pie. I couldn’t have done better myself.

Happy Cooking!
Catherine

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Posted in Pie

Tagged Baking, buttermilk, buttermilk pie, Pie, southern buttermilk pie, utah

Quiche with French Fried Onions

Posted on April 20, 2013 | 3 Comments

One day out of the month at Community Bible Study we have a fellowship day. Members bring food to share. It is a special time of fun, food, and lots of talking, laughing, and praying! Last month one of our friends brought an Onion Quiche. I wasn’t a part of her group for the fellowship time but afterwards, gathered around a big counter in the kitchen, she gave me a sliver of the leftover. I didn’t know if I was just hungry at the moment or this was one special quiche. Either way, I just knew I had to make one and taste more of the wonderful flavors. She gave me a quick “I used french fried onions” from the can. That was enough to get me going!

I adore making quiche. I love eating quiche. It is so easy to make with your favorite ingredients. For this quiche I used a 9″ pie crust, Swiss cheese, French-fried onions, eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and some leftover ham. The meat is optional and Cheddar or pepper-jack cheese can be added to crank this up a notch! Quiche can be made with heavy cream, half ‘n half, or a little sour cream. Those ingredients add to the overall richness and are wonderful. Feel free to sub in a little of the creams for the milk, if you wish. For this quiche I used 2% milk and it was still wonderful.

We ate this as a supper meal with a fresh green salad. Voilà’ — dinner is served. This very same quiche is equally good for breakfast. With Mother’s Day just around the corner quiche fits in superbly for a special brunch!

Happy Cooking! Catherine

Print

Quiche with French Fried Onions

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 50 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour, 05 minutes

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Fantastic flavors meld together for a quiche that won't quickly be forgotten!
Ingredients
1 9" deep dish pie crust
1 1/2 cups Swiss cheese, shredded
1 (3 ounce) can French-fried onions
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/2 cups milk*
1 cup chopped ham**
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Directions
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Bake pie shell for 5 minutes (do not prick shell)
Remove pie shell from oven. Sprinkle the cheese, french-fried onions, and chopped ham on the bottom of the pie shell.
Combine eggs, milk, salt and pepper, whisk well, but not until it is frothy. Pour over the cheese/onion/ham mixture.
Place pie ring around edges of pie crust, to keep from over-browning.
Bake 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Let stand for 5 minutes, then cut and serve.
Notes
Make this quiche your own by adding your favorite ingredients, i.e. mushrooms, sweet peppers, hot peppers, cooked sausage, Cheddar cheese, hot-pepper jack cheese. ** Use 2% milk or heavy cream or half 'n half.
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Posted in Breakfast and Brunch, Main Dish

Tagged Baking, brunch, french-fried onions, homemade quiche, light dinner, onion quiche, Quiche, supper

TWD: Madeleines

Posted on April 15, 2013 | 48 Comments

It’s Tuesdays With Dorie — where a whole bunch of bakers around the world all bake the same recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook, Baking With Julia and then blog the results. Today we are featuring Madeleines. The Madeleine (french pronunciation: [mad.lɛn], English /ˈ m æ d l eɪ n / is a traditional small cake from the Lorraine region in northeastern France.

I bought my petite-madeleine pan from Amazon last year in anticipation of today’s recipe. My mini Madeleine pan makes 18 small shell-shaped tea cakes.

Contributing baker Flo Braker joined Julia when making Ladyfingers and Madeleines on her PBS TV show, Baking With Julia. Both of these sponge cakes use the same genoise batter. A genoise is a whole egg sponge cake. That is, it gets its lift from air retained in a whole egg and sugar mixture that is well-beaten. Our Tuesdays With Dorie hosts this week are Katie and Amy from Counter Dog. They have posted the recipe in its entirety and I hope you will check out there blog post!

Meanwhile, my rebellious streak took hold of me this weekend and when I got my mini Madeleine pan off the shelf I noticed the Almond Lemon Madeleine recipe that came with the pan. Ahhhh, I have almonds, I love lemon flavor, and in a sponge cake cookie-looking thing — yes! Eggs make up a big part of the success of a Madeleine. My eggs are from a neighboring farm and much more yellow-orange than store-bought eggs.

Pipe the batter into the molds for quick, even filling. If you don’t have a piping bag you can use a Ziploc bag, snipping off a corner for easy piping once it’s filled with batter.

I also used a couple teaspoons and dropped the batter onto the pan to see if the little cakes baked up differently than when I piped the batter.

I didn’t notice any difference. Either way they turned out great. These were baked for 8 minutes. I gently turned the pan upside-down over the cooling tray and the little sponge cakes dropped right out.

French Madeleines are known by their heavy powdered sugar-coating.

For my Chief Culinary Consultant I drizzled melted milk chocolate on a few.

My recipe made 72 little maddies. I saved a few for the Chief and the rest will be delivered to two neighbors and one cousin! A fun recipe I will no-doubt make again.

~Blessings, Catherine

Almond Lemon Madeleines

Is it a sponge cake or a cookie? You decide as you savor these delectable little treats!

Ingredients

1 cup almonds
1 cup sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs
1 Tablespoon freshly grated lemon rind
1 cup All-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

Garnish

Confectioner's sugar, candy sugar sprinkles, drizzled chocolate

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Spray Madeleine pan molds with nonstick spray.
Using chopper or food processor, grind the almonds with the sugar until very fine in texture.
Cream butter. Continue beating butter, adding almond and sugar mixture gradually. Beat until mixture is light and fluffy.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating until completely combined with other ingredients. Add in lemon rind.
In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, alternating gradually with lemon juice.
Spread batter into the molds of Madeleine pan or petite-madeleine pan. This can be done by piping into the mold or dropping by teaspoon. Do not over-fill each mold.
Bake in the lower third of the oven for 8 minutes.
Turn Madeleines onto a cooling rack.
Wash and dry pan and repeat process. Makes 4 pans full or 72 cookies.
Garnish with confectioner's sugar or as desired.

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Posted in Cake, Cookies, Dessert, TWD:BWJ

Tagged Baking, Cookies, Dorie Greenspan, Flo Braker, Julia Child, madeleines, sponge cake, tuesdays with dorie

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

Posted on April 10, 2013 | 3 Comments

I haven’t blogged since Easter except for a tribute to my son’s birthday. LIFE came at us fast the last 3 weeks. Sweeping across the country is winter bronchitis and flu and we didn’t dodge the bullet this year. Sadness struck our neighborhood as we lost our good friend and neighbor, Kevin, to the ugliness of cancer. The landscape of our country lane will be forever changed without Kevin’s happy, positive attitude and willingness to be the best neighbor anyone could ask for. We pray for his wife and family as they grieve the loss and yet celebrate his life.

This morning as I was trying to figure out how to start today’s blog post I read a post from Max Lucado called “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread.“ I think he wrote it just for me and you.

Many of us have trouble relating to the prayer, “God, give us this day our daily bread.” Because our pantries are so packed and our bellies so full, we seldom ask for food. More likely, we need to ask for self-control and say, “God, help me not to eat so much.”

You won’t find books on surviving starvation, but you will find shelves loaded with books on losing weight. That doesn’t negate the importance of the prayer, however. Just the opposite. We pray only to find our prayer already answered! At some point it occurs to you that someone is providing for your needs.

You take a giant step in maturity when you agree with King David’s words in 1st Chronicles 29:14, “Everything we have has come from You, and we only give You what is Yours already.” Long before you knew you needed someone to provide for your needs, God already had!

What a terrific reminder of the blessings God gives to us before we even ask! The recipe I have to share with you today was a blessing that came from our neighbors, Gaye and David. One late afternoon Gaye just showed up at the door with a casserole hot out of the oven. Dinner’s ready!

We liked it so much I have made it twice, tweaking the sauce just a little each time. The base for the casserole is diced chicken and ham. This is a good recipe to use up leftover meat if you have it. If not, it is easy to cook up a chicken breast and dice up some ham.

The next layer is Swiss cheese and 1/2 the cheddar cheese. The original recipe then calls for mixing 1 can of condensed cream of chicken soup and milk together. I prefer to make a sauce and not used the canned stuff. It is so easy to make a sauce and not end up with all the sodium and preservatives in cream of chicken canned soup.

The sauce is poured over the meat and cheese layers.

And the crowning touch is a package of reduced-sodium stuffing mix. The stuffing is made according to the directions on the box and then layered over the meat/cheese/sauce. The remaining cheddar cheese is sprinkled on top and the casserole is baked covered for 35 minutes and uncovered for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.

The flavors are absolutely wonderful together and definitely give the taste of a “chicken cordon bleu” without the fuss! The recipe originally came from Taste of Home and indicates this casserole can be made and frozen for up to 3 months, thawed in the refrigerator overnight and then baked when ready to serve!

Happy Cooking!
~Catherine

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 45 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Yield: 8 servings

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole

The chicken and ham flavors meld into one cheesy fabulous casserole that will leave your family asking for more!

Ingredients

1 package (6 oz) reduced-sodium stuff mix, make according to package directions
4 cups cubed cooked chicken
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cups diced cooked ham
1 1/2 cups shredded Swiss cheese
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Homemade cream of chicken soup

1 tablespoon butter
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon chicken bouillon granules or base
2 cups milk

Directions

Prepare stuffing mix according to package directions. Set aside.
In a medium size saucepan, over low heat, melt butter, add celery and onion. Saute' until they are tender. Stir in the flour, base or bouillon, and salt until mixture is smooth and bubbly. Stir in milk, gradually, stirring constantly. When well mixed remove from heat.
Grease a 13" x 9" baking dish. Layer chicken, ham, pepper, Swiss cheese, and 1/2 the cheddar cheese.
Pour cream of chicken soup over the the meat and cheese mixture. Cover with stuffing mix. Sprinkle with remaining cheddar cheese.
At this point the casserole can be covered and frozen for up to 3 months. Otherwise, cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 10 to 15 minutes longer or until cheese is melted and casserole is bubbly. Serve and enjoy!

To use frozen casserole:

Thaw in the refrigerator over night. Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes before baking. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, uncover; bake 10 to 15 minutes longer or until heated through and cheese is melted.

Notes

*One can of condensed cream of chicken soup and 1/2 cup milk can be used in place of the homemade chicken soup sauce. ** One tablespoon of prepared mustard can be added to the chicken soup sauce to give the casserole a slightly different, yet yummy flavor.

Recipe adapted from Taste of Home

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