Posted on 04/23/2011 7:13:03 AM PDT by libertarian27
Welcome to the 20th installment of the FR Weekly Cooking (Recipes) Thread.
Looking for something new to make or made something new that came out great? Please share a 'tried-and-true' recipe or two - or all of them:)! for fellow FReepers to add to their 'go-to' recipe stack of Family favorites?
Here's the place to share and explore your next favorite recipe.
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Happy Easter!
This is a friends recipe for mac & cheese and it is so good!!!
Finally got the recipe last night when we put on a Baked Fish dinner for 50 people, she made the mac & cheese and I made the cole slaw with homemade dressing
Caroline’s Macaroni & Cheese
1 Box elbow macaroni
1 16oz package Deluxe Sliced American Cheese (must be this cheese - the others don’t work as well - it has to be ‘Deluxe’ of any brand-regular American doesn’t work)
1 Stick of Butter
Salt/Pepper/Onion Powder/Garlic Powder (to taste)
Milk
Panko Bread Crumbs (seasoned or season yourself)
Cook and drain elbow macaroni, while hot add the stick of butter and seasonings and incorporate well.
Layer the buttered noodles on a casserole pan, add sliced cheese - next layer of noodles, cheese, etc. to end with a top layer of cheese slices.
Add milk to the dish until it reaches 3/4’s of the way up the noodles(don’t want it hitting the last layer of cheese - keep it well below)
Add seasoned Panko crumbs - dot with butter if desired
350’ Oven for @ 45min-1hr - until bubbly.
(easy to multiply the recipe, just double, triple, etc. everything)
This is a quick easy Easter Cake similar to the one we make almost every Easter. It has been around for years. I have been making it since the 1970’s when I was still in high school. I don’t have a picture of it on the computer I am using today so I searched and found this link to someone else’s version online.
You can really make this with any cake your family likes as long as it can be cooked in two 8” or 9” rounds. Not everyone in my house likes coconut, so we usually leave the coconut off now, although long ago I even made a german chocolate cake version of this cute little bunny.
Our decorations have varied from year to year. We just made the eyes, nose, and whiskers with whatever candies we had in the house that would work or gel icing. We quite often pipe the outline of the bunny’s bow tie, so it looks more like an actual bow tie. We have always used pink sprinkles or pink icing for the inner part of the bunnies ears.
It is a fun cake to let your children help decorate too!
http://pragmaticcompendium.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/easter-bunny-cake/
One of our grandsons favorite sides (we’ll be making it tomorrow.
Brussel Sprouts with Bacon
Ingredients:
6 oz. bacon, diced
5 shallots, minced
4 lb. brussels sprouts, halved lengthwise
2 Tbs. chopped fresh thyme
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Directions:
Preheat an oven to 425ºF.
In a large roasting pan or ovenproof sauté pan over medium heat, cook the bacon until crisp, 5 to 8 minutes. Add the shallots and cook until soft, about 2 minutes. Increase the heat to medium-high, add the brussels sprouts, thyme, salt and pepper and stir well.
Transfer the pan to the oven and roast for 15 minutes, then stir the ingredients. Continue roasting until the brussels sprouts are tender, about 10 minutes more. Transfer to a serving dish and serve immediately. Serves 6.
Mmm, that sounds yummy...I love Brussel Sprouts! And with Bacon and Shallots, that sounds like heaven!
Here is another fun little Easter Treat I make that children especially love. When my daughters were really little they often helped by hand selecting all the small egg shaped candies and dropping them in the nests. It was one of their first cooking jobs at about 2 or 3 years old and they had great fun! (Beware at this age they eat a good portion of the candies before they ever make it to the nests!)
Bird’s Nests
1 package Chocolate chips, melted
1 package coconut (For those who don’t like coconut you can use a package of the hard Chinese noodles, they just make a little bigger nests, one year we used rice krispies and they were good too, but the nests didn’t have little twigs sticking out like the ones made with the coconut or the noodles!)
Hummingbird eggs or other small jelly bean like candies
Fold coconut into melted chocolate chips a little at a time until all coconut is fully coated with chocolate. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture on to a wax paper or parchment lined cookie sheet in rounds. Use the end of a wooden spoon to make a small indentation in the middle to make it look like a nest. Fill the nest with hummingbird eggs or other small jellybean candies.
Refrigerate until these harden and then they can be pulled off of the waxed or parchment paper.
Note: I make a similar treat at Christmas and make them in the shape of a wreath, and decorate with cinnamon candies and pieces of wintergreen leaf shaped gum drop candies. It is a fun recipe to be creative with.
You know I had to share this firat poat on my facebook. :)
I have also decorated cupcakes for Easter with a marshmallow bunny face. To make the face I cut one marshmallow in half so you have two rounds. One round becomes the face that you can decorate using candies, piped icing, or even the food markers.
The other piece you snip partway down the middle and bend the two open ends out to form the general shape of the ears. I dip the cut side of the marshmallow in pink sprinkles (they stick better to this side) and then flatten it and shape it a little with my hands so a white edge forms around the outside of the sprinkled pink section.
I then place the ears on top of my cupcakes, and then the face, slightly overlaping the ears, so it looks just like a little bunny face looking up at you.
I couldn’t find a picture of these on line and I don’t have a picture on this computer of the ones we made, but they are adorable.
The food markers are great for little children to use to draw the bunny faces on the marshmallows. Betty Crocker and Wilton both make them and usually can be found at cake decorating shops and sometimes in the bakery section of your regular grocery store.
Those sound so fun and yummy, shhh don’t tell anyone, but my brothers family wants to go out for Chinese tomorrow, so that’s what we’re doing...and those will be neat to make for the niece and nephew instead of those commercial easter basket thingies. OK, I’ll get the fun making them and they’ll get the fun eating them:)
(I’ll do them with the chinese noodles and it’ll be a theme to boot :>))
Got to hit the store tonight!
Glad that you liked the Three Grain Pilaf. Just curious, did you use the curry or try it with your own seasoning?
Sounds like fun! I am sure they will love them!
What’s a traditional Easter meal without 3-4 different desserts - if you’ve got a gang coming over and only have one dessert - you need more!!!!LOL:>)
Some FReeper ‘tried n true’ recipes from past threads:
Comment#-—Recipe-—Thread Date
93 *-* BLACK BOTTOM UGLY CAKE *-* 12/12/10
60 *-* Fresh Apple Cake *-* 12/12/10
14 *-* Upside down pear cake with orange sauce *-* 12/12/10
28 *-* Hummingbird Cake *-* 12/12/10
157 *-* Fruitcake *-* 12/12/10
159 *-* DANISH, REALLY EASY HOMEMADE *-* 12/12/10
12 *-* Peanut Butter Balls *-* 12/18/10
17 *-* RACHEL RAY FUDGE WREATH *-* 12/18/10
20 *-* Raised Potato Doughnuts *-* 12/18/10
26 *-* Ginger Snaps *-* 12/18/10
29 *-* Oreo Truffles *-* 12/18/10
34 *-* FUDGE *-* 12/18/10
41 *-* Candied Cereal *-* 12/18/10
60 *-* No-Bake Pumpkin Pie *-* 12/18/10
68 *-* Aunt Rita’s lemon squares *-* 12/18/10
81 *-* Chocolate/Peanut Butter Oatmeal Derop Cookies (No Bake) *-* 12/18/10
81 *-* PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE *-* 12/18/10
6 *-* Date Nut Log *-* 12/25/10
14 *-* Mint Cookie Candies *-* 12/25/10
43 *-* Bacon ‘n Egg Candies *-* 12/25/10
54 *-* Cranberry Mould *-* 12/25/10
32 *-* Moist Chocolate Cake *-* 1/8/2011
32 *-* Quick Caramel Frosting *-* 1/8/2011
40 *-* Baked Custard Pie *-* 1/8/2011
36 *-* White Chip Orange Divine Cookies *-* 1/15/2011
8 *-* Do-Ahead Baked Apples *-* 1/22/2011
10 *-* Lazy Day Apple Cake *-* 1/22/2011
52 *-* CHERRY PINEAPPLE DUMP CAKE *-* 1/22/2011
66 *-* Banana Cake *-* 1/22/2011
9 *-* Quick & E Z Cobbler *-* 1/29/2011
28 *-* Brown Bag Apple Pie *-* 1/29/2011
49 *-* Pat In Pie Crusts *-* 1/29/2011
49 *-* Dutch Apple Pie *-* 1/29/2011
12 *-* Pretzel M&M Kisses *-* 2/5/2011
15 *-* Butter Milk Pie *-* 2/12/11
25 *-* Strawberry Cake Cookies *-* 2/12/11
55 *-* Brownie Dipped Cookies *-* 2/12/11
56 *-* Candy Bar Brownie Muffins *-* 2/12/11
75 *-* Oreo truffles *-* 2/12/11
76 *-* Fat Man’s Misery Thin Mints *-* 2/12/11
86 *-* Jumper’s Motherlode chocolate cake. *-* 2/12/11
92 *-* Chocolate Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Spread *-* 2/12/11
24 *-* Poorman’s Toffee *-* 2/19/11
27 *-* Cinnamon Graham-Apple Crisp *-* 2/19/11
40 *-* Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon Rolls *-* 2/19/11
49 *-* Trillian’s Crack *-* 2/19/11
3 *-* OREO TRUFFLES *-* 2/26/11
120 *-* Blackberry cheese tarts *-* 2/26/11
108 *-* Cheese Cake Tarts *-* 2/26/11
82 *-* Cool Mint Oreo Cookie Balls *-* 2/26/11
76 *-* Cream Cheese Coffee Cake *-* 2/26/11
13 *-* Grandma D’s Prize Oatmeal Cookies *-* 2/26/11
10 *-* Kahlua Creamy Fudge *-* 2/26/11
103 *-* Mint Cookie Candies *-* 2/26/11
162 *-* No-Bake Pumpkin Pie *-* 2/26/11
102 *-* Pig Pickin’ Cake *-* 2/26/11
109 *-* Sophia Loren’s Ricotta Condita *-* 2/26/11
26 *-* CANDIED CITRUS PEELS *-* 3/5/11
91 *-* New Orleans King Cake *-* 3/5/11
59 *-* Irish Bananas *-* 3/12/11
81 *-* Espresso Chocolate Chip Shortbread *-* 3/12/11
7 *-* Hershey’s Old Fashioned Fudge *-* 3/19/11
11 *-* Soda Cracker Pie *-* 3/19/11
91 *-* Browned Butter Fudge *-* 3/19/11
40 *-* Easy Chocolate Mousse *-* 4/2/11
45 *-* Chocolate Peanut Butter No-Bakes *-* 4/9/11
11 *-* Roulage (cream filled chocolate roll) *-* 4/16/11
17 *-* CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (diabetic) *-* 4/16/11
Grabbed that recipe for future use! Sounds yummy. Maybe i can get hubby to change his mind about brussel sprouts! lol
I didn’t buy the saffron for the chicken salad I made last night. I bought it for the Arroz con Pollo recipe I posted several weeks ago on the cooking thread. A double batch of it like we make, still only needs 1/2 tsp. of the saffron, so the 2 grams of saffron I bought will make lots of batches of the arroz con pollo.
Here is the recipe for my chicken salad that you wanted that I made last night for sandwiches for our dinner. It is one of those recipes I kind of throw together without measuring anything and do it based on the ingredients my family likes in it. I mix up a big batch of it in my large tupperware salad bowl so I have plenty of room to mix it and so we have plenty leftover for sandwiches over the next few days. I never seem to make a big enough batch of it for my family!
4-6 cooked chicken breasts (depending on their size). I usually poach them so they stay nice and moist. (I strain the resulting broth and cool it and freeze it for use in other cooking another day.) When cooled I cut the chicken breasts into small bite sized chunks and throw them in my large bowl. Depending on how much chicken I have I add:
1/2 - 1 cup finely chopped carrots
1/2 - 1 cup finely chopped celery
1/4 - 1/2 of a medium size onion grated right into the bowl
1/2 - 1 cup craisins or golden raisins (I usually make it with the craisins, since my kids don’t like raisins, but my husband actually prefers the raisins).
I throw everything into my large bowl, and then sprinkle a good bit of celery seed over the top and then season it with black pepper. (I leave salt out, since there is enough flavor with the onion, celery seed, and the pepper and I need to watch my salt intake, but if you normally add salt feel free to add it here). At this point I would add any other seasonings (My family members are picky so I don’t add any others when I am making it for them, but I would otherwise add whatever you like such as a little taragon, rosemary, poultry seasoning, curry, or anything else you and your family like. Some people also like nuts in it, but I have two people who won’t eat nuts in anything, so those of us that like nuts just sprinkle them on our sandwich or salad.
I mix everything up with lots of mayonaise (a little mustard can also be good added in with the mayonaise) and taste it to make sure the seasoning is to my family’s taste and adjust as necessary. Then it is ready for sandwiches or to serve on lettuce leaves for a salad. We also sometimes make lettuce wraps in the summer time, for a lighter dinner.
I think this list has a bit of a sweet tooth! I think we have more dessert recipes than anything else! LOL!
I have had these before and they are great!
No curry, we don’t have any.
All those dessert recipes on post 31 are from all the past cooking threads - we have a bunch to choose from here! Plus all the ones today!
| Zucchini Apple Crisp |
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| 8 cups sliced zucchini (cut like apple slices) 3/4 cup lemon juice 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 cup sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon |
Topping: 1-1/3 cups packed brown sugar 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 cup rolled oats 2/3 cup butter, softened Whipped cream or ice cream, optional |
| Peel and slice zucchini in half the long way. Run a spoon down the center to remove seeds. Slice like you would for apple pie. In a bowl, combine the zucchini, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg; mix well. Pour into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish. For topping, combine brown sugar, flour, oats and butter until crumbly. Sprinkle over zucchini Bake at 375° for 50 minutes or until topping is golden brown. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream if desired. Yield: 12-16 servings. Serving size: 1 cup. Per serving: Calories: 219, Fat: 8g, Saturated Fat: 5g, Cholesterol: 20mg, Sodium: 87mg, Carbohydrates: 36g, Dietary Fiber: 2g, Protein: 2g |
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Tastes just like apple crisp. Comes in handy when you have a lot of zucchini and don't know what to do with it. Plus zucchini has less natural sugars than apples, so if you were inclined to use artificial sweeteners this would be more diabetic friendly.
The hay stacks look good, too. We will try that recipe sometime soon. Homemade snacks are so much better than the ready made packaged snacks from the store
On Easter my family almost always has ham for dinner and through the years I have compiled quite a few different glazes for ham that went over well with my family. When the ham only has about 15 –30 minutes left to cook depending on how browned you like your glaze you can add any one of the following glazes:
Honey Glaze: Mix ½ c brown sugar with ½ c honey and ¼ c mustard
Cranberry Glaze: Mix 1 c Cranberry sauce with ½ c brown sugar, and ¼ c mustard
Orange Glaze: Mix 1c Orange marmalade with ¼ c mustard and thin with a little water or orange juice if necessary until it is a good consistency for glazing.
Spicy Orange Glaze: Mix 1 c Orange marmalade with 1-2 tablespoons of horseradish or creamed horseradish and thin with a little orange juice if necessary until it is a good consistency for glazing.
Maple Glaze: Mix 1 c maple syrup with ¼ c mustard
Barbecue Ham Glaze: Pick your favorite BBQ sauce and slather it on as is or for a sweeter glaze stir in a little brown sugar or honey!
Tangy Brown Sugar Glaze: Mix ¾ c brown sugar with 1 tablespoon dry mustard and stir in about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar.
Heinz 57 Sauce Glaze: Mix 1/2 c Heinz 57 sauce with 1/2 c honey (This is wonderful on chicken too, but beware that if you cook it on the BBQ it has a tendency of attracting all the bees in the area).
Note: I like to use a stone ground mustard or a Dijon mustard for my glazes, but you can also use regular yellow mustard.
Perhaps the rest of you could share your family favorite Ham Glazes as well!
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