Cheddar Chicken Chowder

I hope everyone had an awesome Halloween! I can’t believe we are already less than a month away from Thanksgiving. Since the weather’s changing, I asked my husband if he was up for a soup. I already had a recipe in mind, after seeing it on Dinner Delish. It sounded like a new way to use up chicken, besides grilling or baking it, and it was, most importantly, SKINNY!

This soup definitely did not taste skinny, and my husband and I gobbled it up! It was delicious and not too hard to put together either!

Cheddar Chicken Chowder
Source: Cooking Light (originally found on Dinner Delish)

Ingredients:

• 2  bacon slices
• Cooking spray
• 1  pound  skinned, boned chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
• 1  cup  chopped onion
• 1  cup  diced red bell pepper
• 2  garlic cloves, minced
• 4 1/2  cups  fat-free chicken broth
• 1 3/4  cups  diced peeled red potatoes
• 2 1/4  cups  frozen whole-kernel corn
• 1/2  cup  all-purpose flour
• 2  cups  2% low-fat milk
• 3/4  cup  (3 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/2  teaspoon  salt
• 1/4  teaspoon  pepper

Directions:

1. Cook bacon in a Dutch oven coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan. Crumble; set aside.
2. Add chicken, onion, bell pepper, and garlic to bacon fat in pan; sauté 5 minutes. Add broth and potatoes; bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add corn; stir well.
3. Place flour in a bowl. Gradually add milk, stirring with a whisk until blended; add to soup. Cook over medium heat 15 minutes or until thick, stirring frequently.
4. Stir in cheese, salt, and pepper. Top with crumbled bacon.

The Skinny – serves 6, Serving Size is 1.5 cups

Calories: 306
Fat: 7.5 g
Fiber: 2.9 g

 

Pot Roast, Again!

The temperatures dipped into the 40s out here. It’s absolutely nuts that the week before, we were experiencing nasty, summer weather. However, this new weather was a welcomed change. I told my husband I had to make pot roast for us. It just screams cold weather food!

So, I made pot roast using the same recipe as last time. Diet friendly pot roast, in fact.  I highly recommend this simple, delicious recipe to anyone looking to make their first pot roast!

Birthday Cake-Palooza

Last weekend, my husband’s family celebrated his Dad’s birthday! I was honored that my MIL asked me to make the cake for his birthday. Little did she know that I’d be bringing two cakes!

One being carrot cake, which my husband told me is his favorite. Apparently, he loved it so much that he was sad when it got stale, and he had to throw it away! That’s a big baking compliment right there!

I halved the original recipe to make a personal 6 inch cake, since everyone else in the family usually goes for the standard birthday cake.

I also made a different cream cheese frosting than the recipe indicates, which was inspired by this recipe which I used last year.

Carrot Cake with Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting
Source: Epicurious (Gourmet)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/4 cups canola oil
• 4 large eggs
• 3 cups grated peeled carrots
• 1 1/4 cups coarsely chopped walnuts (omitted)
• 2 tablespoons minced peeled ginger

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch-diameter cake pans. Line bottom of pans with waxed paper. Butter and flour paper; tap out excess flour.
• Whisk flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in medium bowl to blend. Whisk sugar and oil in large bowl until well blended. Whisk in eggs 1 at a time. Add flour mixture and stir until blended. Stir in carrots, walnuts and ginger. Divide batter between prepared pans.
• Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool cakes in pans 15 minutes. Turn out onto racks. Peel off waxed paper; cool cakes completely. For my cakes, it took about 20-25 minutes in the oven, since they were 6 inch.

For the standard birthday cake, I used Duncan Hines French Vanilla mix with 2 tsp. almond extract added. Shocker, I know, but I was also preparing for a garage sale that weekend. I was pretty swamped! This is covered in Wilton Buttercream using ALL butter!

40 Cloves and a Chicken

I’ve been reading so many great reviews about 40 cloves chicken. That is chicken baked/cooked with 40 (yes, 40) cloves of garlic!

There are so many recipes out there, however, so I decided to rely on my tried and true recipe maven, Alton Brown. In reading some of the reviews from the Food Network site, people recommended that I watch him make this. So, I did!

You’ll have to fast forward a little to get to the part where he makes the chicken.

Of course, as you might know, Alton Brown’s show contains characters that add a little humor to the episode. Sorry if vampires aren’t your thing…hehe…vampires, garlic? Ok, maybe too obvious. It made me chuckle.

I ended up making this in a stainless steel shallow pot as well, and it came out beautifully. Very simple too! The flavor was definitely garlic, but not overwhelming. I also took Alton’s  suggestion to make garlic french bread with the spreadable garlic and leftover oil. Simply yummy!

The next day, I shredded the leftover chicken to put in some cajun jambalaya. Yum yum yum!

40 Cloves and a Chicken
Source: Alton Brown

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken (broiler/fryer) cut into 8 pieces (we used 3 bone-in chicken breasts..cut in half)
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 10 sprigs fresh thyme
• 40 peeled cloves garlic
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Toss with a 2 tablespoons olive oil and brown on both sides in a wide fry pan or skillet over high heat. Remove from heat, add oil, thyme, and garlic cloves. Cover and bake for 1 1/2 hours.
3. Remove chicken from the oven, let rest for 5 to 10 minutes, carve, and serve.

Halloween M&M Biscotti

Here is part 2 of the bake-palooza. I decided to make biscotti for my Operation Baking Gals package, since biscotti is a pretty sturdy cookie. I knew it would hold up well for shipping!

A few months back, when I was actively blogging for Weddingbee, I saw a fellow blogger use this recipe for making possible edible favors. I starred it, but as usual, I forget about my starred recipes. I’m obviously making it a goal of mine to look back and make these recipes!

So, I decided to give this recipe a shot. It’s a little different than my normal go-to biscotti recipe, which uses olive oil instead of butter. However, this came out beautifully. I added crushed Halloween M&M’s to make it more seasonal instead of the chocolate chips that were called for.

Chocolate Halloween M&M Biscotti
Source: Epicurious, via Weddingbee blogger, Mrs. Bruschetta

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (subbed 8 oz. crushed M&Ms)
• 1/2 cup white chocolate baking chips (omitted)

Directions:

1. Line large baking sheet with double thickness of foil. Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl to blend. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then vanilla. Beat in flour mixture. Stir in semisweet and white chips (or M&Ms).
2. Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto prepared sheet in two 10- to 11-inch-long strips, spacing 3 inches apart. Using metal spatula or wet fingertips, shape strips into 11- by 2 1/2-inch logs. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake logs until tops are cracked and dry and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 25 minutes; cool 10 minutes.
4. Reduce oven temperature to 300°F. Using foil as aid, lift logs onto work surface. Line baking sheets with clean foil. Using serrated knife, gently cut warm logs crosswise into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Arrange half of slices, cut side down, on each prepared baking sheet. Bake biscotti until just dry to touch, about 8 minutes. Turn biscotti over. Bake until top is dry to touch, about 8 minutes. Cool on sheets.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies

I think I’m pretty brilliant. I have to be. I mean, who in their right minds would join Weight Watchers the week before bake-palooza was going to happen at their house? That’s right, me. There WAS a plan here, I promise!

Bake-palooza happened this weekend for me, because I joined a team on Operation Baking Gals for the first time. I’ve been ITCHING to just have a weekend of baking bliss, and this was the perfect opportunity. My brilliance kicks in even more, because I got to give away all of this food to people I think completely deserve a little something to remind them of home. In other words, I only had one sliver out of this pan vs. eating half of the pan had it been left home with me for a couple of days b/c I felt that the box needed to be filled to the BRIM with goodies for these wonderful soldiers!

However, brilliance did meet with stupidity. Stupidity was this happy baker going to Albertson’s on a Saturday morning to get butter and eggs on sale. Not just ANY Saturday morning…the morning of an away game for LSU. Usually Saturday mornings are so slow, but no, this Saturday involved standing in long lines on Saturday morning surrounded by baskets of ribs, Doritos and LSU colored Bud Light. It took me 15 minutes of waiting in self-checkout (shortest line, or so I thought) to get out of the store, but I had my supplies in tow! I was ready to bake!

I decided to bake three things for the soldiers. This first recipe was featured on Bakerella in the beginning of the year. I’ve had this bookmarked for quite some time, but never got around to making it. I’m glad I did. These turned out to be some very sturdy (shippable) brownies, and the one sliver I tasted was so yummy!

Oh yeah, and these aren’t from scratch. Yeah, I broke a couple of rules here, but it was, after all, game day. Shortcuts needed to be taken since these were thrown together during half time!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies
Source: Betty Crocker (via Bakerella)

Ingredients:

• 1 box Betty Crocker Original Supreme brownie mix (w/ chocolate syrup pouch)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 eggs
• 1 pouch Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 container Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy chocolate frosting (omitted for shipping reasons)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350ºF. Spray bottom only of 13×9-inch pan with cooking spray, or grease with shortening. Make brownie mix as directed on box, using oil, water and 2 eggs. Spread in pan.
2. Make cookie mix as directed on pouch, using butter and 1 egg. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls evenly onto brownie batter; press down lightly.
3. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted 2 inches from side of pan comes out almost clean. Cool on cooling rack 30 minutes. Frost with frosting. For brownies, cut into 8 rows by 6 rows.

Stay tuned for what I made after the game!

Baby Sheep Cookies

My fellow blogger friend from Taste of Home Cooking is expecting a baby girl in a few short weeks!

I wanted to send them a gift card to Target, but doing only that seemed impersonal since we are both food bloggers. Looking for any excuse to bake, I decided to make her some cookies! As I was looking through my cookie cutters, I found a sheep one, and thought aww, baby sheep.

Then, the icing ideas started flowing. I ended up making a good bit, but I was picky and wanted to make sure they got the prettiest ones. My husband was anxiously awaiting the rejects, since he kept smelling almond extract throughout the day!

I made these using the recipes for cookies and royal icing from Cookie Craft. I can’t recommend this book enough! It’s so great for ideas and how-to’s. Even Bakerella recommends it! I’m not a pro, but I’m getting better with my cookie skills.

I think the mom-to-be was really surprised! Congrats!

Pumpkin Bread

I can’t believe this pumpkin shortage. I mean, who would have thought that store shelves would be empty where this stuff is usually stocked? In fact, around this time, most groceries have special holiday baking sections with rows and rows of pumpkin. None to be found. It’s SO weird!

However, as a woman with a craving, I went on a mission to find this rare canned pumpkin. Five stores later, I found myself in a grocery store in a pretty bad part of town. (I went during the day, if you are wondering how wild I am.) I walked down the baking aisle in crazy anticipation. There they were – two large cans of pumpkin puree. I grabbed them quicker than a kid grabs the bubble gum off the candy aisle.

I was so excited when I got home, but I knew I have 58 precious ounces of pumpkin puree. I need to ration this wisely, just in case I can’t find any for the beloved Thanksgiving pie. (You never know!) I couldn’t help but make myself pumpkin bread. It’s a Fall breakfast staple for me!

I’ve seen this recipe from Allrecipes around many food blogs, and people rave about it, so I decided this would be the lucky recipe. It turned out to be a really good pumpkin bread, however, it wasn’t very spicy. I prefer spicy pumpkin bread, like this one I made last year.

Of course, I did my favorite applesauce for butter/oil substitution and it didn’t disappoint. I also halved the recipe  since I don’t need 2 loaves at one time.

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread (full recipe)
Source: Allrecipes

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil (sub applesauce)
• 2/3 cup water
• 3 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour three 7×3 inch loaf pans. (When I halved the recipe, I used one large loaf pan.)
2. In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, water and sugar until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes (took mine 60 minutes) in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The Skinny - per serving, Serves 24 (in full recipe)
Calories 187.6
Fat 1.1 g
Fiber 1.3 g

Lighter General Tso’s Chicken

My husband’s favorite chinese dish is General Tso’s chicken. Unfortunately, the restaurant near our house makes the most unhealthy version possibly available, so it’s an indulgence for him to have it. A few months ago, however, I starred a recipe from Proceed with Caution, but like every recipe I star, I forget about it rather quickly.

I have been in a chicken slump, looking for new ideas, so I went through my starred entries, and I was so glad to find this recipe all over again. I decided to make it last night, and wow! This was very flavorful and good. It’s not exactly the General Tso’s chicken that I’ve tasted, but it’s still good!

I also made some “fried” rice with this to add more veggies to the meal, rather than just plain rice. This fried rice is really simple to make, and I used less sodium soy sauce to flavor the dish.

Lighter General Tso’s Chicken
Source: Proceed with Caution, originally from Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups long-grain brown rice
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1 pound snow peas, trimmed and halved crosswise
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated and peeled
• 3 tablespoons light-brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
• 2 large egg whites
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, such as safflower

Directions:  

1. Cook rice according to package instructions. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 1/2 cup cold water until smooth. Add snow peas, garlic, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and red-pepper flakes; toss to combine, and set aside.
2. In another bowl, whisk together egg whites, remaining 3 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add chicken, and toss to coat.
3. In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high. Lift half the chicken from egg-white mixture (shaking off excess), and add to skillet. Cook, turning occasionally, until golden, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate; repeat with remaining oil and chicken, and set aside (reserve skillet).
4. Add snow-pea mixture to skillet. Cover; cook until snow peas are tender and sauce has thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. Return chicken to skillet (with any juices); toss to coat. Serve with rice.

The Skinny - per serving, Serves 4

Calories 179.6
Fat 7.1 g
Fiber 1.2 g  

Fried Rice
Source: Allrecipes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups enriched white rice
• 4 cups water
• 2/3 cup chopped baby carrots (used frozen)
• 1/2 cup frozen green peas
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• soy sauce to taste  (I used 1/2 cup, less sodium)
• sesame oil, to taste (optional)

Directions:

1. In a saucepan, combine rice and water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.
2. In a small saucepan, boil carrots in water about 3 to 5 minutes. Drop peas into boiling water, and drain.
3. Heat wok over high heat. Pour in oil, then stir in carrots and peas; cook about 30 seconds. Crack in eggs, stirring quickly to scramble eggs with vegetables. Stir in cooked rice. Shake in soy sauce, and toss rice to coat. Drizzle with sesame oil, and toss again.

The Skinny – per serving, Serves 8
Calories – 170.9
Fat – 4.9 g
Fiber – 1.1 g

Note: You can add more vegetables to your rice, which is what I did, to fill your plate more!

Banana Bread

I always make sure to have some fruit options at home. This past week, I realized that I overlooked a small bunch of bananas which were ripening quickly, so I knew it was time to make some banana bread. The last time I made banana bread, I wasn’t very impressed, so I tried another recipe. This one was much better!

Banana Bread
adapted from Allrecipes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together applesauce and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

The Skinny – per serving, serves 12

Calories: 184.5
Fat: 1.3 g
Fiber: 1.7 g