Vegetables Napoleon

Nothing says summer time like fresh vegetables all bright and full of color and flavor! Some of my friends have been lucky enough to have amazing gardens (ahh hemm Haley!) and I am so jealous! The heat has killed nearly everything I planted even the flowers! You know it is bad when you leave the house at 7am for work and it is already 81 degrees! Well at least the grocery store has had some good produce even if my green thumb has sun burnt to a golden brown!

So I decided to make  nice light dinner of garlic mozzarella chicken baked potato and vegetables napoleon!
Making vegetables napoleon is very easy. I decided to make mine with a combination of eggplant, zucchini, summer squash and roasted red bell peppers. I think next time I am going to omit the eggplant and use portabello mushrooms instead!

Vegetables Napoleon
Egg Plat
Summer Squash
Zucchini
Red Bell Peppers (roasted)
Mozzarella cheese
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper

First thing you need is roasted red bell peppers. I used the method of roasting them on my gas stove top. You want to roast them until they are blackened. Move them to  a plate to cool.

while they cool place a towel over them so that they continue to roast and keep in all that flavor. Once they are cool to the touch you want to remove all the blacked parts and throw it away. You do not want to rinse them or you will lose all that sweetness that the pepper gets. Just peel it off with your finger tips and it will come off easily. Then slice them up removing the seeds and set to the side.

Now what you want to do is slice the vegetables up and place them in a large bowl. Sprinkle with sat and pepper to taste (you can add any other seasonings that you prefer to bring out the flavor of the vegetables) drizzle some EVOO over the vegetables and until they are all coated with spices and the oil. If you use egg plant it can tend to be thirsty and soak up the oil so be sure the rest of vegetables are well coated and use a little extra if need be.


Take your seasoned veggies to the grill and grill for approx 3 to 4 minutes per side. Be sure to spray your grill with some cooking spray to ensure that they do not stick to the grill. What you want is the grill marks on the vegetables. It is ok if they are not all the way cooked as you will be finishing them in the oven. Once they are done remove them from the grill take out your mozzarella cheese and get your bell peppers. On a baking sheet you want to layer the vegetables. and in between some of the layers of eggplant, squash, zucchini and peppers place a little bit of cheese. Not too much but enough to bring it all together and add some flavor.


Once you have them all stacked and ready to go you can drizzle a little EVOO on top of them and bake at 350 for 5 to 10 minutes until your cheese is melty and slightly browned.


Plate and serve!


I definitely think these would be great with portabello mushrooms and I will definitely be making these again!

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Broccoli Gratin

OK people! So if any of you decided to try out the Croque Monsieur then you are probably wondering "dear lord what am I going to do with all this bechamel sauce?!" Well I am here to tell you exactly what I think you should do with it! You need to make this broccoli gratin! You will definitely be glad that you did!

Broccoli Gratin
2 cups bechamel sauce
1.5 lbs broccoli
8oz sharp cheddar cheese (the better quality the cheese the better the taste!)
Plain bread crumbs for dusting
Parmesan cheese (approx 1/2 cup, you are just using it to sprinkle on)

First things first, take your cheese out of the fridge an cut it into small cubes. You can grate it if you want but if you don't want to risk losing or knuckle or wasting all that time then cutting it into small cubes will work just as well! Once you get it all cut up nice and small set it off to the side! If it is room temp it will melt easier into your sauce. Go ahead and preheat your oven to 400 and start to boil some water on the stove. Once you get your broccoli all cut up so you only have the florets (just the tops.) Throw a little bit of salt in the water. Once the sauce comes to a boil throw in your broccoli and set your timer for 2.5 minutes 3 maximum. Trust me on this. You just want the broccoli to get a nice dark green. After three minutes pull it out of the water and drain well. In a sauce pan on the stove heat up your 2 cups of bechamel sauce (if you need the recipe click here) continuing to stir it so you do not burn it. Once your sauce is nice and hot put in the cheese that you cubed. Remove it from the heat and continue to stir until all the cheese melts into your sauce. Once the cheese is all melted into the sauce place your broccoli in a bowl and pour the sauce over the broccoli and coat it all. Once it is all coated pour it into a casserole dish. Dust the top with bread crumbs and then sprinkle on the Parmesan cheese.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until it looks like this...

I had set out some venison steaks (deer meat that we have from the Hubby's fabulous hunting adventures last winter) and the plan was to have mashed potatoes and broccoli gratin, however, every potato I cut into was black in the middle! And I had just bought them! So I was already in the middle of dinner I decided to improvise with a box of broccoli rice! It turned out so yummy anyway!

It went wonderful with a nice Merlot!

How did I not notice that grain of rice on the steak ruining this shot! LOL Oh well! This is a great dish to make to use the rest of your bechamel sauce and a great change from just plain broccoli! MMM MMM good!!

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Croque Monsieur

Hello Hello!

Lately I have had a serious urge to try some new and exciting recipes... things that excite me and scare me a little. Going outside of my comfort zone and telling my self "you can do it!" pardon the water boy reference! So I decided to make Croque Monsieur, which also entails making Bechamel sauce! Now you might be asking yourself "What in the heck is Croque Monsieur?" Well I am going to tell you. Croque Monsieur is a French open-faced sandwich that is mostly served at bars or cafes as something quick. It is a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. The name is based on the verb croquer (to crunch) and the word monsieur (mister) When you combine that you get a sandwich called "Mr. Crunchy" well any toasted open faced sandwich that gets a Mr. in front of the word Crunchy is definitely something that I want to try I don't know about you! I decided to make my version of this the more elaborate way by coating the bread in a béchamel sauce as I mentioned earlier. Now if you are asking yourself "What the heck is Béchamel sauce?" don't worry because I am going to tell you! Béchamel is a white sauce; milk thickened with butter and flour roux. This sauce is one of the mother sauces of French cuisine and is also used in many Italian dishes. It is also very easy to make which is always fabulous news!

I made the béchamel sauce first (this recipe that I have for the béchamel is large! I have another recipe, to be posted next, that called for the béchamel sauce so I made the whole batch at once and stored the extra in an airtight container in the fridge for a day before making the other. If you wish to cut this down you should get the same effect in a smaller quantity)

Now there are many ways to make this sauce and if you want a lot of options just google it! There is the most traditional way of an onion studded with cloves (that is how I will try it next time) but I opted for this simple recipe and it was wonderful.

Béchamel Sauce
1-quart whole milk
1/2-cup flour
1/2 cup or 1 stick sweet butter (unsalted butter)
Salt and pepper (You can use white or cayenne. White pepper would be more traditional)
1/2 Teaspoon Fresh Thyme (I had to omit this as there was none at my store and my sauce was still very good)

First you need to make the roux (pronounced row) Melt the butter on low when the foam disappears that is when it is time to add the flour. Whisk in the flour for 5 minutes until it is a blonde color and starts to bubble a little. This step is done to cook out the starchy taste of the flour and you can take this roux down to a deep brick color for some recipes but you want this to stay a blonde color. Once this has happened then add cold milk. I poured it in slowly while whisking. The key here is to make sure the milk is cold. Add in your spices and simmer for 10 minutes. The sauce will start to thicken. A little note I that once the sauce is at a simmer it will not get any thicker. You need to whisk to be sure that nothing on the bottom is burning but the simmer I really to cook in the flavors and thicken the sauce. The sauce is ready when it will coat the back of a spoon and hold a line. What it means to "hold a line" is that if you wipe your finger across the back of the spoon the line will stay so that you can still see the line it won't be runny and cover your line. I added about 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of ground sea salt, 1/16 teaspoon nutmeg (I would have liked to use fresh ground nutmeg, however, I could not find that anywhere so I used the ground kind I had in my spice rack) The way I understand it is that you don’t want this sauce too over powered with spices because it is the "base" of the recipes it is used in and then you build on that! You can add cheese to it while it is still warm and melt that in. I choose to leave mine without and add it later to each recipe since the two recipes that I was using the sauce for called for different cheeses.
Once I made the sauce I placed it in a container and cooled it in the fridge. A couple hours later when we were closer to being ready to eat I prepared the sandwiches.

Croque Monsieur
French Bread
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Smoked Ham (preferably black Forrest ham not to thinly sliced)
Cheeses (the traditional way is with a Gruyere but that was not available to me so I used Swiss you can use any melty cheese)
Parmesan Cheese
Tomato
Asparagus
You will want to take your French bread loaf (preferably the nice round loaves however the long skinner versions will work as well your slices will just be slightly smaller) cut your slices of bread and place on a baking sheet. Try to keep them the same width so they will all cook in the same amount of time. Lightly coat the bread with EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) by drizzling it from above. Once that is done flip the bread over on the sheet so that now the bread with the oil is on the bottom. This is to help make your bread crunchy underneath while it cooks. Brush the tops of your bread slices with your béchamel sauce that you made. Make sure you get the sauce all the way to the edges of the bread to ensure that it does not burn. If the bread is coated to the edges it will not burn. I then placed some smoke cheddar and Swiss combination cheese on top of the sauce. Then you just layer it. I put the Ham on next.
(Ok so that is not entirely true! I forgot the ham and had to add it last because I just knew something looked off! Durr!! I swear!)
I then took tomato slices that I had salted and peppered and placed them on top of the ham. On a few I then put a few pieces of asparagus. Then you top it with some melty grated cheese like Fontina or Swiss. Grate just a tiny bit of fresh Parmesan over the top of the sandwiches. This gives another layer of flavor and you do not need much.
(see! much better with the ham actually on the sandwhich)
Lightly drizzle the tops with some EVOO and place in the oven at 400 for 15 to 20 minutes until the cheese I melted and browned and it looks like this!

Jason and I were so thrilled with the way this turned out! I served it with a light salad with some home made ranch dressing and a nice white wine. As well as a nice glass of white wine! And this

is one of th best white wines I have ever had and it is usually 10 dollars or under! I also love Toasted Head Chardonay. It was so simple yet had the taste of something so sophisticated. It was a pleasure to make and to eat! This is going to be a family staple I am sure! You should defenitly try this out. You can top it with anything! Or just do it simple and tradition cheese and ham.
 
Bon appetite!!

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Chicken Florentine

One of my best friends Brenda sent me a picture text message the other day of her boyfriend Ian making dinner for her after a long day at work!! When I asked what it was that he was making she said "Chicken Florentine!" And then she added in the best part "and it is low calorie!" Wait what? For a second I thought about replying with "ohhh, well enjoy your cardboard dinner then!" because lets face it we have all tried the low calorie and low fat versions of rich and yummy good recipes because we are drawn in by the lure of "low calories" and "healthy" but you are almost always left a bit disappointed and wondering if you should have just done it the original and yummy way and just spent a couple extra hours in the gym that day! Well I opted to save my pessimism for myself and said "great let me know how it turns out!" Well Brenda just raved about it so I decided I had to try this for myself! OH MY GOSH!!! This chicken was so good SO GOOD! Thank goodness I did not have a insert foot in mouth moment by responding with my first thoughts! (Sorry Bren but it was my initial thoughts!) I think this is a recipe that everyone should keep! It is so easy so delicious and definitely worth it! I decided to serve my chicken on top of some Vermicelli noodles and also made some steamed asparagus to go with it!
I got the copy of the recipe emailed to me but we are trying to find the origin of what book it came out of so I know who to properly credit. Until then here is the recipe...

Chicken Florentine
serves 4
4 teaspoons Canola Oil
Two 6 ounce bags of baby spinach (about 12 cups)
1.5 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast (trimmed)
salt and pepper
1 shallot minced (about 3 tablespoons)
2 Garlic cloves minced
1 tablespoon unbleached AP flour
2 cups low sodium chicken broth
1 1/4 cups water
2 tablespoons of heavy cream
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons Parmesan cheese (freshly grated)

Heat broiler and move the rack 5 inches from the heating element

1. Heat two teaspoons of the oil in a 12 in skillet over medium heat until simmering. Add the spinach, one handful at a time, stirring often. Cook until wilted, abut 5 minutes. Transfer to a colander. Place the colander over a bowl or large measuring cup and press the spinach with a spatula until all the liquid is expelled. Wipe out the skillet with a paper towel.

Here is my chicken getting ready to go in the skillet


2. Season the chicken breasts with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Heat the remaining oil in the skillet over medium high heat until smoking. Carefully lay the chicken in the skillet and cook them for 4 to 6 minutes on each side until lightly browned. Transfer chicken to a plate and lightly tent with foil.

3.  Add the shallot and the garlic to the skillet and cook over medium heat for about 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in the flour. Whisk in the broth and water scrapping up any browned bits.

Here is everything cooking away!


4. Return the chicken breasts along with any accumulated juice to the skillet. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to medium low and cook until the thickest part of the chicken breasts reach 160 to 165 with a meat thermometer (about 10 to 15 minutes.) Flipping the breasts half way through. Remove chicken and place it on a plate and lightly tent with foil once again.

5. Simmer the sauce for another 15 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in the cream and lemon juice and zest. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This is what I did as I waited for the simmering to happen!


6. Cut the chicken breast cross ways into 1/2 inch thick pieces and arrange in broiler safe 2 quart casserole dish. Scatter the spinach evenly over the chicken and pour the sauce on top of the chicken and spinach. Sprinkle with the cheese on top and broil for about 5 minutes until golden brown and serve.

The timer went off and here it was! In the oven! Just beautiful!


Plate and serve!


340 calories per serving 11 grams of fat; 3 grams of sat fat; 15 carbs; 44grams of protein;4 fiber; 670 sodium mg

I can't say it enough you must try this recipe.... you know you need a new dinner idea to try and this is going to be it! Once you do it you will thank me!

Enjoy!

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Beer Cake!!

Hello Hello!!

Last week I had a cake order for a birthday. They told me that they wanted a cake that looked like beer and that the birthday boy had a favorite type of beer and that was "Natural Light" I decided to make a chocolate cake filled with Dulce De Leche and frosted with a vanilla butter cream. Had I not had to tint the icing and make it look like a beer I would have used a chocolate frosting but I think the butter cream complimented the cake very nicely as well! Jason was eating all the pieces that I had trimmed off and claimed that it was amazingly good! I plan on making it in cupcake form with a ganache frosting in the weeks to come!!

I used the chocolate cake recipe off the back of the Hershey's coca can! I just made a few changes! I used buttermilk instead of milk and I used strong hot coffee for the boiling water! It got rave reviews from the party goers as well!





Please pardon the horrible photos but the day before I had to have this cake done the air conditioning went out in our house! For those of you who do not know Southern Oklahoma has had some lovely hot and humid weather!! I was literally taking it out of the fridge for 10 minutes at a time so it would stop melting as the repair guys were in the attic with my husband trying to fix our AC problem! SOOOO that is why the pictures are not at the best angle. This cake was also huge! It was three 11x15 cakes stacked on top of each other!! I know my decorating skills are still amateur but I have to say I am pretty proud of this creation!

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Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes!

Well we just competed a huge task!! We put a new patio in, in our backyard and when Jason's brother and Dad came over to help I knew that I needed to make his brother his favorite dessert. However, since we were so busy in the yard and since I didn't have all the ingredients I usually do (I did not want to go to the store as that would leave us a man down and we had lots of work to do.) I busted out a box mix (don't even start with me OK! I know I know but sometimes they are useful, quick, easy and reliable!) I had just gotten a new pan at Walls Bargain Center for a bargain price of $6.99 and I had been dying to use it and my idea was to make personal size Pineapple Upside Down Cakes! This happens to be my brother in laws favorite (mine too!) SO I quickly got to work made my batter so I could get to baking and then back to digging!!
Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cake


Here is the pan ready for the cake... Gosh after I got the butter and brown sugar and pineapple in there wasn't a whole lot of room for batter and room to rise! Oh well good thing my first go at this is just with a box mix!


Hot out of the oven here these cutie cakes are...




Survey says? Yummy cake... perfect for freaks like me that like an equal amount of pineapple to go with each bite of cake! They were so yummy and too cute! I can't wait to use this pan to do my pleasantly pineapple cake (hint hint it will be coming next!)

I thought I would show you all the patio with the new furniture since it was the inspiration for the post and since I blabbed about it. If you are anything like me and hate hearing a story and then getting no visuals then you will enjoy these!

Here is my cheese ball husband the night before when we had dug the patio out and did all the frame work!


Here is the gang working on the pathway... Hey I was helping too but someone had to document the project


Ta Da!! The best part? The candle chandelier on the umbrella!


Here it is just one more time (sorry I am just so proud of us)


Well Happy First Day of Summer everyone!! Hope your summer is going well! I also got a great new BBQ cook book at Lowes this weekend... so expect some yummy new recipes that we will be enjoying on that new patio furniture!! (OK OK OK I will stop finding a way to bring up the patio!)

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Peace Love & Softball Cake

Well I am sorry it has been so long since I have posted last!! I got an order two days ago for a 16 year old birthday cake! She wanted three tiers to this cake! I have never done this before but I am always up for a challenge so I said sure! She also wanted this cake to have the theme of "Peace Love and Softball" since she is very into sports and softball. The kicker was that she wanted the cake tie dyed!! So I decided to tie dye the inside of the cake and frost the outside in her favorite color TEAL!!

Ok so here we go with the pictures...
I separated the batter into 5 bowls to drop in the pan randomly so it will look like tie dye when you cut into it. It looks more like doing Easter eggs then cake baking!

That is not too blues either... clearly my camera is not up to par (although I already knew this) so my purple looks a bit like a darker blue...

Here it is in the pan ready to bake!

All done... only 5 more cakes to go!!

I did not take any photos during the assembly of the cake because... well to be completely honest I had a melt down twice. I was ready to toss in the rag and vow to never cook again! And at another moment when my husband offered help clearly the look on my face showed that his help was better spent with him back on the couch in the living room!! Well once the frosting (Swiss Meringue Butter Cream- White Chocolate flavor YUM) was on the cake and the supports were in I came back down from my "I hate cake cloud" and remembered why I love cake! and baking! and called said husband back in the room to help me put on the candy melt decorations and make him admire the fact that I did in fact not kill the cake or myself!!
SO here are the pictures from the assembled cake... the lighting is not up to par on that side of the kitchen so I am sorry for the darkness of the photos.




On the top I did "peace love softball" she got the idea from a tie dye t-shirt that she has.

Well I was pretty pleased with the results especially with this being my first round with this massive of a cake. I lined a wooden board with a bright pink vinyl table cloth for the presentation.

Once the cake was delivered I proceeded to go outside in the backyard and enjoy my new toy!

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White chocolate cupcakes!

Well I told you all that I made a cupcake version of the birthday cake I had made. It seems that I was so obsessed that I had to make up a reason to make the Swiss Meringue Butter Cream again! If you are looking for the recipe here is the original post!I took a couple pictures of them and I thought I would share them with you here. I have got to say this is the lightest, yet sweet and most wonderful cupcake I have had in a long time!

Here are a few pictures for you!




Some of them I filled with a fresh strawberry or a surprise inside!

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Sunflower cupcakes

Last week I got a call for an order for a birthday cake and some cupcakes. I was so excited as I have not had many "official" orders and even though I have not had many I just knew this was going to be great! I have so many recipes I want to try and decoration ideas to test out but I am sure that my butt would be as big as a house if I decided to try one recipe a week! I know what you are thinking "Heather, just give them away" yea ok! That is a great idea in theory but we all know how that would go. Taste of the batter here.... lick of the frosting there... and before you know it your stomach hurts there is frosting from your nose to your chin and you are surrounded by little paper cup holders that have now been torn to shreds all around you. Then you think well I was just going to have one.... Well I try to not even tempt myself by trying to not bake all the time unless I have a purpose or a place to send the goods! SOOO my point being, it was AWESOME to get this order as it gave me cause to try a cake recipe I had wanted to try for so long as well as decorate some cupcakes and try another cake recipe! The only problems was I got the call Wednesday night and they needed the goods by Saturday morning... So that meant I needed to get my ducks in a row Thursday so that Friday after work I could everything baked! I decided that since last Saturday was the first day of spring that I would do some cheerful sunflower decorated cupcakes! For the cake they had requested something with with fresh fruit and it made me think of a recipe I have been dying to try that Cassie from How To Eat A Cupcake made a while ago! The recipe is here!!! And let me tell you folks.... this cake got rave reviews. I ended up making a cupcake version of it Monday, but that's another blog! The most amazing part I have got to say is the Swiss Meringue Butter Cream frosting!! I made it the way that Cassie made it with her tweaks from the original. I have watched her make SMBC for years and always wanted to try it out but to be perfectly honest... I was scared!! Yes YES I have admitted it! I was afraid of frosting! NOT ANYMORE KIDS!! I have made this frosting now 3 times. I can't seem to make it without the white chocolate though! That is probably because once I realized how easy it was to quest and conquer the amazing silky smoothness that is the Swiss Meringue Butter Cream I have gone on a bit of a binge! It is like suddenly realizing you like something that you never knew existed. You can't get it out of your head, you think about it all the time, and often realize that anything that you are eating could most definitely be made better by putting this new found magical item on it! I swear I am currently having an affair with Swiss Meringue Butter Cream!! For the cupcakes I made SMBC (without the white chocolate amazingly enough) and tinted it! It was great! I used a cake recipe I found here. The cake complimented the frosting quite nicely! Of course the touch that made the cupcakes in my opinion is the ladybugs!!!!
SO now lets get to some pictures!
Here is the center of the cupcakes before they bloomed into beautiful yellow sunflowers!


Well I have to say I think they look quite good but it just seems like something is missing!!


Tada!!! Ok how cute are the ladybugs?


Here is the birthday cake! I decided to top it with a strawberry garnish and some freshly grated white chocolate. As we can see I cant seem to frost a cake to save my life so thank god I was saved by the wonderful flavor of the cake!




Here it is in the box ready to go!


I just have to show you these cupcakes again! I felt so proud and although my pipping skills are lacking you have to start some where and I was pretty happy with the end result!


I just don't know how I will ever made baked goods again that do not have Swiss Meringue Butter Cream frosting and ladybugs!

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