Easter Sugar Cookies

I know I said I was only going to post on the 10th, 20th and 30th of each month......but that was just for new recipes. It doesn't mean I can't post quick ideas, tips or pictures in between, right? Right! So......

My Mom and I made Easter Cookies today.

Here are some close-ups of some of my favorites.

And lastly, one of the ears broke off on one of our bunny cookies so I tried to make it look like one if his ears was flopped down over his face.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Stuffed Crescent Wreath

At one of the first Pampered Chef parties that I hosted, the consultant that came made a Chicken Holiday Wreath. It was good and I have held on to the recipe ever since but never made it. This last Christmas my husband and I were hosting a family get-together and I wanted to make something different and off I was rummaging through my stack (literally.... I really to organize it) of recipes, pictures, ideas, books, notes and magazines looking for something to catch my eye. I came across the original recipe for the Chicken Holiday Wreath and decided to give it a go. I changed a few things around to suit our tastes better and what follows is my version. Here is a link to the original Pampered Chef Chicken Holiday Wreath if you want to take a look or give it a try. I was unable to find it on Pampered Chef's website (the recipe is from a while ago) but was able to locate it on a site called Recipe Goldmine and it is the original recipe.

This recipe makes a great starter course and works really well for get-togethers when you have all little things or appetizers to eat instead of one big meal.

I started off by shredding one chicken breast and placing it in a bowl and finely chopping one small carrot, half of a red bell pepper and 1/2 cup of broccoli.

I added all of the veggies into the bowl with the chicken and added a can of cream of celery, shredded cheddar cheese and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

I then opened two cans of crescent rolls and separated the dough into 8 triangles per tube (16 total). I laid 8 of the triangles out into a half circle, slightly overlapping, on a pizza stone with the wide end facing in.

I laid the other half out in the same manner then pressed the dough together to seal the seams.

I spooned half of the chicken mixture onto the wide end of the crescent dough. We will come back to the other half of the chicken mixture later.

I then took the "pointy" end of the crescent dough and wrapped it over the chicken mixture and tucked it under the bottom side. Don't worry about having gaps in the dough along the top, you want the filling to peek through.

I placed it into a 350 degree preheated oven for 25 minutes.

The second half of the filling can be saved to make other wreath (especially handy during parties or family holidays) OR ......

You can make a pizza with it! I took a thin crust, store bought pizza dough, lightly brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with garlic salt. I spread the leftover filling onto the dough and sprinkled the top with more cheddar cheese. I followed the baking directions listed on the package for the pizza crust.


Stuffed Crescent Wreath

1 pre-cooked chicken breast, shredded
one small carrot, finely chopped
half red bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup broccoli (fresh or frozen), finely chopped
10.5 oz can cream of celery
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tubes of refrigerated crescent rolls
salt and pepper

Mix chicken, carrot, pepper, broccoli, cream of celery, cheese and sprinkle of salt and pepper together in a bowl. Very lightly spray a round pizza stone with non-stick spray. Open tubes of crescent dough and separate into triangles. Going in a circle, lay out triangles of dough around the pizza stone, slightly overlapping with the point of dough hanging over edge of pizza stone. Press dough together to eliminate seams and seal dough together. Spoon half of chicken filling onto wide end of crescent dough going in a circle. Fold over points of crescent dough over top of filling and tuck underneath in center of the wreath. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Dirt Dessert

It's Spring! I know its been here for a while but it finally FEELS like spring. We hit 80 degrees here this weekend and it felt wonderful. So I thought this would be a perfect treat to a nice spring weekend.

I first made some chocolate suckers shaped like flowers. I used pink and milk chocolate candy melts and melted them in the microwave in 20 to 30 second intervals.

I used this sucker mold from Wilton to make my flowers. I first spooned a little chocolate into the center of each flower then used the end of a sucker stick to help me spread it around.

I added dots to some of my flower petals then set the tray in the freezer for a few minutes to set.

 Once set, I poured the contrasting color of chocolate into each mold and tapped it against the counter to even out the chocolate and get out any air bubbles. Then I set a sucker stick into each one.........

......and turned the stick to completely coat it. I then put them back into the freezer to set.

Next I made two flavors of pudding following the directions on the box.

I also made up some homemade whip cream.

After I had the whip cream made, I folded in a couple spoonfuls of the Devil's food pudding to make it chocolate also.

I placed a full package of Oreo sandwich cookies into a gallon zip top bag and crushed them up. I also had mini chocolate chips and gummy worms on hand.

Using my Pampered Chef Trifle Bowl I layered all of my ingredients like this starting with the bottom layer:

Half of the Oreo pudding
Gummy worms around edge of bowl
1/3 of the crushed Oreo cookies
Devil's  Food pudding
1/3 of the crushed Oreo cookies
Half of Oreo pudding
mini chocolate chips
Chocolate whipped cream
1/3 of the crushed Oreo cookies
Decorated top with gummy worms and chocolate flower suckers

And I was able to get the lid on top!

Whip Cream

1 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp brown sugar

Place everything into a chilled metal bowl for easier whipping. Using a whip attachment, beat with electric mixer until stiff peaks form.

Chicken and Dumplings

Hello!! I want to start off by setting a schedule that I am going to follow for this blog. And that way, you will know when to expect new recipes. Although I am sorry for this last month but I really hadn't been feeling well. But everyone is better now and back to normal! So, the schedule for posting will be the 10th, 20th, and 30th of every month. Now, on to our recipe.

I started off by chopping a couple of carrots and an onion then adding them to a large pot over medium heat with olive oil and seasoning them with salt and pepper.

When they were just starting to become soft, I added in a 28oz can of pre-cooked chicken.

I really like using canned chicken in this because it just shreds all throughout the dish and I just love how then it is in every bite. It also makes this dish rather fast to make! At this point I also added in chicken broth and seasonings and brought it to a boil. While I was waiting for it to come to a boil, I "made" my dumplings.

I took a refrigerated roll of biscuits........

......and cut each biscuit into quarters.

If some of the pieces were a little big, I just cut them again. It doesn't have to be anything exact. It is better to use an original biscuit or a buttermilk biscuit. Try not to use the biscuits that are "flake" or "pull-a-part" because they tend to not work as well in this dish. I dropped each dumpling into the boiling pot one or two at a time while stirring.

I covered the pot with a lid for 5-10 minutes until the dumplings were cooked. Then I stirred in some milk I had mixed with corn starch to thicken it all and make it more gravy like and stirred in some frozen peas.

Viola! Chicken and Dumplings!

Chicken and Dumplings

2-4 carrots, chopped

1 onion, chopped

28oz Canned Cooked Chicken

6 Cups Chicken Broth (equals 3 regular size cans)

1/2 tsp Dried Thyme

1 1/2 tsp Dried Parsley

1 Refrigerated Can of 8 biscuits, Original or Buttermilk

2/3 Cup milk

3 Tbsp Corn Starch

1/2 to 1 Cup frozen peas

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Over medium heat, cook carrot and onion with olive oil until softened. Season with salt and pepper. Add can of chicken, chicken broth, thyme, parsley, and a pinch more salt and pepper. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Cut biscuits into quarters or bite sized pieces. Drop one or two at a time into boiling liquid while stirring. Place cover on pan, turn heat down slightly and cook 5 to 10 minutes or until dumplings are cooked through. Whisk corn starch and milk together, add to pot while stirring and bring back to boil to thicken. Add in frozen peas and stir. Season with a pinch more salt and pepper if needed. 

A Little Update

Hi Everyone......
Sorry for my lack of posting lately but I have been a bit under the weather......Ok, more than a bit.  And I haven't been cooking at all lately. I am finally on my way to recovery (fingers crossed) and should hopefully be back sometime this next week with a recipe. If all goes well, I'm hoping to post Chicken and Dumplings! Have a good weekend.

Sesame Noodles

Are you ready for a side dish that is completely different and totally easy? These Sesame Noodles are it!

Using the large tablespoon out of my silverware set, I roughly measure out:

2 spoons peanut butter
1 spoon soy sauce
1 1/2 spoons vegetable oil
1/2 spoon sesame oil
sprinkle in chili powder to taste

The nice thing is, you don't have to be exact with this. Using a tablespoon for rough measurments will work just fine.

The sesame oil adds a really nice flavor but it is strong. Start with the half spoon full and then add more if you wish after you taste it.

Mix everything together using a fork. When you first start mixing, it will seem that it won't ever come together. After a minute or two though, you get a nice creamy sauce.

Mix with a a half pound of cooked spaghetti noodles that are still hot.

Again this makes a wonderful side dish, especially for Chicken Curry. It also makes a simple lunch or dinner all on its own. Enjoy!

Rugelach

A few weeks ago, I tried my hand at making rugelach......And it turned out GREAT! I usually shy away from making my own pasty dough because it seems that I just don't have the knack for it and never have an easy time with it. But this dough was the nicest dough I have ever worked with. It was smooth, soft and just wonderful. It is a recipe by The Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. I pretty much followed her recipe exactly except for a couple of small things. Here is the link for the original recipe on Food Network.

It started by creaming cream cheese and butter together.

Then I added granulated sugar except I used vanilla sugar. Vanilla sugar is a wonderful thing. After you use the seeds out of a vanilla bean, instead of throwing the pod away, add it to your sugar bowl. It flavors all the sugar and as you use the sugar out of the bowl, keep the vanilla bean pod in there and keep adding more sugar. The vanilla bean pod will last quite a while.

I follwed the rest of the recipe for the dough, spilt it into quarters and chilled it. I only ended up rolling out one the quaters and froze the rest of the dough. It freezes very nicely and when you need or crave some, the dough is already done.

I rolled out the dough and instead of using apricot jam, I used this wonderful Carrot Cake Jam my friend Traci gave me. It has chunks of apple in it so I put it into a food processor to make it nice and smooth.

I spread my jam over the dough and sprinkled it the cinnamon sugar and walnuts. I left out the raisins because I'm just not a big fan of them...

I cut the dough into 12 pieces by first quarting it, then cutting the quaters into thirds. I rolled each piece up, sprinkled it with more cinnamon sugar and placed them on a baking sheet.

Very easy and soooo good! I have also made a batch using apricot jam and plan on making some soon using strawberry jam.

Barefoot Contessa Rugelach