Corn Pudding & Thanksgiving Catch Up

I’ve had a bit of a blogging break this past week.  Foodie Jr. was off the entire week from school and we’ve had all kinds of excitement surrounding the impending arrival of Baby Foodie so it’s just been busy, busy, busy!  Our Thanksgiving was extremely quiet and spent mostly in our pajamas.  We generally travel for this holiday whether it be to a relative’s house or to a fun destination like Disneyland but this year with the delivery so close, we thought it best to stay home.  Not to mention, I can barely get from point A to point B without struggle!  Our Thanksgiving menu featured the standards:  green bean casserole, yams, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, etc…  This year we did a cajun brined and smoked turkey and made some cajun dirty rice to go with it.  Dessert was sweet potato pie and pineapple cream pie.  Too much food for 2.5 people!

The recipe I am posting is a tradition on our holiday table – Corn Pudding.  I don’t remember how or when I started making this but it has been some years now and everyone seems to really like it.  I am not posting a picture of the dish itself, but rather of the Thanksgiving spread it was a part of – you can see it in the far back (in a square  dish.)  This is a really easy side dish and it goes with standard holiday food, kid friendly as well.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

CORN PUDDING

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1 Cup Heavy cream

2 TBS Sugar

1 ½ TBS Flour

1 Tsp Salt

1 Tsp Baking Powder

3 Cups Corn (2 cans)

¼ lb. Butter, melted

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Beat eggs and heavy cream with mixer until light and fluffy.

3.  Slowly add the dry ingredients.

4.  Add corn and stir in the melted butter.

5.  Pour mixture in a greased casserole dish and bake for about 45 minuutes, until set.

 

Cream Biscuits

This recipe was given to me several years ago by a fellow mom – I believe that it was originally a Williams Sonoma recipe.  I love a good biscuit and these are my absolute favorite.  They are super simple to make but taste so good!  The heavy cream provides such a nice texture.  We recently had them as part of our biscuits and gravy but they are great just plain too.  Foodie Jr. likes to slather them in butter (much like he does any other kind of bread) but I find that they don’t even need anything, I love to eat them plain, fresh out of the oven.  They are a great addition to a holiday meal and I have even used them in Thanksgiving dressing before!

CREAM BISCUITS

Ingredients:

2 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour

1 TBS Baking Powder

1 Tsp Salt

2 TBS Sugar

2 1/2 Cups Heavy Whipping Cream

Directions:

1.  Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.

2.  In a bowl, stir together all dry ingredients.

3.  Add the cream and stir until no longer lumpy.

4.  Drop a 1/4 Cup or so of batter onto an ungreased baking sheet, spacing the biscuits apart about an inch.

5.  Bake until golden brown about 15 minutes, depending on your oven.  This recipe should yield about a dozen biscuits.

Cupcake Bites

I recently made an adapted version of Bakerella’s Cupcake Bites for Foodie Jr.’s school bake sale.  I have to admit that I wanted to make these purely because of aesthetics.  I thought they were adorable but I wasn’t sure how they were going to taste.  I did not think they would taste bad because really, how can you go wrong with cake, frosting and chocolate?  But, I was unsure how it would all come together.  They are actually really yummy – Foodie Jr. and Mr. Foodie both really liked them a lot.  Mr. Foodie thought they tasted like a Ding Dong or Ho Ho.  These really are easy to make and cute, I highly recommend trying them out – your guests will be impressed!

CUPCAKE BITES

Ingredients:

1 Box Devil’s Food Cake Mix, cooked as directed on box in a 9×13 pan

1 Can of Fluffy White Frosting

1 Package of Milk Chocolate Bark

1 Package of White Chocolate Bark

Candy Coloring, any color(s) you desire

Candy Sprinkles

Candy Cup Mold (I used the Wilton one)

Directions:

1.  After your cake is cooked and cool, crumble the entire cake very finely into a large bowl.

2.  Mix the cake crumbles with the entire jar of frosting thoroughly.

3.  Roll the cake/frosting mixture into balls – they should not be larger than your candy molds diameter.

4.  Melt the chocolate barks in microwave or per package directions.  Add your desired coloring to the melted white chocolate.

5.  Fill each cavity of your mold with the milk chocolate.  Push a cake ball into each cavity, the chocolate will come up the side of the ball a bit.

6.  Set molds in the freezer for several minutes to let the chocolate set – this does not take long at all!

7.  Carefully pop the balls out of the mold and dip the tops into the colored white chocolate mixture.

8.  Decorate colored tops with sprinkles and let balls sit for a few minutes as topping sets.

Fresh Fettucine with Pulled Rotisserie Chicken, Pesto, Roasted Red Peppers & Olives

I believe this recipe originally came from Sara Moulton who used to appear on the Food Network.  My mom found it years ago and has made it quite a bit since.  It packs a lot of flavor and is really easy to make in a pinch for a weeknight dinner.  It’s also nice enough to serve company.  Mr. Foodie is ALL ABOUT pesto so this is right up his alley.

FRESH FETTUCINE WITH PULLED ROTISSERIE CHICKEN, PESTO, ROASTED RED PEPPER AND OLIVES

Ingredients:

2/3 Cup Pesto Sauce (homemade or your favorite store brand)

1 package (9 oz) of Fresh Fettucine Pasta

1 TBS Olive Oil

3 Garlic Cloves, minced

4 Cups of Pulled Chicken Meat (I use it from a rotisserie chicken but you can use breasts or whatever leftovers you might have on hand.)

2 Cups Sliced Roasted Red Peppers

1/2 Cup Pitted Black Olives (I like to keep them whole.)

Salt and Pepper to taste

1/4 Cup Shaved Parmesan (more for the side if you desire)

Directions:

1. Put pesto in a large bowl.

2.  Cook pasta according to package directions.

3.  Drain pasta and reserve 1/3 cup of pasta water.

4.  Whisk the pasta water into the pesto.

5.  While the pasta is cooking, heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat.

6.  Add garlic and cook about 30 seconds.

7.  Add chicken, peppers and olives and cook through until hot, about 3 minutes.

8.  Season with salt and pepper.

9.  Add the pasta and cheese to the pesto and toss to combine well.

10.  Add chicken mixture, combine well and serve immediately with more parmesan for guests to add as they like.

Purple Velvet Cake

For as long as I can remember, my mom has loved the color purple.  We celebrated her birthday this weekend and I was in charge of making the cake.  She requested a red velvet cake.  I figured that the ‘red’ part was primarily from food coloring, so I could make any color velvet cake and I wanted.  I thought I’d surprise her and attempt a purple velvet cake.  I was a little bit worried about how the coloring was actually going to come out.  Purple, when baked, can often come out as a really unappetizing brownish color.  And since I couldn’t bring an already cut cake to a party, I just had to cross my fingers and hope it would come out purple.  I was pleased that it did!  It was a very dark purple, but it was definitely purple!  Woo hoo!  Oh, and my mom does not care for cream cheese frosting so she requested something different, something ‘plain and white’.  So I went with a marshmallow/seven minute type frosting which I used on my Coconut Cream Cupcakes, and I thought it worked out okay – I’m a lover of cream cheese frosting though!  This recipe is adapted from my sister’s mother-in-law’s Red Velvet Cake- an old family recipe.

Not the best frosting job, I was in a rush to get it finished and on the road!

PURPLE VELVET  CAKE

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Butter, softened

1 1/2 Cup Sugar

2 Eggs

Purple Food Coloring (to desired color)

1 Tsp Vanilla

2 Tsp Cocoa

1 Tsp Salt

2 1/4 Cake Flour

1 Cup Buttermilk

1 Tsp Baking Soda

1 Tsp Vinegar

Directions:

1.  Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour bundt pan.

2.  Cream butter, sugar and eggs.

3.  Add food coloring, vanilla and cocoa to the creamed mixture.

4.  Add salt, flour, and buttermilk, alternately.

5.  Add soda and vinegar.

6.  Pour mixture into bundt pan and bake 38-40 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.

7.  Let cake cool in pan for 5-10 minutes before turning out onto cake platter or wired rack to finish cooling.

8.  Frost as desired and serve!

Roasted Crab and Garlic Noodles

If you are familiar with Crustaceans or Thanh Long restaurants, you are likely familiar with this dish.  These restaurants, in the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles are, are run by the An family and contain a ‘secret kitchen’ that is closed off to all employees except family members.  Many a Foodie has tried to figure out the secret recipe for this dish, the recipe I used is courtesy of RasaMalaysia and can be found HERE.

This recipe was simple and I generally have everything on hand to make it, except for the crab.  If you are a crab and/or noodle lover, of which I am both, you would enjoy this recipe.  I’m not sure if you would say it tastes JUST like the restaurant version but it is very good and extremely rich.   Definitely worth the try!

Happy Eating!

Bossa Nova Superfruit Juice

The good folks over at Bossa Nova were so kind as to send me a very generous supply of their Superfruit juices to try.  I was very excited  because I had never tried their product before and they used several fruits that I was not familiar with.  They sent me a wide variety of flavors:

• Original, Acai Berry
• Acai with Blueberry
• Goji Berry with Tart Cherry
• Mangosteen with Dragionfruit
• Acerola with Mango
• Mangosteen with Passionfruit
• Acerola with Red Peach
• Acai with Passionfruit
• Acai with Raspberry
• Acai with Mango

As a family we do not drink a lot of juice because of the sugar content, though Mr. Foodie and Foodie Jr. love juice.  We also never keep anything with artificial sweetener in the house.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn the Bossa Nova Superfruit Juices do not use white sugar but rather an agave nectar as a sweetener.  In comparison with some of the the other similar juices out on the market, these juices are considerably lower in sugar content – always a plus.  Our whole family loved them!  They all tasted wonderful and I personally really enjoyed the texture as some were thicker than others, especially noticeable with the juices containing mango.  These juices tasted like real fruit and tasted very fresh.  I loved seeing that the ingredient list only contained the fruit and agave nectar, no fillers or artificial anything.  As someone who is always looking for good things to serve her child, these juices made me happy!  Although they are available at some specialty higher end markets, I am happy to report that they are also available at my local Safeway grocery store so I do not have to go far to get them!  If you would like more information on the Bossa Nova juices, please visit them HERE.  Give them a try, you will not be disappointed!

I also created a little recipe using one of their juices that our family really enjoyed.  I hope you will too!

 

FURIKAKE CHICKEN WITH BOSSA NOVA ACEROLA MANGO SWEET & SOUR SAUCE

Ingredients For Chicken:

1 Lb Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces

4 Eggs, beaten

2 Cups Flour

½ – 3/4 Cup Nori Komi Furikake Mix

Vegetable Oil for Frying

Ingredients for Sauce:

½ Cup Bossa Nova Acerola Mango Juice

¼ Cup Ketchup

¼ Cup White Sugar

1 TBS (Heaping) Cornstarch

1 Tsp Worcestershire Sauce

½ Tsp Garlic Powder

1 Tsp Yellow Mustard

1 Tsp Fresh Ginger paste

Directions for Chicken:

1. Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat, oil should cover the entire bottom of the pan, about ¼ of an inch.
2. Mix Flour and Furikake mix well and put on plate, for dredging.
3. Pat chicken dry and place in egg wash.
4. Remove excess egg from the chicken and dredge in the flour mixture.
5. Fry chicken pieces in oil until golden brown and cooked through, turning only once.

Directions for Sauce:

1. Place all ingredients in saucepan and combine well.
2. Heat over medium high heat until mixture thickens and reduces a bit to your desired consistency.  Sauce should be on the thicker side.  Keep on low heat until ready to serve.

Serve chicken pieces with sauce for dipping.

 

Cream of Crab Soup

The first time I had ever had this soup was on a visit to Arlington, Virginia last year.  I ordered it via room service from our hotel and to this day, I swear it is the best soup I’ve ever had!  Like I do so many dishes that we try while dining out or on our travels, I had to try to create it at home.  Mr. Foodie and I are crab lovers, no doubt about it.  Being from the San Francisco Bay Area, we primarily eat Dungeness crab and do not come across Blue Crab all that much.  I recently found some lump Blue Crab claw meat and decided to make this soup yesterday to warm up in the rainy, cold weather.  With some homemade rolls, it very much hit the spot!  It’s a very rich soup and one nice bowl is more than enough to fill your belly and soul, definitely not a soup we could eat regularly.

I used a basic cream soup recipe base and add the crab and flavors to it.  I find this to be the best and most versatile way to play with the flavors and really get the one I’m wanting.  This recipe made about 4 servings.

CREAM OF CRAB SOUP

Ingredients:

1 Stick of Butter (8 TBS)

Juice of One Large Lemon

2 Tsp Onion, minced very fine

2 1/2 Tsp Old Bay Seasoning

4 TBS All Purpose Flour

4 Cups Half–n-Half Cream

1 1/2 Cups Blue Crab Meat, picked clean of cartilage/shells

1 Tsp Celery Seed

1/2 to 1 Tsp Salt

Fresh Cracked Black Pepper

Fresh or Dried Parsley for garnish (optional)

Directions:

1.  In a heavy saucepan, over medium heat, melt butter.  Once all butter is melted, add the onion, lemon juice and Old Bay seasoning.

2.  Add the flour and combine into a roux.

3.  Add half-n-half and whisk frequently until completely combined.

4.  Bring mixture just to a boil, mixture will start to thicken.

5.  Lower heat, add crab meat, salt, and celery seed.  Simmer mixture on low for about 15 minutes.

6.  Garnish with fresh black pepper and parsley if desired.  Serve immediately.

Cake Decorating Contest Entries

Foodie Jr.’s school is having a Fall Festival this weekend and of the many things families can participate in is a cake decorating contest.  Originally, I was just going to enter but then Mr. Foodie got wind of that and decided he would would enter to ‘take me out’.  Never mind that he has never baked a cake in his life let alone decorate one but he pretty much swore he was gonna be the Ace of Cakes for this contest.  He had delusions of grandeur about his design which was some sort of elaborate raccoon (school mascot) coming out of a tree stump, complete with pictures he had drawn and all.  However, life has a way of happening sometimes and that didn’t pan out so I found him something more simple online to make.  He agreed and went with a crocodile instead.  He used a lemon cake with vanilla frosting that was colored green.  He had to do some cake carving but most of his decorative elements were candy pieces.  I have to admit, it came out pretty cute and Foodie Jr. LOVED it.

I had always originally planned to do a Spongebob Squarepants cake, using fondant.  I LOVE to bake and decorate cakes but had never used fondant.  Frankly, I was a little intimidated by it.   On top of that, I am not really a fan of eating it so there’s even less draw to fondant because of that.  But, I do love the look it provides for decorated cakes and I figured that Spongebob was a pretty basic design to use for my first time, and kids like him, right?  I used a dark chocolate cake, dirty frosted with a whipped white frosting and covered in fondant.  To my surprise, the fondant was really easy to work with, although hand coloring it was a little time consuming.  I’ve gotten the fondant monkey off my back and am ready to make more fun cakes.

Well, Mr. Foodie ended up beating me in the contest, though we both placed.  But, I like to think that I am the mastermind behind his cake and design, so we’ll keep it at that.  Oh, and not to be outdone, Foodie Jr. also decorated a cake for the Kindergarten cakewalk event:

Plum Chicken

This recipe was adapted from one of my favorite food bloggers, The Noble Pig.  Her recipe for Tangy-Sweet Plum Spiced Chicken really caught my eye.  I love recipes that pack big flavor with minimal ingredients, especially when I have all the ingredients on hand!  This recipe could not be more simple, I can probably teach Foodie Jr. to make it – assuming I would ever let him be in charge of a heating element…

Remember my previous post on the Homemade Plum Jam that I made with my cooking club?  Well, the overabundance of jam had me on the hunt for recipes I could use it in because toast gets old after a while!  In her recipe, The Noble Pig used Chinese Five Spice.  Although I think it would go really well with the plum, I opted not to use it because I generally do not care for it.  My version still came out really good and suited our family well – very kid friendly.  It is a good answer to homemade take-out.  We ate ours with rice and broccoli but I am thinking that it would be fabulous in some homemade crepes, in a pseudo mu shu way.

PLUM CHICKEN

Ingredients:

3 Large Chicken Breasts, cut into large cubes

1 Tsp Poultry Seasoning (I used a Salt-Free version from Trader Joes)

1/2 Tsp Sea Salt

2-3 TBS Olive Oil

1/2 Tsp Chicken Boullion

1/2 Cup Water

1/2 Cup Plum Jam

2 TBS Balsamic Vinegar

Directions:

1.  Season chicken with poultry seasoning and salt, toss in bowl.

2.  Heat olive oil  in large skillet over medium-high heat and then add chicken.  Once chicken is browned and cooked through, remove from skillet and set aside.

3.  To skillet, add chicken boullion, water, plum jam and balsamic vinegar.  Mix with flat whisk until all parts are well blended.  Bring to a boil and reduce sauce until you get a nice, thick syrup consistency, about 5 minutes or so.

4.  Add chicken back into skillet.  Toss to coat with plum mixture, about two minutes.  Serve immediately.