Meat Wrapped Meat

This is not pretty food.  This is not healthy food.  This is not complicated food.  This is good food.

There's nothing fancy about these little meaty nuggets and they are just about the simplest thing in the world to make but I will tell you right now, if you make them once and serve them to people, they will ask for them over and over and over.

A friend of mine in Tennessee introduced me to these years ago and I've been making them ever since.  I serve them at almost every party I host and there is never a single little doggie left in the dish.  Ever.

There has been much debate over what they should be called.  Death Dogs and Meaty Nuggets have been batted around a few times, but I prefer Meat Wrapped Meat... because that's what they are... meat, wrapped in meat.  They are smoky, meaty and sweet all at the same time and people can't get enough of them.  One of things I love about them is that because they are wrapped in bacon, I can pretend they're breakfast food and because they have smoked sausage in the middle I can pretend they're cocktail party food.  That's what I like to call versatility.

Meat Wrapped Meat
Servings: approximately 40 nuggets

Ingredients
1 package Little Smokies
1 1/2 packages Bacon (get the thinnest bacon you can find.  The thick cut stuff doesn't adhere to the smokies as much when they're cooked)
1 cup Brown Sugar

Place the brown sugar in a bowl.  Cut the bacon in half crosswise.  Take one little smokie and wrap it in a half a piece of bacon.  Then roll it in brown sugar.  Place it on a baking sheet, seam side down.  Repeat with the remaining smokies.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or until the bacon is cooked through.

You can wrap and roll the smokies up to 2 hours before you bake them, but any longer and all the juices run out.


See, I told you it was easy!  Now, if I were you I'd look at this recipe and think... hmmm, why would I want to use 1 1/2 packages of bacon?  Why wouldn't I just buy 2 packages of little smokies and 3 packages of bacon and make more meat wrapped meat?  Well... you'd be absolutely right, that's exactly what you should do!

Julie

Gluten Free Cinnamon Honey Scones

I am pretty adamant that anyone who is a guest in my home should have some delicious to eat.  It's how I show my love for people so I have no issues with planning menus around people with different dietary considerations.  I actually consider it a little bit of a food challenge and that's fun for me.  Vegetarian?  Easy.  Low Sodium?  Done.  On a diet?  Fine.  Vegan?  This one is harder but doable.  Gluten Free?  You betcha!  I have a dear friend who is gluten intolerant and I can't possibly allow her to come over without giving her something delicious to eat.

Therefore, at our Easter party I made a gluten free version of the Cinnamon Honey Scones in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook.  This gluten-full scone is my favorite scone I've ever made so I challenged myself a bit to turn it gluten free and it turned out really well!

The basic scone dough I borrowed from the King Arthur Flour website, which is the brand of gluten free all purpose flour I had on hand.  I figured if it was their flour and their recipe, it would be pretty well vetted.  I do this quite often... I find something random in my pantry, decide to make something with it and go to the manufacturers website to snag a recipe.  It usually works pretty well.

I modified the recipe by substituting cinnamon honey cubes for the dried fruit and they turned out so yummy!  I had a few left after the shindig and CA and I been nibbling on them ever since.  If I didn't tell you're they're gluten free, you might not even have noticed.

Gluten Free Cinnamon Honey Scones
adapted from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients

Cinnamon Honey Cubes
3 T Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
2 1/2 T Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
1 ounce Butter
1 T Honey

Scone Dough
1 3/4 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1/4 cup Sugar
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Xantham Gum
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold Butter
2 Eggs
1/3 cup cold Milk
1 tsp Vanilla Extract

Honey Butter Glaze
3 T melted Butter
1 T Honey
Decorating Sugar (optional)

Combine all the ingredients for the cinnamon honey cubes in a small bowl and mix with your hands until you get a uniform paste.  Press the paste into a 4-inch square on a sheet of plastic wrap.  Wrap tightly and freeze until solid, about 2 hours. (You can freeze this for up to a week if you want to)  Once it is frozen, cut the paste into 1/4 inch cubes and put it back into the freezer until you are ready to incorporate it into the scone dough.

Whisk together all the dry ingredients for the scones (flour, sugar, baking powder, xantham gum and salt).  Cut the butter into 1/2 inch cubes, making sure it is still cold.  If it warms up while you're cutting it, put it back into the freezer for a few minutes.  Add the butter to the dry ingredients and mix on low speed or with a pastry blender until the mixture is crumbly (you don't want it to form a dough ball or the scones will be too dense).  Whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla.  Add the egg mixture to the dry/butter mixture and mix on low speed until it just comes together.  Add the cinnamon honey cubes and mix on low speed until they are just incorporated into the dough (you still want to see chunks of them).

Place the dough on a piece of plastic wrap, flatten it with your hands and shape it into a 6" x 12" block.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge and cut it into 8 larger scones (3"x3") or 16 smaller scones (for the party, I did 16 small scones in triangle shapes so I cut the dough into 8 3"x3" squares, then in half on the diagonal).  Freeze the dough overnight (or for at least 2 hours).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the frozen scones on a baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper.  Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

While the scones are baking mix together the melted butter and honey for the glaze.  Immediately after removing the scones from the oven, brush them with the glaze and sprinkle them with decorating sugar (if using).


Now, I need you to go out and find someone who can't eat gluten and make these for them.  Or make them for people who can eat gluten and see if they notice anything funny.

Julie

Adult Easter Party - Part 2: Sweets

I know you all skimmed through yesterday's post and were positively irritated with me for making you wait until today to see the sugary stuff.  Well, I had to find a way to get you to come back.

Let's start with the mildly sweet.  You have to have breakfast pastries at a brunch.

The first ones we served were Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins.  I used this recipe from The Way the Cookie Crumbles which is one of my favorite blogs.

The recipe is for full size muffins, but when there are so many food options to choose from I like things to be bite size so people feel like they can take one (or two) of everything.

The second pastry is a take on the Cinnamon Honey Scones from the Bouchon Bakery cookbook I made a few weeks ago.  Since I liked them so much the first time, I thought I'd make them for my guests.  But these scones have a secret.  They're gluten free!!

I am really proud of myself for how these scones turned out.  Making gluten free baked goods that taste good is not easy; I've made a bunch of things that didn't turn out so great but these turned out really well.

In fact, they are so good that I am going to do a separate post on them and give you the full story and recipe.  Yep, I'm making you come back here again.  You're welcome.

Speaking of making you comes back, I'm doing it again for this yummy stuff.  I'm not entirely sure what to call it, the recipe I adapted it from was Bunny Bait.  I prefer Crack Snack because once I made it, I had to hide it from myself to keep from eating it all before my guests came over (and then I still snuck bites of it repeatedly).

It has Chex, pretzels, popcorn, M&M's, peanuts, marshmallows, white chocolate and sprinkles.  I know, I told you, it's crack, not whack.

This is the only dessert that was completely gone at the end of the party.  There wasn't a peanut, pretzel or sprinkle left behind so I think it deserves its own post.  Stay tuned.

Coconut reminds me of Spring for some reason so Coconut Macaroons were an easy choice for this event.  Plus, these are so easy to make.

I used this recipe from Alton Brown but left off the macadamia nuts.... and I didn't melt my chocolate over the stove.  When the chocolate coating isn't the centerpiece of the treat, I just microwave and stir it in 30 second intervals until its melted.  It's faster and there are less dishes that way.  I had enough dirty dishes already.

Iced Lavender and Lemon Shortbread Cookies.  These were so different, pretty and yummy and something I'll definitely serve again.  They would fit in perfectly at a tea party.

I found these on Pinterest on this website.  These were just so Springy I couldn't resist making them, plus I accidentally bought dried lavender a long time ago and wanted to use it.

These cookies remind me of the Aviation cocktail which contains lemon juice and creme de violette (violets - lavender, same, same).

You might think we've had enough sugar but NO!  I needed one more thing and Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies made perfect sense.  After all, it was Easter and bunnies love carrots and I love cream cheese icing.

I've actually never met anyone who did not like cream cheese icing.  I'm pretty sure if those people exist, we would not be friends.  Luckily my friends are my friends and they do like cream cheese icing so I got a lot of compliments on these.

I'm going to do a separate post on these as well because I meshed together a couple of recipes and made some modifications so I can pretend I made up the recipe.


 

Hopefully you'll have the opportunity to use some of these recipes when hosting your own brunch.  I don't think they're at all Easter-centric... maybe some of them are a bit Springy but Spring lasts a long time.  Especially if it doesn't even start until May which is what it's feeling like around here.  I also hope you'll check back here over the next few days for the posts on Meat Wrapped Meat, Gluten Free Cinnamon Honey Scones, Easter (or insert other holiday here) Crack and Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies.

Now, the question I ask myself each and every time I have a party.  Do you think we have enough food?

Julie

Adult Easter Party - Part 1: Savories

Once a year, we like to throw a nice big party.  It gives me an excuse to go entirely overboard while having people over.... we do tons of food, specialty cocktails, decorations, games... the works. We usually only have one per year because CA only lets me have one it's a lot of work.

Honestly, my favorite things to host are showers... bridal or baby, I don't care.  But I love showering other people with love and for some reason these parties usually revolve around brunch and I LOVE breakfast food.  So, I was super excited when we decided to have an Easter Brunch to go with our Adult Easter Party.

The whole Adult Easter Party idea came from a dear friend of mine who hosted this party where we used to live.  The concept is that Easter Egg Hunts aren't just for kids so you should have a hunt for things that adults like... like booze and lottery tickets.  Yes, we hid miniature bottles of liquor and plastic eggs full of lottery tickets in our backyard and, surprisingly, no one got an elbow to the face (my friends are pretty competitive when it comes to games).

For activities, we had the hunt, of course.  We also had some old school games like egg spoon races, ring toss and a water balloon toss.   There was a scoreboard, a points system and a grand prize which was a basket full of more booze and lottery tickets.

For decorations, there was the peep topiary, plastic egg wreath and Spring subway art.

However, the most important part of the party (to me, at least) was the food.  Today we are going to talk about the savory food that we served at the party. 

Fruit technically isn't savory, but I didn't put sugar in it so it counts.  There had to be one healthy thing at the party and this was it.

I got the little sword toothpicks for fun and cut cubes of pineapple, cantaloupe and strawberries.

Easy!  I like to have at least one healthy thing at my parties so you'll usually find either fruit or veggies and dip.  It's not that exciting, but I think people appreciate having one thing they can eat without guilt.

Speaking of guilt.  This is Meat Wrapped Meat.... or Death Dogs... or whatever other meaty, unhealthy name you want to call it.

I served this at a cocktail party once and now every single time I have a party people ask me to make these.  I also make a ton of them and never have any left, ever.

I'm going to do a separate post on Meat Wrapped Meat so stay tuned but it's essentially Little Smokies, wrapped in bacon and rolled in brown sugar.  You really can't go wrong.

The "main dish" at our brunch was mini Chicken & Waffles.  This was a new dish for us, but they turned out so yummy.

We actually made two versions of these.  One for the masses and another for our favorite Gluten Free friend and, in all seriousness, you could NOT tell the difference between the Glutenous and Non-Glutenous versions.  Seriously.

The glutenous waffles were made using the buttermilk waffle recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.  I wanted to be sure the waffles had a really neutral flavor so the fried chicken could be the star of the show.  I also wanted to use buttermilk since we did a buttermilk soak on the chicken and things that match taste better together.

The non-glutenous waffles were made using the buttermilk waffle recipe on the back of the Gluten Free Bisquick box.  I typically don't like mixes but since there was a lot of food to make the day of the party, I cheated a little.  I think they tasted like regular waffles and would totally eat them.  (BTW, have I ever told you my feelings on recipes found on the backs of cans and boxes?  They're usually really good - Chocolate Chip Cookies off the back of the chocolate chips, Pumpkin Pie on the can of pumpkin, Magic Bars off the sweetened condensed milk).

OK - chicken.  CA was in charge of the chicken because frying scares me.  The only thing I can fry are french fries in my miniature fry daddy and I try not to do that because I have no self control when it comes to fries.  I can't help it, I have a hereditary addition to ketchup.  CA used Alton Brown's Fried Chicken recipe as a guide.  Instead of a whole chicken, we used boneless, skinless chicken thighs and cut them into 3-4 pieces per thigh.  They turned out awesome - really flavorful because we used the thighs and from the great mix of seasonings.

For the gluten free chicken he used the exact same recipe but just substituted Gluten Free All Purpose Flour for the regular flour.  There was no difference in taste or texture.

I apologize I did not take a picture of the syrup we served with the Chicken & Waffles.  However, you can probably envision it.  It looks like syrup.  What you can't see (if you could see it) was the stuff that made it extra yummy.  I heated one bottle of real maple syrup with a shot of bourbon and the zest of half an orange.  Luckily, I have leftovers so you know what I'll be eating for breakfast for a while.  Booze for breakfast is totally normal.

Eggs are a requirement for brunch so we served two different mini quiches.  I went crustless and used the same quiche base for both so the whole recipe is a bit of a mash up.  I wish I'd written it all down while I was doing it, but I did not.

This version has shredded potatoes, chorizo and manchego in it. Mmm. The filling for these little buddies is from this recipe. (Warning, I had to bake these quiches for much longer than the spinach version.  I think it has to do with all the grease deliciousness in the chorizo.

The other version has spinach, mushrooms and feta in it.  Oddly, more than one person asked me what meat was in these.  I think it was the baby portabella mushrooms in there that made them taste meatier.  The filling for these came from this recipe (which I've actually made as written for a separate occasion and it's really good).

The reason I used the same egg mixture in both quiches is because I'm lazy.  It was just easier to make one big batch of quiche liquid and fill both versions up with that and it worked really well.   For 84 mini quiches I used:

1/4 cup cornstarch, 2 cups heavy cream, 6 eggs, 4 egg yolks, Salt, Pepper and a pinch of Nutmeg. 

I used my immersion blender to blend it all up and make sure the eggs were thoroughly broken up and then poured it on top of all the fillings in the mini muffin cups.  My tip of the day is to make sure you have cheese on the bottom and on the top of the mini quiches.  The cheese on the bottom creates a kind of seal that makes the quiches easier to get out of the pan.  The cheese on top is pretty :)

All right, so that's the savory stuff.  Tomorrow comes the sweets.  I know that's what you're waiting for but you're just going to have to be patient for one more day.

Julie

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 27: Cinnamon Honey Scones

Definitely my favorite scone so far!

This recipe is takes the Plain Scone recipe, which was the first scone recipe in the cookbook and adds a cinnamon honey paste to it.  It's like a coffee cake scone and it was so very tasty.

The first thing you get to do it make the cinnamon honey cubes which are made up of flour, sugar, cinnamon, butter and honey which gets patted into a square and frozen.

Then you make the yummy scone base.  This is still my favorite base (made even better with the addition of cubes) because it's the lightest scone I've ever had.  That light texture is from the cake flour which replaces some of the usual all purpose flour.

Look at those little cinnamon honey cubes. They're so cute and I managed not to eat them all before mixing them into the scones.  Winning.

Warning, don't chop them into cubes on top of the plastic wrap you used to freeze the paste.  You will cut the plastic wrap and then have to pick little pieces of plastic off of each cube.  I can't tell you how I know this, I just do.

The cubes get mixed into the batter right at the end so they don't break up too much and you get a pretty little swirl pattern in the scone.

Because a cinnamon honey swirl isn't enough, these scones get topped with a honey butter glaze after they're baked.  Oh yeah! (Insert a visual of me doing an awkward, yummy food dance here.)

To make the honey butter glaze you first must clarify the butter.

The whole idea of clarifying butter is to get rid of the moisture and the milk solids which are in butter and to just leave the butterfat behind.

Why?  Well, it looks better when melted, it has a higher smoke point and apparently gets rid of all the lactose in there.

BTW - do you guys think I actually know all this stuff?  I don't, I look it up on the Internet.  You can find anything on the Internet.

So, you melt the butter, scoop the white stuff off the top and then you have clarified butter.  Done.

The clarified butter gets combined with honey to make a rich, sweet glaze for the scones.

I swore to myself I was only going to eat one of these, but that didn't happen.  I ate more than one and that's all I'm admitting to.  These are definitely, my favorite scones I've ever made.  You should google "bouchon cinnamon honey scones".  There are a bunch of other people who have posted the recipe so you can steal it from them.  Right now.

Julie

Baking Bouchon: Recipe 26: A Tale of Two Cookies

One of these things is not like the other.

Can you spot the difference in the ingredients?  It's like Where's Waldo or I Spy?  There's just one difference... cocoa powder.  The recipes for The Bouchon Bakery Chocolate Chunk and Chip Cookies and Double Chocolate Chunk and Chip Cookies were so similar that I decided to make them at the same time.

Both of these cookies not only use chocolate chips, but chocolate chunks as well.  It was supposed to be fancy 70% chocolate, but I went with good old Baker's Semi-Sweet chocolate squares and I have no regrets.  Especially because it meant I only had to go to one grocery store and I LOVE that!

In all honestly, I couldn't tell there were chunks in there anyway so you could probably go all chips or all chunks and the cookies would be just as good.

I was super organized again when I made these cookies so, of course, I had to take a photo to brag.

One of the interesting ingredients in these cookies is molasses, not much, just under two teaspoons.  I'm not used to seeing molasses in cookies that aren't gingersnaps.  The molasses goes in with the sugar and brown sugar and I think it added a nice little flavor dimension in these cookies so I'm a fan.

The only difference in these two batters is that for the Double Chocolate one you decrease the flour a little bit and add just over a half cup of cocoa powder.  However, just this small change made a difference in the texture and puffiness of the finished cookie.

The single chocolate cookies baked up a little bit flatter and crispier and the double chocolate were slightly puffier and chewier.  I definitely prefer the double chocolate (I'm pretty sold on the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips) but both are very solid cookies with just a subtle added layer of flavor from the molasses - not enough that you'd ever know or guess there was molasses in there - just a little extra depth.

Making all these cookies at once probably wasn't a great idea for my health so I had to remove them from the house as quickly as possible.  My coworkers are going to hate me soon.

Julie

Spicy Vinegar Greens

I have to find some way to negate all the butter I consume and my method of choice is vegetables.  I like the idea of canceling out all the treats I eat with more eating.  It's much better than the alternative, which is exercise.  Especially in the winter.  I don't like going outside in the winter.  It's cold out there.  And what do you want when it's cold outside?  Warm stuff, like braised greens followed by warm buttery treats.

We've haven't been eating greens for very long, but I found a method that works every time with any type of hard, bitter green.  You can use this recipe for turnip greens, mustard greens or collard greens (or a combo like I did today).  You could probably use the same flavors for kale and spinach but they don't take all that long to cook so that's a whole different animal... I mean, vegetable.

I actually prefer to use the ginormous bags of pre-cleaned and chopped greens.  It makes this recipe so easy but, of course, you could make it harder on yourself and use the au natural type.

You start out with a little olive oil and saute the onion for a few minutes until it's soft, then add the garlic and cook just for a minute until you get that super yummy garlic smell wafting towards you.

Then the greens go in.  Depending on how big your pot it, you may need to add it in batches.  I typically use my stockpot and only have to add the greens in two batches.

Then, of course, it looks a little silly at the end when you have just a few cups of greens in the bottom of a giant pot.




Once the greens have wilted you add all the seasonings (except the honey and salt, I save that for the end) and cook for about 45 minutes.  Our preference for the heat component is sriracha.  You do have sriracha don't you?  If you don't, you need to go to the store immediately.  Sriracha is a hot sauce from Thailand and we put this stuff on everything!!!  My favorite?  Macaroni & Cheese.  It's the bestest.

Every once in a while I make this as a side dish for Mexican food.  Is that case, I substitute the Sriracha for canned chilis in adobo.  It gives it a nice, smoky and is a perfect side for tacos, enchiladas, etc.

Why do I put the honey and salt in at the end?  Well, the amount I put in just depends on how the greens taste that day.  The saltiness is very much dependent on the type of stock you use - some are just saltier than others.  Also, I find that each time the greens are more or less bitter so by adding the honey at the end I can taste and adjust.

We probably eat this once a week.  I serve it with grilled chicken or pork chops, meatloaf, whatever.

Spicy Vinegar Greens
Adapted from Cooking Light

Ingredients

1 T Olive Oil
1/2 cup finely chopped Yellow Onion (about 1/2 an onion)
3 cloves finely chopped Garlic
1 lb. coarsely chopped Collard, Turnip or Mustard Greens
1 cup Chicken or Vegetable Broth
1 T Sriracha (I like spicy so usually add more; substitute chilis in adobo for a Southwestern flavor)
3 T Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 tsp Pepper
1 - 3 tsp Honey
Salt to taste

Instructions

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Add the onion and saute for 3 minutes until soft.  Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute until fragrant.  Add the greens in batches and saute for 3 minutes until wilted.  Add the broth, sriracha, vinegar and pepper.  Turn the heat to low, cover and cook for 45 minutes.  Taste the greens and add salt to taste and just enough honey to cut a little of the bitterness.


Now you too can make some tasty greens.  I promise if eat this, you can eat more cookies.

Julie