Friday, October 26, 2012

Eric's Monkey Bread

Holy hell balls this easy recipe turned into one heck of a nightmare!  I thought it would be awesome to take some monkey bread to work, who doesn't love a tasty breakfast? I'm blaming this kitchen nightmare on:

The fact that I worked 13 hours before I started to bake
That I didn't listen to my better judgement that there was to much biscuit in the pan
Words with Friends

Before we get into all the drama, let's start with the normal start to a post, here is how this became a family recipe.  Eric brought home the monkey bread recipe after he went to a sleepover when he was younger. His friend's mom served it for breakfast in the morning, and Eric instantly fell in love with this delicious treat and asked his friend's mom for the recipe.

Ingredients:
3 tubes of biscuits cut in to quarters (if you are using grands only use 2 cans and cut them in to 6ths)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon 
Topping Ingredients
1 stick of butter
1 cup of sugar
1Tbsp cinnamon

Cut biscuits into quarters or if using Grands like I am 6ths

mix the 1/2 cup sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon in a bag and drop in some biscuit pieces

shake to coat pieces, remove coated pieces and put them in a bundt pan and continue coating biscuit pieces until they are all coated

Put the coated pieces in a bundt pan 
*DO NOT fill to the top with biscuit pieces, like shown here. Only fill about 1/2 to 3/4 full


to make the topping
melt butter, sugar and cinnamon together over medium heat, stir often

bring topping to a boil

pour over biscuit pieces

Put in the oven and bake at 350 for 25-30 mins

Looks great up until this point, here is where things go of track, well to be honest they went off track when I used 3 cans of grands biscuits instead of 2 and didn't listen to the voice in my head that said, 
"hello, those bad boys are going to raise and they have no where to go!"

So I put them in the oven, set the timer and sat down to play some Words with Friends. 

When playing my friend Cari I have to give it all my concentration because she usually kills me.  Amazingly enough I am winning at the moment, but I know she is staging a comeback!

20 mins later, I head into the kitchen...
Hmmmmmm, it seems the kitchen is getting kinda smokey!! 

HOLY CRAP!

Into action I go:
turn the oven off
turn the hood fan on
open all the windows
pray I don't set the complex's fire alarm off (it's about 11:30pm)
of course grab my camera to take some smoke pictures

Now cut to me standing at the oven and opening the door just a little bit to let some of the smoke out so it can get sucked up by the hood fan and not continue to fill my apartment with smoke.  It takes a good 5 minutes of doing this before I can fulling open the door and remove the monkey bread and get a good look at what is going on.

Hmmmmmmm, why isn't my smoke detector going off, it is insanely smoke filled in my kitchen, I think it is time to change the battery!!!

oh yeah those things are exploding out of the pan, should have listened to my inner voice! 


Yikes, the topping poured all over my pizza stone that was under the bundt pan. 
What a burnt mess!

Ha, look some topping is now burnt and bent over the oven rack

Perfectly shaped burnt topping

So I removed the first burnt layer of biscuits exploding out the the pan. Clean the burnt crap out of the oven because of course the middle of this bread isn't cooked. So back in the oven it goes.

Damn, it rises out of the pan AGAIN!  I remove more of the top pieces, I'm about to put it back because the middle still isn't done. But before I do I dump it into a 9 x 13 pan because soon I'm going to burn the bottom of the bread and still have an uncooked center.

Finally it is all cooked!!
It is now time for bed, guess who will be cleaning her oven this weekend!!

Luckily they still taste good, they aren't as gooey as they normally should be because of course most of the topping is on my pizza stone and oven, but people at work are still enjoying them.

Enjoy!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Grandma/Kristen's Peas and Potatoes

This is a classic Grandma side dish, with a new Kristen twist.
I will be making the classic version but I will give you the Kristen version as well, and who knows maybe it will become the new classic! 

"It was wonderful with a hint of blueberries. Yum" I love that it sounds like Kristen is describing wine, not her new blueberry/potato/pea dish!

Grandma's classic version
Ingredients:
2 cups milk
4 Tbsp flour
5-6 new potatoes - large dice, skin left on
1 cup peas - can be fresh, frozen or caned 

wash and dice potatoes
boil them until they are tender enough to pierce with a fork

in the mean time
in a sauce pan mix milk and flour together and cook over medium heat until thickened, stirring often 

after sauce thickens add in peas and cook for a few minutes more

drain potatoes

pour milk and pea sauce over potatoes

season with salt and pepper

Enjoy!

Now on to Kristen's twist on Grandma's side dish.
Kristen loves this dish and wanted to make it one night, after calling her mom to get the recipe and starting to cook it she realized that she didn't have any flour.  Of course she called her mom to see what she should do. Kristen not being a cook has a limited pantry and of course didn't have any of the other items that could be used, so they came up with an interesting choice.

Blueberry pancake mix!

Kristen of course picked out the blueberries first and used 4 Tbsp of blueberry pancake mix instead of the called for flour.  Kristen said it turned out great, and had just a hint of blueberry flavor! 



Ingredients:
2 cups milk
4 Tbsp blueberry pancake mix (I only had regular pancake mix)
5-6 new potatoes - large dice, skin left on
1 cup peas - can be fresh, frozen or caned 

Shannon's lit'l Smokies

These are a Christmas morning family tradition! Let me clarify that statement for my brother Mike, who once  said to me a few years ago after I told him I was making the "traditional Christmas morning breakfast".  

"What, since when are those traditional? We always have Egg Nog and Christmas cookies for breakfast Christmas morning"

These lit'l treats became part of our Christmas morning tradition when I became old enough to cook and Grandma saw these on tv and thought they would be a great breakfast treat and told me to make them.  I have been making them ever sense.  These are awesome and a perfect partner with Christmas cookies and Egg Nog! 

Ingredients:
1 roll of crescent rolls
1 pack of lit'l smokies

Unroll crescent rolls, take off the first 2 triangles 

Cut off a small triangle
*I don't like a lot of breading on my lit'l smokies, I can get about 5-6 smokies wrapped out of 1 triangle*

Wrap triangle around smokie

make sure all the ends are wrapped completely around so that the wrap stays together.

as you can see sometimes I just cut strips instead of triangles, those work just as well.

Just keep cutting and wrapping.

I can usually get 1 package of smokies wrapped out of 1 can of crescents, I usually have most of a crescent roll to make too. 

Bake at 350 for about 12 minutes our until nice and golden brown.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Eric's Buckeye Bars

Eric is an Ohio Buckeye and they have a candy that looks like their beloved buckeyes, these bars are a redesigned and easier to make version of those candies.  I liken these to a peanut butter cup on steroids! 
YUMMY! 

Ingredients:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup butter
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 12 oz bag of milk chocolate chips
6 Tbsp cooking oil
* I forgot to put the oil and second stick of butter in the pic*

Crush up graham crackers to get 2 cups of crushed graham crackers, it took about 1 1/2 sleeves of graham crackers

pulse until ground fine

Mix graham cracker crumbs with powdered sugar

 Time for the butter and peanut butter

melt the 2 together over medium heat

pour butter and peanut butter mixture together with graham cracker and powdered sugar mix

 mix until well combined

place into a 9 x 13 pan

pat down mixture to form a "crust" layer

slowly melt chip with oil over low/medium heat 

pour melted chocolate over "crust"

make sure everything is covered with chocolate and then place in refrigerator for a few hours to harden 

Cut into bars
Enjoy!