Week 5: Breakfast - Boozy Baked French Toast

The baking challenge this week was breakfast! Being one of my favorite meals, I was not at a loss for things to make, but I am usually at a loss for time to make anything extravagant in the mornings before work.  I am lucky if I manage to scarf down a bowl of cereal on most days. So, my elegant solution? B for D (breakfast for dinner!). Enter, boozy baked french toast.

The recipe called for Challah bread, but there wasn't any when I went to the store and any kind will do really . I bought a loaf of cranberry walnut bread and dried it out in the oven at a low temp - the best french toast is made with stale bread rather than fresh stuff. Friday morning, I woke up early (shocking, I know) and whipped up the egg custard. I was generous with the Bailey's and the Cointreau and suggest you do the same. :)

I poured the egg mixture over a double layer of bread, sealed it up tight, and put it in the fridge to soak all day. One my way home I grabbed the fixin's for a tasty dinner - bacon, sausage, OJ and the all important....Champagne for mimosas!

While the french toast baked, I threw the sausage and bacon in a skillet. If you have access to Hempler's Bacon, do yourself a favor and buy it.  I love this stuff - and I don't really like bacon (an unpopular opinion, I know). 

Once it was the french toast was all baked it looked like this:

All that was left to do was the cut squares of the deliciousness and plate it all up with some oranges.

A little syrup and we were in heaven.  Actually, the syrup was barely necessary.  The booze flavors made the bread nice and sweet, and if I do say so myself, the cranberry walnut bread was perfect - especially with the Cointreau. 

Week 5 - Alcohol - Tequila Lime Grilled Chicken with Cabbage Slaw

This week's cooking challenge was alcohol.  There as so many ways to incorporate alcohol into cooking that I thought I would tackle a type of alcohol I never use - tequila.  Now, I love to drink the stuff, but when it comes to cooking I usually find myself using a red or white wine. These recipes are all over the internet but I found it on the Smitten Kitchen.

This recipe called for marinating chicken in a tequila and lime marinade before grilling it so I decided to go for it. I found someone else who'd paired this recipe with the cabbage slaw recipe (which uses red wine so this is a double boozy dinner) and I was ready to go. 

I was supposed to marinate the chicken over night but I am an impatient cook with little foresight so I adapted.  Instead of full chicken breasts, I nuggeted (I know that is not a word, but I want it to be so I am using it) up my chicken and pierced each piece many times with a fork to allow the marinade to get in there as fast as possible. I dumped the marinade and the chicken into a freezer bag and then refrigerated it for just under and hour. I heated up the grill and threw my nuggets on.  I basted them a few times while cooking with the delicious marinade and cooked them 'till there were nice grill lines on each side. 

While the marinating was taking place, I sliced up my cabbage - I used green instead of red since we already had it in the fridge - and onions.  I emulisified the dressing in my totally awesome bullet blender and basically waited to dress the slaw until we were ready to eat.

Andrew cut up a tomato that needed eating and not only did it add some color to our plates, but also fit really nicely with the flavors of lime and hot peppers. The chicken had a really nice lime flavor and I imagine with a longer marinade the tequila might have come through more. 

The slaw was AMAZING.  This will most definitely become a regular rotation. It was so easy and it had such a nice mix of tang (due to the red wine vinegar) and spice (due to the serrano peppers).  Really yummy stuff. 

It needed to be paired with a margarita. Duh. 

Week 4 - Frosting/Filling - Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes with Avocado Frosting

I have always made my own frosting. I can't stand the stuff in the can.  But, I have a pretty standard recipe and I don't mess with it very often.  For this week's challenge I'd had designs on doing eclairs or something else fancy, but we have guests in town and it's been a busy week so I chose to go a bit more low key, but new.  I present: Chocolate avocado cupcakes with avocado frosting. 

The avocado in the chocolate cake part is mixed in with the liquid ingredients.

The batter was far thicker than I am accustomed to with cake batter, but I also forgot that I replaced the vanilla extract with scraping out a vanilla bean.  Even so, I don't think the 1 tsp. of vanilla would have changed the consistency that much. 

The recipe called for the muffin tins to be filled most of the way up rather than the normal half full.

I wish I'd filled them up even a bit more, so they would pop up over the cupcake tin, but they cooked up just right and I couldn't wait for them to cool so that I could make the frosting and taste these suckers!

Making the frosting was pretty easy - just mashing the avocado really well (I used a combo of a handheld mixer and then smashing with a spatula against the side of the bowl),  then mixing with vanilla and powdered sugar. The avocado essentially replaces the butter.  In addition to making a new frosting I've never tried, I also busted out my piping bag and got some practice with that.  I am not great at it, but it was pretty and I like how they turned out aesthetically. 

My wonderful in-laws and my wonderful husband were my guinea pigs and humored me by trying my creation.  The verdict was that the cupcake combo was good - not amazing, but good. We all agreed that doing either the chocolate avocado cake or the avocado frosting would be enough - this combo was a bit of overkill.  In the future I'd pair the chocolate avocado cake with a lemon frosting, or a simple buttercream, or perhaps even a whipped cream frosting.  The avocado frosting could be paired with a nice lemon or white cake.  

 It was fun to try out something new.  And it was in no way a bust - there was nary a crumb left, so it was certainly not disgusting. :)

Grilled Pizza

This wasn't one of our challenges, but A's parents are in town from Alaska and we wanted to make them a fun dinner last night.  We've done this once in the past, but we got more ambitious this time making three medium-ish pizzas all with different toppings and sauces.

The trick is to have all your ingredients ready to go on the pizzas since you build them on the grill.  On a well oiled grill, you lay down your pizza dough and cook one side fro just a few minutes.  Once it's got nice brown grill marks, you flip it and quickly build your pizza; sauce, veggies, meats, cheese, then close the lid hope to heck the cheese melts. You have to keep your eye on the dough while the toppings are getting cooked and when the bottom is about to get too brown for your liking, take it off the grill and brown the top in the oven (if you want). 

The top (un-cut pizza) was a red sauce pizza with fresh tomatoes, spinach, garlic, pepperoni, jalapenos and basil under way too much cheese (I got ambitious. This is the one we had to finish in the oven).  The bottom left pizza had mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, grilled eggplant, and garlic over a red sauce. The bottom right pizza had a white sauce with artichoke hearts, red onion, spinach, mushrooms, and garlic.  

All three were delicious and this is quite a simple way to do pizza.  Not the simplest, but really tasty and fun and the prep is worth it. In the bottom right pizza you can see a bit of our grilled eggplant.  We also made grilled brussel sprouts. 

Week 4 - Pan Frying - Double Potato Pancakes

I've been dying to make potato latkes since Hanukkah and either haven't had time, or haven't been in the mood when I did have the time. So, this pan frying challenge was the perfect opportunity. 

I had sweet potatoes and new potatoes that needed to be used so I did mix of both. I added shredded onion, chives, salt and pepper, egg, and a little flour.

I'd been told by a friend that the trick to making sure they stick together is not to flip them too soon, so I heated up my awesome cast iron skillet (which I recently, painstakingly seasoned) then put on my patience hat.

Some held together better than others, but for the most part, they cooked up nicely and I piled them in the oven to say warm.

This little mesh pan lid is fabulous for pan frying. It prevents any burns or stains from the popping oil, but you can see your food so you don't overcook anything. It was left/given to us by the previous tenets (friends of ours) and I use it all the time. 

I always struggle with keeping the latkes crispy between the pan and the eating. I haven't mastered that yet, so suggestions are welcome! Below I've piled them up and they are ready to eat!

We topped them with applesauce and sour cream and went to town. They were sooo delicious! The mix of sweet potato and red potato made the latkes a bit sweeter than I am accustomed to, but it was a nice balance with the chives and sour cream .

Creamy potato soup

I love snow.  I love the kind of snow we get here in Bellingham - a few inches and a few days of mild inconvenience followed by 50 degree weather and all the snow melts. Perfect! I feel like I get my dose of cold and pretty snow, but without spending months on end tromping through slush and ice. Here is our house on the first day as the snow came down.

This week's challenge was soup, which seemed perfect for the weather.  That being said, along with the snow came a certain amount of laziness; that and we had lots of left overs so cooking wasn't necessary for most of our meals this week. I have a huge bag of potatoes that need to be used to potato soup seemed like a no brainer.  

All too often I feel like potato soup is bland so I searched for a recipe that had some serious spice.  I came across a recipe that turned out to be absolutely delicious!  In order to combat the sometimes meh potato soup, this one had Worcestershire, mustard powder, allspice, celery seed, thyme, seasoning salt, white wine, cayenne, and boullion powder. Here is the recipe I (mostly) followed

A dollop of sour cream and chives on top, and Andrew and I were in heaven.

The Giants/49ers game was on and about to head in to overtime so we had our feast in the living room. 

We complimented the soup with a ciabatta roll and ceasar salad.  Overall, a huge win. I can't wait to eat the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Orange almond biscotti dipped (and drizzled!) in white chocolate

I struggled with what to make for this week's baking challenge.  I am not a huge fan of white chocolate (it isn't real chocolate after all) but I was determined to make something that I'd actually like to eat.  I called out to my facebook folk to get recommendations and got some really great ideas.  Next, it boiled down to time and ease.  As many of you know, we got hit by a decent amount of snow this week so I made no trips to the store to even buy the dang white chocolate.  Long story short, biscotti it was!

I've never made biscotti before and it was quite easy! Simple ingredients, only a few steps to get it mixed, then bake in two loaves! The recipe I used called for lemon and anise, but I used orange rind and very finely chopped almonds.  I was trying to just use what we had and I don't just have anise seed hanging around. 

You take them out of the oven, slice them up then bake them again. I let them cool completely and then busted out my makeshift double boiler to melt the white chocolate. 

 I used Baker's white chocolate which has actual cocoa butter - from the research I did, cocoa butter is what makes any white chocolate decent. 

I dipped the base of each biscotti in the melted white chocolate, then drizzled the rest. Andrew and I tried to bite into these bad boys and whoo-wheee they were HARD.  Virtually inedible by themselves. Sad face. 

No problem-o.  I threw the kettle on and whipped up a tasty hot toddy for dippin'.  When dipped in the warm liquid-y deliciousness, these biscotti are pretty good.  White chocolate is still not my favorite.  While the almond was nice, there was not enough orange taste.  I think I'd double, if not triple, the amount of orange zest in the future. 

I'm sure the coworkers will love these tomorrow!