Homemade Blizzards

For some reason I got obsessed with the idea of making homemade Blizzards. I turned that obsessive thought into reality by buying a four liter tub of ice cream and various chocolate bar add-ins. Then I proceeded to eat Blizzards every day for a bunch of days in a row. All the various add-in chocolate bars make a yummy treat, but hands down the best one is Smarties, no question.

Giant tub of ice cream, chocolates, and accessories

Smarties Blizzard (the best)

Reese's Pieces getting ready to blend

Reese's Pieces Blizzard

Mint Aero getting ready to blend

Mint Aero Blizzard

Breakfast Burger

We have been watching a lot of Eat St. lately, which is a show about amazing food from food trucks. Countless episodes of mouth watering, ridiculous (and awesome) comfort food, inspired me to create a ridiculous hamburger.

I can't take all the credit for this madness, as John suggested I use pancakes as the hamburger bun. It was a super idea, and I put a tablespoon of maple syrup in the pancake batter to give it some more sweetness. It was incredibly good that way. Yum!

So, a ridiculous breakfast burger, in photos:

Bottom Bun: big pancake, buttered

Patty: beef burger with melted cheese

Breakfast layer: over-easy egg

Top Bun: big pancake, buttered

Serve with home fries and savour all the deliciousness.

Hot Turkey Sandwich #FoodPicFriday

We had Thanksgiving last weekend and the best part of a big turkey dinner is all the leftovers. I reheated some turkey in the leftover gravy (just like Mom used to make) and poured it over a soft white roll. So good!

Chicken Stock

I had a wonderful day in the kitchen yesterday, making chicken stock. I'm still working on the three farmer raised chickens I cut up, and yesterday I boiled the chicken backs that I had previously frozen. My reward was as pot of hearty chicken vegetable soup and ten cups of stock for the freezer. Wonderful!

Mom's (Nanny's) Awesome Fudge

'Mom's Awesome Fudge' is how this fudge recipe appears in my recipe book, although it's come to my attention that the source of this recipe goes a few generations further. I uncovered this fact after making a batch of it and being reminded of my Nanny. I asked Mom if Nanny ever made it and was informed that it was Nanny's recipe and, yes, she made it all the time. We were pretty young when we spent time with Nanny (she was Mom's grandma), so part of me forgot about it. I'm glad the recent batch I made tasted like memories, otherwise I wouldn't have realized I'd shared this treat with my Nanny when I was little.

This fudge tastes very old timey, sweet and yummy with every bite.

Mom's (Nanny's) Awesome Fudge

1/4 cup margarine
1/4 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup milk
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Put all ingredients except vanilla and walnuts into a saucepan. Mix together, heating on medium until margarine is melted and mixture starts to boil. Let bubble for 9-10 minutes. To ensure it has boiled enough, test to see if the mixture will form a ball in cold water. Put a spoon into the hot mixture and drop a small amount into a cup with cold water. It should form a ball. Take saucepan off burner and let sit for 10 minutes. Add vanilla and walnuts and start beating fudge with a spoon until it changes colour (turns lighter brown) and becomes thick. Put into a greased pie plate and place in fridge to cool. Cut into squares and store in an air tight container.

Enjoy!

Achievement Unlocked: Cutting Up a Whole Chicken

My farmer brother raised chickens again this year, and last week we bought four of them. Each of the chickens weighed between five and five and a half pounds, so perfect for roasting. Even though roast chicken dinner is fantastic, I decided I wanted more meal options from all these birds. I took to Google and set out to learn how to cut up a whole chicken. It seemed easier than I thought, so I was really excited to try it.

I learned how to divide chicken by watching this short YouTube video. I watched it about five times before I took to work on my chickens.

On chicken day, I successfully parted three chickens. The first one took about twenty minutes (maybe longer), as I figured out how the joints worked and the correct angle for the knife. I had the YouTube video called up on my iPod, so I could learn step by step as I worked (while frequently washing my hands). My first attempt wasn't perfect, but it helped me learn for the next one. The second chicken was far easier to part, taking about half the time as I got the hang of it. By the third chicken I was full speed and the breast pieces looked like they were from the grocery store. I was so happy and so proud of myself! Kitchen skills!

From my three chickens I got the following for the freezer:

2-pack of chicken legs x 3

2-pack of chicken breasts x 3

12 (split) chicken wings

3 chicken backs for soup stock

I also kept one of my chickens whole, so we can have a roast chicken one night too. Very excited.

Almost Want To Make These Daily...

These are my new favourite cupcakes; chocolate small batch cupcakes from Celebrating Sweets. They are so easy and six is the perfect number of cupcakes to have when I'm craving them.

The first time I tried these I topped them with strawberry buttercream. This time out I made some vanilla buttercream and they tasted so good. Love chocolate and the sweet vanilla together.

I sprinkled a little cocoa powder onto the icing to give it a more festive look. This recipe calls for either 1/4 cup of hot water or 1/4 of coffee. I've made it both ways and highly recommend the coffee. It really enhances the chocolate flavour. So good!

Steak on the BBQ #FoodPicFriday

The price of beef has been too expensive lately, so we've haven't been buying or eating it. There was a recent steak sale, which wasn't that great of a deal, but with BBQ season here we were all craving a nice steak. Beef is just a once in a while kind of meat now, but we really enjoyed having these. Tastes like summer.

Father's Day Fun #FoodPicFriday

We celebrated an early Father's Day yesterday with Mom and Dad, enjoying some wonderful (as always) Chinese food from our favourite take out place. Mom also picked up doughnuts from Zerhs Bakery (my favourite grocery store doughnut), and a yummy time was had by all.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!!

Cold Treat On A Hot Day

We had some wonderful weather on the weekend, with Sunday getting to a high of 32°C (90°F). Beautiful. After walking (and then relaxing) in the hot sun, I threw together a homemade ice cream sandwich that was cold and sweet. Yes the ice cream all smooshed out when I bit into it, but it was all part of the fun.

This is my current favourite oatmeal cookie recipe. It has 1 tsp of cinnamon in it that really adds to the flavour. Love it.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

My Mother-in-law had a birthday recently and we celebrated with a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. It is her favourite cake and I am always up for making desserts with cream cheese, as I absolutely love how it tastes in sweets. I don't bake with it very often (it can be expensive when not on sale) but other treats I've enjoyed are: pumpkin cream cheese frosting, cream cheese cinnamon buns, Oreo truffles, and peanut butter truffles.

I used a cake mix for the carrot cake, but I put it in three pans instead of two, as multi-layer cakes are so much fun.

There are loads of cream cheese frosting recipes online, all with varying ratios of cream cheese to icing sugar. One recipe suggested 1 package of cream cheese to 4 cups of icing sugar. Another suggested 2 packages of cream cheese to 2 cups of icing sugar. It was really all over the place. I didn't follow any one recipe, I just keep adding icing sugar until I thought it reached peak taste.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 package cream cheese (250g), at room temperature for 1 hour
1/2 cup butter (113g), at room temperature
2 1/4 cups icing sugar

Some recipes add vanilla or lemon juice, but I didn't bother adding either, as it tasted so damn good as is. The thing I find deceptive about cream cheese treats, is they don't really taste sweet to me, which makes them incredibly easy to eat. I frequently had to get a new spoon, as I kept licking the one I was working with. With normal buttecream or marshmallow buttercream, I freeze any leftovers and make it into candies. The leftovers for this cream cheese frosting all went into my mouth. I was not shy about eating it at all.

I made some simple carrot decorations for the top of the cake, using ziploc bags to pipe on the frosting.

This cake was very yummy, and I love the three layers. I think it looks lovely.

Peanut Butter Cup Fudge

I love making fudge with sweetened condensed milk, and have made several varieties over the past few years. One of the first flavours I tried was Reese's Fudge and I wanted to make it again, but I kept forgetting to pick up Reese's peanut butter cups. At some point I got the bright idea that I could make the peanut butter cups instead of buying them and that is exactly what I did. My sister-in-law has an awesome peanut butter cup recipe and I used it to make peanut butter patties for this recipe. I worked out the difference, and I saved over $3 in peanut butter cups by just making the patties at home. Win!

For the Peanut Butter Patties:
1/3 cup peanut butter
2 tbs + 2 tsp brown sugar
1 tbs margarine
1/3 cup icing sugar

Mix all ingredients together and roll into balls (makes approx. 25 balls). Chill them in the fridge for 3 hours. Remove from fridge and slightly flatten to form patties.

For the Fudge:
3 cups milk chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk (300 ml)
1 cup chopped peanuts
1 tsp vanilla
25 homemade peanut butter patties

Add chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk to saucepan over medium heat.

Heat until melted together. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour about a 1/4 of the mixture into a prepared 8x8 baking dish. Ensure the bottom is completely covered.

Place peanut butter patties onto the already poured fudge. Then cover them with the rest of the chocolate mixture.

Top with chopped peanuts, pressing gently to adhere to chocolate. Chill in the refrigerator. I always chill my fudge overnight for best results.

Once chilled, cut fudge into pieces for eating and sharing. This one is pretty great for both!

Mini Crescent Dog Blog

When we were kids, the Christmas Eve tradition at our house was to have appetizers for supper. Mom would bake some Triscuits in the toaster oven that were topped with cheese and sliced green olives. So good! We'd also have a selection of chips and dips and various other snacks. I'm not sure if we ever had mini crescent dogs in those days, but as an adult, they've been added to the Christmas Eve menu.

Mini crescent dogs are really easy to make and especially easy to eat. When they are mini, three of them is equal to one hot dog. So if you don't count how many you are eating (pro tip: never count how many you are eating), you may end up having more hot dogs than you normally would in one sitting. Which is kinda the best.

Ingredients (to make 24 mini crescent dogs):
1 can Pillsbury Crescents
8 hot dogs
cheese

Method:

1. Cut your hot dogs into three equal pieces. Cut cheese into small slices, about the same size as each third of a hot dog.

2. Slice each hot dog piece about half way through and stuff with cheese.

3. Open your can of Crescent Rolls and separate into triangles.

4. Cut each triangle into three, starting from the top point of the triangle.

5. Adjust your mini triangles, so you have a nice sized edge for rolling up hot dogs.

6. Roll up your hot dogs. This recipes is very forgiving, so don't worry how they roll up.

7. Place on a parchment paper lined baking tray and bake at 375°F for 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!!!