Tag Archives: easy

Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Veronica

“This cake is my favorite way to eat chocolate. It is easy to make and contains only three essential ingredients: the very best chocolate, for a full, rich flavor and smooth, creamy texture; unsalted butter to soften the chocolate and release the flavor; and eggs to lighten it. The result is like the creamiest truffle wedded to the purest chocolate mousse. It is chocolate at its most intense flavor and perfect consistency.” -Rose Levy Beranbaum, creator of the Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte

That pretty much says it all! I would like to add that although it seems there are many steps to the recipe, it is very simple to make. Think of it this way: all you have to do is melt the butter and chocolate together, beat the eggs to death and fold them into the chocolate mixture and bake. The reason the instructions are so long is that they are very detailed so you are sure to have success with this cake. Enjoy!

Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte

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1 lb. semisweet chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
6 large eggs

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Butter the bottom and sides of an 8″x2″ cake pan and place a circle of parchment or wax paper in the bottom, then butter the top of it.

In a large metal bowl set over a pan of hot, not simmering, water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water), combine the chocolate and butter and let stand, stirring occasionally until smooth and melted. (The mixture can be melted in the microwave on high power, stirring every 15 seconds. Remove when there are still a few lumps of chocolate and stir until fully melted.)

In a large bowl set over a pan of simmering water, heat the eggs, stirring constantly to prevent curdling, until just warm to the touch. Remove from the heat and beat with an electric mixer until tripled in volume and soft peaks form when the beater is raised, about 5 minutes.

Using a large wire whisk or rubber spatula, fold half the eggs into the chocolate mixture until almost incorporated. Fold in the remaining eggs until just blended and no streaks remaining. Finish by using a rubber spatula to ensure that the heavier mixture at the bottom is incorporated. Scrape into the prepared pan and smooth with the spatula. Set the pan in a larger pan and surround it with 1 inch of very hot water. Bake 5 minutes. Cover loosely with a piece of foil and bake 10 minutes. The cake will look soft, but this is as it should be.

Let the cake cool on a rack for 45 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very firm, about three hours.

To unmold, have ready a serving plate and a flat plate at least 8 inches in diameter, covered with plastic wrap. Wipe the sides of the pan with a hot, damp towel, then run a thin metal knife around the sides of the cake. Submerge the bottom in hot water for 10-20 seconds, then invert onto the plastic wrap-lined plate. Remove the parchment from the bottom, then invert onto the serving plate and peel off the plastic wrap.

If desired, you can spread good-quality raspberry or strawberry jam over the top of the cake. (I have an excellent recipe for raspberry jam here.) Allow to come to room temperature before serving. Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

Recipe source: The Cake Bible

Reminder

Today is the day to return to the Postcard Project spreadsheet and make sure you report how many pieces of mail you sent this week. I will be drawing only from the names that have a number in the “completed” column for this week (not last week). I’m SO thrilled that so many more have signed up and hope you will be able to return to report your goal completed before I draw for the cookies tonight at midnight. Good luck and thank you!

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Posted in Cake & Frosting and tagged butter, cake, Cake Bible, chocolate, chocolate oblivion truffle torte, easy, flourless cake, Mousse, raspberry, Rose Levy Beranbaum, simple, special occasion cake, truffle. Bookmark the permalink.

Homemade Butterfingers & Butterfinger Pops

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Veronica

This super-easy recipe with only three ingredients is making it’s way around Pinterest, and since I’ve had pops on the brain lately (you can find all my pop creations here), I immediately thought this would be a great idea to turn into pops! It’s much easier to make them into the traditional bars, but for the adventurous, I’ll include the instructions for the pops in the recipe.

*Update: this is TOO funny! I did not read the blog that I found the recipe on until I already made the pops, and I see she had a similar idea as me to turn this into suckers using molds. Great minds! Except hers is greater because this would be MUCH easier to make using molds.

I was skeptical that the combination of melted candy corn and peanut butter would taste like a Butterfinger, but, amazingly, it really does. It even has that same crispy crunch in your mouth, though the texture is softer and not as dry & flaky as a real Butterfinger–more moist. One of my friends liked it more than a real Butterfinger for that reason, and I think I have to agree. Very delicious and fun!

Homemade Butterfingers

Printable recipe
Printable recipe with picture
Printable Pops recipe with picture

1 lb. candy corn
16 oz. peanut butter
16 oz. chocolate candy melts or chocolate candy coating/bark

Spray an 8×8 baking dish with oil, then line with wax or parchment paper. Place the candy corn in a large glass bowl and microwave for one minute. Stir, then continue to microwave in 15-second intervals, stirring in between, until melted and smooth. Stir in the peanut butter. My mixture was very chunky because the candy corn did not want to combine with the peanut butter so I nuked the mixture for another 15 seconds. At that point it was grainy, and I wanted to leave it that way since it reminded me of Butterfingers since they don’t have a smooth texture. If you want yours completely homogeneous, continue melting in 15-second intervals until you get the mixture perfectly smooth (disclaimer: it is only my assumption that eventually it would get smooth, since I have not tried it myself). Spread into the prepared pan and allow to cool completely, 1-2 hours. Remove from the pan by grasping the wax paper and lifting out. Cut into small bars. Melt the chocolate coating according to the package directions and dip each bar into it using a fork,tapping off the excess before setting on wax paper to dry.

To make Butterfinger Pops, let the mixture cool completely, then use a cookie scoop to portion it out. Roll each scoop into a ball and set on waxed paper. Freeze until firm, about 15 minutes. Take lollipop sticks and dip the tip of each one into melted candy coating and then stick into the balls. After all the balls have sticks in them, put them back in the freezer to firm up again. Place your styrofoam block in the refrigerator. (Since the balls will be very cold when you dip them, the chocolate will be more prone to crack and placing the pops in the refrigerator after dipping will reduce the amount of cracked pops*.) Once they are firm enough to dip, remove five at a time from the freezer, dip them one at a time in the chocolate coating, tapping off the excess, and push the sticks down into the styrofoam block to set. Check on them each time you add another to see if they are cracking and if so, remove and apply extra melted chocolate onto the crack so that no oil leaks out. If you want to add sprinkles, do it as soon as you tap off the excess chocolate, while it is still wet. I put some peanuts and candy corn together in my food processor and chopped them up for my topping. To get a better idea of the process involved for pops, refer to my Cake Pops tutorial.

Recipe source: Plain Chicken

*LOL, “cracked pops” for some reason reminded me of my husband’s favorite quote from a movie. Can you name the movie this is from?

Father say, “Hurry is waste. Waste is cracked bowl which never know rice.”

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Posted in Candy and tagged Butterfinger, candy bars, candy corn, chocolate, easy, homemade butterfingers, peanut butter, Pinterest, pops, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Cranberry Chicken

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Veronica

Before I get to today’s post, I want to do a quick update for The Postcard Project. People have started signing up but I want to encourage everyone that is participating to add your name to the list. Many have told me they are sending mail but aren’t on the list yet. The list is where I’ll be drawing from for the prizes! Oh, did I forget to mention there are prizes at stake? My blue ribbon chocolate chip cookies, to be exact! I’ll be drawing at random from those signed up each Friday this month (winners will be announced each Saturday), then at the end of the month I’ll award a batch to the person who sent the most mail. So you have a chance to win whether you’re sending 1 letter or 100! Every letter makes a difference, especially to the person who receives it. This project will never take over the focus of my blog, but I do intend for it to be ongoing. I’ve already started on my own goal and it has been so fun writing to people I rarely correspond with. I can’t wait to share some of the funny cards I got with you guys. In the meantime, I give you Cranberry Chicken! :)

*****

Pinterest. Have you heard of it? Bloggers have been annoying me with their urgings to get on there for months and I fought it hard, not wanting yet another reason for internet addiction in my life. Even when I was getting 15,000 views a day on my blog (which is not the norm, I can tell you) because of people “pinning” my cupcake bites on Pinterest, I did not sign up. I was steadfast and strong in my resolve. But then a personal friend sent me an invitation to join, telling me I “had to do it” and I guess she was right because I did it, despite myself. It was almost like some evil force in the universe overcame me and made me forget all my reasons for not wanting to. An evil force named Tracy. Oh yeah, girlfriend, I just called you out! :)

So, what does this have to do with cranberry chicken, you might ask? Well, if it weren’t for Pinterest, I would never have made this cranberry chicken! I bookmarked it ages ago and forgot about it because I never go back to look at things I’ve bookmarked. But when I signed up with Pinterest, I decided to use it instead of bookmarking things and I transferred all my favorites into boards on Pinterest. This chicken was one of the first things I transferred and I could barely remember marking it. And I made it the same week!

I don’t know if this is how everyone uses Pinterest, but I “pin” things, mostly recipes, that I want to try in the future and it is so much more useful to me than bookmarks. I can categorize things and then I see a visual picture to remind me of what I wanted to do and when I click the picture, it brings me to the web page I got it from. It’s very handy, but it is also addicting because I can spend an hour looking at everyone else’s pins and repinning them to my own boards for future reference. Handy and evil!

OK, so let’s talk chicken. This recipe is another super-simple one with just a few ingredients and fantastic flavor. It doesn’t have an overwhelming cranberry flavor, in fact the only cranberry taste comes from the whole cranberries themselves because the sauce has onion and Catalina dressing in it to make a flavor all of its own. It’s a little sweet, a little tangy, and a lot delicious. Dennis and I both give it two thumbs up!

Cranberry Chicken

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Printable recipe with picture

1 (8 oz) bottle Catalina or French Dressing
1 (1 oz) envelope dry onion soup mix
1 (15 oz) can whole-berry cranberry sauce
6-8 boneless, skinless chicken pieces (breast halves and/or thighs)

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a large casserole dish with oil and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the dressing, soup mix, and cranberry sauce and whisk together until blended. Pour enough of the sauce in the dish to make a thin layer, then place the chicken in a single layer on top. Pour the remaining sauce over the top, making sure all the chicken is well-coated. Bake, uncovered, for 1- 1 1/2 hours. Serve over rice, ladling extra sauce over the top.

Recipe source: Very Culinary

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Posted in Meats and tagged chicken, cooking, Cranberry, cranberry sauce, easy, Home, onion soup mix, Pinterest, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Easy Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Veronica

Last fall, I posted a recipe for a skinny pumpkin spiced latte that I became addicted to, making it almost every morning. Now that I have a big jug of cold-brewed coffee in my fridge at all times, I realized how easy it would be to make an iced pumpkin spice latte. This is perfect right now because fall is in the air, but isn’t quite here yet, so you can enjoy your fall flavored coffee over ice until the cold really hits, then start heating it. This really couldn’t be faster or more simple (and delicous!).

Easy Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte

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Printable recipe with picture

1 cup milk (any kind)
1/4 cup cold-brewed coffee concentrate, or to taste
2 tablespoons pumpkin butter,* or to taste
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Add ingredients to a wide-mouth glass and blend with an immersion blender until foamy. Add ice and enjoy! If you don’t have a stick blender, put everything in a regular blender blend until smooth and foamy, then pour over ice in a tall glass. Garnish with whipped cream, if desired.

If you want to know what I drizzled on top, here it is:

I bought this last year and I’m not sure if it will return this fall, but it is a great syrup and probably could even be used in place of the pumpkin butter in this latte.

*Veronica’s note: To make your own pumpkin butter, add 1/2 cup of brown sugar and two teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice to every cup of pumpkin puree you use. Cook over medium heat in a saucepan, stirring oven, until very thick. I think I cooked mine half an hour. Be careful, it bubbles and spatters! I like to help it create a steam vent so that it doesn’t bubble as much, and stir every minute or so, so it doesn’t start scorching on the bottom. If you make a large batch, you’ll be set on lattes for a while!

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Posted in Beverages, Breakfast, Lighter Fare and tagged cold-brewed coffee concentrate, easy, iced coffee, latte, pumpkin spice. Bookmark the permalink.

Homemade Deodorant

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Veronica

You’d be surprised the conversations you get involved in at church. The teens are talking about the “Ponzi scheme” of social security, while one sister is talking about how knitting can “tighten your bosom” if you do it enough (knitting, that is), another is recommending Robitussin for infertility (really??), and two others are talking about how much they love their homemade deodorant while you’re trying to ignore the bloody photos & details of a hunting trip some of your brothers just returned from. I love my brothers and sisters in Christ for all their diversity! And thanks to two of them, I found out how to make my own deodorant and so will you.

Many are concerned about the aluminum found in store-bought deodorants, afraid that daily use will raise the aluminum levels in our bodies above what is healthy. The reason deodorants contain aluminum is to actually prevent perspiration, which is the only down-side to making your own deodorant. If you’re hot enough to sweat, you will still sweat. But at least you won’t smell! And sweating is actually a very healthy thing, allowing your body to release chemicals and toxins through your pores.

Like I mentioned in one of my Thankful Thursday posts, this homemade deodorant passed the ultimate test for me: teaching Sunday school. I’m not a very stinky or sweaty person even without deodorant, and with it I’m always fresh as a daisy, except on the Sunday mornings that I’m teaching Sunday school. It’s ridiculous, but I’m totally intimidated by children when I’m supposed to be in a position of authority. I love playing with kids, having fun with them, but when I’m supposed to be their superior and not their colleague, hoping that I sound like I know what I’m talking about, and required to discipline them if necessary, I almost can’t handle it. (One big reason it might be a blessing that I’m not a mother!) Before the homemade deodorant, I always stunk to high heaven after teaching Sunday school, but when I went in wearing the homemade stuff, I came out smelling just as shower-fresh as before!

So, it definitely is an effective deodorant. As for the look and feel of it, it does not compare to the invisible types, but depending on how thick you make it, can actually be less visible than traditional stick-deodorants. The first batch I made quite thick, only adding enough coconut oil to make the consistency like a thick, whipped frosting, and it went on a little thick when applied. The second batch I made thinner so that I could actually pour it into the deodorant tube (the first batch I scooped and smashed into it), and while I have to keep it in the fridge so that it stays solid, it goes on very thin and smooth so I like it better that way. I find I only need a very light smear of it, which means it lasts much longer than regular deodorant. This may differ from person to person, and your mileage may vary.

While reading other reviews of this type of deodorant, I found that extra virgin coconut oil is ideal, as it is antifungal and antibacterial, which boosts the odor-eliminating power of the deodorant. I also discovered that some people are sensitive to baking soda and can get a rash from it, so you may have to tinker with the recipe to reduce it (and upping the cornstarch as you do) until you get a formula that your body likes. If your skin starts to get dark under your arms and starts to itch, this is a skin yeast infection which one person said is caused by the baking soda (I tend to think it would be the cornstarch since it is something that yeast could feed off of, but I don’t know). If this happens to you, get a generic athlete’s foot cream to clear it up. I have had this happen before for a different reason, and found that Lotrimin (I got generic) worked best for me, clearing it up in just a few days. Go back to your regular deodorant until it’s cleared up, then tinker with your recipe to adapt it until it no longer has this effect. You could even try putting Lotrimin in the mixture.

OK, so here’s the church lady-inspired homemade deodorant recipe! Up next, how to naturally give your bosom a lift while learning to knit! ;)

Homemade Deodorant

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3 tablespoons baking soda
3 tablespoons arrow root powder or cornstarch
3 tablespoons extra-virgin coconut oil, heated just enough to become fairly liquid
Tea tree oil (a natural antifungal), and/or other essential oils for fragrance (optional)

Start with an empty deodorant tube. If yours still has deodorant in it, just roll it up and pull it off the base. Reusing the container and wasting the deodorant is cheaper than buying a brand new empty container by itself, because you don’t have to pay for shipping.

Be sure to wind the base down to the bottom before filling.

Whisk the baking soda and arrow root powder or cornstarch together in a bowl until lump-free and fine.

Add the oil…

and stir with a spoon until incorporated, then whisk it up until smooth.

Add your essential oil(s) in now to reach your desired fragrance, then add additional coconut oil or dry ingredients of equal measure as necessary to achieve your desired consistency. Pour or pack into an empty deodorant tube and refrigerate until solid.

This may be stored at room temperature, but if you made the mixture very thin, you will have to keep it in the refrigerator if you want to apply it as a solid rather than a cream.

23 Comments

Posted in How-To & DIY and tagged aluminum-free, deodorant, easy, fast, homemade, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Chili-Cheese Dog Casserole

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Veronica

I’m just going to go ahead and apologize right now before I go any further. I’m sort of on a comfort food (i.e. high calorie, delicious, and unhealthy food) kick right now, perhaps because the weather is getting cooler, and there is absolutely nothing healthy about this. Actually, you could make it significantly healthier depending on what type of ingredients you choose to use (low-fat turkey chili, nitrate-free turkey hot dogs, reduced fat cheese, whole wheat tortillas), but I’m not going to lie and tell you I made any of those choices. This is pure, delicious, evil.

I really had no choice. The recipe, which originates from Allrecipes, has been haunting me for three years now. I first ran across it on MySpace when a friend, Kimberly V., blogged the recipe. Then Debbi blogged the recipe a few months ago, reminding me that I wanted to try it. I prefer to eat healthy & lighter meals to balance the decadent desserts I make (and eat!) on a much too regular basis, so I had been fighting it the whole time, trying to forget I ever saw it. But I finally buckled under the pressure of Debbi’s delicious pictures.

I’m not going to lie and tell you I regret it, either. Like I said, pure, evil, deliciousness. And it can’t get any easier than this!

Chili-Cheese Dog Casserole

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2 (15 oz.) cans chili with beans
1 (16 oz.) package hot dogs
8 (8-inch) flour tortillas
1 (8 oz.) package cheddar cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 425 F. Spray a 9 X 13-inch baking dish with oil and spread 1 can of chili over the bottom . Roll up hot dogs inside tortillas and place in baking dish, seam side down, on top of chili layer. Top with remaining can of chili and sprinkle with cheese. Cover baking dish with aluminum foil and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Serve hot.

*Veronica’s notes: I have no idea what size my casserole dish is, but I know it’s a couple inches smaller on each side than a 9×13 and the dogs fit perfectly in it. I found my chili didn’t go very far, so I added a can of salsa-style fire roasted tomatoes & green chiles in puree to the top along with the chili. A can of Rotel, as Debbi used, would be perfect. I highly recommend shredding your own cheese to get a magnificent gooey melt. If your cheese is going to come into contact with the foil you place on top, generously spray the foil on one side with oil and place that side down over the pan, otherwise the cheese will stick to your foil and come off when you remove it.

Recipe source: Allrecipes

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Posted in Main Dishes, My Favorites and tagged chili cheese dog casserole, easy, fast, recipe. Bookmark the permalink.

Basic Crockpot Beef Roast

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Veronica

OK, I just want to warn you that this recipe includes two of the Midwestern housewife’s pantry staples that most foodies seem to abhor: cream of ___ soup and dry onion soup mix. So if you are against such things, go ahead and just close this now before I get you too riled up. Because I’m going to use them, and I’m not going to apologize for it.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way! This is yet another homestyle meal that Teri taught me to make, and it’s so simple and easy! You may be scratching your head, wondering why I’m bothering sharing this recipe with you, because you’ve been making something similar since you lost your first tooth, but I’m hoping there are others out there who never learned how to make a delicious and tender roast. This is for you! And for those who know how to make a delicious and tender, yet complicated roast, and need a backup recipe for busy days.

Growing up, my mother never made a single pot roast. Which is weird, because it’s something her own mother made almost every time we visited. You how you grow up watching your Mother and thinking, “I’m never going to do that when I grow up?” Well, I think my Mom did that with her mother’s cooking. Because Grandma was all about the homestyle cookin’ and Mom was all about the weird healthy food. Bowls of lentils. Fish stew. Salad sprinkled with Spike in lieu of dressing, which was forbidden. Some of her food was delicious, like her chicken chili, but most of it I couldn’t tolerate, and that was probably the only reason I was thin as a child. I refused to eat most everything she served us for dinner. I think the school lunch program saved me from starvation. It’s so sad, because if I ate all those foods now, I know I’d love them. The stubborn ignorance of childhood!

Wow. Talk about getting off-subject. Let’s get back to the roast, shall we? As with anything cooked in a crockpot, the meat is rendered extremely tender during the slow-cooking process and the broth from the roast combines with the soup to make a nice gravy to coat everything. Teri recommends serving the roast with fresh bread and I chose to make rolls out of my favorite honey oatmeal bread, but would have gone with my favorite rolls of all time if I’d had milk. Any fresh bread will do the trick, though–you just need something to sop up the gravy! :)

Basic Crockpot Beef Roast

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1 (3-5 lb) roast (Teri recommends one with fat marbled throughout for moisture)
Meat seasoning/butt rubb/seasoned salt to taste
1 (10.5 oz) can cream of mushroom soup
1 (10.5 oz) can cream of golden mushroom soup
1 (1 oz) envelope dry onion soup mix
2 lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into quarters
1 lb bag baby carrots
8+ stalks of celery, trimmed and cut into thirds

Sprinkle meat with seasoning of choice and sear in a non-stick skillet over high heat on all sides. Meanwhile, place vegetables in bottom of crockpot. Once meat is seared, place on top of the vegetables. Spoon the soup over the top over the meat and veggies, then sprinkle the soup mix over that. Cover and set on low all day (about 8 hours).

Check it out yo! Remember the Fairy Hobmother who gave me a $50 gift card to buy a blender? Well, I decided I needed a new crockpot much worse than a new blender (my old one didn’t even have a knob and took two days to cook anything), and this roast was the first thing I made in it. I got the Hamilton Beach Set ‘n Forget 6-quart Programmable Slow Cooker. I’m in love! You can program it by setting it for a certain amount of time, or you can stick the thermometer probe through the top into the meat and program it to turn off once the meat comes to the right temperature, or you can put in on manual mode and just let it heat/warm until you turn it off. It even has a snap-tight lid, making it perfect for mess-free travelling, which would have come in handy when Teri put one of the roasts we made in her trunk and it fell over during transit onto her brand new Bible! She says she now has an official “preacher’s wife” Bible because it’s stained with pot roast juice. haha!

Did the Fairy Hobmother visit any of you guys? Do tell what you got!

34 Comments

Posted in Meats and tagged basic, carrots, celery, cream of mushroom soup, easy, homestyle, onion soup mix, pot roast, potatoes, recipe, simple. Bookmark the permalink.

Caramel Chocolate Chip Bars

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Veronica

I like to have an arsenal of easy emergency recipes on hand for gifts, and recently added this one because I happened to have a caramel cake mix and dulce de leche in my cupboard when I was scrambling to get something ready for a friend with a birthday, who I was going to see later in the day. If you can’t find caramel cake mixes in your grocery store, you can request them at your customer service counter like I do, or purchase them online.

Caramel Chocolate Chip Bars

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1 (18.25 oz) Duncan Hines caramel cake mix
2 eggs
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup butter
¼ cup water
1 (12 oz) package semisweet chocolate chips, divided
1 (14 oz) can dulce de leche

Preheat oven to 375 ºF.. Spray a 9×13 dish with oil. Combine cake mix, eggs, water, brown sugar and butter in large bowl. Stir until thoroughly blended. Mixture will be thick. Stir in chocolate chips. Spread in greased pan.

Bake for 24 to 27 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. While it’s still hot and fresh from the oven, spread dulce de leche over the top and sprinkle chocolate chips over that. Wait five minutes, then use a butter knife or spatula to swirl the chocolate into the caramel. Cool completely in pan. Cut into bars.

Recipe source: adapted from Duncan Hines

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Posted in Brownies & Bars and tagged bars, caramel, caramel duncan hines cake mix, chocolate chip, easy, fast. Bookmark the permalink.

Homemade Miracle Whip & Tartar Sauce

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Veronica

OK, which side are you on? Mayonnaise or Miracle Whip? In our house, my husband goes for the mayo, and I reach for the whip. I just love the sweet tanginess of it! So when I discovered how easy making my own mayonnaise was, I very quickly adapted it to taste like my preferred sandwich spread. I don’t know what took me so long to share it with you. Enough delaying, here you go!

Homemade Miracle Whip

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1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
½ tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon mustard powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon onion powder
1 ½ cups flavorless oil

Place all ingredients, except the oil, in the bowl of a food processor fitted with blade attachment. Have the oil measured and at hand. Turn on the food processor and pour the oil through the feed tube in a thin, steady stream. Gradually increase the flow until all oil is in the mixture. Continue to process until a thick mixture. Refrigerate.

To make tartar sauce, stir in finely chopped onion and dill relish (or finely chopped pickles), as much as you desire. I think I added 3 tablespoons of each to about half the Miracle Whip recipe. It’s so yummy with fish sticks!

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Posted in Condiments & ETC. and tagged easy, fast, homemade mayonnaise, miracle whip, tartar sauce. Bookmark the permalink.

Warm Chorizo & New Potato Salad

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Veronica

This is a very simple summer-friendly recipe that is also, shockingly, husband-friendly. My poor man just does not get the amount of meat and potatoes he believes he requires, so when I served him this salad, he was so ecstatic to be eating meat and potatoes, that he didn’t even care there was a bed of lettuce underneath.

The meat and potato mixture is substantial and satisfying, but I really think you need the egg on top to complete the salad. Jenna said it was optional, but I’m not going to tell you that. You need the warm yolk to run out over the salad and serve as a dressing. It really pulls the whole thing together quite nicely.

Warm Chorizo & Potato Salad

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1.5 lbs new, red, or gold potatoes (I used gold)
Salt and pepper to taste
15 oz chorizo sausage
16 oz mixed salad greens or shredded lettuce
1 lemon
4 poached or over-easy eggs

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Meanwhile, cut the potatoes into bite-size chunks; add to the water and once boiling, reduce heat a bit and continue to boil until fork-tender, but not mushy. Meanwhile, start your sausage to cooking. Add to a skillet and cook over medium heat, breaking it and crumbling with a spatula as you go. Remove from heat if it gets done before your potatoes are ready. Once the potatoes are tender, drain and add to the sausage. Stir well and cook another minute or two. Season with salt and pepper. Divide salad greens among four plates, then divide sausage and potatoes on top of each. Top with a poached or fried egg and serve immediately.

Recipe source: slightly modified from Jenna’s Everything Blog