Enchilada Dinner with Brian

Yes!! We are both wearing aprons... and Yes!!!! We are getting married! I hope this makes you want to smile too!!!

Chipotle peppers, tomatoes, garlic and spices make our sauce. Cool and sweet, corn and broccoli for half of our filling. Ground beef, onion, and more spices for the second half of our filling. Lots of cheese and whole wheat tortillas - another easy one!

Lots of leftovers - which makes Brian happy or you can prepare in two small pans and freeze half before you bake. A dollop of daisy is all you need to finish off this dinner.

PS - you can notice in the picture of our stove above, my new digital timer! I bought this for my birthday at William Sonoma, and it's one of the best kitchen gadgets I have ever purchased! It's red... digital... knows what time it is... has a strong magnet... and it has a touch pad like and Ipod! Everything is going Apple, including my new kitchen timer!

Devil Cake

Super easy Ghirardelli chocolate cake. This claims to be a one bowl recipe - I am not sure how to melt chocolate without using a bowl... So I guess it is a 2-bowl-one pot-every measuring cup/spoon-in-the-house recipe!

The batter was very thick - which I personally believe is more stable, and easier to bake to perfection. We have a light in our oven but the glass on the door is SO dirty (will not come clean) that it is really difficult to see what is happening in there! Sadly, I have this habit of opening the oven while baking, and this is not usually a good idea with cakes. This recipe was not only easy, but it stood up to multiple openings of the oven too.

Though I didn't use cake flour, it had a dark and rich chocolate color and flavor, but surprisingly fluffy resulting cake. I used my old stand-by marshmallow buttercream frosting, and it was a birthday cake without a birthday to celebrate.

As I whittle down my recipes finding the most consistent, easy, cheap, and yummy cakes, Ghirardelli has done it again!

Having a spare bag of confectioner sugar, a pound of butter and a bucket of Fluff is really just how I live. It is great to have this frosting as a topping or filling in so many recipes. You can slightly adjust the recipe to meet your needs, with little risk of failure. Always start with 2 sticks of butter, 1 jar of Fluff, and 1 cup of confectioner sugar.

From there, add more sugar to make it more like a birthday cake frosting, some milk to make it a little smoother, lemon, vanilla, almond extract, or really anything you can dream up!

Another batch of muffins... Sweet & Savory?

Apples and cranberries, sauteed onion and garlic, fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, and some hot peppers. Completely different from any muffin I've ever eaten. The onion and garlic were a great texture addition, since they were sauteed first. Then the crunch of the walnuts, chew of the cranberries, and the tender apples - a whole new level! Warm spicy heat is what you are left feeling on your tongue.

Brian said he could, "eat these all day," as he helped himself to another! I often make ham and cheese pancakes - so the next time I make one of these interesting muffins, I will add some ham or possibly bacon. My goal is to have a meal in a muffin! This is still the same hearty recipe - tried and true!

1 C Whole Wheat Flour

1 T Bran

1 T Wheat Germ

1/2 tsp Soda

1/2 tsp Powder

(Whatever spices you like to have with the ingredients you choose, about a tsp. of ground or dry seasoning - like cinnamon - today I used black pepper, and hot peppers)

2 Eggs

1/2 C Oil (I actually use Olive Oil)

1/2 C Honey

Then you can add 1C of just about anything, apple (or apple sauce), pumpkin, zucchini, banana, carrots, or any combo of things you think will taste great.

Finally 1/2 C of items I think of as texture ingredients - dry fruit, nuts, seeds - again - anything!

When you actually mix the ingredients - you can literally put everything into one bowl, just start with the eggs, beat them a little, and keep going from there. No need to worry about your order of operations with this recipe. They have never, ever failed me, no matter how many times I try to mix it up and change the recipe.

Monkey cake note...

So, a quick little note about the monkey cake. This is the frosting when I was done whipping it in the mixer. It was smooth and creamy, so much like a mousse, I was literally licking the giant whisk attachment when it was done.

We had made plans with Brian's Dad for lunch at Gritty's last Sunday afternoon, and I didn't feel right leaving the frosting out on the counter while we were gone. (BIG MISTAKE!) Never refrigerate chocolate frosting, made with melted chocolate, until you have frosted your cake. There was no bringing it back from the cold. It was easy enough to spread - but the texture went from perfectly luxurious to dry, and almost ready to crack! I used a hot spreader, and it took a LONG time!

It is so heart wrenching when something like this happens in the kitchen... especially when there is chocolate involved.

Just another lesson learned... maybe I should have already known this! Oh well - the flavor was great - and the cake was so yummy - it made up for the blah texture of the frosting. (This is going to be filed away as the best frosting I have ever made though - before I ruined it!)

Since everyone at the Home Store has been talking...

...about my blog... I figured I should feature the BEAUTIFUL store where I work! L.L. Bean's Home Store has an amazing selection of products from food to furniture with the best team of men and women I have ever worked with (and for)!

(This is a photo from the LLB website)

You should probably come by, if you haven't recently, and enjoy the company of good friends in this really special place! Always something new in the one-of-a-kind department, and always something yummy to taste from Stonewall!

Or - if you live far away - http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/31 - then come and see LLB on the web!

Make sure to tell my friends that "Bethany sent you!"

Monkey cake... Thanks Smitten Kitchen!

As soon as I saw her post... I NEEDED to make this cake!

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/09/monkey-cake/

This chocolate butter cream was seriously easy and also really tasty. I quickly ditched the food processor for my mixer with the whisk attachment... good decision - but otherwise - PERFECTION! YUM! Sadly, I had wanted to make this cake with my friend Deb's banana cake recipe, but that piece of paper has been taken to the place where some great recipes go, until years from now when it will turn up in it's greatest time of need. For now, this one worked!

I have to mention that Deb's banana cake was the first one of it's kind that I had ever tried. I immediately fell in love! The cake was lighter than this one and so I am a little sad I have misplaced this recipe... Maybe she will share again?

Bargain Ginger to the Rescue!

Another Market Basket special! Inspired by the basil oil I bought at the Home Store! There was a package of little bits of fresh ginger... the size that most people pass by when choosing the perfect chunk of ginger. They bundled these little guys together and put them on sale for $.59...

They said "BETHANY! BUY US!" and so I did. Sliced half, grated the other half, filled the jars with olive oil, and now I am ready for ANY ginger needs that might arise in the Dumas kitchen!

I LOVE GINGER!

Pork Roast

Asparagus. I love to shop at Market Basket in New Hampshire. They have a great produce section and even better prices. Most days you can find fresh asparagus for only $2 per pound!!

One of my favorite veggies to roast with a little oil, S&P = easy, yummy and healthy!!

GO GREEN VEGGIES!

When we were at Aunt Jeanne's for my birthday, she had a whole pork loin that she shared with us. We put it in the freezer for a couple of weeks, but broke it out on Saturday to have this lovely dinner we cooked together.

We also roasted some red and sweet potatoes. The sweets ended up turning into little candied treats. Again, just a little oil, S&P, so healthy and tasty!!

Finally, from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, this is a brandy cream sauce. Apple, onion, LOTS of fresh sage and a little cream cheese. It was simple to prepare, and since it is cooked over low heat the onion keeps it's flavor and the apples didn't break down into the sauce.

After eating a heaping pile of this delicious meal - we ended up with the plate of leftovers below.

All ready to be thrown in the oven and reheated to perfection! I highly recommend this sauce. It would be great with chicken or pork. Only a few ingredients, most of which we have in the house always. Another way to use those apples we pick in the fall - or to have an excuse to buy some crunchy granny smith apples at the store. Also - we have fresh sage growing in our garden in the summer, so I could see this on a grilled pork chop on a sunny afternoon too!

Three treats

Bittersweet chocolate chips, sour cherries and toasted almonds.... yup this is the cookie dough!

I am trying to figure out the secret of a perfect chocolate chip cookie (without using shortening).

Tim says there is another recipe for the basic chocolate chip cookie that uses 3 sticks of butter and more flour. This is going to be my next attempt I think. They are never fluffy enough, and often spread out too far despite my greatest efforts to get the dough to the right temperature before baking, only beating the dough enough to incorporate the ingredients and getting the oven to the right temp... It is yummy to experiment with cookies!

This photo below is one of our favorite breakfast treats. Leftover taco filling, made into a breakfast quesadilla. Scramble some eggs and cook them like an omelet. Grated cheese, taco filling, the perfect disc of scrambled eggs, some avocado, more cheese and voila! A great use for leftovers - depending on your taco filing, this is a really healthy way to start your day. This time we used tempeh, broccoli and onion. You have to try this!

Finally, POPOVERS! This is my second attempt at making popovers - very simple to make, but still searching for the best baking times. If you have made them before, you know they are first baked at a higher temp, then you reduce the heat to finish the baking. I think that I need to reduce the high heat time. They have come out a little hard, and a little too brown. We will have to do this again!

You should know that we filled these - obviously you can see - with savory ingredients. Eggs, shallots and sausage in a scramble, dried cranberries and walnuts made into a big jumble, then stuffed into the popover. I actually ate this as a finger food - it would be perfect for breakfast to eat on the go if you only had someone to prepare all of the ingredients while you took a shower and got ready for work!

I met a customer at LLB yesterday looking for our popover mix - sadly we didn't have any. I ended up sharing with her how easy it is to make from scratch... 3 ingredients! While talking about eating popovers, she shared with me that she enjoys filling them with ice cream and then topping with hot fudge for a POPOVER SUNDAE! WOW! Maybe that will be dessert today? It would be even better with jam and ice cream... mmmmm.... I am daydreaming about dessert popovers.