December 7, 2012

The holiday season in full swing - crazy,  I know!  Only one more week of class for me until the semester is over, though I am enrolled in two classes in the spring.  I will enjoy the break and perhaps do some cooking to fill our freezer a bit since I will be out a minimum of two nights a week beginning in January! 

This week started off on the right foot- I made Chicken Wellington.  It had quite a bit going for it, and we enjoyed the flavors. Unfortunately, the accompanying sauce didn't match well, and I used the wrong dough...phyllo dough instead of puff pastry!  Ha!  Imagine my surprise when I unrolled the thawed dough expecting to see puff pastry and instead discovering phyllo!  They still turned out fine, but didn't blossom into beautiful little packets with golden coloring, rather they didn't do much of anything.  I will make the base recipe again, use the right kind of dough and find a better sauce to pair with the dish.  Perhaps with these tweaks a keeper will be born. 

Later in the week I made a new favorite - Tex Mex mac & cheese.  Pasta, cheese, taco flavored Dortitos...my kids heard the ingredients list and were already ready to vote it a keeper!  Thankfully it lived up to the expectations they placed on this budget friendly casserole and it earned its place in the recipe archive.  Ryan brought it to work a few days later and he still enjoyed it.

Finally, I stumbled upon a new muffin recipe that I tried this week.  Let me tell you - they looked gorgeous!  Absolutely stunning - these muffins had bakery shop star power.  However, meh, they were a little bland.  I used blueberries and cranberries, though I think if I made them again I would add some lemon zest.  I will definitely be tweaking these because I want to turn this in to a keeper recipe.  One of the fabulous features of this recipe is that the batter can be made and placed in the fridge for 24-36 hours before baking, or better yet - the uncooked batter freezes!  Can you imagine pulling a frozen muffin batter ball out of the freezer, placing it in a muffin tin and then into the oven before you got ready for the day.  Fresh baked muffins without any work?  Sign me up!  So, I will be working on this recipe (it is really easy) and hope to get it to keeper status sooner rather than later.

Hope the week ahead looks good for you!
Happy Cooking!

New Recipe
Tex Mex Mac & Cheese