Take two chocolate chips, a piece of candy corn, and a mini powdered doughnut...
You see where this is going already, don't you?
And put them together like so...
Yum!
The eyes stay on better if you put them in upside down. If you want to get fancier, try adding more features with sprinkles or frosting. But my kids liked them just like this.
Don't dawdle, Amaryllis, and you might still find candy corn at the grocery.
Biscuit mix from a box is something I haven't purchased in years. You know the one I mean - yellow box, "miracle" or "impossible" recipes printed on the back. Well, I have to say, although I have not purchased the box mix for longer than I can remember, the last time I did have that stuff in the house, I cut the back off the box to save in my recipe binder. And on the blank flip side of that cardboard, I wrote a recipe for biscuit mix:
To Make About 2 Cups of Mix
1 2/3 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening or oil
Combine the dry ingredients and cut in the shortening.
If you're into homemade bulk mixes, you can find recipes that start with 10 cups of flour, but I haven't gone there (yet). I can see it happening as it can also be used for waffles and dumplings, but there you go.
I thought I'd share my newest favorite way to use this mix: The perfect disguise for leftovers.
Got a chicken breast and some peas and carrots sitting in the fridge? Or perhaps roast beef and veggies? Or even chili? Or hamburger stroganoff? Don't mix them together, but dice each one up and spread it in a casserole dish or a 9x13" cake pan. Put the chicken on one end and the chili on the other. If your leftovers are a little dry to begin with, consider making a white sauce or gravy to pour over them. And make sure this filling is seasoned nicely. It will taste so much better when it's finished if it tasted good to begin with. Lawry's salt, garlic powder and/or Italian seasoning can be friendly here. Cumin is good for a Mexican flavor. Naturally, salt and pepper are also an option, and sometimes the best choice. One of my favorites is just a little thickened bouillon.
Then take your 2 cups of biscuit mix and combine it with 2 eggs and 1 cup of milk and pour it over your whatever-it-was. If your filling goes well with cheese, sprinkle grated cheese on top of the batter. Now, bake it at 350F for half an hour until the top is golden brown.
What this is is a variation on shepherd's pie. You're just using biscuit mix instead of mashed potatoes. (If you'd rather use the potatoes, go for it.) For me what it is is a way to make something new again so that my kids will eat it. Because no matter how much they liked a dish the evening before, the next day for lunch they will choose a sandwich over leftovers almost every time. But put a hot cake-like bread on top of it and it disappears like magic.
Maybe it is a "miracle" recipe after all.
We love breakfast cereal in this house. Almost always we have cereal in the morning, but sometimes also for our snacks, or even occasionally for supper. The cupboard where the cereal is kept is a lower one so that the kids can see all the boxes and choose for themselves. The plastic bowls are also kept in there. The youngest need help pouring both cereal and milk, but the older they get the more independent they become. And the longer Mommy can sleep in. (Oops - did I say that out loud?)
But there's one thing about cereal that no one here loves: The dregs. You know what I mean. It's that last partial serving consisting of broken pieces, crumbs and powdery remnants that turns immediately to grainy mush if a drop of milk is introduced. Yick. The tragedy is that sometimes there's a lot of perfectly good cereal mixed up with those bits, but because it is only a small amount in the bottom of the bag, no one wants to take a chance on it.
Every so often I go through the cupboard and rescue these leftovers. Into a jar they go.
Nothing with too distinct a flavor or aroma gets included. Once I made the mistake of adding the crumbs from something that had "blueberry flakes" as an ingredient. Bleh. The whole jar smelled after that. The kids didn't mind it, but it was certainly not my favorite. It's not like it smelled like real blueberries.
What does it matter, you say? What are these dumb crumbs for anyway? Well, I'll tell you. Muffins. Find a recipe you like, maybe one with oatmeal in it. Then substitute about a cup of cereal crumbs for a cup of the flour or oats in your recipe. It helps if you know what your muffin batter is supposed to look like because you may need more or less of the crumbs to get the proper consistency. For example, bran flakes seem to absorb more liquid than the same amount of corn or rice flakes. I don't worry about it too much. No one's going to mutiny in my house if the muffins are a little dry.
After all, a dry muffin is better than yicky mush in a bowl any day.
Sometimes you don't have all the ingredients a recipe calls for. Case in point: Red Beans and Rice.
My recipe (my sister's, actually) calls for some bacon and some Worcestershire sauce, among other ingredients. It also calls for ring sausage. Well, I did not have bacon in the house and one of my kids is allergic to fish. Did you know Worcestershire has anchovies in it? Well, it does. I love the stuff, but I avoid putting it in our family meals. I also did not have ring sausage.
So, what to do? Run to the store? Uh - Are you kidding? If you think I'm going to the store for one ingredient (it isn't a short trip) you don't know me. Seriously.
I made do and I did without. Instead of ring sausage I substituted some link sausage made with elk that we had in the freezer. The bacon and Worcestershire were just plain not in there.
And you know what? That recipe tasted great. No one said a word about missing the bacon or any lack of flavor.
That was not the kind of food that makes for a pretty picture. And we were hungry. (Ok, I didn't even think of taking pictures. Didn't even cross my mind.) But this next recipe... Check it out:
This is not red beans.
I am no food stylist, but can't you just smell that cinnamon?
This is monkey bread. It's like cinnamon caramel rolls, but not rolled. Most recipes call for a couple of cans of those pop 'em open biscuits, each bun cut into quarters. Yeah... No. I have made them that way before, even one recipe that cooked in the microwave, and what can I say? They were quick-ish and kinda yummy, but most of that yum came from the sugar. It's like that cake-in-a-cup recipe. Only for serious must-have-it-NOW cravings where you eat it before you taste it.
For my monkey bread I used yeast bread dough. I was baking regular bread that day anyhow, so instead of one more loaf I took that portion of dough and cut it into blobs a little smaller than a golf ball. In a zip-top food storage bag I put a bunch of sugar and a palmful of cinnamon. Then I added the dough balls in batches and shook them to coat.
Now, the only tube pans I have happen to have spent the summer in the sandbox. No way I was going to try to scour those clean. Next best thing? A bundt pan. But I don't have one of those. I used my angel food cake pan. In went the coated dough. It was a lot of dough - filled that big pan about half way. You need a pan in the shape of a ring, or you're likely to get dried out buns around the rim and uncooked doughy buns in the center. If you don't have a tube pan you can substitute a casserole dish with an inverted ramekin or mug in the center. Just be sure everything is food and oven safe.
Beside not using the canned biscuits, I wasn't going to use the two sticks of butter that other recipes called for. One whole cup of butter? Ow. I opted for half that. One stick of butter and 1/2 cup of brown sugar went into the microwave to cook together for a couple of minutes. Then it got poured over the bun bites and the whole thing went into the oven for 30 minutes.
After taking it out, I let it sit for 10 minutes before inverting it onto a plate. It had a lovely caramel coating. Then the baby and I ate some (Who has time to take pictures when you're stuffing your face?) and set some aside for Daddy before letting the devouring horde the other little monkeys know it was ready. Needless to say, it was a hit with everyone. And I did not hear a single murmur about that missing stick of butter.
Good thing I used such a big pan. With twice the usual amount of dough I was nervous as I watched it rise and nearly overflow. Whew. Guess the Kitchen Madonna was watching over me there!
How do I qualify "good"? It's good if most of my kids will eat it.
*This is not the barley version. I forgot to take a picture of that. See below.
This recipe is what I came up with after tweaking the recipe on the box of Quick Barley. The quick is the only kind my store sells; if you use pearled or another variety of barley you'll have to cook it much longer. If you're going to do that, you can use a beef bone or stew meat. Then it will no longer be Good & Fast, just Good, in which case you can disregard this post because here it's all about the Fast. Don't let the screen door hit ya on your way out.
Now here's for the rest of you with a husband just about to walk in the door or six hungry kids or the impatient equivalent:
Good & Fast Beef Barley Soup
Brown the ground beef and drain. Stir in the onion and garlic. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until the barley is done, about 10 min. The beef base has lots of salt, so do not add any salt until you taste it. You can also add some pepper if you like. If you want another flavor leave out the ground beef and use a different soup base, like chicken or vegetable.
*The last time I made this I already had some leftover cooked wagon wheel pasta in the fridge, so I used that instead of barley. I added it at the last minute just to warm it through and keep it from getting mushy.
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