Nutella Æbleskivers

A new favorite recently in our house has been Æbleskivers.  I received this Æbleskiver (or Ebelskiver) pan for Christmas last year (2010) from my mother in law.  Of course this was right as we were really starting up the great kitchen remodel of 2011 and therefore it did not get used until I had use of the new range. 

So far, I’ve only used the mix that I was given with the pan.  It is pretty good and very easy.  But making the batter from scratch is not any more difficult than making pancakes or waffles. 

So, in case you were wondering, this is how they are made.

After spraying with non-stick spray or using a little butter (I have personally found non-stick spray to be easier than butter in this case) and heating the pan over medium to medium-low heat, I use my medium spring loaded scoop to put one scoop of batter in each little bowl of the pan.  I always start in the middle.  Then I work my way around the perimeter going clockwise from 12:00.  That way I do things in the same order each time and they each get approximately the same amount of cooking after each step.

Almost immediately, using the same patter of middle then working around the perimeter in a clockwise direction, I use my smallest spring loaded scoop to add a dollop of Nutella (or other chosen filling) right in the middle if each.

Coming back to the batter, I place a little more batter on top of each dollop of Nutella, just so that it is covered.

By this point, the Æbleskivers are cooked enough on the first side and they are ready to be turned.  I do so using the same routine of staring in the middle and working the perimeter in a clockwise fashion as I have done in each preceding step.

One thing that I have found very helpful has been these wooden turning tools.  They get some batter on them in the turning process, but if you just keep a paper towel handy, they clean up easily with a quick wipe off.

Once they have cooked sufficiently and are golden brown on the 2nd side, I remove them carefully with a pair of tongs.

And they are ready to be enjoyed.  MMMMMMM……

Æbleskivers can be filled with many things.  We have enjoyed them with homemade peach preserves, strawberry preserves… any kind of preserves, to be honest.  We also have some of the chocolate mix that we have enjoyed filled with peanut butter.  We have also had more savory combinations like bacon, sausage, or pepperoni and cheese. 

Or, you know, you could just do them plain and not stuffed with anything. 

Regardless, their cute little finger food size and shape will be a sure hit with your family.  It has been with mine.

Just a housekeeping note

In case you didn’t notice, I added a gadget on the right. 

Over there >>>>>>

Under my “About Me” section.

There you go. 

I got to thinking that you might not realize that sometimes I’ll post a recipe on the recipe blog but may not post anything here on the main blog.  So I added this little gadget to let you know what’s the most recent recipe out there in case you are interested.

Carry on.

A little Monday comedic relief

For your comedic enjoyment, this came home in my son’s weekly work folder from school last week:

My husband said that it would have only been better if there had been some fire coming out of the back of the snowman.

Boys.

Apparently it’s chocolate cake day.

As I’ve been noticing from friends tweets and Facebook posts, it is apparently chocolate cake day.  So if you want a quick and simple chocolate cake for a day like today, this Simple Chocolate Cake recipe that I posted a while back on the Recipes blog might just do the trick for you.  In fact, I’m headed to the kitchen to whip one up myself.

Have a fabulously chocolate cakey weekend.

A tale of two Chocolate Pies

I grew up eating my Nana’s chocolate meringue pie at nearly every family gathering.  You know the one.  That creamy chocolate filling and that mile high meringue that was perfectly browned on top? 

My oldest sister has perfected making it.  I, on the other hand, having just started trying, am merely getting by.  I mean, it tastes good… but I still have some work to do on my meringue technique.  The one I made the week before Christmas came out to be a fairly nice and tall meringue and looked like this:

 

It was really quite pretty.  But in the course of the day, my meringue deflated a bit.   Not like flat or anything, just a bit.  It tasted pretty good, but I was not thrilled with the end result of the meringue.  (My man says I’m too nit-picky where my cooking is concerned.  I say that it’s just how I get better.)

Therefore, I am not posting the recipe until I get it down.  I can’t tell you what to do until I’ve figured it out myself. 

However, I did try a pie recipe that I had wanted to try for a few months now.  So many people blogged about it a few months ago that I can’t even really give credit to a particular blog. 

Minny’s Chocolate Pie.  You know the one.  From “The Help.” The one that made “Two Slice Hilly” famous.  Except without that special ingredient that Minny added in the course of “the terrible awful.” 

If you don’t know what any of that means, rent the movie.  I haven’t read the book, but the movie is incredible.  It may end up on my top 10 all time favorites list.  You can also see a video clip here. (Be aware of a little bad language.)

But back to the pie.

Because, really, not many things are more important than pie.

Apparently this recipe is the one that was used to make the pies in the movie and was published in some form of the August issue of Food and Wine.  Or at least that’s what every blog that I read credited.

And I’ll tell you what.  It’s super easy and absolutely delicious. 

Minny’s Chocolate Pie

Ingredients:

Single pie crust
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs, beaten
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
Whipped cream for serving

You will also need:

9” pie plate (I used the shallow glass kind, not a deep dish)
Parchment paper (or foil)
Pie weights or dried beans

Method:

Preheat oven to 350°F. 

Place pie crust in pie plate and crimp edges decoratively as desired.  Prick bottom of crust several times with a fork, line with parchment paper (or foil) and fill with pie weights or dried beans.  Par-bake the crust for 15 minutes or until set.  Remove from the oven and carefully lift out the parchment paper with weights and set aside.  Return to the oven and continue to bake for 5 minutes longer, just until the crust is dry but not browned.  Remove from the oven, but leave the oven on at 350°F.

While the crust is baking those last 5 minutes, in a bowl, whisk sugar and cocoa powder together.  Add the melted butter, eggs, evaporated milk, vanilla and salt and whisk until smooth.

Pour the filling into the pie shell.  Bake 40-45 minutes, until the filling is set around the edges but jiggles just a little in the center.  If you feel the crust is getting too brown in the process of baking, you may cover it with strips of foil or pie guards about half way through. 

Cool completely on a wire rack before serving.  Serve with a dollop of freshly whipped cream.

It can be made ahead of time, cooled completely, covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated over night.

Enjoy.

Oh Sully, Sully, Sully...

SULLY!!!!!

Whaaat? I didn't do it. Not with this face...

Oh suuuuuure you didn't.

Just like you didn't put holes in every other pair of socks that I own.

Maybe I just need to start a series of posts entitled "What Sully Tore Up Today." Blog fodder for years to come, I'm sure.

Sully Says…

“Happy New Year!”

And he also says that we are very excited that the Aggies finally won a bowl game!

*gasp*

I know!

And you know what? We were there. 

At the last minute on Thursday, I texted Mike that I had found some fairly inexpensive tickets online and did he want to go since the kids were already at his mom’s house.  Then he called some friends who then said they would love to go with us and were going to take their kids…. so it ended up being a whole family affair.  Which was an absolute blast. 

We purchased really cheap seats that had nosebleed inducing potential that were part of a Papa John’s Pizza deal and included pizza and drinks.  This was our view:

But then Mike came across some stadium employees who were swapping out upper level tickets to fill up the lower levels.  He did that and then this was our view:

Nice, huh? And it was a totally different game experience with the fans much more dialed in and complete with my son covering his ears most of the time because of the noise.

We had a great time for it being our kids’ first Aggie football game experience.  There was face painting, bounce houses and other activities before the game.  I even partook of the face painting experience. 

I had to do something to make up for the horrible Houston hair weather we were having that morning. 

One of the most moving scenes of the whole day came at the end.  Number 67 belonged to Joey V, one of our players that was killed in a car wreck a few days before Christmas.  Another player wore his number for the game and Joey V was honored several times before, during and during this scene after the game.

We still need to take these kids to Kyle Field for a game, but that will come in time.  It’s hard to spend that kind of money when they aren’t really into it.  This was actually a much less expensive option, oddly enough. 

I haven’t said much about Aggie stuff for a while here on the ol’ blog, and I felt like our first bowl win in 10 years was a fine time to do it.  It’s been an interesting year in Aggie life as our days of Big XII football are now officially over.  We are headed to the SEC with a new football coach.  Sure, we’ll take our lumps the first year or so.  And even though I’ll miss playing against some of these Texas teams, I’m believing that it will be a good move. 

Out with the old and in with the new.

Kind of like the new year.

Sully also said for you to have a “ruffulous” 2012.

Christmas Genealogy Paper Chain

I’ll bet you didn’t know that my husband and I teach 1st and 2nd graders on Sunday mornings.

Yep.  Last year we taught along with another friend, but he moved up to another class and this year, we’re on our own.  Which has been a little challenging to say the least as our average class size has doubled since last year.  We went from averaging about 8 each Sunday morning last year to averaging about 16 each Sunday morning this year.  To the elementary school teachers out there, 16 may seem like a cake walk… but we’re not talking about school.  Sunday School is a whole different animal and, admittedly, I am not a teacher by training, vocation or gifting.  So to us, 16-18 each week is HUGE. 

But I digress.

One of the things we enjoy doing with our class is a “Genealogy of Christ Paper Chain.”  We find it to be a really good teaching tool to talk about Messianic prophesy on a level that 1st and 2nd graders can comprehend and the links of the chain act as a visual to link together the old and new testaments of the Bible.

I thought my husband was very creative with the lesson portion of the morning.  He started out by talking about the Old Testament and the New Testament and the difference being that the Old was before Jesus lived on earth and the New was during and after Jesus.  Then he began reading some scriptures and asked the kids if they knew whether it came from the OT or NT and began to work in some scriptures of Messianic prophesy.  He quoted Micah 5:2 which talks about Bethlehem among others which refer to Christ to try to trip them up a little and make them think he was reading from the New Testament so that it would be a surprise that it came from the Old.  Once we were able to establish with the kids that the Bible talks about Jesus in the OT, we were able to talk about how the promise of the Messiah was made all the way back in Genesis and we began to read prophesies about the family that the Messiah would come from all the way back to Abraham.

We know that the details of our lesson probably did not all stick.  But we don’t expect them to.  If those 16 kids walked away from our class knowing that the Bible talks about Jesus in the Old Testament all the way back to Genesis, then we’ve accomplished our goal, in my opinion.

So, back to the genealogy chain… in pictures, here’s what we did:

For our class, I pre-printed all the names from the Matthew 1 genealogy of Christ on colored strips of paper.  Older kids could write them down themselves.  And the Luke 3 genealogy from Adam to Jesus could be used as well.

Because I have to have things very organized for our group of 1st & 2nd graders, I put all the names in order with Jesus on bottom and Abraham on top.  I put them in sandwich baggies as shown below so that after starting with Abraham, each child could just take the next strip of paper with the next name on it out of the bag and the rest would remain in the bag and in order.  The links of the chain may be fastened with staplers or with tape.

Now, when you have 16 1st and 2nd graders working on such a project, there is absolutely no time whatsoever for pictures to be taken.  But with two kids working on it at home, it was a fairly peaceful affair.

 
And when they’re done…

I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for a fun way to bring my family and especially my kids back to what we are truly celebrating at Christmas time… the birth of Christ.  I hope that this is an idea that might help some of you in your endeavors to do the same thing. 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Sugar Cookies

In preparation for a little Christmas shin-dig I’m having at my house this week, I decided to make and decorate some Christmas cookies.  Lots of Christmas sugar cookies.

It is no easy task to find the time to undertake such an endeavor with a job outside of my home, two active kids in grade school with homework and projects galore and everything else that a mom has to do.  So rather than try to do it all in one single block of time, I did it in stages.

In a spare 20 minutes I had one day, I made the cookie dough.  And since it needs to refrigerate anyways, I just put it in the refrigerator until I had time to bake the cookies the next day.  After baking the cookies the next day and allowing them to cool completely, I bagged them in zipper plastic bags and froze them until I was ready to decorate them, nearly a week later.

I made all of the icing one morning when I had a spare 15 minutes and then covered it and set it aside until later that evening when I could get around to it again.  That evening, I colored all the icing and decorated one batch and finished up the other two batches the next day. 

Taking it in little chunks like that really helped me to not feel overwhelmed by the task I had put before myself.

I saw an idea recently that intrigued me, so I decided to monkey with my tried and true sugar cookie recipe.  I removed 4 ounces of butter and replaced it with 4 ounces of cream cheese.  The outcome…. delicious!!  The cream cheese adds just a little zip to the flavor that I felt gave the sugar cookies a whole new dimension.  My updated Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe is posted over on the recipe blog.  Just click on the link.

>>>Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

In the midst of all the baking, freezing and decorating, I set some of the cookies that would eventually become ornaments on racks on our kitchen table to thaw so that I could decorate them while sitting down in a chair.  I was in the other room when I heard my husband yell, “NO SULLY!  BAD DOG!”

I came back into the kitchen and saw that something was missing.

He was really sorry.  Sorry that he got caught, at least.

Lesson learned.  Sully is now big enough to get his front paws on TOP of the table and reach food that is sitting there.  A far cry from where he started. 

I made Christmas trees, ornaments and stars all using techniques that were new to me that I learned from the brilliant Bridget over at Bake at 350.  While mine are not as good as hers, I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out for the most part.

Merry Christmas, y’all !!

Today at A Martha Heart...

Today I'm over at A Martha Heart. I share a very insightful creative writing assignment that my daughter brought home from school and think about about a few "What ifs" that came to mind as I read it.

Enjoy "the kite."