Baking with Friends

My son loves to cook, pretend or otherwise. His toy foods and mini kitchen have been his favorite toys for almost two years now, and this past Christmas, we finally got him his own Easy Bake oven so that he could bake his own treats like mommy. (After picking him up from preschool a couple of weeks ago, one of the teachers asked me if we owned a restaurant. When I asked why, she mentioned that they noticed how enthusiastic my son is about play-cooking and serving food to the other kids.)

Today we played at a friend's house, and among other things, we let the boys help bake some brownies. They took turns pouring in ingredients and stirring — as someone who loves to cook and bake, it warms my heart to see how enthralled my son is about the craft.

If he ever wants to become a chef, I would be more than happy to send him to culinary school.

Christmas Breakfast Inspiration

If someone were to ask me what are some things I could live without, the Internet would be mighty high up that list. From finding a video online to entertain my kid for a few minutes to looking something up on Google, I'd be lying horribly if I said I didn't rely on the Internet much.

One thing I use it for A LOT is cooking. I am always looking at recipes (or drooling over food porn). My latest success was making homemade cinnamon buns for Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, my husband brought up something I totally forgot about: Christmas breakfast. (Granted, if you read my previous post, it will make things a little clearer as to why my brain wasn't working properly.) Growing up, my family didn't really have any Christmas Day traditions since we celebrated the night before, so I often rely on my husband to clue me in as to what family traditions he would like to continue. One of these is having freshly baked cinnamon buns for breakfast on Christmas morning.

I quickly looked online for recipes, and sure enough, there were some good choices on my favorite recipe site allrecipes.com. I settled on a recipe called Cinnamon Rolls II because A) it looked easy enough and B) I already had all the necessary ingredients. Now, the original recipe was designed for a bread machine, which I don't own. What I love about allrecipes is that the commenters and reviewers are actually helpful; in this case, a couple of reviewers gave some tips on how to make the rolls without a bread machine. I also had to ask, on Facebook, a question about prepping the dough the night before and baking it the next day. (See? I DO rely on the Internet a lot!)

Here they were, on Christmas morning, fresh out of the oven:

Finally, here they are coated with a basic sugar frosting:

These were so easy and yummy that I'm already planning on when I can make them again. (Specifically, with cream cheese frosting!) So THANK YOU, Internet, for helping my family continue this decadent Christmas tradition!

Cooking: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (with chocolate chips)

I didn't do any cooking today since we have plenty of leftovers in the fridge, but I felt an itch to bake something tonight. I got busy in the kitchen right after I put my son down early for bed (since he didn't nap today).

Late night baking.

This must be one of the easiest cookie recipes I've ever tried. In fact, it was so easy that I was worried it would come out tasting like cardboard. Thankfully, they came out quite yummy!

I have this giant bag of Coach's Oats in my pantry, so I wanted to see what it would be like in cookies. Since they're closer in texture to steel-cut oats than rolled oats, I think they gave the cookies a lighter crunch. The smaller pieces of oats, rather than flat blades of rolled oats, seem to mix in more uniformly with the batter, so you get an even, "oaty" texture all around. Does that even make sense? I guess I sometimes find that when using rolled oats, I get small chunks of oats mashed together in a cookie, while other parts of the cookie seem oat-free.

This might have to be my new go-to recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies. I'm already thinking of different ways to make them. Adding coconut flakes, using dried cranberries instead of raisins, peanut butter chips instead of chocolate, etc. Thank you, Jamie Oliver, for a super easy and yummy recipe!

Cooking: Slow-Cooked Lime Chicken & Rice

I'm trying to use my slow-cooker more often these days since I like not having a lot of extra things to clean up at the end of the day. Slow-cooking allows me to prep things in the morning or even while my kid's napping — easier on my sanity to clean up then than at the end of the day when I have other things I need to do.

Tonight's dinner was a lime chicken and rice dish I found on allrecipes.com. I heeded the some of the user comments and made a few alterations by adding extra garlic and cilantro; and since I only have regular, non-instant rice on hand, I added a cup and a half of uncooked rice to the pot with about an hour left of cooking.

I was worried about the salt — on one hand, I love salt, but was afraid it might dry the chicken breast even more. (The chicken did seem a bit dry at the end, even without added salt while cooking.) I ended up adding several generous dashes of kosher salt at the end, just before serving, as well as extra chopped cilantro. My husband said it needed something else, so I gave his (second) serving a few pinches of red pepper flakes. I'll probably try this again another time, but perhaps with even more garlic and/or red pepper flakes.

Cooking: Jamie Oliver's Sausage & Zucchini Carbonara

I finally tried out the Jamie Oliver iPad app last night to make dinner — Sausage and Zucchini Carbonara. (I joked to my husband that I wished we had the technology where a virtual Jamie Oliver would be standing right there in my kitchen while I cooked.)

Effort: mostly painless. The ingredients were easy to get (all from Trader Joe's), while prep and cleanup were easy to manage.

Result: Yum. The zucchini adds a nice, lighter compliment to the sausage and bacon. However, it's still a  fairly heavy dish. The cream and egg in the sauce, along with the pasta, sit quite heavily in your belly afterwards. I made the dish to serve four, and even though my husband took seconds last night, I think there are at least another two to three servings left.