Month: November 2014

Breads

Cheesy Rosemary Leek Bread Pudding*

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1 teas olive oil

1 medium leek, white part only, cut in half lengthwise and then cut into thin half moons

Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

8 large eggs

2 cups milk

2 teas fresh thyme leaves or 1 teas Herbes de Provence

Zest of 1 lemon

5 cups La Brea Bakery rosemary olive loaf, cut into 1″ cubes, about 1/2 of loaf (you can buy this at Costco or get the olive loaf at your local grocery store)

6 oz Swiss cheese, shredded or cut into small crumbles

Preheat oven to 350. Brush a 8×8 baking dish lightly with the olive oil.

Heat a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Add oil and leeks. Saute leeks until they are soft and translucent, about 2 min. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set aside.

In large mixing bowl, whisk eggs, milk, herbs, lemon zest, 1/4 teas kosher salt and pepper. Set aside.

Arrange bread cubes evenly in prepared pan. Sprinkle with cheese and cooked leeks. Pour the egg mixture over the top and then push the bread down into the liquid with a spatula so it can absorb the egg mixture.

Bake for 20-25 min or until no liquid remains when the bread is pulled from the side of the pan with a knife and bread is golden brown. Cool slightly and serve warm.

Makes 6 servings

*taken, once again from my new free Cosco recipe….can’t wait to try this one this week. sounds delish…

Chocolate · Desserts

Chocolate Croissant Cocottes

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I’m so glad I just have to type the wood “cocottes” and not have to pronounce it…wouldn’t have a clue. If it does rhyme with butter, sugar or cream, your guess is as good as mine. Upon leaving Costco yesterday, the sweet little teeny bopper at the exit door handed Frosty one of their yearly cookbooks that they give away each Christmas. Thumbing through it, I found this and it sounds like something Paula Deen would put her stamp of approval…

4 large butter croissants

Butter for greasing ramekins or “cocottes” (oh I bet it is those cute expensive little dishes you find at Williams Sonoma)

2/3 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

3 large eggs

2 tables brown sugar, packed

Pinch of ground cinnamon

1 cup milk

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Powdered sugar, for dusting

Whipped cream, crème fraiche or vanilla ice cream for serving

Preheat oven to 350.

Cut croissants into small cubes. Butter six (8 oz) ramekins or cocottes.

Melt bittersweet chocolate chips in a double boiler over simmering water or in a heatproof bowl in the microwave. Whisk until smooth.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk eggs with brown sugar, cinnamon, milk and cream. Pour 1/3 of egg mixture into melted chocolate, whisking and then return all of chocolate mixture to remaining egg mixture, whisking to combine. Add croissant pieces, coating them well to soak up liquid. Mix in semisweet chocolate chips.

Divide mixture between buttered ramekins or cocottes, filling to the top.

Place ramekins or cocottes on a baking sheet and bake 20-30- min, until filling is set.

Bust with powdered sugar. Serve warm with whipped cream, crème fraiche or vanilla (or cinnamon ice cream), as desired. Makes 6 servings.

Daily Thoughts

Happy Thanksgiving to All and to All A Good Night

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IMG_1802

IT is official, when the last Thanksgiving plate is washed today, we can unpack the Christmas dishes without guilt or fear of being criticized that we are rushing Christmas. Truth be told, I am one of the closet Christmas fairies that hide all the Christmas décor until I feel safe to bring it all out. For weeks I have had the trees up and the mantel decorated, plus Frosty has had the outside lights up for a week. To me it is just so much fun to have all the decorations up with lights to welcome the family and friends who come over. I just have a hard time waiting until after turkey day to put it all up. So we leave the dining room decorated with turkeys and use turkey dishes until Thanksgiving night, but then….drum roll please……those disappear and by morning the Christmas dishes are washed and in the cupboard and the turkeys are packed away until next November. The house is then completely transformed into Christmas by tomorrow morning, which gives us a feeling of relaxation since the decorating is done and we can just sit and enjoy the lights and sights of Christmas all through the house.

We are also experiencing something new this year. We are being treated to Thanksgiving dinner at our oldest son’s home where he and Tracy have been cooking all day and we are just suppose to show up with a few dishes. What a treat. Last night, Jason came over to pick up some green chile soup I had cooked. I had told them that since they were over there cooking their little hearts out that he could stop by on his way home from work and pick up a pot of soup so they wouldn’t have to worry about last nights dinner. When he came over he remarked that , “my goodness, cooking Thanksgiving dinner is really hard work, we have gone to the grocery store every day this week and now Tracy is out looking for a needle and thread to sew the turkey and what in the world were we thinking?” I just smiled and said, ‘yes and we are so appreciative that we just get to show up and enjoy it.” Isn’t it so cute that all the years that mom’s cook the complete dinner with kids all competing for attention and insisting that their favorite dishes are being served; trying to make it all come together at the same time, and trying to make it a table that would make Martha Stewart proud, the kids just don’t have a clue what all is involved until they feel compelled to begin their own traditions. Mother’s Day should be the first Sunday after Thanksgiving. I think that we would receive much better presents from our adult kids who have decided to host Thanksgiving dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you around the work who are kind to take the time to read chocolatecastles. May God’s blessings fall upon you and your families and may we all try harder to be more grateful for our blessings and keep our eyes open to opportunities to help someone who crosses our paths….To God Be the Glory for His abundant love and grace to all who call upon His Name!

Daily Thoughts

Christmases Past

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Early this morning Frosty’s phone rang and lo and behold it was some of our friends Face Timing us from Richmond Virginia. Of course, friends who you don’t see very often Face Time you before you have had the chance to comb your hair or caked on layers of make up that is now necessary to make myself presentable. But there we were, In our robes, bed hair. Thankfully they can’t tell over the phone that we hadn’t even brushed our teeth yet. But, back to the story, we laughed about times past when Ken use to make fun of us for having so many Christmas trees in the house. At this point, I admitted that our oldest son, Jason had dropped by the other evening and when he walked through the front door, he just looked around and said, “mom….the house looks like it should be in a craft store that has price tags on all the junk that you have.” I informed little smart alec that just for that, I will not clean out any of the hundreds of boxes of pictures or closets so that he will have to do that when we are gone. That will teach him to be a little more respectful of our Christmas “memories” that adorn our gingerbread house.

Ken and Reny ask us if we were going Christmas light looking this year. Immediately it brought back so many great memories of what we use to do every other year. Because Frosty and I love the lights of Christmas so much, we use to rent a 15 passenger van and invite friends over for a chile dinner before taking them Christmas light looking. Frosty would done his Santa hat as he drove and acted as tour guide, as our guests would sip on hot chocolate and snack on the box of goodies each little elf would be given as they stepped into the van. We have such great memories of the laughter that filled the van on those nights. The last Christmas we had the van, we had so many friends ask us if they could be a part of our little tradition, so we ended up doing it for two nights, Fri and Sat with a different group of friends each night. Frosty retired after some of our kids, who shall remain nameless, (but they live in Phoenix now) began to criticize Frosty’s driving and tell him that he wasn’t driving fast enough and that they were certainly glad that they hadn’t had to pay for the light looking evening. They told us that there is an app that you can download of Christmas lights and that they would have been just fine, staying home and watching the light app on their phones. Kids, you can’t live without them….pass the….wait, yes, we can live without them.  I guess after the first couple of hours of driving around to different neighborhoods, our precious adult kids got bored and wanted to go home to watch Big Bang Theory. We have assured them that after that year, we will stick to asking our “senior friends” who appreciate us going slow so they can see all the lights.  We think this year, we will go by ourselves. We will wear our ugly Christmas sweaters, have our Christmas mug of hot chocolate, singing along to our Pandora Christmas station and look at as many Christmas lights as we want, or we run out of gas. We will be sure and take lots of pictures as to give our kids more stuff to go through after they put us in the home…

appetizers

Corn Dip

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A friend of ours brought a great dip that Frosty now says is his favorite dip (I’m surprised at this because you can’t buy it at QT or Walmart), but we actually made it Sun night and our family that was here having dinner with us, loved it also.

1 can of whole style corn, drained

1 can of black beans, drained

1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped very fine

2 green onions chopped

8 cherry tomatoes chopped

2 avocado diced (right before serving the dip)

1 cup finely shredded cheddar cheese or Mexican style

1 cup Pace’s Picante sauce

Combine all ingredients except the tomatoes and the avocado, and toss to combine  and let sit in fridge about 2 hours before serving time. Right before serving, add the tomato and the avocado. Serve with chips of your choice.

Daily Thoughts

Frosty’s Big Surprise

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We have hit an all time low. Today after running errands, Frosty tells me he has a big surprise for me. Since it was around lunch time, I began to wonder if this was going to be the day he drove us down to Neiman’s for a special lunch ending with our favorite coconut cake that has always been one of the huge reasons we would drive down to North Park. But as we pulled into QT, I’m thinking that he will be filling the gas tank for our little trip across town, when he pulls past the gas pumps right up to the front door. I thought that maybe he was going in to get a drink so I wouldn’t get thirsty driving so far, but as he puts the car in park, he just looks at me and tells me that, “surprise, we are getting some of the best hot dogs and they are 2 for $2.12..what a deal. They have all the condiments you could want” he says, I just look at him and follow him into the store. We head to the hot dog counter where Frosty pulls out the buns from out of the warming tray. Is this gourmet or what? When I tell him that it’s not a real hot dog unless we have chile and that I don’t see any pot of chile. He points to a machine that has a lever which lets you pull it for chile  or cheese. You have got to be kidding me. I am topping a hot dog that has been warming for probably several hours with chile that comes out of a machine just like getting soft ice cream at Dairy Queen. I get enough napkins to cover my face for the walk back to the car. My big surprise was lunch at QT. It was at this moment that I gave thanks for our car windows being tinted and that you can’t really see in. The thought that friends might visit QT and see us sitting in our car eating hot dogs was just too much. It’s ok to do that at Sonic, but QT? It was not to long ago that he surprised me with a Walmart picnic. He buys Hawaiian rolls and gets chicken strips from their deli and sits in the car with his sandwich of chicken strips on the rolls. We do live an adventuresome life, Walmart parking lot picnics one week and QT picnics the next. Retirement just keeps getting better and better. Who knows what next week will hold? But if he pulls our car into Golden Corral Thanksgiving day, I will be calling a divorce attorney first thing Friday morn. It will be easy to find Frosty to serve him the papers. I know at the swell places where he hangs out now.

Daily Thoughts

Frosty & Noel’s Gingerbread House

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Ugly Christmas Sweaters
Ugly Christmas Sweaters

It is here….the week that we go from Peter and Penelope Pumpkin to Frosty & Noel. It is also this time of year that our adult children, bless their little hearts, cease to call us because they are afraid that if we don’t answer the phone, like when Wheel of Fortune is on, that they will have to listen to our voice mail in order to leave us a message. Both of our cell phones have this as our voice mail message, ” hi, this is Frosty (or Noel if it is my phone). I’m at the mall  and she’s baking cookies, when we are through we’ll give you call.” It just makes the Christmas season at our house. My phone, of course will say, “Frosty’s at the mall and I’m baking cookies, when we get through we will give you a call.”….

When we first married, I found a little pillow that had “Bah Hum Bug” stitched across it and I bought it to place on his side of the bed. But I have to admit, Frosty has come along way. Without me even asking now, he gets the boxes of Christmas décor out of the garage and brings them all in (all 27 boxes) and begins to set up the trees, then proceeds to put up the lights outside. Frosty has become Clark Griswald, I’m happy to say and it makes the season so much sweeter to have a hubby that doesn’t smirk every time I mention that I just need to make one more trip to Hobby Lobby. This year, he even suggested that we go early before the ugly sweaters get picked over and buy matching for our Christmas Card…is he a great Frosty or what? All this to say that the decorations are up, the candles are lit and the first of the family is coming over tonight to eat.

Last night, we met friends at a Greek Restaurant here in Frisco. It almost ended in us going shopping for a wig. We were sitting there having a great time with a platter of pita bread and hummus sitting there, when all of a sudden I felt this enormous amount of heat all down the back of my neck. Before I could turn around to see what was happening, I hear, “oompa” and this flash of fire is inches from my hair as the waiter has lit this platter of who knows what for the table of 4 sitting behind us. Apparently he doesn’t realize that in Dallas, you never get that close to ladies big Dallas hair. With the can of hair spray that is on my person to keep this Dallas big hair in place, my hair will go up in a flash. When I yelled, the waiter realized how close to my hair he was. W When the table on the other side of us ordered the platter of fire, before the guy lit up the sky and yelled “oompa” he remembered to turn around to check how close he was to me. We managed to finish our meal and leave before any more of my hair was singed. let’s just say that my hair stylist won’t need to cut the back of my hair now…the waiter did it for me

Chocolate · Desserts

Chocolate Creme Brulee

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Having just returned from Corpus where we go to see my mom, as usual, we stay with the friends who I have mentioned several times. They treat me like their daughter and Randy, well, Hal, who is 90 bends Randy’s ear about the oil field surveying business. Hal still goes to work everyday and Jane cooks non-stop. She is 80 and has so many of the best old cookbooks that I love to look through as we sit and talk in the evening. I copied several of the recipes that caught my eye. Frosty loves crème brulee and I love chocolate, so when I read this recipe, I couldn’t wait to come home and make it. Since we will be having pecan pie and piles of whipping cream piled on pumpkin pie this week, I think I had better hold off since this recipe has lots of heavy cream and 4 egg yolks. Do not want to spend our Thanksgiving in the hospital having our arteries unclogged.

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

1 teas vanilla or 1 vanilla bean

1 (4 oz) dark chocolate, chopped

4 egg yolks

t Tables sugar

4-6 Tables sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 300. Mix cream and vanilla together in a double boiler. Heat mixture for 10-15 min and stir in chocolate. Remove vanilla bean if that is what you used instead of extract. Whisk egg yolks and sugar together in a mixing bowl.. Slowly pour chocolate mixture into egg mixture, continuously stirring.

Place bowl over simmering water (which was under the chocolate mixture) until cream mix thickens and coats back of spoon. This takes about 6-8 min. Pour into 4 (4 oz) custard dishes. Place in a large baking pan and add enough water to come up halfway to the sides of the custard cups. Bake until custard is set, about 1 hour. Remove from water and cool. Cover and refrigerate; sprinkle 1 tables of sugar over top of each cup and with a brulee torch, caramelize the top before serving.

Desserts

Texas Sheet Pumpkin Cake

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The Pioneer Woman just posted a recipe that she made by altering the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake. It sounds delish and since the Pioneer Woman says it is wonderful, it must be, because if you can’t believe the Pioneer Woman, who can you believe?

So in case you don’t take her daily email here it is….Many of you have ask if we just have desserts for Thanksgiving since I do seem to post more desserts than any thing else. We do have other things on the table, like, brown sugar coated brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes with sugary marshmallow topping, ham with brown sugar-pineapple sauce and strawberry-pretzel salad,

So see, I can cook something besides desserts,  As long as the recipe has sugar in it.

Pumpkin Sheet Cake

2 sticks butter

2 cups pumpkin puree (not the pumpkin pie filling)

3/4 cup boiling water

2 cups flour

1/4 teas salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 large eggs

2 teas baking soda

2 teas vanilla

1/2 teas maple extract (opt)

Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 pound (about 3 1/2 cups) sifted powdered sugar

1 tables half and half or milk (might require a little more than this, add slowly)

Preheat oven to 350 Spray a sheet pan (jelly roll pan) with baking spray (such as Pam). Set aside

In a medium saucepan, melt 2 sticks of butter. Whisk in the pumpkin puree until it is totally blended. Whisk in boiling water until mixture is combined well. Set aside.

In a measuring pitcher, combine buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, vanilla, and maple extract (if using). Whisk together and set aside..

In large bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt. Pour in the pumpkin mixture and stir until halfway combined. Pour in the buttermilk mixture and stir until combined. Pour into the pan and smooth until mixture is evenly distributed. Bake for about 20 min or cake tests done. Remove and allow to cool.

Frosting:

Mix together the cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar until well combined. Add half and half as needed to all the frosting to be of spreading consistency. It should be somewhat thick but thin enough to spread over cake.

Cut into squares to serve. Keep leftovers in the fridge, as frosting will get to soft if left out.

Desserts

Luby’s Millionaire Pie

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  Yesterday at the craft show, a friend ask me if I ever saw the recipe for her favorite pie at Luby’s Cafeteria. I told her I would find it and send it to her. So here it is, Betty Jo, enjoy and save one of the pies just for yourself…..
  • 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
  • 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
  • 1 (20 ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained
  • 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
  • 2 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crusts
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Directions

  1. Blend together the cream cheese and condensed milk; gently fold in the whipped topping.
  2. Stir in the crushed pineapple and pecans; pour into pie crusts and refrigerate for 3 to 4 hours.