Hummus Crusted Chicken

Obviously, when I shop, I prefer to stick to one color palette.

Get your tunes ready and get your oven ready (450 degrees of ready).

(I apologize in advance for my over-use of this quote…)
Chop up: a zucchini, a squash (a yellow one), an onion. Toss them with a tablespoon of olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper. Put ’em in a casserole dish.

Prep your chicken. In this case, prepping just means washing and cutting it into manageable sizes. I cut mine so two strips would equal about one portion. Lay them gently on the bed of vegetables. Sing them a lullaby if you wish.

Cover your chicken in a blanket of hummus. You won’t use the whole container of hummus, but don’t be stingy with it. You can use any type of hummus that you enjoy. I chose garlic hummus.

Ok, just one lemon. Squeeze the juice of a lemon over your chicken. If you cut it into quarters, you’ll get more juice for less effort.

Ah, paprika. The original “Ginger Spice.” Spice up your life! er.. your chicken.

Slice up your remaining lemon and nestle the pieces in between your chicken. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the chicken is cooked all the way through. While you wait, boil some rice. While this isn’t technically part of the recipe, it’s a worthwhile addition.

When you can cut into your largest piece of chicken without seeing any pink,you’re ready to enjoy!

Take those baked lemons out (they’ll be pretty dried out) and serve the chicken and veggies over a bed of rice. No need to keep the layers in the right order. It still tastes amazing.

Your shopping list is pretty much the first picture…

Chicken breast (I used a little over a pound)
One Zucchinni
One yellow squash
One container hummus
Paprika
Two lemons
Olive Oil
Salt/Pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Chop zucchini, squash, and onion. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place in your baking dish.

Wash, cut, and dry your chicken. Place on top of the vegetables.

Spread hummus on each chicken breast. Squirt with the juice of one lemon. Sprinkle with paprkia (or sumac).

Slice the remaining lemon and place the wedges in between the chicken.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until chicken is fully cooked.

Enjoy over a bed of rice.

Shark Bite Cup Cakes

Today marks the end to one of the best weeks to occur all year..

So, naturally, I made cupcakes.

Sometimes, when you’re making complicated cupcakes, you just need a jump start.

and cheaper. So, just prepare the batter.

Place cupcake liners in the pan and fill about 1/3 of the way.

Now, for the surprise! Put a spoonful of strawberry (or raspberry) preserves in the middle.

Fill the liners up some more, until they’re about 2/3 full.

Bake them according to the package directions. Let them COOL before you attempt any decorating.

You’ll need shark fins for shark week! I used jelly orange slices, but any candy that’s the right shape will do.

Blue icing, graham crumbs, and shark fins make it nice.

A shark bite surprise makes it awesome.

These cookies are patriotic (and “cakey”)

It’s time to make cookies! Some people are all about “chewy” cookies. Anyone can make those. Buy the pre-made dough and you get “chewy” cookies. Personally, I think they are reminiscent of melted plastic.

Now, CAKEY chocolate chip cookies are a bite of heaven. So, we’re going to make those instead.

(Keep an eye out for the links to my suggested baking play list. It’s optional, but highly recommended. Here’s a good place to start.)

It’s easier if you cut it into small pieces, in my humble opinion.

FOURTEEN tablespoons, to be exact. That is a lot of butter (1 3/4 sticks, for those of you who measure like me).

This is where you add 3/4 cup granulated sugar.

and 1/4 cup (packed) light brown sugar.

Cream the sugar and butter together. It’s “recommended” that you use an electric mixer, but we’re not all that fancy. I use a fork and some elbow grease. This is why I suggested cutting the butter into small pieces. This is also why your butter should be room temperature.

Pretty self-explanatory, huh? Salt (1 teaspoon), vanilla (2 teaspoons) and eggs (2) go into the sugar mixture. Again, note my low-tech mixing apparatus (5/$1 at the dollar store).

Surprise! Another bowl! This is the flour (2 1/4 cups, conservatively), salt (1 teaspoon), and baking soda (1/2 teaspoon).

Combine them, duh.

 

 

Fold in 2 cups (about one bag) of chocolate chips.

… or dark chocolate, or milk chocolate, or really any type of chips.

Drop by tablespoons onto a baking sheet. Martha Stewart says to “line it with parchment paper.” I say, “Martha Stewart, kindly get out of my kitchen. Also, I’m just greasing the pan.”

Bake that dough for 10-12 minutes. Then, for the love of God, let them cool on the sheet for 1-2 minutes. If you try to remove them before that, it will be a disaster (trust me).

But, once that minute is up, it’s fair game.

 

Ready for your shopping list?

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together flour and baking soda.

Find another bowl: Combine the butter with both sugars. You can mix on medium speed until light and fluffy or use a fork to mix it well.

Add the salt, vanilla, and eggs.

Beat until well mixed.

Add flour mixture; mix until just combined.

Stir in the chocolate chips.

Drop heaping tablespoon-size dough balls onto a greased cookie sheet.

Bake until cookies are golden around the edges and “set” in the middle. (This means they don’t look like raw dough anymore.)

Remove from oven and cool 1-2 minutes before removing from tray.

 

Greek Yogurt Mac ‘n’ Cheese

(Inexplicably featuring The Hush Sound).
Ready your ingredients! You may notice my picture was photo-bombed by some peppers. They aren’t actually a part of this recipe. But they are hot! (Yes, that was just an excuse to plug in a link to a song, but I like to combine music and cooking. Sue me.)

I typically don’t cook a whole box of pasta at once, but in the case of macaroni and cheese, leftovers do not go to waste. Plus, I didn’t feel like doing math and figuring out how to halve this recipe. Sue me.

While you’re waiting for that water to boil, you can chop your spinach (2 cups of it) into bite size pieces. Or you cant just leave it whole because spinach is already pretty small. You can also dance around the kitchen like an idiot. In my case, I had time for both chopping and dancing.

The recipe calls for 2 cups of pasta.

Your average box of pasta apparently contains 2.02 cups of pasta. I prefer to trick my body into ingesting as many vegetables as possible, so I went for carrot and squash pasta. Really, anything you have works, but why not get the most bang for your buck, yaknow?

I’ll let you figure this step out on your own. (Hint: Read the pasta box).

While that boils, take another dance break. And maybe get your seasonings ready for later. 1/4 teaspoon each of garlic powder and onion powder and then salt/pepper “to taste.” I’ll be real with you, I used 1/4 teaspoon each of those, too. I still ended up adding more garlic salt to my finished project, but maybe that’s just me.

Also, get your measuring cup ready. You’ll need to save some of the water from your pasta. (No, don’t just fill it with regular water. You want the starchy water. No, really hot tap water won’t work either..)

I ended up saving much more than the recommended amount of water, because I like my cheese sauce pretty thin. I would recommend saving as much as you can catch in your cup. You can always throw it away when you’re finished. (My water looks strange because I made orange pasta, remember?)

So, this next step was a video and I can’t embed videos on this Blog and that seems like a flaw. But, we learn from our mistakes, huh?

When draining your pasta, pour it OVER the spinach. This will wilt the spinach (kind of like a flash cooking), without getting it soggy.

See all that nice, wilted spinach? It really is a beautiful thing.

Pour in about 1/4 cup of your pasta water. You may need to add some more to thin the sauce out in a bit, but hold off and just go with the 1/4 cup for now.

You’ve got the mac, now add your cheese! Sharp cheddar seemed like the logical choice, but mozzarella, pepper jack, or any other “melty” cheese would work here. Mix it up gently. You want to melt the cheese and mix it with that water to form a cheese sauce, but don’t want to break your precious macaroni.

If you were honestly surprised by this step, please kindly remove yourself from the kitchen. You’ll only need about 1 cup of your plain yogurt. If you’re like me and bought a big container of it, congratulations! You now a whole container of what tastes like sour air. Luckily, I had a recipe to use up the rest. This is the point in which I added my seasonings and my extra pasta water, too. You’ll get an idea for what the sauce’s consistency is pretty quickly.

Yum, indeed. I’m not claiming this will taste like boxed mac (you can’t have expected that, though). It does have a tang and did require some extra seasoning. That said, I did eat this for four days straight. It didn’t microwave beautifully, though. Honestly, this would be best served to a group (or very motivated individual) who will finish it all in one sitting.

Or you could always, yaknow, do math and halve the recipe..

Shopping list!

 

Cook the macaroni according to the package directions until “al dente.”

(Save some of the pasta water!)

Place the spinach leaves (possibly chopped, possibly not) in the bottom of a strainer. Pour the pasta and water over the spinach to wilt it. Return the wilted spinach and cooked pasta to the pot.

Add about 1/4 cup of the reserved pasta water to the pot, stir in the cheese. Mix gently until the cheese is melted. Mix in the yogurt, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder, until smooth and creamy. You may need to add some more pasta water to get the right feel.

Serve ASAP.

Who doesn’t love a good mystery in the kitchen?

 

 

Featuring: Steve, my guest assistant in the Snap Chat Kitchen on this day.

What could it be? I suppose this qualifies as a GUESS-ipe! (get it? Recipe, Guessipe? I crack myself up like an egg).

I’ll give you a hint. You need to preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

 

Three cups of flour, to be precise. Don’t overmeasure!

 

Heck yes, I want you to season your flour (with 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon)! While you’re at it, add in some salt (1/2 tsp) and baking powder (4 teaspoons). No, you probably shouldn’t substitute baking soda. Oh, that’s all you have? You expect me to believe you bought all the ingredients for this, but couldn’t splurge on baking powder? Set your priorities, please.

 

I suggest using a “steve” for this step. If you don’t have one, feel free to substitute any living human, preferably one with hands or a handy spatula attachment.

 

 

 

 

Yes, really. Two of them. 

 

One cup, whisked with the eggs. Yes, it will look weird.

 

But, not as weird as it’ll look after you add 1 cup milk, 1/2 cup oil, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

 

 

 

Fold that weird looking milk/egg/sugar mixture into your seasoned flour. If you aren’t sure what folding means, please check it out. It’s important in keeping everything light and fluffy.

 

So, for this cooking adventure, I split my batter into two. Why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I can double the options, of course. About 3/4 cup each topping, or 1 1/2 cups of one type of chips.

 

(Steve said cake..)

 

But you don’t grease a muffin tin for cake, do you? (Also, this is the step where you grease your muffin tin)

 

Don’t let your assistant do this until you’re FINISHED with the spatula.

 

 

 

Fill them all the way to the top! They’ll have nice high “peaks.”

 

Sprinkle with coarse sugar (or colored sugar sprinkles, if you’re me). I color coded my muffins. Red for chocolate chip, green for butterscotch.

Bake those bad boys at 425 for five minutes. Then, reduce the heat to 375 and bake for 25 minutes until the tops are golden.

 

Need a shopping list? Here you go:

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Gently toss the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl.

In  another bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Stir in the milk, oil, and vanilla.

Gently FOLD (remember, look it up if you have to) the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix gently until no flour remains on the bottle of the bowl and there are no large pockets of flour left. Yes, lumpy batter is OK.

Fold in your choice of chips.

Grease your muffin tin and fill, all the way up to the top. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake for five minutes at 425 degrees. Reduce heat to 375 degrees and continue baking for 25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.

Allow your muffins to cool for ten minutes before enjoying. This not only saves you from a burnt tongue, but also allows the muffins to set so they’re less likely to fall apart on you.

These taste best the first day, but, if you have the willpower I am lacking, you can freeze them for up to 3 months.