Frog Eye Salad

Our church sent teams to help in the rebuilding of a church after Hurricane Katrina and this recipe came back with one of the folks who responded to the call. Something about considering a dish rife with marshmallows and pudding as a salad just seems quintessentially southern to me. In California, we're more into salads comprised of strange lettuce types, or anything made with quinoa. I don't dislike any of those healthy options but a good batch of salad that tastes suspiciously like a dessert is also quite OK by me!

Just as our workers carried the recipe back from Louisiana, I've recently returned from a trip to West Virginia where I shared frog eye salad with my relatives. We had a big family dinner on Wednesday night and I cooked up the salad, after procuring all the necessary ingredients at Krogers.

Side story: I'd also promised my aunt some praline monkey bread for breakfast - though my cousins didn't recognize the recipe by that name. Seems they have been referring to it as "Brian's Favorite Coffee Cake" since I first introduced it to them way back when Brian was a preschooler. Becky even made me change the name in my file on the Paprika app I use for cataloging recipes.

You make this bread the night before, let it rise, and then bake it for breakfast. The cousins were long gone and my Aunt safely tucked away in bed before I began assembling everything in the Bundt pan. Once again, I'd made sure to buy ingredients ahead of time but decided not to purchase cinnamon because, really, who doesn't have cinnamon in their house? Answer: possibly Aunt Janet. I looked in all the obvious places (pantry, cupboards) and found nothing. Picture that I'm already pretty far into the recipe with no chance of backing out, the stores are long closed, and it's way past a reasonable time to start calling around for one of the cousins to score me some cinnamon. While I'm not NORMALLY a snoop, I wound up looking through every drawer, cabinet, and cupboard before finally finding what I needed. If the CIA needs to do any kind of spy surveillance activity on Aunt Janet in the near future, they should get in touch with me as I've already ransacked her house for them.

The bread got made and eaten, complete with the finest Saigon cinnamon a cook could literally scrounge up.

Back to frog eye salad - it's super easy to put together and makes a tasty, summery addition to any cookout. The cousins all seemed to approve, wanting to know how it was made as they scooped up second helpings. Many thought the little balls were tapioca, a common misperception I've heard lots of newbies to this salad espouse.

Directions stress that you make the salad ahead of time so that it can be refrigerated for at least 5 hours before serving.  It's also one of those dishes that tastes just as good the next day for breakfast. Especially if you don't have Brian's Favorite Coffee Cake on hand.

Frog Eye Salad

1  1/3 cups acini di pepe pasta (this is sometimes the hardest part of the recipe - finding the pasta! I actually brought some from San Diego because I worried I wouldn't be able to find it in St. Albans. Becky laughed when I relayed this worry to her, telling me that her Italian mother-in-law fed her kids acini di pepe as their first solid food. I have no idea if Krogers has the pasta but Becky would've known exactly what store in St. Albans area does carry it.)

1 (20 oz) can pineapple chunks, drained (reserve 1/4 cup juice)
1  3/4 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 (3  1/2 oz) package instant vanilla pudding - regular, not sugar free
1 (8 oz) can crushed pineapple, drained
2 (12 oz) cans mandarin orange sections, drained
3 cups mini marshmallows
1/2 cup flaked coconut

Directions
1. Cook pasta in boiling water for 11 minutes
2. Drain well, rinsing with cold water to cool the pasta
3. In large bowl, beat reserved pineapple juice, milk, sugar, and pudding mix for 2 minutes
4. Gently stir in pasta and remaining ingredients
5. Cover and refrigerate for at least 5 hours

I didn't get a picture of the salad so picked one from the internet that looked the closest to my version.

Chocolate Eclair Cake

Based on reviews from tonight's small group session, this dessert seems to be a crowd pleaser. You get the components of a chocolate eclair in deconstructed but oh so tasty form.

Sometimes I tell myself never to try a new recipe on an outside group, mostly because it seems as though something always comes up to mess with the final product. It's so aggravating to picture a perfect ending to your recipe and then wind up having to serve a mutation that looks or tastes nothing like the original. I can cook every day and do just fine but, come time to serve up a dish for friends, suddenly everything goes completely haywire and I'm left looking like I've never set foot in a kitchen before.

All that to say, this recipe went together exactly as depicted on the "girl who ate everything" site. When my choux dough came out of the oven with big bumps, I had only to look at Girl's cake to get immediate photographic reassurance that lumps and bumps are a normal part of this recipe. And that's how things panned out, from making the dough right down to drizzling chocolate on the finished dish.

My intention was to do the homemade versions of the whipped cream and chocolate sauce but, just to be sure, I also bought Cool Whip and Hershey's syrup. Better to have back-ups in place, rather than winding up forced to run back to the store with the company countdown racing. I've made whipped cream before (many times) but, wouldn't you know it - I didn't watch the first batch closely enough and it went to the cottage cheese looking stage. Good thing I had enough ingredients to quickly whip up a second, perfect batch. I like Cool Whip but it can't begin to compare to freshly whipped up cream. Not even close.

The chocolate sauce is to die for. If the cake had turned out to be a total flop, I could easily have handed out spoons to my guests and let them eat the yummy sauce straight out of the pan. Enough heaping spoonfuls of that rich chocolately delight and they would've all gone home happy. As it was, I encouraged everyone to spoon extra dollops on their cake pieces and many did just that.

Here's how good this cake is. Since last July I've been enrolled in a UCSD study looking at factors to
decrease cancer rates for women my age. Naturally, dietary concerns are strongly addressed as a big component of healthy living. So, since last summer, I've been judicious in watching what I eat and leaning heavily on vegetables, fruits, fish, and lean meats. I don't forego all sweets - like that would ever happen with a Simmons/Beckett! - but I try to choose wisely and limit portion intake. Until last night. I ate my smallish piece in the company of our friends and then, just as soon as we'd bade the last one farewell and shut the front door, went straight back into the kitchen for a second, larger helping. A helping more than drizzled with a whole lot of that extra chocolate. A helping that I did not, for one second, have any remorse over as I savored each silky smooth and terrifically tasty bite.

CHOCOLATE ECLAIR CAKE
http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2009/06/chocolate-eclair-cake.html

Editorial Insert: To call this dessert cake seems like a misnomer. The bottom dough layer has the exact consistency of a classic eclair, rather than any form resembling cake. What you end up with when you follow this recipe is not so much cake, as a flattened out with the insides outside eclair.
Crust:
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
Filling:
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened (Note: I used less - probably about 5 oz. - but that's just a personal preference, as I'm not a cream cheese lover. I'm sure it also tastes great with the full 8 oz.)
1 large box (5.1 ounces) vanilla instant pudding
3 cups milk
Topping:
1 8 oz. container cool whip (just enough for a thin layer. I don't use the whole container) or one batch of homemade whipped cream. (Recipe below)
chocolate syrup or homemade chocolate syrup (Recipe below)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400. Lightly grease a 9"X13" glass baking pan.
For the Eclair Crust: In a medium saucepan, melt butter in water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Stir in flour. Mix in one egg at a time, mixing completely before adding another egg. Spread mixture into pan, covering the bottom and sides evenly. Mixture will be very wet. *If the sides of your pan are too greased you won't be able to get the mixture to stay up the sides so make sure to just lightly grease. No big deal but I like the crust to go up the sides a bit.
Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown (Mine only took 25 minutes.) You may want to check it occasionally-you don't want to overcook the crust, it will ruin the cake! Remove from oven and let cool (don't touch or push bubbles down).
For the Filling: Whip cream cheese in a medium bowl. In separate bowl make vanilla pudding by beating the pudding mix and the milk for 3 minutes and put in the fridge until set. Make sure pudding is thick before mixing in with cream cheese. Slowly add pudding to cream cheese, mixing until there are no lumps. Let cool in fridge.When the crust is completely cooled, pour filling in. Top with layer of cool whip however thick you want it. Serve with a drizzle of chocolate syrup. (*If you want to make this even better use homemade whipped cream and chocolate syrup.)

WHIPPED CREAM
Ingredients:
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons white sugar or 1/3 cup powdered sugar (Note: I used powdered sugar)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or other flavoring

Instructions:
Place cream and sugar in a chilled mixing bowl and mix on high for 1-2 minutes. Add the vanilla and beat for an additional 1-2 minutes or until soft peaks have formed. Don't whip too much or you will end up will cottage cheese looking whipped cream.

CHOCOLATE SAUCE
Ingredients:
1/4 cup cocoa
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup butter
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:
Stir cocoa and sugar together well. In a saucepan combine milk, butter, salt, and vanilla. Stir in dry mix. Heat, stirring until it reaches a boil and is thick. You want it to coat the back of a spoon. If you want it to be thicker, for a crepe filling for example, boil it a little longer. I boiled mine for two minutes whisking constantly. It will still be thin once you are done with this step. Don't worry once you let it cool down a bit it will thicken. It will thicken a lot when chilled.
Makes around 1 cup of sauce.