Peaches N Cream Bars

I know...me and my peaches obsession, right? It's possible I should have a second blog dedicated just to recipes involving peaches as they are pretty much my favorite fruit ever.

I seldom do this kind of cooking but this was a time when I went into my pantry, saw what I had available, and then found a recipe that would fit with those ingredients. Quite the departure from my usual routine of scouring recipes, making up ingredient lists, and then buying what I need.  In this case, I not only had everything needed for the bars but also leftover ice-cream from an earlier KidsJam party - ice-cream just waiting to be heaped on top of a warm peaches n cream bar.

For minimal work, these are pretty tasty. My bible study ladies loved them, as did Millie when I took them over to Kim's house.

Peaches N Cream Bars
recipe courtesy of Lilluna.com

Ingredients:

1 box yellow or white cake mix (I used Betty Crocker yellow)
1/3 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
29 oz. can of peach slices, drained
8 oz. cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Combine cake mix, butter, and 1 egg in a large bowl and mix with a fork until crumbly.
Set aside 1 1/2 cups of crumbs
Press remaining crumbs into a greased 9x13 pan and bake for 10 minutes.
While baking, cut your peaches into 1 inch pieces
When 10 minutes is up, spoon peaches over the bottom layer
Combine cream cheese, sugar, 1 egg, and vanilla in a bowl and beat until creamy
Spread over peaches and sprinkle reserved crumbs over the top.
Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool before serving.

Chinese Chicken Salad

Have you ever noticed that in foods, as in fashion, what was old becomes new? This is a salad I used to take to ladies luncheons back when my kids were small. Somewhere along the line, I quit making the dish and, eventually, my original recipe was lost. So, when I began having the craving to serve my old stand-by again, I had to do some google searches to come up with the one that seemed most like what I was used to making. Today, I tried this one out on the ladies in my Wednesday bible study. This being the group that comes over here for every end of session bible study in the winter and in the spring. I like soups for our cold meetings. Actually, if it were just me, there'd be soup for every meeting because I could eat a good soup every day of the year. Heaven knows with the crazy spring we've had this year, including weeks of unseasonably cold temperatures and rain that goes on day after day after day, soup wouldn't have been that out of place! But, there was a new old recipe to try out, so salad it was! 

The new recipe didn't have any instructions about making this ahead of time, as I'd remembered from the past. Those ramen noodles are rock hard if you don't give them a chance to blend with the other ingredients and soften up. I put this salad together the night before, omitting only the green onions and the already mixed up and ready to go salad dressing. 

One more old versus new note. Since my younger, dumber years I've wised up. Rather than spend a ton of time cooking the chicken breasts, I bought mine at the deli counter in my local supermarket. They were on sale so it was a great deal AND I got the benefit of saved time. Also, the folks who cook those chickens season them nicely, and that gives a little extra boost of flavor to the salad. 

Chinese Chicken Salad 

Recipe courtesy of sugar-n-spicegals.com 

Ingredients;

4 boneless chicken breasts, cooked and cubed (Thank you, Price Chopper!)

1 16 oz package Coleslaw mix or 4 cups of cabbage, shredded

2 pkgs. chicken flavored Ramen noodles

1/2 cup chopped green onions

1  2oz package of sliced almonds

Dressing ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar (I decreased this a little)

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 cup white wine vinegar

2 tsp. soy sauce

2 pkgs. seasoning from the ramen (I only used one)

Mix all the salad ingredients into a big bowl

Put all the dressing ingredients in a mason jar with a lid and shake thoroughly until mixed well. Immediately before serving the salad, pour the dressing on top and mix it into the salad. (This step made me miss the old plastic tall Tupperware tumblers with lids. That's what I used to mix my dressing ingredients, back in the day. Sadly, my Tupperware Tumbler days are long gone!) 

Oven Roasted BBQ Chicken Thighs

I use the app Paprika to organize menus, make up grocery lists and, of course, store recipes. It's a game changer kitchen tool that makes me wonder how I ever managed without it. One of the features it has is the ability to create your own categories of recipes, as you fetch them off the internet or input them from your own family trove. My categories are pretty unoriginal and include all the regular categories of meat, vegetable, fruit, etc...but I've decided I might need to make up a few more inventive lists that jive better with how I plan meals. And you know the first one I'm thinking of adding??? "Stuff Martin Will Not Only Eat But Actually Spontaneously Offer Up A Compliment About" Ok, maybe I need to work on and shorten that title a bit but you get the idea. It is always such a wonderful bonus when I get a true compliment from my hard-to-impress husband. Certainly a dish meriting one of these sweet comments has earned its own category - now I just have to go create it.

These BBQ thighs earned one of those rare compliments when I served them recently. I don't think Hubby Dearest had taken more than two bites before he, with a credible amount of enthusiasm, said they tasted really good. Part of his very favorable reaction can be attributed to the fact that Joe's BBQ is now bottling their sauce for local grocery stores. Up until now, I would've had to travel all the way down to the restaurant in Leawood to buy this secret sauce and, truthfully, ain't nobody got time for that kind of trek just for BBQ.  So, thank you Price Chopper for giving me easy access to a man pleasing dinner.

Oven Roasted BBQ Chicken Thighs
Recipe courtesy of thepioneerwoman.com

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of your favorite BBQ sauce
1/4 cup of peach preserves
1/2 clove garlic
Hot sauce, optional
6 whole chicken thighs, bone-in, skin on
olive oil for brushing

Directions

Combine BBQ sauce, peach preserves, garlic and hot sauce (I didn't use the hot sauce) in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, or until nice and hot. Set aside. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Drizzle olive oil on a rimmed baking dish and place the chicken thighs skin side down in the pans.  Roast for 25 minutes.

Remove from oven briefly, brush with sauce all over the thighs, then use a spatula to flip them over to the other side, being careful not to tear the skin. Brush the tops with more sauce and return to the oven for 7 minutes.

Remove from oven, brush on more sauce, and return to the oven for another 7 minutes.

Again, remove from oven and brush on more sauce. Turn up the temperature to 425 degrees. Continue roasting for another 5-7 minutes, or until the sauce is starting to brown around the edges and the thighs are totally cooked through.

Remove from the oven and let sit for at least 10 minutes before serving.

Peach Cobbler Dump Cake

I like (love) peach cobbler and I like cake so what could be wrong about this recipe? The name describes what bakes up accurately; it is neither a full-on cobbler nor "just" cake but, rather, a tasty and easy combination of the two.  Best of all, you can whip a pan up in no time with ingredients likely to be in your pantry...and, if I make that claim, you know it's true because I don't keep a massively stocked larder as other cooks do. I'm more the kind of gal that reads a recipe and then goes out and gets what is necessary to make that particular dish. This works fine except when I end up buying the same thing over and over. Which, by the way,  explains why my daughter found 6 (or more?) sesame seed containers and too many cinnamon spice jars to count when she decided to organize my pantry.  I'm trying to be better about this but I imagine you could probably still find a few too many duplicates among my cooking supplies. Just don't tell Emily if you do!


Simple Peach Cobbler Dump Cake
Recipe courtesy of theslowroasteditalian.com

Ingredients

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (divided)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 (29 oz) can sliced peaches in juice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9x13 baking dish (or 2 8x8 baking dishes). Set aside.

Place butter in a medium size microwave safe mixing bowl. Heat butter in microwave until melted.

Add 1 cup sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and whisk to combine.

Add milk and vanilla, whisk until combined. Pour batter into prepared baking dish.

Spoon peaches over the top of the batter, placing them evenly around the pan. Reserve the juice from the can.

Add 1/2 cup sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the juice. Whisk to combine. Pour the juice over the peaches.

Bake 55-60 minutes until golden brown. Serve with a scoop of ice cream on top if desired. (And of course you're gonna desire ice cream on top! What kind of savage would choose to have a kind of cobbler without a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on top????)

Blueberry and Raspberry Croissant Puff

Don't you love it when you find a recipe that's easy to make and tastes good enough to serve to company? I first tasted this dish as the company while visiting my friend Millie in Colorado.  Since then, Ive gone on to make it for my own guests.  Being with  Millie and seeing her life was such a treat. I love the area she lives in and I love her new home but, truthfully, I don't think I could live that far off the beaten path. I could, however, eat her breakfast puff every day.

This dish comes out sort of like a cross between bread pudding and a clafoutis.  I've made it with just blueberries and like it that way too. It warms up pretty well for next day eating - assuming you have any left over!

Blueberry and Raspberry Croissant Puff
recipe courtesy of Millie Picker

Ingredients

4 large croissants, cut up into pieces.
1/2 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
1/2 cup fresh or frozen raspberries
8 oz. cream cheese softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup whole milk

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly coat a 9 inch square pan with cooking spray.
Place croissant pieces in the pan. Scatter the blueberries and raspberries over the top.
In a medium bowl with an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until combined and smooth. Add in the eggs and vanilla and beat well until blended. Gradually add milk, beating well after each addition.
Pour the mixture evenly over the croissant pieces. Gently pat down with a wooden spoon so all the pieces are coated. Let rest 10-15 minutes
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until set in the center and golden brown. (If the top starts to get too brown toward the end, cover with foil.)
Serve warm with powdered sugar sprinkled on top.

Corn Casserole

When Brian was in preschool, we attended the obligatory Thanksgiving Pilgrims and Indians feast. Every school seems to have some variation of this re-enactment, from full on turkey and all the trimmings meal to popcorn and pie.  In addition to all the staples, Brian's PQ Preschool served up a corn casserole dish that had the sweet taste and texture of the corn cakes some Mexican restaurants like to dollop onto a combo platter. I'm not gonna lie - I absolutely loved that little addition to plates at Chevy's and other restaurants where we would eat Mexican food. The ever so addictive queso blanco that I eat by the bowlful when I'm at Miguel's hadn't been invented yet, but those little corn cakes were equally anticipated and quickly devoured.

When I came across this Pioneer Woman recipe the name had me fooled into thinking I'd be making something with a texture more like the corn cakes. Turns out Ree's version of "casserole" actually winds up being creamed corn that is slightly less heavy (creamy?) than other cream corns I've eaten. My sister-in-law Jody used to always make creamed corn for our holiday meals and I loved hers...but, as I've gotten older, I think I prefer things that are a little less heavy on the sauce side. Like this corn casserole.

Also, I admit that I love scraping corn cobs right down to the hard cob itself. There's something satisfying about watching those kernels peel off and then going pack for a second pass to get as much of the juice out as possible. Our family recently watched an episode of Shark Tank where some nut job was pitching this super icky gag toy that simulated picking and popping pimples. I won't go into more detail because it makes me sick to even think about it. My advice is to NEVER buy one of those absolutely awful contraptions but, rather, stick with denuding cobs of the last bit of corn juice. Way less gross and far more tasty. Ewwww....

Corn Casserole
From Pioneer Woman

Ingredients:
8 ears Corn, Still In The Husk
2/3 cups Heavy Cream
3 Tablespoons Butter (salted)
1/2 teaspoon Salt To Taste
 Ground Pepper To Taste

INSTRUCTIONS
Remove the corn from the husks. In a large, deep bowl, slice off the kernels of corn. With the dull side of the knife (or a regular dinner knife), press and scrape the cob all the way down to remove all the bits of kernel and creamy milk inside.

Add heavy cream, salt to taste, a generous amount of ground pepper and butter; mix well. Pour mixture into a baking dish. Bake at 350Fº for 30 to 45 minutes or until thoroughly warmed through.