What I Baked for Dessert :: One Bowl Apple Cake

My friend shared this recipe she found from a random person (Jean Dodd) on Facebook. I had some old-ish apples and a breakfast I needed to bring something to so I gave the recipe a go. It got the thumbs-up from my husband and I was asked for the recipe at the breakfast, so I'm guessing this was a successful recipe!

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1-1/4 cups sugar
• 2 heaping teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 6 medium Gala, Fuji, or Honey Crisp apples
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl, mix the eggs, sugar, cinnamon and applesauce. Peel and slice the apples and add to mixture in bowl (coating as you go to keep apples from turning brown.) Mix together the baking powder and flour and add to the ingredients in the bowl. Mix well (best with a fork) until all of the flour is absorbed by the wet ingredients. Pour mixture into a greased 9x13 pan, two 9″ round pans, or one 9” round pan and a 12 cup muffin pan. Bake for approximately 55 minutes (muffins will finish baking in about 45 minutes).

What I Ate for Dessert :: sweets from Baked & Wired

My husband was kind enough to bring home desserts from Baked & Wired for our 15th anniversary. He had the Honey Pecan Bar and I got the very rich Jolt Brownie.

What I Made for Dinner :: Moussaka

What I Made for Snack :: Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

What I Read for Fun :: Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children'sLiterature

What I Made for Dinner :: Chicken with Onion & Mushroom Dijon Sauce

When I graduated from high school, I had no idea that in 20 years' time I would be trading recipes and Instagram photos of food with my high school friends. But here I am, asking for links to recipes, drooling over restaurant pics, and sharing my own cooking tips with the same friends I used to gossip about boys with!

This recipe for Chicken Breasts with Mushroom and Onion Dijon Sauce came from my friend G, a highly-accomplished career woman, dedicated mother and wife, and gourmet home cook. There's a really good chance I haven't seen her in 15 years; it's been so long I don't recall at all the last time we saw each other in person. But social media -- despite its many ills -- has reconnected us and made us aware of our mutual interest in food. There's something special about being connected through food, and sharing a meal, even if it is across the country!

I adapted the recipe to suit what I had in the fridge at the time. Despite all of the changes, it still tasted the way I imagined it should taste, and it was quite good:

• I only had about a cup/cup and a half of mushrooms, and I used a brown onion instead of a red onion.
• I used chicken thighs; I'm not a fan of chicken breast.
• I didn't have any rosemary so I substituted fresh thyme.
• Instead of cream I used half and half.
• I only had whole grain Dijon mustard so I used two tablespoons of that, thinking it's a bit stronger than regular Dijon.

G's dish looked much better than mine ... served with leftover sticky rice "risotto," my dish looks like one big beige blob! But the sauce was delicious and easy to make. For the most part, I usually have the ingredients necessary to make this dish so it'll be good to keep this recipe in mind when I need some variation in my chicken rotation. 

But I do have a question about using dairy to make a cream sauce ... what can I do to prevent the dairy from curdling and separating? I guess I could temper it a bit, but this recipe calls for a quarter cup of cream, which really isn't much. How do I temper that much liquid? Should I bring the cream (or half and half, in my case) to room temperature before adding it to the pan? Mix it with the stock first? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

What I Made for Dinner :: Roast Chicken on Wild Mushroom Sticky Rice “Risotto”

I make a lot of chicken ... maybe too much chicken for my family's liking. But it's an easy protein to work with and it's usually not too expensive. And it must be my personal childhood preference working its subliminal magic because I'm often drawn to chicken recipes when I'm browsing Pinterest.

The recipe for Roast Chicken on Wild Mushroom Sticky Rice "Risotto" jumped out at me the second I saw it: 1) it uses skin-on dark meat chicken, 2) wild mushrooms!, and 3) I love sticky rice but I've never made it. 

The recipe calls for six cups of cooked sticky rice. I wasn't sure how much uncooked rice to prepare to get six cups of cooked rice, so I just followed the directions I found in the instruction manual of my fancy-schmancy rice cooker. I used three cups of uncooked rice and I ended up with waaaaaay too much cooked rice. I didn't measure the cooked amount, but, as you can see, the rice alone filled up a 9x13 (3 quart) baking dish and half of a 7x11 (2 quart) baking dish. Next time, I only need to make half the amount of rice ... maybe even less than that!

The chicken quarters were a bit unwieldy in the dish and I only used three instead of the four the recipe calls for. I baked some leftover boneless, skinless thighs for the kids (they're not very good at taking meat off of the bone) and that worked out just fine. I'm personally a fan of skin- and bone-on chicken, but next time I'm going to break down the leg quarters so it fits in the baking dish better.

As for the mushrooms, I used Baby Bellas, enoki, and brown shimeji. As is expected, the mushrooms cook down considerably, so if you like mushrooms, cook a lot of them! My kids aren't fans of mushrooms so my husband and I got to enjoy what they didn't eat.

All in all, this is an easy recipe to follow. You just have to give yourself extra time to precook the sticky rice. I made mine in the morning and let it cool at room temperature until the evening. I would also suggest not dumping in all of the chicken stock at once. Depending on how creamy/soft you like your "risotto," you may want to adjust the amount of liquid you add, especially if you're not following the recipe exactly when it comes to how much cooked rice you'll be using. I feel like I used too much chicken stock and my rice ended up a bit too mushy.