Duck Fried Rice

I was really bummed when I missed the first Iron Chef Challenge featuring Maple Leaf Farms duck so I knew I had to participate when Ott, A brought it back this month.

I was craving some fried rice so I decided to see if I could create some Duck Fried Rice.

It turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.

Here's what I started with...

I used a Maple Leaf Farms Rotisserie Roast Half Duck, though you could use the regular Roast Half Duck or even their Ready to Cook Duck Breasts.

I defrosted the duck and divided it in half. I set aside one part to enjoy later and cubed the other half. It's already seasoned but I put a few dashes of Soy Sauce on it and set it aside.

I fixed the package of SteamFresh rice and veggies as directed and put it in a skillet with a little bit of oil. I cooked it for 3-4 minutes.

As the rice was cooking, I steamed the snow peas. They came in a great package that I just had to pierce and throw in the microwave for 2 minutes.

When the rice was cooked, I separated it in the middle and added an egg. I cooked the egg with the rice.

Once the egg was cooked, I added in the duck and snow peas.

While that started to warm, I melted a 1/4 cup of butter and a teaspoon of minced garlic. Once melted, I added it to the duck fried rice mixture and stirred.

Then serve it up with some soy sauce and enjoy! This made two large servings or three smaller ones.

It was good take on traditional Chicken Fried Rice and the duck added a lot of flavor. If you don't care for garlic, you could use stir-fry sauce or soy sauce or teriyaki sauce instead of the butter/garlic mix.

Here's the recipe...

Duck Fried Rice

Half of a Maple Leaf Farms Rotisserie Roast Half Duck (or their Roast Half Duck or a Duck Breast), cubed or shredded
Package of SteamFresh rice with vegetable (cooked as directed on package)
1 egg
Package of snow peas  (cooked as directed on package) or other vegetables of your choice
Soy Sauce
1/4 cup butter
1 t. minced garlic

Add 3-4 dashes of soy sauce to the shredded or cubed duck and set aside.

Heat a skillet with some oil and add the rice with vegetables. Cook for 3-4 minutes. Make room in the middle of the skillet and add the egg. Stir until the egg is cooked. Add snow peas and duck.

While egg is cooking, melt the butter and minced garlic. Add to the rice mixture and stir until heated through.

Serve with soy sauce and enjoy.

Grandma's Bread Pudding

I'm excited to be competing in A Latte With Ott, A's Iron Chef Challenge Bake-Off sponsored by Taste of Home. I'm competing against the other winners of previous Iron Chef Challenge's over on her blog.


We were asked to create something new using Taste of Home's Cinnamon Raisin Bread recipe.


Since I won a challenge making something for my dad, I decided to go with the same theme in this challenge. My dad loves bread pudding and my grandma would make it for him a couple times a year. So, I pulled out my folder with grandma's favorite recipes and used one of the loaves of Cinnamon Raisin Bread (we ate the other one straight out of the oven) to make bread pudding.


Here's the final product. Yummy!

First I took a loaf of the Cinnamon Raisin Bread that I had baked earlier in the week.

 And cut it up into bite-sized pieces.

Then I put it into the oven at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes to dry it out.

Then I added the chunks of bread to a mixture of 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and - per my grandma's recipe - "enough milk to soak up bread"(I used about 2 cups) and stirred it together.

I put the mixture into a large glass baking dish. Put it into a 375 degree oven. Grandma's recipe says to bake until brown and thick. I left mine in for about 45 minutes.

I served it warm with some French vanilla Cool Whip. My dad enjoyed it, as did the rest of the family. Thanks to Taste of Home for sponsoring this challenge and Amy over at A Latte with Ott, A for hosting another great competition. Head over to her page to see what my competitors created. p.S. Amy will be posting all of our links tomorrow morning but I have to be at work super early and don't trust my scheduler to post this on time tomorrow...so mine is up a bit early.

Pizza Batter Bread and a Challenge

I'm participating in Ott,A's Iron Chef Challenge again this month (BTW...I won her milk challenge!) and the sponsor is King Arthur Flour.

I chose King Arthur's Unbleached Bread Flour so I could test my bread-making skills! It's been years since I've done any serious yeast baking. When doing a bit of research on what King Arthur flour I wanted to use, I found out that the higher the protein level in the flour, the stronger the rise...King Arthur bread flour has a higher protein level than most brands. Check out more nutritional information about the flour here.

I was tempted to mix up the Cheddar-Stuffed Crusty Loaves from the recipe on the back of the package...yummy.

But, I decided to mix up a loaf of Pizza Batter Bread from the local extension homemaker cookbook. This cookbook features recipes from local women and 4-H members and I have had great luck with the ones I've made before. This one was no exception, two thumbs up from the family.

Here are the ingredients...

I didn't snap many photos of the dough in process...but I did get this one of the dry ingredients...flour, spices and yeast!

Here's the "soft dough" before I set it in a warm place to rise.

Once it doubled in size, I stirred it and placed it in a bread pan to double in size again before baking.

It turned out great! I took it to a pitch-in at my mom's on Sunday night and it was well-received!

Here's the recipe:

Pizza Batter Bread
3 c. flour (I used unbleached bread flour from King Arthur.)
1 pkg. yeast
1/2 t. dried oregano (I used Italian seasoning.)
1/4 t. garlic powder
1 1/4 c. water
2 T. butter
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
1/4 c. finely chopped pepperoni

In mixing bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups of flour, yeast, oregano and garlic powder.

In saucepan, heat water, butter, sugar and salt just until water is warm, stirring to melt butter. Add to dry mixture in mixing bowl. Beat at low speed for 1/2 minute, scraping sides of bowl constantly. Beat at high speed for 3 minutes.

By hand, stir in pepperoni and enough remaining flour to make a moderately soft dough. Cover, let rise in warm place until double, 45 to 60 minutes. Stir dough down. Spread evenly in greased 9 x 5 x 3-inch pan. Let rise until double, about 30 minutes.

Bake in 375 degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from pan: cool on rack. Makes 1 loaf.

Check out the other Iron Chef Challenge entries here.

King Arthur provided me with a coupon for a free sack of flour. But the opinions and thoughts expressed in this post are all mine, of course!

Dirt Pudding for my Farmer Dad

After church this morning, I asked my dad what dessert he'd like for our Father's Day celebration.

He said Dirt Pudding.

This confused me a bit because that's NOT a dessert our family makes...ever.

But, hey, it's his day so I said OK and headed to the store for some milk, Oreos and vanilla pudding! Luckily, Walgreens has the small packs of Oreos on sale for 99 cents this week and I had a coupon for $1 off two packages. SCORE!

Then I headed home to jump on the Internet to find the recipe. I found a recipe for Dirt Cake I on allrecipes.com that looked good. Then I read the comments and found some suggestions on tweak it a bit so I took those, as well as made some of my own.

Before I got started, I had to crush the Oreos...unfortunately I don't have a full-size food processor but my mini one did the job just fine.

It took a bit longer but my mini-processor is much easier to store than the full-size ones!

Here's the final product. I added a small John Deere tractor in honor of my dad. If I had some green icing or green food coloring, it would have been fun to add a "field" to the top as well...maybe next year.

I think he enjoyed it, as did the rest of the family! So I'm sharing the recipe on here so others can enjoy it (and so I have it if I ever want to make it again).

Here's the recipe...

Dirt Pudding/Cake
3 T. butter/margarine, softened (I may have used 4 T. since I had a half stick in the fridge.)
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
2 (3.5 oz.) packages instant pudding mix
3 1/2 c. milk
2 (12 oz.) container frozen whipped topping, thawed (I used 1 1/2 containers because I NEEDED to eat the rest with a spoon right after I finished making this.)
32 oz. chocolate sandwich cookies with creme filling, chopped very fine in food processor (white cream will disappear)

Mix butter and cream cheese in bowl. In a large bowl, combine milk and pudding mix with a whisk. Then add the whipped topping. Combine pudding mixture and cream mixture together.

Layer in a trifle bowl (or a flower pot or other pretty dish), starting with cookies then cream mixture. Repeat layers. Chill until ready to serve.

If you put it into a flower pot, you can add an artificial flower or gummy worms or plastic trowel.

Grandma's Butterscotch Brownies

Growing up, my family and I spent every major holiday (Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter) at my paternal grandparent's home. I should add that they lived a couple of miles away from us. Their house sat on the main farm where my dad worked so we spent a lot of our days there but holidays were special times.

Grandma would do the majority of the cooking with everyone else bringing a covered dish to add to the already groaning table.

When Amy over at a Latte with Ott, A revealed that Baking Powder was the secret ingredient for her April 15-22 Iron Chef Challenge, I decided to honor my grandma by using one of her recipes.

Luckily, Baby Sister sat down with our grandma several years ago and recorded several of her recipes - some that were written on well-worn recipe cards and others that resided only in grandma's head. Baby Sister then put together the collection and gave each of my sisters (and I think my cousins) a copy.

Every Christmas Eve, Grandma would make a crock pot or two of her Oyster Soup, which was a favorite of my dad. Every Thanksgiving, there would be a pan of dressing next to the turkey.

My grandma made a great angel food cake from scratch, as well as a cookie sheet cake that my mom remembers fondly. Actually, my mom flipped through these recipes and decided to make my dad some bread pudding over the weekend using Grandma's recipe!

This time of year always makes me remember one of my family's quirky traditions. For as long as I can remember, my family headed over to my grandparent's house on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter) for some of my grandma's Butterscotch Rolls - these ooey gooey pecan topped cinnamon rolls. They were delicious and after 40 days of little to no sweets because of Lent, we devoured pan after pan of them.

I thought about making her Butterscotch Rolls but I thought I might keep those for a future Iron Chef Challenge (perhaps with a secret ingredient of yeast?).

I settled for Grandma's Butterscotch Brownies. I have to admit that I don't remember my grandma making these but when I looked at the ingredients I could imagine that this was a recipe that she put together when she needed a dessert in a hurry.

I gathered my ingredients, including Clabber Girl Baking Powder - the secret ingredient.

If you saw Grandma's recipe above, it didn't give step-by-step directions. So, I called upon my many years of 4-H training and put the brownies together like this...

I started by combining 2 cups of brown sugar and a half cup of shortening. Using a hand mixer (I don't have a fancy Kitchenaid), I mixed them together.

Then I added 2 eggs and mixed well.

Then I added 2 teaspoons of vanilla. (I used my cool new adjustable measuring spoon from Pampered Chef - it has a 2 teaspoon setting!)

I set aside the wet ingredients and decided to sift together my dry ingredients - 1 and a half cups flour and 2 teaspoons Clabber Girl Baking Powder. (Did you know Clabber Girl is an Indiana company?)

Once combined, I added half the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mixed.

I like to incorporate the dry ingredients in by hand before turning on the mixer because when I don't, flour flies everywhere. Maybe it's operator error, but it always happens to me! Always.

Here's what the completed dough looked like...

I decided that it was lacking something...specifically it was lacking chocolate. So I added a cup of chocolate chips!

Then I spread the dough into a 9x13 pan...yes I covered mine in foil because I have 10 rolls of foil in my pantry and I HATE washing baking pans.

Then I baked it in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. Since this was my first time baking this treat, I worried a bit about how long to leave it in so I left it in for 23 minutes...probably could have left it in for the full 25 and been just fine.

Because it had shortening in it, the brownies puffed up quite impressively while in the oven and then settled once cooled.

The insides were gooey, kind of like butterscotch - I think. They were quite good and my dad said that they tasted similar to what he remembered. So they were a success!

Have a recipe using baking powder that you think is a winner? Go here and enter Ott, A's Iron Chef Challenge. Deadline to enter is April 22!

Grandma's Butterscotch Brownies

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup shortening

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream together brown sugar and shortening. Add eggs and mix well. Add vanilla and mix.

Sift together flour and baking powder. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well.

Spread into greased 9x13 pan. Bake 20-25 minutes.

I also linked up to: 

Iron Chef Challenge: Pizza Dip

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This weekend a couple of my college gal pals and their daughters came over for a fun girls weekend.

We did some scrapbooking, took in a movie (Tangled in 3D, it was a great show), laughed until we hurt, and, of course, had a little something to eat and drink.

I took this opportunity to prepare my entry into Ott, A's Iron Chef Challenge: Canned Tomatoes.

Jane, from Going Jane, just happened to have some cookbooks in her car - doesn't everyone travel with cookbooks - and had flagged a recipe for Pizza Dip. We decided it would be the perfect dish to snack during an afternoon of scrapbooking.

Here's the final product...

I started out with my ingredients, including a couple of small cans of Red Gold tomato sauce. I didn't have all the "toppings" so I improvised and left a few out. This dip is like pizza - your choice of toppings.

The recipe called for pizza sauce but I used the tomato sauce and Italian Seasoning and made my own.

Then I cut up some pepperoni.

Then spread the cream cheese into the bottom of my Pampered Chef round baking dish. The recipe said to use a 9-inch pie plate but I use mine in the microwave (a story for another day).

Then I poured the tomato sauce on top of the cream cheese and added the pepperoni. I decided to up the tomato factor by adding some Red Gold Diced Tomatoes with Basil, Garlic and Oregano.

I only added the tomatoes to one half of the dish because some people don't like chunky tomatoes and some people do.

Then I covered it in cheese - a mix of mozzarella and parmesan - and put it into the oven.

While it was baking, I cut up part of a loaf of French bread and spread them on my Pampered Chef pizza stone. Do you see a pattern of Pampered Chef use this weekend? I went to a Pampered Chef party on Friday night and got inspired.

I wanted to jazz up the bread a bit so I brushed on some EVOO (olive oil) and sprinkled some Italian Seasoning on top. Then I cranked up the broiler and put them in the oven with the pizza dip.

It was a hit judging by the three batches of bread I had to fix!

If you feel up to joining Ott, A's Iron Chef Challenge, go here:

via

Pizza Dip

1 (8-oz) package of cream cheese, softened

1 (14-oz) jar pizza sauce OR tomato sauce with your choice of seasoning

1/2 cup green bell pepper

1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes, drained

1/2 cup pepperoni

1 (2 1/4-oz) can sliced ripe olives

1 (8-oz) package shredded mozzarella cheese (or Italian mix or some Parmesan)

2 green onions, chopped

Spread cream cheese in bottom of a 9-inch pieplate; spread pizza sauce over cream cheese. Sprinkle bell pepper, pepperoni, and olives (or diced tomatoes or mushrooms or well, you get the idea) over sauce. Top with mozzarella cheese (or Parmesan or Italian mix).

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 or 12 minutes or until cheese melts. (I cranked up the broiler for the last couple of minutes.) Serve warm with corn chips or French bread or whatever you want!