Chocolate Revel Bars

When I typed this title, the auto-fill filled it in. So I must have posted about these yummy cookies before. But I can't find the post, so I'm going to do it again. These are really, really good cookies, and I made them yesterday. The recipe calls for sweetened condensed milk, which I do not have in my cupboards, so I made some following Crystal's recipe*. It worked out just fine. I will never buy sweetened condensed milk again.

1 cup butter or margarine

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon soda

a teaspoon salt

3 cups quick or rolled oats

Mix above ingredients and press 1/2 in a greased and floured 11x17 pan (see Hint, below). Mix and heat up until melted:

1 can sweetened condensed milk*

1 12 oz. package chocolate chips

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons margarine

Add 2 teaspoons vanilla and 1 cup nuts if desired.

Pour over oatmeal mixture. Crumble other 1/2 of oatmeal on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

*Sweetened Condensed Milk in a Blender

In a blender combine for several minutes until very smooth:

1/2 cup hot water

1 cup non-instant powdered milk OR 2 cups instant powdered milk

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon butter

Hint: When pressing the mixture into the pan, I use a piece of wax paper to keep the dough from sticking to my fingers.

The results are in

This is a picture of the cake before I frosted it. For frosting I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in the microwave, stirred in a spoonful of cocoa powder, a little milk, and a couple of cups of powdered sugar. Even without the frosting, though, the cake wasn't bad. A very strong banana flavor, but the texture is nice. Nuts would have helped. Dad ate two pieces of it, in his typical fashion of in a bowl with milk over it. Ice cream would have been even better. I'll most likely put the rest of it in the freezer for a future dessert when we need something easy to feed a crowd. So you'd better watch out! Next time you come to visit you might get fed chocolate banana cake for dessert!

Chocolate Banana Cake

Crystal from Everyday food storage has been sharing cake recipes this month. She inspired me to try making a cake, but because I have lots of yogurt that needs to be used, and we have some overripe bananas that need to be used, and I'm craving a bit of chocolate, well, I did a search for a recipe for a cocoa banana cake, and then I adapted it, and this is what I came up with:

3/4 cup bean puree (oil or margarine or butter)

1 1/2 cups pureed bananas (I used 3)

1 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons powdered egg (or 3 eggs)

1/4 cup cocoa

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons water (for the three powdered eggs--if you're using regular eggs, omit the water)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup homemade yogurt (sour cream)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13 pan. Combine the bean puree and the banana puree in a mixing bowl, then add the two flours, the sugar, the egg powder, the cocoa, the baking powder, the baking soda, the salt, and the water. Mix until combined. Mix in the vanilla extract and the yogurt. Pour into pan and bake until done--30 minutes?

I took a bottle of pinto beans and drained off some of the juice and then pureed it in the blender. I measured the 3/4 cup and put the rest of the puree in a container in the fridge. Then I blended up the bananas, measured them, and found that 3 bananas made the 1 1/2 cups (the original recipe suggested using 4 to make the 1 1/2 cups--maybe pureeing it incorporated air into it, I don't know!). Put those things into my mixer bowl and went from there. I'll let you know how it goes. The original recipe is here. I won't be following their recipe for the icing, as I don't have cream (unless I use more yogurt) or corn syrup. If I ice it I'll likely just use powdered sugar and cocoa and butter and a little milk. I'm a little nervous about using the beans in place of the oil. They say it can be done, but I'm still not sure. I'm hoping the bananas and yogurt in there will help the texture in case the beans don't. I guess I'll never really know, though, since I won't have a "control" cake to compare it with.

p.s. This is probably my last attempt at using that yogurt that I made. But that's another story...

p.p.s. While I'm waiting for my cake to bake, I just read the rest of the blog post, and it looks like this person did not like this cake recipe! She got it from this New York Times article, and was very disappointed with the texture and with how the bananas overpowered the chocolate. I knew I should have used 1 cup of cocoa instead of 1/4 cup! Oh, and now I see that she links to a banana cake recipe on her own blog that she much prefers, which also calls for sour cream, so I guess I could have used my yogurt in that one, too. Well, we shall see.

Raspberry yogurt muffins

I made these muffins this morning, following the recipe found here, except that I used half whole wheat flour, and I used 1 1/2 cups of frozen raspberries instead of 2 cups of blueberries. Oh, and no vanilla (see previous post). I used the store-bought Mountain High vanilla-flavored yogurt, rather than my homemade, in an effort to use it up. Still have over 2 quarts of yogurt in the fridge. Stay tuned for more recipes.

BTW, Dad called me on his way to work this morning to tell me that these muffins are "delightful." I appreciated that. I'm glad he enjoyed them. They are cake-like, have a nice texture, and the top is a bit crisp.

p.s. I think one reason they're so good is because of the cup of sugar that the recipe calls for. I mean, that's a lot of sugar! I may have to experiment with variations to make them a bit more healthy, er, I mean, nutritious.

Yogurt cookies

Did you know that yogurt can be used in place of eggs, as well as shortening and oil? In my online search for what to do with all my yogurt, I came across this recipe for Yogurt Cookies. I did not follow it exactly (surprise!). I used 100% whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, and I used 1 cup chocolate chips instead of 2. Here is what I did:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 to 1/2 cup butter, softened (I just used what was on the dish in my cupboard, as one of the commenters said that they had used only the butter (1/4 cup) and left out the shortening (also 1/4 cup), for a total of only 1/4 cup fat, and they turned out fine.)

1/2 cup (homemade) yogurt

(I skipped the vanilla flavoring--I've been getting tired of vanilla lately)

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips

Cream sugars and butter, then mix in the yogurt. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir well, followed by the chocolate chips. Put blobs on cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Makes 24.

These cookies spread out a bit and are quite soft when they're still warm. Stay tuned for how they taste when they are cool.

Okay, I've tasted them cool. They're very soft and a bit tangy. Not the texture that I think of with chocolate chip cookies. Not bad, but not great either.

Tomorrow I plan to try a muffin recipe, like maybe this one here.

Using the yogurt

Today I made pancakes using half yogurt and half water for the liquid. They turned out very light and fluffy. I highly recommend it.

It worked!

Okay, so last night around 7:30 or 8 p.m. I checked the yogurt, and it was done. Not curdled and sour, not runny, but real honest-to-goodness yogurt. It smells like vanilla. Curse that vanilla-flavored Mountain High! If I ever do this again, I will buy plain yogurt. The salad dressing that I made was not good. I did eat it on my salad last night, but couldn't handle the vanilla flavor with the spices, so I ended up dumping the rest of the bottle down the sink. I should have done what Josie says she does, and just made half a recipe. So now I have about three quarts of vanilla yogurt, including the one that I bought. What to do with it? Well, I'm going to make one quart of it into yogurt cheese, and see about making a cheesecake. I'll try to eat some of it with some strawberries and/or raspberries and/or bananas stirred--maybe even blended--into it. And, finally, if all else fails, I'll put the rest of it into the ice cream freezer and see about making some frozen yogurt. Some people do like frozen yogurt, and that would be a way of preserving it for those people to enjoy sometime in the future.

Next week: cottage cheese.

In the meantime...

While I'm waiting for the yogurt to do its thing, I've been experimenting with some other food storage recipes. First of all, maybe I should explain that I'm not sure the yogurt will be appreciated around here once it's done. So I need to find creative ways of using it. I'm thinking that I'll try making yogurt cheese, which, I understand, is a good substitute for cream cheese and can be used in cheesecakes. I've also heard that the yogurt will be good to use in making Ranch dressing, something that everyone I know seems to love. While I'm waiting, I decided to try using some of the Mountain High yogurt (that I bought to use as a starter) and make some ranch dressing, using a recipe I found:

Ranch Dressing, or Creamy Dressing

In a blender combine:

1 cup yogurt

1 cup lowfat mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

2 teaspoons dehydrated onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

Result: it looks creamy and tastes sort of like, well, vanilla-flavored (*sigh*!!) ranch dressing. We'll see how well it goes over with Jim.

Reading all these food storage books and recipes got me dreaming about whipping up a simple casserole. This is my personalized combination/adaptation of a couple of recipes in one of the books:

2 cans (or pint bottles) of kidney beans, rinsed and drained in a colander

4 cups egg noodles, boiled for about 7 minutes until done, then drained in the same colander (yes, on top of the beans)

In the same pot that you cooked the noodles, combine:

1 cup easy white sauce mix

2 cups water

1 tablespoon dehydrated onion

1/2 teaspoon salt

some pepper

some garlic powder

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until bubbly and thick. Then stir in:

1 cup grated cheese

Add the noodles and beans to the cheese sauce mix and stir to combine. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

I also baked some bread today.

And, finally, I've been watching YouTube videos about making cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Maybe some day I'll try one of those and let you know how it goes. But, first, back to the yogurt, and tonight's dinner.

Yogurt

Today is the day! About 7:30 this morning I got my powdered milk and water blended up in the blender and put into the crock-pot, turned it to low, set the timer for 2 1/2 hours, and let it heat up. I noticed that there was a brown ring around the inside of the crockpot, just above the milk line. I don't know if that's normal or not. Maybe my crockpot cooks hot. Or maybe I didn't have it perfectly clean. At any rate, when the timer went off, I unplugged the crock pot, re-set the timer for 3 more hours, and let it sit again. At that point, I measured two cooks of the very-warm milk into a bowl, and used a fork to stir in 1/2 cup of Mountain High brand yogurt. Then I stirred that back into the crockpot, put the lid on, and wrapped it in three towels. The timer is now set for 6 hours. I hope that the next time I open it I am met with a sweet smell and a gelled hunk of yogurt. I'll let you know.

One of the things I learned from the video is what to do with that liquid that sits on top of the yogurt. I've always tried to stir it back into the yogurt, but she explains that the liquid is the whey, and it should be poured off the top, not stirred back in. She says that stirring your yogurt is kind of like stirring a bowl of jello. It just liquifies it and does nothing to help. The whey, she says, is full of proteins, and is good to use as the liquid in your next batch of bread. Or maybe a pot of soup. Or it could just be dumped down the sink. I never knew.

homemade yogurt

I'm going to try this sometime in the next week. Watch and see what happens.

Here is the link to her webpage with more information about using homemade yogurt and cheeses in your everyday cooking.

Chicken pot pie #2 report

Keeper!

The biscuits weren't the best, but they were good, and the sauce and filling was really good.

There are many variations that could be done with this recipe. Just so you know, the original idea came from that Cooking for Two Bride and Groom (I think it's called The I Do Cookbook) cookbook that my cousin wrote. She has a recipe in there for biscuits that are made with sour cream, and they are very light and fluffy. Whatever works!

Chicken pot pie #2

This chicken pot pie is also made with canned chicken and frozen mixed vegetables, but instead of pie crust it uses Bisquick. Only I didn't have enough Bisquick, so I supplemented with a little whole wheat flour. And the picture, above, shows just the filling stuff, minus the biscuits. I added them after I took the picture.

Drain a can of chicken from the cannery, reserving the broth and putting it into a pot. To the pot of broth, add 2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables. Put a lid on it and bring it to a boil. Remove from heat. Strain the broth off the vegetables into a measuring cup by pouring the vegetables and broth through a sieve. Put the vegetables, in the sieve, aside.

In your pot, melt a tablespoon of butter, and saute 1/2 cup onion and 1/2 cup celery, chopped, until soft.

Add enough water to the reserved broth to make 2 3/4 cups of liquid. Add a teaspoon of chicken bouillon granules. Use a wire whisk to stir in 1/2 cup of white sauce mix. Dump the liquid in with the celery and onion and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly with wire whisk, until mixture thickens and gets bubbly.

Stir the reserved frozen mixed vegetables into the sauce, along with the can of chicken, and any other leftover cooked vegetables you may have in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Prepare a recipe of biscuits according to the Bisquick package directions. If you are about a half a cup of Bisquick short, try adding 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour to the dry ingredients before stirring in the milk.

Pour the chicken-vegetable-sauce mixture into a casserole dish. Pat chunks of dough into biscuit shaped blobs and place on top of mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown.

I'll take a picture when it's done and post it and tell you how we like it.

Backward Menu Planning Continued

Sunday January 29

• Meatloaf
• Twice-baked Potatoes
• Green Bean Casserole
• Green Salad
• Ice cream and brownies

This menu would have benefited from some rolls or bread and butter, too. And, of course, fruit instead of ice cream and brownies for dessert.

Monday January 30. The pork chops were from a freezer menu plan of Leanne Ely's. I think they were called Spicy Citrus Pork Chops or something like that. I had put them in the freezer a while ago when we bought a family size package of pork chops. Anyway, maybe I overcooked them, but they were tough and not that good. There were four in the package that I had stashed away, so we'll be having the other two as leftovers tonight.

• Pork chops
• Brown rice
• Carrots, Broccoli, Cauliflower
• Green salad

Tuesday January 31

• Mexican Lasagna, or, in other words, that Chicken Tortilla Bake stuff
• Canned corn
• Carrot and celery sticks, and cucumber slices
• Fruit salad made of fresh strawberries, a pear, an orange, and half a banana

Wednesday February 1

• Leftover pork chops
• Mashed potatoes and gravy
• Green beans (from the freezer) and carrots
• Peach cobbler (maybe)

Since you requested...

Homemade Pizza Pockets

You will need:

1 recipe pizza dough

Your favorite pizza toppings

All you do is:

Roll out the dough into a rectangle. Use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into smaller rectangles (the size is all up to you). Put on the sauce and whatever toppings you want then fold it over to make yet a smaller rectangle. Seal the edges with your fingers or a fork or whatever floats your boat. Bake at 400 for about 10 min. or until it looks done.

The dough recipe I used was from page 57 of The I Do Cookbook and so the dough got all fluffy and tasted like fresh baked bread. We all really liked it. However, if you don't want the dough to poof and be all bready than here is a recipe that you might like to try. It's supposedly flaky, but I made this recipe once to make this ladies pop tarts and it didn't turn out very flaky for me.

Banana Ice Cream

I made this last night along with homemade pizza pockets and the kids declared it the best dinner ever and what we should have every night.

Banana Ice Cream

2 1/2 frozen banana's

5 TBS frozen OJ concentrate (I just eyeballed it)

1 cup milk (I used half coconut and half rice milk because that's what I had on hand)

12 ice cubes

Blend banana's, OJ, and milk until smooth. Add ice cubes and blend until slushy. Serve cold!

I told the kids that it was a slushy and they didn't believe me. They wanted to call it ice cream.