super bowl - mini bacon & cheddar quiches - not very bacon-y

So what other types of Super Bowl appetizers could I create with crescent rolls- Quiches? But I already made sausage quiches for Thanksgiving. I figured I'd use some bacon instead and make it less bready than last time. I mean, come on- I bought a freakin' mini muffin pan so I need to find more uses for it to make my investment worthwhile. And to make the quiches even more delish I figured I'd make it extra cheesy this time. Last time it appeared that everyone enjoyed my sausage quiches, so if I just turn it up a notch or two, I was sure everyone would love these too.


I got the basic idea for ingredients from another Pillsbury recipes online. The quiche mixture is a lot more cream cheese than egg- which I ain't complaining about. I also added some sauteed onion and seasoning to make it even more tastier.


The morning of the Super Bowl I readied my cute little muffin tin. Instead of separating each biscuit in half as my base (which I did last time), I chose to divide them into three. I felt that last time it was too bready and less quichey, so I thought using less dough would solve that problem. On top of that went a little sprinkle of crushed crispy bacon.


And finally the baby tins get smothered in cheesy goodness.


I guess when the cheddar cheese melted into the egg mixture it made a weird little indentation pattern on the top. They looked interesting to say the least.


I was dying to get my hands on one of these adorable little bundles of cheese and carbs (probably my two favorite food groups).


They tasted pretty good actually. The biscuit dough baked perfectly and was the best vehicle for carrying the light and creamy cheese mixture. Unfortunately they lacked in the bacon department.


They probably should have just been called "mini cheese quiches" considering each little guy probably had a miniscule portion of bacon. This picture is actually very deceiving- in reality, most of the quiches had probably half (if that) amount of bacon seen in this lucky quiche.


For some reason though I couldn't stop eating these babies. I must sound like a broken record- but honestly to me, anything with cheese tastes delicious.

---RECIPE---
Idea from All Recipes, but slightly adapted.

ingredients:
4 slices bacon
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoon cooked onion
1 clove garlic
1 sprinkle of salt, pepper, and garlic powder
1 can Pillsbury refrigerated biscuits

directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease mini muffin cups.
2. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until crisp and evenly brown. Drain, crumble, and set aside.
3. Place the cream cheese, milk, and eggs in a medium bowl, and beat until smooth with an electric mixer set on low. Stir in cheddar cheese, onion, garlic, and seasoning, and set aside.
4. Separate each biscuit dough into three pieces. Press each mini biscuit into the bottom and sides of each muffin cup. Sprinkle bacon evenly into the bottoms of the dough-lined muffin cups. Spoon cheese mixture into each cup, reaching almost the brim.
5. Bake 10-15 minutes in the preheated oven, until filling is set and rims of the tarts are golden brown.

amount:
Makes 30 mini quiches.

super bowl - three cheese pinwheels - apparently three cheeses aren't enough for me

For the Super Bowl, I thought I'd make a ton of mini appetizers with the huge bundle of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls that I had hoarded in the fridge from months ago. I figured these would be similar to the Thanksgiving appetizers I made, but I definitely didn't want to make another sausage quiche or another bacon pinwheel. I couldn't think of anything interestingly different than quiches or pinwheels, so I figured I'd just switch it up a bit. Why not use my ultimate favorite ingredient as a replacement for the bacon in the pinwheels- cheese!


I got the idea from Pillsbury.com for the three cheese pinwheels. I varied it of course to suit my own needs. I used Pepper Jack cheese, Mozzarella cheese (instead of blue cheese- I know they're not similar, I was just going for something different), and cream cheese (as a binder for all the cheesiness). I also had one can of crescent rounds left, which would be perfect for the slicing of the pinwheels.


I spread out the dough and rolled it as large as I could. Then I spread the already mixed cheese combination evenly on to the dough. I also had an abundant amount of basil so I chopped up a few springs and sprinkled them on top.


I carefully rolled up the dough and set it in the fridge for the following day so I could bake them fresh for the day of the Super Bowl.


I sliced them evenly into 16 perfect little cute rounds.


The little pinwheels baked up and revealed little pockets of gooey cheese.


The little flecks of green are either the chopped basil or the jalapeno from the pepper jack cheese.


As for the taste- they were pretty good... definitely not as good as I would have liked them, but at the same time people were still eating them.


Typical me- I would have liked them a lot more cheesy. For some reason it just wasn't that gooey-stringy-cheesy type of food that I like.


That of course didn't stop me from eating a whole ton of these though. Anything with a bready-substance and melted cheese is damn good in my book.

---RECIPE---
Slightly adapted from Pillsbury.com.

ingredients:
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 can Pillsbury crescent rounds
1 tablespoon chopped basil
2 tablespoon cooked onion
1 garlic clove

directions:
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In small bowl, mix all cheeses and mayonnaise until well blended and soft. Add basil, onion, and garlic.
3. Roll dough into long rectangle. Spread cheese mixture evenly over dough.
4. Starting at shorter side, roll up into a cylinder. Set in fridge until ready to bake.
5. When firm, cut into 16 slices. Place, cut side down, on cookie sheet.
6. Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

amount:
Makes 16 pinwheels.

super bowl - crab cakes - contrary to belief, i did help make these

As an appetizer for our Super Bowl party, my boyfriend suggested we make crab cakes. Now, I'm not much of a seafood person at all, but I've always enjoyed crab cakes for the most part. As soon as I was certain that crab cakes were on our menu, I started searching far and wide for crab cake recipes. My boyfriend, on the other hand, said not to worry, and that he'd make it up as he went along. This is the thing that I admire most about my boyfriend- that he is capable of "winging it" when it comes to cooking. I, being incapable of such a feat, would have to read the recipe thoroughly and then follow it precisely. I hope to one day attain that magical "feel" for cooking.


First of course we needed the lump crab meat. We bought a total of 2 pounds of crab meat, and in my head I began calculating necessary amounts of ingredients to accompany this amount. My boyfriend, yet again, assured me that he'd be able to make these crab cakes sans recipe.


In the time it had taken me to precisely and finely chop 1/4 of a red bell pepper, my boyfriend had already prepared the majority of the crab cake mixture. I couldn't tell you what exactly all went into this mixture, nor the amounts, but it appeared to contain bread crumbs, Old Bay, Dijon mustard, seasonings, mayo possibly... I'm not even sure what else.


On the day of the Super Bowl we pulled out our crab cake mixture and began assembling. I noticed that it looked a little wet and didn't seem like it would stick together much. I suggested we add a handful more bread crumbs and also an egg (I noticed that most recipes online used egg, probably as a binder). So basically that was my entire contribution to these crab cakes (oh, and also the chopping of the bell pepper).


A dredging station was set up, complete with flour, eggs, and panko bread crumbs. (He found a huge jar of panko at Costco and insisted he must have it. I think it was really only because it had the words "Iron Chef" written on it.)


The crab cakes were prepared, set aside, and then fried in the pan (all of which, done by my lovely boyfriend).


These crab cakes were massive by the way (I wouldn't expect any less from my boyfriend, lol).


The outside was perfectly coated and had just the right amount of crunch, whereas the inside was moist and tender.


I really gotta hand it to you babe, you made one hell of a crab cake.


The dipping sauce that accompanied these crab cakes was just as delicious.


Now, of course, I can't let my boyfriend take all the credit for these- I was the one who suggested more bread crumbs and the egg! And of course, let us not forget who did the spectacular chopping of the bell pepper.

---RECIPE---
Made by my imaginative boyfriend. (Amounts are rough estimates. I made him recite the recipe to me about a week after he made these so he sort of forgot some things.)

ingredients for the crab cake:
2 pounds lump crab meat
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon mustard powder
2 tablespoon garlic powder
3 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning
3 tablespoon honey Dijon mustard
A little lemon juice
A little sprinkle of parmesan cheese
1 egg
1+1/2 cup breadcrumbs
Enough mayo to combine
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped finely
Salt and pepper to taste

ingredients for frying the crab cakes:
flour
eggs, beated
panko bread crumbs
oil, for frying

directions:
1. Mix everything in a large bowl until fully combined.
2. Form 4 inch patties and place to the side.
3. Get 3 dishes ready- one for the flour, one for the egg, and one for the Panko breadcrumbs. Dip each crab cake in the flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. Set them aside.
4. Put some oil in a pan and cook crab cakes for a few minutes on each side.

neiman marcus cookie - my first taste at a non-cook's-illustrated cookie in months

Ever since we had that chocolate chip cookie contest, I haven't made any chocolate chip cookie other than the Cook's Illustrated "Thick and Chewy" (not including my edible and bakeable cookies). I'm not saying that it doesn't taste good- in fact, it tastes awesome for the most part- but I'm just getting sick of it. My boyfriend was over my house today, and I thought I'd bake him some cookies to take home. Instead of my go-to recipe, I opted to try the Neiman Marcus cookie instead (it did get 2nd place in the throwdown). I wonder if my boyfriend will be able to notice the difference between the two.


What I love about this recipe is that it uses ground oats (so ground that it actually resembles coarse flour). I'm not sure what this really does to the batter, but it gives it a slightly crispy yet airy texture.


The rest of the recipe is fairly basic. It's almost as if someone just randomly threw out ratios for each of the ingredients (I mean, mostly everything is by 1 cup or 2 cup measurements). I guess I'm just so used to Cook's Illustrated using their crazy accurate "1 cup + 2 tablespoons" nonsense.


The ground oats and flour mixture gets added to the wet ingredients. The batter didn't taste as good as other chocolate chip cookie doughs, probably because of the small pieces of oats.


And of course- since I am making cookies for my boyfriend, they must contain white chocolate chips.


I baked them shorter than the time the recipe stated because these were such smaller cookies. (The last time we baked these, they came out huge chewy cookies.)


The shorter time allowed for these cookies to bake beautifully (and by beautifully I mean they were slightly underbaked, because that's just how I like 'em).


These cookies had a slightly crunchy exterior, especially compared with the Cook's Illustrated. I usually don't like crisp cookies, but the fact that the outside greatly contrasted with the inside was amazing.


The hard outer shell protected all the gooey-goodness hidden inside. I love food that has a duality to it, which these definitely provided. The tiny crispy oat flakes were suspended in this gooey chewy (and chocolaty) center and could best be described as a party in your mouth.


But of course- this delightful attack on your taste buds could only be achieved by underbaking the cookies and by eating them fresh out of the oven. I will continue to fight for underbaked cookies, yet at the same time never tell my boyfriend (a raw cookie dough hater). If only he knew that he was basically consuming raw cookie dough...

---RECIPE---
Taken from Urban Legends, but can be found almost anywhere. It was one of those chain email forward things (obviously false), but I think almost everyone got one of these in their email at one point in time. These make more than 100 cookies, so definitely halve/quarter/whatever the amounts.

ingredients:
2 cup butter
4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cup granulated sugar
2 cup brown sugar
5 cup blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in blender to a fine powder)
24 ounces chocolate chips
1 teaspoon salt
1 8-ounce Hershey bar, grated (omitted)
4 eggs
2 teaspoon baking powder
3 cup chopped nuts (omitted)
2 teaspoon vanilla

directions:
1. Measure oats and mix in blender until resembles a fine powder or corn flour.
2. Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla.
3. Mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda.
4. Add chocolate chips, Hershey bar and nuts.
5. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet
6. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

amount:
Makes 112 cookies. (holy shit. seriously, who's going to bake that many?)